Might as Well

Sam spent a good few hours simply going through every metal insert and part of the coat, not even leaving out the metal buttons and fixings, engraving his runic creation onto them. The Heart Rune went on one of the inserts that would actually rest above his heart if he wore the coat. The entire runic sequence was about protection from physical, magical, and even environmental damage as well as comfort and robustness.

If he did it correctly, then the coat would become fully self-repairing as well as making the wearer immune to the cold of snowstorms and the heat of deserts. Taking a dip in a volcano was right out, but walking past it would probably be only moderately hot in the coat.

He also made sure to mix his and Lucky’s blood into the ink he used to draw up the runes to make sure to connect the resulting artifact to him and his loyal companion.

After he was finished, he even took up a sewing needle and some high-quality magical thread and stitched in a few supporting runes along the edge of the coat, soaking the thread in the same blood mix.

His sewing skills weren’t the best – the game hadn’t even awarded him a skill for that – but he hoped the effort he spent on it would be enough.

Finally, after a lot of time, resources, and effort, Sam held up the modified coat and took a look at it, both with his physical eyes and mana senses. It looked like every edgy fantasy coat with a fur-lined hood, and metal plates inserted between layers of materials, which in turn reached down to his knees, giving him that authentic fantasy ‘um-actually’ guy look.

To his magical senses, it sang with untold potential, the Heart Rune beating with mana, not unlike a real heart would. And as he watched and listened, he realized that the Heart Rune was beating along with his own heart.

“Fantastic! What do you think, Lucky?” he asked the wolf.

Said wolf padded up to him from his resting spot while he crafted away. His loyal companion walked up to the coat he was holding and gave it a sniff, then looked up at Sam – or rather to the side, with his size – and gave a quiet wuff.

“You like it, huh?”

“Wuff, wuff!” came the reply.

“All right, then I want you to use your power and jump into the shadow it casts!” he gave him an order.

Lucky didn’t even hesitate, jumping directly into the shadows within the folds of the coat Sam was holding, vanishing from most of his senses.

“Good,” Sam smiled as he walked over to the wall and hung up the coat on a rack. “Now repeat it until you run out of mana!”

Sam watched for a minute as his loyal friend, with a wolfish grin on his face, began to ‘play’ with the newly modified piece of clothing before turning his attention back to the desk he was using.

‘One item down, let’s look at the rest of them…’

One great thing about being an owner of a very successful in-game company was that he had gold to throw around when needed. Why go out and hunt and scavenge for materials on his own, wasting precious time, when he could give a list to Lucy and she would buy everything he needed?

Made life much easier…

Even some of the rarer reagents couldn’t resist the lure of a fuckton of money…

He continued his preparation with some delight. The last time he did this he had to hunt down a Shadow Mana Fountain, but this time he was much humbler with his materials.

First, he took out a pile of shadow-infused mana crystals, then drew up a small basic transmutation rune circle. He placed the crystals in the middle of it and activated it. Keeping the shadow mana inside them inert with his own control, he took hold of the malleable crystal material and began to shape it, slowly but surely giving it a wolf-like shape in Lucky’s image. Then, while the material was still soft to the touch, he began carving runes on it. Nothing specific, just a few phrases like friend, loyal, companion, family, and things like that.

Then as the circle ran out of juice, he was holding a medium cat-sized statue of Lucky, made from shadow-infused mana crystals, engraved with beautiful runes that glowed gently with pale white light.

He placed the item to the side and took out a few more things. Leather and metal from shadow, metal aligned creatures, respectively. Most of the metal alloys came from Liz’s talented hands. This time he just looked them over to make sure they were good for the ritual (and nobody snuck in something nefarious) before placing those items next to the small statue.

The next ingredient was the remains of seven Greater Shadow Spirits. It would have been better if he had hunted it with Lucky, but honestly, at this point, he just couldn’t be bothered. There were those essences he got from the Valley of Distortion, but Sam wanted more. He took out an empty white crystal, quartz, and with the help of another circle, transferred the spirits into the crystal that was shaped into a perfect heptahedron by an artist from the capital.

The sixth item was one of his rings. He took off the Ring of the Shadow Fang and spent a few minutes cleaning it and making sure it was in tip-top shape.

His seventh and final item was a small ordinary-looking seed he took out from the depths of his inventory.

[Transformation Tree Seed: A very versatile tree that takes up the properties of whatever seed it is planted next to. The higher the quality of the seed the more mana is needed for the transformation.]

The nature attribute would be probably swallowed by the ritual. At least Sam hoped so. He really wanted the transformation aspect of it.

As he beheld the items on his workbench, each of them costing more than some guilds could afford he nodded proudly.

Time travel was about stacking all of these small things together and creating something big…

Luckily, just as he finished with the preparation, Lucky jumped out of the coat for the last time, visibly tired, tongue lolling out, and missing a very big chunk of his mana reserves.

“Wuff!”

“Excellent timing, my friend!”

Lucky let out a tired sigh and plopped down on the ground bonelessly.

“Rest a little, then we can do the ritual…” he told his loyal companion as he checked the time. Almost sundown. Even if he didn’t hurry, he would be able to start it when the moon was the highest. The half-moon strengthened the transformation aspect as the celestial object itself was in a transitioning phase.

“Symbolism, ho!” he exclaimed to himself as he began to pack up the items for the ritual.

