The next day brought all of the promise of a lighter soul, a free mind. The weight of the day before lifted off my shoulders. I figured that I’d get a little bit of peace since Kraken was in my freaking soul-tree doing who knows what, but since I couldn’t see anything wrong with it, and trust me, I’m constantly monitoring that entire area, I decided to just continue with my day. The first part of my day I spent restoring the area by the river back to its natural state after the battle with the nephilim and then the rest of my day was split between monitoring the pack of humans moving on to the place I laid out and doing an in-depth examination of my alien prisoners.
I’m not even sure if I should call them aliens, I mean, they didn’t come from space and they don’t have rocketships full of anal probes. I lack a term to properly identify them as a whole, which means alien might have to do. Everything I’ve met or heard about so far seems to have some relation to tales of Earth from our lore that we all just believed was made up. But to be fair, Earth or old Earth, didn’t have evidence of dwarves or minotaurs or dragons, we had dinosaur fossils but nothing in the last couple eras that would have given us a hint that we weren’t alone.
Choosing not to overthink things that don’t matter, I had a ball just letting my Flesh Sorcery do something different. I allowed my magic to get familiar with the physiological structure of the dwarves and minotaurs. My own eager Flesh Sorcery kept trying to start enhancing my body with concepts that were garnered from the different bodies like an overeager puppy chasing a squirrel. I could see that the dwarven bone structure is unbelievably dense, traces of unusual metals that didn’t exist on this planet were woven through the latticework of the bone cells. The musculature supporting this was almost just as heavy, easily several times denser than what a chimpanzee would have. It definitely made sense as to why they fought the way they did against the minotaurs. Dwarves are low to the ground and freaking heavy, which meant that their planted tower shields would be literally unshakeable. It opened my eyes as to how their tactics might have been developed in sync with their unique biology.
The minotaur on the other hand, their bone structure and musculature definitely had some serious differences to the dwarves. In fact, their entire body, every bit of it was far more open or receptive to magic itself, but in a plantlike kind of way. They didn’t really seem to have the ability to form scar tissue. In cutting them and healing them to see how the body would react, the normal human response of making scar tissue just didn’t happen. A burst of stem cells, or their equivalent of it, would flood a latticework of magic that covered the area, following the blueprints of the magic to bring the flesh back to brand new. The dwarven body healed from the cut far more similar to humans in that scar tissue formed from the cuts, but magic was the healing helper instead of the director.
Sitting back in my chair in the lab, I looked at the two bodies kept unconscious by my Flesh Sorcery in front of me. Turning my vision towards my own hand, I called Gungnir to my hand in knife form and shallowly cut the meat of my palm. My hand healed just as fast as I was cutting it.
“Ouch,” I grunted, making sure to temporarily cut off the pain receptors in my hand as I tried a couple more times, each attempt I quickened my brain to make everything look like slow motion. Yeah, my body not only responded with stem cells, but there was a magical latticework helping and directing the flow of stem cells. The damaged parts of the skin also used mana to just stick itself right back together like play-doh, my flesh was freaking play-doh with the magic I wield!
I hadn’t played around with my Flesh Sorcery too much as of yet, it had mainly become a support based capability centered around keeping me healthy, whole, and focused. Conjuring the bone armor and enhancing my dog were probably the craziest things I had done with it so far but so many possibilities were open with the simple concept of Flesh Sorcery. I knew that I hadn’t even begun to plumb the depths of what I could do with it, the issue being time. With the Hungry Ones biding their time at the poles, and if Kraken is right, then maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try some Flesh Sorcery stuff out. My main problem is that I’m comfortable in my body, I know how to use it. The real question is how do I make it more durable, more physically hardy, without sacrificing the great and flexible design of the human body? It seems that even dwarves and minotaurs and probably Aelves are designed roughly the same way, two legs with two arms and one head.
