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Home / Fantasy / Rise of the Sciencemancer / Ch. 28 Lunch with Loreweaver Kelp
Ch. 28 Lunch with Loreweaver Kelp
Author: Jon Klement
last update2025-05-13 11:14:30

Even Loreweaver Kelp smiled as the children in the class eagerly helped George master the use of his learning pad. Soon, George was “swiping” and “texting” like a champ, opening files on the pad and creating files of his own. Eventually, the time came for recess. Recess was especially important for sea elf children in Wonderdome. To develop their dual lung-and-gill systems properly, the children who were residents inside Wonderdome, and thus breathing air most of the time, needed to have an adequate number of hours each day spent actually breathing water or their gills would atrophy. Prolonged atrophy would result in irreversible damage, and, then, the kids might as well be terakva.

As recess approached, the kids got excited. George wondered if he’d be going with them to recess. He could see himself, a non-mage terakva, needing to drink a Potion of Water Breathing (kind of expensive if he’d need one every day) or to have a sea elf mage cast a water breathing spell on him so he could
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  • Ch. 54 Deus ex Yörg

    Tentacles slapped the floor, wet and fast.George struggled in the grip of the orange octopus-thing wrapped around his chest and face. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. And most significantly, he couldn’t call out for Yörg.He heard Jellyfish shriek as a green octopus with glistening skin slapped her learning pad out of her hands. “No, no, no, no, no!” She dove after it, grabbed it mid-slide, and rolled under a lab table just as another beast lunged.“Don’t hurt it!” she barked as if the genetically mutated cephalopod would listen to her. “That pad has all the Kraken Cult's genetic research and—ahhh!”A tentacle smashed down on the table above her, spraying shards. Jellyfish gritted her teeth, looked at the pad in her hands… then looked up at the mass of suckered flesh squeezing through the gap after her.“…Mage farts!”She screamed in frustration and whacked the creature with the learning pad. It cracked in two. Data loss warning lights blinked red and died. The octopus shrieked

  • Ch. 53 What's in the Tank

    “Beautiful, isn’t he?” the death shaman intoned solemnly. No one on Field Team Maverick responded. George even forgot to breathe for a moment. The thing in the tank, the tank as big as the Great Coral Plaza, was gray, a soul-sucking gray that had the opposite effect of the blackness before. The blackness before had made George feel like it could lunge at him, like the eldritch ooze spilled out of the ruptured Kraken bot had lunged at HAZMAT workers. This gray, as George stared at it, made him feel gray inside, like it was sucking all of the color out of his soul just by him looking at it. He remembered the energy-draining feeling of Sirena’s last kiss.The next thing that he noticed about the thing besides its grayness, was that it had tentacles, because of course it did.The death shaman beamed with pride. “He is magnificent even in death. You should have been privileged to see him when he was alive. I was, you know. It was the greatest day of my life.” The strange elf walked past

  • Ch. 52

    George felt the familiar tingle of teleportation magic, but it was powerfully intense. The tingling was so strong it was like the tingle of blood returning to a limb that had fallen asleep, but all over his body. Yörg was so powerful that George could feel it when exposed to Yörg’s magic, even for a quick teleport. He recalled the talking staff’s comment about being able to find George anywhere in the multiverse–the multiverse! He had called himself the Staff of Xee. George thought that might sound familiar from his studies in Sutter’s Village. If he remembered correctly, Xee was on a list of powerful mages who had lived pre-Society before its founding as government rule by the Sorcerers Born. The history books and lessons at the school in Sutter’ Village didn’t focus too much on pre-Society history. That time period was given only a short description and not very detailed. Who was this Xee? The group of first-time spies materialized somewhere in sub-basement 5 ostensibly, if Yörg h

  • Ch. 51 Mission Prep

    Team Maverick took a little time gathering the things they thought they might need, including personal lights, diagnostic leaning pads that they normally used on Maverick, and other gear. They didn’t bring along any weapons. They weren’t warriors, and, hopefully this would be a stealth mission.“It’s getting close to the Period of Sleep,” George reminded them. “Hopefully, there won’t be a normal working crew there overnight. They may be a crazy cult, but they do need to go home and sleep like anybody else.”“What about security systems?” asked Jellyfish. “I’m a good hacker, but I’m not a superspy. I don’t think I could hack the security systems there into thinking they don’t see us.”“Could you delay the alarms a little? Maybe give us time to see whatever Shark wants us to see and then get out?”“Probably.”“Even if the alarms are delayed and we get out, security will still have recorded us,” Eel pointed out.“Do you think we could get our hands on enough festival reveler cloaks for a

  • Ch. 50 What's on Sublevel 5?

