CHAPTER 20 - CRAFTING SKILLS

I’d patched up most of Samson’s injuries, but he was still bleeding pretty bad. I raised my head to shout for some help. “We could use Henry’s skills here!”

“He’s on his way,” Lords said, crouching next to his wounded man. “You gonna make it, big guy?”

“Yeah, I’ll live. Been through worse than a few paper cuts like this,” Samson replied. He reached out and clasped Lords’ hand, but didn’t try to get up. As stiff an upper lip as he was showing off, those cuts had to hurt like hell, and I hadn’t removed the arrow at all, just stabilized it.

I sat up and looked around at the aftermath of the battle. Alfred and Brad were moving through the dead goblins, tapping them to get stones. I really hoped that meant they intended to share them, because Samson and I had taken at least half of those guys down.

Rosencrantz came wandering over at that point, two arrows sticking out of him. One was through his right arm, the other stabbed into his chest. I winced at that. My poor zombie had seen better days. I needed to get that Heal Undead spell slotted in, but at the same time, what could I pull out? If I yanked agility, the next arrow might not be so simple to dodge. And Drain Life had already proved to be maybe my most useful spell. I needed more stones, badly. Soon as I got something to tier four, it would solve a lot of problems.

I snapped off the arrowheads and pulled the shafts free, trying to do as little additional damage as possible, but Rosie was still looking the worse for wear. Alfred noticed, too. “He’s kinda banged up, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And getting stinkier.”

“Noticed that, too,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “What do you want me to do? Those zombies have saved our asses how many times now?”

Alfred held up his hands, palms toward me. “Whoa! Not complaining, just noting. We’re all doing what we have to, here. You’re right that they’ve been a big help. But unless you find a way to keep them running…”

I nodded. “I know.”

“I’ve got a handful of those stones from the goblins we killed,” Alfred said.

“Good,” Lords cut in. “Bradley, you got some too? Bring them over. You two, George, Samson, me, Selena, and who else was out there fighting? Actually in the thick of it, I mean.”

One of the students raised his hand, holding a crude club. “I hit one over the head with this. Does that count?”

“It does today,” Lords replied. He looked at the other students who came over to help. “The rest of you?”

Before they could say anything, George shook his head. “They didn’t get in any shots. Came over, though, and I think that counts for something.”

Lords seemed to consider that a moment, and I decided it was time to chime in. “Much as we all need more stones, we also need more people able to fight. If we give each of them a single stone, I think that’s probably enough to make them better able to join in, next time. Because one thing’s for sure—there’s going to be a lot of next times.”

The kid who’d raised his hand looked green at that idea, but he didn’t balk or back down. Good for him.

Lords had Alfred and Brad plunk their finds down in a pile on the street, figuring it was better to do this now, rather than waiting until we were back at the station. More people there, and eventually the noncombatant types would figure out that those crystals were the key to staying in one piece. Fewer arguments if the loot was divided on site. I still worried that by doing that we just kept them as noncombatants forever, but Lords was in command here, not me.

Bradley tossed a bow on the ground next to the stones, along with a quiver that had four arrows left in it. “Your critter took down the archer. Nice work, there.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “For the save, too. You guys were just in time.”

He gave me ‘bro nod’ back. I still didn’t trust him further than I could throw him, but he had helped. That was worth something. I turned my attention back to the loot.

There were fourteen stones. We’d killed fourteen goblins? That was wild. We hadn’t lost anyone, which was flat out amazing to me. It had been close, but we’d survived okay. Well, except business suit guy. I still didn’t know if Lords had gotten him back to Henry in time to save him or not.

“The guy with the arrow in the neck?” I asked.

Lords shook his head. “Was too late.”

Or maybe we just needed to get Henry more white stones with healing powers. He had a single tier one stone, and he was already able to do a lot. Get him ranked up, and how capable would he become? But I wasn’t even sure where we could get more of the things. I hadn’t seen a white stone drop yet. I’d have to ask Henry later where he’d found it.

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Speaking of colors, there was a new one in front of me. About two thirds of the stones were clear, just like the ones which dropped from the goblins we’d already fought. But four of them were brown.

“That’s a new color to me,” I said, pointing at one. “Anyone seen it before?”

Head shakes all around.

“Selena, you have any ideas for how best to do this?” Lords asked. “You’ve been figuring this crap out faster than most of us.”

I thought for a moment before replying. “Well, the biggest problem is that while we can un-slot a crystal, there’s a chance it’ll shatter.”

“What?” Lords asked, alarmed.

I pulled the broken fragments of my Augment Undead crystal from my pocket and held them up for others to see. “When I pulled it, it just broke apart. There’s no magic left in it. I don’t know the odds of that happening, but now we know there’s a risk. If possible, we should try not to remove the things. Especially as we rank them up.”

“How does the ranking thing work?” George asked.

This time Alfred cut in. “You just touch a second stone of the same kind, and it absorbs in like the first one. Two of a kind ranks up the existing one to second tier.”