Thinking about it some more actually made me want to not do this. If I could learn a bunch from these measly bodies, holding off and gathering information might be the better course of action. I scanned each body and created a holographic matrix of it in my head with Mental Sorcery, storing the information away for later. As I was about to put them back in stasis, I made a small incision on both and stuck my finger in, allowing my Flesh Sorcery to create a copy of both of their DNA sequences to add to the mental matrix of their bodies.
“Now to get my hands on some epically magic creatures,” I said, wondering about what made the Aelves so different. “Or the NEPHILIM!” I shouted, running to the freezer. Grabbing the door, I wrenched it open and went to the foot section, rifling through to get the staff-user’s foot. “Ok, ok, this is the big one,” I said, trying to keep my excitement on a tight leash. “Let’s see whatcha’ got big guy.”
I slowly peeled the top layers of the box off, the runed platinum taking much longer than the stone underneath. It was goop. There was no foot in the damn box, only goop. I was about to stick my hand in just to see if my eyes were deceiving me before I thought better of it. Making one of the experimental bloodthirsty trees in my lab grow a small branch, I tossed some of my blood on the tree and then snagged the branch when it was occupied. Pulling my power through the length of the stick, I made sure that it was good and dead and then stuck it in the goop and pulled it back out. The hissing sound it made was disgusting as the goop began to burble and smell like mint that someone shit on.
A few seconds later the goop went back to being still and I examined my stick. The part that went into the goop was gone. My frustration almost made me throw it against the wall but my curiosity wouldn’t let me. Extending my senses, it was too easy to perceive the goop in the magical spectrum. It burned with a white purifying light that hurt to look directly at. From this side, I could see sparks of white power drifting up like it was actually burning. The motes hit the ceiling and phased right on through.
“What the fuck?”
[Heaven jealously guards its secrets.] Kraken said, popping out behind me into existence. [I’m not an expert but it looks like that if the nephilim is butchered and then kept in small enough pieces, it loses its structural integrity and can’t maintain the connection to Heaven. You did it, you actually killed a nephilim, or you will if you open the boxes one by one and let the stuff evaporate.]
I rounded on the innocent looking spirit, his eye looking around as if anything else was more fascinating at the moment. “And since no one has managed to kill a nephilim that we know of,” I started.
[Yup, it means I did not know this would happen.]
“Grrrhgfhgf,” I snarled, quickly capping the container of goop all over again. “So I have the world’s most exotic acid, great. Fuckin great. Does that mean they aren’t snacks for Spot then? I figured the dragon part of him might like something new.”
[Give the mutt a small bit of it. Dragons eat all kinds of weird shit. Have you heard about the shadow dragons that live in the darkest part of hell? They’re worshipped by demons for their torture techniques as their fire makes you feel like being dipped in a bath of needles that slowly burrow their way through you. Long story short, those dragons got that way by eating too many demons and dark magic users. ‘You are what you eat’ applies to them more than most.]
“So a dragon mixed canine with a bit of fire and Flesh Sorcery stands a good chance of eating an angel’s bastard, tight. I can dig it.”
Carefully setting the box down, I conjured a clear quartz bowl big enough to put a watermelon in comfortably and then filled it three quarters of the way up with water. Placing the acid goop container in the water, I slowly peeled away the layers again.
[What are you doing?] Kraken asked, floating in front of my face staring down at the concoction and getting in my way. [That stuff burns, like a grease fire, and you don’t throw water on a grease fire!]
Shoving him off to the side, I decided that he might be right and took the precaution of conjuring a clear quartz covering over the bowl. Using my magic, I kept removing the outside of the container bit by bit, explaining what I was thinking as I did so.
“You probably don’t know this Kraken, but during pandemics, the Catholic popes put holy water in squirt guns and shot it on their parishioners. Now the way I see it, they prayed and got holy water, but how much more powerful must holy water be if I mix in a bit of Heaven itself, hmmm? And what if those squirt guns shot real holy water?” Images in my head of me mowing down hordes of zombies with epic squirt guns distracted me for a second, ah, it was glorious.
