Once again thank you to all for the positive replies, they fuel my fingers to type some more. XaiGRS glad you like it! Also Zairyo I intend for Rudeus to remain anonymous as much as he can but he might play a few pranks on the prince for being an absolute piece of shit. 321jaz, I'm so happy about your responses and concerns. So far I have two new characters I will introduce, they will not be like in the DBZ universe where one OP character is introduced one after another, honestly so many anime have this issue, DBZ, Fairy Tail, Bleach, Seven Deadly Sins, as long as there is a number to their power level the anime will eventually get boring in my opinion. These characters that I will introduce will be on a similar power level to Rudeus, not necessarily world explosive, but they will be able to do OP things on a small scale. Many people in Rudeus's life thought his rock bullet was an emperor level of magic but he used such a small amount of mana to create them. Also Rudeus might create a transportable home or floating castle much like Perugius however that will be later on in the story. The new character I am creating and coming up with will have something much cooler than any floating castle though so I can't wait to see what you all think.
With that being said enjoy this next chapter.
Rudeus walked peacefully along the path, approaching the tree that him and Sylphy hung out at. He wanted to surprise her with his high-pitched voice using helium but knew she didn't really like surprises, if anything she would be incredibly concerned that his voice had all of a sudden changed. He had a high chance of meeting her if he continued to hang out at the tree overlooking the country side.
Right now, Rudeus was thinking back to the time he used to train in an effort to defeat Paul. The man himself was an absolute scum when it came to women but he still tried his best, plus Rudeus couldn't be mad at the man, after all Rudeus followed in Paul's footsteps even more and had gotten three wives. This wasn't by Rudeus's design it was just one mistake after another, like thinking Eris had ghosted him, that Sylphy was a boy named Fitz, and Roxy trying to sooth his pain and depression at the loss of family after the labyrinth incident. All of these were mistakes and Rudeus believed that had they been any other women they surely would have left him alone and in the dust.
'Still, what should I do this time around? All of my relationships were created by mistake.' Rudeus looked at his hands and chuckled to himself. 'I guess that's life, huh, you never know when it will happen.'
Sylphy walked up along the hillside and they practiced wind magic together. They leaped back and forth as they shifted side to side using the wind as their ally, increasing their movement speed. Sylphy still had to use incantations but she was getting better. On the subject of magic Rudeus originally thought that mana was expelled from the fingertips but later on he found it could be expelled from any part of the body. Pores in the body radiated mana when Rudeus focused, perhaps this was a way to create a battle aura. Fingertips were still the exit point for the most amount of mana but pores on the skin also leaked energy.
The next phase to wind magic was jumping up in the air. Rudeus took a running start and leaped upwards, seeming to fly for a brief moment. Sylphy was utterly amazed at the display and Rudeus gave a faint blush at her appraisal. She tried it next and it was a success. Next they would pair fire with wind magic to go even higher. But to do this Sylphy first had to learn silent spell casting.
For whatever reason she couldn't do it. Then Rudeus remembered what Roxy had told him.
'Normally a teacher will give a wand or staff to their students to learn what it feels like to use elementary magic and then remove the said staff or wand when told to replicated the spell.' Roxy said in his mind.
So a staff or wand in this case would be like training wheels.
"That's enough Sylphy, you are doing great but you look tired."
"No Rudi I'm good! I think I almost got it." Sylphy said as she continued to try and summon a water ball without talking.
"Well I have an idea. It can help you learn how to cast silent magic, and more than that it can make your magic allot stronger. Please Sylphy, your efforts are amazing but I think we should play another game for now." Rudeus said.
She lowered her head in disappointment, her ears drooping, but Rudeus patted her head trying to comfort her.
'She is like an adorable puppy.' He thought laughing to himself.
They played some more games and once they were out of breath from running Sylphy went home. Rudeus had allot of time to spare because they stopped their playtime early. Since that was the case Rudeus would start work on his present for Sylphy.
A new wand just for her.
It would look like the wand that Rudeus had received. He knew how to make wands in his previous life, he made them for his children when they were learning magic and he got pretty good at it too. The hardest part was the gem.
