Chapter 8: Chap. 7 : The Grinding Wheel

Zoemie woke up the next day horribly bleary-eyed, not helped by having had a bad night's sleep. "Fuck these nightmares, man..." She shook her head and got up, Once her wakeup routine was done with, Zoemie sighed. "No way around it, I guess." As she moved towards the workshop room, however, she was interrupted by Xajymzia.

"Are you alright ? You look unwell", Xajymzia said with concern in her voice, although Zoemie missed it.

"Just... Real fuckin' tired." answered Zoemie. "Slept awfully." she continued. The maid cocked her head to the side, before eventually asking "Did something happen ?" with more concern in her voice, that Zoemie also missed.

"Nightmares." grumbled Zoemie again in turn.

"Are these common ?" asked Xajymzia, curious. She was under the impression Zoemie was often tired, but it felt to her having more to do with chronic sleep deprivation of some form. Although nightmares aren't conductive to great sleep either.

"Yeah" said Zoemie. "Generally it's school nightmares. This time around it was the 3D game that doesn't exist.". Incited by Xajymzia's "Hmmm ?", Zoemie continued. "It's a 3D horror game about being stranded on an alien planet looking for an artefact. When youn find it at the end of the game... Something wakes up and start to follow you. And if it catches you you won't survive."

"That... is certainly something." said Xajymzia. "Hmm. I'll have to see if I can improve your bedroom to reduce the risks of these." Zoemie emitted a grunt of curiosity. "You can do that ?" Zoemie asked, disbelieving.

"Yes and no... only so much. Mostly, it has to do with things like "temperature" and "CO2 levels" which affect sleep restfulness in general." said Xajymzia, to which Zoemie nodded tiredly."You should take the day off. You're in no state to work."

"Urgh..." Zoemie rubbed her eyes tiredly. Sounds nice, certainly, but... "Things are never gonna get done if all I do is take breaks...", to which Xajymzia answered, gently but firmly, "Yes, but you can't expect to do things well when you're exhausted. Go take the day off. Your equipment can wait."

"Fiiine..." conceded Zoemie, who didn't mind taking a break, as she returned to her bedroom instead, tired and sleepy. She opened up her computer, trying to boot up a game, but was so tired she ended up staying in bed, going for a nap instead.

---

When Zoemie woke up, her first action was to grab a drink, before considering her next move. She was still out of it, and she could feel it, even if she couldn't put words on it. A sigh escaped her lips, before she settled on gaming for a while. It seemed she wouldn't be able to do anything productive... but she found it nice to be able to tell the "you should be working !" part of her brain to "fuck off, it's my time off."

That said, Zoemie did eventually manage to find a few things to do, and that thing was the good-luck curse for Nethany, like she did for her father before. First, remember Neth's face. Mid-length red hair, freckles, brown eyes, a pretty smile and always laughter in her voice. Maybe Zoemie was overthinking things.

Considering that she often hanged around me during recess, I can at least assume she did tolerate my company. Zoemie couldn't fathom that anyone could enjoy her company, but that was more due to her... poor interpersonal relationships in general. Zoemie focused and sent the curse towards Nethany, feeling her mana drain again. She then considered what else to do, and decided on "nothing more for now."

While gaming, an idea came to Zoemie, and she decided to start conjuring pieces of her equipment set and cursing them, but only for things she was absolutely confident about. Which wasn't really something Zoemie did, but she did have a basic idea about the final look of her equipment and the image she was trying to project.

The general image Zoemie was trying to project with her equipment was a "don't piss me off unless you want to die" vibe, going hard into intimidation because it was in her experience the most reliable tool for keeping the hordes of jerkfaces away. It still wasn't very reliable, but it was better than anything else she tried.

Zoemie returned to her gaming. She lacked the mana to do that right here and now, but she could start to grind it out when more mana had recovered. Zoemie's gaming experience spoke to her, telling her mana regeneration was the key then, which meant the skirt came first.

She had considered designing her equipment to have all parts grant mana and health regeneration, but her experiments seemed to indicate that regeneration effects didn't seem to stack, which meant to Zoemie she should focus on making a single curse as powerful as possible instead.

As Zoemie considered it further, however, she realized she had another problem, and that was the material to use. Zoemie had fucked around quite a bit with her curses, but she didn't take a very deep look at materials, and now she realized that would a problem. For later, however. Today was her day off.

"Might want to make a quick one to see how far I can push the regen, though, no ? Hmm..." Zoemie considered. "Yeah, we'll just make a basic skirt with a mana regen curse to make the remaining quicker." she decided, drawing upon her gaming and completionism experience. Zoemie knew that 100% were significantly easier to do if one put in the time to start properly and go out of their way to grab everything that could help first.

Satisfied with that decision, Zoemie conjured a comfy, thin dark orange skirt and enchanted it with the mana regeneration effect. "That will help a lot." She then put it on and returned to her gaming, but not before taking another look at what she had planned.

Wait, no I'm a fucking idiot. Zoemie thought, realizing that to have super mana regeneration was pointless, and as such she ended up taking the skirt off. The experiments for materials wouldn't consume enough mana to justify such high-caliber mana regen, at least Zoemie thought, and the fusion won't be in a while.

