Chapter 55 - Pet Rocks

As Maura poked around in the big cabinet behind her, opening drawers and peering into them, I looked over the stones I had as spares, wondering which I could afford to give away. I had quite a few of them, but a lot of them were things I wanted to keep, because I thought they might be useful later on.

For example, I had a hunch that Health to Mana, coupled with Drain Life, would be insanely broken. I only had the one crystal, so the spell had very limited power for the time being. It was definitely a rare stone, too—I’d seen enough black crystals to get a decent feel for which were less common. That one I was keeping.

Obviously I was also keeping all the stones I was actively using, like the spares for Animate Dead, Drain Life, and Will. Those felt like clear wins to hang onto.

Some of the others I didn’t care about all that much. For example, I’d slotted Entangle, early on, but never used it much, and I took it out as soon as better spells became available. I pulled both of my Entangle stones out of my bag and set them on the table. All three brown stones, too. Maybe at some point I’d want to start making weapons and armor, but it wouldn’t be anytime soon. I figured I could work out something to arrange for that. I plunked those on the table as well.

I stared long and hard at the couple of Charisma crystals I’d gathered. Before today, I’d dismissed those as relatively useless. Now, I was nowhere near as sure. The Colonel had a tier five Charisma stone and it gave him powers almost akin to mind control. That was insane.

It wasn’t a power I wanted. I was okay with controlling my undead, but that was about as far as I wanted to go when it came to ordering people around. At the same time, I wasn’t certain I wanted to trade those away, here. If I did, odds were excellent those stones would flow immediately to the Colonel, amping up his already powerful stat. How far was he from tier six? What would happen when he reached that level? Or tier seven, or higher?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to those questions. I left those in the bag, at least for now. If they had something amazing to trade, I’d think about it.

I figured I could trade a few of the other clear ones, though, like the lower tier Strength crystals and the Intellect one. I wanted to keep the Agility and Will, and I had a feeling Stamina might do me some good as well, so I hung onto those. Of the black crystals, well, I wanted to keep most of them. I pulled out the two Darkness stones, figuring I was less likely to use them. The Nightvision, Protection from Undead, and Shadow Walk stones came out as well.

By the time I was done, Maura and Farnsworth were both staring.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve got a lot of those rocks,” the master sergeant said. “More than anyone I’ve seen gather on their own. It’s impressive.”

“Oh. Well, thanks,” I replied, blushing some. “These are the ones I think I can trade.”

Maura looked the stones over, sorting them out. “These ones are all commons. The others, those are what we call rare. That includes the Nightvision, Protection from Undead, Shadow Walk, and Tracking.”

It seemed to me like they’d made the system too simple. I had a feeling that some of those were rarer than others. For instance, Protection from Undead had only dropped once out of all the undead I’d killed. I had a feeling that one was extra rare. Or maybe stuff like Nightvision and Shadow Walk were only uncommon, not rare. Still, it was their trading shop, and everyone was only figuring out this stuff as we went along. I had no doubt things would change as we learned more.

“Hey, how are you seeing what the stones are?” I asked. “I got that ability at tier five, but—“

“But I’m just tier four?” Maura replied. She chuckled. “Trade secret. But I’ll tell you anyway—you also get that power at tier three Intellect.”

“Oh! Okay, that’s cool.” And it made sense, in a way. I wondered if there were other hidden benefits from ranking up various stats?

“All right then. The rank three Darkness is worth four credits while the rank two one is worth two. Nightvision is a rare so worth three credits since it’s tier one. Ditto Protection from Undead. Your Shadow Walk stones are worth nine credits total, since they’re rare. The Entangle stones are common, so three credits total. Two tier one Strength stones are worth a total of two, and the tier three Intellect is worth four. For the brown crystals, the two commons are worth one each, and Tracking is worth three. Your total is thirty-five credits.”

“Pretty sure that’s the most anyone has ever delivered here,” Farnsworth muttered.

“Yeah, it is,” Maura agreed. “Selena, this is a great deal of wealth in this new economy. You can use a credit to get a day of food and lodging without work, here at the base. But I suspect you’ll want to spend them to acquire new stones, am I right?”

“Spot on,” I replied, starting to get excited. She was pulling out small drawers, like you might find at a jewelry store, each one padded with soft fabric and covered with small crystals.

“Outstanding. Here’s the yellow crystal collection. We have more of these than anything else. They give air powers, and they drop from the avians. Since we’ve been fighting them a lot, we’ve got a lot of them.”

I examined the stones while she went to pull another drawer. There were almost two dozen stones in the set, but a lot of them were duplicates. I quickly examined them to see what the spells were. I saw Gust of Wind, Flight, Levitate, Wall of Wind, and Tornado. It was easy to tell which ones were rare—there was only one stone each for Flight and Tornado. Those were the spells I was most interested in.

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Being able to fly would rock! But it didn’t mesh well with my other stones. I couldn’t very well leave my undead legion behind and go flying off into the sunset. Also, since there was just one of the stones, I figured the effect would likely be weak. Gathering enough of them to get the power tiered up would be a challenge, so I grudgingly set the stone back down and—for now—gave up on my childhood dream of being a flying superhero.

She pulled out the clear tray next. I glanced over the stones there, and wasn’t at all surprised to see there were zero Charisma stones. I knew where those had gone.

There were a good variety of the others, though. I saw two Strength stones, an Agility stone, three Stamina stones, two Intellect, and three Will stones. I immediately set aside the Agility and Will stones, then after a moment of thinking, added the Stamina stones as well. That would burn a lot of credits, but those were the three stats I was working on building, so it was worth it.

Black was next. My heart skipped a beat when I saw them, just five lonesome stones on the cloth. But three of them were Animate Dead spells, and the other two were Control Undead. Those were my core spells. Making them stronger was going to be vital to my survival, so those five joined the pile.

