Chapter 29: Chap. 24 : Sunheater

Zoemie woke up from a pleasant night of sleep, for once. She wasn't too bothered by the heat, which was unusual but welcome in what was now what she thought to be early summer. She got up, stretching her arms as she did so and sitting on the bedside. She had slept in her panties, which was pretty much her usual sleepwear in summer.

She got up and teleported into the silent kitchen, her breakfast ready as usual. After eating her breakfast, she moved to the bathroom to finish her routine, but ended up looking at herself in the mirror for a bit. Did I, like, get taller or something ? Maybe it's the food ? Zoemie thought. "Neth mentioned that people were shorter in the past because they didn't have as much food as before."

Also feels like I'm less skinny ? Maybe ? Or maybe not... Zoemie shook her head, unsure, breaking out of her reverie after a bit and returning to her routine. She then went into her room and started up the computer. She wasn't sure what she was going to do, but it probably would involve continuing her gaming from last time.

Zoemie conjured a desk fan after a bit, feeling the computer heat up the room. She plugged it in and turned it on, moving the guard around so that the wind hit her face, then bringing the guard down it and moving it around some more.

Zoemie didn't necessarily hate this kind of manual finagling, as long as it wasn't too long. She found it almost relaxing, but it did tend to tire her hands out when she did it for long periods of time. Plus, it meant she wasn't playing, but right now she wasn't feeling that session that well.

"Alright, this is good.", Zoemie decided after putting the fan in a position that satisfied her, the wind blowing across her chest. Yeah... this is the shit, Zoemie thought before returning to her gaming, satisfied with the fan's position and the way it blew.

She did eventually go for her bath, albeit later than usual. Almost 5 PM. Damn. Zoemie disliked going for her bath after 4PM, it left a bad taste in her mouth, even if there was no apparent reason for it. At least this save editor was a good catch. I can tolerate RNG, but not to that degree. After finishing her bath, Zoemie left the bathroom in different panties.

"Go back to gaming ?", she asked herself. No. Zoemie had gotten a bit annoyed at the game she had been playing, and decided to not insist. That way lied frustration and anger, and it wasn't worth it. She instead grabbed a skirt with pockets, her music player, and simply teleported out at the dungeon entrance.

She wandered in the forest, the late afternoon weather not overwhelmingly crushing like it could be in the past, but still hot enough that Zoemie would feel uncomfortable being more heavily dressed. She simply wandered in circles in the clearing, thinking about other games she could play and what she could do. This is nice.

Summer had always been and remained Zoemie's favorite season. Partly because the vacations, partly because she felt more at ease in light summer clothes or even half-naked than in heavy winter clothes, partly because Zoemie hated the cold and rain. The longer-lasting days and shorter nights were the icing on top.

Some annoying memories came back to Zoemie's mind, but she suppressed them by thinking about her games instead. "That's how it is" isn't a reason. Never has been, never will be. She shook her head, and returned to other considerations. She quickly checked on Xajymzia with her Warden sight, who was scurrying around in her area doing... something, before shaking her head and putting her hand on a tree.

Zoemie sighed. She was a little tired, maybe, or more antsy. Like she had electricity under her skin, wanting to do something, but unable to because of the circumstances, but she couldn't tell what. And, well, compared to the alternatives ? She was quite content with her circumstances

Zoemie had known she loved games ever since she was but a little girl. She remembered how she realized it, a small smile cracking her lips as she remembered her realization that most kids didn't spend all of their time at home playing, but instead did... whatever kids did, like playing outside with their friends. It had been a strange realization, back then.

There wasn't anyone she knew of who liked games like she did. Although she and Neth had sometimes talked about games, Neth's favorites games tended to be quite different than Zoemie's. And Zoemie's father was more interested in building computers and explaining in detail how they worked rather that using them to play games with.

It wasn't something that bothered her that much, it was still nice to know how computers actually worked, but it wasn't the same as truly talking about games she enjoyed. That's why she liked forums, it was a nice way to find people talking about the game specifically.

Zoemie decided to return inside after a bit more of circling around, a bit tired from her wandering around, but having decided the game she was going to play instead. That said, she wanted to take a short nap beforehand, so Zoemie teleported inside and did just that, cleaning herself quickly with a towel before closing her eyes and resting for a bit.

She ended up not falling asleep, however, and as such simply returned to her computer once she rested enough, the crust leaving her eyes as she booted up another game and starting a new run. It had been a while since she last played that one, it would be nice to finally do a full maximum difficulty clear from scratch.

---

Xajymzia looked around at the location, and started expanding it. She had been working alright in the grasslands, but she wanted a proper laboratory for security and safety reasons, so she simply worked on that. Zoemie was in a contained, safe location, so she had no need to bother herself with her charge and could focus.