The only thing that would cost mana would be the curses, so it still wasn't a total waste, but it still wasn't going to be as useful as Zoemie originally thought, since conjuring dungeon items didn't cost any mana. Still, it might come into handy later, so it wasn't a total waste. Or maybe I'm just trying to persuade myself that I'm not a complete fuckup.

Zoemie grumbled, and focused on her gaming. Maybe she wouldn't do anything more today, actually. Since so far her sole attempt at being productive ended up in abject failure, maybe it was a good idea not to insist and just wait for tomorrow.

At least the food is great as usual, Zoemie considered. This time it was chicken prepared like fishsticks with cream sauce cucumbers, and Zoemie quite enjoyed it, the breaded chickensticks and cucumbers completely gone once the meal was finished.

After returning to her bedroom, Zoemie decided to stick to gaming for the night. She was almost done with that game's 100%, to boot. All the more reasons to stick to it rather than try anything funny. As she was about to tuck herself in for the night, Zoemie felt tired and bad about herself and her fuckups, but understood she couldn't get anything more done.

---

When Zoemie woke up the next day, she did feel somewhat better, so after Zoemie ate breakfast and took her bath, she decided to focus on experimenting with materials, which mostly involved conjuring various ingots and trying to infuse them with mana of various types to try and get something unusual or interesting.

Zoemie was tired of this, she wanted this mess to be over with, and as such teleported herself to her workshop, put on her super mana regeneration skirt, focused, and got to work. But for the most part, Zoemie didn't find anything particularly noteworthy.

She did find a few metals with interesting properties, such as one that never exploded how much mana was poured into it, but fabric was significantly more boring, having relatively little reaction to various types of mana. Definitely really odd.

Wait. I have an idea. Zoemie, helped out by her Warden abilities, started conjuring materials from the monsters she could summon, some of which did have some interesting properties for Zoemie, although not always useful. "That self-regenerating metal is really interesting. So are these... prisms things.", Zoemie pondered as she looked at the creepy purple prism with a opaque side.

Zoemie then returned to the metals. Let's try... to make alloys. "I can't re-fuse the alloyed metals... but I can conjure a fresh ingot of the same alloy, and fuse that instead.", she noted down with a nod. "The gravity-weakening curse... is working just fine. Nice." Remembering her physics lesson has allowed to Zoemie to suppress most of her equipment's weight. Guess that wasn't completely worthless, she grumbled to herself.

Zoemie took a look at her todo list of experiments, sighed, and started grinding away at it, little by little. Zoemie knew from experience that there always was a sequence entirely about grinding it through, and figuring out a method to handle that grind efficiently and quote-unquote "quickly" was a necessity and arguably the biggest part of a 100%.

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She crossed off each experiment one after another, adding in any new ideas she may have meanwhile. "Seems like material... doesn't affect curse strength very much, for the most part. Okay." Zoemie sighed.

Tired by just fucking around with metal ingots, Zoemie decided to bring the finishing touches on her weapon instead. She was satisfied at the concept she had picked, it was a very large, long sword. Really put in the "great" in "greatsword". It would have a large crossguard and hilt, topped off with a wheel-shaped pommel.

Zoemie had tried out both single- and double-edged swords, and favored overall the latter type. The blade was going to be mostly straight, with a slightly curved, wider upper part ending in a sharp point. Not too much, but it added a bit of weight to the blade's tip. Zoemie counted on her strength and the gravity-suppressing curse to ignore the sword's weight.

Her weapon was going to be made of a magical alloy with great conductivity and mechanical properties to use her magic and strength to the fullest, packing two different attack curses : the first was a cleaving edge, coupled with an activable, extremely nasty anti-friction curse to keep each swing's momentum going longer when slicing through things.

Alternatively, Zoemie could activate a magical switch to make the weapon go from a slicing to a crushing weapon, swapping the boosting enchantment to a gravity manipulating one, increasing the sword's weight and as such its power without actually increasing its mass in metal or requiring more effort to swing.

---

Zoemie looked and reviewed her equipment, and she nodded and smiled. Alright. Can finally start doing this, she thought, and, little by little, Zoemie started conjuring and cursing pieces of her equipment, using mostly monster materials and military-grade magical alloys, having at last associated every sub-part of her equipment with a material.

And it had taken a while, a lot of conjuring, a lot of cursing – in both sense of the term, but Zoemie could finish one of her final equipment pieces, the skirt. "...Let's go. Won't be getting around it anyway – the sooner done, the better." grumbled Zoemie, psyching herself up. Her stomach felt like an iron pit, she was anxious. She only got one shot, she couldn't mess this up.

Or, well, she could, but then she'd have to redo everything again, and that just sounded like pain. "Unless..." Zoemie tried to distract herself by checking whether she could unfuse something. Surprised I didn't check that earlier. Zoemie retrieved from storage the creepy skirt she had fused before, and attempted to separate it.

