By the time that the mayor's bodyguard returned with a cart full of the tools Josh had requested, Mary had learned a total of six Gunner spells, including the Pyro Shot she already had. That was all the elemental runes Ruth had.

Like with the Pyro Arrow spell, it wasn't as simple as firing off a shot with the right elemental effect attached. Mary fired off three earth-element bullets—which turned to stone in flight and shattered against their wooden palisade like shrapnel—before realizing they needed a new approach.

Darius suggested that she focus more on the runes and the power they exuded, using her Sensitivity score to watch the magic and observe how it might interact with her and her own magic. Mary used Pyro Shot twice, a thoughtful expression on her face, before nodding and loading another earth-element bullet.

She immediately earned the Geo Shot spell.

Not all spells were equally useful. Hydro Shot was basically just a heavy splash of water. If it did any damage at all, they couldn't tell. Josh had been hoping that it would create an ice spell, but Darius reminded him that was an Exemplary-tier element, like gravity.

Still, Josh was sure they were missing something.

Regardless, Mary learned all the elements Ruth could give her. Anemo Shot was surprisingly powerful, a massive blast of wind that blew out all the leaves from half an acre, while still doing damage to the target. Luxos Shot was basically just a bright, glowing bullet, but he suspected that it would be useful for tracking someone. That could certainly be invaluable.

Things got very interesting with Vareo Shot.

Gravity was an Exemplary-tier element, so the rune cost more for Ruth to make. That was expected. Mary wouldn't be able to learn the spell if the cost was higher than her mana pool, but Darius did the math and said it should be fine. Mary loaded up the bullet, pointed it at the same wall she had been shooting at all morning, and fired.

Gravity wasn't an element people had much experience with. As Ruth had said, there was a huge variety in effects. The fire element typically manifested as flame, but it could just raise the general temperature of an area or even move all the heat out of an object, freezing it.

With the gravity-element shot, Josh made a bet with the mayor's bodyguard, who was named Samson. Josh bet that the shot would make anything it hit heavier. Sam bet that it would do the opposite, lightening the load. They both agreed that the effect would be dramatic. Either the post would be driven deeper into the ground, or it would be ripped out and fly into the sky.

Mary fired the bullet. The shot rang out. They barely heard it over the roar of breaking wood.

The targeted section of the palisade was crushed, twisted, and broken in and on itself. The thick logs snapped as easily as toothpicks. That was what the sound reminded Josh of. Snapping toothpicks, but amplified ten thousand-fold. Like an explosion in a sawmill.

Once the sound finally ended, once all the sawdust had settled and they could see what had happened, they saw...

Nothing.

Or, more specifically, they saw a very large gap where there had once been a solid part of the palisade.

It took a few minutes for them to figure out what had happened. Josh and Darius waded in, the smell of sap and sawdust in their noses, to observe the carnage. Eventually, they put together a working theory.

The bullet had only directly affected a small portion of the wall. Possibly even just one part of one log. But it hadn't just made the log heavier, or lighter. It had apparently subjected it to random gravity fluctuations, causing it to leap out of the ground at the same time as it was driving deeper back in, at the same time as it was being crushed to either side a thousand other directions.

All that wild thrashing had pulverized the surrounding logs just as thoroughly. There was little more than a pile of splinters left, scattered around an area at least ten feet wide.

“Did you at least grok the spell?” Josh asked tiredly.

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Mary stared at the hole in the wall. “...yeah. Grokked, grabbed, grappled. Got it.”

He just nodded.

“I suspect the spell normally would not be so powerful,” Darius mused aloud. His eyes were distant. “Between the mass of the target and the close confines it was trapped in, its effects were amplified.” He looked at Mary. “Still. That is not something to attempt on a target you wish to remain intact.”

She gave a single, slow nod.

“Well,” the mayor said, clapping her hands. “That was certainly interesting. I'm afraid I've spent too long here already. I have work to do, but I will send Samson back with at least a few magic items for you to look at later.” She raised an eyebrow. “And I suspect you can put those tools to good use repairing the wall. I would be interested in seeing an instant stone wall go up.”

