Type of mage: Name of Affinity Patron Deity or Primal

Necromancer Nox(Styg)* Vesper

Heliomancer Lux Claritas

*Denotes the most common derivative affinity and elemental manifestation of the affinity.

-Glossary of Affinities and their Primals, Nys’vera Aesterith’s Treatise on Mana

[Magitech Aercrafter Level 14!]

[Synergy Met: Skill Consolidation Successful!]

[Skill- Intermediate Rune Lore Acquired!]

So began another day in the Dust. And he would have gone to sleep for another 5 parquartz had he not had guests outside of his tent.

‘What can a man give for some peace of mind around here?’ Arthur groaned as he exited his tent. It was made from some sort of vellum-like leather, hand stitched by yours truly, and was large enough to sleep 3 people, or 4 with some squeezing. It had two layers with air in between for insulation, the outer layer was waterproof. And someone was trying to make light of his stitching right outside his tent.

Waiting for him outside was the woman who was supposed to take his wurmhide armour.

“ Ah, there you are, man of the quartz,” an old Djy’veli woman said. Old, because there were streaks of grey in her mauve hair. Arthur cast [Cleanse] in his mouth before he regarded her. She wore one of the most elaborate tops he’d seen on the Djy’veli women.

It had a sheer neckline sequined with varicoloured sand glass. What could have come out looking like a bohemian beaded curtain was tastefully turned into a work of art. Even her thigh-slitted pants had the same treatment around the calves. The seamstress had arrived.

“ Morn greetings,” Arthur grumbled, keeping the bite out of his voice. .He was a grumpy soul without breakfast. And then there were the pin-prick reflections getting in his eyes from the woman’s top.

“ Aye, at least he knows his manners,” the woman murmured as she bustled towards him. Arthur flinched in alarm as the woman poked and pinched at his shirt, his side, and his pants while her tail wrapped around his arm and across his chest. She even smacked his rear as if to spite him.

His scandalous squawk died in his lips as an even greater embarrassment was done to him. Was there such a word as being woman-handled? Maybe he should have taken Livierre’s words about getting feisty seriously because, with a flourish, the woman had drawn out a measuring tape as if from thin air.

And it appeared on Arthur’s body at the very same places she’d pinched. As a result, Arthur ended up looking like a trussed up parachutist with the leather tape wrapped around his thighs, his waist, under his arms, around his chest, and neck.

Then she pulled the two loose ends of the measuring tape; it was made of leather. The less said about the compromising position the better―it would scar him for days.

“ What the heck?!” Arthur yelped, wriggling in his bindings.

“ Ah, that’ll do,” the woman said, sizing him up, unheeding of his mortification. With a harrumph she banished the measuring into wisps of darkness. “ I’ll send one of the young’uns with your wurmhide armour. A most unusual request omitting the right sleeve,” she said as she turned to go. The latter part of her muttering was addressed to herself more than anyone else.

However eccentric the method the woman had used to take his measurements, Arthur hoped the leather wouldn't pinch and chafe. Besides, he would always have his own enchantment garments to fall back to. But that was scandalous!

Squinting at the rising sun, Arthur decided he'd have his breakfast before his morning went to the dumps. He was so looking forward to getting out of the Dust soon. Along with his breakfast, he reviewed what he'd learnt the day before, the culmination of which resulted in [Basic Rune Lore] becoming [Intermediate Rune Lore].

His supposition about the nature of the [Sygnumeric Artificer] class had been spot on and as a result he was feeling good about the upcoming task.

The implications of what he could do with that knowledge were staggering and that's why he didn't have any written material on him.

If need be, [Eidetic Memory] would pick up the slack. What he was about to do was something he'd done before. As an avionics tech, system troubleshooting was his forte and regardless of language, every system with imbalances could easily be fixed as long as you understood its ones and zeroes. Done with his introspection, Arthur cleaned up camp and went below to see the [Artificer].

Arthur knew there was something afoot as soon as he made his way out of the old fortress. There was a palpable buzz in the air, some excitement, as though something grand was about to happen. When he caught sight of a wyvern and rider he felt his stomach drop thinking that perhaps Mastresse Venera had made her way back after hearing news of what was happening in the oasis.

At the door to Livierre’s wagon, he was surprised to find one of his braid-knotted wardens standing guard. He hadn’t noticed that the man had not been at his post as per usual. It seemed like he was the one late to the meeting because as soon as he caught sight of him, he pointedly jutted his chin towards the wagon. Arthur swallowed thickly and prepared to enter, as they would say in Eryth’ the lhjon’s den.

