Once Spike got inside and shut the door (attempting to ward a space with open doors or windows was an easy, and often costly, mistake) he pushed some effort towards his latest skill. The mana flowed along with the words 'Dragon's Den' whispered under his breath. He could use his skills without saying anything out loud, but sometimes it felt dramatically appropriate to do so... Maybe Pinkie really was rubbing off on him?
He shook off that train of thought and turned his attention to the new menu he'd opened: And it was a menu, quite the complex one to boot. It had all sorts of different sections and parameters, cleanly arranged and neatly color-coded: The type of ward, keys, duration, space, elemental tuning... One option in particular, right at the top corner, caught his eye: A three-position 'switch' that was currently set to ASSISTED. On the left it could be set to MANUAL and on the right, to INSTANT.
Focusing pushing his mental-imagining-of-a-claw to one side, he flipped it to MANUAL... and the entire menu faded away, leaving him to see the room as normal. He could still feel that the skill was active, especially once he moved a claw into position near one corner of the doorframe. His internal energy began to flow and draw down MP almost automatically: The skill would likely improve his natural warding abilities like this, but he'd still be doing the entire thing by hand.
Setting it back to ASSISTED returned the menu to full opacity, where he did a little poking and exploring: There were options for doing basic ground-circle wards, entryway wards, room wards, object and personal wards... He couldn't select those last two, either because of his own lacking experience or the low level of the Dragon's Den skill. Likewise, the variables he could put in for things like duration, break-effect, warnings, alarms and so forth were all pretty limited... But still better than what he could do on his own a week ago.
Spike also noticed a projected MP cost for the currently-selected options (and a button for saving setups for future use, conveniently) with a smaller total next to it: Manual Discount. Presumably the system would have to put some energy into doing all these calculations and prep for him, so doing the same work manually would be cheaper by... Well, right now it looked like a ten percent drop, depending on his options. Not bad at all, given how much it would save him in terms of math time!
Confirming his options (an hour-long room ward that would physically repel invaders and send him an alert, with a different alert if it was broken), the window faded away again... But his system's lights remained. Now they were arranged all across the room, showing him exactly what signs and markers to place, which runes went where and how to connect the flow of magic. It was impressive stuff, but... He was still curious about that third toggle.
Backing up, he switched the marker to INSTANT... And only one thing changed: One number.
"TEN TIMES!? Jeeez... Eh, might as well try it."
The price in MP to set up the exact same ward had gone up by an entire factor, just straight-up slapping a 0 onto the end of the previous cost. So Manual warding was ~10% cheaper, Assisted warding was the baseline price, and Instant warding was tenfold more expensive... But it would be instant, just like the name implied. The new cost was more than his entire MP pool, but it looked like it could drain from his supply while he regenerated more until it hit the required amount.
Hitting the button confirmed it: His MP stayed at max while the number in the menu dialed down. A thirty-second dip into Omphaloskepsis later, then BAM. His entire MP supply dropped out from under him in an instant, recovering shakily afterwards. He felt his body get thrown into the toxic self-destructive state that the system called 'Mana Confusion' once again... With his experience surviving the condition from yesterday, he made no effort to restrain the whipsaw flux of power until it calmed down. Once he had his senses back, he looked at the menu with bleary pain-struck eyes.
"...Note to self: That checkbox for Withdraw entire cost from recovery rate should stay checked."
Thankfully there was no permanent damage, but he was also a little distressed to see that unlike his previous tangling with the assault on his interior systems, he hadn't netted any progress towards the Internal Alchemy Mastery. Was it too short, too low-intensity, or had he just reached the point in the skill's progression where that kind of thing didn't matter?
Eh: All issues for another time. Right now, he had a ward to review! And... Well to be honest, the review was a bit of an anticlimax: It was flawless. He'd never done work better, or maybe even on par, and it was all completed in a second (once he could pay for it) or less. Outside and upstairs, he could clearly hear Twilight's surprised reaction to the sudden shift in the local magic, and once he cracked the door he saw Pinkie Pie's own scrunched muzzle and wide eyes.
