Bog Standard Isekai

The next day, Brin woke with a kind of manic energy, a pressure to make progress in all the little things he’d been working on. Things were changing, people were moving, and one way or another, these slow peaceful days were coming to an end. He’d been through this in the past, but unlike before, this time he actually had a deadline. In two weeks Lumina would tell him what she had planned for him; he would either join her in the tower or go into hiding somewhere else. Two weeks to finish everything.

He wanted to start right away. The laser he was working on was close, he knew it, but he hadn’t quite cracked it yet. But as soon as he entered the workshop, Davi knocked on his door for their usual workouts. Davi was only able to make it about once every three mornings, so Brin couldn’t blow him off in favor of a project he could do any time.

When Brin opened the door, he noticed that Davi’s status still read [Bard]. That made sense, he supposed, since [Bards] were beloved and not everyone knew what a [Skald] was.

Davi was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He grunted a good morning, and then indicated the road with his shoulder. Brin nodded, and together they set off. It was too early for words. For Davi at least. Brin had woken up positively wired, but he understood the feeling.

They never got around to commissioning another set of weights. Jeffrey had told Davi that lugging around heavy weights or buying a new set in every city wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle for a [Bard] and insisted that he think of something else. After some thought, Davi had found a lumberyard that would let him lug some of their heavy logs around in the mornings. People basically let [Bards] do whatever they wanted.

They jogged to the lumberyard in question, and Brin enjoyed the cool morning air. None of the [Carpenters] or [Woodworkers] had arrived yet, but a few preteens who hadn’t been through System Day yet were already there and sweeping the shop.

Davi started right off by heaving a tree trunk ten feet long and a foot wide over his shoulders, and then starting in on squats. That couldn’t be right. If you only got the chance to work out two times a week, it didn’t seem fair that either of those days should be leg day.

Brin sighed and hefted a slightly smaller trunk over his shoulders and got to work beside his friend.

For most of the hour or so that they exercised, Brin was breathing too hard to want to make conversation, but he did manage to ask, “What have you been up to lately?”

“[Bard] life. Singing songs, telling tales. Actually, Blackcliff isn’t a bad spot for me. As long as we keep to the taverns and public houses near the docks, Blackcliff isn’t as restrictive on [Bard] magic as Oud’s Bog was, so I can get some real practice in. Mostly I’ve been working on the Epic of Hammon’s Bog.”

“Really? I thought that was done,” said Brin. “You played it while we killed all those sea monsters.”

“No, that was just a small portion of it. The Fight Song of Hammon’s Bog, maybe. An epic needs to be at least ten minutes long. Twenty is better. Also, I’ve been redoing parts of it. Ever since I became a [Skald] I’ve had tons of new ideas about how the music should go.”

Brin got one notification for his efforts.

Through training you have received the following attribute:

Vitality +1

"What's your plan for today?" Davi asked as they were wrapping up. "I was going to meet up with Myra and Sion later. Zilly will probably show up."

"Hogg came into some money, and I think he means to do some shopping." Then Brin remembered what it would mean to have Sion and Zilly together in the same room. "Oh, but I want to come with you instead. Let's go back and wash up, and then we can head out together. You can use my shower."

Davi looked down at himself, seeing a shirt soaked in sweat. "Why? I'm not dirty."

"Just trust me."

The run home was almost too much for Brin after a leg-focused workout, but he managed to get the entire way home without tripping or otherwise embarrassing himself.

He showered first, and then convinced Davi to take one as well. He didn't have anything in Davi's size for him to change into, but it was better than nothing. Originally, he'd invited Myra, Zilly and Davi to stay with him and Hogg, but they'd all turned him down for different reasons.

Myra had opted to stay with the caravan; she'd be traveling on with them when they left Blackcliff. With their leader dead and so many others coming on or leaving, it was a completely different group now, and she wanted to get to know everyone before they left. Davi had been forbidden by Jeffrey. Part of his [Bard] training meant that he needed to mooch off of people, apparently, and Brin was too easy. Davi had to find a new home to give up one of their beds each night, and he wasn't to eat anything that wasn't provided for free.

