The Conceptual Deck

Chapter 73: Void Skipper

It was a bit of an awkward wait, silently sitting in the tent, just waiting for the illumitant to finish being copied. Master Wong had sat down in a spare chair, across from Ema and I, but he sat silently, alternating between watching me, Ema and the machine. When it finally did spit out the copy Master Wong lifted it from the output tray, turning it over and examining it. After inspecting it for a minute or so he turned it on, slowly increasing the light until it was shining brightly, enough that if I didn't have a tattoo to specifically prevent me from being blinded by bright lights, I would have been struggling to watch. Eventually Master Wong stopped and turned the device off, putting it down on the metal table.

"It seems to be identical in all ways I can discern," He said, just the barest hint of surprise on his face. "Extremely impressive."

"That's great. I want to test it on more complicated enchantments before we start trying to improve the LPM though."

Over the next half hour we threw a few more enchanted items through the UCMs, the last being something I was very interested in. A sling ring was a three inch long double finger ring that was made from electrum and could open portals to other locations. The portals were seamless, with no travel time and with no restrictions on distance. As long as you could form a mental image of the location clearly enough, and you knew how to use the ring, you could travel anywhere.

"I want one of these," I told Master Wong when I had finished examining it. "I will make you fifty copies if you let me have one."

"Done," He said simply, surprising me with how quickly he agreed. "The Ancient One said you were welcome to have a sling ring, as well as a few other things when your task was completed. But since you offered"

I shook my head and set up one of the UCM's to print fifty copies of the sling ring, carding the original once the device was finished scanning it. It completed its task in the background as I worked, finishing about two days later.

"Okay, so we know the UCM's work on enchanted things, which means we should be able to fix the large production machines as well," I explained, mostly to myself before looking to Wong. "I'm going to need books on how enchanting works, especially ones about enchanting buildings or stationary objects. I'm also going to need the plans, methods, spells used for enchanting the sanctums and building in general. Lastly I'm going to need a sample of the materials used in general enchantment, both buildings and objects. Oh and try to keep all of the books as focused on building and large enchantments as possible."

"Most of those should be easy, though the Librarian will need to give permission for the Sanctum plans and notes," Wong responded. "What will you be doing in the meantime?"

"I'm going to go and grab some more UCM's," I responded. "I underestimated how many I would need."

Twenty minutes later I had ten UCM's filling the courtyard, duplicating books, notes and materials. The materials were added to the group of four LPMs while anything remotely connected to building plans, instructions or methods got combined down to three separate books before getting added to the scanner, which was recombined with the LPM's. The final addition, which we couldn't get around to until the next morning, was carding a dozen copies of the spells used to lay in enchantments, combining them down and adding them to the tools used to carve the runes and lines into objects that were being enchanted. Once those were done I added them to the LPM's.

When I was pretty sure we had solved the problem, the Ancient One returned and guided us back to the same room as before, though Ema was pretty sure we had gone a completely different route this time.

"Alright It looks like it's working," I said happily, watching the scanner play over the massive red spinel, lighting up the thousands of electrum filled runes. "It shouldn't take long after this."

The scanner took five minutes to work through the plans, but when it was done we had a complete blueprint for the massively enchanted structure, as well as a material list for what the large production machines would need to construct it.

"Do you have the materials for one structure?" I asked the Ancient One, who had been watching the scan complete over my shoulder.

"It would nearly bankrupt us of materials, but yes."

"Good, alright. We will use your materials for the first one, but as its building I'll have the UCM's printing out more by the ton. By the time the first building is done we will have plenty to build the second. I'll make sure you get more materials back than you used when everything is done."

After a short discussion on what we would need, how much we would need to start and how long it would take to build, the Ancient One left me in the capable hands of Master Wong again. Together with Ema and I, we started the UCM's creating hundreds of ingots of electrum, gold, silver and platinum, as well as chunks of precious stones and an incredible amount of yew, hazel and alder wood.

Once that was set up Master Wong used a sling ring portal to take us to Brisbane Australia, where a large chunk of land was cordoned off and ready for me to build on. The plot of land was right next to the Brisbane River, cut out of a small grassy park. Wong insisted it was under a powerful spell that would keep people from realizing we were about to build a large building in just over two days.