"Welp, there you go! Test away, Pinkie Pen."
She blinked off her minor confusion and poked him with a hoof.
"That was terrible: Pens aren't tasty at all! I mean I cooouuld make one with a chocolate-lacquered cookie reservoir using some kind of dyed milk ink, or maybe a cream or a gel icing? But then the nib would be such a chore... Bon-bons would be too large! Nonpareil dots? Ooooh but they're so finicky!"
"...Can I retract my stupid joke?"
"Nope!"
"Fair enough. Well... Still, at your leisure."
He knew that Pinkie did most of her best work (especially the type nopony could explain) when she wasn't being watched. Rather than just turn around, he made his way upstairs to make sure Twilight didn't need help: It sounded like she was writing up a storm. Was in the past tense emphatically, since as soon as he rounded the corner of the stairs she jumped on him like the last pancake.
"SPIKE, did you prepare that ward in advance!?"
"N-no! I just used my new skill and... Before you get too excited, it's incredibly stupidly inefficient."
"Well I figured that much because a lot of thaumic radiation sort of blipped past in relatively short order, but still! That was incredibly fast, and I assume the majority of the time you spent in there was reviewing parameters rather than doing preparatory work..."
"Yeah, more or less. But really: We're talking about a huge leap in input cost."
"...Triple?"
"Way short."
"Sixfold?"
"Think bigger."
Her overjoyed expression deflated as she stepped back.
"...Ah. Even that was a bit of a stretch, but... Yes, alright, I got a little over-excited. Can you blame me? This is a pretty big deal even if it's eight-"
"Ten."
Twilight let her jaw fall slack, then brought it back up with one hoof.
"Ten... Ten times more expensive? No wonder you were so adamant: Even if this method were teachable, most ponies wouldn't have the supply to do wardwork period at that scale, much less doing so safely."
He shrugged and started sketching up the menu from memory.
"Pretty sure it's not teachable even in the best of circumstances: The 'engine' seems to be taking control entirely, in that mode. I also had the choice of an assisted-creation mode that improved a few things, but..."
The two of them quickly lost track of time discussing the minutiae of wards and Spike's new abilities, and were only drawn out of their reverie when Pinkie Pie came upstairs to report back.
"Nope!"
"...Nope?"
Pinkie looked slightly more disheveled than usual, which says quite a bit for a pony who is barely sheveled at the best of times.
"Nada. I didn't wanna go too crazy on it? But all of my non-crazy options super-duper did not work!"
"Hmmm... Any idea why?"
"Explaining too much would involve some 'Pinkie Promise'-level secrets, but I can definitely say that you using a room that doesn't touch any of the building's outside walls made it way tougher."
Twilight was obviously tempted to start taking notes again immediately, but seemed to hold back for Pinkie's sake: They'd already learned the hard way how counterproductive it could be to stare too deep into that particular abyss.
"Well, that's extremely reassuring: If you can't get in? I can trust this power with my life."
Pinkie's grin did a wibble-wobble at that, but straightened back up before he could say anything.
"G-good! But here's hoping you never have to, yaknow?"
"Absolutely, Spike: Just because you've got some new power and confidence doesn't mean you can be cavalier about risk to life and limb!"
"Says the pony who threw herself off a cliff because a farmhoof she'd known for less than a day said it'd work out."
That set them all off laughing again, although Twilight's laugh had that extra little edge of 'I am going to give you a stern talking-to for that later' hiding underneath. Pinkie's was far more genuine, and she even wiped a tear off the corner of her eye by the time they were all done.
"Aaaah... So! I was reliably informed by some paper that the real reason I'm here is so we can eat lunch and make party plans!"
"Party... RIGHT! Both kinds of party, actually."
"Oh Spike, there's so many more than two types of party!"
She wrapped a forelimb around his shoulders and began gesturing into the void. If he hadn't spent the last day literally seeing things in midair that other ponies couldn't? He'd have made some kind of analogy here with the sweeping image she tried to paint with her words. As it is, he just sort of let the comfortable babble wash over and through him: Listening with no intent to interject.
