16th of Ianua, 1491.
Eldereach County, Bakewia. Shavew, Heather Brook District.
11:42 PM.
[Step 13, Grandmaster Enchanter.]
[Reward: Active Skill - [Enchantment Duplication.] By imbuing mana into an enchantment of your creation, it can be duplicated a number of times based on your mana density.]
[Reward: Active Skill - [Sigil Stamp.] The Sigils in your scroll book can now be stamped onto enchantments using this new tool, greatly facilitating the act of mass producing your craft.]
[Reward: Active Skill - [Duplication.] Using mana, you can duplicate raw materials at the same rate as Refined Material Purification.]
[To continue down the path of the Grandmaster Artificer, you must put your knowledge of craftsmanship to the ultimate test by creating a weapon of legendary proportions.]
***
Five days. Even as the God of Engineering, it took five days.
The party of nobles and guards turned out to be from a singular family. The House of Dulaeny stood closest to the wall from our location; a veritable village of relatively small buildings surrounded by a wall and lush fields. Though they weren't the first to see it, they were the first to arrive and receive a formal explanation of how the Shards worked.
Much to my surprise, they seemed impressed to learn their prices varied according to the total area of the land lifted, with the smaller shards being limited in terms of altitude. In effect, nearly anyone could afford a shard or, at the very least could save up for one. However, they had questions, namely about someone attempting to ambush their entrance whenever they arrived or left.
Of course, for that, I pointed them over to my dear acquaintance, Ed, who allowed their eyes to feast on the many mind-blowing vehicles their family, friends, and guards could use to travel anywhere in the peninsula with guaranteed safety and reliability.
After, of course, I explained the Lunar Roads that naturally linked all Gates together. Roads of moonlight, capable of linking to other shards via a simple connection. In turn, those same roads could be used to bring shards closer or even have them orbit around each other. Almost like Leylines.
Naturally, those words nearly flew over the heads of the nobles and their cohort, but they purchased one for each of them, electing to subdivide their lands amongst themselves and have them float in a cluster together.
In the passing hours after, every noble estate was lifted into the sky one after the other, increasing the murmur and chatter in town to almost palpable levels; even from the Brook. It was nearly deafening went we went into town for breakfast. By then, the rumors had spread. But with the workday unfinished, all the citizens could do was gossip or approach for a quick word.
At least until we began wandering around after our meal. Then, it was deal after deal until the city began to sleep. Wherein the real work began.
Though we were relatively well-known due to our mid-year event several months ago, recognition as renowned artificers wouldn't come for a few more days yet- for five more days. And every waking moment of those days was spent working.
Ed placed his Doppelganger in charge of sales after the first day. Soon after, I promoted a skeleton further, named him Sid, and put him in charge of sales in my stead. Every moment further was spent in our Creation Stations, toiling in the workshops like coked-out addicts feening to create whatever toys would turn us into legendary craftsmen.
But that came only after we fulfilled our duties to the home front by sending mountains of undead and infrastructure and enchantments and orders to Silas and the others in Maru.
With the relatively few skeletons and shadows they'd received until now and the mountains they'd receive later, they were given blueprints that showed a vast complex of tunnels, caverns, pipes, and peaks that blew even Ed's mind. And indeed it still blew mine, as such a thing could never exist in the outside universe.
Although, with Silas having already known the grand design and fully expected such a task, he was hesitant to believe it could even be accomplished. And he used the perfect word to describe the primary objective.
Excavation.
Hesitant or not, Silas and the Council agree and go to work. As such, so did we. Through the simple act of creating, divine energy poured from my spiritual body, accelerating my actions to the point that I could perform several tasks simultaneously.
It wasn't as if I was moving from place to place at speeds that made me seem as if I stood in many places at once. Enough energy poured off of me so as to form not-quite an avatar, but something. Eyes suited to analyze something. Manipulators suited to grasp the infinitesimally small. Any and all things revolving around craftsmanship and Artificing, using pure energy.
Such things were natural for me. But so too was the effect seen with Ed. Although not to as high a degree as seen in me, the speed of his actions was greatly increased. More importantly, his mental horizons were expanded greatly. He could know more. Learn more. See more. Become inspired more.