Priority : Potion Generator room. Proceed. She opened a door to the side and created another room, tiled white labfloor was silent under her steps, and a pale, bright white magical light illuminated the place. The Potion Generator was a classic she had used for all of her existence, as it had been among her functions even when she was first created.

Simply put, it cost more mana to conjure a mana potion that would be regenerated from drinking it. Therefore, it was quite easy to end up running out of mana in crisis or even high-consumption situations without any method of regenerating it. The Generator countered the problem by passively conjuring mana potions using Xajymzia's mana, as well as any willing inhabitants.

Therefore, there always was a supply of mana potions available in case of emergencies, reducing the risk of problems in case of emergency. It had saved her people's lives more than once, although it had ended up pointless in the end, and Xajymzia dismissed it at some point. She didn't remember how, exactly.

That said, Xajymzia had now realized there was a need for serious, heavy-duty crisis management tools, and it led her to setting it up again, with expanded potion selection to boot. Mana, healing, stamina recovery, and amplification.

And in case the crisis hit at a moment where mana was low, a bit of potion bingeing solved the problem handily. It was very customizable, too, being able to set a mana limits such as the source could always keep a quantity of mana available to them at all times.

She felt a strange sense of nostalgia looking at the device. It had been a long, long time since she last used it, and it hadn't changed at all since all these years ago, the artifact of wood, ceramics and wound-up enchantments engraved on hardened magical clay clashing mightily with the clinical look of the laboratory.

There probably were ways to upgrade the Generator using plastic, glass and / or enchanted metals, but Xajymzia put it on the backburner for now. Said backburner was starting to get big, but Xajymzia had nothing but time. One of her immortality's few boons, but it wasn't one to overlook either.

She then returned to the first room and created another room, to the front this side. It would be large and very wide, with no ceiling. This would be the room for the portal and battery. The maid was uncertain of the final setup's size, so she decided to go large. She could just make the room smaller or bigger at will if needed, so it wasn't that big of a deal if she mis-sized either way.

The room would extend upwards as far as the eye can see – it truly had no ceiling. Strictly speaking each of these "rooms" was actually a pocket dimension in its own right, with the "doors" simply acting as connections. The result is that if one was to draw a map from the top, the rooms could overlap with each other, but it wouldn't cause problems on ground level.

She then opened a third room on the other side. This room was for devices designed to emulating Zoemie's fusion ability. Xajymzia considered how to add more rooms, before setting up a ramp and second floor walkways. Thanks to the magical nature of dungeons, setting it up was a cinch. Antigrav enchantments helped.

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She added a first room on the side of the second floor. It would be dedicated to working on and with the scanning device, how to amplify its ability in order to serve her and her charge's needs for information about stragglers properly.

She then made one last room, also on the second floor, facing the room she made before. It would be for experimenting with weaponry, both standard weapons and more unusual things. She had in particular an interest in chemical weapons due to her immunity to these, and that in particular was one thing Xajymzia in particular did not want anywhere near the grasslands, or Zoemie for that matter.

For now she had no need of other rooms, and therefore decided to move on the next item on her agenda, which was preparing dinner for Zoemie. Easy enough, she would go with something cold for today. With the summer heat, it was the smarter decision.

---

Zoemie wandered in the dining room after a long and somewhat unsuccessful gaming session. The smell of the food did thankfully calm her nerves, and she started setting up her cutlery while Xajymzia brought the food on the table. She looked at and nodded to the maid with a grunt of gratitude, Xajymzia nodding in return.

Zoemie ate the creamy cucucmber dish and finished her post-dinner routine in a pleasant silence before Xajymzia hailed her in the corridor as she was walking back to her room. The maid bowed, and started talking. "There is something I would like your help with,", she started, "but it can wait for tomorrow."

Zoemie considered internally. Urgh. Zoemie didn't like being asked to help very much. It was always either a ploy to make fun of her or she was basically as useful as a bandaid on a pegleg. But I'm kinda in a bad mood. Might give me something to do. She sighed and made her decision. "Let's just do this right now." Sooner we start, sooner I'm done.

The maid nodded and teleported both of them into a white room with various doors. "Set yourself up a better place for working ?", Zoemie inquired, getting a nod in answer. She thought it a bit too bright for her taste, but it didn't bother the maid at all. Then again Zoemie hated bright ceiling lights.

"The grasslands were fine, but I wanted to make certain none of the experiments would bother the plant growth.", Xajymzia explained as she walked to a room on the side, Zoemie following in tow. The maid opened the door, her clothes into a labcoat with a tan undershirt, thick pants, and goggles as she passed through.