"-and shindigs and hoedowns, oh the hoedowns I have seen!"
"I thought those last two were regional names for the same thing?"
"Nope! The difference comes down to the type of dancing!"
"...So one's as bad as the other where Twilight's concerned, huh?"
"LUNCH! We should probably stop this and handle food. Please?"
While the two of them were just getting on a roll, it made sense to go ahead and focus on food before the jokes got out of hand: Spike had done enough of that yesterday at the Arcade.
"But really, what I meant by the other kind of party was that my Gamer ability lets me bring ponies into a party with me: A group of players going through the game cooperatively, is usually what it means. Want to test that out while we make lunch?"
"Eeeh, Twilight's right: I'm super hungry since I was looking forward to this ever since I got the note! 'Wait until after' is my vote."
"Seconded: I do poorly enough in a kitchen environment without the new research taking up space in my thoughts."
"Motion passes! Lunch prep sans party testing it is."
Pinkie brought a sweet side dish (because of course she did) and produced several containers seemingly out of thin air, or from her mane's not-so-thin hair (because, again, of course she did).
"It's all the stuff to make a diced trifle! Get it? Dice?"
"I'd expect nothing less in terms of puns or desserts."
While their guest set to taking apart her various containers full of cakes, creams, fruits and such? The host took the chance to do her one regularly-successful kitchen task: Mise en place. It wasn't just a Prench phrase that perfectly described how Twilight Sparkle aspired to live, it was also a technique for preparing the ingredients to make cooking easier. And it helped a lot in times Spike was cooking something fast and ambitious: Times like now.
"Alright Spike, here you go: Hot peppers (which are actually chilis) for the oil sweat, then carrots, asparagus, non-hot peppers (no relation to black pepper the seasoning), and onions. Finally the scallions and garlic... Are we doing rice for the base this time?"
"Yes please! I had pasta for lunch yesterday, gotta keep it varied if I want to find more buffs."
"I'll start the cooker up, in that case. We've still got plenty of sauce base mixed... And if you're looking to get another buff, what gem do you plan to use?"
Pinkie popped her head into the conversation, eyes bright.
"OOOH that's right! You told me about getting a real-deal cookery skill for making food all magical, right? I wanna try it too!"
Spike looked between their stir-fry preparations and Pinkie's ever-growing assortment of dessert fixings. It looked like the main course was going to be savory, lightly vegetal, with most of the stronger flavors coming from the dark and spicy soy sauce blend. Nearly black at first glance, but a lighter tawny brown when you held it up to the light...
"Tiger's eye, I think. Lets powder the gems and whisk that into the sauce before cooking."
Predictably, Pinkie's preparations were perplexing. There was an entire cake of some kind that had been cut apart into little cubes and then reassembled for transport, a container of what looked like cream, and a lidded bowl full of...
"Tiny oranges in sugar syrup?"
"Close but nopes: Those are kumquats! I always thought it was a super-funny word and then I realized I'd never actually had one so I decided to try them and WOW are they good. You can eat 'em whole with skin and all, if you cook them first! I cut these ones up and gave them the ol' roast-n-soak so they could make their own syrup."
Twilight took a glance over from the automagic rice cooker she'd developed last year.
"Macerated fruit: I've seen that kind of preparation back in Canterlot, come to think of it."
"Yup! 'Tis but a trifle... Which is me being literal, because I'm gonna assemble it into a trifle! I just need Spike's help to gem it up and then it's whipping time."
"...Wouldn't that only be if I did a bad job of helping?"
Pinkie's blush was so bright that she instinctively shielded the cold fruit and cream from its heat.
"Whipping the cream! Jeez, Spike: Don't make me regret those lessons in advanced jocularity."
"No promises! But as far as gems go... Those kumquats got me thinking of carnelian. It comes in around the same size, and pretty similar shade: Orange isn't a real common gemstone color. As for adding it..."
"Half and half, powder in the whipped cream and pieces with the fruit?"
