By the dawn of the final day of the quest, Harvey’s mind was numb, the constant ringing of hammer against steel drowning out all other senses after almost a week of slaving away in the forge. A week just wasn’t enough time to outfit over 50 Veilstriders.

  First, he’d tackled the smaller plates that would be fitted into the cloth and leather armor of the 30 or so survivors who didn't want to be weighed down. That had taken two days, and he’d still had some time to eat with his friends, test out some inscriptions, and get a good night's sleep. The whole endeavor netted him another Profession level. He’d expected more, but the penalty for mass-producing the same things over and over again was steeper than he thought.

  Finished with the easy part, he resumed the brutal cycle of carving corpses, melting iron, infusing carbon, making molds, casting components, hammering out imperfections, tempering, and quenching.

  Why did I sign up for this? He lamented, venting his anger on a plate that would become part of Hyrum’s greaves.

  He was racing the clock. His only reprieve was the few minutes spent chopping wood to refill the kiln or grabbing a bite to eat, but even those stolen moments away from the anvil had been robbed once Carla took it upon herself to run his errands for him. The leatherworker practically moved in with him while she rushed to add the strips, padding, and buckles he couldn’t add himself.

  They worked day and night, sleeping just long enough to prevent the bulk of the mental errors that would require rework. Initially, they’d kept a swift but steady pace. After all, the quest timer wasn’t a hard stop on production since Veils End would still be the only Outpost with a functioning loom and shop. Or so they thought.

  “They passed us again,” Carla whimpered, staring at a quest screen he couldn’t see.

  “You’re kidding,” Harvey moaned.

  “Nope.”

  Harvey swung so hard the plate cracked. Swearing, he chucked the steel into the coals, not bothering to hold it with his tongs.

  “How much longer?” He seethed.

  “11 hours and 24 minutes,” she sighed, returning to the set of Stonetusk leather armor she was making for Dr. Silva.

  That should be enough time. Even if we lose…

  Ever since being overtaken by the Hell Hotel just days after the One For All quest appeared, Veils End had been fighting tooth and nail to reclaim that first-place finish. Three days ago, they’d finally managed to surpass the hotel, only to lose the spot again in a matter of hours. It had been a tennis match ever since, with first place constantly bouncing back and forth between the two Outposts.

  The problem was that Veils End was running out of quick wins to chase. Every level needed more essence than the last, so maintaining a decent speed meant either sleep deprivation or increasingly dangerous fights. The mad dash to win the quest had cost 4 Veilstriders their lives when a hunting party got overwhelmed by a massive pack of wolves near the river in the living forest. Since then, Julian had reminded everyone that, no matter how proud they were of their new home, it wasn’t worth risking their lives.

  Able-bodied soldiers would be more important than the battlefield when the Necrolord Army finally showed up.

  Other than levels, it made sense that the system factored evolutions when calculating which Outpost was the strongest, but almost everyone had already reached F Grade by now, with the exceptions of Gabe, Amy, and Elena. The first two were holed up in Gary’s house all day, playing make-believe instead and hoping their new dad would rescue them once the scary monsters showed up. Just thinking about it made Harvey seethe, but there was nothing he could do without poking the bear.

  Elena was limited by the amount of blood she could afford to lose in a day. Her profession didn’t provide a single point in Vitality, and she’d given up on her class a long time ago, leaving only the +1 from every race level and a few extra free points to boost her physical recovery. With her current 49 points, she could only make 3 or 4 batches of ink a day before the blood loss made her too sick to inscribe effectively. She had more time to work now that Gary wasn’t insisting on eating at dusk every night, but she’d only barely hit Race Level 23 before leaving the night before.

  The last quick win he could think of was their equipment, and with only two sets of platemail left to forge, it wasn’t going to be enough. The Hell Hotel had at least 14 times the population of Veils End, so even if every single one of them were 10 times stronger than the average hotel resident, they would still lose to raw numbers.

  Who cares. At least you’ll get one good night's sleep before this is all over.

  Most Veilstriders had already given up on the quest, but Gary’s tirade five days ago had whipped them all into a frenzy. Harvey was alone in the smithy when it happened, stealing a few bites of dinner in between mapping out the inscriptions for the Blood Tyrant’s armor, but that hadn’t protected him from the aura… The shouting match that followed still grated in his ears.

  “What are you all doing sitting around a campfire when I’m about to lose my outpost? Roasting marshmallows? Telling ghost stories?” Gary screamed, bloodlust billowing out to cover the entire camp. Even Harvey, invisible behind the thin wooden walls of his sanctuary, started to shake as the imprint loomed over him.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  “Eating dinner, Gary. And we’ve talked about this. It’s not your outpost. It’s everyone’s,” Julian replied.

  “Say what you want, but the System’s not on your side. I’ve let you all pretend this is some hippie commune for long enough! We’re all in this together, Gary. We’re all just doing our best, Gary!” He mocked. “That was fine before, but I won’t let your lazy asses be the reason I lose my Outpost. As of this moment, I am in charge. This is not a democracy. This is a dictatorship. You don’t eat, sleep, or shit unless I tell you to. You don’t like that? Then you'd better kill me, because I will hunt you down. Veil’s End doesn’t tolerate deserters.”

  Harvey had stood trembling inside the Smithy. Waiting… praying that somebody would accept his challenge and be the spark that ignited the flames of rage he knew they all felt.

