Research and Experiments

John spent his shower considering his plan for the rest of the day. Obviously, he was going to work on his powers some more, and he had some ideas about how. Specifically, he had thought of some questions about how his Inventory worked that would be nice to resolve.

He also wanted to take a closer look at the options of his Create Barrier spell. Especially the ones marked as special ‘Gamer’ options, because their names had suggested that they might be a way to grind EXP in a level-scaled environment, which would be very nice to have.

Lastly, the Librarians’ website was an undeniable treasure trove of information that he would have gladly sunk hours upon hours into reading. He couldn’t put developing his own abilities completely aside for it, though, nor would he have even if he’d had the luxury of that option. There were things it was probably smart to look into sooner rather than later, though, like local guilds for his Quest.

All of that would probably benefit from Qhila’s input. However, he wanted to inspire some sort of confidence in his ability to make it, to keep whatever painful memories surfaced yesterday from troubling her too much. Making some progress on his own seemed to be the best way to pull that off.

Well, he had made some progress already during the school day, actually, but given what she had said about Late Bloomers, a Level Up and a few auxiliary Skills were probably within expectations, more or less. Plus, even after noting that Leveling Up involved self-transmuting, she had still thought the Abyss would kill him. So developing fancy powers was probably not the best answer unless he power leveled really hard.

Rather, being smart about things was probably the way to go. She had reacted positively to why he wanted information from her, after all. And she had considered getting him on the Abyss Web fast important. So doing some research on Springfield, and on the guilds he had seen people from at school today, seemed like a good place to start. And on Wentworth too.

Typing in the Librarians of Alexandria website got him a ‘server not found’ error. For a moment, he was confused but then he remembered that the Abyss Auction was notable for maintaining both Abyssal and Mundane websites, so he tried them instead.

That got him an immediate redirect to the same URL except with ‘aw’ instead of ‘www’, so he tried the Librarians’ with that at the front, which worked. ‘Gotta remember that, I guess’

The Librarian article on Springfield turned out to be a lot longer than he had expected. The summary at the top revealed that it sat at a leyline convergence, and that it was a rare case of a town being founded in the Abyss before the mundane town existed. Which probably explained why it got a big article.

Since he wanted to do some quick research, not a big wiki-dive, he skipped some sections and skimmed the rest. The cliff notes seemed to be a ‘Natural Barrier’ a bit outside of town proper, that peace was kept by an agreement called the ‘Springfield Accord’, the parties to said Accord, mentions of a handful of other local guilds and a list of 10 of the 11 Barrier Alleys.

John wasn’t clear on what a Natural Barrier was exactly, though he thought smart money was on it being an Illusion Barrier that had popped up on its own. The article on those was probably worth a look as well, but reading between the lines for now, they seemed to be an important resource of some kind.

The main hint there was that terms about access to it was mentioned as a major part of the Accord, and disputes over it were mentioned as part of the conflict that the Accord put an end to. The Accord also defined territories for the parties to it, which was a handful of guilds and a single individual called ‘the Scarlet Witch’. Considering that her territory had Ashcroft very close to the center, that was probably Wentworth.

The guilds had a few familiar names as well, specifically the Order of the Golden Rose, which Erica and presumably Moira were in; the Inferno, which had been listed as an entrance to Barrier Alley 7; and the Moon Clan, which John assumed was related to Kim and possibly Kaen. The listing on the first one mentioned a ‘Shield Branch’, which was presumably the local chapter or somesuch.

Generally, he should probably skim the articles of all the guilds on the list. Doubly so the Golden Rose one, considering that John’s neighborhood lay just inside their territory. On the topic of territory, Qhila’s ‘nest’ lay inside the Abyss Market Neutral Zone and the recycling center was inside Emerald Order territory. Which made John wonder if the shot up warehouse-turned-hospital had been theirs.

Skimming the articles on the parties to said accord, the Scarlet Witch was confirmed by picture to be Wentworth. The guilds involved were a varied bunch. Aside from the Golden Rose guys, who were a knightly order, and the Inferno, which was apparently a nightclub franchise, the list included at least two flavors of monster hunter, of which the Moon Clan was one, a mages’ guild and an alliance of local Abyssal businesses.

Unfortunately, details on how the guilds actually did things, or their moral stances on stuff like the slavery and brainwashing that Qhila had mentioned, were largely not there at all. As a result, this didn’t get him much further in terms of figuring out a guild he might want to join, other than now having a list of names to look more into.

