Purify made quick work of the mess. The spell even dissolved all the chucks of discarded viscera that remained.

It was interesting that it could distinguish what was wanted and what wasn't. Then again the shaping of the mana was a couple of orders of magnitude more complex than the shaping of Cleanse.

Maybe, it was kind of like programming? Not that I knew a damned thing about coding. On the other hand, it could make more sense to look at this like a circuit issue? That's what the shapings looked like to me, organic curvy circuits.

Hmm. It did bring up a few interesting ideas. What could be changed before the spell failed? I'd have to sit down someday and explore that thought, but not today.

I walked over to the remains of Lumi. I'd have no better opportunity to try to bring him back, any time soon.

Renew the cycle? I didn't have the needed components, I'd have to buy them in the CStore. Also ten hours, when I wasn't certain we had one, before Militech came to find out what happened to their agents.

I'd have to try Life Crafting.

"John, I'm going to try something watch my back please." I kinda hated that my requests were starting to just sound like orders.

"I've got you." He vanished. I really wanted to know how he did that. If it wasn't for my Aura I'd have no clue he was there.

I sat down by the rug and rested my hand on it. I could feel his energy and his presence.

Maybe that was enough.

I drew the Tower's mana to me as I started shaping Life Crafting consciously, for the first time. It was so complex, layer after layer of winding paths of mana, new shapes and formations embedded in the mostly circular patterns. I poured all my focus into making it perfect.

Soon, I lost track of anything unrelated to the spell.

When the final curve of the last layer was complete mana rushed to flood the channels of both myself and the spell construct. Oceans of energy ripped through us and slammed into the remains.

It didn't seem to take long before the flood died back down to a trickle and then stopped.

There was the glorious form of Lumiar the Golden Plains Wolf, at the very least a semi divine being.

Unmoving.

I hugged his large head to my chest, giving it scritches even if there was no one to feel them.

I used the remnants of the spell to start his lungs and heart, then forced the brain stem to take over the job of keeping them running. The higher order functions wouldn't spark, no matter how hard I tried. And I tried so very hard.

I checked and double checked everything seemed to be physically fine.

The things that made up Lumi simply did not return to the body. Maybe they couldn't.

I failed.

I failed again.

I failed dozen of times.

Some part of me could not accept it, so I kept trying.

At some point John stopped me, pulling me away from the body I had clutched ever tighter, scritched ever harder.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Why couldn't I do this?

The body would be "alive" for a time, I could keep it that way indefinitely. Should I? Maybe he would be able to come back with time?

A wild idea emerged from my despair.

Maybe I could merge the faith energy into the spell.

Waved John off and started again.

Weaving the spell and threading a small amount of golden energy through the construct.

Golden light flared.

{[NO!]}

I was slapped by some undetectable force.

A black wall greeted me...

When I came to Lumi's body was gone.

We had never gotten to know each other as we should have. For some reason that hurt the most.

I turned to John but he just shook his head.

What? Tears? No. No tears. I was too tired for tears.

After a while I managed to pull myself back together. I couldn't afford to be idle for too long.

Breathe. Listen. Count.

It helped and it didn't.

I checked in with Alina and it seemed that everything else was still fine. Folks were only just starting to worry about us. Which meant I had a bit more time to think.

Today I had to settle on a plan one way or another. I needed to buy time until Alina could complete the Stargate. That could be months, it would certainly be at least a couple of weeks. Then I would need even more time to design and build a strike force.

What would make all the Corpos back off for that long?

I had to start with the understanding that at least one Corp knew everything I had ever told "Sally" or "Megan". Which if I understood their dynamic at all, meant at least the rest of big five, had some of that information as well.

That put a lot into perspective. It limited options severely.

There was an answer I didn't like that was immediately obvious. Pick one of the Big Boys and spread my metaphorical legs for them. I really needed to work on my imagery. I reflexively cast Purify on myself, nope I still felt unclean from that thought. I wanted a brain bleach spell now.

Alliance would at least buy some time, but I was under no illusion that I would get good terms. They would come in and strip everything bare, fucking locusts that they were. Then force me to pump out whatever bullshit they wanted nonstop. We'd be treated like valuable slaves at best.

We couldn't risk expanding underground too much more. That was apparently where they hid all of their mistakes. We had gotten extremely lucky that it took as long as it did to run into the consequences of Corpo experimentation.

Though I'm sure the Death Corp was loving the light work. It was probably like a vacation to them.

At some point, I could use them to just bulldoze every thing under their boots, but I had a feeling I would not like the end results. Even if I wanted to go that route, they weren't ready to be deployed on that scale.

The last option is to just sit under the cloaking fields for as long as possible. I kept thinking that it would only be a matter of time before they just bombarded the area. I could expedite some of the building sized shield generators to counter that. Though that brought up the issues of power generation. Which wasn't really very much of an issue with the odd properties of the Pylons. Hmm.

We would need a source of Minerals and Vespene. Which led back to digging if we were huddled under shields.

Which led to a mixed solution.

What if I tucked in the Town and Valley with Shield Generators and Cloaking Fields? As secure as I could make them in just a few days. Then I'd give myself up, with a Probe and enough Wisps to make one Moon Well, obviously in exchange for keeping everyone away from our small area.

Make them an Outpost at a place of their choosing. They could knock themselves out studying the Khalai tech and the "Magic" of the Well. Even run tests on me I guess.

They already knew they needed me to make it all work properly. So my willing cooperation potentially had more value than just hijacking what we had right now. At least for long enough to bring us up to the next level. It was time to upgrade everything I possibly could. I'd have to make lists for areas of responsibility.

I'd have to see ahead and try to outthink the Corpos. Just long enough to punch through the sky.

I could then prepare a few surprises to could myself from being overly exploited. If they figured out a work around, I'd just have to last long enough for my people to come for me.

With an Observer following they would always know where I was.

My mind even without overclocking was shifting from thought to thought at a blistering pace.

My hands shook a bit. I just told myself to stop being a pansy.

Was it worth it? What where any of these people to me? I might end up being a Guinea Pig in a lab. Then death would be a mercy.

NO! Stop. This was not a track I was going to entertain.

The responsibility was mine. I'm why any of these folks were here. I'd step up to protect them now, so that they could have my back later. Otherwise, I didn't see a way out of this.

I wanted a good path, a safe option. There were none.

I shrugged to myself. Fuck it.

So I would pick the best of the bad options.

Yeah. I would buy my people the time.

This was a gamble. I was betting on the premise that they wouldn't be able to understand the technology in a usable manner for years maybe decades. They'd never understand the mana aspect of things, no way.

The first step would be choosing who to approach.