Project Seraphina [LitRPG, Magitech, GL]
2.61 Final Preparations II

Planet Earth, Year 1 A.I. (June 2023 CE, 10 weeks after System Integration.)

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Chloe says. “Did you sleep well last night?”

I awaken from my memory, which might or might not have also been a dream, to find Chloe fully awake, lying on top of me, and grinning that grin that she’s so fond of. The sun is still streaming in through the same window as before, so it can’t have been an excessively long time. Unless, of course, an entire day has passed. My heart races. Too late, gotta–!

“I did. Not as well as I would have hoped. I didn’t sleep through the whole day again, did I?”

“You were experiencing another memory, weren’t you?” Chloe asks.

“Yeah. I was…” Time to come clean and face the music. “I was experiencing another memory just now. Decided to practice some [Ether] manipulation exercises while waiting for you to wake up. Did some experimentation, trying to see if I could enhance my body with [Ether]. Then I did the same to my brain, and yes, feel free to chew me out for my recklessness later. That was when the memory resurfaced.”

“Sera, I’ve made my peace with the fact that this is who you are. I hope you can make peace with the fact that I’m still going to worry about you. Just… how I love.”

I caress Chloe’s cheek and smile. “Yeah. I didn’t expect anything else. Though I’m curious how you knew I was living through a memory.”

“Your eyes change color. I didn’t realize it the first couple of times, and more recently, you’ve been having these dreams— visions?— in your sleep. But you looked like you were staring out into space a little while ago. And your eyes turned from teal to silver. They turned back to normal just before you awoke a couple minutes ago.”

Silver eyes. Odd. Madison also had silver eyes. The rational part of my brain wants to dismiss that as mere coincidence. There’s no concrete reason I can point to, but something is telling me that there’s more to the story than sheer happenstance. Though I can do nothing to investigate that right now.

“And no, Sera, you didn’t sleep through the day. You’ve still got a day left.”

“Thank the goddesses.” I breathe a sigh of relief. “Though, I’d really not like to burn daylight. Not right before the biggest challenge we’ve faced to this point.”

“Promise me something, Sera.”

“Name it.”

“When all this business with the Order of the Wilds is over and done with, I want us to go back home. See Mom again, spend a few days at home without worrying about monsters and levels and Experience points and the System.”

“Yeah.”

“And maybe spend more than a little time getting to know one another.” Before I can interject that we’ve been best friends for over a decade, she continues in a whisper. “As a couple.”

Her tone leaves no uncertainty about exactly what she means by that phrasing. And I can’t say it doesn’t excite me either, if not also making me as nervous as it does excited.

I nod, the words being stolen from my throat. We share a quick kiss before we prepare ourselves for the day ahead. A day, which Chloe informs me in no uncertain terms, will include a full thirty-minute break for lunch and dinner, and uninterrupted five minute breaks no less often than once every ninety minutes.

After receiving my marching orders from my girlfriend-turned-doctor and a hearty bowl of warm strawberry oatmeal for breakfast, I return to my workshop to begin today’s tasks. The heat from yesterday’s firing session has long dissipated, and with the cool morning still upon us, the breeze that fills the room is comforting. It won’t last more than another couple hours, and I need to take full-advantage of it if I don’t want to end up sweat-drenched and incapacitated by afternoon.

The problem is that I simply don’t have the tools or time I would need to sculpt hundreds of tiny rings of silvered alloy to form a necklace of the right size and shape that Kristil might be able to wear. But, the idea of simply tapping 「The Anomaly’s」power directly is appealing. Moreover, it’s a good, fairly low-stakes way to do so. At least, I don’t foresee using magic for such purposes to be riskier than anything else.

I hold the lump of metal in my hand and envision the overall shape and size of the piece. I go for a length of nineteen inches, something that won’t be too tight when worn but won’t cause the amethyst effector to dangle or chafe too much. Each ring of the necklace’s string should be a torus with inner major radius of a sixth of an inch and outer major radius of a fifth of an inch. With a bit of calculation, I’m able to determine that I need about a hundred and fifty of these little rings, plus some additional metal for the bezel and a special clasp for the back. All in all, probably only about a cubic inch of metal, plus whatever I lose in shavings and inaccuracy in the sculpting.

The process is slow-going at first. While I could certainly do all the sculpting by hand with [Ether] alone, much as I’ve done to this point, this is an opportunity to practice with my will alone. It’s also an opportunity to lament the loss of the [Mass Production] skill I briefly had in my final days as a [Planetouched Mechanist]. This I realize as I craft the eighth loop of the hundred and fifty I need.

But I persevere, gathering about one five-hundredth of the mass before me, melting it down, reshaping it into something akin to a tiny horseshoe, and then setting it aside. I’ll handle linking them all together in the next step.

The process is slow at first, and twice again as tedious. It’s not quite as simple as simply thinking really, really hard that I want this metal to turn into tiny silver ringlets, although that would be nice. Instead, I have to convert that will into instructions that my [Ether] can carry out directly. Instructions which are analogous to the glyphs that I have in my repertoire. In short, it’s something more akin to my [Glyph Manifestation], although I needn’t actually Manifest the glyphs themselves in physical reality.

