Chapter 22: Chap. 19 : Taskworking

self.beginTask(decidePriorities)

Following the events with the adventurers, and after having checked out her loot, Zoemie had decided to withdraw into her video games for a while. A fine choice, as far as Xajymzia was concerned.

Xajymzia found herself thinking about Zoemie's dreams, more and more dubious that these were simple dreams. But as she did not dream, she could not confirm herself. She, however, had noticed a... connection ? while Zoemie was asleep. If someone was behind this, there were most skilled at covering up behind themselves.

Her current goals were many : increasing her own power, the... time magic... interdiction ? Not quite correct. Figuring out new magical tricks. Trying to figure out what was going on with the dimensional anchors preventing her from teleporting away, and investigating who teleported the archer's body.

Speaking of teleportation, she needed to work on the Earth portal, but... that one was going to take a while. Even Xajymzia's most optimistic calculations made it clear it would require an enormous amount of mana, and a large amount of infrastructure to store and channel that mana.

Xajymzia shook her head, and considered her priorities.

---

self.beginTask(timeMagicInterdictionIvestigations)

Zoemie's complete failure at time magic, despite having an high affinity for cosmic magic of other kinds... and the particularly unpleasant dream afterwards ? Xajymzia was dubious these events a mere coincidence.

Xajymzia teleported the broken vase pieces from storage and confirmed. Simply channeling like Zoemie tried to do led to the same results. Nothing, and if her focus broke, the vase was repaired through normal magic. The maid decided to try with something else.

Whether it be shattered items or worn or damaged equipment, both failed in a very similar fashion, like what Zoemie had saw. It was when Xajymzia started trying things out with rotten food that things became interesting. The interdiction seemed... more flexible. Desperation, oddly enough, seemed to be the key.

The more desperate someone was to warp food back to edibleness, the more likely it was to succeed. How bizarre. Xajymzia wasn't desperate for food. Neither had been any of her charges, whether past or present, and they would never be.

Animals, as Xajymzia expected, seemed to be a hard no. There were other ways to bring back animals, however, as the maid knew of some. It had been convenient in the past, a few times. Limited, but handy when available.

Similarily, manufactured products were a no. Leather wouldn't turn back into rawhide, and neither would forged iron back into ores. Xajymzia's interest deepened. She had never investigated time magic in the past, and... oddly enough she found herself wondering why. Some kind of large-scale cognitive filter ?

Xajymzia... had her regrets, too. Going back to the past, these blessed days... a part of her understood very deeply why Zoemie had thought about it. To maul and maim those who harmed you, deny them the opportunity... the maid understood, too.

This wasn't quite like before... but she could live with it. Zoemie needed help. Unlike others, she wasn't from here. She had no role in... those past events. Xajymzia held no grudge against those from the other world, whether Zoemie or others, at least for that part.

Quite a few of the travellers had been awful to Zoemie, and for that she would grudge them, but that was a different story. The maid refocused after a bit and returned to her experiments, growing more and more curious about the interdiction. Why is our stasis-equipped storage chamber unaffected ? It was similar, and yet it worked perfectly.

It felt so strange, to interdict such a specific category of magic in such a way. It didn't feel natural to Xajymzia. Magic was known to have weaknesses. It was awful at tracking people down, by example. But this wasn't the same.

This wasn't an accidental weakness born of conflicting energy currents, or someone messing up somewhere. This felt intentional. Someone was trying to prevent people from time-travelling. And frankly... Xajymzia had to admit she understood why. Not that she liked it.

---

self.beginTask(testWeaponOptions)

Xajymzia had teleported into the training room, checking up on Zoemie with her powers, who was currently muttering to herself about her favorite Mokepon in her three-headed pajamas she conjured. Most would find these pajamas goofy, but Xajymzia didn't care one whit what Zoemie dressed herself in. Or didn't for that matter.

Although, she did have to say laundry machines were very nice. Least you end up conjuring the Great Elder of Discarded Clothes, which would be problematic. Having the ability to handle large amounts of dirty clothes quickly was an enormous boon. Xajymzia would have loved to have such a device back before rather than brute-forcing it with magic.

Xajymzia considered. She had meant to try various things with the cursed slab. She conjured a flask of extremely nasty acid - HSbF₆, something within her mind told her, and threw it at the slab before it started eating into her body.

Xajymzia might be poison-proof, and immune to both nerve gases and asphyxiating agents, but she wasn't certain she was corrosion-proof. Something she put on the list of things to investigate later. Low probability of enemy using such means of attack yet. Maybe later, when the knowledge brought by Zoemie's classmates spread.

The acid bit and melted the rock, but the slab magically reformed around the fluorine compounds, expelling them into the air, Xajymzia observing for a while, noting the chemicals and their spreading, before she cleaned up everything with her magic when satisfied. Best be careful. Next, she focused on various type of special munitions using her arm-cannons.