“ Ah, so he lives,” someone said as soon as he ducked into the wagon. Every gaze turned to regard him as if he’d been expected. Around the table were yesterday’s company plus someone blue.

There was a Djy’veli man he’d not been acquainted with, wearing the trademark clan garb . He was smiling brightly at him as though they were long-lost friends. He was either a loon or― He started walking towards Arthur with his hand stretched out for a greeting. Did they shake hands here or not? Arthur hesitated―that decision was taken to him with a forearm handshake.

“ Hail human,” the blue Djy’veli saluted with their version of a disarming smile.They managed to make it work despite their prominent fangs . The Djy'veli male was just about as tall as Arthur and garbed in form-fitting wurmhide armour.

An indigo sch'magh, as typical of Dust dwellers, was wrapped across his neck. At the small of his back he had his arming sword, a falchion made of bone in a sheath of the same material as his armour. His body language undoubtedly marked him as a dangerous fellow with an undercut man bun.

“ Hail, Djy’veli,” Arthur responded in kind. He squared his shoulders and gave a forced smile of his own. It was not for disarming, but rather to show he too had teeth. Arthur did not forget that a fifth of himself was not human. If the Djy’veli thought that he was just another kf’hec , he would have to think again.

“ Ah― I like this one,” the male said to the other occupants of the wagon. “ He’s got some spunk in him yet. I can see why those bandits had it coming to them,”

Arthur stamped down his grimace. The edges of his uneasy smile burned and quivered against his reflex to frown. Luckily, his counterpart had already released his arm and was on his way around the other end of the table. He practically glided as if floating on grandiloquent airs.

“ Kervir is my name human,” he grinned . ” As the sylvani like to say, Oonaris smiles upon our meeting ,”

Livierre groaned wearily as she beckoned Arthur to grab a seat. There were five stools around the table, space for five. Nora, likewise, seemed to have a faraway look in her eyes . She caught the tail end of Arthur’s greeting and blushed furiously as she clutched the hood of her poncho to her face.

“ Ahem, “Kervir said . “ Let us have an accord,”

“ Drop it, Kervir. He is not some titled ponce,”Livierre sighed, waving him off. Nora giggled.

“ Ah, I am bad at this, aren’t I?” Kervir said, wiggling his brows and arms in exasperation. “ Right then, I’ll be blunt—have you done it?”

“ Done what?” Arthur asked.

Kervir stared at the [Artificer] helplessly.

“ Dekara, You’re just bad at communicating,” Livierre snorted. She seemed to be in a rather dour mood, stressed even. “ Master Arthur, did you succeed?” she asked, with a hopeful look on her face.

“ Somewhat, “ Arthur said, remaining vague. He noticed that the wardstones had already been set up. Nora was there too ,so she might have well ratted him out. “ It is a work in progress. If the dungeon core operates on the same architecture as a shard, I should be able to make something work,”

“ I don’t get what you’re saying but go on,” Kervir said grinning. “ That sounds like good news, right Livierre?”

“ Hmm,” Livierre murmured, chewing on her lip. “ Do you have proof you can show Master Arthur? I would want to double check to see,”

“ I peeled back the basics,” Arthur said, adopting a serious countenance. He retrieved the mageslate he’d borrowed and slid it over to the Djy’veli woman. Livierre took the slate and scrunched her brows with a questioning look.

“ Unless you know chaos theory, thermodynamic entropy, and the works of Mandelbrot I would be so inclined as to explain it―” Arthur added. He stamped down on the smugness in his voice.

Arthur watched her reaction because she was the only one in the room who even remotely knew what dwarven [Sygnumeric Artificers] were all about.

“ Is Mand-uhl-brot some dwarf I should know about?” Livierre asked, confused. “ That’s a strange dwarven name if I’ve ever heard one.”

Arthur did not deign to correct her supposition. She fiddled with the runes on the slate, manipulating them with a rune scriber.

“ I discovered that the dwarves used a numbering system to run their sygnums. I don’t really know how, but each combination of numbers uniquely identifies an aetheroglyph.”

“ Ah, the root symbols in the material I gave you,” Livierre chimed.

“ Yes,” Arthur said, remembering to also retrieve her notes from his [Inventory Chest].

