Orphan At The Edge Of The World 68 Crystal Cage 6

"Due to emergency energy... Due to emergency resource protocols, please remove power cells from construct units and deposit them into the recycling chute. Estimating average cell residual charge... Please deposit 2312 cells into the recycling chute," the merciless A.I. politely demanded.

Orison looked up at the ceiling and said, "I'm a portal gun away from calling shenanigans on you."

He reasoned that it was just a bit of elbow grease and had never been afraid of a little hard labor. However, it became obvious after taking ten minutes to access the first cell out of the back of a small unit that without the ability to use his mending drone, due to the heavy magic s.h.i.+elding, it would take weeks or even months to complete the task.

Continuing to work as he thought, Orison deposited his fifth cell into the shoot and didn't hear the number go down. It was counted at the same number as the time before.

Orison said, "A.I., there was an error in the counting. Please respond."

The monotone voice said, "There was no error. Equipment in the facility needed to provide a safe and healthy environment for your race are consuming energy that is otherwise unused. These expenditures add to the total necessary cells."

The young mage said, "A.I., lower additional environmental energy usage to minimum amount necessary to preserve life."

The monotone voice replied, "Unable to comply. The student does not possess required clearance to override this setting."

Out of desperation to work against deficit, Orison acquired three cells at once and brought them into his s.p.a.ce. Brus.h.i.+ng them against the crystal dust, the cells went from dead to dangerously charged. Orison brought them out with a caution against disqualification from the A.I. for using external a.s.sistance during testing. Attempting to reason with the machine that there was no test ongoing, the A.I. responded that he was in testing facilities and therefore fell under that regulation.

With fingers crossed, Orison tossed the cells into the chute. The A. I. gave a miserable result based off of expected yield that had the young mage despairing he'd die from some form of deprived state before he could finish but trudged on in the meantime while thinking furiously about solutions to the conundrum. After two more cells, the voice gave him a tally of a little under 200 remaining. A machine came into the room and also started combing through the pile around where Orison had collected the cheat charged cells. Sadly, the cells being collected by the machine didn't count for his total. It took nearly three days for Orison to finish the remainder.

He was angry about it but he needed water and food provided by the facilities which cost him extra cells. Knowing that there were perfectly fine food and beverage in his s.p.a.ce but not wanting to get his testing 'terminated', he wasn't left with much option. Since nothing stopped him from putting things into his s.p.a.ce, Orison stole a few cells and a couple of the smaller machines in retribution for his slave labor.

In the next room was a much larger and better decked out version of testing room nine. The largest difference aside from size was a bedroom and a metal hand indentation on the wall.

The old man's voice cut in again. "If you are hearing this message, it has been over an astral cycle since someone made it to this stage of testing or functionality of the facility has become insolvent. If so, I can only imagine the hards.h.i.+p you must have endured in the recycling room. Be that as it may, I fear I require you to aid in some maintenance. This will not go unrewarded whether you succeed in trials to come or no.

"There are two ways that you can fill the quota A.I. will expect from you. Repair the parts presented in the theater or refill cells using the receiver on the wall. Do not attempt to actively push spiritual essence through the receiver. Allow it to pa.s.sively absorb. If any leaks into the room, A.I. will sense it and terminate your test... Please do not attempt more than two cell charges in a day. Each charged cell represents a month's worth of Chosen spiritual acc.u.mulation stimulated by your crystal spark.

"If you begin to feel hurt or sick in a way that is difficult to put into words, immediately cease charging cells and finish quota through repairs. All I can say at this point is that whatever is asked of you, it will be rewarded adequately. I'm sorry but all this that I ask is so that the hopefuls who come after you will have a facilities capable of testing them."

Orison rolled his eyes and walked up to the indentation in the wall, sticking his hand on it. It was a cold and wrong feeling to have something invade his spiritual seat without fighting it but Orison did not allow the seeking tendril to stay there. Using his s.p.a.ce to reroute the tendril, Orison let it float in the dust ring.

Every few minutes there was an update on how many cells were left to charge minus one. The first time that Orison heard to grand number of sixty needed to complete the task, black lines ran down his face. Out of morbid curiosity, Orison asked the monotone voice how many repairs would equal a charged cell and received an average of thirty to fifty logged repairs. After the fourteenth cell, Orison asked the droning voice to cease with the cautions about soul exhaustion with a bitter look on his face.