I quickly set up the large production machines and fed in the required materials, almost all of which was coming from the stores of enchanting and magical building materials that the Masters of the Mystic Arts had hoarded since the original three Sanctums were built. Just an hour and a half after the adjustments to the large production machine were finished they were building away at the Brisbane Sanctum. I stuck around for a few hours to make sure that everything was going according to plan before eventually heading back to Kamar-Taj to experiment more with the the anti mind control spell, which over the next day I was able to distill and compact into a much better design, replacing my cuff with a much sleeker version that I wouldn't have to charge in the sun. I made a few dozen of them and stored them in my cabinet of tricks.

When the first Sanctum was done we immediately headed to Los Angeles, where the Masters of the Mystic Arts managed to find an empty plot smack dab in the middle of the city, between an office building and a parking structure. I quickly set up the LPMs before returning to the brand new Brisbane Sanctum, where I met up with the Ancient One, who was putting the finishing touches on the connection between the Brisbane and the hub of doors to the other Sanctums. I pushed the building improver out onto the floor in the front hall, opening the control screen and connecting the device to the building.

"Alright, first things first, let's replace the frame of the building with ultra metal" I mumbled to myself as I worked through as many enhancements as I could while not messing with the enchantments woven into the entire structure.

It took a while, but eventually I settled on the final upgrades, settling on a fully solid ultra metal framework, while using conceptually enhanced versions of all the original materials, including the wood, the iron and the glass. The final design wouldn't be nearly as strong as a structure that I built from the ground up with conceptually enhanced materials, but it would be much harder to destroy. The important part, the dimensional energy sync, which drew in the nearby ambient dimensional energy, otherwise known as the massive red spinel that served as the Sanctum's "heart" would survive anything strong enough to level the entire block.

I spent a while gathering and feeding materials to the building improver, which wou;d finish its upgrade by the next night. Once it was done the Ancient one invited me to watch them weave the new Sanctum into the massive shield spell that protected the entire planet. It was interesting to watch, with plenty of flashy spells and even some chanting. I could feel the pulse of energy flare out as the Brisbane Sanctum sank into place, the large blue and gold globe showing its symbol as it was worked into the massive planetary dimensional shield.

"Well done, well done," The Ancient One said to her fellow order members. "Take time to rest and recuperate, we will be doing this again tomorrow."

The Ancient One talked and chatted to her students, most heading back to Kamar-Taj, though some of them left through the doors to the Sanctums. A few other Masters, who hadn't been involved in the spellworking, walked past into the Brisbane Sanctum, bowing at the Ancient One as they passed.

"This sanctum is almost eight percent more powerful than the New York Sanctum," The Ancient One said when we were alone, looking up at the magic infused globe above us.

"I'm not surprised with the amount of upgrades I layered into it," I said with a shrug. "Ultra metal is made from an Asgardian Alloy, one originally summoned by Odin himself. The inclusion of that alone would be enough to get that kind of results."

"True, but you forget that the New York Sanctum is one of the original three, and therefore placed in a powerful convergence of dimensional energy."

"...So when we upgrade those we will see an even bigger increase."

"Indeed we will." The unreadable woman said, giving me a massive smile. "Thanks to you the Earth will be safer from dimensional threats than it ever has been before. Such a service demands a hefty reward."

"All I need are samples of exotic materials and access to spells that I can use in my making," I responded, shrugging slightly.

"You know, most would ask to learn the mystic arts."

"Oh I'm sure eventually I'll want to learn a few tricks. Having access to a back up plan like that is invaluable," I admitted, looking up at the orange glowing globe above us both. "Unfortunately my plate is pretty full at the moment, I can't drop everything to study and you already explained why my usual cheat for learning things wouldn't work. But I'll be around to learn eventually."

During some down time, between setting up the LPMs and the building improver, I had offered to make beginner sorcery rings, in exchange for making a more advanced version for myself. The beginner rings would teach the basics spells and information of sorcery to anyone who wore it permanently, and my ring would teach me slightly more advanced spells. Unfortunately the process of learning sorcery is one part knowledge and five parts harmonizing your body with dimensional energies. The more you interact with dimensional energies the better your body gets at those interactions.

Apparently it's not something you can rush, and the effects were too ethereal for me to locate and card in order to create a solution. In other words I could give myself the knowledge but my body would still need to be trained over a long period of time, time I really didn't have.

"We will be happy to teach you," The Ancient One said with a smile. "When that time comes."

With the new Sanctum tied into the global shield, the Ancient One began preparing for the next addition, while I passed the time by experimenting and idly crafting. I worked with several interesting metals, including the dimensionally charged electrum that we had used by the brick in the Sanctums, as well as several other mystically charged materials.

