It took the people of Arman a few days before a sense of normality returned. As normal as life could be after the world ended. Martin came by my shop on the second day. He came to tell me they figured out what happened.

When they were doing a census they came across a woman named Gran's house. That wasn't her real name but everyone just called her Gran, short for grandma. Her husk had to be dispatched as it was roaming the house. That was when they discovered the magic circle. It was an open secret that the woman dabbled in the dark arts, long before the system came into being, and she had chosen a class called Spirit Binder. They weren't sure what she had been trying to bind but they figured she accidentally called up the Banshee instead.

As for where the Banshee came from, local legends spoke of a woman that had been wronged by her husband. The woman murdered her entire family and burned herself alive in the plantation house as a result. They say her soul was cursed to never be in peace after her foul deeds.

I didn't know if that was actually the case but it didn't matter. The woman was dead, the person that unleashed it was dead, and I was still alive.

I thanked Martin for letting me know the details. The man left with a friendly wave, although, his smile was no longer as warm as it had been before. The man lost two of his best friends in the attack and the city was still counting the dead.

It was surprising to me that quite a few survived in storm shelters. For whatever reason, the Banshee was unable to detect them inside the spaces. I asked Fiona to check it out, maybe she could determine why.

As for Bella, I spent the rest of the first day trying to find her in the swamp. Other than a few tracks, I wasn't able to locate her. I hoped she was alright and that she would return in time. My second day was spent enhancing the second copy of my staff to match the first. I did this while Fiona was out looking at the storm shelters. Martin was helping her. The two had hit it off, which surprised me. The rest of the town looked at Fiona with distrust but she could take care of herself.

I forced the citizens to give up the weapons I made until I was certain they wouldn't be used against Fiona. They were reluctant until I told them to bring me a better weapon from the Bazaar and I would make it better. A few people came to me with makeshift armor they wanted rune-crafted. I agreed, so long as they took the oath and paid me for my time.

I didn't give them anything as fanciful as my Mage-Bane armor but my skills had improved. So much so that their armor was now better than the original set I had made while under the thumb of Sharla.

I could have made them even better equipment if the quality of materials supported the magic. For anyone interested I posted a listing of materials needed to construct a brigandine like mine. A few people wrote down the items before they left. Any metal would do, I didn't expect the simple folk around here to have the credits for full mithril as I had used.

A few asked me if I could construct a full set of plate armor for them. I had to explain to them that I wasn't a blacksmith or armorer, I could only rivet plates into place and carve my magic into them. I told them I could modify a set if they purchased one, those people left disappointed.

That was fine, the money wasn't anything to write home about. I only managed to make a hundred credits so far for my work. I wasn't here for the money though. Not that I got to keep most of that anyway. Constable Sally, being the only leader of the town and being uncontested was given rights by the system to tax people or businesses within. She was still upset with me over my initial refusal to help so she taxed my shop and anything purchased from it by thirty percent.

Admittedly this was an oversight on my part, I hadn't been in a town controlled by one individual yet and didn't realize this was a System perk.

That was fine. She wouldn't be getting any of my upgraded items until she stopped acting like a petty child. I knew the townsfolk respected the woman, mostly for what she had done for them after the System went active. But if she continued to treat all outsiders this way the town would eventually collapse and die.

Personally, I thought her brother would make a better constable but I doubt he wanted that position. And I was not getting involved in the politics of this town.

I only wanted to spend a few months here, work on learning to tattoo, maybe find a few dungeons to clear, and then it was on to other things.

I also hoped that Frathsar got the message I sent him. I had no idea if those communication plates I purchased were legitimate or not, time would tell.

My hand slipped as I was tattooing the chilled slab of pork skin. I cursed at my fuck up. Pigskin was the closest analog to human skin I could get without tattooing myself. Turns out it was a lot more difficult than I thought. Some of that might be due to the fact I had to do it all manually as there was no electricity for the tattooing machines.

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It was a good thing the proprietor had an old Japanese style tattooing set. The manual approach was much more difficult to learn but it gave me finer control over the end product. Martin had offered to loan me the mana engine he purchased but I turned him down. I could just purchase my own if I needed one. I might pick one up on my next visit.

I shook the cramp out of my hand and started over on another section of the skin. The ice below would keep the skin cool for another hour or so before I had to store it back in my ring until I could produce more ice. This wasn't all that difficult for me with my imbue but it wasn't exactly easy to lug the ice around.

Despite my setback, I was improving. My first attempts looked like blobs of ink, where all the lines had run together. For what I had in mind I needed an extremely steady hand.

