~~~Lee~~~

Lee looked away from the core hovering in midair before him and out of his window instead. He saw a stone wall, and if he craned his neck, he could just make out some sky peeking past the top far above.

Bradley had outdone himself by building the massive monolith, but it really ruined the view... not that Lee really minded. Though it would be nice if the wall did more to stop invaders. An issue that wasn't Bradley's fault. It was the insane invaders that they kept having to deal with.

Lee pulled the core to his hand and looked at it again.

[Skill Shard](D-grade)

Shadowstride (Epic)

Walk through shadow.

Allows the user to step into and traverse through the shadow dimension. While within the shadow dimension, the user is immune to most forms of detection and attack from outside, but beware what dwells in the dark.

Mana cost to enter, remain, and depart the shadows is dependent on skill level and the user's shadow affinity. Fully depleting mana while within the shadow may cause serious side-effects.

Skill Level Effects (Novice):

+1% Effective Intelligence

-1% Mana Cost

Requirements:

Shadow Aspect Mana [Requirement Not Met][N/A][Adaptable]

Mana Core/Channels [Requirement Not Met][N/A][Adaptable]

Adapting to this Skill will require 60% Adaptation and may alter your Class.

Adapting this Skill to your Class will require 1% Adaptation but may drastically alter the Skill.

Adapt Yourself and Learn Skill: Y/N?

Learn Adapted Skill: Y/N?

Consume and Destroy Skill Shard to gain +300 All Base Attributes: Y/N?

D-grade. Lee didn't know why it had died so much easier than the one Stanley fought, but he wasn't complaining.

It hadn't had the same insane regeneration, but he'd directly seen it take what should have been fatal wounds and keep fighting. Though he was guessing a bit, considering the weird biology of the monster.

Still, he'd been able to see inside it with Mana Mind, and he was pretty sure about his guess. It had taken a Mana Beam through the heart and the equivalent of a stab through the head more than once before dying. But since he didn't have any other D-grade examples to look at besides the skeleton...

He also hadn't spread the news to anyone who wasn't directly involved in the fight, and not by choice. He wanted to tell everyone. It was his fault, after all, but Maria told him to wait. She thought telling everyone might trigger a mad exodus to get away from Lee and end up killing more of them because they got scared of the wrong thing.

Lee suspected she might be right, but he also suspected she had selfish motives. If they lost too many fighters, it might get harder to defend the fort.

Then there were all the people linked to his soul who might have no choice but to stay and keep him alive... He was okay with being selfish here if it helped him protect everyone who had helped save his life.

The only good news was that the monster's minions had all been E-grade. Otherwise, the fort would likely have fallen last night, and they'd all be dead.

They'd still lost a few...

Lee's current guess was that the system was counting him as a D-grade because of the source. At least he hoped that's all it was. So it let one D-grade invade. He'd just gotten lucky that it had a weakness he could exploit with the light rune...

That thought sent his mind back to the fight. To when he'd crafted that rune. He'd done something different with it, something he wasn't sure he fully understood. He'd made it... more, and he suspected his newest class skill had helped him do that.

There was nothing obvious he could point to for confirmation—just a feeling. A strong feeling.

In that precarious moment after Martin's attack, he'd felt something. A resonance or dissonance between light and dark. He'd tapped into that feeling and created... light. True light. Not something that emitted light, but the very concept of light itself.

Lee lifted the core back into the air and set it spinning, little blue sparkles dancing within. The skill looked amazingly powerful and useful, but no one who'd seen the D-grade up close wanted to learn it. Also, no one had shadow aspect mana.

But that wasn't the problem. Not the main one.

The issue was the nightmare that had lurked beneath that shadowy cloak. No one wanted to get anywhere near the so-called shadow dimension if something like that might lurk in the dark there. It didn't help that there was that line about running out of mana and side effects...

Alejandro was supposed to be asking around discreetly about people who might be willing to learn it, people they could trust. They'd find someone to learn the skill. Potentially, even someone willing to adapt to it... Lee half-hoped for someone to take that option since he was curious what would happen. Either way, it was too good to waste on attributes, and way too good for him to gamble it on himself. Especially since he was under house arrest.

Lee kept playing with the core while he watched Martin teach the kids in the courtyard.

The man had paid a price for his attack the night before, and not just his dis... arming. Saira had fixed that.

Martin had used his soul for that attack, and Lee knew from terrible experience how that could go. Luckily, the sword master hadn’t done himself any permanent damage and was only slightly more subdued today.

Of course, that hadn't stopped him from preemptively scheduling another personal class for Lee tonight to make up for the one they missed...

Lee flexed the fingers of his right hand, rubbing flesh against flesh as he remembered his skeletal limb the night before. It was all good now. Saira had healed his flesh up easily enough, and Lee felt it was a small price to pay for their lives. That and the meager one hour of mana burn the attack had cost him...