This time, the ritual would be performed in one of the heavily fortified ritual rooms that the AFK Company maintained for its members’ use. Based on the notes on some of the doors, Sam knew that the rest of the team was already in the process of doing the rituals.

He entered one of the empty ones, closed the door, locked it, and drew a small line of salt mixed with iron powder at the threshold. Once again, better safe than sorry…

Those damn fey were surely still watching him…

Then came the tiring part.

In the middle of the room was a giant rock slab smooth as a newborn baby, ready to be carved by a runemaster. Which, in this case, was him…

He took off his armor, rolled up his sleeves, summoned the shadow dagger from the ring, got on his knees, and began to carve.

First, seven runes in a circle – slightly larger than usual – gently carved into the rock slab. Then he called out.

“Lucky!”

The wolf instantly emerged from his shadow and waited for his command.

“Do you see this?” He asked, pointing at the runes. The wolf nodded after looking at it. “I want you to use your claws to follow my carvings.

Lucky looked up at him with a worried look, but Sam just nodded encouragingly. He chose some of the simplest runes, so Lucky only ruined two rock slabs before the deep carvings of the runes were perfect.

Sam gave the proud wolf a pat on his head, then finally began the real carving.

The first circle, simple as it was, was done by the two of them working together. The next one was for simply letting the mana work through the ritual and granting it stability and control, and a safety valve if things went wrong. The one following that was the concrete instructions for the ritual; what Sam wanted to happen and what the mana he would channel into it would need to do. The fourth one was for the reagents. This circle contained seven smaller circles, all placed equidistantly from each other, filled with the prepared items, including the coat he just bought.

He placed the Ring of the Shadow Fang last, then called out to Lucky.

“Sit in the middle, please…”

The wolf once again followed his instruction and calmly walked into the circle and sat on his haunches, looking proudly around, not unlike a king surveying his domain. Sam didn’t even have to tell him to stay still.

Then he created three concentric circles made from salt and iron powder around the ritual, changed into a simple cotton robe, leaving all his magical and usual clothing and artifacts outside of the salt circle.

He took a moment to center himself, made sure no emergency messages had arrived since he started carving, then looked toward the still patiently sitting familiar. He raised a hand and began casting. One illusionary circle, looking like it was made of liquid silver that represented the mutability of transformation, sprang up around the carved circles. Another soon joined, this one shining with the warmth of the sun, representing life, power, and health. Finally, the last one looked like ghostly runes, unaltered from the skill’s base state, to represent the infinite possibilities.

Sam made sure that the circles he summoned were correct, then with barely any effort – once again marveling at the game the devs created – he began channeling all of his mana into the ritual.

And the ritual drank it in like dozens of starving people on the edge of dehydration in the middle of the hottest day in the driest desert. His knees buckled under the onslaught and he could feel his mana core begin to spin around faster and faster, basically pouring mana into the ritual circles.

Slowly, but gaining speed, the runic circles he painstakingly created started to glow. The three circles in the air glowed with their own light: silvery, warm orange-yellow, and light gray, while the ones carved on the ground differed greatly.

The one he carved together with Lucky was oscillating between blue and black gently, while the first circle after that was solid white, the next one lighted up with rainbow color, and then the last one glowed with a curious mix of silver, gray, black, white and a minuscule touch of green.

Sam, seeing this, grinned and continued to maintain the mana flowing into the ritual. He said nothing, as he couldn’t really find the words to express his thoughts, instead he just focused on maintaining the ritual and keeping control of the incredible amount of mana.

Soon, the reagents were enveloped in light, all of it rising into the air and then being sucked into Lucky’s body, which began to glow. At first, it was just a gentle glow, but as more time went by, the glow got stronger and stronger until Sam couldn’t really see anything but a giant blob of light.

‘I really hope I chose correctly…’ he mused. He didn’t use anything rare or hard to find. Instead, he relied on his own skills and creations, hoping the thematic links would be a sufficient substitute for power.

As Lucky vanished into the light, Sam knew it was now just a waiting game. He closed his eyes and began to meditate to increase his mana regeneration, as the ritual was still sucking up an incredible amount of it.

He didn’t really know how long he stood there, maintaining the ritual, but he was tired and exhausted. Even with his incredible mana regeneration and Perfect Mana Core, his body still felt like a wrung-out cloth after it was put through several spin cycles.

Thankfully, the light covering Lucky was dying down and soon he would be able to collapse. Hell, he even felt the mana slow down to a trickle before gradually stopping, finally letting his worn-out mana channels rest. Even the illusionary rune circles spun around without his input.

Letting out a sigh, he shook his limbs a little, getting the cramp out of them, and stared at the slowly dimming globe of light that Lucky had become. He was really wondering what was going to emerge from the magical cocoon on the other side…

His senses told him that the mana was churning in the ritual room in a manner he never felt. Mana around Lucky’s transient form was expanding, then collapsing into itself, becoming much more condensed, and stronger. This would continue until under the direction of something unseen it would expand and explode again just to be pushed back by equally unseen pressure. It felt to him like mana, not unlike coal, was being shaped by the pressure to turn it into a diamond.

The quality of the mana was slowly rising, turning into something that Sam couldn’t really identify. And all of it was being attracted to the transforming Lucky and filling his body with the new type of mana.

Smiling pleasantly, Sam watched the process in fascination, waiting for it to end.