Taking a step back from the workbench, I banished the last layer of the containment box, the burning white liquid pouring out, mixing with the water. Watching carefully in the magical spectrum, the white sparks that burned off last time when exposed to air simply mixed with the water. The feeling of danger slowly went away as the entire bowl joined with the small portion of dismembered nephilim.
“Voila bitches!” I yelled, dancing around the room, pointing and laughing at my very confused spirit familiar. “You won’t get it, but I just completed the first steps to manufacturing the ACTUAL Holy Hand Grenade!” Artfully making my voice deeper, I got into character. “From now on, I shall fear no undead or decapitating rabbits!”
[Humans make no sense,] Kraken muttered, wondering why I found any of this funny. [You just made glowing acid water, big whoop.] Wrapping up a copy of a memory from a beloved movie, I shot it over to Kraken through our mental link.
“Watch this and trust me, there’s more but we’ll get to that later. But with this stuff, if we do it right, there’s a solid chance that I’ll be able to make some damn good anti-undead gear.” Darting out the front door, I stood in the middle of the clearing, mentally calling for Spot at the same time as I yelled for him, “Come here boy, I got a real nice treat for you today!”
I can’t believe it. The little, I mean big, SHIT brushed me off! My fucking dog told me ‘no’. It’s definitely a word he’s familiar with but to actually hear it from his mind directed at ME? My mental command hit a wall of sheer joy and unrestrained happiness that was disgusting, revolting, sickening. Grabbing our link with a vitriol only a rejected owner could muster, I peeked at what could make him act like a puppy who got in the snacks . . . children. He was playing with children. Running through the happy memories because Spot simply didn’t care if I wandered his mind, I looked at the events of the past day.
Hide, hide, watch, ball? Stick? Am seen, play? Small humans play? Stick, woof, stick! WOOF! STICK! PLAY! JOY! FETCH! Small humans . . . too big, be small, self be small, like small humans! Play now? Afraid? No, joy, happiness, small woofs. Run, can’t catch, play!
His running mental monologue was simple but the accompanying images almost broke my heart. He had been caught watching by some of the children as they played with makeshift balls and swatted at each other with sticks. When stepping out to fetch due to instinct, he had initially scared them due to his size and shrank down to be less frightening. Apparently being small and cute with a wagging tail can make even the adults trust you as they watched the playful dog scamper around fetching all manner of sticks.
[LYRA!] I called, blasting down our thin mental link. [What did I say about staying hidden? That meant Spot too!]
Due to the distance, images more than words were sent, but what I received was a laughing scoff that conveyed, ‘As if I could stop a giant dragon dog from doing whatever the hell he wants’.
Fair point, but still fucking annoying.
I need that damn dog, I mean, I HAVE SNACKS FOR HIM.
[He can’t fight his nature,] Kraken interjected, giving the feeling of patting me on the back. [Lighten up. Besides, letting Spot ingratiate himself with the group for a bit won’t hurt your chances if you want to say hello. From your memories, people trust other people who have nice dogs. Humans are weird, ya know that? Basing basic suppositions on the disposition of a simple canine.]
[That’s cause you’ve never had a dog,] I shot back. “Guess we’re waiting on that plan for a bit,” I muttered aloud to myself. Figuring that Spot was more than capable of taking care of himself, and since nobody else could blood-bond with him like I did, letting him have fun with the human group for a while wouldn’t harm me or my interests, especially in the long run. I might have been working him too hard and being too close to Yggdrasil is apparently painful for most creatures. Odd to me that I never considered that that might be the source of most of my peace. I’ve been walking on eggshells expecting a helluva lot more incursions and enemies to pop their unwanted heads into my business.
[Kong does a pretty good job keeping most pests away as do the giant birds who patrol the forest,] Kraken interrupted.
“I’m never going to get used to that, am I?”
[Nope.]
Rolling my eyes at him even though he wasn’t out of my soul-tree area, I picked up Gungnir and shook it. “You done with my armor yet or what? Sheesh, I thought this would be fast dude.”
[Almost . . .]
