If Syron wanted to have one of his new favorite participants involved in his game, unfortunately he had no choice but to formally request her family to allow her to attend. When he asked Marigold if that assumption was correct, she agreed. When he asked his mother about it, she looked… complicated. But since his mother didn’t feel the need to elaborate on what may be bothering her about inviting Beyeth, he requested her to do so at her earliest convenience. It couldn’t be helped. His mother was far too busy to play; everyone else worked for him. He needed a set of eyes that was more indicative of the whole public’s perspective, a mole’s eye view. If that could only come from the scion of a fellow noble House… well Syron freely admitted it wasn’t optimal. Regardless of it being optimal or not, he did invite her anyway.

His mother’s only response was to dryly say, deadpan, “Lady Quoro will be thrilled.” Again though, if she wouldn’t elaborate, Syron wouldn’t care for her reasons. He was never one to talk in circles. In his former life, his friends and family would often tell new people being introduced to him that if they weren’t direct, he wouldn’t understand. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t intelligent, it was simply that he didn’t have the capacity for such social ambiguity. People should say what they mean, after all.

Basically, he would make the worse kind of noble thrust into a political world. Every word and action would be scrutinized before being used against him in some way. If his words were direct and blunt like a club, his conniving and vicious political opponents just had to take said club and bludgeon him with it. Until his mother murdered them, anyway. That did seem to be an actual, real life thing that could absolutely happen. That would certainly make it difficult to earn allies, particularly if he remained the magically weak loafer he currently appeared to be.

Syron shook his head and focused his thoughts. There was no point in fretting about things that he couldn’t or wasn’t willing to change. So he did what he always did.

“Young Master, will you be retiring to the library again today?” Marigold asked, tersely.

“Yup! I think that it might be time to stop play testing with random scenarios and let some real, actual story lines get going. I’ve gotten pretty close to mastering the small-scale images, and the strain on my brain has greatly diminished with practice. I do still worry about long games with detailed maps and numerous enemies, but I don’t really have any plans to deal with it other than to get good, nub.”

Marigold didn’t even question the nonsense tacked on to the end of his response to her question. Instead, she merely asked the follow up question of “Will you be needing any volunteers for your games, Young Master?”

Ah, Marigold… always so on point with your work ethic.

“Any interest in trying it yourself?” Syron asked, knowing roughly what her answer would be.

“If that is Young Master’s wish, though I have already tried the game once.” Marigold responded as expected.

“It is my wish for people to want to come. In fact, I’d go so far as to further say that if someone doesn’t want to be there, I also don’t want them there. It’s a lot easier to keep a steady and fun game going when none of your players hate every moment of it. So while I wish you’d come play… not as you are right now.”

“I’m terribly sorry Young Master.” Marigold bowed her head, and for the life of him, Syron couldn’t figure out if she was being serious or not.

“Criminy, don’t bow down to me or anything. It’s not like you’re in trouble.” Syron said, frowning at the still bowing Marigold.

“Well, if you don’t want to play, I get it. Yes, I would like a few volunteers to take their day off work and come play games with me… but only if they are actually volunteering since I’m now feeling really self-conscious. Seriously, stop bowing please! You’re going to give me a complex!” Syron complained to the now slightly smirking Marigold. She stood with a terse “Very well, Young Master”, and went about her duties.

At the library, a second table was noisily dragged over next to his first like an Ovalia egg chair at the M.I.B.. He didn’t mention it to Marigold at the time, but to tell the truth he was already hitting the upper limits of his illusion abilities. He wasn’t sure what else he could do, since his abilities were not high enough to play the type of games he wanted to. It just wasn’t enough to fulfil his dream, anyway. As such, he had started experimenting with ways to make the strain go down a bit. A few things he had learned over the past couple months was that his magic had a few key points worth considering.

First, the number of entities mattered, obviously. They were individually constructed with his own imagination, so obviously he couldn’t split his attention between fifty different images. The more images he created, the harder it became. Especially when they were unique images. A platoon of identical looking maids with only slight variations in the weapons they were using made the effect more grand in scope… but also easier to create. However, if he ever wanted to have a game where the characters all wore different outfits, had different physical appearances, made different noises when they spoke or grunted in exertion… or perhaps encountered more than one type of enemy at the same time… yeah, the effort for variations was too extreme, and even resulted in him losing consciousness a few times. Syron had no idea how to mitigate this issue. Practicing helped make his images more believable and detailed… but he still couldn’t have more than maybe six unique moving entities before his brain blue screened.

