Spacetime Magic and Fun
Collecting the corpse of the Amphisbaena into his Item Box, Nox started to make his way back to the surface. He had plans to stop on the 18th floor safehouse and stay there a while however.
It had almost been five whole months since he had come to this world and in that time, Nox had started many projects but only part of then had been finished or even mentioned so far.
Currently, Nox had one thing to test out, two projects to finish, one preferably before the expedition that Loki had informed him of, and finally a lot of spell development to take care of.
The test could wait, one of the projects, the spell he was trying to create based on Kokonoe and Arcana Ring, was not urgent and magic development could definitely wait so Nox's focus turned to the only thing that had a time restraint set.
Although it would only be a lost opportunity he he didn't manage to complete said project in time, there was no reason not to try.
This project, was the development of the inner workings of his Tem Box magic into other spacetime shenanigans. As Nox's magical ability and power, both progressed, so did his comprehensions of the characteristics of the Item Box spell became more thorough and detailed.
Quite regretfully, Nox had yet to be able to develop other spacetime based spells despite his numerous attempts to do so in the past. However, when it came to bestowing such abilities to objects on the other hand, he had some preliminary successes.
Item Box already had a feature to create an entirely different inventory space and that particular feature was the main source of all of Nox's breakthroughs.
While making another Item Box by virtue of his magic alone proved to be quite impossible due to a lack of energy, Nox had managed to discover that having a specially made focus made the costs much less prohibitive.
As such, he had successfully made a Storage Ring, its inner dimension that could be used to store things however, was quite unstable.
Sometimes, things were just lost while another time, a ring's dimension collapse, creating a hole in spacetime that, albeit temporarily caused much destruction in Nox's testing facility and made him realize he should be far more careful about doing such things.
Regardless, as his magical prowess grew, so did his ambitions towards spacetime magic and his experiments resumed and resulted in three massive gains.
Nox could now make Storage Rings that despite not yet safely storing items, at least did not collapse into a destructive singularity.
As an added bonus to figuring out why that happened, he could now make highly unstable Singularity Bombs . . . That sometimes went off on their own . . .
But, much more importantly, Nox had figured out how to create Spatial Gates! Mostly. And only useable by those with no regard for their well being. But it was a start. At least that's he he told himself whenever his dangerous experiments failed.
They worked by establishing a temporary dimension that lays between two of the gates. Rather than directly allowing one to cross space by entering one gate and exiting the other, one enters small created space and form it, access the other gate.
The problem was very much the same as the Storage Rings, the created space was far too unstable to be reliable, which is precisely why mastering the "Create" function of the Item Box was so vital. Not only would it solve his Storage Ring problem, it would also allow Nox to fix the Spatial Gates.
As the days went by and the expedition approached, despite not being able to perfect his space creation ability, Nox managed to raise his skill sufficiently, allowing for a temporarily stable dimension, even though it could last anywhere between 8 to 17 seconds before collapsing.
It was a trade. For some reason, by setting the space up for collapse, purposely, Nox somehow gained a measure of control over when the collapse would happen.
There were still risks however. Although the space was certainly stable enough to cross it. Shifting pressures of space could still damage anything within. Although with his powers, Nox was confident he would not die, the journey would not be pleasant.
Not only that, as soon as the crossing was complete, the connection between the Spatial Gates and intermediary space must be shut down before the pre ordained collapse takes place. Otherwise, it will cause untold catastrophes on the real world through them.
Regardless, despite their many flaws, the current iteration of the Spatial Gates were a useable means of quickly traveling across great distances, including in the dungeon. During the expedition, Nox would be sure to take the chance to plant a few of them around in any safe areas he may come across.
Before that though, he made sure to outfit each of his safehouses with a Spatial Gate before yet again shutting himself in his room. This time, to try and perfect some of his spells in the three days he had left before the expedition set off.
One great thing that came out of all of Nox's failed experiments, was an increase in his understanding of spacetime, most notably, how to influence it with his magic.
As such, Nox had a few ideas on spells he might be able to cook up with that knowledge but unfortunately, that was not something he was confident in achieving with his current time restraints.
That being the case, he decided to turn his mind to more feasible endeavours in creating equivalents of Aqua Bolt for the other elements and, if he still had the time, fuse them all together into a single spell with element just being one of its variables.
Thankfully, and expectedly, this undertaking proved to be much easier and more smoothly accomplished than Nox's previous ones in regards to the unfathomable spacetime. The finale result being:
Spirit Bolt: Divided into Spirit Gun, Spirit Cannon, Spirit Missile, Spirit Mortar and Spirit Decimator. Respectively, they are a small compressed magic bullet with high penetration and firing rate, a powerful single shot projectile with an area of effect blast, multiple fast moving projectiles with area of effect blasts, a slow moving big projectile with a huge area of effect blast and an area suppression attack capable of laying waste to a large area with utter indiscrimination.
After that was done, there was only one day left before the start of the expedition so Nox decided to take a break and enjoy a day of fun before his first journey into the further reaches of the Dungeon.
He visited Airmid in the Dian Cecht familia's shop. She offered him some potions but he respectfully declined since he already had more than enough on his own. He then gave her a little gift, a hair clip accessory made with crystalized Mermaid Blood and a piece of carved Unicorn Horn.
It had the power to enhance healing magic as well as reducing its Mind cost and could shield the user from curses and poison too.
Airmid was quite delighted with the gesture. Even though she usually treated everyone with the same kindness, she had to admit she found herself looking forward to Nox's visits and showing him some favoritism when he came.
After visiting her, Nox then swung by Maria's Orphanage and played with the kids for a while before flirting with Maria for a but as he donated some supplies to the orphanage.
The mature lady honestly found him charming but she was still treating him a bit like a precocious child with her "Ara Aras~".
Beyond that Nox had some fun joking around in the Hermes Familia's Home. After doing plenty of questionable jobs with them, he had gotten pretty close to the gang and most of the girls in the familia had a little crush on him to various degrees.
As nighttime arrived, Nox made his way to the Hostess of Fertility to have dinner and flirt around with the beautiful waitresses.
He gave Ryu a magical necklace made out of jade and encrusted with a refined jewel from a Treasure Tree. It had multiple magical properties that benefitted her style of combat and abilities.
This however, resulted in all the other girls requesting for a gift from him and, in the end, even Mama Mia joined in for the fun and asked for a gift for herself as well. Even the cook May, who rarely talked with Nox came out and made that request.
In the end, after some pestering Nox agreed to give them all gifts and they threw a little private party for him after the place and closed where he could enjoy being served by each of the beauties in turn.
And so, having a day full of fun a flirting, Nox decided to get a good night's sleep. He really couldn't wait for tomorrow to come . . .
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P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!
The link is: https://www.p.a.t.r.e.o.n.com/lusoba without the extra dots of course.
You'll get to read up to FOUR week ahead, a full month, but I'll still post here.
There's also my other novel Kage of Kages, do check it out!
I would greatly appreciate any support since this is going to be my breadwinner.