The Boy Who Murdered Love [Closed/Event]

[Scoria]

The Boy Who Murdered Love

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[attr="class","forestborder"] Cold hands and a heart of stone. Scoria wandered slowly through sands, hands in his pockets. A heaving sigh of disappointment flushed out of his lungs, like water sliding debris away. He was jumping on this exploration train a little late, if he was going to be perfectly honest, but there really wasn't much else he could do if he wanted to reap the benefits. He had gotten busy with studying various things and even now that he was out here, he was thinking about that wonderfully obnoxious thing known as Alchemy. He had taken a small break from being a Scribe to focus on this other thing and the result was that he got so carried away with various errands that... Well, it didn't really matter that much. The main point was that he was out here. He might have considered asking someone for help or something, but after sort of vanishing on a few people in rapid succession the last few times he had met up with anyone, he was starting to suspect that he was simply too distracted and unfocused to properly be paying attention and -not- leaving them out in the cold. Repeatedly.

So he was out here alone, doing his own thing. His own thing being trying to use alchemy to cheat and obtain chests more easily. Yeah. That seemed pretty straightforward as far as that went, and to be completely honest, he was surprised he didn't see 'metal detector' popping up on the craftable item lists, but he was kind of out here holding some wires in his hands and walking along the beach searching for some magical chests or something. How this was at all related to finding chests or alchemy, he wasn't quite sure, but he knew an opportunity when he saw one. Cheat the system! Scoria glared and rolled his eyes softly as he advanced further through the coastline, watching as everyone and their mother decided this was the place to be. He was no different, he supposed, but he had things to do and places to be and chests to collect. Something like that. The wires in his hands were really just sitting there and although he considered summoning a familiar to aid him, he knew it wasn't going to be any good. It wasn't like either the wolf or forest sprite could dive, so why bother summoning them when they were off doing their own thing? Instead, he'd just do this alone. Him, his flimsy wires, and the sea. Well, if he was going to get anywhere, it was probably a better idea to leave all these scavenging people behind. After all, even if he found anything, they'd be on him like seagulls in a disney movie.

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[Scoria]

Scoria clenched and unclenched his fists slowly, wondering just what he was attempting to do with this little escapade. Wasn't it obvious to anyone and everyone here that there was just now way he was going to be able to find any treasure at all? His 'attempt' to succeed was just him placing himself further way from the chaos of people running around like idiots, leading him further down into the abyss of solitude. Poetic and stupid, really. Scoria wrapped wires around his hands as he walked, twisting and rolling them around, discarding what was needed and pulling together what was useless. It was the impractical thing to do, of course. Be a healer when fighting alone. Tank as the dps. Scoria was never one for doing things the reasonable way. Or the right way for that matter. He kind of wished he had any sort of attack he could use. A druid attack. That would be nice, but of course he knew it wasn't happening. There was no way he could. The wires coiled around his hands as if moved by magic, wrapping and twining around themselves. The natural inclination when mana coursed through them.

It was silly, wasn't it? Most people thought Alchemists were scientists trying to bridge some unknown magic with technology. In a way, that was true, but that was not what an alchemist was. A cook was someone who cooked. A woodcrafter was someone who manipulated wood. So what was an alchemist? Someone who did 'alchemy'? What was that, really? The defining characteristic of alchemists was not their ability to do alchemy, which was really more of a side effect than a true ability, but instead their ability to manipulate mana. One look at the class would have you at least partially understanding that much. They gained mana on impact. They produced mana crystals. There was really no joke in saying that alchemists were the 'magic' class, moreso than even the mage main classes. Scoria twined the filaments around his wrist even tighter, knowing that the wire was bending. It acted almost like electricity. It was almost analogous. Well, perhaps it was just his own mana. It sparked. It raged. Scoria continued to walk down the beach, looking for some sign of some magical treasure chest. This wasn't going to work out well, he knew already, but there was no use in fretting it. The real result was that he'd end up with some extra knowledge about alchemy and some shoddy chest that someone had opened, then left behind because they decided its contents were absolute nonsense. That sounded about right.