Unfortunately, the minutiae of it were lost on her. As she did not understand the concept of radices and programming languages, Livierre could only give Arthur dead fish eyes. Arthur was betting on that—not that he could explain the technicalities of it himself.

“ Well, we shall discuss this later,” Livierre said as she cleared her throat. She set down the mageslate and looked at Nora as if she did not believe that Arthur was being truthful. They were being rather blatant that they did not trust him. The relationship was merely transactional. Arthur did not mind, but he sure as hell would pay them back for their duplicity.

However, if she called his bluff, he had some materials ready for her. The risk was that she would think it was all a bunch of hot gas. But she couldn’t do that, not so long as Nora thought he was telling the truth. He was actually betting that truth skills had to gloss over things that a person believed to be the truth, even if they weren’t.

“ Nora?” Kervir prompted the girl with an uneasy smile. He really didn’t believe Arthur either.

‘ All that posturing,’ Arthur thought, almost wanting to smirk.

“ He’s telling the truth,” Nora said. Her eyes were gazing at him as if they could see straight through him. If he fidgeted even a little, he could ruin his plan and step onto a slippery slope from which there was no salvaging things.

Arthur could feel his body’s reflex to heave a sigh of relief, but he crushed that too. He was literally clenching his jaw.

“Very well then,” Kervir said tentatively. “ The clan head was never wrong in that regard. If he said that the human can fix it then he will. Do we have an accord?”

“ Yes, I shall keep my end of the bargain,” Arthur said, nonplussed.

But the truth of how the dwarves really did it? Actually, he would wager that they built the fundamentals of harnessing magic from the ones who went before. The short of it is that whoever made dungeon cores managed to create artificial consciousness like that of beasts by using fractal structures.

It was the only hypothesis Arthur could come up with. That the makers of dungeons essentially understood that the only way to understand nature, and hence magic, was to speak its language.

Fractals were that language, and its mathematics was its expression. Fractals gave nature and magic a framework of communicating to one another.And the dwarves somehow knew that too.

If the working principles of their sygni were order and chaos or negentropy and entropy expressed in non-binary states, that would surely explain a lot. A magical computer did not need 1 and 0 as the on and off states and therefore, dungeon cores were quantum computers.

Maybe the fact that shards and cores were sentient entities was even forbidden knowledge. There had to be laws against tampering with dungeon cores and reasons why [Sygnumeric Artificers] were the only ones authorised to interact with them.

Arthur was not so naive as to think what they were about to do was legal or allowable. One would have called it paranoia, but so far, this particular clan had done nothing but make things difficult for him. He could therefore be forgiven for watching his bacon.

“So then, with that out of the way,” Kervir announced, practically staring at the table.

“ We shall go over the plan. Because, we move tonight!”

The deafening silence that followed was a non-sequitur to the bombshell before it. Kervir had the tact of a rubber mallet.

The delving party was going to comprise five people. Coming along was the Djy'veli male Arthur had found standing guard outside the wagon. His name was Arkilius and he was going to be their heavy hitter, or their defender if they were so inclined to use the terms of the Adventurers Guild.

A typical party had to have two strikers, one defender, one ranger and an overwatch. Such were the roles, but sometimes a ranger could also be an overwatch while the second striker could also be a defender. It depended on what deck a party was dealt.

Such a formation depended on trust, which truthfully was in short supply as Arthur wasn't really sure he would trust them with his combat capabilities. They knew that he had spellcraft and could hold himself in a melee if possible. They'd already seen him use a dagger, which he mentioned being proficient in. He wasn't going to be in the thick of things anyway, because he only had one job.

Their mission was to save the oasis, and the parameters for success involved the fulfilment of two objectives. As per the [Sygnumeric Artificer], to fix the dungeon core controlling the oasis' microclimate, they had to re-establish equilibrium.

It was half of Arthur's job to find out what that entailed. The other half involved the use of the Aqertherite crystal as a mana source. From the tidbits of information from the Djy'veli intelligence gatherers, they would need to make sure that the core assimilated the mana crystal for it to work.

The Aqertherite crystal the size of a terror fowl’s egg was meant to either serve as a mana source to nudge things along. Given that it was water that the oasis would start lacking, it was the most plausible explanation. Easy peasy, so the [Sygnumeric Artificer] said. Arthur would have cursed the dwarves if he could.

“ A party of five is the optimal number of people we can bring along. Any larger than that and we risk attracting things we can't handle,” was Kervir's preamble.