“Almost?!” I yelled. I knew that I didn’t have to yell but I felt that the situation warranted just a bit of volume. “You said -”
[I know what I said!] Kraken half growled, [There were complications. In order to figure out how best to go about this while still taking into consideration what you want in an over-powered super magic suit, I had to go through your memories.]
“If you hadn’t been given to me by an angel . . .” I snarled.
[I know, I know, but calm down. I’m literally tied to you on a level you really don’t want to understand, and trusting Maa’lik was the right thing to do. He had just been freed by you and wanted to clear his debt so his intentions of helping were genuine. I’m not in the dominant position here.]
I had figured as much. Trusting anyone is fairly difficult for me, blame it on the stupid decisions I’ve made in the past but other than tree-wife, there are few people I get along with.
Kraken’s post-conversation silence was odd.
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“Well?”
[Humans are weird. I mainly skimmed through your life to see how you think so I could help you but damn, as the humans would say, ‘you need a therapist’, or, ‘you got issues man’.]
Taking a deep breath, I forced my hand to stop gripping Gungnir so hard, imagining that I was wringing Kraken’s slimy neck. “Duh, we all do,” I retorted. “Humanity is by and large fucked up, and I’m nowhere near the worst, trust me.”
[Oh I do, I have to, hell, I’ve seen it through you. Your teenage years were pretty sad if I’m understanding it right, but-]
“Ok, skip the shit that doesn’t matter. My teenage angst is well behind me. Yes, high school sucked but it does for most nerds,” I answered, a bit of heat coloring my voice. “Besides, before the apocalypse, life got better in college and adulthood. I was definitely nowhere near the bottom of the trashcan can like some of my classmates. I had a good tech job, was making great money, about to get married to a hot sweetheart who loved me and loved making me sandwiches. I had it good. So let’s get past my life because that part is over. Where’s my SUPERSUIT!”
Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
[Sheesh, I’m almost done. Might as well come on in. Such a grouch.]
Gathering what passed for a semblance of inner peace, I walked into the Hole and sat in a chair where I could be comfortable for an unknown amount of time. Breathing in and out, I easily slipped into my soul-tree area.
“Check it out!” Kraken’s now-audible sounded like an announcer for the WWE. “Here he comes folks, all the way from the Shattered Lands of Altered Earth, the former capital of the Arcaneum, the Scion of the Mad Sorcerer himself . . . .”
“Dude, what the fuck did you do to my soul-space?” I wasn’t complaining, it was the shock that made me sound angry but I really wasn’t upset. My soul-space had been completely reworked. I was now standing in a banging bachelor pad complete with three giant floating televisions, a huge water bed, and my soul-tree acting like the lamp that made up the spine of the domed room.
“It’s your dream bedroom! This is your soul space, it can be anything you want!”
Soul-tree and I glared flatly at Kraken, both impressed but not really amused. “Seriously, I come here for a supersuit and you deck out the inside of my brain?”
Kraken flew in front of the TVs, gesturing at them with two of his arms as they lit up with very different pictures. The one on the left had two images, the human bone structure and a naked representation of me. The middle tv had a line dividing two sets of complex interconnected runes while the right tv had several pictures of different suits of armor.
“Just wait, I promise, you’ll love it,” he promised, shades of yellow and orange coloring his pointing arms. “Ooooh, I’m so excited! I don’t think any Scions back home will believe that I got to do this!”
“What?”
“Moving on! All right! I’ve divided up the three relevant layers as you can see here, your body itself on the left split into the inner bone and outer skin. Both can function as a canvas for runes due to your Flesh Sorcery. The display on the right is the suit you had versus the suit the Centauri have with your probable modification and the suit I want to make by melding the two together. The center display is the rune structure, one for you to inscribe on your bones and by extension your skin, and the other to be laid out on the armor by the Centauri nanotech function.”
The sections separating the three TVs joined together to form one giant curved projection as sections of the runes split up crossing the expanse of the screen to burn their way into each bone of the skeleton. The flesh image welcomed its own set of runes as it covered up the skeleton taking its rightful place as a normal naked body. The last couple sections of runes formed a beautiful twisted artwork across the suits of armor and they smashed together in a cartoonish explosion to make a new set of armor.
