“Yep,” Harvey answered as he carried a chunk of elemental over to the anvil.
“And how are you planning on doing that without blowing up the rest of us in the process?” She asked.
“With this,” he announced, holding up the severed head of an elemental that Hannah’s Critical Mass had detached from the rest of the body.
“Quit teasing her and tell them your plan,” Julian sighed, his water jug sploshing as he plopped into a stool beside Elena.
“Please, because I’m not seeing it.”
“Alright, alright. I’ve been brainstorming how to use my new power to turn inscriptions on and off to start making traps. Little things, like using some of the Kalthera venom or cracked essence crystals to debilitate the Undead before we charge in. But, then I realized there’s nothing stopping me from doing the same thing on a smaller scale…”Harvey began.
“An armor set for Gary.” Julian interrupted.
“I’m getting there!” Harvey sighed.
“So, what. You’re going to paint some exploding runes and then blow his head off?” Hannah asked.
“Not exactly. You can’t really detonate the inscription itself. You can overload it until it burns out, but that can only release as much essence as what’s stored in the ink. The pattern will have to trigger something else.”
“Like what?”
“Poison, fire, lightning… I could probably find a way to detonate any essence crystals embedded in the armor itself,” Harvey explained.
“That won’t be enough,” Elena shuddered.
“And it’s pretty morbid. You’re talking about getting him to wear a microwave aimed at his insides that you can turn on whenever you want,” Hannah hesitated.
“It doesn’t have to be enough to kill him. Just enough to slow him down if a fight breaks out. I’ll admit it’s not the most ethical choice, but we have to do something. Besides, if he decides to play nice, I won’t ever need to activate it.”
Harvey should’ve felt sick even suggesting it, but he didn’t. Tricking someone into wearing armor that would boil them alive was not only horrific... but cowardly. He expected to feel his dormant Stain flicker to life, but felt nothing at all. His hands used to shake whenever he got nervous, his body doing whatever it could to get the anxiety out, but staring down at the chisel ready to carve into the elemental’s neck, his hands were still.
Innovative, not cowardly. The best solution to an unsolvable problem. He thought.
“I don’t like it,” Hannah challenged. “It’s not human.”
“Humanity’s done a lot worse for a lot less,” Julian sighed.
“Still, we don’t want to stoop to that level, do we?” Hannah complained. “Not to mention all the risks. What if he notices the trap? What if he refuses to wear the armor?”
“He won’t notice it, I promise. And if he doesn’t wear it, that just means we’re back to square one, but at least Elena and I will have gotten some essence and learned a few new inscriptions from crafting it.”
“I want to kill monsters, not become one,” Hannah snapped.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do here. Listen, if anyone’s got any better ideas, I’m all ears, but until then, I’m not going to wait around for his last shred of sanity to snap.” Harvey retorted.
The room was silent, the other three all staring at him while he began dissecting his next batch of iron. Harvey could feel their eyes boring into him, but refused to look up. He knew he was right, but struggled to meet their gaze anyway.
“Fine,” Hannah sighed. “Come on, Buttercup, let’s go get you something to eat.”
Julian followed her out, leaving him alone with Elena, who gingerly retrieved a brush resting in her inkwell.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“I’m not just doing this for you.”
“I know, but still… Hannah just doesn’t understand. She’s never seen him fight.”
Harvey shuddered as the image of Gary looming over him with his bloodstained beard flashed in his mind. A cold sweat ran through his body as his hands began to tremble.
There it is.
“She doesn’t have to like it. That’s not going to stop me from doing what has to be done.”
Harvey looked up at his friend, his heart lurching as tears welled in her eyes. He’d never know exactly what happened behind closed doors… she wouldn’t tell him, but the agony plain on her face told him everything he needed to know.
He had to die.
A lot needed to be done to make that happen, starting with his next batch of Steel. He’d love nothing more than diving right into the inscriptions for his hammer, but they didn’t have much time before the quest ended. He’d have to maintain a tight schedule to create as much armor as possible, so he’d have to save his inscribing for the time spent waiting for his creations to cool down.
Chopping enough iron chunks to fill his crucible, he filled the firepot with charcoal and got to melting. Dissecting elementals was mindless work, so he spent the time brainstorming all the projects he wanted to finish over the next week.
One for All - Consolidation Event
Without uniting as one, the Veilstriders have no hope of overcoming the Undead. To ensure no one shirks their responsibility to humanity, only the strongest outpost shall remain active once the timer expires.
Current Leaders:
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The Hell Hotel
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Veils End
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
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Riverbend Refuge
Time Remaining: 7 Days: 5 Hours: 12 Minutes: 42 seconds
So much to do in so little time… Harvey thought. First things first, the hammer.
More than a contrived plan to incapacitate Gary, he needed to make sure his own gear was ready for war. Actually forging the armor would be simple enough, but he needed to map out all the inscriptions required to make the most of his skillset.
He was excited to check out that notebook full of everyone’s skills that Master Seung-Ho had suggested, but he expected most to have a more straightforward path than his own. Most skills, including his early creations, were a simple exchange. Essence in, power out. His path had morphed to one that amplified the effects of his gear, creating constructs that mimicked both their form and the function of their inscriptions. That meant he needed to make the most of every inch of steel covering his body if he wanted to bring his full power to bear in the final days of the trial. Dreaming up fantastical arrays of runes was easy, but finding the right materials for the ink was another question.