Any larger than five, and the logistics of carrying around food would mount. There were ways to get around that, like [Inventory] skills or bags of holding, but the Djy’veli seemingly glossed over that.

Kervir went on to explain that if the party was smaller than that, they could be easy pickings for monsters. Unless, of course, they were cannon-toting dwarves who could blast their way in and out.

To imagine that mobile cannons already existed had Arthur flabbergasted. In hindsight, Dwarves were not exactly known to be mages and therefore needed every advantage they could extract from their crafts. Dwarves were majorly augmenters attuned to Pyr and Ter affinities which helped them work metal.

“As for monsters—” Kervir tutted, and then narrowed his eyes. “ should expect terra scorpions, skargliths and crypt crawlers as likely to put up token resistance. A young sand wurm if we are unlucky. But the golems at the antechamber on the fourth floor would be the worst case scenario. And please beware that I have not included the rabble.”

Then he laid out the map of the dungeon. They’d had it for as long as the clan had used the oasis as one of their seasonal stopovers in those days when they were free game. However, the dungeon had passive mechanisms that changed the layout after a certain number of intervals.

The current map was something that some of their scouts had managed to acquire through tailing the [Sygnumeric Artificer]’s inspection team. Their current map consisted of the first floor’s tunnels, connected to the second floor by ramps that switched back using the entirety of the dungeon’s breadth.

The dungeon’s overall layout was two pyramids laid base to base. Consequently it took the shape of an octahedron with triangular tunnels.

‘A Sierpinski Octahedron,’ Arthur realised as he saw the tattered map. ‘ It has to have some practical significance beyond aesthetics. Does it have something to do with the fractalized nature of magic?’ He thought, cradling his chin.

‘ But those tunnels essentially mean the dungeon is arbitrary with which side is up. Maybe that warps space around it or there is some type of arcane gravity field,’ He’d almost tuned out the rest of the discussion, only catching snippets of something about a fissure to the third floor, some warnings about golems and such.

‘ I am not sure about gravitational fields and the theory of general relativity,’ he shook his head ruefully. ‘Damn, should have paid attention in physics class,’

“ Questions?” Kervir asked, rousing him from his introspection. Arthur stifled a reflex to start and stared, contemplatively between his soon to be party members.

“ How long do we expect to reach the core?” Arthur asked.

“ Hmm, if we're lucky, we can do it in one, ” Kervir replied with furrowed brows.

‘Huh? That fast?’ Maybe it was playing with his sense of distance, but given the scale notations, the icosahedron had to be 300 metra from apex to apex. That was twice as deep as the Great Pyramids were tall.

“ Are we travelling light ?” Nora chipped in, curious.

“ Yes,” Kervir nodded, folding up his map . “ To that end, everyone will have a flask of Xazhu brew, the potent rejuvenation one. There will be no stopping until the dungeon is fixed.”

There was a lull as everyone seemed to stew over the plan.

“ We meet at the fort when the shadows are longest,” Livierre said. And that signalled the end of the planning as Kervir broke away to talk to the [Artificer]. All that said, Arthur thought the planning felt lacklustre, as if they were not just walking into a monster’s den that was part labyrinth.

They were the natives. They knew what sort of metric could be considered adequate for dungeon diving? Spelunking? No equipment was mentioned, save for the weapons and rations. If the legends marked on the dungeon map were to be believed, they would be pushing it hard and cutting a lot of corners, literally and figuratively.

‘But eh, if they’re putting their lives on the line and they’re this powerful,’ Arthur mulled, side-eying the red Djy’veli who’d been at the back of the wagon. ‘Either they’ve done this before or Kervir is a worse planner than he is a communicator.’

If the plan went south, Arthur could always nope it out of there with his hoverboard. It didn’t seem like there would be any challenges to the terrain. Water could be surfed, crevisses could be flown over, a monster that couldn’t be beat? He’d just have to fly faster.

“ Master Arthur,” Nora called out. A cold palm on his left jolted him out of his fuzz.

“ Ah, sorry. I was just thinking,” Arthur said, meeting the dhampir’s gaze. “ Do you need something?”

The woman seemed to hesitate as though grappling with her thoughts before she spoke.

“ I―we don’t have to worry about anything,” she said, smiling. “ So long as I am the healer in the party, short of a decapitation, you will be fine,”

“ Eh, that is very reassuring Mastresse Nora,” Arthur responded smilingly. ‘Morbidly reassuring,’ he left unsaid. He was unaware of the conflicting thoughts going through Nora’s mind.