“It’s, too beautiful,” I breathed, a bit of air getting caught. “I can’t wear that.” The silver tones of the nanotech were smoothed out over the ivory bone spikes located in places convenient for combat like the elbows and knees. If you took the most wicked looking spiked armor from a demon and then had an angel purify its existence, that’s what I’d be wearing. That’s what Kraken had designed.
“Psshhh, it’s nanotech, mostly,” Kraken said proudly. “You can make it look however the hell you want! My personal favorite is the Redeemed Wrecker! This version is the formerly fallen angel who smites his foes even as his heart bleeds for their pain!” The outer shell shifted to a more futuristic look similar to the Alpha Centauri getup, but with silver wings and a spiked tail.
Kraken continued as if he were showcasing brand new cars to a first time buyer. “And here we have the Vorpalian Vengeance, the terror of Deep Space, where even seasoned Fleet Captains dare not travel! This suit is far better adapted to water and aerial combat as the wings are made with a combination of flesh and mana magic to complement the natural shifting abilities of the nanotech!”
And on it went. I made notes of the ones I liked but to be honest they were all a bit too over the top. They gave me some serious ideas about what maybe I could do in the future but it was just too much. Since I was inside my own brain, I magicked up a glowing tablet and took pictures of the different suits and put my own ratings next to them. After about ten suits in, I held up my hand to get Kraken to stop.
“Dude, I love it, I really do-”
“Buuut . . .”
“Buuut . . . I need something on the tanky side of slender, ya get what I’m sayin?” I said, letting my mind wander just a bit. “Roll with my imagination here. Let’s start with something like a souped up Power Ranger, everytime they get hit, they might spark a lot or a little but they never really bleed. Let’s start with that. Or where’s the classic sorcerer look? The one with black armor striped through with ominous silver runes with crazy magic leaking everywhere?”
“You don’t like them?” Kraken’s big eye quivered.
“Keep it together!” Reaching over, I pat him on the head. “Dear lord, it’s all right. I liked them all, but you didn’t have to draw all of your inspiration from animals did you? We need to table some of this for when I get some real life minions dude. I can make more than one suit, and I’m pretty sure I can either get the nanotech to replicate or I can steal some from my little brother.”
“Fine,” he grumbled, waving one tentacle arm and making all the images vanish.
“No!” I yelled, waving an arm and putting everything back. “I didn’t say it was crap, I said we need something with a different direction. What did you have in the way of innovations for current tech? We gotta work our way up or I won’t be able to use it as effectively as I could, ya know? Cool armor and new tech is useless if I can’t use it right.”
I waited as he gave a grudging nod.
“Ok, so, let’s start with the basic framework of runes on the skeleton and skin. I love the idea, but help me out with some of these runes please.”
Huffing ever so softly, Kraken pulled the diagrams of runes on the skeleton and body off the screen and in front of me. His reluctance faded as he shifted into his teacher voice. “Runes are multiplicative in nature, and when you line them up correctly, their effective capability can even become exponential when you factor in resonance. Synergies are the hardest diagrams to plan as one bad placement can cause the opposite effect. These runes here . . . all over your skeleton, are runes of kinetic redirection, energy absorption, and disbursement. The goal of this schematic is to keep your bones from melting under high intensity explosions. The bleed off channels are set up here, here, and here . .” he pointed out the wavy lines that flowed between the clusters of runes. “These will allow the extra energy that would have killed the wearer enter feedback runes of healing and focus so you can stay conscious through pain and not die.”
“What’s this over here?” I asked, pointing at a cluster of runes that I hadn’t seen before. They were set in an octagonal formation at all of my major joints.