The articles on other notable guilds in the town were similarly unhelpful for John’s main purpose. He did learn a few things that could come in handy, though, like that Abyssal medical services, called Apothecaries, existed in Springfield General Hospital. Presumably in a barrier.

Another interesting, auxiliary bit of information that he had picked up was that Wentworth was a demigod, which probably was part of the explanation for her overwhelming power. No mention of which divinity was her parent though.

That was it for the wiki dive, time to go knock on Qhila’s door. Manhole cover. Something. Or rather, there was one last thing to do on the Abyss Web. There’d been a message to his account over on the Auction website, which he had initially just assumed to be some ad message or the like and ignored. On second thought, it was probably better to know than to assume.

I am not home today, until late. Gathering ingredients. Repeated days of Babel Incense not recommended anyway.

-gwh348vn3sg0

Weird account name aside, that was definitely Qhila. John considered going back to the Librarian website for a moment, but since he had already concluded that it wasn’t really a good resource for his most immediate information needs, at least not on its own, he decided not to.

In terms of working with his own powers, the main things he wanted to do was look more into the Barrier Basics skill, especially the Create Barrier Gamer options, and figuring out some details about how his Inventory worked.

Deciding to start with the second of those, he went and fetched a few things around the house and headed to the kitchen. Using a glass, he first tested how much contact he needed to put something in his Inventory.

He already knew that skin touch from his hand was enough and that just being near it wasn’t. His finger nail, nose, tongue, and hair all proved sufficient as well, though plucking a hair out and putting it on the glass wasn’t. He could put it in through clothing as well, as long as the clothing was pushing ever so slightly against his skin. Taking his arm out of his sleeve and draping it over the glass wasn’t enough, though.

While he was taking the glass out of his Inventory a bunch of times anyway, he experimented with the options there as well. While it defaulted to putting the thing in his hand, he could wish it to happen under basically any circumstance where he could have put it into his Inventory, pointing in whatever direction he wanted and touching him with whatever part he wanted, as long as nothing was in the way. If something was in the way, he got an error message.

Next, he filled the glass, put it in his Inventory and jumped a few times before taking it back out. With none of the water being missing, and none of the other things in his Inventory saying they had gotten wet, it appeared to be spill proof. Or at least compartmentalized.

With that determined, he took out a candle and put a horizontal line on it near the top with a permanent marker. Then he lit it, waited a few moments until the melting had just reached the line, then put the lit candle in his Inventory. The tooltip said “lit candle” and even presented him with a remaining burn time, which wasn’t counting down.

That set up, he went back to the glass of water. Holding it over the sink, he tried to put away just the glass without the water and got an error message. Then he did the upside down glass of water prank stable on the counter, put the glass of water in his Inventory and found that the spot on the counter was left dry.

When he went into his Inventory screen to make sure that it didn’t say “upside down glass of water” now, he discovered that he had the option of emptying the glass. Putting his hands over the sink to be safe, he tried it and found that the result was that a separate Inventory slot was now just taken up with ‘water’. He could even put it back into the glass too.

It turned out that by dipping his finger in, he could take the water from the glass without the glass. And put the water in the glass in his Inventory even if they entered separately, or if the Inventory slot held more than a glass’ worth of water, in which case only a portion of the water was moved to the glass.

He could also put air in his Inventory, a process that made a sound similar to a vacuum cleaner. And fit 1 cubic meter of it in a single Inventory slot. After running several sinks’ worth of water to see if the same limit applied there, he realized that maybe this wouldn’t look so good on his mom’s utility bill and stopped.

Next test was a half-full glass of juice and seeing if he could add water to that in his Inventory, which failed.

Finally, he tested if he could move liquid from a closed container inside his Inventory as well, specifically the bottle he had been conjuring Alchemist’s Fire into. Aside from a warning message that this liquid would ignite if removed outside a closed container, it worked.

Which prompted John to test what happened if he took out the now empty bottle, opened it and waited a bit. After ten seconds with no sign of small flames nor scent of burnt plastic, he concluded that doing this left no traces behind. Then he put the bottle back, and the Alchemist’s Fire back in the bottle.

With no further experiments left to do there, it was time to check on the lit candle. It still said ‘Lit Candle’ in his Inventory, with the same remaining burn time. When he took it out, it was indeed still lit, and still burned to just at the top of the marker line. ‘Seems like the stuff in my Inventory is basically in stasis.