Xajymzia stared at the cursed metal slab as she shot at it, using high explosive and piercing rounds. Zoemie's approach to cursing items was... like her approach to everything that wasn't gaming, which meant "lacking in finesse but making up in power."

It wasn't a deep vein of dark magic going deep in the metal, woven by a professional, it was the magical equivalent of slamming a large hammer on an item repeatedly. But it most certainly did work well, that the maid was to admit.

It was said by some that technique is what the weak used to make themselves look strong, and that the truly strong needed no such thing. Xajymzia didn't entirely agree, but she had to admit the cursed slab made for a compelling argument. It could take a direct shot from a battering ram.

A wall made of stone cursed in this fashion would require nothing short of highly explosive weaponry to break down. Xajymzia did have an interest in such weaponry, including for shooting as she currently was, but her understanding of the requirements was lacking. It was most likely highly secret knowledge anyway, considering the power these could bring to bear.

---

self.beginTask(improveAbilities)

Xajymzia had actually messed around with the scanner device Zoemie had conjured before, but it didn't work on her. Probably because she wasn't human at all. Still, it was an interesting item, but a part of Xajymzia disliked what it represented. Her own insuffiencies in regard to her abilities, that Zoemie had to take up arms in turn.

Xajymzia's conviction was rock solid, however. She would not fail again. She could not fail again. Her greatest error in the past had been to slack off. And the events with the three adventurers had made something clear to her. She needed to get stronger... and she had no idea how to proceed.

Need to find methods to increase power of self. If a human wished to get stronger, they had various options. They could train, increasing their reflexes and skill with their weapons. They could work out and get stronger. But... Xajymzia had comparatively little use of training and no muscles to strengthen.

She could improve her body by replacing her parts for better ones – that was on the docket. But the fight against the blonde human had clearly shown she was going to need more than just better body parts. She was going to need to learn how to... fight ? Not quite.

But she couldn't rest on her laurels anymore. Xajymzia had a sense of sympathy for Zoemie's frustration at having to fight and kill. She as well would much rather not have too. Xajymzia... simply put was bad at fighting. She had never been built to handle armed conflict. She had to break a few scuffles by timing people out, but that had been it.

Zoemie wasn't good at killing, but she had a better sense on... how to fight. Not as much in technique, as much as a sense of "when to attack, when to press the assault, when to withdraw and when to double down."

Xajymzia, however, had won her last fight against the blonde human because of her enemy's presumptuous and careless nature more than Xajymzia's own strength. Speaking of strength, the maid had a realization. Defence of self is greatest strength ?

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Zoemie... wasn't frail, but she could be injured, even now, if she got caught out of position. Since she was a Warden she could resurrect, but Xajymzia had realized that even that couldn't always keep Zoemie safe, as the collar showed – analyses indicated that even if Zoemie resurrected, she would still be bound by it.

Xajymzia, however, was simply very hard to injure. She had a stiff, thick and bulky outfit that as the adventurer learned deflected blows well, and beyond that her body had no joints to injure, she did not need to eat, drink, sleep or breathe, and had a lot of powerful immunities. Consider finding ways to leverage defence rather than improve offence ?

---

self.beginTask(portalWork)

Xajymzia shook her head. This will not function. Her... people, those who lived here before, had mana storage items, similar to a battery, that they used in their daily lives or when going out for hunts or joining caravans.

But there was a major problem. The batteries Xajymzia knew of, even the most advanced models, simply didn't hold enough mana. She had never had a need for a large, centralized mana storage before, but she was going to need herculean amounts of mana to open the portal and keep it open.

Too much for both her and Zoemie to channel, even silmutaneously.

Moreover... well, she had been slacking off back then. She hadn't really heavily investigated better battery designs, because, well, there were no reasons too, since they recharged passively. Some of her people had, if only to busy themselves, and she had popularized those upgraded variants, but she never had any need to.

Xajymzia had more or less affined her design in two major parts : the battery and the frame. The first part had as primary goal to hold the massive amounts of mana necessary to run the portal, while the second was were the mana would be channeled in order to figure out how and then open the portal.

While the battery was the bigger issue, the frame was also going to need work. If it was too big, opening the portal would be even more expensive and complex than it already was, but if it was too small, there was a risk of breakdown from excessive amount of mana being channeled into it.

The frame's materials needed to be able to handle the strain. She looked at her designs. Where to begin ? Materials ? Engineering ? Xajymzia wasn't certain where to start. Maybe she should look over Zoemie's fused materials ? There might be something of worth here for her objectives.

---

self.beginTask(sortMaterials)

Xajymzia looked at the storage with a deliberate glare. Monster corpses, Zoemie's schoolbag, loot from the bandit and the adventurers., and a smith's wonder chamber worth's of Zoemie's fused ingots. Eclectic assortment.

She was currently looking at the metal ingots Zoemie had made in the past. One seems to be missing. Thankfully, there was another ingot of the same material, albeit fused rather than conjured. Xajymzia simply reconjured the ingot and went back to her analyses.

