He took a deep breath. “Instant Crafting,” he whispered.

There was a pause, as if the system was deciding whether this was a fair use of his spells.

Then the bricks under his hand—the bricks held together with nothing but their own interlocked design—disassembled themselves and flew into place in the gap in the wall. They reassembled themselves vertically, so fast that he almost didn't see it happen. One second they were flying through the air, and then he blinked and there was a new wall section in place.

I wonder if I could do that as an attack, he thought, before he was tackle-hugged by Ruth.

“You did it!” she cried. “Oh, I knew you could do it, but you did it!”

“Yeah,” he said, putting a hand to his head. “Drained me to zero, though. Gonna need a minute to get my moxie back.” He wouldn't have even been able to do it at all without his Capacity runestone boosting his mana just that last little bit. He didn't quite understand how the base cost of each blueprint was determined, but he suspected that if the design had required one more brick, he wouldn't have had the mana to cover it.

Ruth stepped back, nodding furiously. “Yep, yep! You make sure you're all good to go! I'll find more rocks for you!” She ran off, deeper into their property.

“Someone should go with her,” Josh said tiredly. His mana was inching back up with each breath, but even with his [Meditation] skill he was still exhausted. Even just bringing his mana down to zero was debilitating and gave him a migraine. It was so much worse if it hit the negatives.

“Any chance that won you a whole new level?” Mary asked. She leaned over him, hair falling down to frame her face as she looked down. “An extra point might be just what the doctor ordered.”

Darius leaned over him as well. “Yes, until you gain another point in either Capacity or Sensitivity, this is too impractical to continue. We can't have you collapsing every time you craft a single blueprint.”

Josh wearily checked his level. He groaned. “Nope. Still level 25 Stonecrafter.”

Mary stuck her tongue out at him. “That means I'm still ahead of you.”

Josh rolled his eyes. The experience he gained from crafting was more reliable—and sure as the Tower safer—than combat, but it was also slower. Not to mention that as an [Attacker], Mary got more experience from combat than him anyway. Every time she attacked an enemy, she got a little bit of experience. Josh only got a share of the experience from killing the monster.

Ruth slammed a boulder bigger than she was down on the ground next to him. He jumped to his feet, heart pumping and head swimming, thinking that he was under attack.

“So,” she said, seemingly not noticing how everyone was staring at her with wide eyes. “I was going to ask for help to wrestle it into the gravity cart. Then I thought I could use a rune, but then I thought that might interfere with your crafting, and then I thought maybe that was a good experiment!” She smiled. “So, here we are!”

She had carved a rune-chain into the boulder, letting her effectively reduce its weight by making it fall “up.” She had been having trouble earlier with the exact fractions of gravity to use, but it seemed like she had gotten it. Even so, she had probably needed the enhanced strength from her talisman to lift the boulder.

“...thanks,” Josh said at last. He gave her a shaky grin. “Maybe next time, give us a holler before you drop half a quarry next to my head?”

Ruth blinked, then smiled sheepishly. “Oh! Sorry.”

Having recovered his mana, he was feeling much better, and he used [Instant Crafting] without delay. It worked without any trouble, though it did cancel the rune effect on the stone, even though Josh was careful to line up his blueprint so that the rune-chain remained intact. That wasn't a surprise, but Ruth had been hoping the entire pile would end up enchanted.

He then used the bricks to make another wall section, slotting it in next to the first. It worked exactly as intended, locking into place as solidly as if they had built it with their hands. Unfortunately, it knocked him on his ass again. As Darius had said, it wasn't really feasible to use his spell to build the wall until he improved a bit.

Darius might have had an ulterior motive, though, because he wanted help with something.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Mary and I gathered enough materials for three more shrouds,” Darius explained.

Josh frowned, then turned to Mary. “When was this?”

She gave a vague wave of her hand. “When we were about.” She scowled. “He bought some of the shinies off your new bird.”

“My new—” He stopped himself, then rolled his eyes. “Just because I gave the mayor a smile doesn't mean she's my anything.”

“Yeah, sure.”

He rolled his eyes, though he did see Ruth mouthing bird? to Darius in confusion.

