Gestation, John Gold [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

idea for how to handle that problem, and a pack of sand dogs is exactly what I need. Where are my spikes?

Monster, Sand Dog, Level 244

After a quick battle, I stun and paralyze my victims. I’m never going to find five hundred of them here, not to mention twenty-five hundred, but I’m nothing if not patient. I can wait for my dozen to turn into a hundred. In the meantime, they can lie there paralyzed—we have lots of work ahead of us.

Back in Heron, when I was working with Claude, I found out that sand turns into glass when it reaches four hundred degrees. It takes me a few hours just to get the area ready for me to work. I’m a kid in the world’s largest sandbox! By the time I’m finished, I’m up to forty victims, and I haven’t even been the one doing the attacking. It’s all their fault for jumping me.

Now, I can use my ritual for sharing pain and health to boost my attributes. The first ten dogs will be perfect for that.

An enormous column of fire bursts from my palm and turns the sand into glass.

∞ ∞ ∞

Damage taken: 1135 (ignored: 152)

458831/461200

Resistance to fire: +0.01%

Thermal damage ignored up to 167/second

That’s not much. What if I try two streams?

∞ ∞ ∞

Damage taken: 2270 (ignored: 167)

457716/461200

It still isn’t that much. I need to try everything at once and see what I come up with.

This time, the flame isn’t orange; it’s a blinding white. I even hear a roar and get a debuff—I’m blinded. It feels like I could go up like paper in the face of the terrifying might springing out of my hands. Did I really do that?

∞ ∞ ∞

Damage taken: 12845 (ignored: 167)

446226/461200

Resistance to fire: +0.02%

Thermal damage ignored up to 221/second

In front of me, the melted sand has taken the shape of a cone. It hisses and crackles. It may not be more than fifteen meters long, but what an effect. If I took just 5% of the damage, the total was twenty times as much, or a quarter of a million. Shooting that at the sand dogs would have incinerated them and their loot. They only have 45000 health each.

But I’m getting distracted. I need to prepare the area, especially now that my fireworks have scared off everything in the vicinity.

It takes me two hours to collect my first experimental group made out of a hundred monsters. I should take a screenshot of me with a mountain of paralyzed bodies in the background. There are giant snakes, dogs, overgrown ants, and even something like sand fairies. Those last ones are what take the most time—they’re the only monsters who attack with magic, so I have to spend another six hours on them. But with my health boosted to half a million, it isn’t their lucky day.

Once the altar is in place on the red-hot glass, I start tracing the ritual seal. I actually have more victims than I need, so I use the first set to make a ring out of twilight iron. They are, incidentally, the most expensive items at the auction, already with gems set in them. They may not be mithril, but there’s a reason I learned how to reinforce metal in Heron. Everything’s been planned for a while now. All eight of the blanks spend a week boiling in my blood, right in the middle of the ritual seal using mana depositories. That’s what the remainder of the malachite is used for.

And now, it’s time to get to work on the most exciting part of my evening.

Monster-eater

Once upon a time, a famed killer lived in the world. His victims were all monsters in human skin: vampires, werewolves, witches, cannibals, and others. The killer himself came from a tribe where you eat your enemy to inherit their strength. Nobody could catch the killer, and the only trace he left was a ring. Nobody could understand if the killer was possessed and therefore eaten by his ring.

Effect:

Intellect +5

Wisdom +5

Morale +5

Stamina +5

Athleticism +5

Requirement: Scalable item

Durability: Indestructible, with damage to it taken out of the owner’s health

∞ ∞ ∞

It’s a good thing I boiled it in my blood. I got five effects and it isn’t even mithril. That’s some mastery for you! My mithril bars couldn’t match it. Of course, it’s nothing compared to what I made in Hell, and I can only imagine that the structure of the world order has something to do with why the bonuses I’ve been getting from rings are so much lower. There is some logic there, needless to say. What would I do with a scalable item that gives me +300 intellect before I’ve even reached Level 1? What I made with the pirates may have been unique, but it wasn’t scalable. Unique items give you a bigger bonus for your level, but their value drops precipitously if they’re low-level. It’s just a shame that my victims weren’t a bit stronger and that there weren’t more than the hundred and fifty or so that I had. I had to use a different seal to make sure they all fit. Anyway, I clear the loot and load up my cart. Anybody could be out wandering the desert.

Mornings are wonderful when you know that you’re going to be spending the day digging yourself an altar and collecting a bunch of monsters to use in your experiments. I have lots of things to do and the whole day ahead of me. I’m not in a hurry, either, and I can wait quite a while for another of those rings.

I prepare from morning till night, and I have to skip my experiments. I’m out of spikes. In the evenings, I smear a paralyzing poison on them and pile them up on the ritual seal. All I have are simple iron spikes with pieces of malachite forged into them. The paralysis rune draws energy from them when I use it.

With three hundred and thirty-two of the creatures gathered, it’s a shame they don’t