His E-grade evolution had paid off big time.

It gave him a good idea of his new limits and meant he should be able to enchant the wall using Mana Mind, all without going outside. The only question was whether he should even bother. Nothing had actually breached the wall by breaking it down.

Why bother when they could climb over or through it with no one the wiser?

Making it tougher was unlikely to help and would probably push him back to or over his rune limit. Of course, that wasn't the only option. What they really needed was something that would block entry by any means, or at the very least, detect anything that tried to sneak past.

Which was why he was sitting here and racking his brain for ideas on how to do just that. While also thinking about ways to use his new super light rune...

His first idea for that, and an obvious one, was to make some backup weapons for if or when they ever ran into more shadow monsters that could avoid his normal cutting runes. It had to be a backup because the thing was just too goddamn bright for everyday use. Maybe some daggers spread out among the wall guards? With sheaths to contain them until needed?

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The wall problem was harder. He thought he could make it detect invisible monsters like the hidden invasion or Mar, but he didn't know if he could detect shadow monsters in another dimension. That would be the only reason for him to attempt learning the skill—to see if it would let him block more of them.

Then he could set up an alarm of sorts when anything tried to sneak in.

But it would also do the same for anyone in the fort. The way around that would be to give everyone a key the wall would recognize, but that was going to mean even more runes.

Now he knew there was a limit on his runes, so any non-essential runes would limit how many weapons and armors he could enchant. Though it shouldn't require much more, since he could make it look for his soul as a check, and so long as everyone carried at least one rune on their gear when crossing the wall, it would work.

Perfect.

Lee dropped the skill shard and dove into his rune storage to craft what would become the new wall rune. It would detect passing mana, and if he angled the effect just right, the detection should cover the airspace above the entire fort as well. Maybe even a short distance outside. Then it only had to check that passing mana for any sign of his soul.

Not too hard.

He also needed an alarm so the wall could tell people when and where something approached or came through. A noise, and... a light. Like, say, a really bright light that was beyond any normal light?

Lee grinned and tweaked the rune coming together in his storage. This is going to be good.

The only thing he wasn't sure about was how it would work to enchant something so big. He might have to split it into multiple runes... or could he use just one spread over the entire wall?

A single rune wouldn't be a problem, soul and material wise, and might actually work if he kept it just about detection. That should require far less power than if he wanted to make the entire thing as unbreakable as a sword or shield.

So he started with that and stuck the rune onto the wall right outside.

Mana flowed from him and through his Mana Mind to the wall, but not that much. Which made sense when he felt the rune stop spreading at the first of many towers spread along the wall. Hmm.

It was still inside his Mana Mind range, so the problem was easily visible. Not only was the rune not going to spread on its own, but he needed to make adjustments for the towers, or else they would leave gaps in the detection coverage. Not only that, but he needed the wall to be a little more... symmetrical.

He pulled it back and returned to his storage for some tweaks. He could resolve the problem of it not spreading with a tweak to make it copy itself around the wall... like the repeating runes around May's workshop. Bradley would still have to do some reworking, though.

Lee froze in bewilderment when something walked into his Mana Mind.

What the... I have to see this. He only hesitated for a heartbeat before sprinting for his door. It sprang open at his approach, startling Jeremy, who was standing guard outside.

"Going to the garage!" Lee called as he hopped over the third-floor balcony, catching the railing as he did and redirecting his forward momentum downward.

He plummeted toward the courtyard floor below and felt a little thrill in his heart as he did so. Physical feats like this were becoming commonplace in the new world, but he couldn't help but be in at least a little awe when he stopped to notice what he was doing. No wonder the kids loved to fly around on the plates.

Speaking of kids... "Sorry! Don't mind me!" he said to the many little faces who'd turned his way the moment his door opened. "Keep studying!"

The kids were getting more and more used to his broadcasting soul, and they seemed to have accepted him as he was... especially when he came bringing magical flying toys. It might be different if he was in pain or in a bad mood, but right now he was just curious.

Jeremy followed him over the rail with the same worried feeling in his soul that he always had. It was unjustified. Lee wasn't that hard to protect...

He made it to the garage and slid to a stop on the ramp just in time. "Holy shit!"

The target of his gaze turned to look at him with an abruptly annoyed soul as he passed. "Yeah, yeah, you can't believe it. Yes, I'm still human. No, you can't ride me. Yes, I live..." He blinked and stopped walking. "Fort Commander... sorry. I've been getting a lot of flak... I'm sure you can understand."

"No," Lee said to the real life centaur standing outside his home. "I get it... Um, have we met?"

The man, centaur, scratched his cheek. "Yes, but... well, I looked a little different at the time. I'm Lawrence Thomas."

