The sound of dripping woke me from my slumber. I cracked open my eyes, barely able to turn my head. Everything felt fuzzy. When I looked down I saw the reason for the dripping noise. A large pool of blood was staining the floor and a quick look showed that my stump had continued to leak blood after I had passed out.

Going by the size of the pool I must have been unconscious for at least a few hours. I injected another health potion but that was only a stopgap. I needed to deal with the issue.

I glanced at the viewer, it showed that the valley was empty. Footprints blanketed the ground but the people must have left before the cloak ran out of power.

I decided to set the fortress back down and engage the shield. That would give me five or six hours until I had to worry, assuming nobody came by and attacked.

With that done I slowly stood on weak legs. I had to brace myself using my staff but I made my way to the kitchen. There I turned on the electric stove and let the element heat up. I didn’t have the knowledge or skills to seal off the stump with stitches so this was the only other option I could think of. I had thought about just cutting the arm off higher up but something told me that wouldn’t fix the issue caused by Randy Cotton’s skill.

When the burner was red hot, I stuck a chunk of wood in my mouth, grabbed a health injector, in my good hand, and shoved the stump against the burner.

I screamed as my flesh sizzled but I was able to stay conscious through the pain. The end result looked awful but it no longer bled. I went and retrieved some anti-burn ointment and slathered a liberal amount onto the area before I fumbled with gauze and a bandage.

The wound throbbed but the System and my pain tolerance made it bearable. I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I went to the fridge and grabbed some food.

I was so hungry I didn’t bother getting a plate or silverware, I simply shoved my hand into the food and shoveled it into my mouth.

***

I woke up on the kitchen floor, not even remembering having passed out. The blood loss was affecting me severely but looking around I saw that no more blood was soaking the floor or me. I also felt slightly better. The food I had eaten must have helped. That made me remember Bella.

I pulled her from her storage and she seemed distraught at my condition.

“It’s ok, I'll be fine, just keep watch and make sure nobody gets in.”

She gave a squawk in response.

I gave a half-hearted smile as I made my way to my bed. This fight would leave me weakened for days. Once inside the room, I set the tracking plate on the table next to the bed and activated it. Still two signals. It looked like Ska and Fiona were heading West. I realized they must have entered the tunnels again. I hoped they would be ok. As soon as I lay my head on the pillow, I fell asleep.

The next time I woke up, my condition had improved. I wasn’t as light-headed and my mind felt much clearer. My head was clear enough that I realized how much of a monumental idiot I had been. I made a fundamental mistake in thinking my enemies would simply wait around or that they didn’t have another way to find me. Randy and the Black Dragon had already proven that they were resourceful enough to track my movements once before.

I should have expected the attack, the whole ‘Let’s check out this tunnel through the mountain,’ scenario was not something I would have done. I didn’t care what was on the other side of the mountain, only that there was a path through. The only thing that made sense was Fate Spinner magic. It made me realize just how powerful and insidious the magic that Randy Cotton used was. I hadn’t thought anything was odd about my actions but Fiona had pointed out my actions were weird and out of place, to the point she asked me about it.

How do you begin to even fight against someone who can bend fate to their whim? Then again, a spell of that magnitude must be costly. I knew spells could utilize other resources as payment for activation, my Aura of Rage was a prime example of that. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what it cost or how often he could use it. I needed to be extra vigilant. I also needed to heed my friends' advice.

I checked the tracker and noticed the bar moved slightly to the west. I had to assume they were still traveling through the tunnel. I slammed my good hand down on the table in frustration, knowing there wasn’t anything I could do. Even if I entered the tunnel again it would be a week before I could join up with them. In my state, I didn’t hold out much hope that I would be any help. I had to trust in their abilities and prepare for when they arrived.

I went to my workroom and created another defensive necklace. Randy Cotton’s attack had destroyed the first item. Rune-crafting with my offhand was a major pain in the ass. Only my high agility allowed me to make a passable item. It was considerably weaker than my previous attempt. I sighed, I would need to practice quite a bit more to bring my offhand up to my former quality. I Inspected the final result.

Necklace of force attenuation

Quality: Average

Description: This necklace redirects 60% of the force of one attack to the whole body. 40% magic resistance.

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It would have to do. I slipped the item on and pushed it under my shirt. Next, I took a look at my armor. It was in rough shape. The back had six gaping holes where he had stabbed me repeatedly. Even the front was damaged to a lesser extent. A row of mithril plates was slightly bent from absorbing the initial blow. The cut continued onto the open leather, leaving a ragged-looking slice that was barely stopped. I still had a minor hitch from the broken rib.

I couldn’t do anything about the damage right now so I rinsed the blood off and tried to slip the armor back on. Unfortunately, this proved impossible without my ring to assist. Untying the straps had been a chore but retying them so the armor was tight was a nightmare.

I gave up and stored the armor for now. Without a second hand, I was going to be nearly useless. I would have to buy another ring to replace the one I lost or figure out what to do to shore up my disability.