Druid

[Scoria]

You're the thief of innocence, they said. Ruin lives for everyone. The cords that wrapped around his wrist bristled, but he was sliding the wires off his hand once more and picking apart more and more pieces, not quite satisfied with what was happening. It just didn't seem to resonate like he wanted it to, and if he was going to be entirely honest, he didn't really think that he'd finish his little cheating device before the end of this particular expedition into the wild. The rabble had long since ceased their endless chatter around him, leaving him now in his own abyss. No one around to bother him. No one could message him either. No summons around, and Caerbannog did not often call on him. In fact, he had not heard from her in a long time and, barring that one incident with the guardian, had not so much as seen her face in quite some time. She would not call on him and therefore, no one would. Not Elkeid, not Ruemia, not Kumori or Oxford or Midori or Caerbannog. So it was just him, scouring the beach for anything that might let him end this stupid and fruitless search as he continued to feed mana through his system and tug at the filaments in his hands. Turn, twist, feed it power and energy, make it mana-bound. Not just something anyone could do.

It couldn't just be regular wire. That was too simple. That was too easy. Someone would have already done it. Even a lander could do it, attach two pieces of wire together and call it a loop. You needed an alchemist to make it mana-tuned. He really wished he had some sort of elemental spell at this point, one that wasn't Glacial Freeze, but he would have to make do with avoiding the elements for now. Pure magic would be just fine. Scoria continued to work the wire in his hands, pressing mana into joints and rolling it out, wrapping more filaments around it and working further. He had worked with Cat 5 cables before. He had worked with construction cables too. He just needed this to come together. A seagull came down on him to rain on his parade, but he sidestepped smoothly and 'kindly requested' that it bugger off as he continued to work on his cable. He might not have been 'searching for treasure' in the regular way, but building himself a cheating cheaty device to do it for him was as close as he was really going to get. He just continued to walk down the beach, alone, as his hands finally seemed to settle around a 'proper' cord. One that met his standards, anyway. And because he had tossed out the wheat and only used the chaff, it was a quality that was miserable. If something this miserable could be used, then everything else had to be better and would work even nicer. That was one thing down. It felt nice to be researching again, even if it was just proper wire. Well, you couldn't get anywhere if you didn't have that much. Mechanics and blacksmiths could suck it.

Druid

[Scoria]

So he had shiny fancy wires now, right? What does someone do with something like that? CHEAT. HAHAHAHA. Yeah, okay, so he was cheating now. But how was he going to cheat? Obviously, with science and magic and all that fancy Alchemy jazz. Scoria continued to walk along, wire in his hand, thinking to himself how he could implement his new conductive material in order to go search out for gold. His immediate inclination was to go make something like a dowsing rod, but hadn't it just been made clear to him that trying to elementally charge these wires wasn't going to end up well? He'd need something like a compass needle, but how would that even work? He'd need some sort of elementally receptive material to work with and he didn't have anything like that just sitting around. Scoria continued to walk along the sands, dodging more low-leveled seagulls and ignoring the flocking mobs for the most part. The thinking part was really the most difficult here and Scoria wasn't entirely sure how he wanted to proceed. For the most part, he just figured the best thing to do was improve his tools, but how was he going to search out boxes...? A radar was beyond him, but perhaps something a bit more low tech?

He had to find some method of making his life easier. A dowsing rod seemed viable, but then he'd need a way to elementally tune it, and in order to do that, he'd need something that could catch the elements, which he didn't have. The path to cheating his way to getting treasure chests seemed to be stretching out in front of him, but there was really no helping it. For now, Scoria needed a way to confirm that he could at least capture the world's most basic elements in alchemy form. He had attempted it as a scribe, with mixed results, but 'magic ink' was not viable here. If he was going to do anything, it was going to have to be with wires and magitech and mana manipulation. Still, it really seemed like his conducting wires weren't going to be useful quite yet. Which kind of sucked, he really liked those. Still, he knew they'd be handy later as a means of sending out signals and getting them back, like an elemental sonar. For now though, he needed a way to capture the very elements themselves. And of course, if it was Alchemy, it had to be Mana Fragments. What else, after all! The best part about these little guys was that they seemed to have a static quality, shifting based on the rank of the manipulator. No need to worry about exorbitantly scaling prices either. Ahahaha. But still, how was he going to use mana crystals to 'capture' the elements. That was the real question here. Scoria continued to walk along the beach, dodging more seagulls and donning his work gloves, pulling out one small crystal shard. Here we go, he supposed.

