Now that he’d completed his immediate ideas, he was feeling rather listless. The ship was quickly becoming confining and boring, and he found himself slipping into depressive spirals of homesickness. His wife would never get any closure for his missing persons case, they’d never find a body because he was still alive, just… not on Earth. Would she ever move on? Had she moved on already? Surely not… It had only been a few months. But what if she had? Round and round Xander’s thoughts chased themselves, and he found himself becoming snappish and withdrawn.
Finally, Frazay sat him down and plainly asked him, “Xander, what’s wrong? You don’t normally act like this.”
Xander was taken aback by the question. He’d been trying to keep everything locked up tight, and hadn’t realized that it was so obvious that something was wrong. “I… sorry. You’re right, I’m not acting like I usually do. It’s just… with all this time on the ship, it’s let me do too much thinking. My thoughts keep turning to home, and my wife. I still miss her. I haven’t gotten over the fact that I’m probably never going to see her again. And to her, it must be like I died! But there’s not even a goddamned body to bury… Because I’m still alive, just here instead. Ugh, I have got to find something to do to keep my mind occupied.”
Frazay put her hand on Xander’s shoulder, comfortingly. “Xander… I’m sorry. We didn’t realize, but I suppose we should have. You’ve mentioned her before, after all. If you ever need, or want, to talk about it, to any of us, we’re here. I might not be able to relate to the experience, but I can at least sympathize and lend an ear. What you went through… it’s not something that a person gets over quickly. If anything, you’ve handled it surprisingly well. And, if it helps to keep busy, then, yeah, you should find something to keep you occupied. Because we were worried about you.”
“I… thanks. I’m not used to this kind of thing. My friends before, we never really talked about anything like this. But seriously, thank you. Just… letting it out has made me feel a little bit better. I guess it helps, putting words to a problem.”
Frazay patted his shoulder once more. “Just try not to shut us out,” she said, before leaving him back to his thoughts.
Xander pondered what he should do to take his mind off of his homesickness. He knew that it wasn’t something he’d just be able to mentally resolve yet. The wound was too fresh, still. He wondered if he’d ever get over it, or if he’d pine after some aspect or other of his life back on Earth for the rest of his life.
Wracking his brain for a project that could occupy him, he remembered his idle idea of creating wings when he’d been coming up with ideas for his automaton backpack. He’d had the thought of wings but discarded them as something that would operate better as a runic device. Now that was something that could occupy him. He’d need to think of lightweight but sturdy materials, first, though. He opened his status to check what he had in his [Store] skill from things he’s [Analyze]d.
---You have created devices and runic arrays---
---[Combat Artificer] leveled to 19---
---[Rune Lord] leveled to 5---
---[Combat Artificer] level 19 skills---
[Improved Ferrokinesis] – Strength, distance, and force with which [Ferrokinesis] can be used increased.
---[Rune Lord] Level 5 skills---
[Improved Rune of Shielding] – Damage absorbed by [Rune of Shielding] increased.
[Rune Tattoo] – You may manifest runic arrays directly on your body.
Huh. Xander had forgotten to check his status after creating that flamethrower, and it must have tipped him over the edge. The boost to [Ferrokinesis] was certainly welcome. [Rune Tattoo]… was interesting. He could think of a use for it immediately, though, as he was expecting that he would need a lot of mana to create the materials he’d need for his wings. After all, he’d remembered that his watch had a body that was made of carbon fiber. He willed a large personal mana gathering array to appear on his chest, and one on his back, stripping his shirt off to take a look. Thin, silver runes had appeared on him, almost looking like metallic threads under the skin. He could feel the mana he’d spent on the skill already rapidly refilling and smiled. Between the two arrays on his body, and the ones on his armor, he should be able to create quite a bit of carbon fiber.
Xander spent the next week just sketching out idea and deciding which runes he’d need to use to make the apparatus work. In between sketching out his ideas, he created small sheets of carbon fiber, the modern material quickly draining his mana. By the time they reached the coast, Xander was finally satisfied with his drawings, though he was still not entirely sure it would work. He’d opted for something similar to bird wings, with scales of carbon fiber to act as feathers. Several additional carbon fiber rods would come out from the ‘shoulder’ of wing the to allow more space for the scale-feathers to be mounted, giving it more lift. The wings would be attached to a harness that would go under his plate carrier. Sequences of intelligence and movement runes would cause the wings, which attached to the harness on a ball and socket joint which would be covered in smoothness runes, to flap up and down. Xander was still unsure how to vary the rate of the flapping, though. Lightness runes, or really, inverse weightiness runes, would adorn every single part of the wings, which, combined with the already lightweight nature of carbon fiber, should hopefully make it nearly weightless. Strengthening runes would also abound, ensuring that the feathers were not ripped off, or any components crack or break.
