“So here’s what I want to do,” Garth said, sitting beside Alicia in the village hot tub, taking a dip with the rest of the Terrafell natives. Needless to say no one was wearing anything, including the wrinkly village elder.

Bleh.

They had kicked the kids out to have a moot of the more influencial villagers. The Elder, a few hunters, and their wives.

“The Practice Effect has to get it’s direction from us. A purpose has never been an objective fact. It must be subjective, and that means mind magic is especially powerful.”

“This sounds strange.” One of the corio women said. “The practice effect just is. We have no control over it.”

“Wrong!” Garth said, excited. “Because it is subjective, as long as we can control our thoughts, we can control the Practice Effect.”

“And what if the practice effect is simply a positive feedback loop based on tangible benefits that have been received from an object, rather than what we perceive.”

Ah shit, I didn’t think about that.

“I’ve got a simple way to test that,” Garth lied. “but in any case, how would the universe know what was a benefit to you? The laws of reality are cold and unfeeling.”

“You said these stones change them. The laws of reality.” Alicia said, leaning back and kicking her feet idly. “What if the stone extracts a construct from your mind and then applies it to reality, which then works independently of your perception?”

“Whose side are you on?” Garth demanded, turning over to her. Kurt and his wife Jaela, along with the rest of the surrounding villagers, broke into a laugh.

“Looks like your girl knows how to get under your skin.” Kurt said, grinning with his primal orc-teeth.

“Bah,” Garth crossed his arms and faux sulked, to more laughter.

“No one said that was a bad thing,” Kurt’s wife said, she had a button nose, contrasting her large teeth and larger bosom. Garth had caught Al staring more than once, and Jaela probably had too.

“I’m more interested in your end goal.” The elder said. it was his responsibility to herd the conversation along before it could devolve into mindless chatter and romantic advice.

“Well, the end goal would be to take control of the Core of the dungeon and harness it to our whim. If you can’t destroy it, control it.”

The Terrafell native stared at him. All laughter and side conversation had subsided.

“How do you plan on doing that, exactly?” The elder said.

“Well, first I’ll test my theory extensively, work out the guiding principles to how the Practice Stone works. I’ll need to develop a material that can block thoughts of Purpose from interacting with the Stone, along with a way to transmit them.”

“Then once I’ve got that taken care of, I’ll create a little hood to put on the sphere that blocks out negative Purposes and lets in positive ones. In a positive feedback loop, as the core does more things that benefit us, we will believe more strongly that its purpose it to help us, which will slowly transform this place from a deathtrap into a utopia.”

The elder and Kurt exchanged looks.

“That’s a drastic course of action. How do you plan on getting past the Guardian?”

“I’ll do it myself,” Garth said. “I’m pretty tough. I can lose an arm or two and still be fine.”

Kurt’s eyebrows climbed his forehead.

“How much time do you expect this experimenting to take before you’re ready to try it on the dungeon?” the elder asked.

“Month or two, at least. Maybe years. There’s no mana condensing material, so I’m going to have to get creative.”

“And how do we know it will do what you say?”

“As proof of concept I’ll turn an object with no purpose into something wildly different, and very specific. Like a rock that mows everyone’s lawns and stirs porridge.”

“And can you guarantee the lives of our families were you to fail and incur the wrath of the core?”

“As far as I’m aware, the core isn’t a thinking being, but you have my word that I will do everything in my power to assure your safety.”

“See that you do,” the elder said, giving Garth a calculating stare. “I can see a lot of good coming from your ideas. A lot of bad, too.” He addressed the rest of the people in the tub. “I’m curious to see what comes of this. Practice Stones work slowly, so I’ll postpone judgement until we’ve seen a few examples of what Garth is speaking of.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting pruny.”

Everyone groaned and shielded their eyes as the stick thin, wrinkly orc stood up and climbed out of the hot tub, exposing his horrifying front, and then his sagging backside before wrapping a towel around his waist and plodding back to his hut.

“That’s going to linger,” Garth muttered, taking his hand off his eyes.

“I saw it coming and managed to miss the whole thing.” Alicia said with her eyes scrunched shut. “Is he gone yet?”

Garth pinched her defenseless nipple.

