Final Countdown - Part 2

The room inside the hole was dark and made purely of plain stone, very different from the Glass Castle fancy construction and bright corridors. It also was full of stone stands covered in enchantment runes, all of which had some sort of item atop. Most were engraved boxes made of dark-green metal, but some were odd geometrical forms and even some things that seemed like glass bottles.

“What is this place?” ‘I’ asked with suspicion, taking my time to follow the man inside.

“The room in which the director’s personal collection is stored. All very valuable pieces of art that someone like him doesn’t deserve, of course.” He explained while approaching the nearest stand. “Now, if you could open your pocket dimension right by the side of this one…”

The use of the word ‘pocket dimension’ took both me by surprise for a moment. I did call it something similar because that’s how I remember it, but that wasn’t how the spell was usually known. Most people would just call it Arcane Vault or something of the kind.

But it was just a momentaneous matter. In the next, ‘I’ was already approaching the stand as if beckoned by the offer and getting ready to fulfil it.

“I reckon the adamantine boxes are not what you are looking for…” ‘I’ added while already in range to open the pocket. “Those are rare, but nothing special.”

Adamantine is an absurdly dense, incredibly hard, and very brittle material made with alchemy. It can also resist magic very well at the cost of being almost impossible to enchant beyond its basic capabilities. The hardness is a big perk, but equipment made out of it is usually too easy to crack and too heavy to use properly. In summary, it's rare and hard to produce, but not very useful beyond some very niche cases.

It also has a very particular reaction that can produce another very niche material, but I’ll deal with this one after I wake up.

“Of course not, but it would be safer for both of us if we didn’t think about what’s inside the box, milady.”

“So that is how it is…” ‘I’ commented with a pensive expression, but shook off the thoughts soon after. “I understand. As long as the deal is properly followed, that is good enough for me.”

Right as these words left ‘my’ mouth, the purple crack in the air appeared close to the box. Then, as if waiting for it, the hooded man suddenly used a different spell and displaced both the stand and the box, moving them towards the box.

The spell was something I couldn’t pick up right away, but the effect was clear: with the movement, the box standing on top of the stand tipped over and fell inside the pocket. After that, the runes on the stand started to glow strongly, getting shinier and shinier until smoke came out of the enchantments and they lost light. Whatever had happened, it made the spell on the stand force itself beyond the magical energy stored in it, and break.

“What was that?!”

“Just a small annoyance. Don’t worry about it…” The hooded man reached with both hands for the open rift and started to pull something out, but had to give up halfway. Instead, he moved around a bit and then used another spell. A sound of metal breaking came out when he did so and then he managed to pull something out. The lid of the box and something that looked like an egg made of gems, to be specific. “And with this, your part of the deal is complete.”

‘I’ opened my mouth to say something and there were probably some negotiations that happened after this, but this point was my limit. By now, the image was starting to distort and blur while all sound vanished.

Time to wake up was arriving.

So, I groggly opened my eyes.

For a moment, I was lost on what was happening. My messy room seemed alien and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing, but then I suddenly jumped off the canopy bed and rushed to my desk. The task at hand had returned to my memory, so I had to rush. In the hurry, I pushed some papers around and almost fell down, but all was fine.

In a moment, I reached the tools I left at the ready and for the half-finished sketch close by, rushing to add as many details as I could while the image was still fresh. Six days of work and five reruns of the same dream, but now I could see something.

“I got you…” I smiled at the further corrected sketch of the hooded man even if I still couldn’t recognize him. “That’s three out of four.”

As usual, I stored the paper after working on it and then moved to the repurposed drawer nearby. The clothes that were inside this one were now thrown into a pile to the side, but I only need my uniforms, so it’s fine. Having a place to store the adamantine lid and its reaction was more important.

“Such a bothersome process… No wonder why people can’t be bothered to try.” I bit my lips and opened the drawer, taking a worried glance at the lid filled with the shards of arcane wood I collected and the gems charged with magic that I made. Next, I reached for the kitchen knife that I managed to ‘acquire’ during the week and emptied the lid, allowing the few protrusions on the adamantine to show. “I hope this much will be enough.”