He'd have to remember later to create an anti-magic set of gloves so he could handle these things more recklessly. Alchemist's Gloves sounded nice. Well, that 'gauntlet' idea was something for far later. He had far too many ideas in his head to get caught up in the end game.

Druid

[Scoria]

Scoria didn't waste any time moving forward with his idea. He wanted to be able to capture the very elements themselves and intended to use a mana fragment to do it, but that was obviously not going to work out so well. After all, whether large or small, a mana fragment still had the unfortunate quality of being incredibly fragile and dissipating on touch. Scoria needed something that would do neither and in order to achieve this particular plan, he figured he'd go straight into using the Stabilized Mana Fragment as a base. This thing was more stable than its parts, more resistant to breaking, but it was still relatively fragile. Certainly not strong enough for what he had in mind. Given that, he figured that perhaps the easiest thing was to reinforce this even further. He didn't quite have his lab tools here, but he did have his hands and his increased knowledge and proficiency in alchemy. Leaving the stabilized fragment in his glove covered hand, he dropped another fragment on top of it. It wouldn't do for this to have quite the same effects as its predecessors, Scoria mused. After all, if all upgrades shared the same quality, no mana crystal would ever be immune to being soaked up and devoured. Thus, Scoria did what Scorias do and devised a plan to attempt to change the nature of the mana fragment itself.

If he wanted it to be elementally tuned, then perhaps it would have to be more receptive and acknowledging of nature itself, borrowing strength from the surroundings? He was a druid, he knew all about calling upon nature, and perhaps that would be the method with which he worked. He could simply fuse his old knowledge of scribing and grimoire magic, his knowledge of nature and druidic customs, and his newfound talent for the manipulation of magic. He certainly made it sound easy, but it was anything but. The druid held the stable crystal in his hand and tried to manipulate the fragment he had tossed into the mix, slowly pulling the thin fragment out and around the stable crystal like a gelatinous ooze. It was sliding over the oblong object neatly, but Scoria would not be satisfied with just that. It was a container and, honestly, what sort of container did not have any room inside? Some might argue that the 'elements' could mingle in the solid structure, but that wasn't aesthetically pleasing enough for Scoria. He expanded the outer fragment into something of a bauble, druidic cracks sliding across the surface. Hadn't he just created a vacuum? It was a tiny one, for sure, but vacuums tended to want to crunch in on themselves when made of a malleable material. The crystal expanded and strained against the force of the vacuum, structurally weak, but Scoria had more phases to this plan than "create a vacuum and then watch yourself get stabbed by mana fragments when the whole thing literally implodes in your face". Thankfully.

The druid focused his mana on the inside, stable fragment, and expanded that outwards so it filled its container. And just like that, there was an almost ice-like shell casing around a crystalline, hollow sphere. The whole thing continued to strain against the force of the elements around it, not able to coexist. It was threatening to shatter in on itself, but Scoria wouldn't be satisfied by such a shoddy ending. He was a druid and all druids did (well, excluding himself) was coexist. Their whole tagline was 'coexist with nature' or something like that. He was a druid and, while he might not have subscribed to every belief in the handbook, he did know one or two things about coexisting and basic druid shenanigans. He drew power from nature, drew it into himself and then let it flood outwards, mixing his own mana and energy with the power of nature. That was how it worked to him and no one would be able to tell him otherwise. All he needed to do was get this little crystal bauble to do the same thing. He, almost naively, tried to send some mana into the center, only for the thing to suddenly begin glowing lightly before wafting to the ground. Wafting...? It wasn't that light. Scoria bent down to pick up the now dirty bauble, suddenly finding it heavier than it was before. Inspecting it carefully, he watched little sand and dirt particles float about in the center, swirling around as though pushed by the air itself. What was this...? Scoria probed with his mana, only to see the inside seemingly turn blueish, mixing his magic with what appeared to be earth and wind. Was it... sucking up the elements around it?