With those effects combined with the sheer abundance of material wealth pulled from the Deep Darkworld and the industries of Ilium, Hill Base, and these Stations here, we finally built up the infrastructure to realize the end of our technological road map and eventually, push past it entirely.
Miniaturization continued at an almost exponential rate until we successfully created machines and computers on the nano-scale. In turn, that created a positive feedback loop that made every other industry exponentially better. Nanotech improved automation, in turn improving nanotech, robotics, and other fields, which in turn improved upon each other. Leading to, in the end, far better infrastructure, industries, tools, and technologies than anywhere in any plane of this universe.
That sparked a creative frenzy in the two of us that was split down the middle. While Ed created infrastructure, tools, and massive fucking vehicles, I worked on sorting through Archie's data and using the findings to create augments and implants that were guaranteed to work on the many creatures found in these realms.
That said, there was still much research to be done concerning their compatibility with different classes and magical affinities. But I digress. The work was done. And I had the perfect candidate to be the first transhuman in this universe.
The best part was, she was only a city away. The problem, however, was that the implants weren't designed for prepubescents; or if they were, multiple surgeries and follow-ups were necessary in order to have the implants refitted as they grew.
Or rather, that would have been a problem. A simple blessing from my Engineering Domain would solve that. But I wanted her to become more. And as my protege, she would be far, far more than a mere transhuman.
So, in effect, she only needed to be educated enough to understand what would be implanted into her and, of course, to agree to my terms. Most importantly, though, she needed to learn more about herself and the realms around us and figure out who she was and what she wanted to be in this life.
Because I sure as shit wouldn't do it for her.
What I did do, however, was spend what felt like days designing the pact that would grant her the perfect augmented body. And when that was done, I started on the stuff of legends.
I dove into the workshops to craft tools of war, starting with an arm-length, hexagonal adamantine pole, capped with gold and inlaid to house a pair of enchantments. Similar gold caps dangled from the ends of adamantine chains attached to the pole, with each housing a trio of enchantments imbued with Ed, my, and Toril's magics.
The finished product was a three-section staff of with an adamantine center and tungsten ends, enchanted with Toril's weight and lightning, my gravity, and Ed's tungsten. A lethal mix I affectionately named the Pillars of Zeus.
I couldn't wait to give them a try. But, I wasn't done.
My twin needed a weapon as well. So I took a standard repeating hand crossbow and Dismantled it beneath a cloud of mana, then took the time to make a scaled-down version of the Jaeger Bow and fit it inside the skeletonized crossbow frame.
From there, the drum was replaced with a spring-loaded magazine, enchanted to have infinite storage and engineered to click into place along the ventral side, just before the trigger housing. And so too were the bolts enchanted to Bamf back into the cartridge after several seconds had expired post-impact.
Normally, that would have completed the design, and indeed it became the upgraded or modern version of the repeating hand crossbow. The Owl's version, however, would be far more capable.
To that end, I created a thin disk of mithral with a pie of twelve enchanted slices etched into its face before imbuing each slice with a different flavor of energy, and to the radial side, the disk went. Finally, a small, dome-like capsule fastened to the top completed the base design of the weapon.
It was the central point. A small fixture that had an additional dual function as a rear peep sight. Primarily, it was built to contain a small, twelve-sided die held aloft by a gravitational enchantment. Naturally, those twelve sides coincided with the twelve pies of the disk just below it.
The result was a rolled die every time the weapon was fired. A rolled die resulted in the disk spinning to align the corresponding pie with the bolt, imbuing it with the energy of whatever was rolled.
From a natural one to a natty twelve, there was no such thing as a bad roll. Not for the Zodiac Crossbow.
The arcane words flashed to life the moment I sent it to the Owl. But I was in the zone. I kept working, this time taking a staff made from divine wood and imbuing it with an enchantment fueled with Ash's fire and another that flowed my darkness to create a staff that burned with the Flames of Moil.
I then took a boomerang and infused it with gravity and Toril's combustion magic to make a Bomberang.
I took the standard issue daggers, infused them with Darkspace to enable them to teleport back to the user after being thrown, called them the Night Crawler Talons, and sent them off to the rogues.
