Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

With his bookmaking done, Ben went out to start the day, putting his main destination on hold since it was still early, to instead visit the church he had set up, wanting to give it a look.

There was not much need for cleaning. Given the evaluation of gods in that world, anyone who went in, even those who didn’t necessarily give his god any faith, made sure to show a certain level of respect and kept the place in top shape, and he was fairly sure that Sachel would occasionally visit to dust.

He wasn’t there to inspect the level of cleanliness though; making so many books had reminded him of something his god had once mentioned and he’d decided to put it into practice as he rearranged the space.

Despite how big the church was, having two stories along with both a basement and a sub-basement, only the main floor was open for public use, with the rest of it being left for whatever he personally felt like storing, but that was going to change as he began lugging up piles of the books he had down below to the top floor, moving the shelves as well before he organized it all to create a proper library.

It had taken a couple hours thanks to the sheer volume he’d been accumulating and while he’d been doing it he’d been making books as well, with texts covering what could be done with the first tier of each of the ten affinities being made, along with a couple that covered a few of the more prominent non-affinitied magics.

He was able to make about two books like that without Thera around so long as his mana pool was full and it took him less than fifteen minutes to refill it, so even if he wasn’t as fast as he had been in the morning, he was able to chip away at it all as he’d worked, with the public library of Myriad complete.

It still needed a sign, both out front along with inside to point up the stairs and remind people that if they wanted to use it they should at least offer a prayer, but he couldn’t help but feel a small sense of pride by the end.

He’d originally shot down the idea because he didn’t want to risk losing any book he hadn’t yet read when his god had suggested it, but that was no longer a problem. There was nothing there he hadn’t consumed and the nature of his mind meant he could bring it all back to the front of his thoughts so making it a resource for the town as a whole felt nice.

There. Aren’t I a great apostle? Don’t you love me? He asked up to the sky.

When I have time I’ll make some more covering the intersecting points for various branches and some more on both non-affinity and combined branches, but I think this should be good for now. Even if it only gets a couple people in per day, that’s a couple more prayers for you, right?

No worries.

With that little side task done, he moved on to the main one, walking through the busier streets now that people were up and enjoying their day to get to his research center to see what progress had been made since he’d last been in.

He made his way through the halls before finding the one in charge. Kufno was busy talking with some of the others as they scribbled down notes, using the cube that contained a section of the summoning spell as a table to do it.

“Kufno,” He called out, getting the man’s attention and giving him a grin. “Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve been in. How have things been going here?”

“I would say rather well, Ben. While we don’t have many theories, testing is at least ahead of schedule,” He told him positively. “Can I assume you’re here to go through the books?”

“That you can, I’ll be back in a bit to talk about how it looks after.”

After giving his greeting he passed by, going to a shelf at the back where hundreds of notebooks were being stored, each of them on the examination of different fragments of the monumental spell.

It was a lot, but not so much he couldn’t handle alone, even without his clones there to speed up the process. He pulled out as many as he could read from the shelves, letting them hang in the air as pages turned, a few of his staff turning to watch in surprise, none of them having seen how he absorbed information before with pages fluttering before his eyes and knowledge condensing in his head. 

There were a few ideas mixed into the various pages of observations but one he felt had real potential, even if he wasn’t yet sure of what to do with it.

Mana modifiers, certain arrangements of power that seemed subtle but had a tremendous impact on the final product. It matched what they were seeing, but beyond just having a name for the phenomenon they didn’t have a way to predict them, nor judge their ultimate purpose.

But I can at least test it out for now and go from there, this is along the lines of what I was looking for anyway.

His hope when coming to see the research for the ridiculous spell was to see if any small breakthrough would have something relevant to brace creation, and while it didn’t yet, that didn’t mean it never would. From all of the notes he’d gone through, he was sure they’d discovered around fifty modifiers so far, but had plenty left to check for more. Within it could be something that would enhance the effects beyond what he could currently accomplish, he just needed to wait and hope.

With what he had so far though, he needed to properly test.

“Can I get someone to pull me down a finished block?” He asked, wanting to fiddle with the enchantments that had already been examined and had two earth mages there to accommodate him before he got to work, taking the sealed sheets apart to begin his experimenting while Kufno came to join him.

“Find something?”

“Maybe. Someone jotted down the idea of mana modifiers and it's a good one. From what I’ve seen within those notes I believe there’s fifty different arrangements that have been discovered, just gotta see how they work.”

He was altering areas that seemed like they had certain modifiers on them already to have different ones before resealing the block and adding a mana crystal to test it, seeing the change in output.

He’d added a light enchantment at the end, something that should have given him plain white light but the original modifier had turned blue, only thanks to the new one it ended up red.

Progress. This is progress.

Seeing he was on the right track only motivated him even more and he got to work to keep it up, wanting to see what else would come as he spent hours thoroughly testing each one, taking the block apart each time to modify the contained spell, only to come to a conclusion by the end of it. They hadn’t found fifty modifiers, they’d found around two hundred.

He’d come to the conclusion after around a quarter of the modifiers seemed to either alter only the output that was shown or caused it not to work at all, making him re-examine everything he’d seen in the different sections and found that many, though not all, of the sections that didn’t work had modifiers on them as well. He’d assumed up till this point that part of the issue was the way he had to cut the spell to test it, and while that was still likely true, it implied that the faulty output was continuing on to be modified by a later modifier as well.

Which means I need to start cataloging modifier interactions to try and find the rules of each individual one before seeing how it works when you start combining modifiers and from there I’ll need to be able to interpret which parts can be cut away and which need to stay. Plus I know this stupid thing is meant to incorporate faith in some way and even if I think it’s just supposed to be used to enhance the spell as a  whole I need to be prepared in case it’s actually adding some yet-unknown component to the whole of it. Jesus Christ.

It was a lot and it was going to be exhausting, but at the same time, it was progress. A huge leap in progress even. Testing all known modifiers against different spells and affinities was something he could do in a day, and by the time he was done he could come back and remove any spell blocks that only had those modifiers on them, meaning the workload would shrink. He was sure there were going to be plenty more to discover too, but he could feel everything being chipped away, letting him get closer to the goal of mastering that mad spell.