Zoemie raised an eyebrow as she got her own goggles as she passed through the door, although she appreciated the light-filtering effect. It would make things more tolerable at any rate. "I have been meaning to find a way to emulate your fusion ability," Xajymzia started as she conjureed two chairs and a desk, "as it struck me as simpler than asking you to fuse everything I may need, but I need more information about your fusion ability for that."

"So you need me to fuse shit for... Right. You mentioned it before, I think. The emulation part is new, though." Still, not complaining about that. The less work, the better. "So, what you need fused from me ?" Something about saying this made Zoemie smile internally. I sound like a shopkeeper NPC.

Xajymzia answered by pulling out a spreadsheet. "What I need you to do is infuse some materials like you did in the past. I'll conjure the base material myself and... how to explain this... I'll be using my own magic to indicate to you which type of mana I need you to infuse.", the maid explained, Zoemie nodding.

"Let's go, then.", the Warden decided, and a first ingot of metal spawned in front of her eyes. Generally, Zoemie didn't like working that late. It brought her unpleasant memories of long and boring homework. But, well, she was a bit frustrated by her gaming right now, so this was bound to be at the very least more useful. Plus, Xajymzia had been very helpful to her. It was the least of courtesies.

---

Xajymzia looked at the ingots. Eighty-seven materials in total, made in around an hour and half. Once they had gotten into the rhythm, it had been an absurd rate. Zoemie had pulled out her orange skirt for super mana regeneration in order to keep up. Still, Xajymzia had ended up cancelling the experiments before she truly exhausted herself.

Mana depletion once wasn't risky. But only once. Every instance after the first one came with progressively greater risks and consequences, up to and including death. Although Zoemie, being a Warden, had a natural immunity to the worst of the consequences, it was still a good idea not to play with fire.

And Zoemie wasn't very good at regulating herself when it came to stopping work. Probably never learned how to. She was somewhat better at handling stopping her gaming session when her nerves or temper got the better of her, but she struggled doing the same when "work" was involved.

Still, Xajymzia was very satisfied. She had gotten good results, and could now start to analyze each material properly and figure out the patterns. Not only to see which materials she could use right now, but also try and predict the most useful materials to infuse next time.

She had metals, plastics, ceramics, even some gas samples, and nothing but time and goals to research. Not only that, she had gotten a lot of records of Zoemie's mana infusion ability, which was indeed derived from her fusion ability, and Xajymzia was confident enough about her understanding on how the magic moved to make the infusion work. Which meant she could build a device to do it instead of asking Zoemie again.

While at first she had not planned to do it right now, instead wanting to focus on the materials, Xajymzia had managed to come up with a design, and solve every problem the construction of the device would pose through her already existant suite of arcanoengineering knowledge. Thus, the only thing she needed was blueprints, and she quickly finalized it.

Xajymzia started constructing the device, fixing engineering problems as they came up. She had expected to need to ask Zoemie for more infusion, but she managed a setup she knew to be functional enough to begin. She would get possibly better materials using her infusion device, that was what it was for after all. Plus, it could work at night and in the morning, and on materials Xajymzia didn't want anywhere near Zoemie like fluorine gas.

It would be roughly Zoemie's height, wider than a man, and was composed of two parts : an octagon-shaped pedestal to receive the material to be infused, off-ochre tablets of engraved plastic winding around a browner body composed of infused of silicon, and an upper part with a more circular shape, made of an infused aluminium alloy, topped up by a mana intake.

While at first Xajymzia had considered various methods for producing mana to the required purity, she for now would produce it herself. She had the ability for it, after all, and currently no need for industrial production, so there was no point trying to figure that out right now, if ever.

---

High Priest Kvutar was sitting in his chair. Some would have thought the elderly man sleeping or maybe dead, but in truth he was reflecting on the Outsiders' summoning. All his life, Kvutar had seen himself as nothing more than a servant of the Heaven's Will, and so when they called for summoning the Outsiders, he did as ordered.

He did not know how long it would take for their assistance to save the world, nor how it was necessary, nor whether an old man like him would even would live to see it. But he did not care, for when the Heavens asked, he obeyed.

He had to admit to himself he did not understand the Outsiders that left. Why would anyone ? He would find it an honor to be picked by the Heavens in order to save the world. But ultimately, they had the card to come back at any time, so he knew they would return at some point. It was not something he could do anything about either way. The Heaven's ways were inscrutable to mere mortals like him.

But he did feel a bit of base anger at the one who left the first day. She didn't even attempt to hear them out, she just ran off and was never seen nor heard from ever since. He hoped the scrying spells he had put in place would work out.

He could accept those who listened and strayed. These things happened, after all. But to so brazenly defy the Heaven's Will ? That was utterly unacceptable. The Heaven's ways were inscrutable... but it was no excuse to simply ignore them outright.

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