A Relatively Powerful Mage

Imri returned to his workshop after he had finished his walking meditation to recover his mana. He began conceptualizing a new enchantment that had been forming in his mind. He continued working all through the night, not needing any sleep thanks to the effects of his Transcendant Meditation.

The idea clicked into place after several hours of thought. He took out his sketch pad and began writing the combinations of runes he needed to make this work. Unfortunately, the idea would require a lot of details, as he needed to work through a couple of new concepts.

Imri began working through the basis for the enchantment, the Dimensional Portal rune. He intuitively knew how to create the rune, but it had more complex parameters than any rune he had created. The first was the shape of the portal opening, expressed as a function. This wasn’t too difficult, as most runes had to either specify a target or an area. He also needed to define where the two ends of the portals would be. The opening nearest the enchantment was also easy enough, as he could specify a set distance from a frame of reference. This was similar to how the Dimensional Tear defined its frame of reference to the saber hilt.

The most challenging parameter was the other opening, which needed to be defined precisely. His first thought was to create some sort of enchantment that would be placed near the portal exit and send the coordinates to the first. He quickly dismissed the idea, as it was unlikely that the method would work over large distances, and he wanted his solution to be scalable.

The answer was simple: he needed to use his Spatial Beacons. He had created a rune that queried all his Spatial Beacons, returning an array of parameters that could be parsed. So far, he had only used the beacon within Celestia and only needed to use the direction parameter. Now, he needed to use both the direction and distance parameters from all the Spatial Beacons to get exact locations.

Once he had solved that problem, the rest of the enchantment was easy enough to finish, as it was just a matter of using functions he had used many times before. Some runes calculated mana expenditure and determined how long the portal would be open; this was then returned to a display. He also added a safety shutoff, not wanting the portal to shrink in dimensions when it was running out of mana.

He continued working well into the morning, completing his sketches and beginning work on the actual components. He also couldn’t wait any longer than necessary, waking Toby and Zuri a bit earlier than was probably polite. Their drowsiness was quickly wiped away when he explained his idea.

As with most enchantments, the hardest part had been the design. By this point, there were very few runes that Imri struggled to inscribe. He finished his work while his two assistants were still completing their portion. He took a brief break to wash and have breakfast with Emelia.

When he returned less than an hour later, Toby was putting the final finishing touches on the leylines. Emelia had also come with, sensing Imri’s excitement, even if he had mostly restrained himself from talking about it during breakfast.

Imri approached the improvised touchscreen as the final connections were made, and the device lit up. All the current Spatial Beacons were displayed in a list for him to select. Some of them would need to be removed from the list, as he hadn’t intended them to be portal destinations. He also needed to set more user-friendly names, as they displayed distance and direction.

He selected the desired destination, the only beacon at a higher altitude, and then confirmed that he wanted to turn the device on.

A Dimensional Portal was immediately opened. Where once there had been a solid wall, now there was a doorway-sized opening leading to Mount Celestia's frigid peaks. Due to the pressure difference, with the air so thin at such a high elevation, they were all nearly sucked through as the air pressure attempted to equalize. Fortunately, the force wasn’t too much to handle, especially for Imri, who now had the strength of a professional athlete before the system. He quickly shut the portal down, averting the disaster of one of them being stranded on the other side of the portal. It also would have been quite the fall, as that particular beacon was almost a hundred meters above the ground. Perhaps that hadn’t been the best location to test with.

Almost as alarming was the enormous amount of mana that had been consumed. Even with the portal only open for a few seconds, it had consumed almost 500 mana. A month ago, wasting that much mana would have been unforgivable. It still consumed slightly more than the panels could output in two hours. Imri sighed as he considered how many more mana panels he would need to enchant to keep up with the expanding mana demand.

Despite the obvious flaws, the other three observers stared wide-eyed at where the portal had been.

“Was that what I think it was?” Emelia asked.

“It actually worked,” Toby said in amazement. “Not that I ever had any doubts,” he added quickly.

“That was incredible,” Zuri said.

“I still have a few issues to work through. I must improve the administrative functions to define which beacons can be used. I also think I should install some sort of doorway or arch where the portal will open. That way, people will know where it's going to be. We’ll also eventually want the enchantment on both sides, so it isn’t a one-way trip. It will also need to be a pressurized chamber so we won’t have the same issues with the elevation,” Imri listed off.

“I can work with the builders on an arch. They have some exotic stones that should suit the mystical portal vibe. Maybe we could paint on some runes for aesthetic purposes,” Zuri said excitedly.

“I was just thinking a simple doorway or something like that,” Imri said. All three of them gave him the ‘you’re being an idiot’ look, and he ceded to their superior artistic sense.

With Zuri leaving to work on the arch, Imri began to rectify the issues he had found. Instead of manually adding the runes he wanted, he created runes for a separate administrator interface. This program would allow the user to manually change the name to something more user-friendly. It would also allow them to edit whether that particular beacon could be used to open a portal. He defaulted the value to false, making it so newly formed beacons wouldn’t be available to use until someone added them to an acceptable list.

Imri thought his iteration had only taken a few minutes, but he quickly revised his estimate when he saw Zuri returning with several builders. “Not here, build the arch in the marked-off area near the nexus,” Imri explained.

That was the area where his Spatial Beacon in Celestia had been anchored. He wanted every portal to be built on a beacon so gates could be constructed on either side. While that wasn’t strictly necessary at this point, with people able to radio Celestia and have them open the portal, he wanted his network to be scalable.