Seeing it would be a while before the iron was hot enough to start folding in carbon, he moved to an empty workbench and got to work on his weapon. The hammer already had the resonances he needed, so he just needed a brush and two batches of ink. One to gather the energy and another to transform it. The brush was simple. All he needed to do was cast a steel pen.
I wonder if people ever make inscribing pens? It would be a lot faster than constantly dipping a feather in an empty potion vial.
Deciding it wouldn’t hurt to try, he carefully constructed his mold to include four separate parts: a hollow tube, a threaded cap to secure the ink, and a tip that could hold a small ball bearing. He had no idea how pens were made back home, but figured he’d at least give it a shot. Just in case his dream of magical office supplies was too ambitious, he molded a simple stick he could use instead. Adding an opening to the mold to pour each piece, he watched the essence putty solidify.
With the problem of his brush handled, he turned to the most challenging part... the ink. Retrieving the single F Grade core he’d extracted from the body that had become his hammer, he inspected it.
Most of the resonances made sense, but construct animation? Was there enough intelligence left in this core that he could bring it back to life as some magical robot? He didn’t know how that made him feel. Hopefully, the spirit of the elemental he’d taken it from was gone, and all that remained was a blueprint for sapience.
If it’s actually the elemental’s soul stuck inside the core… He shuddered, thinking of the pile of G Grade cores buried in a crate outside.
In any case, it looked like the core had the resonances he needed. Since he couldn’t reconfigure an essence crystal to store the kinetic energy, the core would have to do. That solved half of the equation, but what about the lightning?
He hadn’t seen a single thundercloud since he got here. Even if he had, what was he supposed to do? Catch it in a bottle? Attach metal scraps to a kite and fly it in a thunderstorm? Other than finding a monster with the resonance he needed, there wasn’t an obvious solution.
I could… make a flame inscription instead? No, that’s not it. He mulled, pouring his first batch of steel into his pen mold and a second he’d fashioned to become his new helmet. It was probably possible to transform the vibrations into fire, but that just didn’t feel right. Nothing said inscriptions needed to follow the laws of physics, but he’d like to avoid playing god for now if possible. Besides, another fire inscription would just be a weaker version of his own skill.
Seeing as steel was the only material he could find that resonated with electricity, he decided to try adding tiny shavings to the ink he used for the lightning inscriptions. If that didn’t work, having two out of three components align with his intentions should still be enough.
A plan in place, he got to work. He had a lot of practice using Artificer’s Toolbox to make molds, and thanks to the precise measurements afforded by Artificer’s Eyes, he could cast pieces that perfectly fit his body. Pouring pieces that large with only his tiny crucible would leave seams that made the armor brittle, but that was easily fixed with a quick reheat, a hammer session, and a temper using Perfect Finish. After a few rounds of heating, infusing carbon, and pouring, he had a good idea of how much time he’d have for inscribing.
First, he broke open the mold holding his new pen. The pieces were small enough to cool quickly, and after a quick temper and quench, they were ready for testing. For that, he’d need some ink, so he took a seat in front of his inkwell. Gritting his teeth, he slit his palm. Warm blood flowed down into the cauldron until his 90 points in Vitality stitched his skin back together.
Gonna need more than that. He grimaced, carving deeper into his hand. The ratio of blood to core was important, but he had no way of knowing what it should be. Instead of plopping the whole thing into the cauldron, he shattered it with a hammer on the anvil, grinding it to dust he could add slowly until the balance felt right. Placing his left hand on the inkwell, the runes flared to life. Feeling the cauldron like a new stomach waiting to be fed still felt weird, but it didn’t take as long as last time for his Willpower to fill every groove and channel carved into the steel.
Remembering his 14 free points, he dumped them all into Willpower before dripping core dust into the blood. Unlike the charcoal, the elemental heart railed against his desire to reshape it into a simple battery. It wanted freedom. Freedom to feed, to grow, to fight. The voice calling him a destroyer didn’t return, but he felt the latent will trying to punch away his Willpower like its iron fists hadn’t already been stripped away from its body. Harvey hesitated for a moment, but his will was too strong for the shard of elemental consciousness.
Its dreams were destroyed, breaking down everything until all that remained was the battery he needed. Satisfied, he added another glob of core sand and the battle began anew. He repeated the process five more times, but found only traces of the resonance he needed left in his blood after every session. His mind was growing tired, not because the elemental was successfully fighting back but because the process was taking too long.
Something’s wrong.
Severing the connection to his inkwell, a notification appeared in his mind.
A new creation has been made | Kinetic Ink | F Grade | Inferior
Inferior? He’d never seen anything below common… Inspecting it with Artificer’s Eyes, the throbbing exhaustion in his head only got worse.
“Hey Elena?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you come take a look at this?” Harvey asked.
“Sure, but I need to head out soon. It’s almost time to grab dinner for Gary,” she replied. “What’s going on?”
“I’m trying to make ink to store all the vibrations from my hammer, but the System gave it an inferior grade. Any idea why?”
“Well, first off, you’re starting with a huge batch,” she began, looking between the blood and clump of shattered core in his hand, “and second, you tried to cheat.”