Rudeus went down to a riverbed and picked up a small stone. An incantation was used to create a normal looking stone into a magical gem, they were difficult incantations and not everyone could do them but Rudeus could create as many as he wanted. The more mana that was put into it the stronger the stone would become and eventually it would turn the color that the user desired, in some cases it would be a reflection of the soul of the creator and it would change color depending on the users emotion.
The boy spun the small stone around and around until it glowed bright red from the force being applied. He then compacted the stone until it crystalized, then he expanded it until it formed the shape and smoothness he wanted. Next he polished it. The stone was now complete.
Out of curiosity he touched it for a brief second and it glowed, making the same high pitched noise that he had heard before with the wand that he had destroyed. At least this way Rudeus knew it was good.
'What was that saying….. can god create something he can't destroy?' Rudeus thought. Well he wasn't a god by any means necessary and he would never call himself one but it was a quote that fit the situation.
The next step was creating the base of the wand. The top part that would hold the gem was made of metal which would encase it, then the handle was made from carved oak which Rudeus stained a dark mahogany color. To make this an above average wand Rudeus planted several enchantments composed of magic circles into the wand that were hidden beneath the surface and directly inside the wood. Most of this was detection magic, such as when monsters were with a 100 meter radius the wand would glow a light blue.
'I feel like if a certain short person wearing no shoes trying to throw a ring into a volcano saw this he would sue my ass off?' Rudeus thought.
The next was if the wand was pointed at a poisoned item or food it would glow a lime green. If the wand was waved in a square like motion going from corner to corner to the ends of the room then it would glow pink if the room was clear, it would blink red if the room was not and was occupied by someone in hiding, this spell could be done on unopened doors as well so the user didn't have to go into the room to inspect if it was clear. Each of these circles were so small they could only be seen by a microscope but hundreds of them were etched together in an intricate pattern.
However the final and most important piece was inside the wooden part of the wand. The inside had a sliver carved out of it, the part that was carved out stored two condensed rolls of paper and a summoning circle in it. If the wand detected that the user was in life threatening conditions then it would deploy a healing circle on the owner of the wand, while at the same time summoning Hollow, at the cost of destroying the wand. By this point in Rudeus's mana capacity he could expand it over an entire continent so if Rudeus kept growing soon it would be possible to connect to Hollow anywhere in the world. He had some dangerous ideas on how Hollow could actually be active full time without the use of Rudeus expanding his mana but that would have to wait.
Chemistry had also progressed to a point that Rudeus could turn air into a liquid which was both thrilling and terrifying. Chemistry had another factor in it according to the book. Heat was just the movement of atoms and if enough heat was applied flames would be produced in something that was combustible. There was no limit to heat, it could just get hotter and hotter, cold on the other hand was a different story. There was in fact no such thing as the term cold when it came to chemistry, just the absence of heat. And so if an atom was slowed down enough then it would alter the behavior of its physical properties. Water could easily become a liquid, gas, or a solid regularly such as clouds, rain, or snow. But oxygen itself when brought to a temperature close to -273.5 on the Celsius scale would begin to liquify.
Thank goodness Rudeus didn't have a candle nearby. If he did he would be dead. Liquid Oxygen was highly flammable as it worked as a great fuel source. If it was controlled it could be used with Acetylene welding, the book pointed this out as a practical application for uses of liquified or condensed Oxygen.
If the Oxygen was in a pressurized insolated container it would be stable and could be stored away for future use. If he wanted to do that Rudeus would have to learn how to make pressurized welding tanks. It's not like he needed to learn how to do welding, he could do that just by vibrating two pieces of metal together really fast making the atoms forge a bond between them and making it a perfect fusion. This method actually existed in his first life too, it was called friction welding. Still it was fun to learn how to do something a little more complicated than rubbing two pieces of metal together.
On a different note, copper was a good conductor of magical circles and when mixed with Rudeus's blood it formed a stable bond of magical properties. He had tried different ratios of blood and copper mixture, finding that a 10:1 ratio produced the best results. While allot less powerful than a circle made of pure blood is didn't break or crack when preforming a spell. Rudeus would have to implement this into the 200 pages, unfortunately this involved changing out all the 200 pages. Still it was something he would have to do eventually, either he replaced the circles now or he would have to rewrite them all later once the stack of paper had been used too much and began to tear.