Darius pressed on. “I am sure that we all want our own shroud focus devices. However, it would be advantageous if I could learn the Instant Crafting spell from you first.”

Ruth looked up, her face scrunched up in a frown. “Is that even possible?”

“Of course. It might be easier to learn techniques outside of class advancements, but it is certainly possible with spells.”

“No, not that.” She waved her hands vaguely. “I mean because it's a Crafter spell. Josh and I can't learn Attacker spells or techniques, why would this be any different?”

“There's always overlap and loopholes and 'special cases,'” Josh said, making quote marks with his fingers. He very specifically did not look at his missing fingers. “Techniques and spells aren't branded with a role in their description. We don't know anything for certain.”

“More to the point,” Darius said, adjusting the glasses on his nose. “My class is a hybrid class. Yes, it is labeled as a [Defender], and I receive experience for performing defensive actions. But I clearly have some [Crafter] abilities, such as the skills and blueprints.”

“It's worth a shot in the dark,” Josh said. He struggled to sit up, then moved to a comfortable lotus position. “You ever tried learning a spell outside your nice and proper class advancements?”

“I used to be a Mender,” Darius reminded him. “I typically learned Cure Disease and Cure Poison the moment I had the mana for them.”

Everyone nodded. That was a common tactic. At the first milestone, when first taking the class, the Mender class granted the [Least Heal] spell, in addition to the [Anatomy] skill to help use it. At the second milestone they learned [Cure Disease], and at the third [Cure Poison]. These were both relatively easy to learn on their own, and if you did, you could skip straight to the fourth milestone, [Regeneration]. It was like how Josh was supposed to learn [Instant Crafting] and [Hands-Free Crafting] when he took the Stonecrafter class, but he got the runestones instead.

On the other hand, [Regeneration] was extremely difficult to learn on your own without a class advancement. Josh had no idea if [Instant Crafting] would be one of the easy ones or one of the hard ones.

“What's your Sensitivity these days?” he asked.

“Ten,” Darius said. “In addition to the hard benefits, it gives me a better idea of where to place my shrouds for maximum effect.”

Josh bobbed his head in agreement. Every stat score had the hard, mathematical benefits to stamina or mana, but also more vague benefits to your body and spirit. Having a high Strength score literally made you stronger, but it wasn't always clear to what degree. Was it a percent, or additive? A high Sensitivity expanded your magical senses and improved their precision, but it wasn't as simple as saying your range increased by a meter with every point or anything like that.

“All right,” Josh said, sitting down cross-legged on the ground. They could go back to their shacks, but he didn't see a need. “Let's go with something a couple breaths easier than a bloody wall. Mary, stick me!”

She picked up a stick about the size of her arm. She threw it underhanded with quite a bit of strength, whipping it through the air. Josh caught it with one hand without looking, in what might be the coolest moment of his adult life.

“So,” he said as he put the stick down. “I'm gonna just craft a basic statue.” He used a knife and his [Chop Tree] technique to cut the stick into smaller pieces. They were rough cuts, and he wondered if trying to get a new technique would have worked better. “You ready for me to go?”

Darius nodded, eyes focused. “I am ready.”

“All right. Instant Crafting.”

A piece of wood transformed into a small stylized statue of a fox. It wasn't a complex or impressive statue. But considering he hadn't seen a real fox in a very long time, he was rather proud that he even got close.

Darius didn't say anything for a long moment. He closed his eyes, clearly concentrating deeply on what he had just seen. Josh knew better than to interrupt. His sister had rolled a [Healer] more than once, and interrupting her while she was trying to master a spell was a good way to get smacked.

Josh passed the time by whittling with his knife at a spare stick. He wasn't trying to do anything specific, which was probably why he didn't gain a new technique. Or maybe he couldn't gain more wood-based techniques now that he was a Stonecrafter? He could still learn wood blueprints, but maybe that was a different thing.

After a few minutes, Darius took a deep breath and nodded. “All right.”

Josh raised an eyebrow. “All right... what?”

Ruth poked her head up from behind the pile of boulders she had brought over. “Did you get the spell?”

Darius shook his head. “No. But I certainly sensed something. That's the first step. Please, continue.”