Keeping in Touch

Chapter 143

The evening at Elim’s farm passed pleasantly. My awkwardness wasn’t much of a barrier after some initial formalities and thanks. Erica probably would have kept listing things she was glad for but Bess quickly derailed her. The little girl was quite fascinated by my odd appearance and physiology, doing her best to catch my tail and play with it.

Chris mostly sat to the side offering the occasional remark but was well mannered by his standards. Henry and Elim seemed to hit it off quickly and were discussing sparring as Elim was still getting used to his class change and eager to be put through his paces. The bone brigade in general would likely be happy to help with that.

Tiller seemed the most overwhelmed by my presence but she loosened up after a while. She didn’t join in much even once she did but she did put in a gear request which I took as a good sign. Erica herself wasn’t shy on the point, praising what I’d made but pointing out practical issues or shortfalls in provisions.

I felt content when my group left the farm later that evening. Chris departed for his crypt immediately and after a while Henry mentioned a project before taking his own leave. The rest of the night passed quietly while I worked on a few smaller side projects.

When morning came and I noticed I had a message, I assumed it would be from Elim or a dungeon denizen. Instead, it was from Jun, which was a surprise. She wasn’t obligated to check-in like Elim was, so I hadn’t been getting anything like regular reports. What she did send thus far had been more like travel diary entries than letters.

I didn’t mind. Seeing Jun have fun after everything she’d been through was nice. I was also still getting map data from her, so it was still a win for me.

Hey, 42!

I’m still in the desert. I wish I could pin local pics like I could on my old phone's map. Here are some fun ones though!

About your request, I found a temple with friendly people running it. They don’t have any class crystals or relics though. They have magic scrolls, but they don’t sell them. Instead, they give them to divine casters for free.

Since I can’t use them myself, they won’t let me have any. Very need before greed and I respect that, but like I know you’d probably want them and I’m super curious about them too. I haven’t gotten to look at them before because they were super expensive.

Anyway, I was kind of worried about being near a church of any kind but they're all really chill. They worship a god of water called Talmor and he’s not a fucking monster like Stromholt dickbag of a deity thankfully.

They let me refill my water for free. I felt bad about it since they have a shallow well. I didn't need it thanks to you, but I couldn't tell them that.

Here’s a pic of me with the priest. He’s not a hot onii-san, but he’s super nice!

The last picture was of Jun with a wizened old man in what looked like a lightly colored kurta with a feather pattern worked in a tea stain color on it. He seemed to be speaking animatedly in the image and I found it pretty charming. The setting seemed to be a room with colorful tapestries on the walls or possibly a large tent.

The other attached images were of the desert and the people of the temple. Like Jun had said, they all looked pretty friendly in the images. Friendly, but rather careworn if I wasn’t off the mark. The community seemed rather poor, despite the presence of the temple.

Looking up Talmor, I found he seemed like a pretty okay deity to worship. He didn’t deal with weather patterns. Instead, he gave omens through birds of good locations to find or dig wells and locate springs.

He also advocated for kindness. If someone broke the peace at a water source he governed, they’d find it too bitter to drink until they made amends. A light punishment as far as divine wrath went.

Curious about where Jun was, I pulled up the map of the area. Like she’d said in a prior letter, the desert opened up once you cleared the end of the Laurel mountain range. She was smack in the middle of a small oasis, but the map didn’t denote any surface water.

I found that worrying. I couldn’t see how much of an underground source they had, and she’d mentioned the well was shallow. I didn’t know enough to figure out if it was in danger of drying out. Things like that were well outside my area of expertise.

Between the people being nice to Jun and my curiosity about the scrolls, I felt like it wouldn’t be a bad idea to help them out a bit. At worst I’d be out a little mana and time, which I wasn’t hurting for at the moment.

The basic water crystal in my store wouldn’t have been up to the task of supplementing even a frugal community's water needs. I spent some mana to upgrade it to a more substantial production level. Purification crystals were a little weird in that they acted on the entirety of the body of water they were dropped in, so they were fine as they were.

Hi Jun,

Hang out at the temple for today. I’ll try to come up with something to convince them.

Thanks,

-42

My message definitely wasn’t enlightening, but it would do. I started trying to figure out how to convince the temple to give Jun what I wanted. Thinking back to the pictures, I had to wonder how well the temple itself was doing for the community to be that poor.

