Benjamin marveled at his core. The nearly spherical structure kept drawing his attention. Benjamin had to force his thoughts elsewhere as the apeirogon spun lazily in the middle of the room. He shoved his perspective back at the two recovering from whatever that explosion had been. Gram had some new information floating over his head displaying his name and title. There hadn’t been a surname displayed. Benjamin just thought that that was because he hadn’t known enough about Gram to begin with. In the back of his mind Benjamin also wondered if giving such a quest to the first person he saw was a good idea to begin with.

He looked back at the woman and Gram. The woman seemed exhausted, but Gram appeared to have recovered fully. He recalled the moment his heart grew. There was a barrier that appeared between the two and the explosion of mana. If Gram had a mouth he would smile. If there was mana, there was magic. If there was magic, there were mages. The existence of the magical barrier seemed to prove this point. Could the barrier have been some kind of mana shield that allowed the trade of mana instead of health? The blinking in the corner of his vision grew in frequency, but Benjamin ignored it.

“I think my cellar is ruined.” Gram said as he looked around the room.

The woman nodded at him with her eyes closed. Gram moved to the edge of the floor that hadn’t been melted into glass and knelt down holding a hand over the distinct line. He didn’t hold it there long.

“It’s pretty hot.” He said shaking the hand.

“It’ll cool down after a couple of hours.” The woman replied.

Gram sat down next to the woman without another word.

Now what? Benjamin thought to himself.

He looked at the flashing notification icon. It was still flashing at the rapid pace it had been before. He opened the notifications.

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He cleared the notifications quickly, clearing his vision. The warning about the mana capacity had alarmed him at first, but with options being unlocked he figured the mana issue would be quickly resolved if they were used. The two buttons for the newly unlocked options floated in the center of his view. He accessed his options menu and moved them swiftly to the side. There was still a box for setting a focus for the king, but he was able to move it to the side without having to fiddle around in the options. He looked at the menu for a moment and went back into the options menu and changed the name to the settings menu. He was still annoyed by something. The options that he had unlocked were called options with his interface. He changed the name to abilities. As an after thought he found something for mana capacity and put it near where he had the population information listed. With satisfaction he closed the menu altogether.

Alright, lets see what we can do here, he thought to himself.

He cast a glance at the two people that were still sitting there. The heat had some effect. The two were sweating quite a lot. The woman looked as though she had fallen asleep. Gram had removed his shirt and was using it to fan both himself and the woman. Benjamin opened the ‘Modify Building’ ability. In the new window he found an option to modify the single room. This room had originally been cold he remembered, so he set the temperature of the room accordingly. He found he wasn’t able to repair the ladder, but he would be able to make changes to the wall and started to carve footholds into the wall. The rest of the room looked strange with the glass for the floor and walls, so he started to change them back to the stone and brick that they had been originally. With the changes complete the countdown timer that had been underneath his mana capacity display had vanished. It seemed that starting a modification process for a building was rather mana intensive.

The room had started to cool. The shirt Gram had taken off was back on. Both him and the woman were no longer visibly sweating. Their clothes had been soaked with sweat, but that was one problem taken care of. The footholds that Benjamin wanted carved into the wall were slowly taking shape. They were just small concave indents at the moment, but eventually they would allow the pair to escape the cellar. The line between the brickwork and the glass had started to move. Benjamin wasn’t sure if Gram would have noticed it yet, but Benjamin was quite happy the previous brickwork had started to reappear. It wouldn’t be an exact match, but Benjamin had tried to copy it as well as he could remember.

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He tried selecting Gram to see if there was a menu or button to assign either the class or title, but all that happened was a display of Gram’s known information popped up into Benjamin’s view. He cleared the window and tried several times, but was unable to get the desired effect. Benjamin then decided to look into the create item menu. There were a few items listed, but Benjamin hadn’t been interested in any of the weapons or armors that were listed. He wanted something unique to make. He still had the warning in the back of his mind about the pantheon. The thought of a multitude of gods watching him and judging him a bit creepy. The mention of an imposter in the pantheon was even more so. If the gods were prone to human weaknesses and able to have their numbers infiltrated by others that weren’t gods he would need to keep things a bit more low key. The quest to make Gram king still was active and Benjamin understood he needed to award something to Gram that bestowed the title and class. He decided to outright dismiss the crown for the moment. Benjamin wanted something that didn’t outright yell king until he got a better idea of the political situation.