Just for the hell of it, I took kegs and infused them with spatial magic to allow them to be filled with an unlimited quantity of acids, poison, booze, or whatever else anyone fancied. Of course, those were being sold to the civilians outside, but these could also flow with the force of Ed's magic, creating recoilless geysers that could spew any fluid known to sentients across the realms.
I made lunar swords and whips that could split into multiple octopus-like arms, then did the same with serpentine armaments fueled by twilight.
I made another toy for myself when I came back from a smoke break. A popular item for Saturnian Knights fighting on Saturn's low-gravity moons. The Lagrange Spear; or a spear with mini thrusters installed within and controlled by a neural mesh.
In that way, it was like the Shadowsteel Reaper. But Lagrange Spears had slings attached to the pommel, allowing them to do a lot of damage in airless environments. This one, however, was imbued with gravity magic so that it could pick up, catch, launch, and accelerate projectiles at insanely lethal velocities.
When that was done, though, I turned back the dial and made enchanted versions of all the basic equipment.
Mithral and adamantine chains were given umbral and gravitational properties, making them weightless and able to stretch indefinitely. So too were ropes enchanted. And, really, anything imaginable. Everything was enchanted in some way until, using the last bit of weapon-based inspiration I cared to give myself, I chose the simplest thing of all to try and make legendary.
A bug net.
Made of mithral, the ring itself was imbued with Darkspace, turning into an interdimensional portal tucked inside a net of carbon nanotube fabrics. To make things better, the ring was then enchanted in many ways, with one of them giving it the ability to expand far beyond its means like the maw of a great cosmic serpent.
Inside the interdimensional maw, however, was an ordinary region of cosmic space, filled with just one celestial body.
A Supermassive Black Hole. A gravitational singularity with a pull strong enough to put the galactic core of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A *, to shame.
At least, it was for now.
Through the wormhole on the edge of the system, light years away from the event horizon, matter would enter and fall under the relentless pull of gravity. Faster and faster with each passing second, the matter will accelerate and fall into an orbit around the black hole, forming an accretion disk of material that would begin to heat and glow and change phase as its decaying orbit pulled it to relativistic speeds and eventually beyond the event horizon.
But not all of that matter would meet such a fate. Kilotons upon kilotons of the superheated matter, a mere fraction of the disk, would be ionized and ejected along the axis of rotation as jets of radiation traveling just under the speed of light.
Using absurdly strong magnetic fields, those radioactive jets would converge and flow right into a second wormhole. By flipping the net inside out, that wormhole could be revealed to reality, and yet closed until it was fired. In doing so, the ring would shrink down to the size of a barrel, and that jet of relativistic particles would be concentrated and unleashed to devastating effect.
It, the Stellar Net, was completely overkill and yet entirely necessary. For, if the history of humanity and warfare told me anything, I knew I was guaranteed to use it eventually. And thus, after five days, my steam finally condensed to form tepid water and I eagerly looked at the perks of becoming a Grandmaster Weaponsmith.
[Rewards: Active Skill - [Upgrade/Downgrade.] Using Mana, you can upgrade or downgrade the quality of a crafted object by one tier.]
[Reward: Active Skill - [Raw Material Purification.] Using mana, you can purify raw materials at the same rate as refined materials.]
[Reward: Passive Skill - [Forgers Eye.] Your time in the forge has yielded great knowledge of your craft, enabling you to spot weak points and discrepancies in armaments with little effort and allowing you to know the details of any weapon you focus on.]
[Reward: Passive Skill - [Blessing of the Forge.] Through your tenure in the forge, your proficiency has grown such that tools and materials become a part of you, enabling you to work metals with much greater efficiency. Even with limited tools.]
All would come in hand, I was sure. Even the blessing, as it so nicely synergized with my domain. And, as Zoop did in my first year at the Bodhi, I could properly identify the name and specs of any weapon I laid my eyes on. Not to mention, upgrading things made it all the more easier to promote the Legionaries.
That said, the next perks were even better. So, after another self-blessing to inspire me to create, I was out of the forge and into the workshops.
It was time to create the stuff of myths.