The Dao of Magic

59 - Nurture

There is something about crafting that soothes my soul. Using my own hands to make something new is incredibly cathartic. I get distracted by my thought about souls for a moment. Nearly every person on this world has a black sphere, but I am starting to suspect that it might be a perception error on my part. I have developed certain ways of looking at things that don't seem to cross worlds very well.

I shake my head a bit and continue clambering across the support beams of my ship. The wooden rib cage that forms my ships support structure is clad on the outside with wooden planks. The ship's hold will need to be filled with ballast to prevent it from keeling over with a stiff breeze, so I have no plans of making this area easier to navigate by foot.

Tess hands me another plank and I nail it halfway up the hull with my augur, making the beginnings of the below-decks floor. Please don't hold it against me if I butcher ship terminology, I was no ship-ologist back on Earth, and I refuse to call it something like the 'First Heavenly Galley Floor', as was custom with flying cultivator ships.

"Make some square beams to reinforce this floor. The qi-reinforced wood doesn't really need it, but we have appearances to keep up."

I look at my disciples who are working hard. Ket is now in charge of gathering new wood. I wince a bit as Bord fails to catch a log as it ploughs into his face. The only other mindcore cultivator on this planet, at least as far as I know, is chopping down trees, then he strips them of their branches and throws the log at high speed and with pinpoint precision. Bord rolls around a bit while clutching his face as Selis pulls on the water in the fallen tree trunk to make it roll over to her. The fatty then gets up just in time to receive another stripped tree to the back of his head. I glance towards Ket's position and see his head peeking out between the remaining trees. He is totally doing that on purpose.

I ignore the resilient fatty and look at the rest. Angeta is using qi on her nails to slice the logs in the needed shapes, Vox is sanding the surfaces flat by lasering the protruding bits and splinters with his white beams and Tess is handing the results to me after Selis dries them out. I catch a square beam that jumps from the shadows and plaster it to the underside of the below decks.

I decide there and then to call the lowest area the hold, the floor above that the below decks and the deck is the deck. Below decks is where the banks of rowing slaves are normally, but multiple hidden qi powered rotary engines will do that job. I am still tinkering and simulating the engine design for optimal efficiency and controllability. The first prototype I designed and simulated went from zero to blender speeds without anything in between. Not only would the oars splinter into lethal shrapnel at those speeds, the water would explode into steam from the friction. Not ideal.

The below decks will be part experimental laboratory, part loading area and part guest quarters. A big-ass hatch midships will allow for stowing and loading of goods without cheating with spatial rings, essential if I ever want to tour some coastal cities.

I also decide to use the other sailing terms I remember. The front part of the ship will be the fore, the back is the aft. Port will be left, starboard right and the looking back is the stern. The big-ass stick will be the mast, the horizontal stick the beam. There will be two big sticks, the foremast and the mainmast. Those are all the sailing terms I will need, I decide. No need for complicated shit like the mizzen mast, fore jib halyard or, I snicker to myself, poopdeck. My translation process will have to listen to local sailors to pick up and automatically translate those terms first though, I see more sneaking and stalking in my future.

The ground continues to rumble occasionally as we work, the Tree is still rearranging the lands around us. The grand clumps of dirt and rock floating over our heads have disappeared, the Tree didn't seem to be able to form the land and absorb dirt at the same time, so it made a buffer area. The main clearing is now located on a flat plane surrounded by naked brown hills dotted with rocks. The ice covered mountain is located a few kilometres away.