I poked the spots that looked like rust bubbles on the adamantine while infusing the knife with magic, breaking it into as many pieces as I could. Hitting the adamantine itself would only bend the knife, so I had to be very careful there. Enough so, it took half an hour or so to break all the eight or so bubbles.

By the end of it, I had a small pile of adamantine rust. A very complicated process just to force the overly resistant material to slightly react with air, but this one wasn’t the last step.

Now, with the rust piled close by and four days of alchemic training, I took one of my silver necklaces, a very thin one, and broke its chain over the pile. And finally, I set my hand over it and started to infuse energy into the two, forcing them to react and combine. It wasn’t too different from any other alchemic reaction from this point, but the balance was hard. Let it react too little, and it wouldn’t be the right material, and let it react too much, and it would degrade into nothing. No way to retry with this one.

“Stop the moment the black turns into white…” I kept muttering to myself while focusing on the reaction until I cut it. And I could only stare in silence at the white dust covering the mixture.

To explain it, this was the method of making Void Steel. Another, obviously, alchemic material made by several roundabout reactions related to adamantine. Its physical characteristics include: low heat resistance, low tensile resistance, low reactivity with other metals, and a tendency to easily rust. With the exception of one singular quality, Void Steel is a horrible material.

But it can negate magic fully.

Any spell, even pure magical energy, entering in contact with Void Steel would be absorbed and voided. It, of course, came at a cost, though. Each time the reaction occurred, an amount of the metal would turn into so-called ‘Fairy Dust’ and vanish. Any amount of Void Steel can’t be considered more than a consumable item. One that takes several days to produce some grams of, requires three different very expensive materials to make, and can be destroyed during the process.

To add insult to injury, an arrow tip made of it wouldn’t be able to pierce even the arcane silk used in the uniforms; A blade made of it would never keep an edge; Armor made of it would barely protect against itself; And it was too soft and light to be used as a blunt weapon either. All of which are already ignoring defensive spells that can’t be dispelled.

A wall of stone is still a wall of stone even without the spell controlling it.

There’s a reason why void steel is considered a material used only by assassins with overly rich patrons. But I had no time to think about it. Right now, I have to commemorate.

“I did it!” I patted the cover of fairy dust off the pile of small black metal shards in front of me and held them with glee. “Four out four! Bloody four out of bloody four!”

Of course, One was a mix of weak poison pops, smoke bombs, a few explosive canisters, one alchemic fire bottle and a single combat spell with a few variations;Two was out of makeshift combat training based on the little knowledge I can replicate with my limited physical abilities; Three was a hand-drawing of someone I remembered in a dream that may or may not exist and that I don’t have a reliable way to hunt; And four was, if I'm lucky, a hundred grams of void steel, which may work for three or four uses.

Being realistic, these are very barebones preparations, but compared to my initial situation, these are a reason to commemorate. At least I had a real potion. That mixture of healing and recovery potion that I found some days ago was still with me. No one would accept it as a lost item since it was Roselia trying to give it, so I had to keep the bottle.

But what matters is that today is the day.

“All the cards I can have are here… I can do it.” My smile froze for a moment as I tried to hype myself up for the fight. “I have to do it. I will do it.”

Right at this moment, my alarm clock set somewhere in the room started to ring. It was the warning to get things ready and move to the arena. It’s actually a few hours earlier than it should, but I have to walk there, so it’s better to be thorough. But more importantly, it cleared my worries and made me start moving in a hurry again.

I did finish the materials, but there was still one last thing to finish. One that involved the two clay molds I had prepared beforehand stored in my pocket and the tool used to boil water for tea. It was thrown somewhere around the room, so I had to find it too.

No way to turn these random metal shards into actually useful stuff without these. I did learn production magic, slightly, but that won’t work here for obvious reasons.

“Nothing like some cast forging to get me ready for a walk…” I moaned and got to working as fast as I could.