"What's that?" Katie asked Keith.

"Remember Evala's brother's journal?" Keith asked.

"The one you said she lent you?" Katie asked. "Didn't that disappear when you guys left the Isles of Darkness?"

"It did," Keith said. "Despite Nathan being somewhat of a moron academically, he has a pretty decent memory. He copied the entire journal down from memory… and this is in English."

"Right," her cheeks flushed. "The beastkin have a different native tongue than us."

"Yeah," Keith said. "When Nathan translated it, he wrote it down in English so that I could understand it as well."

Keith left out that Nathan had translated both parts of the journal – the part written by ink and the part written by magic. The latter didn't come into the game with them, however, as they didn't want the Overseers to learn its contents if they didn't already see it.

It contained the demigod beastkin's own research into the game and the System. One of the things he had discovered even allowed him to check if he was being observed or not, and Keith knew that Nathan was planning on making a ring with that enchantment, though the demigod hadn't managed to get the time to do it yet.

It was being made before they entered the game again, though. That much was a guarantee.

"This journal," Keith tapped the one in front of him. "Is how we managed to create the magically-made bullets. There's a sword enchantment in here that creates a blade of pure magic, and we adjusted that enchantment to create bullets instead. There were a few other tweaks we had to make, but he had the basis for it."

"Okay," she said. "So what kind of research do you guys do? I've been trying to watch you, but the two of you… have a tendency to speak without words or telepathic communication. It's like you know what the other's thinking without any magic."

"We often do," Keith told her. "When looking at the same problem, we tend to come up with the same solutions, and when we don't, if we put our different thoughts together, we end up coming to the same conclusion.

"But in short," he said. "We look at what we need to enchant, what magical runes we know, and then put them together. Then, we experiment with them until we can create an enchantment formula that works for what we need. We have three decent sources of enchantment runes – human knowledge on Earth, the demigod beastkin's, and Ichtvar.

"In addition to that," Keith drew a rune on the air using his light magic. "This rune is one that Nathan and I figured out ourselves. It means 'unlimited', and we figured out by looking at other runes that had similar-meaning parts."

"Okay," she said. "And then you just… draw them onto the items you're enchanting?"

"Sort of," Keith twirled the enchanting pen. "We have to use our magic to imbue it. A pen like this helps do it with more fine control, but we can use really anything. Hell, I could use a needle or my finger, if I wanted."

"And the cards?" She asked. "You seem to use a different pen for that."

"That's not a pen," Keith shook his head. "That's a mithril 'pencil'. It's really just a mithril rod with some phoenix down woven into the tip, and we channel our magic through it to create the patterns that we're drawing on. Don't ask how Nathan got that, because I've no fucking clue."

"Ichtvar had it," Nathan approached them and sat beside Keith. "He decided to give it to me to help with this. I'm not sure where he got it, but I think the down used for the tip might have been his."

"Probably," Keith nodded in agreement.

"So," Katie said. "With you two creating these enchantments. How much work goes into it? I've seen you two do some for a few days each, one for a couple of weeks, and some for maybe an hour, at most. It doesn't seem consistent."

"Depends on the complexity of the enchantment," Keith answered and Nathan begin inspecting the small orb he had been working on before leaving to use the restroom. "With the cards, we basically have the knowledge down because of how long we spent studying them. We could probably create dozens more types of cards on the first try, since we put a lot of research into them."

"What are you working on?" She asked Keith. "A new card type?"

"No," Keith answered. "I'm actually trying to create a way for us to simply mass-produce the cards. They'll probably end up being weaker than if made by a person directly, but the mass-production of them will enable us to sell more of them to the government. It'll also allow us to keep more of them secret."

"It'll take a lot of mana crystals, though," Nathan said.

"Yeah," Keith said. "We'll need to sort out a supply of that. The Enchanters' Shop doesn't really carry enough of them. Then again, most people don't burn through them as quickly as we do."

Nathan shrugged, then returned to enchanting the orb.

"And what are you working on?" Katie asked.

"A spy orb."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"No, you aren't," Keith said.

"Yes, I am."

"Are you done with the enchantment yet?" Keith asked, and Nathan contemplated it, then nodded.

"All I have left is the protective one to increase its resiliency," Nathan informed Keith. "And the anti-read enchantments."

"Alright," Keith said. "I'll be right back."

Keith went into the kitchen and filled a large pot with water, before carrying it back to their work station. Without the System, he knew he'd not have been able to carry that pot unless he had been through Nathan's training. With the System, however, that didn't matter, as even without Nathan's training, the Strength increases would have been enough.

With the reality of the end of the System in his mind, he had begun to think about things like that. How different things would have been without the System and its granted Stats, and how he'd handle a situation he was in. With the pot, he would have used air or force magic to help carry it, much like with the statues from the Isles of Darkness.

The psychic set the pot down on the table, then pulled out a card and reached into it, pulling out several fistfuls of dirt. He dumped that into the pot, along with some vegetable oil and gasoline, before dumping nearly a cup of salt and another of sugar into the pot. Force magic was used to stir it, and then he took the orb from Nathan.

"Look inside the pot," Keith told Katie.

