The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith (43 page)

“
Dariel actually
requested to meet her, after I summoned her for the fight with the
wolfman.”

Denise nodded to accept
that. “I understand. Then you’ll have all your women in
one place.”

I tilted my head back and
laughed. “Totally not what I had in mind. It’d be nice if
they could join us for a dungeon hunt, but it’s understandable
because they both have responsibilities to their people.”

“
Thinking about
expanding our group again?”

“
A bit, yeah.
Recently, we hit another benchmark in power. I haven’t had the
chance to fill you in on it yet, but you got quite the interesting
ability yourself.”

“
Oh? Please, do
tell!”

“
Alright. Well, it
looks like both of us received something called a Hidden Power. Mine
is a large area spell that can deal immense damage. Your’s on
the other hand, is a further enhancement to your speed. According to
the window, you can focus your inner power to temporarily achieve
such insane speed that the world seems to freeze around you. You’ll
need to be careful though, it seems it will wear you out quickly.”

“
Ooh, that sounds
lovely. I take it your power is a cheat like with the rest of you,
and has a low cost?”

“
Actually, it
consumes every ounce of magic I have, and requires a long chant to
activate.”

“
Ah… that
does sound bad.”

“
Of course, I
recover my magic really quickly. A good ten seconds after the spell
and I should be good to use my normal combat magic again.”

“
... Such a cheat.”

“
Maybe. But you can
tell from the two of us that we’re lacking something as a
team.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Well, we have a
mage and an archer, but really both of us are easy to take down if we
get hit. It would be nice if we found a warrior that could accompany
us.”

“
Do.. do you need me
to learn that role?” Denise asked, looking down to the floor. I
smiled and shook my head, bringing a hand up to pat the top of her
head.

“
Remember, I said
when we were deciding what role you would play that you don’t
have the build for that kind of warrior. The issue is that we’ll
need to get someone from this side. A foreigner wouldn’t be
able to match our schedule and would end up slowing us down too
much.”

“
Right. So, why is
that a problem?”

“
Well, look at it
this way. You remember how I told Kev that rank thirty was the
equivalent of a master rank?”

“
Yeah?”

“
Well, the two of us
are in total over level one hundred. In order to find someone on par
with us, we’d need a master of several fields, or someone with
a lot of different skills like you have.”

“
I understand. So,
we can’t ask just anyone, right?”

“
Exactly. I don’t
know if they’d get a sudden boost of power for joining up with
us, but there’s a chance that if we take on someone weaker than
us they’ll always stay weaker.”

“
Right, I get it.”

“
Speaking of,
where’s Midnight?”

Denise smiled to me. “I
let him rest on one of the lower decks. He said that he didn’t
like the sea very much.”

“
That’s fine.
It might have freaked Kev out that we could talk to a horse anyways.”
I smiled back to her. “I’m going to finish touring the
ship. I haven’t had the chance to look around since they
installed the equipment, and I want to see if I can use my special
magic on the cannonballs.”

As I turned to walk off,
Denise started laughing. “Cheat character, making this into a
cheat ship!”

I couldn’t help but
grin. That’s exactly what I planned to do, basically. I had
already confirmed a few things about this ship in regards to my
ability. First, the entire ship was treated as a single object.
Second, I couldn’t adjust the speed of the ship, as that relies
entirely on its structure. Since my Customize spell doesn’t
allow me to change more than the most general of shapes, there’s
nothing I can do about that. The only thing I really can change is
the color of the ship. But, turning my ship blue in front of everyone
would be a bad idea.

Finally, I learned that
the enchanted objects on the ship, such as the cannons and detection
crystals, are all treated as separate objects. So, even though I
can’t make my ship go faster, there is no reason why I can’t
make it stronger. With that thought in mind, I began my tour of the
ship’s artillery.

The cannons of the ship
were lined up on two decks. Each deck had twelve cannons on each
side. Out of all of that, there were 24-pounder long guns. On the
main deck of the ship were another twelve cannons on each side. These
were shorter barrel cannons, identified as a carronade 24-pounder.
Unlike the cannons on the lower decks that were tied to the wall with
ropes and mounted on a carriage, these were mounted on a slide that
allowed them to be turned inwards when they weren’t in use.

Finally, the ammunition.
Next to each of the long guns was a box of 24-pound black balls.
Hence, the cannons being classified as 24-pounders. The carronades
had similar storage units, but they were kept nearer to the center of
the ship, next to the entrance to the lower decks in a large crate.

The range of the long guns
was just over one kilometer, but at that range the penetration power
would be significantly reduced under normal circumstances. I’m
not much for normal circumstances, though. With a grin, I set about
changing roughly half of the cannonballs. Most of them I turned into
Lightning Shots, covering them in the runes for Shock Bolt. That
should increase their range and penetration power. Others, I changed
into Flame Shots, using the Fireball runes. That should make a good
explosive shell.

Thankfully, I was able to
use my Customize spell for this, because I don’t think I would
have been able to carve the runes into the iron balls by hand. If all
works out like I imagined, I should be able to aim the cannons like I
aimed the bow, and fire the spelled shots the same way. Of course,
there was no way to test this without getting in an actual battle.

Is it sad that I was now
hoping to run into pirates or a sea monster?
Come
on out, bad guys! I have a new toy, and I want to play!