Alicia gave a girlish squeak and punched Garth in the ribs before he held up his hands in surrender, putting an end to the quick fight.

“So how did you two meet?” Jaela asked, separating from her husband to slid across the rounded stone bench and speak to Alicia.

Ah, once the elder is gone, business is over and gossip begins, Garth thought as he listened to Alicia give her accounting of their meeting. It was vastly different from how Garth remembered it, but he didn’t say anything.

“You said you could lose an arm and be fine?” Kurt asked, addressing him. “I find that hard to swallow.”

That’s what she said.

“Here, I can show you,” Garth said, a wooden blade growing in his hand, sending a bit of ash into the water as the bark sloughed off. The ash caught Alicia’s attention, and she looked over just as Garth was lining the blade up with his arm.

“Do not get blood in here.” She said, scowling at him.

“Bah,” Garth muttered. “Let’s go to the stream.”

“Sure.” Kurt said, nodding.

Garth climbed out of the stone tub, waving off a playful spank from Alicia as he got to his feet.

Two other hunters followed Garth to the stream, steam rising off the four of them like like fire.

“Alright, let’s see it.” Kurt said, he and the other two hunters crossing their arms. In the distance the women shook their heads, rolled their eyes and went back to less violent forms of gossip, chatting happily amongst themselves.

“You asked for it.” Garth said, tossing aside the little knife he’d been intending to make a small cut with, and replaced it with a massive wooden cleaver.

Everyone leaned in a little closer, fascination written all over their faces. Who wouldn’t stare at a man about to cut off his own arm?

Garth took a deep breath, lining the cleaver up just beyond his elbow. He took some practice swings, pretending to be nervous as he changed his grip on the cleaver.

The key to a good performance is building tension.

Garth took a few more deep breaths, lining up the cleaver, and beginning to shake.

Kurt scoffed. “Pfft. I knew that was a pile of sh-“

Garth let out a scream and lopped off his arm. Thankfully he was able to get through the bone.

“Shiit!” Kurt shouted, flinching backward as Garth began to scream and thrash, surreptitiously aiming the squirting vein at Kurt’s face.

“Oh god, oh god!” Garth shouted lamely, staggering forward continuing to aim the vein at Kurt as the hunter stumbled backward and fell on his back, covered in blood from head to toe. “Why did I do that? Where’s my arm? Oh my god!”

All three hunters were crawling away from him in panic at this point, none were spared.

A few of the women screamed at the scene, prompting Alicia to glance over her shoulder at Garth’s antics.

“Garth, stop being an ass!”

With a thought, Garth’s wound scabbed over, and he stopped staggering forward, straightening up and putting his hand on his hip, leaving three blood-covered hunters staring up at him, wide eyed.

“Ya’ll might wanna wash off the blood quick, it gets pretty hard when it dries.”

Kurt was the first to leap off the ground, catching Garth in the midsection and carrying him forward, followed by the other two.

“What are you – “ Garth looked behind him, where they were carrying him. “Wait, time out, time out – aaagh!” They tossed him into the creek, and while it wasn’t ice cold, compared to the hot tub it was arctic.

Garth surfaced with a gasp as the other hunters dove in after him to rinse themselves off. After a few minutes of dunking him in revenge, they marveled at his rapidly regrowing stub before the four of them crawled out of the stream, shivering until they slipped back into the steaming pool of water.

“Remind me never to call your bluff again,” Kurt said with a chuckle before retrieving Garth’s disembodied hand from the edge of the pool. The purple hand was dramatically clawed, which made it an excellent ball scratcher, according to Kurt.

“You keep that in mind.” Garth said, putting his feet up in the hot water, as if there was something to rest them on.

“It’s getting late.” Jaela said, pointing at the dim sun above them that kept everyone on Village Time. It had been gradually growing darker this entire time, but Garth hadn’t really noticed it until it had been mentioned, his vision had been engineered to be excellent in the dark.

Which was a shame, because he couldn’t use it as an excuse to fumble around like the others were, bumping into each other and playfully copping feels.

“Will you two be joining us this evening?” Jaela asked as things started to get a little more heated around the pool, people playing around under the surface of the water, supposedly under cover of the dark.

I wonder if I should tell them I can see in the dark…Naaaah.

