Time continued to pass as I toiled, designing, building, and working my magic into weapons and equipment.
I spent the remainder of the cycle designing and working on gear for the army, slowly but surely arming the volunteer men and women with new, powerful equipment. As I had hoped, my ability to create orichalcum had paid off massively, making quite a few of my creations noticeably more potent. The restriction of the potent metal only being able to hold one strand of magic was challenging, but I managed to get around most of that by metaphorically chaining chunks of it together, linked by enchantments. I got the idea from the grand workings subject, and it worked decently well at mitigating the metal's primary shortcoming.
I ended up working so hard that I didn't even realize that I hadn't gotten a quest this cycle until after the cycle had passed. I had no idea why the usual bonus hadn't triggered, besides the fact that I hadn't really been engaging much with the world beyond Olivia, New Wave, a few people around the city, and the PRT staff helping me with the anti-endbringer project. Not being exposed to conflict beyond the discussions between the PRT consultants might have been the reason, but I had no way to confirm.
I was just hoping it wouldn't happen again, as losing those points would significantly slow down my development.
Either way, I continued to work until the cycle turned over and started again. I spent the final night of the cycle in the usual way, lying back by the firepit, waiting for the new charges to roll in. When they finally did at midnight, I waited patiently for the bonus selection to appear as well. As I gained another free level of alchemy, I pumped my fist in excitement before letting the knowledge wash over me. Once again, I would need to update my alchemical conversion circles, as I now knew how to make them even more efficient. Thankfully, it wouldn't be too hard, since the changes were additive rather than direct alterations.
On top of that, I also unlocked the ability to infuse and purify gemstones, which was frankly another huge boon. Not only were the aforementioned treated gems better all around to be used in magical spells and crafting, as they would be infused with my magic and made the purest they could be, but they were also more in line with elemental magic.
For example, if I wanted to build a better flying harness, I could use infused euclase to make it faster by invoking its elemental link to wind. If I wanted to make it more intuitive to control, I could use infused creedite, invoking its association with communication and clear thinking.
I could even push the links considerably further by bridging the gap with enchantments. I could make a laser-firing glove more powerful by linking it to dioptase, which was linked to light, not lasers, heat, or impact.
Even better, the infused gems drank up enchantments like a sponge. A sufficiently infused gem could withstand a massive level of enchantment energy, with some of the better options working better than orichalcum if the enchantment had to do with their nature. Of course, the fact that it only worked for enchantment was limiting, though still very useful. I also gained a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of which gemstones and minerals were linked to and associated with.
Unfortunately, I would have to build a whole separate infusion setup for gems and minerals, as I couldn't just sacrifice some of a stone's mass to infuse it, as that's not how stones worked. Instead, I would have to make a bi-focal alchemical circle with a ritualized connection. That would allow me to sacrifice one stone to infuse another.
It was definitely on the complicated side, but I worked out the design in about an hour and got to work building it as an addition to the alchemy platform. Luckily, while the metal infusion circle had to be massive to accommodate large amounts of metal being infused at once, the gem circle had no such issue. I built it into a counter like the conversion circles, making it just big enough to convert a large, overinflated basketball-sized gem or mineral. I would likely never infuse a gem that large, but it was better to overdo than underdo.
Before I started working on my alchemy setup, I spent my normal cycle points quickly, since I already knew exactly what I would be spending them on, including the single point I had left over from the previous cycle. First, four whole charges went into the fourth level of grand working design and crafting. Once that was done, I spent the last three on enchantment, finally getting it to the third level.
The plan was to purchase another level of grand workings next month, which would leave me with a single point. I would use it, and any points I got from the cycles quest, to investigate other magical crafting methods, as at this point I had well and truly focused my efforts as an artificer, rather than a pure mage. I would like to eventually invest in broader magic to expand my repertoire beyond basic magic and magical crafting, but for now, the crafting was too potent to ignore.
With all of my points invested, I got to work, using magic to refresh myself rather than sleeping. Once I was done with my alchemy upgrades, I had a simple breakfast, during which I contemplated my plan for the next few days. I had already told the PRT I would be taking some time to work on my own projects, while they secured even more soldiers. At this point, I had more than adequately proven my idea had significant potential, which meant it was time to move past the test group to a larger group, even if I hadn't finished their loadout. According to Project Lead Kinsey, they would be looking to bring in five hundred soldiers in the first full batch. It would take some time, and while I could have spent that building up a backlog, I instead decided to spend some time working on my own projects.
Originally, I had wanted to spend my "free" time upgrading my equipment. Even before I had gained the knowledge of gem infusion and a third level of enchantment, I already had several improvements in mind, not the least of which was the inclusion of orichalcum. Now, however, after having some time to consider, I was starting to think that that was a poor idea. I had gotten a fourth level of alchemy during the cycle switch, which at that point was the highest my bonus subjects had pushed anything before. It was beginning to get too expensive to invest anytime soon, but I was also very interested to see what happened next.
If the pattern continued, the next upgrade would be an even bigger increase in potency, and I didn't want to upgrade everything only to get something even more impressive that could push me even further. Yes, that was a constant issue with the nature of my power, but it felt especially important with alchemy. It had single-handedly pushed my artificing to new heights and would likely continue to do so.
Eventually, I decided to let my gear sit for a while longer. I had time, and while a lot of that time would be spent being busy, I could take some of it off.
My latest idea, which occurred to me as I refilled the spell storage crystals with my teleport spell, was to design a permanent teleport pad for my base. This would be able to cast the outgoing teleport spell freely without my interaction, except for the command to go.