There were two major categories of materials she was looking for : the first were the one she could use to improve her body. The second one were those she could use for the Earth portal and other infrastructural needs. The reconjured ingot was an interesting one for the second job.

It seemed to be able to keep an enormous amount of mana no matter how much was poured into it before breaking, even at absurd scales. That said, that alone wouldn't suffice – she needed to check its other properties, such as whether it retained that mana.

Zoemie's fused equipment was made of materials so complex by now the maid couldn't conjure them in any form. Zoemie might be able to, but Xajymzia wasn't certain, nor did she want to bother her for that unless absolutely necessary.

While metals were her primary interest, Xajymzia was also all too aware that she would need more than just that, such as ceramics and fluids. She conjured another thing first, however. Plastic. Plastic was... Xajymzia was hesitant to call it "miraculous", but it was certainly interesting. It could be made soft and flexible, or hard and stiff.

It was consistently light or at least not heavy like metal could be, did not rust, wasn't eaten by vermin, and decayed slowly if at all. It did not shatter like glass, did not denature food, and was easy to sterilize, making it excellent for medical applications. It came in a lot of varieties, but their shared precursors make the conjuration cost easy to cut down.

It did have flaws, primarily having to do with its flammability, but Xajymzia could work around that. The flexibility in particular was interesting – it wasn't a trait a lot of materials the maid knew about shared. There was the necessity of checking how well it took to magic, however.

Xajymzia considered how to organize herself. Needs to classify the materials' various properties and work from there. It would probably be a better approach overall.

---

self.beginTask(investigateDimensionalAnchors)

Xajymzia, after separating her consciousness from her avatar and returning to her ethereal form, looked around the body of the dungeon, feeling frustrated. Whoever designed these anchors was skilled. More skilled than her. There seemed to be no metaphorical thread to pull on to remove these anchors, they were stuck here.

Ah, I see, Xajymzia constated as she worked through the enchantments. These only prevents blind warps. That meant the dungeon could potentially still be teleported to a deserted island, but that needed having gone to that deserted island, and well, deserted islands weren't known for ease of access.

Some form of aerial travel would be necessary if such a task was undertook. Although not with a plane – a large copter of some kind ? A zeppelin, maybe ? Xajymzia reconsidered. Is such investment truly necessary ?

Xajymzia felt an odd confidence in the idea that by the time she could have such a tool for aerial travel, Zoemie wouldn't want to teleport to a deserted island anymore. Better have it and not need it ? Xajymzia decided to think about it further later. There was no point making decisions that early. tasks(portalWork).getPriority() > tasks(aerialTravel).getPriority() =...true.

She shook her head and teleported a bit further in the woods, the area where the archer's body had been. She had taken a recording of the magic field after the teleportation, but even then she most vexingly had almost no idea who did it, until Xajymzia tried something.

The mana current identification spell was adamant – the persons or maybe even merely beings who setup the anchors and teleported the body away were the same. Level of accuracy – DNA identification level.

This means that whoever she was dealing with had a high level of ability with cosmic magic and was to boot very powerful, as Zoemie, like all Wardens, had the ability to prevent in and out teleportation on anyone weaker than herself.

Xajymzia herself had the same ability in the past, and she could still use it as needed, although she was dubious of the usefulness since Zoemie was more powerful than her. Xajymzia, who had repossessed her body, reconstructed the magic currents from her recording, creating a visual overlay only she could see and trying to figure out if she had missed any details or potential leadups.

Finding any form of warning sign or something that could allow her to predict ther actions was important, because it could allow her to potentially deny further attempts at meddling. And while ultimately losing the archer's body had meant little if any in the grand scheme of things, it frustrated Xajymzia.

---

self.beginTask(investigateLoot)

The maid had quickly looked over the majority of the items looted by the adventurers, but there was only one that truly interested her. She looked at the buckler-shaped item. She wasn't certain it was the same one used in the past, but the processes were similar for what she saw.

Success of modifications against this variant almost entirely luck. Xajymzia nodded to herself, as she remarked, using a reinforced wall she had conjured, just how one of her smallest modifications hooked the enchantment on the breaker item and prevented it from functioning.

Yet at the same time, it had been enough. Xajymzia couldn't afford to overspecialize the dungeon's reinforce enchant against this item because it would make it easier to defeat by other similar items using different entry points. She had to more broadly and cleanly block breaking attempts.

Xajymzia looked at her charge. She currently was playing another game, this time some kind of tower-based defence game. Xajymzia felt something close to being soothed inside of her. Her charge was... maybe not happy, but playing without worrying about the adventurers. Xajymzia closed her eyes.

I have a lot to do. She didn't know how many variants of these items existed and how each of them worked. This specific item worked like the ones that were used so long ago, but... as much as Xajymzia wished it, she knew humans weren't complacent enough to simply stagnate.

Especially when it came to things and people they hated.

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