By the time Davi was done, Hogg was starting to stir, so Brin made the three of them breakfast, though Davi made him promise he wouldn't tell Jeffrey.

When Hogg entered the room and sat down at the table, Brin had the food ready and he set down a plate of fried mato, bacon, and eggs. Mato wasn’t actually a common food here in Blackcliff, and Brin honestly didn’t like it at all, but somehow it had ended up in his pantry and Davi liked it. He put together plates for himself and Davi, and accidentally left off the mato from his own plate.

Hogg moved slowly, looking a little worn out. He gazed at nothing and by the time he had taken three bites, Davi was nearly done.

“I did some shopping,” Hogg announced out of nowhere.

“When? We got home pretty late last night. Everything was closed.”

Clearly, money could open closed doors. Hogg was such a kid. Now that he was rich again, he had stayed up all night shopping while Brin was asleep.

Instead of answering, Hogg reached into one of his pockets and withdrew a slim paper package. He tossed it on the table.

Brin opened it. Inside was a red cylinder-shaped ruby.

“Is this… how did you find this?” Brin had gone to several different [Jewelers] and other crafting Classes, and no one had been able or willing to make something like this for a reasonable fee. They all wanted to start with a really big ruby and whittle it down, and none of them seemed to have the Skills to magically reshape any old ruby into the right configuration. It was frustrating, because he was fairly certain Toros from Hammon’s Bog could’ve done that easily.

Hogg didn’t answer, and Brin didn’t particularly care. He left the rest of his breakfast and ran through the door, down the hall, and into his workshop. Davi followed him, still chewing after hastily downing the rest of his breakfast.

“So what’s that for?” Davi asked.

Brin’s first instinct was to evade the question, but there was no reason. Davi was one of the few people who knew he was an [Illusionist]. And honestly, he thought it was time to bring the rest of his friends into the loop as well. After all they’d been through, he thought he should tell Myra, Zilly, and Sion about his Class, if only because they were probably going to find out on their own eventually anyway. That was a thought for another time.

“This device here is a laser.” He decided to use the Earth word for it, since he still hadn’t found anyone here that had heard of them. “It’s supposed to make a special kind of light beam. It’s different from regular light because it’s more concentrated so it’ll be stronger, and it’s synchronized so it won’t spread out or dissipate as easily over long distances.”

This whole project had been significantly more difficult that he’d assumed at first. He had always assumed that a laser used a series of lenses to focus the light into a beam. But then he’d found a diagram of the first ruby laser, and realized that was completely wrong. Apparently it was more like a flashlight, with two parallel mirrors that synchronized the light by bouncing it back and forth through a medium in the middle.

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It seemed simple when he just saw a picture, but that was until he had to figure out how to make the medium, or what it meant when it said that one of the mirrors was “partially reflecting.” Also annoying was the fact that the particular memory he’d retrieved the diagram from had his roommates playing Call of Duty in the background. That at least had been easily solved when he realized that he could just have a directed thread copy it down for him.

“So what’s it for?” asked Davi.

Brin scratched his head. He doubted he’d be using lasers for optical storage or communication any time soon, not unless he found a lot of information in his memories that he’d somehow overlooked. “Maybe I could use it to burn things? Hard to say. I mostly wanted to make it because I had the diagram in my memories. And because lasers are cool! Here, let me turn it on.”

He didn’t actually turn on anything. The one advantage he had against people on earth was because he didn’t need to break up the perfect mirrors inside the shell by putting a light source or battery inside. He was the light source. He pumped the laser full of clean, white light.

A beam of light flashed out of a circle in the front of the tube, and bounced off two mirrors until it reached the place where the mirror that Rhun had been messing with should be.

Brin picked it up and put it back, and then carefully adjusted it until the light hit the next mirror just right to bounce through the other three he’d set up. It ended by making a pale white dot on the wall.