He put the 200 pages on hold and instead drew up a design.
This would be the largest room in the cave system so far. The room itself was a long distance from the rest of the cave, a long, dark hallway connecting the room to the rest of the house. The room would be shaped like a sphere with the entrance being in the outer edge or the equator of the sphere. It would be 5000 square meters, and would be the size of a large warehouse. The walls blueprint was to be an intricate pattern of large gears, cogs, hydraulics, and magically powered motors that would give the observer of the room an impression that they were inside a large spherical clocktower. 12 mechanical robotic arms would be built and would all be on an x, y railway system going around the circumference of the sphere. They would be able to retrieve thousands upon thousands of copper blood magical circles stored and organized in alphabetical order, these robotic arms would have the purpose much like a classical jukebox player, retrieving a record to be played and a song to be heard.
Instead of a record being played it would lay many magical circles on top of the already premade 100 page stack that would be laying down in the center of the room. The entire purpose of the room was to change the search results to fit what the user desired, wither they wanted to summon a seedless water melon, or if they wanted to summon something a little more complicated such as a piece of technology like a cellphone. Rudeus would then work on more complicated magical circles that would summon living animals, but that was an entirely different subject matter.
Once he was confident that the objects he desired could be summoned he would add another 100 pages that wouldn't be used by the mechanical arms, instead when the middle pages had been laid down he would put the remaining stack on top of it. The reason for this final stack was that it would stop the summoning 1/2 way through the transportation and would make a perfect copy of the object being summoned.
It still would feel wrong for Rudeus to be essentially stealing something that wasn't his to begin with and he didn't want to steal someone's computer or expensive item by mistake. So this would copy everything about the object and replicated it.
The project alone would take years but Rudeus would continue to summon more books and consume more knowledge while at the same time expelling all his energy to summon said objects. He was confident his capacity would continue to grow. Essentially Rudeus was going to be building a computer that could reach between worlds and copy them into his own.
The other project was finding a way to store his energy safely without destroying himself. So far he was thinking of a storage room that would be directly linked to a ring he could wear on his finger. The room would contain hundreds of thousands of gems that Rudeus would create by the riverbed much like how he did with Sylphy's wand. But on a much broader scale. There he would put allot of his energy into said gems until he felt he was no longer about to explode with the amount of energy.
This concept was similar to a room full of computer servers, storing vast amounts of data as the human race continued to create, store, and use said data, ever expanding and never ending. Then when newer efficient methods of data storage were found Rudeus would create newer server rooms to store even more magic in the same given area of space. If this storage room ever ruptured Rudeus would have safeguards in place to keep the world from ending in an explosion caused by the pollution of the pure mana.
Rudeus finished a portion of his blueprints. Honestly the only a small portion of his time was spent making concepts for the magical teleportation clock room. The rest of the time he was in the cave he just wrote down in his journal on future ideas for the floorplan of his lab away from home. Sylphy's wand was the hardest to make but it had only taken a few hours or so. Since he could manipulate objects with precision carving magical circles into something was child's play.
He stored the wand in a wooden case so Rudeus didn't directly come into contact with the wand. He would give it to her tomorrow underneath the tree they hung out at.
The boy made it back home by the time he promised, it was almost dark but not quite. Zenith was waiting for him and she smiled when she saw him, taking her son inside to wash up and have a dinner that Lilia had helped prepare.
Nighttime came and Rudeus read through more on the chemistry book. Chemistry could be used to alter, purify, morph, or change the physical properties of anything. In his first life learning about chemistry was boring since he was just learning about it. But now Rudeus could use and practice chemistry in this life and apply it using magic without the need for large amounts of steps that would normally be required. Every page of the book opened up a new world of possibility and use for his abilities.
He continued to practice them until once again, and just like all the thousands of days he had been here in his third life, he collapsed into unconsciousness.
