Winds of Magic Chapter 14

 

Chapter 14

I woke up to the sound of something shattering. Throwing off my covers, I got dressed in order to investigate. I walked through my house until I came to the source of the sound. Rei was in her backyard, adjacent to mine, and was practicing her destructive magic.

“Up this late?” I said, walking through the gate that separated our backyards.

“Same to you,” said Rei.

“I just woke up,” I said. “You training?”

“I am,” said Rei. “I want to be the best. I’m going to get onto the team as a starter as soon as possible.”

“Don’t bother the neighbors,” I said.

“I won’t,” said Rei.

I typed a few things into my casting device. It took about two minutes to charge and then threw up a sound proof barrier surrounding the backyard.

“Now you can work in peace,” I said. I sat down in a lawn chair and took a breath of the fine night time air. I watched Rei crack pillars of ice for over an hour and then returned to bed, leaving her to her training.

I needed my sleep, anyways. I had a lot of work to do the next day.

When I woke up it was light outside, but my alarm clock had not gone off yet. I got out of bed and checked the backyard. Rei wasn’t there. I went over to her front door and knocked. Rei appeared after a few minutes and let me in.

I donned an apron. “My turn,” I said. I put together a breakfast of over easy eggs, hash brown, and pancakes. Rei and I had a deal. When both of our sets of parents were gone, I cooked one meal and she cooked the next, switching between us. It was an arrangement that suited us.

When we were done we got ready for school and headed to campus. The walkways were sparsely populated, as the first classes of the day had not yet started. We both went to the curling clubhouse beneath Battle Tower. Rei split to go to the team’s room while I arrived in the auxiliary clubhouse. I was the last of the members to arrive.

“Right on time,” said Alice. “Have you figured out how to decode the book I gave you?”

“I haven’t started,” I said. “If you don’t mind I’d like to start now. I’m sure you don’t really need my help elsewhere.”

“Go ahead,” said Alice. I took the book from my backpack and placed it on a table in the corner. “I think this book is a grimoire.”

“Well, that’s not surprising, is it?” said Alice. “How can you tell?”

“Instinct,” I said. “I’ve dealt with grimoires before.”

“Wow,” said Alice. “I wouldn’t have expected. Did you see them in your line of work?”

“Of course,” I said. I opened the book on the table. The spine cracked as I moved it. The pages were not made of paper but of parchment, which had survived the years a lot better than paper would have.

“When is this book from?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” said Alice. “I tried looking it up online but couldn’t find anything. There are also no identifiers inside that would tell us when it was written.”

“I think it’s a recent book,” I said.

“Even though it’s been written on parchment?” said Alice.

“Exactly,” I said. “This parchment doesn’t look like it was made during the preindustrial era.”

“How can you tell?” said Alice.

“There’s one way to find out,” I said. I took out my casting device. “This may take a while,” I said. I loaded a program for carbon dating using magic. It took about fifteen minutes, and another half hour for the analysis to complete. In the meantime I assisted with the small day to day tasks of running a curling team.

When the analysis was done, I checked it. As I has suspected, the book was only fifty years old. For a grimoire, it was super young. Most grimoires that were worth anything had been written several hundred years ago. But something told me that this book held a secret that would change a lot of things. Creating a single crystal superalloy not protected by governments would upend the market.

And that’s exactly what I planned on doing. I flipped through the pages, trying my best to analyze the jargon. When I had finished my inspection I put together a serum described in the book’s first chapter. It was easy enough to create with the materials we had in the clubhouse—it was a workshop dedicated to materials science, after all.

I had a precursor to a superalloy in a jar in my hands. It bubbled with a thick green viscousness that made it seem magical. Well, it was magical. I placed the vial down. The grimoire snapped shut with a surprising clap. I tried prying it back open, but couldn’t.

“Maybe we triggered a trap?” said Alice. She tried opening it as well but to no avail.

“I don’t know,” I said. I slid the book back into my backpack. “This is the second object I’ve found that has locked itself.”

“Second?” said Alice.

“I was going to ask,” I said. “Have you ever played a magic VR game?”

“Yeah, a couple of them,” said Alice. “My brother is really into that kind of thing.”

“This may sound funny,” I said, “But are you willing to risk your life for a friend?”

“Of course,” said Alice. “Why are you asking?”

“Because I found a manifested dungeon where you die for real when you lose.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of those,” said Alice. “Though I never thought you would be the one to find me one.”

“Are you in?” I said. “You may die. I can’t understate that fact.”

“What’s the reward?” asked Alice.

“Eden,” I said. “Or at least information about it.”

“I’ve heard rumors about that,” said Alice. “It’s something a bunch of crackpots are trying to do to the world. Like the rapture.”