Making a rune-crafted hand seemed like the quickest approach to solving my problem. I couldn’t manufacture anything too complex with the materials I had available but I didn’t need to be complex.

I sketched out a design that utilized an arm brace that we had for setting broken bones and six bars of steelium. The bars would act like fingers and thumb. Really I only needed three but I had another idea.

It took a bit of digging to find the storage ring where I stuck the extra steelium. I stuck it in the small bandsaw in the workroom and cut up the six bars. Each bar was half an inch wide, a quarter-inch thick, and six inches long. It was overkill for a temporary prosthetic but that was fine.

Simple movement runes were easy for me to produce. I had used those on the outer doors of the fortress. Attaching all the fingers to the arm brace was a far larger challenge. I muddled through it and eventually got them all attached. Activating the ‘fingers’ turned out to be too difficult. They all wanted to activate at once. It took me some fiddling before I came up with a solution. I now sported six tattoos, one for each finger. I could control each individually or with a bit of effort more than one at a time.

I had to thank my high Intelligence stat for this. I don’t think I would have been able to pull it off otherwise. I clicked together three of the fingers, testing the functionality. I could hold my staff but I wouldn’t be holding anything delicate with the hand. Fine motor control just wasn’t possible.

Now that I knew the hand would function, I started adding the other runes. This process took a few days. I had to eat and rest as my body was still trying to recover from the blood loss. Each morning I checked the radar to see if Ska and Fiona were ok. The mark was slowly creeping west.

“They should be at the first fortress,” I mumbled.

I got out of bed and strapped the arm on. The process took a good ten minutes, with me fumbling for the hard-to-reach clips. But I got it done. I tested the connection to each finger, then flipped them all back so they sat along my arm.

Then I walked to the command room. The shield was nearly depleted, just from sitting around, but I didn’t have the time or energy to recharge it. Seeing as nobody had attacked and the remote viewer showed the area around the fortress to be empty, I turned off the shield. I spent the next few hours recharging the shield crystal and the cloak crystal. I checked the remote viewer one last time before I powered off the fortress and headed outside. There was no point wasting the little remaining mana on the shield. It wouldn’t last more than an hour with its current charge.

I walked for fifteen minutes before I found a small grove of trees. The short walk had tired out my healing body and I had to wipe away a sheen of perspiration.

“This is far enough, I can test it here,” I said with a tired sigh.

I was wearing my armor but it wasn’t strapped down properly. I wanted to avoid any fighting if possible but at least I had my shield if worse came to worst. I was surprised the shield still functioned due to the damage but the properly enhanced mithril was strong stuff and not even that damn magic-defying sword had been able to pierce it.

I flexed my mechanical fingers again, making sure everything was functioning. Then I clicked all six into a forward-facing direction. They formed a rough tube. Energy began to crackle between the openings of the fingers and a blue glow quickly formed within the center. I aimed my arm towards a tree and sent the signal to fire.

A burse of mana from the mana heart situated in the bottom center of the opening drained completely. A lance of blue light ripped through the air, missing the tree and continuing on until it struck another tree forty feet farther away.

The tree exploded into splinters where the beam of focused mana struck and came crashing down as the remaining portion could no longer hold it.

While my aim was atrocious, the results spoke for themselves. I hadn’t wanted to reveal the fact that I was able to recreate the mana cannons but I needed something to shore up my weakness. This wasn’t a rapid-fire weapon though as I could already feel the heat from just one shot. I figured I might get three or four shots before I had to let it cool down.

People would probably mistake the blue glow and energy discharge between the fingers as part of the buildup to fire but they would be wrong. That was just the runic-containment array that focused the mana. I wasn’t sure how the original mana cannon builders did it but my method worked fine. With time I might be able to tweak it to make it invisible but that was far off. I quickly recharged the mana heart and fired again and again.

It took me about six seconds to recharge the crystal, which seemed like a long time considering it only held fifty mana but the conversion rate was garbage and it cost me two hundred mana just to fill it once. I deactivated the containment field and folded away three fingers. Thankfully, I could keep a charge ready in the crystal. Two more attacks in battle seemed like a reasonable option, any more than that, and I would be running on fumes.

I tried practicing with my staff in my new hand but it didn’t have the flexibility or range of motion required to do much more than hold the staff. I also couldn’t feed mana through the hand and into the staff, so activating the runes was impossible.

Instead, I swapped it back to my remaining hand and practiced with that. My new hand wasn’t useless though. I had two modes, crushing grasp and shield. Crushing grasp was just me pushing as much power into the hand as possible to break whatever I was holding. Twenty mana could crush a stone so it was highly effective. The shield mode just spread the fingers out like a fan and allowed me to partially block stuff with it. I could also use it as an improvised mace if I really wanted to. Not that I thought it would be very effective.

I returned to the fortress after my tests and practice. I had one more thing I wanted to add to the hand. I had to dig through a bunch of crates before I found what I was looking for. Martin and Ska really did pack all kinds of shit.

I attached the laser pointer to my arm and connected it to the power rune for the weapon. Now I shouldn’t have any problem hitting what I was aiming at.