“Mold them into a piece of armor, like a pair of boots.” Currently Carter was trying to teach Solstice how to use gravitons to make constructs of simple stuff. Slowly but surely after around a month of messing with gravitons he finally succeeded in making his first construct and it was a pair of crappy and incredibly dense boots. Carter just looked at the boots with disappointment, but nonetheless it was progress.

“The boots suck, but it’s a pair at least, I guess. Next stop is trying to make weapons. I like the idea behind the war glaive, but it isn’t practical in the long run so let me show you something.” Carter went into his armory and pulled out a sword that had a barrel on the backside of the blade.

“I modeled this after one of my favorite games I used to play. It’s called a gun blade, swords are great for being all-rounders while the gun allows you to strike at range, it’s way more powerful than arrows so give it a shot.

Solstice grabbed the sword and went to the range to fire off a shot.

“Just insert mana into that chamber and press that trigger at the top of the handle.”

Solstice injected aether into the chamber instead hoping for a better result and it didn’t disappoint.

As Solstice shot the aether filled gun blade a loud boom echoed throughout the building alerting all the girls and when they entered the range all they saw smoke filling up the room. After a few seconds the room cleared, and they saw Solstice holding a destroyed blade and Carter staring blankly at his precious creation that was destroyed.

“I swear to god I’m going to kill you.” Carter started to run at Solstice with the aim of killing him but was held back by all three girls. After a few minutes he calmed down and went back to his workshop without saying a word.

“He’s passionate about his craft, reminds me of Darius.” Solstice began to reminisce about his old crafting mentor, he never got the chance to see him before he was whisked away and was curious as to how the man was doing. For Aevis he was one of the best craftsmen, but he paled in comparison to Carter, ever since he was introduced to Carter's base and saw how common the tech here was, he couldn’t understand how Aevis was so far behind. All Carter would say is that his world crutches on magic which made no sense to him until he saw Alpha 2 activate one artifact and completely render him helpless against him.

“I don’t know how far your learning has gotten but you could get him to teach you more advanced crafting?” Luna knew how obsessed at one point Solstice was with crafting so it would at least be a nice time sink for him when he wasn’t learning about gravity.

Solstice nodded and went into Carters workshop and saw all kinds of unexplainable things but what caught his attention was the runes he saw in frames on the wall.

“Are those runes? I remember my old mentor trying to decipher how they worked.”

“Your world won’t be able to harness runes for a few more hundred years, maybe even a thousand. I would know since I’m the one who created them.” Solstice heard what Carter said and went bright eyed.

“Can you teach me how to be a runesmith?” Solstice said excitedly, he had mastered most of what Darius had left him but with runes he was left with next to nothing.

“If you complete your gravity learning within two months, I’ll do it.”

“Great!” Solstice ran out of the workshop and instantly went back to work on graviton particles.

“Man, who knew carrot and stick would work flawlessly with that imbecile, I mean loveable idiot.” Carter mused to himself before going back and working on the gun blade.

—- A little over a month later

Carter was in his workshop still trying to fine tune his gun blade to be able to handle the output that Solstice was capable of when he heard a loud gunshot from the training ground. He immediately rushed out there only to see Solstice holding a gun blade that was matte black.

“Is that a graviton construct?” Carter couldn’t believe his eyes; he thought that Solstice was just innately gifted because he was part dragon, but he had never seen his genius in action.

“It’s a bit rough to maintain since this weapon is kind of complicated and I only held it once, but I did it. So, about those runes?” Solstice smiled brightly which brought smiles from the girls who had watched his hard work over the last month.

“A deals a deal, we won’t be leaving the workshop for a long time so get ready.”

“Give me one second.” Solstice ran to his room to grab the crystal given to him by Darius and hoped to polish the information and make it more up to date to bring Aevis up from the dark ages of crafting.

Before he entered the workshop he ran over to the girls and gave each a kiss on the cheek before running away.

“He’s trying, but he could at least make one of us feel more special.” Luna complained but her facial expression gave up her facade.

“It only took him this long to reciprocate, I wonder if we’ll get more before we have to head back…” Lily was rubbing her cheek shyly while thinking about possible futures.

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“With due time, I’ve had visions.” Harumi said while walking away to tend to urgent needs in her bedroom.

Like another few weeks passed and finally Solstice emerged from the workshop and looked ragged, he had some facial hair coming in finally despite almost being seventeen, and he had dark circles under his eyes. But what struck the girls the most was the tattoo that covered his entire left arm.

“What's on your arm?” Luna questioned.

“Pain….” Is all Solstice said before walking away and locking his door to sleep.

Slowly Carter emerged from the workshop, but he was the polar opposite of Solstice, he had a huge smile plastered on his face.

“Care to explain?” Harumi asked and this sent shivers down Carter’s spine.

“Well, I’ve been working on a special rune, but I’ve never had someone durable enough to put it on, but he fit the bill.”

