Part 28 - Revelations

  Elizabeth was—in her opinion, understandably—annoyed.

  She had been studying the runes used in the lab and the runes in the armor Sorana had made for her all in preparation for the day she could get them to function. Only after so much effort, only the runes in the Runeweave armor actually functioned.

  She didn’t have many she could test properly, but she did see the mana flowing properly, so she deemed it safe to say they were functional runes. The skill [Rune Molding] was excellent when she was simply etching the runes into a solid surface, as the skill evenly infused mana into the script to create the allegedly intended effect.

  The confusing ones were the runes used in Professor White’s notes. Somehow, they weren’t considered proper runes when she tried to etch them into the equipment she had begun to work on.

  That, too, was a compounded problem. Elizabeth found that the skill quite literally bound gemstones to her body as armor when she used [Gemstone Binding]. Which meant it couldn’t be removed without undoing the attunement of the gemstones involved. As far as the initial work of creating the new suit of Runeweave from rutile went, she’d successfully created a flexible suit of woven rutile that proved much stronger than the original fabric designs, and it had been so comfortable that she could work and sleep in the bodysuit quite easily. The only thing she hadn’t dared to move was the actual Arcanite portions of her old gear. She didn’t have the Arcanite element, so her control over the threads Sorana had sewn together were not something Liz was ready to mess with. She decided that she’d find some other way to incorporate the rare material when the time came.

  Washing herself had become a small chore, but so long as the weave remained touching her body in some fashion, the attunement held, but the range limit on so much [Gemstone Manipulation] meant the material couldn’t go far, and had to be perfectly memorized to be knit back together in the same fashion as she’d designed. She kept flexing her skills to push for an upgrade somewhere that might allow her to be more creative with her wardrobe, but she hadn’t had much luck there yet.

  In other news, she had been molding the rest of the gems into the right armor plates and etched the runes for her future additions, not that she had decided to actually permanently attach the plates to her body yet. She’d need a lot more mana to manage to creatively shower while moving around that extra amount of material. Fortunately, her new Ooze [Adhesion] skill had made it easy to get the water drawn out of her outfit so she didn’t end up constantly clammy.

  And so, her rune studies continued.

  The lab had thousands of notebooks. She finally began visiting and familiarizing herself with the main chamber of the undersea lab, and with the plants stored there. Many of them were sheltered groves for various ingredients used in the pudding recipes in the kitchen’s cookbook. She could finally create her own variety of culinary choices, which was a whole adventure on its own.

  The other plants in the main chamber were more unique fixtures. Everything had runes for careful trimming of the growth and steady creation of the nutrients needed for survival for each plant. Some glass storage spaces had their own book dedicated to the study of a particular type of plant, like the case that held a sample growth of illusioherb, which was some sort of small undergrowth that disguised itself as other herbs planted nearby. The sample was stored with specific other plants made to cause it to change the false image by the angle you looked at it from.

  Then there was a barred storage room near the botanical experimentation lab that held slightly more dangerous plants. One was simply called Firewood. It was wood. It looked normal, though a bit darker in color, and it burned eternally so long as it had the oxygen it needed and wasn’t exposed to something that would smother the flames. If the wood got submerged in water fully, it would allegedly break apart. Elizabeth had been planning to prepare her own survival pack for when she left, and if she decided against taking the watery way out, she’d decided to take some Firewood and reuse it for simple campfires on the road.

  One storage room had been full of steam, preventing Liz from exploring it, but the notes in other rooms mentioned a ‘Fire Lily’ that generated thick gouts of steam. It was in contrast with a case that held a ‘Fogweed’ that created a case full of mist instead. The two plants apparently didn’t react well together, and would choke each other out, hence being separated in exaggerated fashion. The Fire Lily room made for an excellent sauna when Seira visited, though.

  The lab didn’t have every mystery elemental plant, but the others were noted down briefly as being extremely rare and guarded by nature itself. Liz was dead curious, but held herself back from other distracting adventures.

  She hadn’t yet visited every available lab. Several were sealed like the steam plant room had originally been. She had been waiting to visit them all, hoping for further hints from the remaining rooms.

  She’d come up empty on the last three rooms.

  She didn’t hear anything from the first two, and the third had some unusual clicking noises. The time had come for silent door number one.

  As she gathered her gear for the attempt, she first wore her Runeweave main suit under her rutile garb, then formed some of her attuned gemstones into spiked knuckle-guards. She also had prepared a few simple runes with barriers copied from the Runeweave garments and slotted them into her body directly, each made to cover her more vulnerable areas, minus her head.

