After Jordan had finished climbing all the way up the roof, he quickly discovered that there was some bad news. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t spot the purple sphere again. And as nice as it would be to brush it off as just his mind playing tricks on him last night, he knew that actually thinking that way would be foolish. It’d definitely been there, but now, it was just gone.

Welp, let’s hope that doesn’t come back around to bite me in the ass. But maybe it’s something that’ll show up again tonight? Jordan asked himself. He wasn’t sure if it was some kind of weird creature, or just some sort of magical phenomenon. With how little he knew about what was even possible in this new reality of theirs, it could be anything.

All he could do for now was to make a regular point of checking to see if it reappeared, especially at night. If it did, then he’d just need to go from there to decide what he’ll do next.

Until then, it was back to his regularly scheduled program for more testing. But after being awake for a little while now and eating his breakfast, Jordan could use some more water. However, it was finally time to make the upgrade from makeshift bucket, to an actual bucket.

In his pocket space were plenty of things that he would honestly never use. The equipment given by the System, the clothing people had changed out that’d he also taken, and just whatever else had been on their person before the Merging. Only things like his Energy Pistol or the Healing Wand were magical and therefore valuable, which meant that everything else was entirely expendable. Especially since if he needed something new after using it all up, there was nothing to stop him from taking a transformed item and then just transforming it again.

When Jordan returned downstairs to the Transmuter, he quickly got to work. Of course, he also kept notes, but this was something that he decided to call a batch test of sorts. Just to see how it handled various tools and items in terms of both the result and associated cost.

Several minutes of using the machine later, Jordan had a whole list of results.

Desired Transmutation: Bucket with padded handle.

Material Used: Metal helmet with cloth.

Charge Needed: 0.8%

Desired Transmutation: A 16-hour watch.

Material Used: Non-digital silver watch.

Charge Needed: 0.5%

Desired Transmutation: A large set of nails and screws of varying sizes.

Material Used: Metal breastplate

Charge Needed: 0.6%

Note: A cube of metal was made from the excess material that wasn’t needed.

Desired Transmutation: A hammer, pair of screwdrivers, and adjustable wrench.

Material Used: Excess material saved from the creation of nails.

Charge Needed: 1.0%

And the list went on as Jordan had used it to create even more stuff that he thought would prove useful. The last major thing of note was the creation of items that were very necessary. A trapdoor for the access to the roof, and a regular door for the main entrance.

The trapdoor was the easier part. It didn’t need to be that big, nor very secure. It would be mostly to just prevent the rain from falling through the roof access and all the way down to the ground floor. Also to make it just a bit harder for something to not fly in from above, or jump down from the surrounding trees.

But yeah, all that really required was for him to gather enough sticks and such to fill a large part of the Transmuter, and then turn them into one solid object. Then he just put it into his pocket space, climbed up the ladder, and then placed it over the hole in the roof. He would fancy it up with an actual mechanism later, but there was another thing that would need that kind of work more.

The actual front door.

When it came to that, Jordan had to give security a bit more priority. He didn’t have enough metal on hand to make it anything super tough. And even if he did, the doorway itself was too big for him to just throw some material in the Transmuter and call it a day. The door itself would need to be approximately eight feet tall and three feet wide, which was obviously too big for the output slot.

That was where the set of various tools he’d just made would come in. If he couldn’t have the fancy machine do all the work, then Jordan would just have to go old school and do it himself.

“I really don’t want to deal with installing the hinges into solid concrete though, so I’ll need to make my own doorframe to start. But then I’d need to secure that to the concrete anyway, so… Ahhh fuck it, can I just make a drill instead?” Jordan complained aloud. He went to the Transmuter after getting what he believed to be the appropriate materials and…

No. It simply didn’t work. Which the complexity of the item itself wasn’t the issue, as he’d gotten the watch to work. From a regular mechanical watch, he’d gotten it to transform into one with 16 hours on the face instead of 12. This way he could keep track of the time more precisely while indoors, and in a way that was easier than translating it to and from normal Earth time in his head. So why did it accept him changing a watch in such a way, but not make a power tool?

Was it because the watch itself was still the basis as the original item, versus just throwing what he believed to be the right materials together to create an electric drill? He’d gotten metal, bits of plastic from random stuff like cards in wallets, and electronics in the form of smartphones and such. Yet clearly something was either missing from the input, or misunderstood in how he had tried to picture the desired product.

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

Oh well, it is what it is then. Even if the door itself is just multiple pieces attached together, and then its installation in the doorway is also scuffed, that’ll just have to do for now. It doesn’t have to be the fanciest thing in the world, at the end of the day. Just needs to make someone kick it down, versus just being able to walk right in while I’m asleep or focused on something else. He rolled his shoulders.

The red sun steadily moved across the sky, though out of his sight. Due to being surrounded by the giant trees, the clearing only really got a direct view of the sun during the afternoon. It had already dipped below the trees by now, and then had moved further down toward the horizon hidden by the forest.

