The next hour was spent sealing the graveyard, just in case some other trumped up fucker decided to do what squeaky did. Not on my watch. This was not out of any sense of duty, but merely not wanting to deal with some undead down the road. I don’t have a good answer for this problem. My magics are defensive in nature, and they have scaling possibilities down the road, but damn that fight was just awkward. That pathetic excuse for a wizard could have wrecked me if he were smarter or any better. I need options, hell, I need training. But I don’t think I’m getting that anytime soon. My bullets will run out eventually, and for some reason, I honestly think that this isn’t the end of the changes. I made my way back to my house, stopping at the abandoned gas station. I picked up what canned food was left over; not much was left. The medical supply section and beer section were wiped clean. That means the grocery store and Wal-Mart would be dangerous places right now. I may have to grow my own food if this keeps up. Great, another project. This laundry list just keeps growing.

  Well, if I'm going the tank route, I might as well do it right. The next idea was shields. All magic users have some kind of magical force field that blocks bullets and spells and makes them invincible. Turns out, that shit is crap. Or maybe, my shit is crap and I have to work around it. Returning from my adventures with the undead to the basement of my house was a huge relief. My reinforced walls gave me a feeling of security. I took off all of my equipment and set it down. My mana batteries were full due to my pocket generator, which meant the one on the left was free for use. Linking myself to it and turning the flow to low, I conjured a piece of granite about the size of a dinner place, then I did the same for cold iron. It was all easy until I started on precious metals. What instantly popped into my hand when I conjured it, the stone, did not work the same way for gold or silver or platinum. Instead, they started out small and grew until I cut off the energy flow to the conjuration. It took about ten minutes to conjure a disk the width of my palm and the thickness of paper. It took longer than that for the platinum. I put the various disks next to each other. Time to test. I created an energy matrix enchant for durability and pushed it into the stone. It sunk in with a small bit of resistance. Doing the same to the iron was a lot harder, but well within my efforts. The crazy part was doing the same to the gold, silver and platinum. There was no resistance to the silver, the gold seemed to suck it down, and it slid right off the platinum. I made the same enchantment, put more energy into it, and put it on top of the platinum and Pushed! The whole energy matrix collapsed. This is definitely something for me to use later.

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  I put the silver, iron, and the granite next to each other, shaped the first to make it a rectangle about the length and width of my forearm, and then shaped the others to match. The plan was to layer them to be a magic shield. The stone to be the middle layer, with enchantments to be overly hard and to project a field that repels physical force (bullets and punches). The iron is the covering, and it holds enchantments of dispelling, to block magical projectiles such as curses or fireballs. The silver layer is the inner layer with the control enchantment. Through that, I will control the shape and size of the shield. After the enchantments were done, I bonded them all together and sealed the outer edges with a crystal covering edged with the gold. The shield plate was about an inch thick. Then, my piece de resistance’. I put an enchantment on the crystal covering to project a field of draining, to weaken any curse that came my way and then absorb what it could and divert it to an overflow battery. Multiple layers of protection, first the draining layer, then the dispelling layer, then the physical layer, then the control layer. I conjured a bone gauntlet, sealed the shield plate inside and put it on. Not too heavy, maybe about 3 pounds total on my off arm. I don’t know how much power it’s actually going to take to use, but I linked it to the battery vest just in case. The light streaming through my basement windows showed me that it was well past noon. I had taken care of my defensive needs, now I had to figure out the offensive.