The rest of the first month of their travel, now on a sailing ship, hugging the coast of the continent as they traveled South, Xander spent creating more carbon fiber, and slowly creating the skeleton of the wings. He layered the sheets of carbon fiber in opposing directions, strengthening the already strong material even further. Each inner sheet was engraved with ruby inlaid runes and gathering arrays, while the outer was inlayed with silver which created a multilayered system of runes, a first for Xander. This kind of thing would allow him to fit a huge number of runes in a relatively small space, now that he considered it. He’d probably want to replace his armor with layered carbon fiber, too. Plus, it would look badass, he thought to himself.
Testing the wings, now that they were finally in one contiguous piece, proved troublesome. His first iterations had not even lifted him off the ground, though they had created strong gusts of wind. Increasing the number of, and power to the movement runes had worked. His next test, however, found him clutching a rope tied to the mast, as his mechanical carbon fiber wings forcefully flapped, trying to lift him higher. He hadn’t yet worked a way to make them slow down, and that mistake had almost ripped him away from the bounds of the ship’s deck. He’d ended up having to use [Improved Manipulate] to break the sequence of runes on the wings, ending the terrifying ordeal, and dropping him into the sea, where he angrily hoisted himself up to the deck with the rope he was still holding.
Another two weeks of testing kept leading him to similar results. He was so close that he refused to give up, but he was becoming increasingly frustrated. How was he supposed to get the runes to follow his commands in such a nuanced way? In a moment of clarity, as he was angrily bashing the wings against a wall, he realized what the issue was. He was creating arrays that would flap in a set pattern, which was enough to lift him off the ground, but offered little to no control, and no variation in the speed or power of the flaps. What he needed was not a set of hard instructions, but something that would respond to his own ‘touch,’ as it were. Hurriedly, he laid the wings back out on the floor. They were completely undamaged, thanks to the strengthening runes. He began undoing the intelligence runes that originally caused the wings to flap, smoothing them over and peeling back layers of carbon fiber to give him a blank canvas. What he did next was fill the space back up with intelligence runes, but left them, for the most part, with more vague instructions, clustering them for even more ‘processing’ power, as he thought of it. One cluster would vary the speed of which the movement runes were used to flap depending on how much mana he fed it. Another array would tilt the wings up if he fed it mana, and a separate one would similarly tilt it down. He created as many movements as he could possibly think of, making the wings as close to fully articulated limbs as he could. He’d have to learn to use them like one has to learn to walk, but it would allow him to move the wings with his mind, and the drain on his mana would be negligible, since most of it was powered by existing gathering arrays.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
By the time he was finished re-etching all the runes on the sheets of carbon fiber, it was time for him to go to bed. It was hard for him to sleep, as he kept thinking about different ways he could use the wings, and what might go wrong, maybe he should try this rune there, but eventually, he did fall asleep.
As soon as Xander awoke, he was right back to his project, pulling it from his inventory, making his way to the deck, and strapping it onto his torso. Experimentally, he began feeding mana into different arrays. He was able to make the wings flap, wrap around him, stretch out, angle this way and that. It was everything he wanted. Before flying, he spent several hours just… wandering about the deck, getting used to the balance of having wings strapped to his back, opening them, closing them, practicing just about everything he could think of short of actually trying to fly. Finally, he could contain his excitement no longer, and began feeding his mana into the ‘flap circuit’ as he thought of it. The jet-black wings, covered in silver runic script, unfurled and began flapping, kicking up gusts of air. Soon, he was lifted from the wooden deck of the ship, and still gaining altitude. As always, his teammates and the passengers on the ship’s deck watched his test with interest.
Still experimenting, Xander fed more mana into other arrays, angling the wings forward a small amount, giving him some forward momentum, just enough to keep up with the ship, as it had begun to move out from under him. Xander cheered. This was his best test, yet. He lessened the mana flowing he was feeding the flap circuit, slowing the speed at which the wings were beating, and he, ever so slowly, began to drift back onto the deck. He cheered again. “Hell yeah!” His teammates cheered along with him, happy to finally see his device succeed, and that Xander had been pulled out of his funk by working on it in the first place.
Xander spent the entirety of the next month of travel learning to fly. Between his wings and his automaton backpack, he would no longer need to burden Freyja by riding her, freeing her to make her way next to Xander however she wished. He would also be able to provide air support, hopefully, for his teammates, firing his shotgun, or perhaps even the flamethrower, though the tank would need its placement adjusted, from on high. Between his [Improved Ferrokinesis] and his newly padded armor, he should be able to deal with any traditional arrows and bolts. For more esoteric skills… well, he’d have to get good at dodging, and learning to know when it was better to just stay on the ground. When he opened his status for the first time after creating his wings, he was greeted by a prompt informing him that he’d gained a title.