Garth glanced over, and saw Alicia nod in assent, her cheeks burning. Her hand touched on his inner thigh under the water, and slowly began to work its way up.

“Sure, we’re down.” Garth pointed at his stump. “I might need someone to give me a hand, though.”

*****

Well, the locals are friendly. That’s undeniably a good thing. Garth chewed on a bit of coca leaf as he pondered the room in front of him. He was standing in front of the core room, eyeballing the pale white core the size of a basketball.

The guardian was a massive leonine thing with barbs on its back, armor plating, and a comparatively small mouth surrounded by powerful muscles. It was reported to be able to use them to snip large chunks out of people then wait for them to bleed out.

A chomp-and-stalk, much like a komodo dragon.

It was an extremely mutated version of some of the rodent-like predators on the planet’s surface, and it didn’t like him.

The room’s boss was pacing back and forth, keeping an eye on Garth, who was sitting only a few feet outside the beast’s territory. The creature was most likely expecting him to make a run for it.

Which Garth would, if the core could suffer any damage. So far he’d shot ironwood stakes into the room, and they’d shattered against the walls, the monster, and finally the Core. There was also no drugging the creature to allow him better access to the Core. Apparently, whatever made them invincible prevented drugs from working on them.

That was a bad sign for his plan, if there was truly no way to alter the Sphere at all, then it would fail miserably and the two of them would probably spend the rest of Alicia’s life cooling their heels in Terrafell. Is this why the core can’t go any deeper? Because it’s locked itself in place with some kind of stasis field?

What Garth was betting his escape on was that he could use the Practice Stones to override the Law of the core room and change the way the core itself behaved.

But what happens if the core kicks back into gear and starts tunneling toward the planet’s core again? And why won’t this fucking rodent give me a clear view?

“If you could move just a couple inches to the side,” Garth said, motioning for the monster staring at him hungrily to scooch before peering back into his rangefinder.

“So, according to this, the diameter of the sphere is twenty-five point three four eight centimeters.” He said to Alicia, who wrote it down. “A little bigger than a basketball.”

“What’s a centimeter, and a basketball?”

Garth stood up from the rangefinder, blinking. “You don’t know what basketball is?”

Alicia shook her head.

“Remind me to introduce you guys to basketball when we get back. And make a note that we need to test the Practice Stone’s effect in the Core room’s Law before we do anything drastic.

He turned to Kurt. “I got everything I need, thanks.”

“That was less impressive than I was expecting.”

“Science is pretty boring until something explodes. A famous guy said that.”

“Oh, who?”

“Me.” Garth said with a grin.

“Alright, next thing we need to do is gather up a bunch of smooth cut rocks, set them on a practice stone, and lie to the villagers about how they attract mana for my enchantments.”

“Lie to the villagers?” Kurt asked, his brows furrowed.

“I want to see how effective their belief is at creating a perception of Purpose. You know those helmets your tribe wears around?”

“The Idachi, they protect our thoughts from the nifishya.”

“They sure do, but the new ones don’t work that great, do they?” Garth recalled the almost living pulses of mana he’d seen running along the decorated stone helmets.

“Newly created Idachi provide little protection. We give them to the most experienced hunters, who can shrug off most of the Nifishya’s effects on their own.”

“My god,” Garth said, clapping his hands together. “This is giving me chills. Alicia, give me the list of experiments we need to run.”

“Establishing a base rate of performance enhancement over time vs the control,” she began ticking off boxes on her notepad as she spoke. “identifying the means by which the stone’s assign purpose to an object, enhancing the speed of a Practice stone’s effects via boosting the mental signal of perceived purpose, physical alteration of the crystal itself, or synergistic effects.”

“Practicing a practice stone probably won’t work.” Garth muttered.

“It’s been tried, many times.” Kurt agreed.

Alicia continued, “Using the Practice stones to create high-quality tools and materials for experimentation and fabrication, finding a way to filter Purpose or create artificial Purpose using plants or magic, testing the Practice stone in rooms that have different Laws, including the core room, and about a dozen more things that make no sense to me.”

“You signed on for this, you gotta do the science thing.” Garth said, rubbing his hands together in glee.

“including, and this is on the list, ‘women’s lingerie’?” she asked, giving him a raised brow.

“Let’s get to work.”