    “I really appreciate you guys helping with this,” George said. “Hey, we’re a team. It’s what teams do,” Fin answered. “I think I've got something,” Jellyfish said. She and Eell were sitting side by side at two computer stations, going over encrypted files. Inside the clamshell box had been a data crystal. The only information on that Crystal that was not encrypted was that it was the property of the Wonderdome Genetics Institute, and if found, should be returned immediately. The rest of the contents of the crystal were not only encrypted, but trapped with (and George was a little confused about the terminology here) a computer worm that was supposed to eat the files and destroy them if anyone unauthorized tried to de-encrypt them. Eel’s computer savvy prevented the worm from doing that, fortunately. On Jellyfish's screen, what had, to George's eyes, been a mess of weird symbols that made his eyes swim, suddenly resolved into the schematics for a building. It wasn't just a

  • Ch. 49 The Victory Party

    Maverick dodged, rolling to one side, and a new compartment in his chest sprang open, ejecting a net woven from synthetic kelp fibers. The net tangled one of the Leviathan’s claws, slowing it, and the crowd roared approval.George’s pulse steadied. Maverick was holding his own, but the Leviathan’s armor was thick, its titanium plates deflecting the tridents’ thrusts. George knew what came next. “Get serious, Maverick,” he whispered. As if hearing him, Maverick retreated a step, his right arm whirring as another hidden panel opened. Out slid his deadliest weapon: a monofilament-edged sword, its blade so thin it was nearly invisible, its edge capable of slicing through most armor like whale milk cheesecake. The crowd hushed, sensing a shift. Even Anemone leaned forward, her breath catching. “What’s that?” she asked.“His best shot,” George said, pride swelling. He’d spent weeks perfecting the sword’s edge, using nanotech to align the monofilament’s molecular structure. It was science at

  • Ch. 48 Maverick vs. Leviathan

    George slipped back to his seat, the clam shell box heavy in his pocket. The crowd’s roar surged as they cheered the action from the day’s first scheduled fight, which had just started. Maverick vs. Leviathan was the second scheduled match. A starfish bot parried a claw swipe from a crab-like bot, its pincers sparking against one of the starfish bot’s steel arms. Anemone leaned close, her eyes bright. “Is everything okay with that guy? He seemed… scared.”“Yeah, it’s complicated,” George muttered, his mind racing. Shark’s warning—They’re coming to get me—echoed, and the box felt like a ticking bomb. He glanced at his learning pad, where Maverick’s diagnostics blinked green, but his focus wavered.“Boss, I could follow Shark and find out where he’s going, who he’s with, and what he’s up to. This is your big moment with the team. This is your day. Let me handle this other business for you.”Starstorm was on Anemone’s lap, curled up like a cat. Those two had hit it off right away. George

  • Ch. 47 The Clam Box

    The roar of the crowd at the public-pool-turned-combat-arena washed over George like a tidal wave, thousands of sea elves had come, more than had been there on the first day when the ill-fated Kraken versus Nautilus match had taken place. George gripped the edge of his seat, his learning pad forgotten in his lap, its screen still glowing with Maverick’s diagnostic readouts. The Barolias Festival was back in full swing. The arena was a spectacle of red and gold streamers, their colors rippling under bioluminescent lights that mimicked the ocean’s depths.The mood was jubilant enough on the surface. George supposed it seemed like the atmosphere of Barolias Festival Week any other year, but there were a few serious faces in the crowd, worried faces. After breakfast at Nereia’s, George had made his way across Wonderdome as fast as he could. As he had made this way through the city, he had noticed that, if one stepped away from the music and cheering and dancing, and listened to the talk

  • Ch. 46 The Morning After the Break-up

    The next morning, George had gotten barely two hours of sleep when the dutiful Starstorm was in his hair, literally. And in his his face, and on his back, and on his chest, and tugging at his arm, while George tried in vain to push him away. “Boss! Boss! It’s the robot rematch day! You’re gonna be late if you don’t get up now!” George sucked in a big breath, trying to get oxygen to his starving brain. “This is like when you used to wake me up for school in Sutter’s Village when I was a kid if I had stayed up too late the night before, only worse.” “You are still a kid, but this is way worse. Boss, are you hung over? Be honest now.” “I’m not hung over.” “Well I wouldn’t be surprised if you were with that Sirena. She’s always trying to corrupt you. Alcohol was bound to be next. She’s been trying to get you into things that aren’t good for you.” “You have no idea. Anyway, she’s gone now. We broke up. And I think I have a new girlfriend now.” George rubbed his tired eyes. “Whoa!

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