The items did, in fact turn back to sludge, the white substance decomposing and separating with the usual fanfare of mana drain and gross noises, before returning back to the components items. Zoemie wiped her brow. "Jeez, that's a bit more intent than I thought, but..." Certainly not gonna complain.

Stretching her arms and trying to put thoughts out of her mind, she looked at the pile of various skirts, each of them a powerful magical artifact in its own right. She focused deeply, feeling her mana under her skin.

"Fuse." she said, as the skirt melded into eachother, the pile of fabric and metal turning into sludge, melting and alloying. It was as usual, rather gross and oddly terrifying. The skirts, cursed skirt cage, and extra magical fabric combined, emitting an eerie white glow as all of them fused in deeper, a thick pile growing thinner at eyesight.

The sludge melted back into fabric, as if it had been casted and molded, many becoming one into a single piece of equipment.

Zoemie opened her eyes. A single skirt was here, a thick, pink skirt with the skirt cage turned into purple highlights. The tip and hem of the skirts were silvery white. Zoemie found it beautiful, magical bolts cracking at the fabric as if it could not contain its own power. Zoemie smiled slightly.

"One down. Hell yeah." Zoemie smiled tiredly as she tried on the skirt. It felt... Odd ? Weird ? Bizarre. But it fit her correctly. "Not too tight, not too loose. Perfect." Zoemie smiled smugly. "Nice. Superb. Wonderful. Now only gonna do all of the others..." She sighed. "Got a lot of shit to do and I'm tired as shit. Business as usual..."

Everything was tiring for Zoemie, but she merely grumbled and sat down. "Let's keep going, I guess. Gonna have to do it, like it or not. What a pain..." She looked at the various items. She had slightly more than half of the pieces she needed, including the now-fused skirt. She looked back at her notes, not sure what to do, both tired and bored.

She couldn't focus to keep going, her brain not working anywhere close to full capacity. She sighed, frustrated, as she returned to the computer and put up some game videos to watch. Maybe that was enough for today ?

A borborygmus interrupted Zoemie's gaming session, however, and she teleported to the kitchen, not wanting to bump into the doorframe. As she teleported into the room, Xajymzia instantly opened her mouth to ask Zoemie a question.

"I see you finished the skirt. Do you want me to try out its defensive abilities while you eat ?" she asked, as Zoemie considered the offer, and nodded. "Yeah, that's a good idea, actually. Please do." she answered, teleporting the finished skirt to Xajymzia before she focused on the food.

For tonight, we've got... mashed veggies and smooth sausages, constated Zoemie, who opened her mouth and promptly started eating the food. Tasty as usual. Once she was done with the mashed parsnip and Frankfurters, Xajymzia returned from her testing and handed Zoemie the skirt over.

"It withstood everything I threw at it" started the maid, clearly quite impressed by the skirt's defensive abilities. "It is an interesting choice to focus on the skirt first. It is for the mana regeneration ?" asked Xajymzia, a little curious about it all.

"Yep. With the mana regen on it, it felt like the smartest decision, you know ? Make the others that much quicker, since I don't have to wait as long for the curses.", to which Xajymzia nodded in assent, before Zoemie continued talking. It turned out high-level curses like the one Zoemie used where very mana-intensive.

"Yeah. I mean, I do 100%s. And, like, one thing I learned from that is that... you need to give yourself the means to do what you need to do, you know ? And, by example, it's a lot easier to synth all monsters when you have 3 Conks XYs with Uber Attack Boost." started Zoemie, rambling.

"Or, like, when going for the 50K pop, you need the layouts to optimize shit and use straight-up fucking Noria layouts which are OP as balls for the southern part, you know ? Same thing here. The mana regen boost is really fucking powerful, and that alone makes it tolerable." she continued.

Xajymzia didn't interrupt, a little surprised by Zoemie's sudden rambling, but mostly interested. Even if she was clearly lacking a lot of context for what Zoemie was saying, Xajymzia understood the idea she was trying to communicate.

"So, when I try to go for a 100%, the first thing I always look at is speedruns, actually. Because, these guys, their whole objective is "complete everything ASAP". And while sometimes, it's worth going for alternate strats for safety or convenience, it gives you a pretty good idea on how to proceed." Zoemie said afterwards, engaged in a sudden, borderline monologuing talk.

"And, this whole thing is a fucking mess that qualifies as "long and complicated" ! It's almost been a fucking week, but we're getting there. I hope I won't need another week to finish everything, but the day I'm ready is coming sooner than later."

"Indeed. I did not expect you to start rambling." said Xajymzia, slightly astonished at the sudden avalanche of words coming from the girl.

"Oh, yeah, sorry. It's a "Zoemie is a weirdo" thing. Dad does the same, too." Zoemie said in return, to which the maid nodded. Zoemie thought for a while about what to do while the two cleaned up the table. Well, mostly Xajymzia, Zoemie was trying to help.

After they were done, Zoemie decided to call it a day and return to her bedroom for her nocturnal gaming session. The mega boss rush turning out to be more of a pain than I thought. Zoemie smiled as she started to rework her strategy. Gaming was truly Zoemie's favorite thing. When Zoemie went to bed that day, she was mostly tired.

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