Josh nodded. “I will do my best.” Then he had a thought. “Actually, do you have any cement mix? We think my skills might work on it.”

The mayor looked briefly surprised, then shook her head. “Not much, I'm afraid. We don't have much use for it. Still, I can look into it. I am aware of ways to make it from monster parts. If we can find a colony of rockback crabs, we can get something done.” She gave a small, polite wave as she left. “Good luck, everyone.”

Ruth waved enthusiastically enough for all four of them. “Bye, Vashti!”

Testing the limits of his Stonecrafting was an amusing distraction for a few hours. As he had suspected, using a pickaxe on the large boulders littering the property earned him new techniques. [Break Stone] was good for getting rid of the big ones, but it wasn't until he got [Mine Stone] that he started getting anything useful on a regular basis. Mining the stone left behind larger bits that he could then chisel down into more useful shapes. He built stone versions of a few of his earlier blueprints, but most of them were listed as shoddy variants, so he soon stopped.

Using the tools the mayor had given him, he eventually got something new—not a technique, but a blueprint. [Stone Block (stone)].

It was, as he had expected, nothing but a simple stone block. It defaulted to about half a meter long by half a meter wide and half that tall. He could change the size of the blueprint, though it just counted as a variant and didn't change the experience gains. In terms of experience, this blueprint was almost worthless.

In terms of everything else, it was solid gold.

With his tools in hand, a single cast of [Instant Crafting] would reduce a boulder to a stack of blocks of the appropriate size. They would all be the same size and any leftover stone would be little more than dust and stone shards, so he had to be careful. There wasn't exactly a preview button. Darius helped with the measurements. He also discovered that the spell would let him craft blocks even if they would crack and break the second he tried to move them, so he had to be careful there, too. Stone was, once again, too brittle if it was thin.

They eventually settled on bricks about as long as his hand. They were portable, though he was worried how a wall like this would stand up to a determined attack from a monster. Still, he made about a hundred of them out of a few boulders, then used their cart to carry them to the gap in the wall.

Which led them to their next problem: They had no mortar.

None of them knew how to make mortar. Josh wasn't sure if anyone in town would know, since it wasn't something in high demand out here. He also thought that cement could do the trick, but he knew there was a difference between cement and mortar. If cement was just as good as mortar, no one would ever use mortar.

For the time being, they settled on an interlocking brick design, without mortar. Each brick would support each other, locking together like a puzzle. They built it flat on the ground, as if they could just pick it up and move it into place once they were done. Darius pointed out that this version was actually stronger, it was just more complex and took more time to build. It also took twice as many bricks as a normal mortared wall, but at least it was twice as thick.

And besides, Josh had an advantage over most people building a wall like this.

CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the blueprint Interlocking Brick Wall (stone) (small). This wall is like Tetris in real life! Except it's boring, and if you get it wrong, all your friends die.

Josh almost wept at the notification. He pulled up the image of the blueprint and double-checked it. Yes, the way he and Darius had designed it, the way they had hoped the blueprint would appear in his interface, meant that there were interlocking bricks on all sides of the design, just waiting to lock in. That meant that he could take this design, two meters wide and two meters tall, and just build copies already interlocked with the next one in line. He would have to make sure holes were dug in the ground for the foundation, but that was no huge effort.

Briefly, he wondered what Tetris was, before dismissing the thought. The System often dropped references to Earth media and culture, but they were horribly outdated. Sometimes he recognized them. Usually he didn't.

Now for the real test. They had done all this testing right next to the hole in the wall, so they were already in range. He put one hand on the interlocked wall on the ground, facing down in the dirt. Then he concentrated on his blueprint, and on where he wanted it to go.

It wasn't as simple as having the blinking, three-dimensional blueprint appear in front of him. He had to imagine it in the right place and hope that he wasn't just lying to himself. He wouldn't even know if this was remotely possible until he tried.