“Those are neuro-link bypasses. If you can’t move any part of your body yet due to injury, these will function as joints until you do. They keep a power charge of about ten minutes worth of movement giving you time to haul ass if you aren’t in a position to heal. The other runes on the spine that look similar are siphon runes. Those will allow you to greatly speed up your internal intake of mana if you need to without the issue of burnout. You may need some new bones but as a Flesh Sorcerer, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Layering the image of the body over the skeleton, the runes were a bit more edgy, a sort of tribal look crisscrossing the skin. “Now all of these are pretty much your standard combat runes but with all kinds of Heaven rune-based camouflage. They are based on the meager scans I’ve been able to decipher of Maalik’s swords. No demon, angel, or deity will ever be able to divine your position in the universe unless you allow it or carry a possession of theirs. These runes bounce off similar ones on your skeleton allowing for a broader muddling of your personal signal.”
I gasped in wonder but Kraken just kept right on talking. “And then you have your mental defense runes coupled with a focus diagram and a hardness frequency on your skull, mana channeling combined with absorption and bleed off runic pathways for physical combat if necessary, and your legs the kinetic expulsion runes for uber jumps and devastating charge kicks.”
Blowing up a small diagram located on the chest, Kraken continued as if it were a standard college lecture. “This particular diagram is an elemental refraction field increasing your resistance to the basic elements. Fire, electricity, raw mana, sympathetic strikes from rituals, as well as wave-based attacks will all be seriously blunted and maybe even absorbed as raw mana. These babies are sort of all over the body as well as between other rune channels to maximize the coverage.”
A low and slow whistle escaped me. I couldn’t even begin to think of what it took to pull this off. This was way above my paygrade and I bet the damn squid knew it.
“Here are the standard anti-teleportation runes with the voluntary enhancement array if you ever need it, which all wizards do. You don’t need the regen runes as your Flesh Sorcery does that for you and you don’t need the under-water setup either which gives you a ton of room to play with some more risque stuff like bound tattoos. You capture the soul of some creature, tattoo it on your body while pouring its power into the ink and you have a tatted protector as a secret watchdog. Venomous snakes, vicious cats, and wolves are usually the recommended ones as their enhanced senses really work better than anything you have.”
Adorning the feet and hands were impact runes, I recognized those on my own. My Mana Sorcery was helping me piece together the runes bit by bit, but some of them I had come up with before. “Those there, those will help with hand to hand combat right?” I asked, trying to show off just a bit.
“Hehehehe,” Kraken tittered. “I know you don’t know shit man. I went through your memories. Hahahaha, trying to bluff your own familiar! Hahahaha!” Fake wiping a tear away, Kraken moved on. “Don’t forget about these, these are the basic bio-enhancement runes that most humans use. They make your stomach process waste far more efficiently, regulate your body more so that your muscle tone never falls below a certain point, and it even tweaks your Flesh Sorcery to always keep you fresh without having to waste a background mental process on it. Sleep can also be instant with a rune tattoo but I don’t think you need that one . . . Oh! And the scent removal array so that tracking you by scent will be an absolute bitch.”
“What’s with that channel? The one from the shoulders to the collarbone and then to the spine all the way down to the forepad of the foot and heel?” I asked, getting closer to examine the spiky blue lines.
“That my friend, is an experimental channel I came up with based off of your water and Earth Sorcery. That will allow you to transfer any extra energy or kinetic motion into the river or dirt if you’re standing on it. It also allows for reverse channeling of power from ley lines even easier than before. Basically, this turns you into a fortress if you’re in your element.”
“Oh hell yeah!” I freaked, I mean geeked, I mean shrieked. “Let’s get this shit done right fuckin’ now!”
“Hold up!” A wet smack of Kraken’s tentacle pulled me back from my excited momentum towards the real world. “We still have your suit dummy!”
Grumpily sitting down, I looked at the screen. “Let’s go, come on Squishy. Whatcha got?”
Rolling his big eye, Kraken made all of the suits disappear except for one. “Here, since you’re so eager, this is the final product since you pretty much hate all the other suit ideas. Lame ass,” he said, muttering the last part to himself.