All said and done, the total amount of crystal powder consumed to charge the cells equaled about a third of what he'd managed to reap from the grudge. A follow-up question the young mage had managed to get the A.I. to answer revealed that the total spiritual essence required was the equivalent of a resp.a.w.n. If he had been anyone else, the requested amount would have taken a month to get safely and that could have only been halved, at best, with repair work. At least when he laid down to take a five hour sleep, he was provided food and water without additional payment being demanded.

Once Orison was awakened by the pitiless voice, he stomped off to the next part, darkly daring this place to demand anything more from him in his head. He almost spit blood in anger when the next portion was essentially asking him to manually input packaged coding into repaired and reset machinery using a screen that was mercifully all but automated. He still ended up wasting nearly two days before the A.I. no longer required him to finish backlog.

Behind him, Orison realized that the giant construct he'd been pa.s.sing through began resembling a sleeping dragon slowly waking up. Each room he was pa.s.sing through was less test and more one-man maintenance runs through the entirety of the construct. At some point, he'd left the testing zone completely and had began making rounds, fixing things and aiding machines in distribution to restore functionality.

At first, Orison was on the verge of rage quitting when it occurred to him that he was still being examined but in a different way. He wasn't just doing, he was learning and his crisscrossing was nothing less than apprentices.h.i.+p in the most direct manner available to the dead man. With little hints and clues, he had managed to understand that whatever 'emergency protocols' that were in place, it had deemed his unworthy self as a desperation selection but wasn't going to spring the big news on him until he'd logged enough effort to guarantee that if he was found unsuitable in some other way, another might still be found.

With only two days left on his instructor period, Orison was finally lead to a small room that locked him in as soon as he had walked through the scanning doorway. The old man's crackly recording came on, thanking him for all the hard work the young mage had done and regretfully informed him that the main inheritance room nor the rest of the test could be made available due to Orison's a.s.sured understanding of the system that governed the giant construct.

Before he could go ballistic, the A.I. began speaking "Student Orison, the system is about to ask you a question. The answer to this question will determine what the nature of your compensation will be before you are transported out of Metconstruct three. Regardless of your answer, the examiner who has brought you will qualify for a best result compensation and so will you... Are you an outsider who is currently trapped in Osomo?"

The young mage balanced to pros and cons rapidly in his head and with no small amount of anxiety said, "Yes."

The room he was in moved rapidly in an occasionally jerky manner that made Orison's heart drop until it came to a rough stop. The door opened but stuck in the halfway position before Orison gave a helping hand to finish opening it the rest of the way in a slight panic to get out of the makes.h.i.+ft elevator. The large and luxurious apartment he found himself in was heavily marred by the pa.s.sing of time. The large bed had mostly sunk in with a pile of dust in its center which Orison tried not to focus on or think too much about.

In the next moment, a feminine version of the A.I.'s voice with emotion and 'life' in it said, "So much time has pa.s.sed that the recording you are hearing is not the one I had originally hoped you would hear. Little remains in this world that I'd be familiar with and none who'd be familiar with me. I make this message knowing it is the one most likely to be heard but the one I least wished to be needed.

"Since my name and small desires no longer matter, I won't bother you with their trivial and meaningless weight. On the vanity to the far wall is a box with a modified crystal spark inside. It was made with the combined might of my father and myself. The sacrifices made to create it are as unimportant as time can make anything but use it to cleanse yourself of Osomo's tether. It will take time to a.s.similate, more if you were caught unaware and completely changed to suit Osomo's design.

"I once knew a man who referred to himself as a climber. Under his tutelage I and another managed to create a key, if such a term has meaning to you. A great upheaval occurred which you will read about if such things interest you and, if not, is unimportant. The important part of this story is that the climber aided many of us to survive what happened and there is a possibility that one of his disciples may yet still live. If they carry the conduit of our master, then the spark will help you find them as the conduit was also used in its creation. My prayers to some unknown and more benevolent existence than the cold heart of our own be with you in finding the answers that you seek.

"There are perhaps a few trinkets of value for funding your exploration and escape from this place laying around. Freely avail yourself. I and this place have no need of them. If you are a kind soul who would listen to a small request, take a portion of my remains that lay on my bed. Should you find yourself escaped from the madness of this prison, allow those remains to kiss a sky and ground not of this place as I, in life, no longer can achieve."