  She wedged some formed Diamond into the seam around the door, then expanded the material to pry the lock free from the door jam. The material of the metal door, surprisingly, warped and separated quite easily.

  Until the handle glowed with a bright light and promptly exploded.

  Liz was suddenly thrown backwards with an ear-shattering crash into the wall behind her, though her armor kicked in barely in time to arrest the impact on the solid stone.

  “Ugh. That was awful.” Liz muttered to herself as she pried herself out of the actress shaped dent in the wall.

  “The knob didn’t even have a rune pattern on it… And it bypassed the Runeweave barriers, which definitely worked on the impact on the wall.”

  She winced slightly as she felt a broken bone in her left arm, and given her difficulty breathing, she’d cracked a rib as well. Through twelve thousand Vitality. She got to work with [Crystallize] to set the bones and mend them together with some conjured diamond. It was expensive, but it was worth the mana as the substance would steadily integrate with her bones as she broke them in the future, making her body stronger. She knew the entire idea would lead to a future of becoming a human gemstone, but she’d deal with the consequences in the future.

  Speaking of, her stunt prompted a notification.

  [*ding* Your body has adapted to introduced materials. Racial errors have been corrected.]

  She checked on her race in the status window.

  [Race: Living Gemstone/Human Hybrid]

  She let out a small sigh. The Stone Golem part was officially gone for good. She hadn’t had the stone in her body for quite a long time, but finally having the new race somehow made it hit home that she wasn’t ever going to be human again.

  After so long, a large part of her wondered if she’d ever been human to begin with. Her life had become too strange, and her idle thoughts were drifting.

  She cast her gaze back to the doorway she’d been working on…

  Except it was back to normal, as if she hadn’t done anything to it.

  She pondered the setback, then decided to try a more potent method. She turned [Crystallize] on the door handle itself, surrounding the knob in conjured diamond, hoping to contain the blast that had hit her before. Then she used her diamond from the sample room—although it wasn’t a large piece—and wedged the hinge side of the door.

  It didn’t take much abuse before the door finally submitted to her pressure, and the whole thing fell into the room beyond.

  “Huh. If the spell on the handle was a defensive rune, not detecting the hinges was a bit of an oversight.” She peered into the dark room and saw… darkness.

  She knew the layouts well enough. She reached one hand inside and poured mana into the rune for the lighting, which she still hadn’t identified the source of yet. She strode into the room and looked around at the unusual experimentation containers all around.

  “Weird… What even are all of these?”

  The glass pods all seemed to have biological experiments of… inhumane standards. One body—originally some kind of beastkin—seemed to be preserved right after death during a heart surgery, only instead of a heart, there was a heavily engraved chunk of Arcanite there.

  Other operations were in varied states of progress, some with plants and some with animals, all suspended in their final moments.

  She picked up the first journal near the beastkin.

  Experiment #86

  Another failure in this test. The patient this time was a male Mouse Beastkin, age of 17, Vitality in the 160-240 range. Began operation at a reported 164 Vitality, the ideal range for beginning this test. Subject remained alive under the influence of the Arcanite Heart for exactly 92 seconds. Death caused by an aneurysm due to a likely uneven flow of the mana infused blood.

  Liz didn’t dare to read more before she found some way to lay the body—all of the bodies—to rest. The lab was full of the most heretical of White’s research.

  She got to work.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Elizabeth found a section of hallway that was facing the ocean floor, and unlikely to be so high as to leak easily, and then dragged a massive collection of the quartz from the storage to the heretical lab. From there, she encased each body in quartz, then brought them to the selected area, wishing she still had an Earth class to safely inter all the bodies into the wall.

  She hoped that the patients had all somehow been willing, but she knew better than to forgive something so awful by taking comfort from the assumptions. Instead, she worked at it slowly, using diamond the chip at the stone, then combining her skills to create cavities for every one of them.

  Once she was done, she used the last of the quartz to seal the wall back together. Liz could only hope that they would be able to rest properly afterwards.

  Then, she went back to the lab and began to pour over the notes in detail.

  Elizabeth felt like a fool. She’d spent so long learning and memorizing the runes from White’s notes, only to find out what they were using as a basic concept.

  White had been an Ooze Runesmith.

  His runes were made using the same concept as biological proteins. Every one of his runes was the formula made from the Ooze he molded and layered into a sequence that created a spell.

  He had named the language ‘Proteation’ after the scientific study of Proteomics.

  It wasn’t a horrible thing for her to have memorized what she did, but a lot of the information was like memorizing words before you knew your letters. And now that she could study the letters, she realized those words she’d memorized were more like college essays.

