He sat crouched over a dusty pit of bones and ashsteel filings, lips parched, arms aching from exertion. His improvised fire-starting drill—a sharpened Wooden Plank and claw-hook combo—refused to do the one thing it was supposedly invented for: make fire.
He muttered, breath heaving. "You’ve got to be kidding me. I did this in school once. Why isn’t it working?"
A ripple of runes shimmered into the air beside him. The Akashic Record materialized mid-review, sleeves rolled up, her clipboard floating beside her. She looked like someone five years deep into overtime.
"Because," she said flatly, "that isn’t real wood."
Nolan blinked. "What? It’s a wooden plank. I summoned it."
"It's the idea of a wooden plank," she corrected, blowing steam off her ethereal teacup. "Technically a mana construct mimicking the properties of wood. Looks like it, feels like it, weighs like it. But it's not actually wood."
Nolan stared at the splintered spindle. "Then what is it?"
She snapped her fingers. A schematic appeared, rotating slowly: a voxel model with mana threads and internal structures. "Think of it like one of your game dev props. Texture, physics, particle system—all very convincing. But it’s still code pretending to be matter."
He rubbed his face. "So I’m trying to light a fire with textured polygons. Fantastic."
"Stable polygons," she corrected. "Very important distinction."
Nolan let the useless spindle fall into the ash. "Okay. Then how do I make real fire without magic?"
"Craft it," she said, already flicking open a secondary window. "You’ve been using single Plank cards to summon raw shapes. But if you want more complex behavior, like fire generation, you’ll need to sacrifice more than one."
Nolan narrowed his eyes. "You’re saying I can’t just shape the drill and light a fire with it, but I can make a new card that’s specifically a fire drill?"
"Exactly. But you must define its function clearly. No poetry. Just the use-case."
He nodded slowly. "Alright. Two Planks. Let’s try this."
He summoned two new Wooden Plank cards, focused, and burned them into a new inscription.
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[Fire Drill: Flame Generator] Summons a frictional fire drill. Generates fire through use. Fire lasts until the item's mana-structure depletes.
Akashic Record reviewed the glowing text. "Approved. Wood has terrible mana retention, so expect minimal burn time."
"Durability is based on mana?" Nolan asked.
"Exactly. Not toughness, not thickness—just how long the item can hold structured mana."
Nolan looked at the new card. "Makes sense. I guess it’s like battery life."
"Precisely."
He flicked the card into his palm. A simple drill appeared—elegant in form, sturdier than his improvised one. He began working, this time feeling the faint pulse of energy in the shaft. After a few turns, a wisp of smoke rose. Then a fragile, flickering flame.
He let out a breath. "There we go."
"Enjoy it. It won’t last long."
Later, as the flames licked a small bone-scorched meal of foraged dungeon fungi, Nolan looked up.
"So what if I just used magic to light stuff? Wouldn’t that be easier?"
The Akashic Record sighed. "Yes. But it’s expensive, bureaucratic, and wrapped in at least three layers of narrative."
"Narrative?"
She conjured an image of an ancient scroll and recited with mock grandeur: "A scroll written by a white sage bestows the divine secret of flame."
Nolan stared.
She dropped the illusion. "Reality? A fire scroll crafted by a mage apprentice from another plane, sold to us via interdimensional contract. One parchment, three fire mana shards, and a few gold coins."
"That’s not a spell. That’s outsourcing."
"Welcome to divine economies."
He snorted. "So if I wanted to learn real magic—"
"You’d need a magic-aligned Talent, which you don’t have."
"Right."
She saw the frustration and softened. "Look, if you really want magic, I could show you some theory from other planes. Maybe even some spark theory or contract runes. But it’d be like trying to program with no language knowledge."
Nolan waved it off. "I’ll pass for now. Let’s stick to blueprints and drills."
"Wise."
He leaned back, warming his hands. "So... any other advice on making fire? Without getting fancy?"
She nodded. "Carry planks. When you get a fire-aligned monster core or mana shard, crush it against the summoned item. It’ll ignite—temporary, but usable."
Nolan stood, stretched his legs. "Then I need mana shards."
As he packed up, a thought lingered and he voiced it. "Wait—if the item I summon isn’t real, then how come I can use it to craft other items? Wouldn’t it be like... using a fake object to make more fake objects?"
"You’re not actually reshaping the item itself," the Akashic Record explained patiently. "You’re sacrificing the card that summoned it. You’re converting the mana blueprint into a new functional form. That’s why it works."
Nolan snapped his fingers. "Right—so it’s not like I’m melting down a fake sword to make a fake shield. I’m rewriting the code of the item at the card level."
She nodded. "Exactly. That’s also why you can’t use these cards for infinite duplication. If people could just summon actual food and eat it forever, we’d have collapsed economies and gods banning card usage within a week."
"So basically, I’m working with templates. But if I sacrifice the template, I can build something new from it."
"Yes. And the more specific the new function, the more acceptable it is to the system."
Nolan flicked open his deck. Five cards blinked into his soul-hand:
[Wooden Plank]
[Fire Drill: Flame Generator]
[Claw Hook]
[Wooden Spear]
[Summon Rock]
"Guess it’s hunting time."