---For creating an item that many would consider to be a magnum opus, you have received the title [Craftsman]---
The month of travel passed quickly to Xander, who found himself quite taken with his newfound ability to fly. He was sure there would be at least a few other people with skills, or perhaps mounts, that allowed them to fly, but he had yet to see any. Such a thing would surely allow one to dominate a battlefield in a profound way. His companions were happy to see that he did not sink back into a mood once he had finished the wings. For their part, the trip was either leisurely, in the case of Atrax and Frazay, or productive in the case of Graffus and Gabrelle, who continued their training regimen, with Gabrelle now occasionally able to land a blow on Graffus.
The port that the ship dropped the mercenaries off at was small, surrounded by only a fishing village. As the ship docked, men, women and even children flocked to the docks, as they began haggling with the sailors and a few merchants that had brought their wares to with them on the ship. The captain likewise was haggling for supplies like fresh water and foodstuffs with the villagers. The mercenaries made their way off the ship and through the crowd, checking the map which they’d been given by the guild with the location of their final destination. The village was marked on the map, but unnamed, and they would need to travel Southeast on the road out from the village for about a week before breaking from the road and following a small trail that had been blazed by the original expedition that led deep into the jungle. The village was quickly left behind by the mercenaries.
The landscape they moved through was tropical, with dense foliage on both sides of the road, and mountains far off in the distance. It seemed to remind Freyja of home, and the cat would frequently peel off from the group, since Xander was no longer riding her, to prowl through the tall plants. Occasionally, she would come back with the remains of a small animal that she had managed to catch. Xander alternately walked, hoisted himself onto his spider legs to keep up with the horses, and flew. The time he took flying above his companions, he would spend observing the area for anything interesting or dangerous. He struggled to spot much through the thick blanket of plants and trees, however. Once, he did manage to spot what he thought might have been a wolf spider scuttling through the underbrush, but he wasn’t quite sure. It was alone, and moving away from them, though, so none of his companions were particularly concerned about it once he’d relayed the information to them.
After a week of travel, often checking their map and comparing it to noted landmarks, the party did indeed come across a small trail leading off from the path they were on. From this point, it was a three-day trek into the jungle for them to reach the researcher’s camp. As they made their way into the jungle, webbing began to become more and more noticeable. In a few places across the trail it was so thick, they had to pause for Atrax to burn the path clear. Xander considered using his flamethrower, but decided it was a little bit too much of a forest fire risk. The journey ended up taking them an extra day due to the amount of webbing they encountered, but they did find the camp ono that fourth day, still intact. As they walked into the clearing that had been made, Xander noticed two guards hauling the corpse of a large spider out of the way, dropping it in the brush outside the perimeter. More guards were seen cutting down the webbing that constantly accumulated in the jungle area, keeping it from growing too dense.
“I knew there’d be giant spiders…” Xander muttered.
The camp was butted up to one end of a large ziggurat. Xander expected that it would be overgrown and crumbling, considering that it was supposed to be an ‘ancient’ temple, but there was not a single plant growing on the stone sides of the building. That seemed wrong. There were numerous carvings and pictograms that he could see on the side of the temple, and all of them seemed to include spiders.
“Great. Spider temple. You bastards dragged me into the spider jungle to the spider temple.”
Atrax mused over the carvings. “Mmm, could be a temple to one of the gods surrounding fate. They’re often depicted as spiders due to their weaving ability. ‘The threads of fate,’ is often interpreted literally in imagery like this.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Xander said, sulkily. “Spider temple full of traps. Let’s just go talk to the researchers and figure out how to get this place cleaned out.”
The group met with the lead researcher, a woman looking to be in her mid-twenties. She was dressed pragmatically for the area, in canvas pants and a loose shirt, and introduced herself as Severa.
“So, you’re here to clear out the temple? The last group of mercenaries gave up after one of them caught a spike through the leg. Though, I think they also tired of the webbing that infests the damned place.”
“Fortunately, the webbing won’t be a problem for us,” Atrax said, conjuring a small ball of flame in his hand, as if to say ‘because we can just burn it down.’ It worked better than if Xander had brandished his flamethrower, because the woman would have had no idea what it was. “And traps shouldn’t be much of an issue with our artificer.”
The woman nodded. “Mm. Sounds like you’re the right set up for this, then. We’ve been getting antsy out here, unable to study anything but the outside of the temple. The guards don’t have any trouble with the spiders out here, but there’s no getting them into the temple. The spiders are ‘too dense’ and they ‘don’t want to fall prey to any traps,’” the woman said, somewhat mockingly. Xander found it rather hypocritical, considering there was likely no way the woman or other researchers could make it through the temple, either. “So, when can you get started?”
“We’ll make our first foray into the temple today, scope things out,” Atrax relayed.
Xander groaned quietly. He really didn’t want to do this.