“This focuses more on streamlining your power storage capabilities as well as some brand new features you might like,” he continued. “Most of your current power storage is in batteries that you’ve now stuck in Gungnir. Well, I took your initial design and combined it with your second design. Listen before you say anything, because you haven’t thought about this in a while. I recreated your matter-to-mana generators and fixed them so that they’ll work in a mana rich environment. It took a lot of rune work as well as platinum coverings to stabilize the pressure diverters, but small generators can now work as long as you keep it inside of Gungnir.”
My jaw hit the ground. “How did you, wha-”
“Yes, I figured it out. I had to re-rune the entirety of the storage space in Gungnir, but now it actually can hold energy related things with much greater efficiency and the outer structure of the storage space is no longer super permeable. That being said, you won’t have the kind of power flow you used to with it, but its passive output will be more than a solar panel. That being said, the crystal batteries have been reworked as well. They’re more of a solid energy now providing at least three times more energy than before. You won’t understand the math but every ‘brick’ of power you had now equals at least three.”
“So where are they?” I asked, looking over the suit for the battery pack holder.
“They’re in your suit, not in Gungnir. Creating the new suit of armor will take an incredible amount of work while requiring painstaking attention to detail. The plan is to have you conjure the bone enamel armor like before, lay down the initial rune pattern, and then put in the small batteries as you layer more bone enamel armor on top with another layer of runes. Then, the nanotech coating will be coupled with microscopic bits of platinum so all magical attacks will be blunted against you. Notice anything odd on the back?”
Walking around, I noticed that there was what looked to be a form-fitting backpack on the other side. “These look like solar panel runes,” I said. “Hey, that’s my old hoverboard!”
“Yup! These solve the issue of your mobility! The hoverboard works pretty much as before but with an upgrade. It uses runes based on your Earth Sorcery to project anti-gravity allowing you to skate around. The upgrade is that it can go ridiculously fast if you’re near a ley line and can even pull extra power from it to put into you or your batteries if need be.”
“And the solar backpack?” I said, motioning with my hand for Kraken to hurry up. “What’s the point of that if I have my generators back?”
He looked at me like I was dumb. Reaching one tentacle forward, he slapped the hologram on the back, the smacked rune glowed, forcing two wide, thin wings out. “Solar wings. These will let you fly, slowly, but they’ll let you fly.”
“NO SHIT!” I yelled, jumping up to get a closer look.
Kraken looked very pleased with himself. “It isn’t for combat but the functionality itself wasn’t hard to figure out. The wings combine anti-gravity runes projecting from the bottom and solar-panel runes on the top that pull in power from the sky as well as effect-amplifying runes on the edges that effectively create a much larger surface area so that you can actually fly. Again, this is not a set of combat wings, but flying is something you’ll be able to do, albeit clumsily. It is a super-intense drain on your power which is why you won’t have much airtime but it’ll work in a pinch. This pack also has two large independent batteries if you need just in case, giving you about ten times the amount of stored power you had before. Three hours of flight time is the max of what you can get, hence, the attachable skateboard.”
My jaw hit the ground again. “Flight?” I croaked. “Kitty Hawk kind of flight? One small step for man, a giant glide for sorcerer-kind?”
“Yes, it’s not perfect,” he continued, straight up ignoring my sheer amazement. “This is why the hoverboard is perfect. Over ley lines and water, you’ll be able to go incredibly fast. The wings are also for the hoverboard as they can flare out to passively intake heat and light while also functioning as steering apparati.”
“And I didn’t forget about the craziness you were doing in the lab either. That water you made with nephilim goop is a perfect candidate for an experimental weapon you made.” Kraken said, making four sets of ice blue glyphs glow on my armor projection. “These are the water conjuration and control runes for up close defense. If you’re going to fight the undead, I added four sealed storage containers in your armor for you to put four capsules of nephilim matter. Conjuring the water at these points will free the nephilim stuff, mixing it with the controlled water and allowing you to have four holy water arms controlled by your sorcery. With Gungnir who already has holy star iron in its makeup, you now have a personal arsenal that works perfectly against all undead and unclean things.”