That worked. Scoria tried throwing in some healing magic, noting the subdued tones that this thing took. He remembered back to when he created his explodey chalk and came to the same conclusion that he had then, purity came from nature. It couldn't be forced. You could end up with something similar, but without purity and isolation of the elements, no truly 'pure element' bauble could be formed. Still, for a rudimentary attempt, this wasn't too bad. Proof he could contain magic, including mana and anima. What else could he contain in this thing?

Druid

[Scoria]

As any halfway intelligent individual can tell you right off the bat, Scoria was someone who 'had a few screws loose' and happened to be just a little bit crazy. Perhaps that was why he was clenching and unclenching his hands repeatedly as he tried to figure out just what it was he wanted to do next. All of this stuff was nice and all, but it still didn't solve the ultimate problem of being able to radar his way into finding chests much easier. If he was going to do that, his cheating skills would have to become much more intense. For now, he couldn't properly abuse his newfound creation, because getting a pure sample out of this would prove difficult if it was anything but the water element. The sand might produce a mixed fire and earth mix, while simply holding it would naturally taint it in many ways. Again, his thoughts drifted back to the idea of Alchemist's Gloves, but before he went and created something like that, he knew he'd need a few more components. He debated attempting to ask Kumori for some gloves to work with, but the idea of working with Kumori of all people grossed him out a bit. Besides, if Kyuu had said anything about how Scoria had ditched the woman, he guessed that Kumori might chop his head off. Verbally. With an hour long lecture. Definitely not something he wanted to deal with. So he'd just cheat and use a force accessory type thing instead, but before that...

Well, the thing he wanted to do now was to create a conducting circuit. He was thinking about it more and more and having some professional work gloves would be pretty nice. Part of that would be something to help him manipulate basic alchemist tools at a distance, feeding them power. It'd be especially good if he, for some reason, could not transfer mana through his hands into an object. For instance, because he had developed gloves that prevented exactly that. So that was the next idea he'd be working on, and as such, Scoria walked further down the beach, before stopping to deal with all these seagulls that were swarming around him. He very much wanted to be completely rid of them and just ignore them, but it'd be kind of cheap to ignore the search entirely and just stumble on the prize at the end. So maybe he'd throw in a little bit more about fending off seagulls. Summon Familiar: Shrieker Echo was cast cleanly, summoning a few creepy mushrooms in the sand. Scoria then intentionally stepped on one, covering his ears and gritting his teeth. The scree that sounded out a moment later stunned every single seagull in a rather large area, giving even the summoner a massive headache. Although Scoria was stunned for a full three seconds, he was a land-based creature. The birds that flew in the sky had a much harder time, as they were stunned and subsequently fell straight into the earth, crashing into the sand. It wasn't a damaging tactic, but after having every seagull in the area suddenly grounded in one clean swoop, even Scoria could hear the seagulls chittering to themselves - "Let's get out of here!" - before taking a hike. Or flying a hike or however seagulls did it.

Anyway the important point here was that the seagulls were gone, which left Scoria able to traverse the beach and shuffle along without much difficulty. Forward he walked, moving across the beach and taking careful steps across the sand as he fashioned his second piece of Reinforced Wire, twisting it around to create a loop and smoothly doing the same with his original piece. Two pieces of wire, right? One folded into the other and the other folded into the first until he got a simple ring of wire, just in sight of his other loop. Okay. So now he had two loops, it was time to see if mana acted like a particle or a wave. Or worse, both. Plank's equation, please don't show up here. He knew that mana floated through a substance as a form of energy, like heat or electricity in many ways, but did they induce 'mana currents' in other objects? Electricity did that because magnetism and electricity were coupled and they induced each other, heat naturally did not and simply flowed. Unless mana had multiple parts to it or took on some sort of electrical property in order to mimic the E&M properties... Scoria huffed and held the two loops parallel, spinning mana through one loop rapidly, shoving mana in. What was he, a battery? Well, it was time to see if this worked.

