The first thing that struck Laurence as he arrived on the new floor was the heat. Humid, bitter heat permeated everything in the surroundings and made each breath stick in his lungs. The heat and light seemed to make the surrounding plants thrive. All the plants in this place were massive, with trees reaching hundreds of meters into the air, vines coiling and spreading wildly, filling the world with odd green nets and vegetative nets. The sun beat down on Laurence’s head while he stood on a plateau looking over the forest. The forest was loud with the sounds of animals eating, killing and mating with each other, often in that order. It was incredible to the young boy. Although he had lived in a village from the day he had been born and was used to the sounds of wildlife, this was so much more. The giant forest in front of Laurence was teeming with life and sound.
He climbed down to ground level and pulled out the pointer stone. It didn’t seem like the money he had been given would be much use to him, but the stone pointed in the direction of the entrance to the next floor. The stone fit in the palm of his small hand and it immediately lit up once it was flat. An arrow formed on its shiny black surface with the number ten underneath it. He looked up and began walking. Whether that meant that the journey would take minutes, miles, hours or days he had no idea. All he could do was move in the direction the stone told him and find out.
The first day was uneventful, but every sight blew Laurence away. He saw nature in its purest form out here, rough, brutal and chaotic. It did not detract from the beauty he saw in everything he walked past, even when he saw a giant praying mantis tear a bird twice its size in half and begin eating its guts he was not dissuaded. The vibrancy of life and the suddenness of death were all in plain view here, and to the young boy it could not be more incredible.
Near the end of the day Laurence stopped by a white cliff near a large lake that was thriving with life. He set up camp, grabbed a long branch and quickly whittled it down into the shape of a simple spear. It was perfect for skewering any fish that Laurence could see within the lake, so soon enough he had more than enough food to last him on his journey. While Laurence ate the fish he noticed that the bones of this fish were oddly shaped and very tough. They were exactly what he needed to use as needles for sewing and he wanted to record where he found them for future reference. Unfortunately he had nothing to draw or write on. He pulled out the red book and looked at the second section for a while, then flicked through the first until he had an idea.
The next morning he spent a little time hunting for a furred animal and eventually found one. His target was a pair of small ferret-like creatures that were deadlocked over something. Grabbing two stones, he hurled them at both ferrets without modulating his strength. It came as a surprise to both him and the ferrets when his stones shot out of his hands like they were flung from a catapult and collided with his target’s skulls, crushing them instantly. He was not used to his own strength now he had become a Saint, but at seven years of age he was nothing if not adaptable. He grabbed the two carcasses and went back to his impromptu camp, and prepared for the process of creation.
Some of the process was new to Laurence, but the majority of it was something he had done before in one form or another. The first was make leather and vellum, then sew a book together from wood, leather, vellum and string. While he had never made a book before, he could cut wood and make leather easily. Vellum was harder, he knew the process but had never actually tried it before, so he would be experimenting.
He pulled out two boxes from his bag of holding. They had similar runes on them for storage and stability as his bag did, but there was a large space following the first section which was covered with incomplete runes. Laurence knew that if an object was not made with good enough quality materials then it would not be able to handle the runes and the power they represented. In the case of this happening the object would simply crumble to dust. To counteract this a crafter could put caveats on runes like ‘single person’, ‘less than 1 meter’ or more commonly ‘only objects’. These caveats drastically increase the lasting power of objects with them on, and were most often used for small boxes to carry large amounts of perishable goods with the rune for ‘reduces time’, which would allow the perishable goods to last longer. The added bonus of this was that bacterium that would make the food decay and any parasites living in the food would also be removed, which meant that people would often use these tools to clean the perishables of any unwanted extras.
Laurence pulled out the knife from his bag and then had a thought. He put the knife back and began pulling a small amount of mana from his reservoir, shaping it into a knife edge at the tip of his finger. He then flattened the point, and used the chisel shaped mana-blade to finish the glyph on the first box. These glyphs represented ‘slow down time’ with the caveat ‘only objects’ and ‘20x’. Simply put, if anything was in that box it would age at one twentieth of its normal rate which was still an incredible feat of magic power. Laurence could tell immediately that the box would last a matter of weeks before it would be destroyed by the power it contained, but that was long enough. He proceeded to put the carcasses in the box and store it back in his bag.
Looking around he knew he needed three things if he was going to complete this properly; wood, quicklime and water. Time was also a necessity, but he was only nine days away from the tower. His idea was more important. Laurence stopped and realised that he might have everything he needed right in front of him. He walked up to the white cliffs and saw they were made of limestone. Checking the quality of the limestone he found he could get a fair amount of dust easily, so he got everything made and began his work.
Tanning hides and making vellum is not a hard process, but it is a time consuming one, so Laurence made his second box one that speeds up time for things inside it. For whatever reason this caused more stress on the box and he surmised the materials would only last for two or three days. Long enough for his creation to come to fruition, but only just. He set down the materials, soaked the skins for about two and a half hours in the speed up box, then cleared all the flesh off the skin and began by cleaning everything with a calcium bath. This was one of the longest parts of the process, so he filled the ‘slow down box’ with water and prepared to use that later. He also grabbed a few more fish for the road, slung them over his back and walked off towards the tower with his ‘speed up box’ processing away in his little bag.
After about four hours Laurence stopped by a small brook and decided to test whether he would need gloves to handle materials or if he could just sheathe his hands in mana. He pulled the skins out of the bath and proceeded to clean one of them off with water. Once it was thoroughly clean he pinned down one side and made the surface of his arm perfectly smooth, then split the flesh off of the hide. He put the two skins back into the calcium bath and continued on his way. It was beginning to get quite late so he momentarily stopped to pull both hides out from the lime bath and clean them again with some of his stored water. He then began looking for a new place to set up camp.