Jordan wiped the sweat off his brow as he looked at his “finished” work. The door looked exactly like the kind of thing you’d expect from someone who had never installed a regular door in his life, but thought it wouldn’t be too hard to install one after nailing the door itself together from multiple pieces. Which was to say, it looked like utter crap.

“Well as long as it works,” he began while giving it a test swing. “Oh yeah, that’ll-”

After the first couple of seconds had gone well, a bit of door attached to one of three hinges cracked. It then snapped away from the hinge, which led to a catastrophic shift in how much the other two had to support from the shift in weight on them. While the hinges were made of metal, the door itself had been constructed from wood, since that was the most abundant material around.

“-Ah, damn it!”

Another few seconds later, Jordan was now staring at the door that’d fallen onto the floor. Splintered bits of wood were still stuck onto the hinges. After it’d hit the concrete ground, a section where two parts of the modular door had also split apart and partially separated.

Jordan sighed. “Man, I wish Leo was here. He probably would have been able to do it all himself, first try. And I’m sure he would have made it look easy too.”

When it came to any skill that was considered practically hands-on, Leo was a true genius. He was the kind of guy who bounced around all sorts of jobs, only working for maybe half a year at a time at the very most, before moving on to the next one.

But if the job required working with your hands more than anything, then Leo might have been the fastest learner in the world. And that wasn’t even hyperbole. After taking an apprenticeship as a plumber and gaining a few months of experience, he’d once mentioned that the guy teaching him had asked if he’d secretly been doing it for years and only pretended to be bad and inexperienced at first.

“Welp, nothing to do by try again, right? The trapdoor was fine, but that’s just covering the hole in the roof. If the wood itself is too weak even after being processed by the Transmuter, then that could be the problem. Or it’s me, and the way I imagined it wasn’t good for making it structurally sound. Only one way to find out,” he said.

A part of him was worried about using the machine too much and quickly going through its Charge faster than he could replenish it. But at the end of the day, all it really needed was that last 1% of battery to keep the lights and heat on for a few months.

As the world grew darker from dusk, Jordan was fitting together the second door. His plan was to take a break for dinner once this project was finally done, and then maybe take just a bit of time to relax before going to sleep. Maybe he would instead decide to start thinking of something to sleep on, rather than just the concrete floor.

However, those idle thoughts were suddenly paused as Jordan heard something. Something was loudly and quickly stomping on the dry leaves outside. With how relatively quiet the forest one, he could clearly hear it even before the source was close by. But with how the noise seemed to be growing a bit louder with each passing moment, whatever the source was, it was rapidly moving straight toward his base.

What the Hell? Did some animal smell me or the cooked food? Jordan thought to himself as he pressed himself against the inner wall by the doorway.

His Energy Pistol already in hand, he mentally desummoned his land drone and was about to summon it again beside him. It would take up the space of the doorway as the air drone flew out, acting as a combo of offense and defense while he moved to the roof. Though that would be right after seeing what he was dealing with, since it sounded like it’d be showing up any second now.

Right at that moment, deep and ragged gasps for air were heard. Now frowning deeply, Jordan peeked his head into the doorway. Coming from the side, a woman then half-ran, half-stumbled into view.

Her blonde hair was a disheveled mess, as the leather armor she wore was stained in dirt with leaves stuck to some parts. For the parts of her body not covered by the armor, she was covered with sweat. When she then came to a stop, hands on her knees as she leaned over, drops of sweat quickly dripped off her nose.

Jordan lowered his gun as he stepped through the doorway, his brows knitted together with confusion more than anything now. This lady, who appeared to be a few years younger than him, maybe only in her late teens, seemed to have intentionally come directly, which most likely meant that she was a member of the group that Joey had claimed to be a part of.

But why was she here now, and what would have made her so clearly exhausted? Had she already been coming this way, but then was attacked and chased by something? Yet before Jordan opened his mouth to ask that very question, she looked up at him as he stepped closer. He did a slight double take as she looked up at him with concerningly red, bloodshot eyes.

“Please, we- we…” she tried to start, before pausing to swallow heavily. From his pocket space, Jordan pulled out a metal water bottle he’d made earlier, and that even came with a screw-on lid.

“Hey, hey, you’re alright. Here,” Jordan said as he walked up to her and held out the bottle. “Have some water, and take a few deep breaths. Then tell me what happened.”

Nodding, she grabbed the bottle and quickly began to gulp down the liquid inside. Looking her up and down as she drank, Jordan only became more sure that she’d been running for what must have been a while. And now that several seconds had passed since her initial arrival, it didn’t sound like something had been immediately chasing right behind her…

After the woman took one last gulp, she took just a single deep breath in and out before trying again.

“We were attacked, by- by-” her words were shaky as the water bottle trembled in her hands. “By that thing!”

Jordan sharply exhaled as he clenched his teeth. The still all too recent memories of yesterday quickly rushed through his mind. Trying to remain outwardly calm and get a grip on himself, he couldn’t stop his entire body from still becoming visibly tensed up.

At his side, the land drone appeared. “Just point me the right way, and I’ll head there immediately.”