Lee laughed. "Yeah, I think I would have remembered this. Was it your E-grade evolution?"

"It was!" Lawrence exclaimed. "How hard is that for people to understand!? The world is magic now!"

"No judgment here," Lee said. "I got an option to turn into a building myself."

Lawrence stared down at him for a long moment, then shook his head. "Guessing you passed on it. Even I wouldn't have gone that far... at least I'm still half human like this."

"It was a bit much for me," Lee said, nodding. "So, did you just really like horses? Or used to work with them?"

"Both... and it was totally worth it!" He lifted his human arms in a grand gesture, then reared up with his horse-half, front legs kicking at the air, before slamming back to earth with a thud. Even on all fours, he towered above Lee, with his back already higher off the ground than Lee's head.

"What does that feel like? Any new powers?" Lee asked. He had other questions... other than about how it felt to have extra limbs. But they were mostly silly or immature. Like if the guy was now hung like a horse...

Lawrence straightened up even taller. "I'm the fastest scouter we have. Been doing scouting, and recruitment runs almost non-stop while we try to gather up all the smaller nearby settlements."

"It doesn't cause problems with them when you look... like this?"

"Some people get spooked, but more people are evolving every day. You seen Davy?" He jerked a thumb back deeper into the fort. "He went full on werewolf."

Lee hadn't seen Davy... "I probably would have been more concerned if I couldn't tell you were a resident," he admitted. Then he frowned. "Where do you sleep?" The guy was too big to walk through a doorway...

"Bradley hooked me up. I'm good." He glanced away toward the wall. "Well, I'm heading back out, Commander. Made it all the way to the Strand on my last run. Doing another sweep past the beach if it isn't too crazy today. There might still be some people holding out over there..."

Lee abruptly realized he knew very little of what was happening in the wider world, and now he was stuck in here. Hadn't Wilson mentioned something during his boring meetings? "What's happening at the beaches?"

"Sea monsters that like to crawl onto the land. Crabs. Lobsters. Shrimp. Pretty much anything in the ocean with legs. They've all gotten bigger... and hungrier. That's not even counting all the new alien stuff..."

Lawrence had armor on his human upper half, rune armor, but nothing else. Lee eyed the long, thin legs while thinking of giant crab pincers. If he was going to enchant anyone’s bones, this guy might make use of it more than most. Until then... "You know, if you get some custom armor, just come see me, and I'll enchant it."

"I'll keep that in mind." Lawrence grinned widely. "Right now, I'm kicking the shit out of them." He stomped a divot into the dirt with his foreleg as punctuation.

Lee stood up as straight as he could and nodded at the man turned centaur. "Thank you for your service, Lawrence. We wouldn't be here if not for people like you." He considered saluting... but wasn't sure if that would be too much.

Lawrence had no such qualms, and he saluted proudly down at Lee. "Thank you, Commander. I've heard you can kick some ass yourself."

Lee returned the salute with a smile. "When I need to. Go on, then. Run fast and kick ass."

He wondered how the guy would get over the wall as he galloped away... Had Bradley put in a gate somewhere? That might complicate his plan for the wall rune... He'd need to find out. "Jeremy?"

His bodyguard jumped. "I... Commander?"

"Relax, man. You can't get much safer than inside Three, and since I'm not going outside, think of guarding me as taking a break."

He didn't relax. "Yes, Commander."

Lee sighed. "Could you get a message to Bradley to come see me when he has a chance?"

"I... I'm not supposed to leave you..."

"I'll lock myself in the elevator room."

"I really shouldn't..."

"Just go," Lee said, already walking to his little room. "I'll be right here until you get back."

"I... I guess I could... Commander."

Lee did as promised and spent the waiting time working on tweaking his wall rune. While he did that, Mana Mind let him notice the guards gathering on the nearby wall. Was there a monster coming?

He didn't know what all the hubbub was about until the wall split wide open. That had to be Bradley... or else they were under serious assault, though none of the people he could see looked very upset.

Then a car drove through the gap... a car!

Lee sprang up to go see it for himself before remembering that he couldn't go outside. Also, he'd promised to stay in this room. But they could drive the car inside! Or... was it better to keep any strangers from detecting his leaking soul? Because it was definitely a stranger and not a resident.

Instead of going anywhere, he used Mana Mind to study the car from his room. If they could replicate it...

The first thing he understood was that it wasn't really a car anymore. It had the shape, but inside was nothing like what the outside suggested. Magic was at work.

Not just in the car, either.

It stopped right inside the wall, and he watched the man emerge from within, absolutely festooned with magic items. Nothing that quite matched up with Lee's rune gear in terms of sheer power, but some that came close. It was the total number of the things that stood out, far surpassing anyone else in the fort.

Jeremy will understand. Lee ducked out into the garage.