“I have to say, I’m pretty jealous of your Soul Forge skill. 8 Vitality and 5 Wisdom just for using a sword would be pretty nice,” Julian remarked.

  “I know, right? Each piece might not look like much on their own, but it adds up fast,” Harvey smiled. “My hammer’s had an unused essence crystal since I made it, and I think I’m going to add a few of those healing burst arrays for myself now that I know it will boost my Vitality.”

  “Make my knife first,” Hannah demanded. “I’m feeling left out.”

  “Aw, I’m sorry,” Harvey mocked.

  “You should be!” Hannah snapped. “You guys get all these cool toys while I’m stuck with the same old bow and quiver I’ve had from the start!”

  “I’ll trade my hammer for Buttercup,” Harvey offered.

  Hannah gasped with an affronted look, her face turning beet-red as she wrapped her arms around the deer’s neck. “How dare you! I would never!”

  With a promise that he’d get to work on her project, the two left for the mines to hunt any newly evolved elementals. Nobody said anything, but they were all eager to get back to leveling up, knowing the Undead army could be just around the corner. All jokes aside, they were in a rush to do everything they could to prepare themselves.

  Harvey, still riding high on his recent successes, managed to keep himself from slipping back into his sleeping bag for a quick nap.

  You can sleep when you’re dead. Harvey thought, only to recoil as the old saying used by many a partying college student took on new meaning under his current circumstances.

  Chopping up another elemental, he got to work on the steel for her knife while going through his plans for the day.

  Since he wasn’t planning on trying anything new for her weapon, he should be able to get it done by nightfall. In the meantime, he’d get back to forging arc charges and testing his firestarters. The more F Grade ink he made, the more he realized he was going to struggle with his second set of traps. It wasn’t that campfire ink was hard to make. It was actually the opposite. The ink's ingredients were too simple.

  Finding a balance between his F Grade blood and ungraded charcoals was much harder than before he evolved. His essence was simply too strong and would overpower the resonances of the coals, whether he wanted it to or not. Without an F Grade phoenix or fire elemental around to use, he was going to need piles and piles of whatever flammable materials he could find in the forest.

  His brain worked overtime to worm its way to a solution while he hammered away at Hannah’s knife, but no eureka moments saved him from the conundrum. Such a simple problem shouldn’t even make the top 5 of his list of concerns, but the Undead drew closer every day, and he needed his traps to be as deadly as possible. The arc charges were powerful, but he needed a wildfire to corral them all into Veils End.

  Whatever clarity had guided his hands last night was gone, and he realized he’d need months of practice to produce a sword like that again. Her hunting knife was a straight, single-edged survival knife with a simple guard housing a small essence crystal. He couldn’t fit a larger one without bulking out the blade, but it should still provide enough juice for the occasional lightning burst. Hammering out all the imperfections on the 7-inch blade took almost as long as half of the Sentinel blade, and learning to add a few inches of serrated teeth without completely dulling it needed the other half.

  Hannah and Julian returned from the mine with two more elementals, only to find Harvey hunched over a workbench, swearing at the steel with a file in his hand. Hannah tried to convince him to take a break and eat something, but he just waved them off.

  “I’m almost done,” he spat without looking up from the edge.

  He almost wished he didn’t have his Artificer’s Eyes to show him every minor imperfection, but eventually the blade was ready to be quenched. It would need some time on the grindstone if it were going to be razor-sharp, but for now, he set it on the edge of the forge to put it through a few rounds of tempering.

  A new creation has been made | Steel Survival Knife | Major Essence Gained.

  “Hallelujah,” he sighed.

  Being cooped up in the smithy for weeks on end was starting to get to him. Pushing the bounds of his Profession was immensely rewarding, but he itched to mix in some time walking the wilderness. Even in his old life, he’d needed time away from the desk to keep his head screwed on straight. Whether it was playing tennis with Chloe, going out to eat with friends, or even taking a stroll around the neighborhood, it always helped get his creative juices flowing.

  A stroll around this neighborhood would be very different than back home, though.

  Finally, having a chunk of time for his own weapon, Harvey inscribed four matching healing burst arrays onto Aftershock’s handle, mirroring the set on the sword. Adding the runes used up the rest of the Healing Ink and gave him the same +8 Vitality from Soul Forge.