Orison collected the box and stored it in his s.p.a.ce. As soon as it was inside, the s.p.a.ce ate the box. It was a conduit that contained secrets of preservation and warding. It wasn't overly powerful and digested in less than the hour necessary for him to comb the rest of the rooms for valuables which gave him a few thousand gold and a full set of mid level mage gear well suited to summoners. The black and silver robes, hat and shoes carried a few enchantments that were probably unique in their ability to provide more efficient spiritual essence usage among other minor bonuses. The jewelry set, while somewhat feminine, carried too many resistance bonuses for him to turn his nose up at their unappealing design.

Isolating the clean crystal spark so that his s.p.a.ce wouldn't do something regrettable with it while he wasn't paying attention, Orison gathered up a handful of her dust remains to honor the lady's only request. To keep from being too cavalier or accidentally having her remains mix with the crystal dust of his formation, the young mage put them in a velvet bag of no real use that was among his collection of slightly odd boundary crossing survivors.

In the middle of the mattress was a miniature version of the training devices the size of a marble. A small trail of it's rolling path over the centuries could be seen in the dust but it had been inevitably buried by them as well. Lifting it out, curiosity too strong, Orison activated it.

There wasn't a great deal of information inside but it did contain the lady's research on a bridge model that would allow a summoner to use the mending drone in two unique ways. In the t.i.tania version, the drone would turn into a set of fire and electricity mage equipment for a 'female fairy' version of the summoner's basic sprite. In the Oberon version, a 'male fairy' would be able to equip a modified drone into a set of armor complete with 'letter opener great sword' and s.h.i.+eld.

Locked up in these apartments to keep Osomo from reclaiming the crystal spark before it was done purifying, she had apparently been very bored. To keep herself from going stir crazy in her last few years of life, the lady had taken a story her master had told her of and used it as fuel for imagination to create the fanciful renditions of the basic summoner and artificer models taught to her by her father. Orison saw within the modified models and the magical bridgework, a genius of a different caliber. The melancholy woman had taken apart and put together the models so many times that they had turned into perfected art. The renditions they cast were even more efficient than their originals but possessed a vital life of their own not too differently than Enbarr had once been for Orison, perhaps more so since imitating the emotions of a human and a horse were on totally different levels.

Oberon and t.i.tania weren't just admirable works of art and a little embarra.s.sing vice. Orison was eager to incorporate them because they boasted substantial increases in damage output, in t.i.tania's case, and melee capability, in Oberon's. They were a little heavier in spirit essence cost but they more than made up for that in capability, especially when it came to increasing the efficiency of reaping more essence.

After his cell charging experience, Orison had the final piece as to why summoners went the way of obscurity before even artificers had. At least artificers could make up for loss of combat capability with utility. Summoner's spirit essence usage slowed down growth by it fundamental nature, though not in any meaningful way unless the summoner was particularly active with their skills.

Having sacked the lady's room of anything worth taking and received benefits beyond his wildest hopes, Orison walked over to the transporter formation that took him from the apartments back to the double door room with all the militant machinery pointed at them. Once he crossed the scanned boundary, attempting to return would be an act of suicide. Not that he wanted to. As fruitful as the trip had been, Orison somewhat hated the place.

A miserable Alta waited for him outside. For whatever reason, she had been unable to leave until he returned. Thankfully she had come prepared for a bit of a wait with food and a few days water. Until he had reached the portion of the journey through the great construct where he had access to food and water, she hadn't had access either. Seeing her manic face that switched between a scowl and a foolish grin, Orison braced himself.

The gnome said, "I'm not going to ask and I don't want you to tell me. I'm somewhat dying to know but I have a feeling knowing WILL get me killed, so here's the deal. You made it to the triangle room in record snail's pace and then we went back. End of story... As long as that's how you tell it, that's how I tell it."

Orison whispered to her, "What you really don't want to know is how long it could have taken."

Alta shuddered and said, "I'm just glad to see you get back here alive. Not so much for your sake, mind you. The pain was worth the gain and all that. I don't hold a grudge, much, but if you had croaked in there... No need to focus on a bad what-if that isn't. Please tell me you understand how dangerous what you did in there is. Not then but now. You've got to promise me you won't breathe a word. It isn't just your a** on the grill."

Orison looked at her solemnly. "I do and I do. Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here."

Alta kept their minds preoccupied with small talk about what restaurant she was going to and what celebratory feast she was going to order right after she bathed and had a short coma in her bed as she lead them back through the traps that surrounded the area.