“Yeah, that,” I said. “If you can help me, we can figure out what’s going on.”

“I’m in,” said Alice. “My life has been pretty boring as of late. I can do with some excitement. Until the tournament gets close, of course. Then I’ll have to double down.” She looked at the rest of the club members. “We’re going out for a while. Keep working on the second layer granite construct.”

Alice and I walked out of the room. Alice had her hands in her pockets. “Adventure is kind of sexy,” she said. She chuckled. “Anyone else joining us?”

“Yeah, hopefully,” I said. I took out my phone and texted Rei.

“Bring Jade and Tetra to the cafeteria as soon as you can.”

“Be there in ten minutes,” said Rei.

Alice and I arrived in the cafeteria and sat down at one of the larger tables. Since it wasn’t meal time, the room was pretty empty.

“Tell me more about this dungeon,” said Alice, leaning forward on her palms.

“Well, it appears that whoever designed it didn’t want to hide information so much as gatekeep it. I can’t think of any other situation where they would allow random people access to their files without breaking the encryption.”

“If my hunch is correct,” said Alice, “I would think that whoever designed the dungeon system wanted to find good fighters and magicians.”

“I think so too,” I said. “I think they’re testing people to see if they are worthy of receiving whatever is inside that flash drive.”

Rei came through the door with Jade and Tetra. “I’m here,” she said, sitting down across from me. Jade and Tetra also sat down.

“What’s the story?” said Rei.

“We’re going to try beating a VR dungeon crawler that protects the flash drive I found underneath that lake. I believe it will lead us to Tally and what those cultists are trying to do.” I paused. “And the kicker is that if we die in the game we will die in real life.”

“Yikes,” said Rei. “But if it leads to us finding and freeing Tally, then it would be worth it. Jade? Tetra? What do you think?”

“I’m with you,” said Tetra. “But besides that, I’m starving, and my cook has taken the day off. Do you mind if I get something to eat? I will treat you all as well.”

We grabbed a meal and returned to our seats. I chose sushi and Rei picked a sandwich that was pre-wrapped. Tetra ate daintily with her hand in front of her lips. “Tally is my friend, as well as Jades,” she said. “I will do anything to return her to us and her family. She has been missing for far too long.” She took a bite of her pasta. “And I do not want her to be sacrificed to an ancient bloodthirsty god. Who knows what will happen to her soul if she is consumed in a ritual like that?”

“We’ll get to her before that happens,” I said. I looked at Rei and she nodded. “We’re in this together.” I looked at Alice. “Oh, and I don’t believe I have introduced you to Alice yet.”

Alice waved. “Hi. I’m the vice captain of the curling auxiliary corps.”

“Jade,” said Jade.

“Tetra Pearlash, at your service,” said Tetra.

“It’s nice to meet you,” said Alice. “I thank you for being York’s friends.”

“No need for thanks,” said Tetra. “York is a very easy guy to be around.”

Rei finished her food. “I think we should go there now,” she said. “We’re all free for the next hour or so. Can you tell us more about how we are supposed to fight in this dungeon?”

“Sure,” I said. “Apparently you’re given a class and weapons just like in a traditional virtual RPG. You can even level up. Some of the monsters are pretty scary though. The smell especially.”

“It’s all to save Tally,” said Tetra. “Jade?”

“I’ll help as much as I can,” said Jade. “I don’t know how much use I will be, though.”

“Aw, don’t be modest,” said Tetra. “Even as a Second your skills are invaluable.”

“Thanks,” said Jade.

I looked around at the party. “Are we ready to go?” I said.

“Then let’s go,” said Alice.

We traveled to the computer lab and I hooked up the flash drive. In an explosion of light all five of us were transported to the same starting room I had been taken to yesterday. There were two doors this time, and one of them had “level 2” written on it.

“This way,” I said.

“Wait, let me choose my class,” said Rei.

I waited as the party chose their weapons and their class. When they were done I approached the door leading to the second level. We entered and came onto a volcanic plateau that stretched far into the distance. Kangaroo-like monsters wandered back and forth across the scorched landscape. I held up a hand. “Since you guys are lower level than I am, maybe we should do some grinding.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Rei.

Grinding, in a situation where levels were important, was the method of beating lots of small monsters to gain experience points from them before fighting the big bad guys. This allowed one to have a leg up on the boss monsters when they did arrive.

We decided to kill at least a dozen of the kangaroo monsters before we attempted to head deeper into the dungeon. I leveled up twice during the process. It was difficult to face the kangaroo monsters as if it were real life, but I couldn’t die now, facing off against mooks who didn’t even have names.

We killed about two dozen of the creatures and, when I deemed that we were ready, we headed deeper into the dungeon proper.