The week went by quickly. Most of my time spent crafting for others or practicing tattooing. Bella finally returned on the sixth day and I was overjoyed to see her. She was covered in muck from the swamp and sported a few wounds I had to heal but she had survived. I cleaned her up and put her back in her storage for some much-needed rest.

I looked up as the bell above the door dinged, Martin walked in with a smile and wave, Fiona following behind.

"Hey, Paul, how's it going."

"Oh, I'm doing well. What brings you by?"

"We figured out the conundrum with the shelters."

My interest perked up at this, "oh yeah?" I asked, looking at Fiona.

She nodded, "Yea, turns out not all of the shelters were safe. All the ones that were, I couldn't step foot near."

"Yep, turns out the builder of those always consecrated the ground with holy water. He was a very superstitious man from what I remember, he died a few years before the System."

"Well, I guess you learn something new every day. Good to know consecrated ground can keep out spirits. I wonder why it didn't work in the graves though."

"I had a theory on that," Martin added, "I figure it has to do with how long ago it was done or the fact that corpses break the protection. It would explain the fact that the Church wasn't spared the banshee's wrath. We found signs that husks had been clawing at the doors."

I just nodded, it made sense to me, not that I was going to dig too much into spirits and whatnot. Not unless it was to find a way to destroy them.

"Thanks for the information," I replied sincerely.

Martin was one of the most honest and generally likable people I had met, even before the world ended. It's too bad his sister acted like a dictator.

"Nah, man, it's the least I could do for your help with the banshee. Plus I got to chat with the charming Fiona. Anyway, I gotta go out on patrol, I'll see you later."

"You going to be ok out there?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, we got a few more people that decided to join after the incident. You might know one, Gail, she was the woman that killed the banshee. With her husband's death, she took it upon herself to help protect the town."

I nodded, not really sure what to say. Martin gave one last wave as he left the building.

"You should help them out," Fiona said flatly.

"We've been over this," I replied, turning back to my work.

"Helping them would only hinder the town's growth. When we leave they may not be able to handle the challenges that come their way."

Fiona huffed in annoyance and floated away. She had been trying to get me to help for the last few days. I understood her reasoning, the town had lost some good fighters but I wasn't going to budge on this. I was heading out in another day or two anyway. It was time to look for a dungeon.

When I asked Martin about it he said they hadn't spotted anything like that in the vicinity. Since I knew they had kept to the roads that wasn't much of a surprise. With Bella and Fiona, we should be able to locate one within a few days.

I did have to purchase a tent and a new sleeping bag though. Luckily Martin pointed me in the direction of a man that owned a small survival store. He wouldn't take credit so I had to trade him a rune-crafted machete for the items I desired. He was more than happy to take the oath.

All this extra work with rune-crafting was really pushing my skills to the next level. I think I had done more in the last five days than I had in the last six months. Most of my improvement came in the control of how deep I carved. This allowed me to have more consistent results across all of my runes, allowing fewer runes to have the same result as more. At the moment it was only one rune worth of difference but it was a start.

This also meant I could pack more power into items, the only limitation being the item's quality and components. During this time I also took a look at the six enhanced slave collars I had. I had the basic slave collars as well, nine of those in total. I spent most of the first night closely inspecting the collars. I had never really had the time to just sit and look at them. I could see the faint lines of the enchantment running through the devices.

Comparing the old to the new collars it was clear that the enchantment was much stronger. It's a good thing I decided not to test the enchantment. I'm not sure my runes could have overwhelmed the magic on the newer collar. I did come up with a plan for the new collars though. Since the design as a whole was too powerful I created six loops of runes around the collar. They were designed to break the material along the lines. This of course would trigger the failsafe in the device, causing it to explode inward.

That wouldn't do for what I wanted, so I added more runes that would reflect the damage outward and enhance it. In essence, I turned these new collars into cluster claymores. None of this would activate unless I said the trigger word. I also figured out a way to link runes to a single person. All it took was a little blood. Now nobody but me could activate the effects.

I repeated this process with the other two advanced collars and turned the other nine simple collars into grenades, only now they were slightly more powerful. I only wish I had more time to test my tattoos out. But I wasn't confident in my skills yet so that would have to wait.

I made sure my gear was all ready, put my armor back on, and locked up my building. It was still weird thinking of it as mine. I let Bella out from her cage, she looked rested and healthy. I nodded to Fiona and the three of us headed out of town to look for some dungeons.