For the next hour people buzzed in and around Victor but left quickly after realizing the focus he was in. the knife and Seed were both in his hand, and he was guiding the process of creation with his will.

The Seed and knife both felt like cups in his hand. the power was pouring out of the Seed and going into the cup, passing through Victor in the process. At first he just marvelled at the feeling of it before he realized how formless the power really was.

He’d forgotten to guide it, and that almost made him lose focus on his Weaponsmith Heart. Victor then thought to the simplest power he could give the knife and settled on expansion. The knife would be able to expand in size and retract back.

His thoughts melted into his Weaponsmith Heart, which took the Seed and moulded the power within to fit his idea. The power then flowed into the knife. As it filled up, the knife grew sharper and tougher, and the ability was embedded within the steel.

An hour passed and Victor wiped the sweat from his forehead.

[Ability Unlocked: Greater Structural Sense Boost]

[Ability Unlocked: Sense of Time Boost]

Any boost to his Timewalker Seed was welcome. Victor pulled up the knife again and viewed it through the menu.

[[Combat Knife (Infused: Extension)]: STRENGTH: 70 ABILITIES: Extension

A combat knife infused with the abilities from a Sword Edge Seed. It can extend and retract to its original size. A weapon made by an amateur without full realization of how to guide its creation.]

“You’ve got something to say about everything, don’t you?” Victor said, annoyed.

But he wasn’t about to go waste his time arguing with the floating screens. He had a new weapon to test.

He held the blade by the grip and focused his will into its abilities. It was much like his Seed, only external. He channelled its ability out of it, and saw the blade extend before him. But not only the blade, the handle and grip extended too.

That was when Victor realized his mistake. He had to be more specific with the ability he put into the knife. It extended far beyond where he was able to with his own Bladebody Edge, but it was useless when the grip changed.

He could place five hands along the grip and still have space for more. Victor sighed at the failure of the weapon and retracted its blade back into its normal form.

Could’ve warned me earlier… He hated wasting a Seed, especially when someone else could’ve used it.

The knife went into the sheath near his belt, since he wasn’t one to throw away even failures. Victor then turned his attention to the less costly of his new abilities. That one would require an active zone to test.

****

A group of Metamorphs wandered through the streets. They ambled slowly on the orders of Count Hemotep, unaware of the two Wielders nearby.

Victor and Amadeus were crouched inside of an old fried chicken place. The Trap Ward’s glyph was plastered to the floor with Victor’s hands touching it. Amadeus was also touching the Trap Ward and had his eyes closed.

“I can feel… something close to the ground?” Amadeus told him.

“Push your Seed’s power into it, Am,” Victor said. Amadeus chuckled.

“Am? You’ve got a nickname for me now?” he said.

Victor ignored him and guided the magic that came through the ward. Using Infuse Trap Ward, he changed the way the Trap worked, making it instead electrocute an area around it when touched. He could see the physical form of the trap ward glyph shifting, as it took on an appearance that was crackly and sharp at the edges.

“Like a lightning bolt,” Amadeus noted.

Once they were done, he placed a phone with a timer on the desk and the two of them exited the building.

Victor waited while chewing on a protein bar. Amadeus didn’t look as easy, and was tapping his foot on the ground ahead of him.

California Girls started playing in the distance and Victor had to do a double-take.

“I swear I didn’t know,” Amadeus said.

But the Metamorphs seemed enticed by the song. They ran into the restaurant wildly, and Victor chuckled.

“Not big fans of Katy Perry, are they?” Victor said.

A moment later, Victor felt the hairs on his hand raise. Lightning exploded out of the shop, drowning out the popping noises of Metamorph speech. Victor shielded his eyes from the explosion of light until it finally faded.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

When they both walked back inside of the restaurant, they found black scorched walls and the calcified bodies of the Metamorphs. They looked like statues then, smoking and still.

“That’s a helluva power,” Amadeus said when he touched one of the statues.

The Metamorph tipped over and broke on the floor.

“We’ll have to hope its enough for what comes next,” Victor replied.

****

Once the preparations were done, Victor took his group inside of Hemotep’s castle and ran through it quickly. He picked a time he thought the Count would be preoccupied before breaking into his castle.

They cleared the rooms as quick as they could, along with any of the guards they could find. Once the walls started moving, Hemotep woke up, and spoke to them through his magical speakers.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in my-”

Victor ignored his cries and slammed the Hemostone back into its pedestal.

“Ah, here for the children, aren’t you?”

Victor fired an Infused rifle round into a Metamorph Brute’s core. it cracked into a thousand pieces and he swiped the Hemostone out of its body.

The Count kept trying to talk to them but none of his words got through. Victor had told Amadeus and the others to ignore the voices, and all but Ashley had managed it.

“Can he shut up?” she asked as she cleaned the mud off her clothes.