By the time I’ve gotten through fifteen of the little loops, I fall into a steady rhythm. [Cut] a piece off, [Heat] it to near melting so it’s easy to work with, use the [Snakeshape] glyph to twist it into a horseshoe shape, and then use an inverted [Heat] glyph to cool it down to around three hundred degrees. Too much lower and there’s the risk of making the alloy too brittle to work with. At least the small mass of each means there’s not much total heat to dissipate into the room, though it is warming some. Not enough to be uncomfortable just yet, but enough to make me happy that I’m doing this in the morning rather than during the heat of the day.

With the rhythm falling to place and my adeptness with this small bit of my latent power growing, I’m able to finish the remainder of the loops in just over an hour. Just in time for my first Chloe-mandated break of the day. Five minutes to stand up, stretch my legs and wings, take a quick trip to the restroom, and then return to my workshop to begin the next task.

Building the clasp for the back of the neck is a straightforward task. It’s more or less the same as all the other loops, except a bit thicker, and with a little hinge joint which can be used to unfasten the necklace. It’s a good opportunity to test out my ability to make precise movements while crafting in this new manner. It doesn’t turn out perfectly. Not precise enough for the glyphs I’ll need to craft shortly, but it’s functional. And that’s a win.

It takes another half an hour to interlink all the little toroid pieces together into two strands of seventy-five. One end of each of the strands is then linked into the clasp, and I then weld one of the two links to the clasp, ensuring that the small piece of silvery metal isn’t going to get misplaced somewhere. Probably not, anyway.

Now for the bezel. I can use all of the remaining metal, although I suspect I’ll need nowhere near this much. The piece of amethyst is cut roughly in the shape of a regular hexagonal prism, save that one of the two ends that tapers into a sharp point. Rather like a pencil, though far shorter and fatter. The bezel, therefore, needs to be shaped the same, long and deep enough to reach from the base to the tapered end.

The process is actually quite easy once I realize I can just use the crystal as a mold. The only challenge is getting the metal into a solid layer of uniform thickness. Well, nearly uniform. Not going to suggest that I was perfect. Just because I’m a [Mechanical Angel] and my [Angelic Insight] supposedly lets me ‘access the periphery of the wisdom of the gods’ per its description, doesn’t mean I’m perfect.

Though there’s the question of what the gods are. Is it just referencing ‘the gods’ as an abstract concept, or are there actual, tangible gods. And if so, are they more gods in the sense of having immortality and mastery of a Domain, or are they like the One True Creator God with true omnipotence and omniscience? And in either case, which gods?

Oneiros, Pazuzu, Apophis, Moloch. Four different deities— or at least, supernatural beings— from four different Earth mythologies. Each of them was referenced by a boss we’ve fought to this point. Do these beings now Actually Exist in some capacity? And if so, will we have to face them in battle? How does an angel stand up to a god?

I muse on the topic some more to distract myself from the monotonous process of evening out all the imperfections that I can see with my [Ether]-boosted eyesight. There are a lot of imperfections, and so I choose to focus on the small handful that I consider most an eyesore. Nothing too bad, but… yeah, definitely a ways off from being a master craftswoman. Hopefully the System doesn’t call my accessories ‘amateurish’ and ‘crude’ again.

The clock on the wall says nine twenty-seven. Still another hour before my next Chloe-mandated break. I decide to spend that time sketching out the glyph array I plan to enchant this accessory with. I’d like it to be used as a storage space for Kristil to store and channel Lightning-aligned [Ether].

Though, after thinking about it a little bit more, I realize that [Ether] storage isn’t what she needs. She has System-generated spells and Skills which have a level of efficiency I could only dream of. What she needs is the equivalent of my [Glyphcasting]. Powerful, showy, and explosive. A siege weapon of sorts, that can devastate an enemy defense in a single blast. The storage capabilities of the gemstone will assist in that matter, but I need a stronger combination of glyphs to achieve the outcome I feel will best serve both Kristil, and all of us collectively.

The [Lightning] glyph is the obvious choice for the center of the formation which I begin carving into the backside of the bezel. I add in two [Intensify] runes, one above, and one below. Using two of the same glyph is a horribly inefficient method to boost the power of the spell, since you’re using double the [Ether] for only forty-one percent more outcome, but the entire point of this formation is power at the expense of efficiency. I also include an [Impulse] glyph as is becoming my standard, to boost the speed and stopping power of the overall spell. Finally, since I have a bit of space left, I include a [Sharpness] glyph. I’m not certain that this is going to do what I plan for it to. But I’m hopeful.

After another five minute break, I get to work with the carving. And, somehow, whether through skills or Skills or sheer dumb luck, I manage to finish the accessory just seconds before lunch.

[[Lightning-Wreathed Talisman]: A necklace of silver headlined by a deep purple amethyst. Boosts the power and/or duration of its wielder’s Lightning-aligned evocations by 25%. Once per four hours, the wielder can unleash the gemstone’s stored energy to create the effects of [Burst Lightning] (Requires 80 [Mind] to control the spell effect of the talisman).]

And with my third accessory completed, it’s time for lunch. Chloe is already waiting for me at the door, and I dare not earn her ire by reneging on my promise to her.