“What does it do? And why does he look so drained?” Luna asked, she had never seen Solstice so dead before.

“It amplifies his mind, I guess. He has two minds now essentially, so it’ll be easier to multitask, and I made an alteration to it so that the second mind has superior intelligence to his main mind. Dear god he needed it too.” Carter hated having to walk the guy through almost every chapter in his book so hopefully now he wasn’t needed.

“Sounds a little strong, could we also get runes?”

“Not that one, but I have other ones that your bodies could handle. But not too many since it can strain your soul. Speaking off, we need to do something about his soul.” Carter said seriously all of a sudden.

“What’s wrong with his soul?” Luna instantly changed her tone to worry.

“I don’t know what the hell you idiots on Aevis did but how he got all those affinities is tearing his soul up, alongside the other soul that’s bonded to him.” While Carter was working on his personal rune he was able peer into his soul and he noticed that due to the corruption he suffered, his soul weakened immensely and couldn’t recover. The only reason he was able to recover after bonding with Victor was due to Bela keeping a watchful eye and tweaking his soul when it was needed.

“Do either of you know what’s up with that weird eye?”

“Which one? All three girls asked in unison.

“The colorful one.”

“I have a slight idea, but you’d have to ask him personally, it’s something that he inherited through his bloodline with his ancestors is the main thing I know.” Luna was privy to some details regarding Solstice thanks to living with him for a few short years and listening to his mother.

“When he wakes up, I’ll deal with it, what about the other soul attached to him?” Carter had seen many things in his life, but two souls bonded together was unknown even for him, he could count on one hand how many experts he had met in regard to souls, but none reached this level.

“If I’m being honest, only Bela really knows what’s going on with his soul.” Luna bluntly said.

“Bela? Whoever she is, she’s the best I’ve ever seen with souls. The fact she pulled this off is incredible to say the least, if anyone else tried to do what he did then their soul would have exploded from all the stress.” Carter rarely gave out compliments but clearly, she was at an incredibly high level that nobody could even begin to understand how she did what she did.

“In a week he should wake up and from there I’m going to take care of his issue, if I don’t then he could die next time he fights with his life on the line.” This one statement made each girl begin to fear the worst.

“Don’t worry I won’t let him leave my bunker, just make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid when he wakes up and send him to me.” All three girls nodded and began to rotate shifts for the next week to make sure he didn’t leave at all.

A week later Solstice finally woke up and before he could do anything he was dragged by Lily to the workshop where a table with special tools was set up with Carter casually sitting in his recliner.

“I’ve got a few questions, so be truthful because if you aren’t then I can’t properly save you.” Solstice heard this and frowned; he had no idea something was wrong with him.

“Whose soul is bonded to you? And can I remove it?” As soon as Solstice heard this, he shook his head no,

“His name is Victor and he’s my martial mentor, he also gave me access to this special eye.” Solstice pointed to his eye that had two white rings circling his pupil.

“Alright fair enough, second question, what the hell does your other eye do?” Carter had seen many things in his life but never gifts that could how your eyes looked.

“It’s from my bloodline, it allows me to control ambient mana in the air.” As soon as Carter heard this, he spit his coffee out of his mouth.

“You’re joking right? Tell me the truth.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Well, that changes everything. Of course, the main character has perhaps the most broken ability known to man.” Carter got up from his chair and looked into Solstice's eyes before sitting down and scribbling on a piece of paper.

“Alright I’ve got two options for you. Option one is to remove all the affinities that aren’t natural for you to relieve the stress on your soul. Option two however is risky, I can remove the affinities and forcefully remove the seal on your eye to make you able to use all affinities. Your call.”

“A seal? I thought the seal was removed when I bonded with Victor though.” Solstice remembered the giant fight Bela had with Ariel about his eye seal coming undone when his soul was injured fusing with Victor.

“It’s partially removed but it’s still massively limiting its power. Whoever put that seal on knows how to make them too, if I remove it you’ll be able to use any type of mana, albeit externally and not internally.”

“I think it’s clear what we’ve got to do then right.” Solstice knew he only had one option from the start.

“If you want to beat Maverick then yeah, go ahead and lay down. This shit is going to hurt so Luna I’d appreciate some light and nature magic to help keep him alive.” Carter slowly got up and looked over his table and nodding to himself.

“Keep him alive? What…” Luna was stunned.

“Well, I’m going to be tearing his soul apart and reforming it while undoing a very durable seal, so yeah it’s going to basically kill him unless you do your job.” Carter said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“No pressure, okay.” Luna got up and tried to calm herself down, but nothing seemed to work until Solstice grabbed her hand and kissed it.

“I trust you.” He said with a genuine smile before laying down on the table and awaited his fate. This was all she needed, and she immediately zoned in.

“You two wait outside, if I need you, I’ll let you know.” With that a long surgery was taking place and if it worked? Someone who was near omnipotent would be born.