I was up to ten stones. “You said that it counted at three for two, right? So thirty-five credits is…?”

“Well, thirty-six would buy you twenty-four common crystals,” Maura replied.

I nodded. “Makes sense. Let’s see what else there is?”

The green stones were of little interest. She had stones for Entangle—seemed to be very common. There was one for Plant Growth, and another for Leather Skin—seemed to be some sort of protection or armor spell. Animal Control sounded interesting, but I already had a bunch of minion-control spells in my black stones. I passed on those.

Blue was for water magic. Maura told me they’d gotten these from mud creatures that attacked out of the river. She only had a few. The water spells tended to be pretty useful. The ones she had were Create Water, Waterbreathing, and Fog. Cool to see more spells, and I filed all the information away for later—but not enough to make me want to switch to another color.

The red crystals were far more intriguing. Red was for fire, and I’d seen firsthand how powerful a good Fireball spell was! There were only three, but all of them looked cool: Flame Bolt, Burning Weapon, and Wall of Fire.

I only had twelve stones in my pile, which was only about half of my credits. I pondered the fire spells. There were only one of each of the three, but any of them might be useful. Flame Bolt was an attack spell, like Fireball but less explosive. Burning Weapon seemed to do just what it said—light my weapon on fire to make it do more damage. Interesting but not key. My plan was to let my undead do most of the fighting. Wall of Fire could be useful to redirect enemies, though.

While I was thinking, Maura clapped her hands together. “Oh! I had one more thing you might appreciate. Most folks don’t care, and in fact we’ve been struggling to figure out a use for them, but… You might like these. I only have two, and they’re rare stones, but they might be just what you need.”

With that, Maura pulled out two stones. They were gray crystals, almost like a smokey quartz. As soon as I saw them, I was interested, and when I saw the power they unlocked I was even more so. Each of them was a Minion Augmentation stone.

I picked one up and my mind flooded with information about the crystal. Unlike most stones, this one wasn’t meant for me to absorb; in fact, it wouldn’t have been absorbed into me even if I had an open slot. These stones were meant for pets, minions, and other controlled creatures. In order to use them, I’d hold them at the same time as another stone, which would merge them. Then I’d touch the stone to a minion I controlled, and it would give them a permanent augmentation.

“Cute,” I said, staring at the crystals. “Pet rocks?”

Maura chuckled at the joke. “Rocks for pets, certainly. I thought that with your specialty, these might be extra useful for you.”

She was right. Of all the stones in this room, those two were probably the ones which would help me the most. I did a little mental math. The other twelve stones would use up eighteen credits worth. If I added in both pet stones, they were three credits each, six total, and because of the exchange rate would burn nine more credits for a total of twenty-seven.

I had thirty-five credits on the table. I glanced over at Farnsworth, who still wore the crazy cool armor he’d had on when he led his team out onto the airfield to meet us as we approached the base. He also had a sword belted to his side, and they’d been using proper shields as well. I could use some of that.

“How much for armor or weapons like that?” I asked him. “Is it possible to buy gear with these credits?”

“Sure, easy enough,” Farnsworth said. “If you want to do that, Maura here will give you credit coins, and then you’ll bring them to the smithy. If you want something weird, it might cost more and take a little while, but they have stock stuff on the shelf they can just rig to fit almost anyone. Armor is three credits for a whole set, or one or two credits if you want a partial. Weapons range from one credit for something basic to two or even three credits for something complex. Shields are quick and easy, so a credit each.”

“Awesome. I think that’s what I’ll want to do,” I replied. I wanted armor for me, to keep me alive, and maybe a sword and shield as well. Not because I was any good at all using one, but I’d learn. Beyond that, my troops would only get more powerful if I armed them better. I’d done some of that, giving them basic weapons and gear as I could. But it would be much better to equip them properly.

Spending twenty-seven credits on crystals left me with eight. I could get armor for three, a shield for one, a sword for two, and that would leave me with two left over for minion weapons. I pulled out the tier three Strength stone and added it to the ‘for sale’ pile, which boosted my credit total by four more.

“If my math is right, adding this brings me enough credits to buy these twelve stones and have twelve credits left over?” I said.

Maura glanced across the table, did some mental math quickly, and nodded. “Is that what you’d like to do? I can get you the credit chit now.”

I thought about it for just a moment, and then nodded. She flashed me a smile, scooped away the stones I’d traded, and pulled out a sack that jingled as she moved it. She poured some of the contents into her hand, counted them out, and handed me a dozen of the heavy brass coins. I looked them over, surprised to see someone using coinage—but these weren’t regular coins.

“Security Forces challenge coin?” I asked, holding one up.

Maura laughed. “Repurposed. They’re a military tradition, to award people and commemorate events. The Colonel had them all collected, every one we could gather, so we could use them as a form of on-base currency for the duration of the emergency.”

I had a feeling the ‘duration’ was going to be longer than most folks thought when all this started, but I could tell from the look on her face Maura was feeling the same thing.

“Works for me,” I replied, smiling as I pocketed the coins. That would buy me all the gear I needed for myself, and a bunch to upgrade my minions as well. “Master Sergeant, you mind escorting me over to the smith?”

“Miss Selena, it would be my pleasure.”

I turned back to Maura before we headed out. “Thanks for your help. I appreciate it!”

“Glad to. Just be sure to bring along anything new and interesting you run into,” Maura replied. “Always happy to trade.”

With that, we were off to our next stop. Once I had the gear I needed, it was going to be time to get myself back out there. I had a growing hunch that Colonel Turner wasn’t going to go rescue Alfred and his people. If I was right, then I needed to be ready to do the job for him.