They appeared outside the temple of Rizari and immediately began arguing.

Cruella spoke over everyone, her voice practically booming. “You’re going to trust that little creep?”

Amy pulled Sasha aside, and they sat down on a fallen log, keeping out of the discussion. Eli looked from them to Cruella. “I don’t see how we can take the chance if he’s telling the truth. They obviously have the technology, or whatever you want to call it here, to do what he's threatening. Everyone would be teleported away.”

“So what do you suggest?” Samantha asked.

Eli considered the question, then replied, “We have to make sure. We’ll play along for now, and I’ll go speak with the goblin council to see what they have to say. They didn’t tell me the entire truth either, and only made it seem like Solomon leaving was unexpected. There are questions to be answered by them."

“You want us to find whatever Solomon planted by ourselves?” Cruella asked.

“Yes. We can’t tell everyone, or there will be panic, and people will leave. I don’t think we’re ready for that. Do you?”

Cruella looked away, obviously not happy with the answer, but she accepted it. Simon’s jaw clenched tight, and Eli waited for him to say something, but the words never came.

“So we’re in agreement. You find the devices, but don’t touch them yet, and I’ll speak with the council first thing tomorrow.”

Everyone nodded, and Eli turned to Amy. “Are you coming back with us?” He looked to Sasha, who peered up into Amy’s unseeing eyes. The owl squawked and jumped down to the log with a single flap of its wings.

“We’ll stay here,” Amy said.

Eli nodded. “I got that new Cleanse skill. Do you want me to try to remove the blind debuff?”

Amy frowned and looked down, as if thinking. “What is he talking about?” Sasha asked, her gaze shifting from Amy to Eli, and back. “You can give her sight back?”

“I don’t know,” Eli said. “I can try, but I don’t know if it would work.”

“Why wouldn’t you want that?” Sasha said, hugging Amy tighter. “Don’t you want to see?”

Amy gave her a weak smile. “I can see far better now than I ever could before—even before I lost my sight. I can see from multiple perspectives at once. I can see as the hawk flies, and I can see in the dark through the eyes of a wolf. I’m not sure how well the ability would work if I had my actual sight.”

Sasha gave her a searching look, then nodded and rested her head on Amy’s shoulder. “Sounds like you have your answer.”

Amy nodded again and turned her face to Eli. “Thank you, Eli, but no.”

“I understand,” Eli said. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

“Oh, we’re not leaving." Amy said. "Why do you ask?”

“Zack is gone,” Eli said. “He and Irene took off.”

“Yeah, I figured they would. Our beloved barista could barely stand being in a full party, much less a building full of people.”

“Really? It was that bad?” Eli asked. “I didn’t notice.”

“He did tell you,” Amy said. “He told all of us. I guess you need to work on your listening.”

“Maybe I do,” Eli said, handing over The Ruler's Mantle, the item that improved pet handling. “Well, goodbye for now. I’ll talk with you later. And Sasha, you’re staying away from the traps, right?”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere near that place again,” Sasha chuckled.

Eli cast Warp, and he, Simon, Samantha, and Cruella returned to Infinite Innovation Solutions. The foyer was quiet, with most people probably asleep at this late hour. Or early hour, depending on how your perspective. Even the goblins were gone. All except one. Arti lounged on one of the sofas, sound asleep.

Their return startled him awake, and he rubbed at his eyes. “What time is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Eli said, “but it should probably be morning soon, I think.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Arti leaned back and put a blanket over his face. His voice came from under it, muted by the fabric. “Wake me up when the sun comes up.”

“Sure,” Eli said. “I’ll be going to the council then.”

Arti removed the blanket with a jerk of his hand. “You found Solomon?”

“We did,” Eli said.

“Where is he?”

“We left him in the forest. I have some questions for the council.”

Arti gave him a long, weighing look and nodded. “I bet you do.” He stood and stretched his arms over his head. “Well, I better be heading back then.”

“You’re going now?” Eli asked.

“Yeah, it takes a little while to get back for us who can't wave our hands in the air and teleport wherever we want, so I better get a head start.” He put heavy emphasis on the word teleport, and Eli thought he heard a hidden meaning. Arti knew, and he wanted Eli to understand that he did. The small goblin left through the entrance, whistling a rather melancholic tune with long, lingering notes.