  Her first test of properly using [Rune Molding] and then compounding the ‘letters’ with [Ooze Layering] saw her creating a strong gust of wind—what she’d thought was the safest to start with—inside the lab.

  It had made a mess.

  Successfully!

  But it was a mess that she spent several long super-speed minutes cleaning back up after.

  “Still, I’m a wizard, Henry!” She winced even as she said the words, but that had been the term White had been using in his records for those who composed their spells in such a manner.

  [*ding* Congratulations! Your class [The Hermit] has leveled up from level 39 to level 40!]

  [*ding* You have gained the following stats per level! +8 Strength, +16 Dexterity, +40 Vitality, +16 Speed, +24 Mana, +16 Mana Regeneration, +24 Magic Power, +24 Magic Control from your class! +1 Free Stat for being Partially Human! +1 Dexterity, +1 Vitality from your element!]

  [*ding* [Purify] has leveled up! 39 -> 40]

  [*ding* [Concoct] has leveled up! 39 -> 40]

  [*ding* [Adhesion] has leveled up! 39 -> 40]

  [*ding* [Survival Sense] has leveled up! 39 -> 40]

  Liz was fully on board for easy levels from practicing her new types of casting! Just not in a room with so many sharp surgical instruments.

  [*ding* [Rune Molding] has leveled up! 21 -> 22]

  [*ding* [Ooze Layering] has leveled up! 2 -> 3]

  The best news of the day was that she had a way to level her two most necessary new skills. If she was going to survive her new circumstances, it would be with the help of as many new abilities as possible.

  She spent weeks in the undersea lab. The longer it took, the more she felt that the ocean was not the best option for her escape. Even if Liz was confident she could take on massively high level sea monsters and survive—which she was not—she did not see herself coming out of the ocean and simply climbing the cliff and venturing into whatever mess had become of the remains of the city.

  The kill notifications still haunted her dreams. It was why she didn’t sleep unless [Tireless] had just leveled. If she went to sleep when she was exhausted, she was less likely to dream of it all.

  She’d reviewed them all during one of Seira’s visits early on, and the goddess had comforted her through the experience as she wept at all the people who had classes like [Newlywed Wife] or [Perfect Gentleman].

  Every class name she had seen had been a story of a person. Each notification was putting her [Imagination] to torturous work as it created vivid concepts of who each person might’ve been, or what life they’d lived.

  So many guards, craftsmen and women, and everything in between… she certainly had gained her burdens. Seira had been there to take a tiny sliver of mana for each person she gave a prayer for. Every one of them would have her condolences in their next journey, and hopefully live lives with less hardship as well. It was the least she could do.

  In the end, she had no way of knowing who each person was. None of Team Iota’s members had stood out, but she couldn’t find any mention of a [Priestess] with both Ice and Decay classes. She had been quite certain that Elina had made it out alive somehow.

  Regardless, Elizabeth kept studying and testing her new skills.

  Opening the second quiet doorway was a mistake.

  It had been ruptured—in a perfectly round hole in the ceiling—and was completely full of water. It had taken some rapid [Rune Molding] to plug up the hole temporarily before she managed to seal the door back off again.

  No wonder it hadn’t opened easily, there was an ocean’s worth of water behind it. Thankfully, there hadn’t been anything living in that water. More runes had been set up to prevent ingress, for whatever reason. Maybe it was meant for a visitor to enter there.

  Oops.

  The time had finally come.

  After doing all she could to study the sequences of Proteation, she could finally craft a decent repertoire of runes on the fly, though she couldn’t quite invent new sequences that didn’t risk drastic consequences yet.

  She hadn’t meant to create a soundwave that shattered all the glass in the particular lab she had turned into her testing room, but she’d learned a solid lesson about being careful about inventing new spells.

  It had also gotten her a few new skills to work with.

  [*ding* [Enhanced Recall] has evolved to [Perfect Recall]!]

  [Perfect Recall: You remember things perfectly! Instantly recall things you need when you need them, from runes to details you might’ve glanced at briefly! Be careful not to overload your mind in the process.]

  The skill had been welcome enough, as it cut down the time of remembering what order the components of her runes needed to be arranged in. The warning had her hoping to upgrade the skill eventually, though.

  [*ding* [Minor Adjustment] has evolved into [Minor Botanical Transmutation]!]

  [Minor Botanical Transmutation: Causes plant material to transmute into different material.]

  The new skill was actually more of a side-grade. Instead of being able to reheat teas, Liz had gotten creative with the skill to change it into one that would allow her to make any biological substance turn into an ingredient for the recipes from the book.