"Why do you have dirt in a card?" She asked.

"So that we could test this," Keith answered. "Look inside."

Katie did as Keith activated the orb, then gently dropped it into the pot, using force magic to create barriers around his hands and arms to keep them clean and free of the dirt, oil, and gas. At first, Katie wasn't able to see anything change, and continued to not be able to for several minutes, then sat down.

"Nothing happened," she said.

"Look again in about ten minutes," Keith told her. "But if you look now, you'll see that the water is moving on its own – that's why nothing's settling."

"The orb is used to stir the pot?" She asked in confusion.

"No," Nathan stood. "It's almost time for dinner. Since that's working, I'm going to go cook. I'm making lasagna."

"He really likes lasagna, doesn't he?" Katie asked after Nathan left.

"It was Cyrus's favorite food," Keith told her. "And with his real-world day of death coming up, Nathan's eating it a lot. Part of the reason he doesn't want to be in the game right now is to get to the day of his brother's death and the day of the funeral faster."

While Keith knew Nathan had initially wanted to do longer runs to delay that, he also knew that Nathan had become resistant to it partly because of the day coming up. Suddenly faced with having to endure a metaphorical eternity before passing by those dates made the demigod rethink things.

"Oh," Katie looked in the direction of the kitchen. "I didn't realize."

"Easy not to," Keith shrugged. "It's not really come up, and you weren't really 'in the know' on that to start with. But yeah, Nathan always consumes a lot of lasagna up through the day of the funeral. Lasagna and bread sticks."

"Okay," Katie said. "Can you teach me some enchanting? Or do I have to wait until I'm awakened for that?"

"You have to wait until you're awakened," Keith answered. "And the enchanting Nathan and I do is technically classified. We've actually been working on lighter stuff while you're looking. That, and we know you can't actually keep up with what we're doing or remember it."

"Yeah," Katie admitted. "It's a bit beyond me. What was the purpose of the orb?"

"I'll show you in a few," Keith told her. "Mind if I work on this a bit more? I want to try to get this done in the next week. Nathan and I actually have a pretty heavy schedule for this run, on top of our training each other, ourselves, and you."

"Alright," she said. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize," Keith smiled. "Part of the reason Nathan agreed to bring you here was so we could train you so that you'd be able to keep up with the rest of us."

"Okay," she said.

Keith returned to working, and when Nathan finally brought over their lunch, he looked in the pot.

"Success."

"Only took an hour or so," Keith said. "Impressive. I did a pretty high density of that."

"Yeah," Nathan fished the orb out, and Katie looked at the sludge inside of it. The orb itself was glowing with a faint green light. "As I said, I just needed to do the protective and anti-read enchantments."

"What's that?" Katie asked.

"Look inside the pot," Keith told her.

Katie looked inside the pot, finding the water clear once more.

"Did that purify the water?" She asked.

"Yep," Keith answered. "Now that we have the freshwater version made, we'll work on a saltwater version. We were working on it in the last run, too, but ran into a few issues with it."

"Saltwater," she said. "Wait, saltwater, like the ocean?"

"Exactly," Nathan said. "We can drain the sludge out ourselves. The green glow is there because it's in contact with water that's not contaminated with any of the 'forbidden substances'."

"We can adjust the programming of the enchantments," Keith said. "After taking samples of a water source and seeing what's natural and what its contaminants are. This way, we can also purify natural springs that end up contaminated, too. Waters with minerals in them naturally that shouldn't be pulled out."

"That would make oil spill cleanups so much easier," she said. "And cleaning the ocean back up, too."

"Yeah," Nathan said. "And we'll charge oil companies millions of dollars each time we use it to ensure they know they're still paying for their fuckups, because this isn't a free ride to do whatever they want, especially since the oil is recoverable."

Katie examined the orb, then looked at one of the others sitting on the table, picking it up and turning it over in her hands.

"I thought these were solid," she said. "They're heavy.

"They are," Keith told her. "I'm using my magic on smaller ones to alter them into larger sizes. An application of heat and force magics allows me to reshape them with ease, even resealing them back up better than without magic would allow. This allows me to create a hollow orb with no creases. It takes me about two minutes to do, which is probably why you haven't noticed."

"So what will this one be used for?" She asked. "It's a larger one already, and still solid."

"That one won't be expanded," Keith told her. "We can use solid ones, too, such as my scrying orbs."

Nathan also liked using them to refract his light magic, but Keith wasn't going to comment on that, because he technically wasn't aware of it, as the demigod would only do it when alone.

"Alright," she set the orb down, and Nathan set the purifying orb on a stand, before he sat down and began eating. "It smells good, Nathan."

"Then start eating," he said. "Or it'll go cold and taste off. I'm making pecan pie for dessert, too."

"Why pecan pie?" She asked. "You've been making a lot of peach pies."

"They didn't send us very many peaches this time," he answered. "The supplies vary from run to run. Didn't you catch that already?"

"I did," she answered. "I didn't realize they sent us fewer peaches this time."

"They did," he told her, then shoved a forkful of food into his mouth, ending any conversation with himself until he finished eating.