The group said their goodnights and separated, leaving Eli alone to wait for the sun to rise. He felt weary, but not sleepy, and thought he probably couldn’t sleep again just yet. Instead, he took Arti’s place on the sofa and realized he hadn’t equipped his tome after it got sucked into his inventory when the goblins put the bracelet on him. Eli brought it out and opened it, blinking. The damn thing was empty. Every page was blank except for the first one, which held only a single word: Light.

Sighing, Eli closed the book and equipped it. He equipped his staff and remembered Cruella using her runeforging profession back in the Temple of Rizari. He turned to his own character sheet and saw a tab he hadn’t noticed before in all his haste: Profession. He opened it and read a brief description of the profession he’d received when using the tome they’d found on Ephraim’s corpse.

Enchantment: Magically enchant equipment to bring more power into the world.

Short and sweet.

The name was similar to the mage’s subclass, but while the mage used spells to enchant her weapons and skills, this profession was only for applying permanent enhancements to gear. From what he read, it only applied to armor, for he saw no way of upgrading weapons through this profession and figured that might be the difference between runeforging and enchantments. One was for weapons, the other for armor. Probably Blacksmiths could upgrade both, but Eli didn’t know much about that class.

He looked at the very short list of recipes the interface provided for enchantments.

Life Enchantment: Increase maximum health points.

Mana Enchantment: Increase maximum mana.

Defense Enchantment: Increase defense.

Rather self-explanatory, Eli thought as he selected Defense Enchantment. Apparently, he didn’t have the components necessary to craft the enchantment. The screen told him he needed something called common enchantment materials. When he concentrated on the words, a small description popped up, telling him that common enchantment materials could be looted from monsters or obtained through scrapping items. That wasn’t something he’d seen before, but Eli found himself intrigued.

He opened his inventory, located a common sword, and thought, Scrap. The sword disappeared, and he received common enchantment materials x3.

“Interesting, very interesting.”

Eli immediately began scrapping every piece of common loot in his inventory, and he had a lot. By now, most people would have basic weapons, so he didn’t need to carry all this stuff with him to hand out.

In his haste, he accidentally scrapped a pair of magic leather gloves, which netted him common enchantment material x3 and magic enchantment material x1. Going back to his enchantment screen, Eli used 15 common materials to craft a Defense enchantment, adding it to his Simple Ring. A small chime sounded with a pop-up, telling him the enchantment was successful, which meant crafting enchantments could fail, something to keep in mind.

He inspected the ring. It had gone from Simple Ring: (+10% HP) to Simple Ring: (+10% HP, +10% Defense). Simple enough.

There was a small symbol in the item pop-up window, and when he concentrated on it, a new tooltip described that the item had been enchanted and could be upgraded using magic materials. He did so, and another chime sounded.

Simple Ring: (+10% HP, +15% Defense).

“This is really good,” Eli said, speaking to the empty room. Just to test it out, Eli enchanted a piece of leather armor, creating Common Leather Armor of Life (+10% HP). Then he scrapped it and found that he received more materials than if he’d scrapped the base item, though not as much as the base item plus the enchantment. Some materials were lost in the process.

Wanting more defense, Eli enchanted his Ruler’s Crown with of Defense, holding his breath until the chime sounded, indicating success. This added +10% defense to the item as well. Enchanting was incredibly powerful. Even as a beginner, he could give himself so much more defense, health, or mana with barely any effort.

He added of Defense to his other ring as well, and a different chime sounded. At first, he feared the enchantment had failed, but a new pop-up appeared: New enchantment effect discovered. Numbed Pain Enchantment. Eli’s eyes widened as he read the item description.

Numbed Pain Enchantment: Numbs the sensation of pain.

Ring of the Blessed: (+10 Wisdom, +10 Constitution, increased buff duration, +10% Defense, +5% Numbed Pain).

This enchantment could make him feel less pain. He looked down at his hand, aching with remembered hurt after being crushed a few hours ago. If he could make people feel wounds and injuries less, it would be amazing when fighting monsters.

He tried adding the same enchantment to his first ring, but the interface wouldn’t let him. Item already enchanted. So, he couldn’t enchant an item more than once, but he could upgrade the enchantment already added to it.

He’d have to plan accordingly, but this was good. Very good.

The next hour or so Eli spent enchanting the rest of his gear, adding a few pieces of common leather armor under his robes, enchanted with Numbed Pain. Stacked together and upgraded after scrapping a few more magic items, he managed to get the total up to 30%

Unsure what to expect, Eli punched a wall. Pain radiated from his knuckles, but it was absolutely dampened.

"Whoa."