Hey,

Just had an idea, can you get a tour of the temple? I’m curious if they have relics or anything like that. Also just what the interior is like in general.

-42

My interest in the interior was partly due to my plan, but there was an element of pure curiosity. I was still working on Laurel's temple. It would be good to have something to compare my own design with. Reference material as it were.

Having sent my request, I got to work. Picking out a piece of blue-veined marble, I laid a semi-transparent image over it and started sketching. Talmor had three popular ways of being depicted. A man with a flute, a man with wings, and a very large version of his sacred bird.

I selected the winged version and had him play the flute. The first design was him standing, but I felt it looked boring. It also failed to give a sense of his personality. I changed up the design and had him lounging atop some stones with a spring gushing from them.

The laid-back vibe fit him. I added a couple of his sacred birds relaxing with him. Finally, happy with the composition, I started the rough lay-in carving. I could have technically started with a smaller figure and sized it up but I intended the final to be life sized and started at that scale. Sizing up would lead to weirdness with the color bands in the marble otherwise.

Once the rough cutting was done, I started experimenting with where to hide the water stone. The crystal was pretty but I felt like water issuing seemingly from nowhere would have a better more magical feeling than an obvious source. I experimented for a bit until I was happy with how it looked flowing.

I could have gone into more detail on the figure of Talmor but left his facial features roughed in rather than finishing them. I put more detail into the figure, birds, and stones instead. I had a reference image but I thought it suited him better not to be too rigidly designed. Not that I could explain why exactly.

It was like when I worked on the temple for Lorel’s consort. I’d just gotten a kind of vibe. Though in fairness that guy was not even a third as fleshed out as Talmore. There had been no reference images for him and almost no information other than he’d been lawful good.

Hey again 42!

The priest was super cool about showing me around. They don't really seem to have any relics, just paintings on the wall and a couple of books. I asked if that was just how it is, but it seems like something happened but they don’t really want to talk about it. IDK why and it's not like they're mad, just kind of sad about it. Very much a downer whatever it was.

My interest increased a bit as I read the message. I decided to send Jun the improved water production crystal and purifier immediately. Tossing them in the well would probably keep it from drying up any time soon and prevent it from becoming contaminated. Hopefully getting to help would cheer her up a bit.

With that dealt with for the moment, I turned back to my project. I upgraded a second crystal for the relic I was making. It would activate with a command phrase instead of going constantly. The upgrade increased its production rate significantly and added an on/off feature.

The final magical touch was a size change spell. This too was command-phrase activated. I linked the two by picking a short verse from Talmors dogma and carving it into the water collection basin. If someone read it aloud, it would assume its proper size slowly and begin producing water.

To change it back and stop the water the latter half of the rest of the verse that wasn’t on the base would need to be spoken. It seemed like something easy for a member of the temple to figure out but not so easy a pilgrim would accidentally shrink it by reading the words aloud without thinking.

It was night by the time I felt like the fountain was in a presentable state. After one final fussy polishing of the surface, I nodded, pleased with my work. It would do for a simple relic for a water god.

I sent it to Jun along with a text. My suggestion was saying she found the figurine adventuring and hadn’t activated before. She could offer it up as thanks for their generosity before leaving without drawing as much suspicion that way.

This was a moment where I knew I was being a soft touch, but it didn’t bother me. I didn’t mind “borrowing” things, since I could copy them non-destructively and Jun was aware of it as well. The scrolls likely weren’t in a place she could get access to, and I didn’t want to put her at odds with the people of the temple for no real reason.

Jun had indicated that scrolls were expensive, which meant that other churches sold them. Exposing Jun to needless risk or putting her in a position to do something unpleasant for a quick reward was just stupid.

If I got lucky the temple clergy would change their minds after receiving the gift. If they didn’t, I’d move on and figure out a different source. Jun sent me a picture of her doing a double thumbs-up, apparently approving of my plan.

42! They REALLY liked the fountain thingy!

Was the reply I got an hour later. The attached pictures showed what looked like a pretty wild party erupting, Jun body surfing above a crowd of revelers. I was laughing so hard I was practically rolling in the air. If nothing else, she was definitely a hero to them and it looked like she was enjoying it this time.