He scrolled through the list quite a few times before he settled on it. There had been an option for a bracelet. Gram had worn what Benjamin now understood as a part of his own heart within an iron ring secured with simple leather straps. Benjamin set about creating a duplicate of that bracelet. He decided to not include an apeirogon and instead focused creating a white opal sphere set into an iron ring. While the opal hadn’t been quite as colorful as the piece of his own heart, it had just enough sparkle that it could be mistaken for the same gem if only seen quickly. Benjamin hadn’t been happy with the leather strap. He knew he wanted to be as low key as possible with the bracelet, but he wanted it to still have a little something extra. He decided to replace the strap with a simple ball chain. Benjamin hadn’t been sure if this kind of chain existed in Kallan but it would at least tell Gram the bracelet was different than the one that got consumed when the core started to grow.

The chain was easy enough to design for Benjamin. It had been an easy concept for him considering memories of pens attached to some kind of desk played in his head. Benjamin grew surprised about the memories. There had been something mentioned of repairs being done to the heart so maybe it was possible Benjamin would remember more as the core continued to repair. He focused back on the bracelet. The design finished and then a new window appeared. There were enchantments he could add. There were only a few listed.

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Benjamin grew annoyed because the stat boost hadn’t listed what stats were boosted. He didn’t even know stats were something that were an actual thing beyond what his interface told him with the vague description. The more he thought about it though it made some kind of sense to him. This world did seem like some kind of RPG that he had played before. The Minor Heart Link had been intriguing. He decided to explore that in the future. For now he wanted to create this item. He attached the enchantments onto bracelet. The next screen displayed an option for naming the bracelet.

Benjamin looked behind the item editor. Both Gram and the mysterious woman hadn’t moved. He was sure eventually they would notice the way out forming behind them, but at the moment they hadn’t noticed the floor or the wall behind them reverting back to the original materials they had been made of. Gram did seem to get a bit worried the room was getting colder, but for the time being Benjamin was confident that it would be just like standing in an air conditioned room.

Benjamin switched back to the window to name the bracelet. He input ‘The Bracelet of Kings’ only to remove it a second later.

I need it low key! He thought to himself.

He looked at the bracelet again. There hadn’t been much that came to mind. Maybe some kind of word play or a synonym would work. He could remember that RPG games did tend to have items named after mythical counterparts that may or may not have existed on his own world. Benjamin decided to go along that route. There might be something he could do to keep some kind of plausible deny-ability in case Gram ran into trouble down the road. The first king he could think of was Arthur. He thought of Excalibur. That wouldn’t do. The thought of a bracelet named ‘Excalibur’ was ridiculous. He couldn’t even think of an example of a noteworthy bracelet and a king. He decided on something else. He entered ‘Prime Arthurian Bracelet’ into the window. With a little influence from Gram, people might think of it as some kind of branding. He wasn’t sure if there was such a thing as branding or even marketing in the world. He really needed to talk to someone. There just wasn’t enough information.

Benjamin proceeded to the next step of the item creation process. He had expected another window, however, what happened next was a little more comforting. A green outline of the bracelet hovered in the air. It took him a moment to get used to manipulating the small green object in the air. The green would turn red if it came into contact with anything in the room so Benjamin decided the best bet would to have the thing get created in the air and fall onto Gram. Benjamin watched the man for a while. Gram paced around the patch of brickwork that had been expanding. The concave handholds that Benjamin were still slowly forming, but currently seemed to have taken second seat to the glass that was slowly forming back into brick and stone. Benjamin was starting to get impatient and then opportunity struck. Gram decided to sit back down next to the woman and stared up through the hole in his cottage’s floor. The bracelet formed in the air and Gram stared in wonder. Benjamin could feel the mana being pulled directly from his core as the bracelet became a physical object. It hadn’t taken long, probably ten seconds at most. Gram hadn’t reacted in time and the object fell right onto his face. The gem had managed to hit his eye. Gram had at least managed to close his eyes in time, but it clearly still hurt. Gram cried in pain from the impact. He scooted away, holding his face where he had been hit. The shout woke the woman who jumped to her feet almost instantly. She still looked quite exhausted, but she held her staff menacingly as she scanned the room. She had clearly been conditioned by something.

“The bracelet hit me in the damn eye!” Gram complained as he pointed at the object on the floor.

The woman stooped to pick it up. Her eyebrows rose in surprise once she had a good look at it.

“I think this is yours,” she said as she handed it to Gram.