Soul Merger

Fortunately for Alissa's sense of smell Fili had been satisfied with a simple gutting and general inspection before pushing most of the creature back into the lake. None of them were really good at enchanting, so they had no idea what parts of the beast were useful. Rosalina thought the teeth could at least be used for scrimshaw, so they'd grabbed a few of the massive needle shaped fangs. But that was it.

After that they cleaned up in the parts of the lake not filled with monster guts, then walked away from the water, blood, and stink. Clara looked around a clearing at the forest edge. "Good ground here I think."

Fili nodded. "I can set up the fort. Everyone gather close."

Their group moved together, Alissa making sure not to bump into Fili, while the mage readied her staff. The fortress chip looked strange. A clunky slab that jutted out of the spell bank, unlike the small unobtrusive chips other spells used. Still Fili didn't seem concerned. She closed her eyes and planted the staff in the ground. "Instant Fort."

Alissa swayed as a tremor rippled through the earth. With a grinding of stone a near rectangle of rock and earth punched out of the ground ten feet into the air. Loose earth tumbled down from the tops, but in general the barriers looked fairly solid. There was a slight bulb in the furthest corner with a hole. Probably a privy. There was no door in or out however.

"Not the fanciest setup, but pretty impressive," Alissa said. "Suppose I should get a fire going." She broke out their wood and a firestone, letting the magically infused item trigger and start the blaze.

Kotori poked at the walls. "How thick are these?"

"Six inches," Fili replied. "They're mostly a deterrent. We'll still need to keep watch. But there's no chance of a random goblin arrow killing anyone this way."

"Six inches of rock seems fairly strong for a wall," Akari pointed out. "I doubt anything can punch through it easily. We had to settle for ofuda wards."

Fili nodded. "True, but there's a number of burrowing or flying creatures that could bypass things. Not to mention things that can melt stone or otherwise cheat. Still this is the best fortress design as per a study of one thousand wilderness excursions." The mage paused then hid in her cloak a little more when she realized she'd been lecturing, so Alissa gave her a pat on the shoulder.

Clara pulled the cooking pot out of her pack. "I'm actually curious why the chip's so weird. Why's it need the extra space and everything?"

"Oh, that's because this is a full program chip." Fili removed it and showed it to the group before placing it into her pack carefully. "There's no variables in the spell. Everything is laid out. It uses the caster as the point of origin, so I didn't even need to target it. That's what makes it so simple to cast, and require so little mana. It would be much harder to throw up stone walls myself."

Rosalina peered over at the thing. "My. That's a lot of work for such a small chip. No wonder these aren't common. Usually when I spend several hundred crowns I expect something a little more fun."

Fili shrugged. "They keep trying to make other spells work with it. Like the Flamethrower spell. But it's always cheaper to find an alternative."

"It is still impressive though," Raiel said stretching her wings. "I've heard that this world has the most unique artificers ever seen. At least from one of the few angels that has been to multiple worlds."

"How so?" Akari asked as she worked with Clara to add ingredients to the pot. "I imagine all functional civilizations include some artifice."

"You seek items that can be mass produced," Raiel said. "Artificers in my world, and in many others apparently, sought to forge unique items of incredible power. You instead aim for items that can be used by as many people as possible. Not that uniqueness isn't encouraged, but your masters generally would not sacrifice a full decade to a single blade."

Akari blinked. "My, that does seem excessive, even to someone whose land takes great pride in our swords."

"A decade? Wow, that is crazy. And I thought the humans here cared too much about stuff," Kotori shook her feathers. "Must come from having opposable thumbs. Gives weird ideas."

Alissa couldn't help but snicker at that, along with the others. "You took to clothes quickly enough."

"They have ups and downs," Kotori replied. "At least I can skip the lame stuff like boots."

"Speaking of great artificer inventions," Clara said as she added the lid to the pot. "Rosalina grab that fancy timekeeping thing you picked up and give me fifteen minutes. That should get the meat and hardtack to something edible."