This would have two major benefits. One, it freed up a bunch of time I usually spent before bed, repeatedly sinking the teleport spells into empty spell crystals. It wasn't a ton of time, at least in the grand scheme of things, but it was still annoying as I had to repeat the spell each time I used it, as well as wait for my magic to refill. I had memorized most of the spell by this point, but I was not about to free-style a spell that sucked me into a stabilized wormhole and spat me out whole, safe and sound. That meant casting it without a crystal required me to take out the spell book each time, repeat the chant, cast the spell…
Yes, it was kind of a first-world problem, but it was still annoying.
The second part was a lot more significant. By locking the spell for an outgoing teleport into a single item, likely a large pad, I would be able to teleport much more than just the equivalent of four or five golems, at least on teleports outbound from the forest. With the right design, I would be able to send considerably larger items, making it much easier to build my grand workings and transport the smaller ones around.
Of course, without an equally large teleport pad on the other end, whatever I teleported would be stuck at the destination, but ultimately, I would just have to be satisfied with that.
At least until I built more of the pads.
The process started with the design, as usual. The subject of grand working design and crafting was noticeably deeper and more detailed than what I had before, and it was clear that the new level was definitely worth the investment. That said, the more I worked, the clearer it was that the subject was also starved for more crafting methods, even with my enchanting getting up to the third level. It was desperately trying to latch on to the scraps from my other subjects, like resonance manipulation from orichalcum forging, a bit of simple runecrafting from druidcraft, as well as thread and weave magic from arcane focus crafting. Unfortunately, they were little more than spots on a canvas, and grand workings needed much more before they could fully bloom.
My conclusion that the next cycle would be the last one invested in grand workings for a while was only reinforced by this realization. After that, I would dedicate several cycles to more crafting methods. When that was done, I would likely pad out my more standard magic casting, going beyond just simple healing and lightning magic.
Despite being desperate for more, I was also confident that I could achieve my current goal, even if I needed to make it a bit more complicated to get it done.
The design process ended up taking a solid three hours, broken up by Olivia waking up, talking to her for a while, before bringing her to the city. While I was out, I spent some time at both the Docks community and the hospital, doing my usual business.
While I had finished fixing the physical damage done to the community by the Slaughterhouse Nine attack quite a while ago, the people were just starting to finally get over it, the tension finally uncoiling. It was good to see, as we hadn't been entirely sure that the community would hold together or just spread out to what it had been before.
When I was done with my business in the city, I went back to the forest and spent another hour finishing the designs. Then, I got to work.
Previously, my usual landing and leaving pad was my ritual platform, for no other reason than it was an empty space in the compound. This new teleport pad, however, would take over this role and thus would need its own separate space. So, I quickly grew a walkway out to a small, clear area, before using magic to dig a two-foot deep, twenty-foot wide hole. Then, using my stone molding spell, I filled it with rocks and fused them together, forming a twenty-foot-wide, three-foot-thick slab of stone that pushed up out of its hole by a foot.
Once that was done, I set up a one-time-use ritual, with the focus on the effect going down into the stone. A chunk of the design came from druidcraft, as they had a spell to push magic into the soil, but the majority of it was modified and integrated with alchemy. Once the design was finished, I fed the ritual several large chunks of infused obsidian, using that as a sort of seed to change the entire fused block of stone into a pitch-black slab. It wasn't completely obsidian, but rather a magical blend, linked heavily with obsidian's connection with the void.
Once the slab was converted, I spent about half an hour making it look good, smoothing out the edges and fixing any imperfections. Once that was done, I began carving.
The center of the slab, and the sort of control hub, would be a huge amethyst, which I used magic to form into a disk about a foot wide and three inches thick. I infused it with magic and heavily enchanted it, using it as the focal point of the device. In a circle about a foot out from the center, I set seven dark opals, followed by a ring of fourteen black tourmaline gems. Lastly, just inside the perimeter of the large slab of pitch-black stone were twenty-one hagstones.
Hag stones were erosion-worn rocks that naturally formed holes in them, and all of mine were smoothed and set flush with the slab. Each gem, save the tourmaline, was enchanted and infused with magic. The black tourmaline was converted into spell crystals, with each one carrying a stored teleport spell. Once all the gems and stones were treated, they were set into the stone slab for a final time.
Once the stones were set, I spent two hours carefully carving in the magic circle. It was essentially a large ritual, one that would bring together every bit of the grand working to fulfill its purpose. It wasn't actually overly complicated, acting more as a guide and focus than an active ingredient.
With the lines carved, it was time for the orichalcum, and a lot of it at that. I would need a massive amount, which in turn required a massive amount of infused gold and a slightly less massive amount of infused copper. When it was done, I set up a large resonance manipulation ritual, drawing on my knowledge of creating orichalcum and of ritual and alchemy. I then waited for the moon to rise, before starting the ritual and… going to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up late, did my morning business, and returned to the forest to see how the ritual had gone. Overnight, the ritual had shifted the orichalcum from a metal in tune with the sun to one more in tune with the moon. It was the same metal, in the same way that, technically, moonlight was just sunlight, but now it held a separate, new attunement.
Using the moon attuned metal, I quickly filled the lines carved into the massive slab of stone, using the potent magical metal as pathways for the magic. The rest of the metal went to creating a handful of acorns, which I grew into massive trees. These still had their golden trunks, just like the trees connected to the Solar Forge, but the moon-attuned metal turned the leaves silver, allowing them to draw in moonlight to power the teleport pad. The trees would also store extra energy, so even when the moon was covered, I would still have plenty of energy for several dozen teleports.
The last step of the process was creating a ring of moon-infused orichalcum around the dark stone slab, fusing them together. I then carefully grew the roots of the golden and silver trees into the metal ring, hooking up the platform's power source. The slab of material hummed as it filled, then settled and went silent.