Imri followed after the grumbling workers and the excitable Zuri as they made their way to the seemingly vacant area directly across from the town hall. Soon, porters arrived with lighter-colored bricks that closely resembled limestone, though it was a unique rock that hadn’t existed before the system.

While Imri was more than willing to cede the artistic elements of the small monument, that didn’t extend to the functional portions. He needed the size of the opening to be precise, needing it to be the size of a doorway that people could easily walk through, but no larger. This would already be a massive drain on mana, and he wouldn’t have extra space just to make it appear more grand.

Fortunately, the builders were professional, simply nodding at the precise measurements and list of technical demands. The first layer of the arch was closer to something Imri had in mind, as a doorway shape was constructed smoothly and efficiently. In addition to the normal masonry methods, earth mages fused the elements of the small structure, effectively making it one singular piece with no weak point. Imri also noticed with his mana vision that the stones had been enhanced significantly, meaning the unassuming doorway could probably withstand Zhaire with a gravity sledgehammer.

While Toby added leylines to the doorway, Zuri and the builders added a second layer for aesthetic purposes. It was constructed from the same limestone-like bricks, but these were less uniform, having purposefully been chipped and cut in non-uniform shapes, giving it a somewhat aged appearance. Zuri also chiseled in some fake runes that were stylized across the surface. She then painted it a shade of blue that seemed to glow like mana. Again, the earth mages used their spells to fuse the stone into a solid piece. While this second layer was less structurally sound, it surpassed most pre-system structures.

Imri surveyed the finished product. He had to admit that Zuri definitely had a better eye for aesthetics than he did. It would have been incongruous for something so majestic to appear as a door to nowhere.

Imri smiled as Toby finished creating the leylines from the arch to the console-like sheet of Zopralt that contained the main enchantment. He would eventually have Toby extend the leylines to the central repository, adding the portal to the main mana grid. However, Imri didn’t have the patience to finish that work. He wanted to test out his invention immediately.

He temporarily connected the tablet-like device to the now-recharged Espeonite crystal that he had used earlier. By this point, a sizable crowd had gathered to see what was happening, and hushed speculation about the strange arch whispered throughout the crowd.

There were murmurs of disappointment as nothing noticeable happened while Imri went through the crude administrator UI. Imri added only two beacons to the selectable list: the healing spring and the cave system entrance. With them added and named Imri nodded, he was ready to commence the final test.

“Anyone need to go to the healing springs or the cave system?” Imri asked the gathered crowd.

“We have a rotation of soldiers going to and from the caves,” Major Harper suggested.

“That works. Radio the squad they’re relieving and have them ready to move through when the portal opens. Have them away from the marked area on the side further from the cave,” Imri said.

Several minutes later, the soldiers had gathered around the strange arch. Imri explained what was about to happen, ruining the surprise for the crowd, though many had already guessed its purpose.

Imri tapped the button on the UI, and the portal opened. This time, there was no dramatic change in pressure or awe-inspiring view. The only noticeable change was that people could now see the cave system instead of seeing the town hall through the arch.

Imri watched as the mana in the crystal dropped precipitously. Even with the caves being much closer than his previous test, the portal could only stay open for less than a minute. Fortunately, the soldiers moved with alacrity, crossing the threshold within seconds. At the same time, the soldiers on the other end went through the opposite side, emerging on the side closer to the town hall. Within several seconds, everyone had gone through.

“Stand clear of the closing portal,” Imri shouted with as much severity as he could muster.

“All clear,” the major shouted as he inspected the end Imri couldn’t see.

Imri would need to add safety features as he shuddered at the thought of someone mid-transit when the portal was deactivated. If that happened, they would die, their body separated into two pieces as if a Dimensional Tear had sliced them apart.

Imri deactivated the portal, instantly deactivating the immense mana drain. There was a chorus of cheering as everyone realized the implications of what had been done. Imri ignored them as he finished the enchantment with his highest-level core. The moment that was done, a flurry of notifications entered his mind.

Achievement Upgraded

Master Crafting 4 (+1): +.4% to all primary stats (+.1%)

New Achievement

Wonderous Crafter 1: Awarded for creating an item that is considered a wonder.

+.15% to all primary stats/rank.

Imri Padar has reached level 23 (+3) in Runic Engineer (2F)

Primary Stats

Strength 136 (+1)

Constitution 124 (+1)

Intelligence 226 (+3)

Willpower 182 (+3)

Secondary Stats

HP 197 (+3)

FP 146 (+2)

MP 656 (+27)

Mana Efficiency 601 (+15)

Crafting Efficiency 680 (+27)

Traits Ranked Up

Relativity Runic Enchantment F to E: Understand how to create runes of all known relativity spells. Crafting Efficiency of runic enchantments based on relativity increased by 2.56% (+.06%).

Runic Crafting E to D

Trait Tier Upgrade

Runic Crafting (1D) Improved to Runic Creation (2F)

Runic Creation (2F): Gives an understanding of how runes work and how to create them. Improves the rate at which new runes are learned by 5.5% (+.25%). Crafting Efficiency of runic enchantments increased by 2.5% (+.93%)

Imri smiled at the substantial improvements. It felt reassuring that the system agreed that this was a monumental achievement. It was mildly annoying to have made those gains after completing his most important enchantment to date, and he had to resist the urge to start redoing the enchantment.

This was just the first node. Imri had a grand vision of an interconnected network of portals that would reconnect humanity, or at least what was left of it.