Rosalina pulled out the small clockwork alarm and started winding it. "But of course."

Alissa settled her bedroll to make a good seat and plopped down next to where Fili was scribbling away in her notes again. When the woman looked up, she waved it off. "Don't mind me. I'm just gonna look over your shoulder." She grinned. "Since you want me paying more attention to monster stuff."

"Oh! Um-" Fili looked embarrassed again, and Alissa got a faint scent of strawberry. "Well this is me working on that thing we fought. So I don't know if it'll be all that useful. Most is pure speculation. After all, we've never seen a monster like that before!"

Alissa nodded. "So, how do you make an entry on it? I figure that has to happen a lot."

"Not as often as you'd think. Remember people have been working on these since the Fall. Completely unique monsters are rare." Fili pointed at a few names scribbled to the side. "For example I think I've heard something called a Nessie or a Plesiosaurus that had similar features, but we don't have enough details to make even a theoretical entry on either. Now that I've seen it personally we can review the older data to see if its the same species or something different. Or if we're still missing data."

"I see." It did make some sense to Alissa. Obviously it took a number of fights to get complete information on a monster. For some rarer specimens there just hadn't been enough encounters. "What do you do after that?"

Fili tapped the section that had physical traits. "We search local legends for information on the creature. See if we can find a story that matches. That's usually more important for merge data. Like we've never heard of anyone merging with a yuki-onna, but there's a story from the East about someone who had that happen."

"Hm, looks like a lot of work. A little like hammering out what investment to make in a season." Alissa considered it. "So why isn't this being handled by the Tower? It seems like it'd be easier for people with large libraries to find the research materials. This is a lot for a small group of hobbyists."

The long suffering sigh gave Alissa some of her answers. "The Towers are terrible at sharing information outside of their internal circles. Like say the whole 'merges raise the ambient mana' detail that really could have been useful to know!" Fili grimaced and made a few notes. "So delvers, the people who actually find monsters, don't exactly run off to tell the Tower about new finds or strategies."

"Aha. So mutual dislike," Alissa gave Fili a reassuring pat. She'd heard many a complaint from her father and aunt about groups that couldn't work together for stupid reasons. It shouldn't be too surprising to run into the issue again outside of trading.

"Um, actually-" Alissa looked over to find Fili looking at her. "I wanted to ask about that technique you did. It was really impressive, but also kinda worrying. It didn't look like anything you've practiced before. And well-"

Alissa gave a sour grimace. "The last time I used a technique out of nowhere I messed myself up?" Fili nodded. "Yeah. Understandable."

She chewed her lip a bit as she thought about how to explain. "It was a little dangerous, but I think I figured out enough of the specifics. Ibaraki kinda hit the heart of it. Techniques work better if I'm doing succubus like things."

"You hate succubus like things," Fili pointed out.

"Yeah. Most things." Alissa tugged on her cloak a bit. "But I've never hated the body. I'm fine with being sexy. I think on some level I enjoy it."

Fili considered that quietly for a moment. "You just hate people staring at you?"

Alissa took a deep breath. "A little. But I think I mostly hate the fact this merge forces people to stare. On some level they aren't even staring at my boobs, they're just being mind controlled to look in my direction. And that's bullshit."

"Hm, that makes sense." Fili looked back into the fire. After a few second a weak smile flitted over her face. "Does that mean you forgive me for staring at your boobs when we first met?"

Alissa blinked, then laughed. She wasn't used to those jokes from Fili. "Sure. So long as you forgive me for not finishing your monsterpedia yet."

The mage made a show of thinking hard. "Well, I suppose that's fair. Deal."

A ringing from Rosalina's clock drew their attention to the cooking fire. Clara popped off the lid and started working to separate out the water and the softened ingerdients. "Right. Dinner in a few. Get me some onions and carrots would ya?"

Alissa grabbed the vegetables out of her own pack and tossed them over. The night had become darker and much colder, so a hot meal would be a great improvement.