Davi put his hand down to interrupt the beam in a few places, looking at how it was the same dot and the same size no matter where in the setup he was.

“Is that it?”

“It’s not as cool during the day, but at night–”

Davi shook his head. “I mean, is that a laser? If it’s already working, why do you need that gemstone?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Kind of an expensive thing to get if you’re not sure why you need it,” said Davi.

“No, I mean I’m not sure if it’s already working. It needs a medium, and I made one out of glass, but I honestly can’t tell if it’s working or if that’s just regular light. It seems to be a laser, but I can’t tell.”

What he really meant was that the System hadn’t given him any awards, and he thought it should if he actually invented a real laser. Even though laser beams had been theorized by Einstein in 1917, no one had actually succeeded in making one until the sixties.

Brin decided that was enough of a demonstration, and cut the light. He bent over and started pulling off the top of the cylinder with [Shape Glass]. He’d actually made this the regular way, by creating actual glass in his oven and stretching it out with tools. It made better glass if he did it by hand for some reason, so the only magic he’d used was to heat the oven and to harden and strengthen the glass as it was cooling.

With the lid undone, he withdrew the old glass medium and put the ruby in its place. It didn’t quite fit, so Brin had to resize the cylinder. It took a surprising amount of Mana to widen the hardened glass, and there was always a chance it would compromise the quality, but he was too impatient to make another one right now.

Once he had the ruby secure, he placed the top back on and used [Shape Glass] to reseal it.

Before he even turned on his light magic, the System had something to say.

Congratulations! Through your act of creativity, you have increased the following Skills!

Shape Glass: 39 -> 41

Summon Glass: 28 -> 29

Call Light through Glass: 45 -> 46

Level up! 37 -> 38

+5 Strength +1 Dexterity, +2 Vitality, +2 Magic, +3 Mental Control, +1 Will, +2 free attributes.

Alert! You have received a new Achievement!

Inventor (Common)

Without aid, you recreated a complex invention based on a technical diagram.

You can now hide details about your creations from Inspect. This ability improves with Hide Status.

Would you like to merge this Achievement with Celebrated? No abilities or benefits will be lost. ( Y / N )

Brin laughed out loud. He’d been hoping that he’d get some benefit from this, but he’d never expected it would be this much. A new level! Most people never got to level 38 in their entire lives, and at this rate he’d be at 40 before he turned 16.

As for the Achievement, he figured he had nothing to lose and let the merge happen. The Achievement turned into [Celebrated Creativity], and like it had said he didn’t lose anything, but he didn’t gain anything either. It only combined them to save space on his status screen.

“Did you just get a level?” asked Davi with a grin.

“Yes!” Brin cheered. “And an Achievement!”

Davi widened his eyes in surprise. “Then this is really going to be something cool, huh? Turn it on!”

Brin didn’t need any encouragement. He pushed a huge amount of light into the laser, so bright it would be nearly blinding. A red beam appeared, maybe invisible to someone without an [Illusionist’s] affinities, but the red dot it created on the wall was plainly visible.

“Is that it?” asked Davi.

“Shut up! This is amazing!”

Davi was shamefaced. “No, I meant, is that what you were going for? Obviously it’s really cool. It’s such a straight line and–”

Brin laughed. “You’re fine; I’m aware that it’s not much to look at. Yes, this is what I was going for. You’re going to have to trust me when I say that this is huge.”

The way that the laser felt to his senses was entirely unique. He’d known for a while now that his glass magic let him sense the nearby glass, but he’d never really made the connection that he could sense light and sound in the same way. After all, he had eyes and ears for that, and they generally did a better job. But now the laser felt different from anything he’d ever experienced before. It was like the first time he’d tried curry; strange and foreign, but delicious.

“Unbelievable,” said Hogg, making Brin jump.

The old guy must’ve snuck in behind them, Brin hadn’t even realized he was there.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Hogg.

“I’d be surprised if you had,” said Brin.