  Nobody did. Not even Julian.

  Instead, a suffocating silence blanketed everyone until Gary stormed back to his house with a final decree.

  “That includes you, Scoutmaster! I know you’re in there!”

  Harvey’s knees buckled, and he heard a collective gasp from the crowd eating just outside his door as Gary started to laugh. The air seemed to boil for a minute longer before the terrifying aura finally receded.

  Julian and Hannah stormed inside the second the aura disappeared, shock and horror plain on their faces.

  “He leveled up,” Julian whispered.

  “He killed someone?” Harvey gasped.

  “No, he was just talking. He didn’t kill anyone… He didn’t craft anything. How the hell did he level up!” Julian ranted.

  Everyone had their theories, but without a clear answer, all they could do was keep moving forward. Luckily, the outburst gave Harvey a good excuse to bend the knee and offer his new dictator a set of shiny steel armor.

  He hadn’t had as much time to experiment with the inscriptions as he would’ve liked, but was still proud of the result. Both for his own equipment and the nasty surprise he’d forged for Gary.

  Seeing how effective his kinetic absorption and lightning array combo had been on his hammer, he’d decided to inscribe a similar set onto both Julian’s and his own breastplate as well as a steel shield he’d forged for himself. The shield was a lot larger than his old buckler, which had been folded in half by the first F Grade he fought, looking more like something a medieval knight would use. Now, whenever he blocked attacks, some of the force would be converted into retaliatory lightning. Inscribing both got him another 10 points of Wisdom and 6 points of Willpower with Soul Forge, giving him a healthy boost when wearing his armor.

  For Gary, he inscribed identical arrays, hoping that seeing Julian wear the exact same armor would convince him it wasn’t a trick. He’d added as many energy storage runes as he could fit, as well as a few extra burst runes that weren’t present on his own breastplate. Both had three essence crystals embedded in the steel, one in the center of the chest and two near the neck where the breastplate connected to the shoulder pauldrons. Julian’s lay dormant. Batteries ready and waiting to power an inscription he hadn’t added yet. Gary's had suppressed lightning-burst arrays, waiting to explode the crystals and bathe him in mind-ravaging light.

  He’d already confirmed the bursts were enough to crack the gems like a walnut, and with the addition of an extra rune to forcefully trigger the burst, he’d be able to activate the trap any time the breastplate was charged.

  He’d been delighted to find that suppressing an inscription with Modular Array made the ink disappear completely, just like his own weave had when evolving to F Grade. As long as the ink didn’t draw any essence, which it wouldn’t, it was completely undetectable by anything other than his own aura, at least among his own friends. He was sure there was some skill out there that could find them, but nobody he’d asked had any hint there was an inscription at all once his skill did its job.

  With that, the armor would look and function completely normally until he detonated it, giving Gary no reason to doubt it was anything but a sincere attempt to make amends.

  The combined essence of 3 crystals cracked at once would hurt, but he knew it wouldn’t kill a monster like Gary. So, he’d spent the next few nights testing out inks refined from the acid glands of the F Grade Kalthera Widows. Carla had asked why he was messing with poisons himself instead of handing the glands off to one of the alchemists, but he just lied and said the inscriptions would be stronger than a simple poison. They both knew that wasn’t true, but she didn’t bother pushing harder.

  In the end, he’d been able to create something that released a cloud of poison gas. It couldn’t use the venom itself since he had no way of discreetly storing the liquid inside the armor, so he had to make do with using the resonances in the ink as a blueprint to transmute raw essence into a weakened version of the venom. He had no idea whether the poison would seep through the skin or if it had to be inhaled, and considering he wasn’t willing to test it on himself or anyone besides Gary, the only place that made sense was the inside of the helmet. Carefully, he painted the runes until he’d covered every inch. The array needed to be as large as possible since the process would be relatively slow when powered by ambient essence.

  He’d hoped to find a third inscription to add somewhere else, but time was not on his side. Everyone worried about what Gary would do if Veils End lost the quest, so Harvey had been forced to hand it over a few days early to make sure he had time to make alterations if the suit didn’t fit.

  He’d expected the hardest part would be selling Gary the idea that he actually wanted to make amends, but the genuine terror of knocking on that man’s door had done the trick. Harvey prepared an entire speech, but Gary just snatched the open crate out of his hands and walked back inside. He hadn’t left the smithy since, so he wasn’t sure if Gary had been wearing it or not.

  The trap is set, now we gotta pray I get the chance to trigger it.

  The cracked steel plate he’d thrown in the furnace was close to melting, so he pulled his tired mind into focus and got back to work. If he were honest with himself, the final two armor sets weren’t his best work.

  Oh well, it would have to do.

  Quenching the final piece, radiant orange light erupted from his weave. Another level. The last contribution he’d make to Veil’s Ends campaign. There were still 2 hours left on the timer, but going out hunting in his state was suicide. Instead, he’d be taking a well-deserved nap. Scrolling through the notifications hovering at the edge of his mind, Harvey collapsed on his cot and fell asleep.

  Your profession, Runeforged Artificer, has reached Level 32. +8 Endurance, +10 Strength, +4 Dexterity, +12 Willpower, +8 Free Points

  …

  Your race, Veilstrider, has reached Level 29. +2 to all stats