Chapter
20

After confirming and
modifying the artillery, I went to work on what I promised Kev.
That’s right, it was finally time to get started on my
enchanting. About time, if you ask me. I pulled out a few copper
coins to use as my test dummies, and then opened up my skill window
to figure out just how the enchanting process worked.

First, the rune
inscription. This was commonly used because it allowed people to
easily identify an enchanted item. Second was aura inscription.
Essentially, this would let you capture a spell as you cast it, and
trap it in the item you want to enchant.

Typically, enchanted items
were only usable once. The exception to this rule were items that
contained materials especially good at storing mana. Such as my
staff, which I suspected to be made of Mana Wood, and likely had a
core of granite or something that would help store energy. Items like
that were able to recharge by absorbing the ambient mana around them.

Well, it’s not like
I want him to be calling me all the time, so I won’t bother
working on a storage unit for recharging mana. Next, after you
enchant an item, you designate a method of activating it. You could
consider this an entirely separate enchantment in a way. First you
place the magic in the object, then you make something that lets you
access it.

When designating the
activation method, you could use either a command word or action, or
require that mana be applied to the item. The latter method also
allows for inscription enchantments to be used repeatedly, as they
wouldn’t fade like an aura after use. Kev can’t use mana,
though. That means that I’ll go with an aura inscription and a
command word.

Another thing required for
enchanting was a diagram. This was needed to create any enchantments
aside from basic inscriptions, so it was also needed in order to
apply the activation method. Thankfully, the tutorial showed a basic
enchanting diagram that I quickly copied onto a piece of paper.

Okay, so, do I need the
incantation or not? I’ll assume not for now, because he isn’t
going to be using the announce or dimensional features of the spell.
I put one of the copper coins onto the paper, and my hand over the
coin. Focusing, I concentrated on the individual runes for the
Message spell, as if I was going to cast it. Then, I let my mana pour
down into the diagram on the paper and fill the coin.

“
Okay… step
one complete, I think…” I looked down to the paper, and
the diagram was glowing steadily. “Now, for the activation
conditions.” I put my index finger on the coin and closed my
eyes. Using my mana to paint the picture, I imagined myself picking
up the coin and reciting the word ‘Message’. Then, it was
as if I folded up the entire scene into a ball and threw it into the
coin. When I opened my eyes this time, the diagram was no longer
glowing. But now, the coin itself had a faint glow to it.

I sent a quick Message to
Denise to call her down, and when she arrived I tossed the coin to
her. “Mind testing that out for me? Won’t do any good if
I try it myself.”

“
Uhm.. okay…
what is it and how?” Denise looked curiously down to the
glowing coin in her hand.

“
I call it a Call
Token. Basically, just hold the coin up and say Message, followed by
who you want to call. It should activate the spell in the coin like
when I cast the spell myself.”

“
Huh, neat. Alright…
uh… let’s see.” She held the coin up, and closed
her eyes. “Message, Dariel.” She waited for a few moments
and the light from the coin faded away. I was just about to assume
that it had failed when she suddenly jumped in surprise. “Huh?
Woah.. weird. Uh, sorry. Denise here. Jin gave me this coin and said
to call someone… guess he’s finally figured out
enchanting. Yeah, I’ll tell him.”

Suddenly, she was looking
to me and smirking. Why did I feel like I was back in my world
watching someone talk on a cell phone? “Thanks, you too. Talk
to you later. Yeah, he told me. Bye.” Denise giggled slightly
and looked at me. “She said to tell you it’s about time.”

“
Of course she did.
But at least we know the coins work. I can make a couple to send with
Kev, and see about making some more complicated items for our own
use.”

“
Saving the best for
us, huh?”

I smiled to her. “Of
course. Once I get good at this, I should be able to make some pretty
interesting items.”

“
I’ll look
forward to it.” She smiled and went to lay down on the bed. I
made sure the ship was firmly on auto-pilot and joined her.

The next day, Kev returned
to check on our progress, and I gave him two of the completed Call
Tokens. Since we still had over a full day of sailing yet, he didn’t
really feel the need to stick around the entire time. Unlike with the
merchant caravan he had traveled with, he had neither the need nor
ability to protect us if something bad happened.

Well, that’s all
the better, I suppose. Won’t have to hold back with him gone.
It would be troublesome if he found out about our true abilities,
with his connections to that information network. Surely people would
be swarming just like they had the other mage. He did, however, tell
us that he passed along the information about what was required to
graduate from the Mages’ College.

As a result, several
people apparently quit their attempts to graduate immediately, and
were instead determined to just learn the bare necessity to make
their own magic classes.
Can they really call
themselves mages if they settle for the bare necessity?
I shook my head at the thought.

It wasn’t until
later, a few hours after Kev logged back out, that we had our first
encounter on the high seas. Off in the horizon, I could see two large
ships ahead of us. They were still too far to register on the
detection crystal, but once I activated my Scan spell, it was clear
what their purpose was.

“
Denise!” I
called out to her, as she was sitting in the cabin after having been
on watch for a while.

“
Huh? What?”
She slowly came out and looked to me.

“
Black sails and
cross bones. You’re about to tell me that they mean the same
thing here as they do in my world, right?” I pointed to the two
ships in the distance. Their sails looked little more than specks in
the distance to normal eyes, but I knew that Denise would be able to
make something out.

“
Pirates. We got
bloody pirates on our maiden voyage.” Denise shook her head and
sighed.

“
Thought so. Shall
we give them a warning?” I grinned a bit, thinking that this
was the perfect chance to test a few things.