I nodded, and expanded on what he’d said. “And two tier two stones will merge to become a tier three. That’s harder, because you need the second slot open for stones of the same kind. I have a tier three stone, which means now I can slot three crystals.”

“Tier three is what, four of a kind?” Bradley asked. “How many of those things you been hoarding there, anyway?”

Lords cut him off before I could throw it back in his face. “That’s enough of that. She fought for those and earned them, same as you did today. How do we best divvy these up then?”

“I think you guys should have first dibs,” I said, shrugging. “None of those stones are going to make me rank up. But you have a strength crystal, right Lords?”

He nodded.

“So if you touch any of those clear ones, and they’re strength, then it’ll absorb in, merge, and become tier two. You’ll be setting yourself down a path, but you’ll open up a new slot.”

“What do you mean, a path?” Lords asked.

Alfred came back in to help with that. Clearly the kid had more gaming experience than was healthy. “It’s like a computer game. The higher we rank these stones, the more it hurts if they break, right? So as we rank them, we’re not going to want to pull them out again, because they can shatter. The higher rank, the greater the loss. Once you have a tier three or four stone, that’s going to pretty much define the way you fight.”

“Makes sense to me,” Lords replied.

Lords and Bradley had strength crystals, while George and Samson had agility. With ten clear stones, I figured there were probably at least one of each in there. Since Samson was worst injured, we all agreed to let him try first. It took him six stones, before one finally sank into his hand. He gasped, then smiled.

“Ah, that’s nice. Tier two agility,” Samson said. “I feel faster already. Just…sort of wish I had stamina now instead!”

We all chuckled at that, then went on. Since there were only four clear stones that could still be agility, we let George try those out, but none of them worked for him. He shook his head as he set down the last one. “Not this time.”

“There will be more chances, trust me,” Lords said.

None of us doubted him.

Then Lords let Bradley check the clear stones for strength crystals. Brad got lucky on the second try, the stone sinking into his palm. Lords checked the remaining eight, and on the very last stone he also got a boost to tier two strength.

“Okay, the easy part is out of the way,” I said. “Now we need someone with an open spot to check the rest of these and see what they are. Slot one in, take it out, try the next, repeat.”

“But there’s a chance they’ll break, if we do that?” Lords said.

I nodded. “There is. But we need to know what these things are.”

“Makes sense to me,” he replied. “I have an open slot. I’ll test them and announce each, so we all know. Fair?”

Nods all around.

He went through each stone in sequence. Thankfully, none of them broke. I had to wonder if they had a little resilience that perhaps wore down. Maybe each time a stone was slotted and removed, it had a higher chance of breaking? I had only removed the Augment spell what, twice? I knew there were some I’d done more than that, so there was a random element involved.

The other eight clear crystals were three stamina stones, two will stones, two intellect stones, and one charisma stone. The four brown crystals were what really interested me, since we hadn’t seen any of that color before. These were something brand new—not spells, nor boosts to our personal abilities, but instead they granted skills.

“Two of them are Weapon Making, one is Hunting, and the last is Armor Making,” Lords said. He shook his head, then looked at Alfred. “I’m remembering what you said about video games. My kid played games with shit like this. Is that our lives, now?”

Alfred just shrugged. “You know as much about it as I do, sir.”

The sir made Lords grin a little. “It’s okay, kid. I’m not mad. But I may lean on your game advice some here.”

George ended up with a Weapon Making stone. Alfred took Stamina. I grabbed Will; I couldn’t slot it now, but I had a hunch it would help with spellcasting and said as much, so Lords snagged another of them to bring to Henry.

“He wasn’t here for the fight, but anything we can do to help him heal better is good for all of us,” Lords said.

Nobody argued with that.

Once the other stones were passed out to everyone who was involved in the fighting, there was one left over, an intellect crystal that Lords held onto. “Just for safekeeping. We can’t split this ten ways. Let’s get it to someone back at camp who can use it.”

Henry had arrived by then. With my help removing the arrow and him using his healing power, we managed to close the awful wound in Samson’s shoulder. He wasn’t wholly better, but he’d live, and was able to get back to his feet again.

“Back to camp,” Lords said. “We need to talk to these newcomers, see where they’re from and what they know. Then we need to talk about what we’re doing next. This clearly isn’t getting better.”

“No, it’s getting worse,” I added, softly. He stopped talking and glanced my way. “That many goblins? And that horn that sounded their retreat, it came from inside the woods, so there had to be more of them in there. I think they’re gathering out there somewhere. It’s going to be a problem.”

“One we’ll figure out,” Lords said, but his face looked grim, and I understood why. We were a camp of strangers, mostly college kids. There were some actual kids in the group now. How were we going to keep everyone safe if things just kept getting worse?

And this was day two of the mess, not even noon yet, if I was guessing from the sun right. If this was the story of our lives now, we needed to get to work.