"Oh, I like that. Hopefully that should be enough involvement for Dragon's Kitchen to work? The description says 'Your Cooking' with a capitalized C, not a lowercase: I'm betting that means the skill and not just the action. Does that Cooking cover instructing other cooks, like a head chef?"
Twilight wiggled a hoof side to side in midair.
"Shining is inconsistent about that ruling, I've seen him call for Leadership checks just as often as the skill being led, so..."
"Eh, worth a shot: You don't mind if we accidentally mess up the batch of ingredients if it does go wrong, right Pinkie?"
She shook her head and pushed the various bowls in his direction.
"All good! It's not like it'll go to waste since it'll still be safe for you to eat, right?"
He nodded and turned his attention to the gems he had on hand. Tiger's eye was common in these parts, barely even considered a gem by pony standards. For Spike it had a sort of deep, spiced note, tasting like a char-black pepper or Minotaur mole. Carnelian was a little less basic, harder to acquire but by no means rare (and for what it was worth, tasted sweet and sour at the same time, and slightly sticky). He had a good amount of both in his normal snacking supply, with no need to dip into Rarity's Hopeless Case or the rewards from his quest.
A little test on samples of the sauce and the cream proved the flexibility of his skills: The gems integrated flawlessly and his MP emptied out to fuel the Dragon's Kitchen. With that confidence he let his mana recover for a bit, and then repeated the process with the entirety of the sauce and cream. Finally, he tossed the macerated fruits with the remaining chunks of carnelian.
The rice would take time to finish, and Pinkie was going to work furiously beating air into the cream mix he'd finished gemming... So now it was time for Spike to burn.
Yesterday had been sufficiently hectic that he never got around to sending more test packages to Celestia: He decided later was better than never, and blew a few miscellaneous items across space with his Breath. Alternating each gout of green with a blast of orange, he worked on grinding the skill and testing how well he could control the flames: How tight, how dense, how hot?
He'd learned the trick of stir-frying from a foreign delegation during one of their trips back up to visit the Sparkle family in Canterlot, years ago. Spike had wandered his way over to the castle and accidentally met up with an ambassadorial envoy and their cooks. They'd been surprised to see a dragon in civilized lands, and rather than take offense he'd struck up a conversation about the huge iron pan one of them had slung across their back.
The ensuing conversation lasted long enough to mess up the timing for their meeting, but Celestia diplomatically handled that in that way she does, and Spike went back home full of curiosity about all the new words and ideas. That had been one of the eye-openers that got him deeper into cooking recently, and for his birthday that same year? His very own wok had arrived courtesy of Night Light and Twilight Velvet.
After the first few accidents, Twilight had fireproofed an entire section of the kitchen and put in some new spells to prevent the heat from overwhelming ponies or damaging the tree itself. An open-air spell wouldn't be able to restrain the heat or smoke, so they'd even put in a separating wall with its own door and a little window-counter to move items between the halves of the kitchen. Just like the new space Pinkie had, Spike had his own place where he could work culinary magic with abandon.
And with his new Gamer skills? Now it was a space where he could push other magical limits.
Twilight's science-minded training was high in his head as he exhaled one giant blast of fire after another: The green would send assorted packages and snacks to Celestia, then the orange would land in a large stone basin. When Spike had used the wok previously he'd only used his breath to light wood or coals and worked from those: Today he wanted to try and use just the raw flame.
Using it directly wouldn't be feasible. Even with his new height and improved proportions, moving the wok with his claws and craning his neck to breathe fire underneath? Yeah, no. Instead he wanted to try breathing his best flames in advance. He could hold them in stasis using Stagnet and work the wok over top of that. He'd still have to figure out a way to keep all the fire from going away in one huge poof, of course.
His current options for the skill were Stagnet to fix things solid, Vanesco to remove them after, and Resūmō return them to their natural form. So far he had only used Stagnet to halt his dragon fire (and his internal mana, but the memory of that pain was still too fresh for a repeat performance) and the results had been mixed. Stabilized dragonfire released light but not heat. He'd vanished the fire from Rarity's table without damaging it, and he'd crushed some in his claws without it igniting...
Well, every experiment had to begin somewhere.
What's the worst that could happen?