  You have inscribed | Healing Burst Array | Essence Gained X4

  The rattling screech of a bat interrupted the notification, and Harvey bolted outside. Luckily, Hannah was close, and he could see the creature already trying to flee with an arrow-sized hole in its wing. Seeing it in the daylight for the first time, Harvey got his first good look at the beast. He’d checked out the corpse in his slipsack, but the exploded remains didn’t do it justice.

  Gray, leathery wings stretched at least 6 feet across, with thin bones creating articulated ridges across its length. The head reminded him of a fox, with mottled gray fur covering a short snout with fangs jutting out over its lips. Black claws covered the toes of its tiny feet that hung limply as it desperately tried to fly away. A second hole appeared in the outstretched wing, followed by a pained wail.

  Harvey didn’t think they’d need any help taking the bat down, but ran in that direction anyway. When it finally came tumbling into the trees, he saw Buttercup burst through the forest to gore into its head with his antlers.

  “You guys ok?” Harvey asked.

  “We’re fine, but we’re starting to see more Undead. We found two more Graveweavers on our sweep around the Outpost, along with quite a few beasts with all the life drained out of them,” Hannah explained.

  “Good to know,” Harvey replied.

  “Wait, it gets worse. The drained carcasses are starting to wake back up,” she said.

  “What? That doesn’t make any sense,” he replied.

  “They aren’t dead. The Graveweavers are turning them undead. Bloodrunn, Stonetusks, we even found a Carrionwing turned gray like a deranged figurine,” she answered.

  “Does turning undead change them much?” he asked.

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  “Hard to tell, Julian cut the first one in half the second it started moving. We’ve been poking holes in any other bodies we find before they can finish the transition,” she answered.

  “Alright, I guess I'd better get back to work then,” he sighed.

  “We’ve got things under control for now, just do what you can,” she smiled reassuringly.

  Harvey rushed back to the smithy and snatched one of the balls of G Grade iron covering an essence crystal, and got to work on the firestarters. Now that the Graveweavers were converting the entire forest, burning it all down was more important than ever. Even if they survived the Necrolord army, reaching the portal home would require escorting all the children and elderly Veilstriders in the heart of the living forest across the entire trial ground. He shuddered as the vision of an elderly woman being ambushed by an Undead Bloodrunn appeared in his mind.

  Yep, let’s make sure it all burns.

  Taking the rest of his G Grade Campfire Ink, Harvey inscribed the same extraction, transmutation, and burst runes used by his arc charges. Placing it on the stone floor of the mine’s entrance, he used Modular Array to trigger his System named Campfire Charge. It worked as intended, and the iron orb was engulfed in orange flames that radiated warmth and safety.

  What the hell?

  Safety was the only way Harvey could describe the feelings his aura conveyed. Ever since he evolved, he’d gained a much finer control of his aura, instinctively learning to extend or retract it based on his needs. Not only did it help him project his Will and Legacy onto the world, but it also helped him sense the Will and Legacy of others.

  Grabbing the bottle of Campfire Ink, he inspected it again.

  I don’t need a fire to illuminate Veils End. I need one that can burn it down! He swore.

  Wondering if it was all in his head, Harvey grabbed a few fallen branches and piled them around the orb. The flame burned as intended, but wasn’t able to ignite the larger fuel before the essence crystal ran out of energy.

  A low-potency, G Grade ink with the legacy of providing warmth and comfort wasn’t going to make an array that was strong enough to serve his purposes. It was interesting to see that a single concept like flames could have so many different meanings. Campfires provided comfort and light in the darkness. Julian’s flames carried his will to protect and rejuvenate his allies while burning his foes to a crisp. Harvey’s forgefire strove to burn hotter and hotter until it eventually broke down whatever was placed in its midst.

  They were all functionally the same, but vastly different in purpose.

  Alright, Harvey. You just need different ingredients! No big deal.