The next morning Rudeus continued his training with his father outside. He had decades of basic sword training behind him so his fathers movements were predictable but Rudeus never pushed in to finish the fight, always letting his father parry, deflect or dodge. After a while Paul started to notice this.
"Why don't you press in to finish the sparring Rudeus? you seem to hold yourself back." Paul said, he was a bit concerned his son was going easy on him.
"I just don't want the sparring to end dad. After all it's allot of fun training with you." Rudeus said as he continued to swing and sweat dripped down from his eyebrows and chin as he panted.
Truth be told he was enjoying the moment with his father, trying to remember the time of when he first started to spar with his father out in the yard. A feeling of nostalgia flooded his heart. This experience was allot like the feelings he had when he first started his second life, a chance for redemption but also the feeling that life was easy going and more like an RPG game.
"Don't go easy on me son, I can take it." Paul said sternly. He didn't want his son to stunt his growth for one second, at least that was what he was thinking.
Rudeus hesitated for a second, then he closed his eyes and nodded. Opening his eyes, he stood in a defensive stance. Paul would do the first strike.
He leapt forward using water god style to launch himself as the ground beneath him pushed him forward. He did a sideways slash at Rudeus's ribcage but Rudeus didn't block. Instead he closed the distance between him and his father.
The end of a swords blade had the most force behind it. The most speed, and the best chance of doing damage against an opponent. Much like how a baseball player would always try to hit the ball at the end of the bat to achieve a home run.
Rudeus on the other hand thought of a sword much like a fist only with a longer extension, reach, and sharpness. If the fist was stopped from moving in the first place then the fist itself would do little to no damage other than applying an opposing force with no momentum.
Paul was caught off guard by the boys movements. He thought he was about to be tackled at first by Rudeus because he closed the distance so quickly but instead Rudeus hit Paul with the pummel of his wooden sword right in the diaphragm, the muscle responsible for controlling the intake and exhale of air from the lungs.
The sudden shock to that area of the muscle caused the man's lungs to stop working for a brief moment, kind of like getting a hiccup in the worst way possible. Paul fell down gasping for air, it was Rudeus's win.
Rudeus patted Paul on the back trying to help with his recovery. It wouldn't take long but it was still enough of injury to temporarily cripple anyone.
"Where did you learn that?" Paul asked still gasping for air, thinking his son had some secret trainer or something like that.
"No one taught me. I normally dodge or block your movements so if I did something my dad wouldn't expect then the sparring match would yield to my advantage." This was true. Rudeus had to learn this on his own in his numerous training lessons and practice with Eris. She was an aggressive fighter too and when he performed that same move on her she was almost caught off guard at first. Later their skills with the sword greatly divided and he never won a match against her again.
Eris, the thought alone made him happy and scared at the same time. She was the very definition of a Tsundere, the biggest difference between her and most Tsundere characters was that she actually took the initiative when she finally acknowledged her feelings toward Rudeus. Before they got to that point though numerous fractures and bruises were waiting to happen in the near future for Rudeus. He wondered if he could improve his healing magic in this life too, he would definitely have allot of practice and opportunities to work on it since he would become a human punching bag.
Paul looked down in a moment of weakness, his pride damaged. After a moment of reflection he got up and beamed at his son. He was still so young and he had caught Paul off guard enough to actually win in a fight. But he wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. If Rudeus attempted that move again he would be prepared.
Hugging his son they went inside for some morning breakfast. Paul later on had to do some routine monster hunting around the perimeter of the valley he protected. Paul did this every month and depending on the amount of monsters it normally took him a day or two to return home, however if it was badly infested it could take a week. Still Rudeus saw to that with Hollow.
Hollow had cleared out most of the forest already leaving some of the weaker monsters in the forest so Paul wouldn't let his guard down. Monsters were a result of mana corrupting an animal's body, in other cases monsters were created from a failed magical experiment, the result of this were monsters that were abnormally powerful since usually advanced sorcerers attempted such mutations but failed at the experiment. In many other situations monsters were just large predatory animals to begin with that were not afraid to attack people.
Mana pollution was the reason why so many strong monsters existed in the demon continent. They were the byproduct of the war that was waged between the demon god Laplace and the armored dragon king Perugius. Even after 400 years of that war happening the land would take many more centuries to fully recover.