Second, once an entity was constructed, it became far easier to alter and maintain, but not manipulate. It was the main reason he had first started out with wireframes, then added details slowly, even color by color. The strain between building up and creating wholesale were leagues apart. Of course, constant practice made this second point less important for altering, as he was getting pretty close to immediate creation with preconstructed illusions with only a little stress. It was the ‘maintain’ part that was super important though. If he created an image and then stuck it in the corner without it moving or doing anything at all, he only felt the tiniest of strains on his willpower. If it was to be manipulated… well this kind of went back to the number of unique entities. If he kept the images frozen in stasis while he wasn’t using them, it was… doable to have his upper limit of six at a time. However, once he tried to have all six of his creations do something at once, it was like a hot poker was trying to perform ‘not safe for work’ actions with his cerebrum. It seemed he was unable to both maintain and manipulate an image without it going up in cost of his mental capacity. If he dropped its image quality, manipulation became easier… Once again, he had no real idea how to mitigate this issue.

Third, people were really not okay with him using his unnatural magic and putting images or sounds directly into their heads. Public images and sounds that everyone can see and hear… they are less abhorrent. Individual images and sounds that only one person experiences? Well, he had come up with the idea after accidentally letting the whole party of maids know something that only one member should have. Namely, that the goblins on the other side of the door they were breaking into seemed to have heard the door unlock and were moving their positions. When he explained the issue, they all agreed there was a problem. When he pitched his idea to correct it… they all went white as a sheet and begged him not to. He’d never felt like scum before, not even once in his life… until he had a whole group of terrified girls begging him for mercy. He felt less like a happy go lucky kid playing a game with his family’s willing employees… and more like the wastrel scion having his way forcefully with the ‘help’. Honestly, the whole scene made him sick to his stomach, and he couldn’t help but apologize profusely until they left for the day. One of the four maids had left to find work elsewhere. The other three had not volunteered to play again. Once again… Syron had no ideas on how to mitigate this issue.

Currently, he was sketching out a map of the kitchen in Rowan Keep, including where everything he could think of was located. If it existed in his memory he placed it on the map, including pots, pans, spice racks, the table, chairs, a bowl full of peeled potato skins… everything. Once he had the layout completely put down to paper, he began constructing each item he placed on the map, giving them three-dimensional shape in front of him. Once he was done putting all the details he could on an item, he’d try to save the template in his mind. Then he’d allow the image to vanish before rapidly bringing it back into being. He did this over and over again with the table, getting frustrated with himself if any of the details were off. Once he was satisfied that it had the right amount of flour covered mounds where dough was being prepared last time he visited, splinters on the legs, as well as a particular spot that looked like it had been rubbed so many times it shined compared to the other less buffed wood… he placed the item down on the map.

Once again, after about eight images, even if they were just items that only would move when they were forcefully interacted with, he couldn’t really create more. Well… he could, but the pain in his head made it unfeasible. It was like there was a qualitative difference between eight and nine images that was represented by a change in difficulty far more extreme than between seven and eight.

Syron let the images fade away and mentally destroyed his templates by intentionally muddying up and removing details in his head. Then he went back to work again.

His result? If he made a kitchen room with a table and chairs and bowls and… everything else, he could do it easily if it was one connected image. That meant that any new images that tried to interact with it wouldn’t be able to in a highly detailed fashion. If Syron put a spice rack on a wall, and the bottles contained were all just part of the whole room’s general illusion, in order to have an avatar rifle through the bottles to find one they wanted he’d have to adjust a tiny little part of a much huger illusion. It put the strain of focusing on altering a larger image as compared to focusing on just the tiny bottle on his mind. However… if the avatar interacted with the spice rack by being thrown bodily into it, crushing all of the bottles in the process, doing a quick and dirty low resolution patch over everything was far easier than to individually edit all the little changes the images would warrant. It got even more complicated when the entities in question weren’t physically connected in appearance.

It’s almost like my magic treats voided space between images as its own image I have to interact with. Is air in an illusion room really that important to consider?

Two maids and two knights stepped into the library with various differing degrees of wariness.

“No playing today! I’ve been experimenting with my magic and I feel like I’ve got sewing needles in my brain. Instead… how do you all feel about copying pages out of a journal?”

“Of course we’ll do whatever Young Master wishes.” One of the maids said, flashing her teeth in a full-face smile.

“Wonderful. This is my first official draft of the rules. I need about… fifty copies made? I need enough to distribute to the nearby town so they will be ready to play when I visit them.” Syron said cheerfully as he slapped a thick booklet down on the table.

“I’m still unsure of the name of the game, so tentatively I’m just calling it… umm… any suggestions?”

“Syron adventures!” One of the maids came up with.

“Monster Slayer.” One of the knights added.

“Monster Party Game.” The other maid tried. Syron… didn’t hate them, but they really weren’t what he was thinking in his imagination.

“Alright, alright… I get the idea… how about I call it… something with only a single word so it never feels like a mouthful…”

“Blades and Battles.” The second knight tried, immediately disregarding Syron’s prior advice.

Syron thought about it for a minute, then agreed. “Okay.” Syron said, shrugging his shoulders and writing at the top of the rule sheets.

“Blades and Battles huh… talk about a tentative name.” Syron sighed.