The Magicist gives a shrug.

Magicist: "Not my field, sorry. Heartstones are actually made in the building I just mentioned, so you could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak."

You exit the building and head back to Luttiim, since it's on the way to Vranhal. The afternoon sun is bright, and you can feel an occasional rumble reminding you of the disaster occurring to the east.

Luttiim at least looks okay. Chirop are up and about, a bit in panic, maybe not okay.

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Magicist: "The Mother Incubator has all the life support needed to keep Base 2 alive and healthy, and has a telepathic link to a probe in a library. Each Focus Module holds a specific fragment of a spirit, no consciousness, that was produced from the Multiplier. The Multiplier is another big machine, it causes a female's spirit to produce child spirits. The early ones produced entire child spirits, our current one only produces the bits that have the magic capability. Those fragments are loaded into Focus Modules.

The Mother Incubator can then merge the fragment with the Mother, Base 2. It doesn't work very well on anyone else. Like I said earlier, Base 2 has unique properties that make this operation possible. Some of the other magicists here gave her the nickname Pseudo-Witch in reference to her monstrous magic adaptation, but don't be alarmed by the name, she is a human."


Vandolf: "Torture, huh...

John, I'm going to head back, but I need to talk to you back at Vranhal later. Good luck."

He leaves the room and heads down the hallway, towards the stairs.

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The three of you push the engine towards the Farmer's buildings a bit more north, into the one where the mill is contained.

It's a simple mill - about the size of a large well, you push a thing and it pushes a wheel that grinds stuff.

It takes a bit of work and some witch-metal gears, but you and Tabi rig the engine to the mill while the farmer fills the tank with water from a nearby pond and brings over a load of firewood.

After a few minutes of lighting a fire and letting the tank heat up, the drive shaft starts spinning freely, picking up speed until it's moving at a decent pace. Flipping a switch, a large gear connects the drive shaft to the mill's rotational pole, and the mill begins, well, milling.

Farmer: "Amazing. Here, lemme grab some wheat, you can get the milled wheat that comes out."

Barrels of wheat grain are poured into the mill, ground into powder, and then collected in the same barrels, and soon you have ten full barrels of wheat flour.

Tabi: "This should last a good amount of time. Thanks for the flour!"

Farmer: "And thanks for the engine! Oh, and you might want these, too."

She hands you a burlap sack, and opening it up you find it's full of jars.

Farmer: "Can't really make bread without yeast."

You head east, sticking to the north edge of the road. Not that it matters a whole lot when the roas is what, ten feet wide?

It doesn't take long for you to reach Teleiat, which looks desserted.

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Magicist: "Corruption is a bit of an ambiguous term. Common people think of it as some viral infection of magic, while those who study magic define corruption as a random alteration to a magic sequence.

Goal-directed sequence alteration is called that - Alteration.

Witches have powerful magic alteration, but their remains often emit a great deal of corruption with some minor alteration. Leads to some very strange and dangerous effects.

Alku possesses Alteration capabilities similar to a witch. Apparently she was discovered by a witch-hunting team because she was causing a ruckus hijacking and altering constructs. One thing lead to another, and she ended up volunteering as our Base 2."


Magicist: "It looks like you have a Heartstone. As for the spirits, they can be extracted if you like."

Wait what

I want to stay in a body don't extract me

Whelp should've seen this coming. It's been short but fun, guys.

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Horoma: "I guess healing can't make it get any worse than it'll alteady be. Sure, heal me up."

Grant: I highly advise taking her to see a bio mage, not a light-based healer like myself.

Magicist: "Originally it seemed to be out of her control, and mostly activated as a defence mechanism. She described how once when she was being chased by breeders, she ended up cornered and instinctively let out a pulse of corruption. The breeders were, of course, killed.

She also naturally resists foreign corruption and alteration.

After a bit of time, she learned to control her ability to the point where she could manipulate artificial matter on command, break down or alter cast spells, and leave fields of alteration or corruption.

We originally thought she might be a Fourth-tier mage, but all of her abilities can be done by Third-tier magic, she's just a naturalist at it. Also, she can't perform negation."


Magicist: "Yes, just a lot more difficult to get the binding to work. Much easier when the spirit is in the weak early process of binding like when a baby is formed, or if the spirit lacks a good connection to a body. Dead."