I also made sure to utilize my access to the sorcerers around me to the fullest, experimenting and playing with several different interesting spells. One of the more promising spells was a simple shield, one that got tougher and tougher the more energy you put into it. While the sorcerers considered it an extremely basic spell, I quickly realized that I could combine it to any material, then add in a few energy cells, making something as basic as a normal t-shirt indestructible until its inherent energy was used up. It functioned almost like a sort of energy shield, absorbing all the types of energy I could think of, including kinetic energy, before it eventually being overloaded. At that point the normally cast spell would disappear, leaving the user defenseless. My version however simply ran out of energy, meaning whatever it was conceptually bound with would then take the damage.

I immediately applied it to my armor, adding thirty energy cells and dozens of recharging concepts, basically all I could get my hands on. The result was another monstrous layer of protection on my armor, which was already unbelievably tough. When I was done with my armor I worked the same concept into a simple plate of ultra metal and a bracelet, so I could use it whenever I wanted.

By the time the third Sanctum was finished I was barely spending time in Kamar-Taj anymore, having cleared out my temporary workshop and finished up improving the other Sanctums. Because, as cool as working with an ancient and powerful sorceress was, my new space ship was even more cool.

It had actually finished without me even realizing it, the massive vessel sitting empty and unappreciated while I worked on my armor and toyed around with magic. Ema was the one who finally reminded me, and was also the one to stop me from abandoning my job to go fool around in space. The Ancient One only chuckled as I rushed out after the fourth and final Sanctum was completed, promising to return to experiment with other spells.

Only a few hours after my hasty goodbye, Tony, Ema and I stood on the observation platform around the still unnamed ship. It was still held up by scaffolding, though it was only resting on it, rather than attached to it as it had been previously.

"So are you going in?" Tony asked, leaning on the railing.

"Yeah, you coming?"

"Not until you test fly it," He responded with a scoff. "Do you have any idea how difficult space flight is? I mean you just sprinkled on the thrusters without doing any of the math. My money is on it either not lifting off at all or spiraling away and crashing."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I said with an eye roll, extending my wings and preparing to take off to enter in my ship.

"Wait, you need to name it!" Ema said, putting her hand on my shoulder. "The LPM's can paint the name on the outside but you should name it before you take off. It might be bad luck or something."

"Really? Bad luck?" I asked, giving her a look.

"What? It's the first flight of our first spaceship!" She responded. "We should do it right."

"I Suppose you're right."

I flew back to the warehouse and grabbed a bottle of champagne from the fridge, flying back to the ship and landing in front of the prime LPM. After a few minutes of thinking, and listening to Tony suggesting sarcastic names like Lunar Crater and Future Space Debris I finally came up with something.

"Huh" Tony said, watching the name get quickly etched and painted onto the side of the hull. "Not bad actually. Bit pretentious but ship names usually are I guess."

I flew to the side of the ship and smashed the champagne against the side, the liquid floating away in the low gravity.

"I christen you, Void Skipper!" I shouted out, Ema cheering from the observation platform, Tony clapping sarcastically a few times. "Yeah yeah, you guys get inside the building."

With the christening done, I flew along the ship and landed in the hanger bay, doing my best to make my way directly to the bridge, rather than stop and ogle every inch of the ship. I ended up making pretty good time, only taking about ten minutes to make what should have been a sixty second walk.

I dropped down into the pilot's seat, a comfortably ergonomic chair that was at the head of the ship. Technically this station could control almost the entire ship, but I figured that would be a lot for one person to do on their own, so I ended up making a few seats around the pilot's chair in a vague imitation of Star Trek's style of dividing the responsibilities.

After a few minutes of reviewing and familiarizing myself with the controls I started flicking switches, a steady hum of power pulsing through the ship as it finally fully activated. I could see out in front of the ship from a personal screen on my dash, but a much larger series of screens around the bridge displayed a much wider view of the front, top, bottom, back and sides of the ship, though the back and bottom had to be toggled on to keep it from being confusing.

"Alright baby, let's see what you can do!"

I slowly increased the power pushing out of the thrusters, the hum of power permeating the ship turning into a rumble then a roar at the same speed. I reached over and tapped on a screen, dragging my finger up to increase the sound dampening around the engines, the rumble fading back down to a hum. I couldn't feel any difference as the ship slowly lifted off of its scaffolding, but I could see it from the screen. I let out a whoop of excitement as I rose higher and higher off of the moon's surface until I pushed the thrust forward and rocketed away from the Octopit. I pulled up and the ship left what little gravity the moon had, tearing into the void like a shooting star.

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