Davi put his finger in front of the beam. “It’s hot.”

Brin tried, and found it was true. Not enough to hurt him with his [Heat Resistance], but enough to set paper on fire, maybe, if he held the beam on it long enough.

“So that’s what I was missing. The ruby isn’t just synchronizing the light, it’s also magnifying it.”

“I can’t believe you find this after I give up my light magic. I can’t even see what you’re doing there,” Hogg said with his arms folded. Brin noticed that he was speaking in the Silent Voice and his mouth wasn’t moving, so he didn’t respond.

Brin picked up the laser and started pointing it around, then handed it to Davi when he begged for a turn.

“Marksi is going to love this!” Brin said.

“Where is the little guy?” asked Davi.

Brin checked the screen his directed thread had running. Marksi was near enough to Blackstone that he could see the city walls. “Out with Lurilan. He’ll be back in an hour.”

Davi shrugged. “Well, we should probably start heading over if we’re going to meet the girls.” He tried to hand the laser to Hogg, but he refused. Brin took it back.

Hogg bit his lip, frowning at the device. “Do me a favor. Figure out how to make one of these in the language.”

Brin met his eyes and nodded. What would a laser of hard light even look like? It would either be a superweapon, or it wouldn’t work at all.

Brin and Davi headed out, and Brin left his new laser at home, but that didn’t mean he had to stop working on it. He kept a directed thread with an Invisible Eye in the workshop so that any time he wanted to turn it on again he could just create a Conscious Thread back there.

As they walked they chatted easily about all the ways that city living was inferior to good old Hammon’s Bog, and Brin didn’t need his full brainpower for that. He created a conscious thread with the instruction that it should try to create a laser entirely out of illusion magic.

It succeeded surprisingly quickly. Only five or six city blocks down the road, he felt a tug on his mana and then saw a pale red dot on a white cobblestone in front of him, too.

Level up! Call Light through Glass: 46 -> 50

Davi noticed it as well. “Is that what I think it is?”

Brin nodded.

Davi punched his shoulder. “Nice!”

Brin smiled and did a fist pump, and the pale dot faded away.

He waited. Nothing happened. He went to his log.

Main: Hey, what are you doing? Return already! I want to know how you did that!

CT1: Returning.

The insight hit him all at once. At first he’d tried to copy the way the laser had felt and conjure it directly. They called that intrinsic casting, meaning that he created the light on instinct without using the Language. It hadn’t worked; he wasn’t familiar enough with it yet.

So he’d recreated the laser with light. It hadn’t been too difficult. Making mirrors out of illusion magic was one of the first things he’d ever learned. Then, rather than making the entire laser, he’d just used intrinsic casting to create the medium, using the feeling of how the light had felt as it transformed as his guide. He needed to check his [Memories in Glass] three times to remember the exact feeling perfectly, but when it worked it happened right away.

There had been one clear problem; the light bouncing off his illusionary mirrors was a strong and constant drain on his Mana. He’d been in the middle of thinking that over when he’d been interrupted by… himself.

Still, the four extra levels in [Call Light through Glass] proved it had been worth doing. He could make lasers!

Brin turned the corner and bumped straight into his friends.

Zilly was stern faced and facing Rhun, a hand on the hilt of her sword. He glowered back at her, fire in his eyes. Myra stood between them, looking concerned, and a small crowd had gathered at a distance around them. Sion was back in the crowd, looking resigned.

“Oh. Yeah, I figured this was going to happen,” said Brin.

“Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard,” said Myra. “Anyone with half a brain knew this was going to happen.”

Rhun turned his glower to Myra. “Well?”

“Sorry!” Myra said. She took two long steps back, away from Zilly and Rhun. Then she stage-whispered to Brin. “I’m playing referee.”

“Get on with it!” said Rhun.

“Fine. You remember the rules? First blood. No killing, and no permanent injury,” said Myra.

“I promise not to kill you,” Zilly said with a cocky grin.

“Hmph,” said Rhun.

“Begin,” said Myra.