Druid

[Scoria]

Of course it didn't. How foolish a human did you have to be to assume that magic followed the rules of electricity exactly? Idiot. Moron. Loser. How stupid did you even have to be anyway, to believe something stupid and dumb and impossible like this? Scoria nearly punched himself in the face for hoping, but there was really no good way to tell 'how' mana worked. It'd be nice to extrapolate, but infer too far and make conclusions without proper validation and well... you were ruining it for everyone else. It was pure arrogance, nothing less, to decide that you and you alone got to be in charge of the how of 'how mana works', and Scoria was arrogant, but not that much. He wasn't about to make this kind of claim though, that he could decide what happened for a global property, as he was certain the 4th wall gods would smite him. A lot. Scoria scoffed and simply took what was known. Mana flowed. It had to flow, because the original alchemist items, 'mana-powered so and so', were able to be powered by pushing mana into them. Therefore, mana could flow from inside the body to outside the body. Mana could follow conducting wire. That was the entire point of old filament and reinforced wire. Mana could be fed into a load, such as a lamp. These were facts. It was fair to assume that, as a form of energy, in many cases mana would follow the path of 'least resistance', and in doing so, would probably not dissipate freely into the environment when inside a wire. Otherwise, mana-powered items would be completely pointless.

The rest was all conjecture. So just assuming that mana would induce so easily would be nice, but it certainly wouldn't happen on its own without some help. What Scoria needed was a way to somehow... tunnel the mana towards a location, funneling it. He could feel faint wisps of mana floating into the other loop, and the more mana he shoved into the right side and the harder he shoved it and the faster he moved the energy, the more showed up on the left. But it wasn't funneling like he wanted. He wanted to be able to direct this mana anywhere, to any of his contraptions, be able to create remote trigger devices and the like. So he thought to himself, what if he oscillated and sent out pulses of mana like it was a wave, creating wave forms? Would that work, perhaps? The whys and hows of all of this was getting increasingly complex, treading into the domain of theoretical physics and energy depending on light, heat, or... Well, it was just very confusing. Scoria was, despite his looks, not that old. So he just continued to spin the mana, trying to find a way to power up the connection, before resorting to his cheating tactics like always. The druid formed a single mana fragment in his hands and pulled out another, forming a stable crystal cleanly and then feeding it over his loop, creating a somewhat flexible, crystalline ring. The moment he stopped molding the mana, the crystal became hard and brittle, but as long as he fed it energy, it would shift shape in his hands. Huh. Letting the stable object dangle around his palm, looping around to the back, Scoria once more sent mana into the device. He slid the mana through varying types of waveforms and oscillations and frequencies until he passed over one that seemed to resonate specifically. This was the so-called critical point, wasn't it? Scoria had read and heard about it. It seemed every object had a certain critical point, almost like the resonating frequency of that one bridge that collapsed, and if Scoria played with it and got to know the resonating frequencies of all his objects, then maybe he'd be able to activate them from a distance.

And using different frequencies could theoretically mean no interference, using multiple signals at once. But that was just an assumption. He was just making guesses in the dark as to how mana seemed to work and absolutely nothing was set in stone, because there was no solid proof that things worked one way or another. Despite all of that, however, Scoria kept trying. He pulled out some lamps and some 'mana-powered' objects, holding them in one hand and pushing mana into his new device with the other. After about twenty minutes of testing this device and getting to know it, Scoria determined that if he directed the mana a certain way or used it in a certain way, he'd be able to power one or more devices. It'd take a lot of practice and a higher quality ring would allow him to far more easily manipulate more objects with less loss along the way, but this was... something. It was something. He really didn't want to touch this directly to his skin, but it did need to be close to his hands. It was still fairly stable though, and seemed to be bound to the wire in part, so perhaps it was more durable than he had originally expected. He'd have kept testing, had something not glowed lightly underneath him as he moved the frequencies about. Squinting, Scoria let the mana slide through a range of frequencies and amplitudes, then back again, noting that one item in particular seemed to be glowing or rattling slightly under the sands. Huh. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Scoria put his materials back in his pockets and got to digging before finally deciding to CHEAT LIKE A CHEATER and just Summon Golem and get the sand creature to dig it up for him. Good boy. A chest plopped in front of him and he stored it in his inventory before carrying along on his way. Done and done.

Druid