Rudeus would have to conduct some experiments on monsters once his schedule was freed up after the magical teleportation event was stopped.
'Should I say if I stop the teleportation event, or I will? I shouldn't be cocky but yet I should be direct in my actions to stop the event….. ahh this is so frustrating to think about.' Rudeus thought to himself as he took an angry bite out of his bacon. Looking out thought the window leaves began to fall. They were already starting to change color and the weaker leaves on trees were already beginning to flutter down onto the ground.
'Winter will be approaching soon, and next year around the same time in the winter we will have to have that emergency family meeting.' Paul was going to cheat on Zenith with Lilia.
It was difficult for a maid to bear hearing the moans of a husband and wife within the hollow walls of the modestly sized home. Rudeus had caught Roxy outside the hallway fantasizing while Paul and Zenith were going at it in their bedroom so he couldn't blame Lilia for being pent up too.
'Why is everyone in this world so horny!? Was it like this in mid-evil times on earth? Constantly fucking without discretion?' Rudeus humorously thought. 'No no, maybe religion got in the way of how men and women truly want to act around each other, that or maybe the people of this world just have a higher sex drive.'
Rudeus left the house looking up at the sky. Bringing his gift for Sylphy along with him as well as the magical incantation book. They would continue to practice.
"Hey Rudi!" Sylphy said waving in the distance standing next to their favorite tree.
Rudeus broke into a run of excitement.
"Sylphy!" Good grief, this was like the cheesy beginning of a romance novel.
The boy hugged the girl and she blushed with surprise but before she could say anything Rudeus handed her the box.
"What is this Rudi?" She said putting on a puzzled expression.
"It's a gift, I hope you like it Sylphy." Rudeus said smiling back at her.
She opened it and held a hand to her mouth in surprise. She fought back tears but it was no use as she reciprocated Rudeus's hug with one of her own thanking him for his gift without having to say any words.
"Thank you Rudi! Thank you…. I'm so, so." But Sylphy couldn't speak another word as she continued to cry. No one in her life had given her a gift like this so she just continued to sob and embrace the boy. He patted her head as they continued to embrace each other. It was innocence at its best.
"I'm glad you like it Sylphy. I also put some cool enchantments on it, can I show you?"
She nodded wiping the tears from her eyes. And thus Rudeus taught her about the various signals the wand could give in certain situations. He also talked about the healing scroll but did not mention that Hollow would be summoned as well to her location to try and protect her. He didn't know how she would react to his monstrous side but he hoped Hollow wouldn't terrify her too much.
"Don't forgot if you are in a life threating condition the scroll will be summoned but at the cost of the wand. So please try not to get into danger." Rudeus said pointing at the wand with worry.
"Don't worry Rudi, there isn't allot of danger around here so I think I will be safe, other than those bullies."
"Speaking of, I may not always be around, so you need to be strong and fight them off okay."
She looked down at her hands nodding. It wasn't a nod of courage, it was a nod to boost her determination.
Bullies sometimes caused trauma, Rudeus knew that from experience in his first life, but that shouldn't have stopped him from growing, instead he let himself be consumed by his fear and he became a shut in. It took allot of work in his first reincarnation to even muster up the courage to go outside, allot of the help was given by his goddess, Roxy.
Rudeus hugged Sylphy in an attempt to bring her more confidence.
Then they began to practice.
"Rudi look! I did it! I did it!" Sylphy said with joy as she performed a water ball spell without using the incantation. The ball fell to the earth and she made another, and another. Rudeus clapped along with her as they both ran down the hill into the fields laughing all the way.
They collapsed on a pile of leaves as they looked up. It was a nice and cool weather.
Practice continued after their momentary celebration as the hours pasted by quickly, one after another.
Not that big of a chapter I know but I feel I should make a filler chapter now and again to pace the story. That being said, questions and requests are highly encouraged so let me know in the comments section and I will give a shoutout to you in the next chapter. Soon Rudeus will get to go meet Eris in the next few chapters, and that is where his real work will begin. Like I said I won't spoil anything major though.