  Using the skill even allowed her to get the rarer ingredients mentioned in the notes and cookbook. It was definitely a skill from the Biomancy playbook.

  [*ding* You have unlocked the skill [Reusable]!]

  She had willingly replaced [Ballroom Dancing] with the new option. Her dancing didn’t need skills to function, and she could perfectly recall what her lessons with Faythe had taught her.

  [Reusable: You can reuse runes by refilling them with mana. You’ll have to figure out storage on your own, though.]

  The skill allowed her to create a large amount of the individual components used in Proteation and stitch them together on the fly, if she had a method of storing and carrying around the components somehow. Thankfully, [Rune Molding] took well to the style, and she could pad her rutile outfit with some stored components, and a few saved complete spells as well. Rutile was comfortable, but when she didn’t quite pay attention, it could pinch or catch hairs on occasion.

  Speaking of, Elizabeth had embarked on another journey with Henry White’s notes and guidance.

  Hair removal.

  She found a recipe in his personal lab for a number of unique Ooze compounds that could permanently remove hair from the body.

  Liz took a detour on her serious learning time in order to acquaint herself with a homemade hair removal project that left her skin smooth all over, with few exceptions. For one thing, she was not about to go anywhere near her head with the stuff. It was far too effective for her to risk such a thing.

  It took a long time, but she felt more confident with every passing day as she stockpiled everything she would need to make her journey out of the undersea lab.

  The main project she had saved for last, with the intent of enjoying her time with Seira as comfortably as possible beforehand, was the complete [Gemstone Binding] of her finalized outfit.

  There wasn’t much diamond available in the lab, but that material was dedicated to being her weapon, if she needed something with blades.

  Instead, her armor was being melded to her rutile layer and was made from a combination of Ruby, Emerald, and Topaz. Layered like leathery trimming around her body were stylish sections of her Ooze Proteation compounds. Every section knit together to create a seamless suit from her feet to her torso, ending at her neck and shoulders.

  If she had to, and could afford the mana cost, she could [Crystallize] around the exposed skin and make a full body suit, if she had to.

  Some gemstones were perfectly clear when they didn’t have any inclusions, making for a perfect visor, and she had replicated the runes needed to duplicate Sorana’s breathing spell, so she had crossed Miasma and Poison off her list of weaknesses, if she was expecting trouble enough to armor up.

  She preferred not having sleeves, though. Sticking to heavy gauntlets of material on her fists kept her strikes powerful while not getting in the way of the flexibility she might need.

  That might’ve just been a lie, though. It also just looked better. A girl was allowed to embrace her fashion sense, and Liz was willing to risk her health to give [Stunning] a boost.

  Seira had also been helping with the skill, too. The goddess had taken on a sweet and caring side with her visits, including a few gifts of certain products that Liz greatly appreciated.

  That was not the Seira that had come to visit her in her final preparations.

  “You know I’ve been keeping an eye on you. I’ll ask again… Are you certain you’re ready?” The goddess had a serious tone going and a no-nonsense expression that conveyed that this wasn’t ‘playing housewife’ mode, but instead was ‘Goddess of Order’ mode.

  “I’ve gone over all my designs multiple times. I’m not an expert in Proteation, but I’ve got all the notes memorized. I’m sure I’m missing something, but I have no way of knowing what that is until it goes wrong.”

  “That’s what I’m warning you about. Just try to stay safe out there. I can’t see the future, but I know you’ll be fine. I just also don’t want to see you get hurt.” Seira spoke words of worry, but the emotion wasn’t in her tone at all.

  Liz finished [Gemstone Binding] the last chunks of the sample room’s more useful materials before facing the goddess.

  “I promise you. I will not die. I refuse to. I have too much I still need to do.”

  “I can’t tell you details, but I’m a thought away if you ever wish to trade mana for some information. This is it. No more waiting to learn and get stronger before you set out. Make this count.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Liz nodded and snapped a salute. Seira seemed slightly miffed at being called ‘ma’am’ but she moved on.

  She had put together a series of durable pouches beneath her outermost layers of armor that held water and other useful supplies she might need. In theory, water was the only thing she needed most of the time. She could manage to create food from any plants she found in the wild anywhere, though the magical plants fully resisted her attempts to transmute them.

  With a deep breath, Liz made for the final sealed doorway in the undersea lab.

  The one with the clicking noises behind it.

  Elizabeth had used the same method again, creating a contained area around the handle, then wedging the area around the hinges to pop the door inwards.

  The swarm flooded into her vision the moment the door was loose.