“We’ll shut him up on a permanent basis,” Victor replied.

They reached the final room and burst through the large double doors there. Count Hemotep was close by and his eyes widened when he spotted the group gathered before him.

“Wai-”

They hurled every magic they could at the monster. Clay rose up to block the assault, but it was nothing against their combined might. Victor flanked the wall and fired his Infused Attack right at the Count’s chest, where his supply of blood stayed. The Count hardened clay in response and summoned mud clones to protect himself.

Those clones died as soon as they came alive. Lightning scorched them through and arced right through the Count’s heart. The glass chamber at the core of his being broke apart as the Count panicked.

He tried to drink it in but the blood evaporated it. Leo opened the ground underneath the Count, trapping his arms and legs. Ashley covered him in white-hot fire, Victor emptied his magazine into the monster before Jared dropped down with his sword through the monster’s head.

Hemotep lasted barely two minutes with them.

Leo buried it under the castle’s foundation after they extracted the Seed from their bodies. Victor plucked it from the corpse and threw it to Amadeus.

“You take it,” he told him.

The mission had been successful, and a much quicker affair overall. Once they brought the kids back, Victor had some cars arranged and left within a few months.

That kept him ahead of New Columbia and ensured that they’d never come face to face with them. Victor had his own reservations of leaving Jeffords to rule like a tyrant, but he couldn’t spare the time for him.

He took the kids back through the wastes. It was a much slower and tumultuous crawl through America, but they made it at last by the end of the year. The kids were safe, Amadeus’ loyalty was earned, which meant the only thing left for Victor to do now was figure out the Vintaric problem.

****

Before Victor could get started on his plans for the coming years, he had to deal with the biggest problem Los Angeles faced. The infestation.

The Vintarics were a much harder species to get rid of than the Metamorphs. No matter how many Wielders he sent out, the bugs would come back later, and with stronger forces. There was something guiding them, Victor knew. They were coming from the city itself, from a Gate hidden in plain sight.

He’d known a few of them, ones that tended to either blend into the environment or look completely different from the normal beams of light. He’d have to figure out where it was, and before the worser kinds of Vintaric Hives found Angel Heights alluring.

Victor stalked their patrols for weeks on end. he couldn’t expand the home until they were out, so his resources were limited. He would have to use his own powers instead. The others were on their own missions, so Victor had to do it on their own.

A purple-tinged portal opened beside him on the cloudily-lit roof, and Victor sighed.

“Professor, what are you doing here?” he asked.

He’d regained much of the colour and vigour Victor remembered of the old Professor Cooper, which meant he was back to being an annoying eccentric.

“The offices you’ve given are insufficient,” the old man told him.

“You’re not going to work on corpses near the kids, Professor,” Victor told him.

“They’ll learn to live with the smell.”

“Not before filling up a swimming pool with their vomit,” Victor said.

After that day, Victor would go out with the Professor every day to scout out the patrols. Sometimes the Professor would ask him to fight the monsters, or bring back something that interested him.

With some help, they were able to narrow their search patterns to one of the smaller districts in the city. All the patrols stemmed from there, and Victor kept watch with the Professor’s help.

It was during these searches that the both of them came upon something interesting. Victor had begun losing interest while out. The Professor was talking about some interesting biological feature or another of the Altesians when it happened.

“Spread out! Do not come back without results!” some Vintaric shouted in a human tongue.

The professor paused and Victor stopped leaning on his elbow. The two of them exchanged a nod before turning their full attention on the Vintaric.

It was a simple adolescent, with a sheen to its carapace that was different from the others. It was a light brown instead of the green the others displayed, and moved much more humanly.

“That’s bound to make an interesting specimen,” Cooper said.

Victor glared back at him.

“After you’re done extracting any information that you’d like from it, of course,” the Professor allowed.

The other Vintarics dispersed from it, leaving only a single Adult to guard it.

“Pretty heavy security too. Think you can help me out on this one, Professor?” Victor asked.

“I’m not the quickest on the pull.”

“It’s fine. We just have to knock it out and bring it back. Give me a portal and a moment, and that’s all I’ll need,” Victor told him.

Victor prepped his rifle beforehand. He readied a stone with his Trap Ward and followed the Vintaric and his guard around from atop the rooves. The Professor waited in anticipation for the Timewalker.

When Victor gave the signal, a portal instantly opened up straight to the front of the Vintaric.

Victor jumped through to the Adult’s screech. He shoved his Trap Ward rock down its throat and fired into its chest with an Infused ignistone bullet.

Then he grabbed the light brown Vintaric and used Slowdown. The Adult exploded from the inside while Victor knocked his target out with the butt of his gun.

He grabbed the unconscious Vintaric and easily hauled it back through the portal within a moment.

“Another portal, Professor!” Victor ordered him.

The other patrols were alerted soon after, but by that time Victor and the Professor were both gone.