Fifteen minutes of hunting later, he heard a series of roars and a yelp. Nearby there were two creatures causing a massive disturbance to the area. They were in Laurence’s way anyway, so he decided there would be no harm in taking a look to see more of nature at its finest.
When he got to the clearing that the ruckus was taking place in, he saw a small wolf cub desperately fighting for its life against a lizard almost ten times its size. The poor beast was being played with by its crocodilian captor and this angered Laurence. He could deal with animals killing and mating with each other because it was just what happened but his mother had always told him two things. One, torture is wrong. It harms the torturer as much as the victim. And two, never play with your food. This reptile was doing both of those things, so without even a moment’s thought Laurence jumped in, summoned his hammer and thrust the spearhead straight through the crocodile’s brain. He swooped over the wolf cub that was on its last legs and picked it up, looking for a safe place to hide. The sun set during his search, and it was almost completely gone by the time he found a hollow at the base of a large tree to nest in. The young boy built a low fire and quickly set the wolf up in a stable position. He left some meat and some water for the cub to eat and then said “I’m going to look for some herbs to help you. It’s night time now and it will be easier for me to find them in the dark. Once I’m back I’ll be able to fix you up easily”.
He dropped off the two boxes, spent a few seconds sorting out the hides and preparing them for their next step and then unsummoned his hammer and walked out into the night.
Remember son, the easiest way to find most plants for healing is by looking at night. A lot of the plants that have medicinal properties are bio-luminescent, they glow.
Unbidden, the instructions on healing his father had drilled into him echoed within his mind. He was nowhere near as gifted in the study as either of his parents, his expertise lay in other fields. The young boy did have enough knowledge to get by though. He knew he needed to find some red veined Iconis Roses at the very least, or the poor wolf cub would bleed out before the day was up. Blue leaved Cillin Root would stop the wounds from getting infected and white Silkweed would just speed everything along greatly. If there were white budded Aguara Leaves around then it would speed up the small beast’s recovery as that plant allowed for increased blood production. Aguara leaves were difficult for Laurence to use though, his father had often said that too much of any medicine would be dangerous, and Aguara was the best example of this. If a doctor used more than necessary it would cause the patient’s veins to expand and eventually explode from over filling them with blood.
He searched without any sort of torch, only going towards luminescent spots and looking at what he found. After about fifteen minutes Laurence had only found Silkweed, but that was better than nothing. He knew Iconis Roses were hard to find but comparatively common, so he hoped it was only a matter of time before they were pasted upon the wounds of the wolf. He dug up the roots using a shovel shaped out of mana. Each time he reshaped his mana it became easier to do so he thought the simplest way to become proficient was just use it instead of any normal tool. It also meant he didn’t have to clean the tools afterwards to keep them in good shape. Once he finished digging up the roots he felt a few drops of liquid on his head and realised he should probably get moving before it began raining.
Little did Laurence know that for the last ten minutes he had been hunted by a monster. The creature had come across the young boy as he was looking for something inconsequential. It followed him round the forest, always keeping just out of the way. It was waiting for the perfect moment to strike and eat the boy.
It called itself Garral, and it was an apex predator in this jungle. It knew how to kill creatures and get food that it should not be able to, and had long since recognised the tattoo of the Challengers. It knew they were hard to kill, but in its one hundred and thirty years of hunting not one had escaped. The rain came down and Garral decided to get closer, soon it would try its standard lure and consume the child.
When it first came across the boy it was wary. It thought perhaps the child was bait to catch Garral finally. It was not the only smart hunter in the jungle, but it was the oldest. It had not got where it was by being stupid. It decided to spread its awareness out and when it found out that it was the only other large creature in the nearby area,it climbed down the tree it was perched in and began the final stage of its hunt.
Laurence finally decided to pull out his red book and have a look for the roses on the map. Since he made the map he had discovered that he could zoom in and out to either get more detail on the local area or see the area in a larger scale. He expanded the map and finally spotted some roses, only half a kilometer away. He was about to shut the book when he saw the words ‘Garral – Royal Orik‘ heading towards him. He looked at the dot for a few seconds and then closed the book, wondering what an Orik was.
He began walking towards the roses with his book in hand, occasionally checking the map to make sure the creature continued to follow him. He changed directions a few times and finally decided that the creature was probably hunting him. The boy ran towards the roses at full pelt and watched as the dot followed him at a good pace, keeping up to his Saint level speed. In the blink of an eye, Laurence had reached the roses and began harvesting them as fast as he could without damaging the plants. If it was not for his mana formed objects he could not have done it anywhere near as quickly as he did.
He put the roses in his bag of holding when the creature finally caught up. The entire process of reaching the plants and harvesting them had taken less than a minute seconds, but the creature covered almost a whole kilometer in that time. Laurence oriented himself towards the hollow where the wolf was and then put away his book as the Orik arrived.
A profoundly hideous creature walked out of the foliage towards Laurence. It was almost two metres tall hunched over like it was, with a face that was part pig, part dog and part bear. It was furred all over and exuded an aura of violence about it that could only be formed from cultivating in the direction of Death and Destruction. A gobbet of drool dripped down its jaw, past its massive tusks, getting lost in the steadily worsening rain.
There was a crash of thunder and a flash of lightning as the Orik opened its mouth revealing filthy yellow fangs. Its guttural voice could be heard even above the thunder. “Hello little boy, shall we play a game?”