  Stepping inside the smithy, he shoveled the remnant charcoal cinders and ash from his forge and piled it on metal trays. Hopefully, it contained at least a shadow of his forgefire and would help him create ink that was strong enough to set the world ablaze. Next, he emptied his spare slipsack of rations and set out into the forest to grab piles of anything his old Boy Scout days told him could be used as kindling. Piles and piles of dead leaves, bark shorn off the trees, and chunks of dead wood from fallen trunks. Emptying the pouch in the smithy, he went back to chop down a few of the living trees before carving them into inkwell-sized chunks. He even took an axe to the inside of the saloon, stealing chunks of broken furniture and pieces of the wall.

  His next batch of ink would be layered, first using charcoal and ashes to establish the flame, then feeding it everything it was meant to burn. Artificer’s Eyes proved each had at least a trace of the resonances he needed, and he hoped feeding them all would culminate in the hunger he needed the flames to have.

  The piles and piles of material were too much for him to shovel in on his own, so he screamed for Hannah and Julian to come back until they both came running.

  “What’s wrong?” Julian fretted, looking around the gate.

  “Nothing, but I need your help,” Harvey said.

  “You scared the hell out of me!” Hannah complained, slapping his arm.

  Sitting on the floor of the smithy with piles of fuel around him, he added his blood to the inkwell. The connection established, Julian shoveled charcoal inside as fast as he could. At the same time, Harvey struggled to break down the physical matter into essence before expelling all but the energy he needed. Chewing through the charcoal wasn’t difficult since there was almost no latent will to fight back against his 340 Willpower, but it wasn’t instantaneous.

  Filling the cauldron to the brim put a strain on his weave he’d never felt before, almost like his stomach was about to burst from being stuffed full of rocks. Any reprieve from digesting one of the stones was instantly washed away by the addition of another, and it took everything he had to maintain his connection to the cauldron.

  The problem stemmed from the lacking resonance in his materials, forcing him to replace quality with quantity. If he moved too slowly, any power he did gather would dissipate before he could begin the process of infusing it into his blood. Starting the infusion early would fill his cells with diluted essence, leaving him with ink even worse than the original.

  If he was right, the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts, and there were a lot of parts to digest.

  First, the coals, then the ashes. Handful by handful, the piles were stuffed into the cauldron as an earthy haze filled the air. By the time it was all inside the inkwell, they could barely see through the expelled residue. The veins on Harvey’s forehead bulged as his body trembled. Just maintaining the connection was a constant drain on his weave, not to mention the strain of condensing the essence.

  Inside the inkwell was a roiling ball of flames, fuel, and hunger forcibly reshaped by Harvey’s intense desire to burn the forest. He purposely used his Will to agitate the energy, turning it from a sleeping bear to a ravenous wolf before forcing it inside his blood. Every other ink he’d made had been a single ingredient added to his blood, and his first experiment with mixing materials told him it was a much more complicated process than what he’d done so far. The result of this first batch would likely produce something unstable that wasn’t guaranteed to last more than a few days, even after the inscriptions were complete, but he hoped it would be enough.

  Finally, the last motes of essence fused with his blood, and he could finally relinquish his hold on the cauldron.

  “Did it work?” Julian asked.

  “I think so,” Harvey croaked, just as power exploded from his weave. He didn’t know if the System gave him a bonus for turning a small hill of ungraded objects into an F Grade ink, but the success was enough to push him over the hump to level 36.

  “That was intense!” Hannah laughed nervously, opening the doors and windows to try to air out the room.

  A new creation has been made | Wildfire Ink | F Grade | Uncommon | Unstable

  Harvey wasted no time grabbing one of the F Grade orbs he’d planned on turning into an arc charge and inscribing the Flame Burst array. It was almost imperceptible, but he could feel the ink slowly leaking essence. It wouldn’t make much of a difference in the short term, but the inscriptions would almost entirely dissipate in a matter of days.

  A new creation has been made | Wildfire Charge | Major Essence Gained.

  I guess that’s what happens with unstable ink.

  Stepping into the tunnel, he placed the wildfire charge on top of the pile that the campfire charge failed to ignite. With a mental nudge, the orb erupted with a burst of flames. Fire leapt from the iron orb to the surrounding branches, bark, and leaves, igniting them into a raging inferno that tried to consume the stone.

  “There we go,” Harvey smiled. “Now we’re in business.”