~~~Lee~~~
"Contractual. Zhint racial trait," Z said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Wait, every race has a racial trait?" Lee asked with a glance toward Trak while realizing that he'd never thought to ask about the anubian trait... "And yours is literally about contracts?"
"Correct," Z said. "Successfully completed contracts most rapid way to advance for our race. More efficient than hunting alone."
"I guess that explains why you are so obsessed..." Lee trailed off with a shake of his head. "How much has that trait shaped your culture? Were you like this before the system, or only after you got the trait?"
"Unknown. But highly probable that trait led to current culture."
"That doesn't bother you?"
"No. Very efficient. Nothing to complain about."
"Never mind that," Wilson said. "What we need to discuss is this D-grade event and how to prepare for it."
"I mean, yeah?" Lee said. "But what is there to do that we aren't already doing?"
Alejandro finally stopped pacing and rounded on Z. "Explain it again. In plain English this time."
"I do not speak English," Z said. "I..."
"It's an expression," Saira snapped. "It means keep it simple." She hadn't warmed to the alien. At all. Lee completely understood and sympathised. She'd almost lost her daughter to the creature.
Lee understood, but he didn't share her distrust. Probably because of the contract, or because he could feel its soul, or both.
"Dungeon warfare," Z said. Again. "At D-grade, world will compete with others. Winning world absorbs the losers. Grows bigger." Aside from the insanity of a planet growing bigger... it explained his comment from before when he said earth was small.
"But how does a world fight another world?" Wilson asked.
"Same way. Fighting. Invasions. Have fought in a few. Likely you will face another fort of similar strength and numbers." It was hard to tell which way Z was looking with those black eyes, especially behind the helmet, but Lee felt the gaze land on him, regardless.
Because it wouldn't be similar. Because of him.
Most of the people gathered here knew that, and Lee was seriously considering bringing Wilson into the club. Not just him, either. Harold had already noticed the discrepancies... He and everyone else fighting for this place should know what they were getting into.
It was possible they'd lose some fighters if Lee told everyone the truth, but it wasn't like they were getting nothing out of the deal now. Lee knew personally how powerful his runes were when it came to hunting in the lairs. If he kept handling the more serious threats himself... or let Z help.
He wasn't sure how much help Z would actually be. The alien's D-grade presence would only increase the threat of D-grade invaders, but at the very least, he should balance out.
"Which is the problem," Wilson said in a soft voice and then glanced around, as if afraid someone would overhear. Which was unlikely since they were in Lee's apartment. Wilson's idea. Probably because he kept bringing up the same thing and discussions like this weren't something he wanted to have out in the open. "We have too many useless people here."
Z had already explained the invasion process, including how they got to choose a difficulty and how the total number of humans here had a very real impact on what could come through. That wasn't even counting Lee's impact...
"What happens to the losers?" Alejandro asked, ignoring Wilson's statement. To be fair, it wasn't the first time the other man had brought up the subject, and no one liked where that discussion always led. "For example, if we win, but our world loses?"
"Will be absorbed into victorious world. Earth will be no more."
"But it won't kill us... or split us up, right?"
"Entire fort domain will go together. If fort is still standing. All beyond that may go anywhere on other world. No way to know where."
"Okay," Alejandro said. "Okay. That's good." His gaze landed on Lee before wandering past the other people in the room to look at the door. Lee knew he was thinking of his wife and kids in the courtyard and probably imagining a scenario very much like the one Lee and his twin were facing.
Only how much worse would it be if he couldn't feel the other's soul... and if the world was ten times bigger? Definitely a good reason to avoid getting separated. The real problem was that almost all the lairs were beyond the fort domain.
Z actually seemed to guess where the conversation was going. "Will have warning. Not long, but enough to return. Also, not an issue yet. Will take a while to reach a win or lose. Even after world is D-grade."
"Do you know when we will reach D-grade?" Wilson asked.
Z didn't glance at Lee, but he felt its soul do the equivalent. "Your world advances quickly. Will reach D-grade soon. Exact estimate... difficult. Knowledge focused on fighting. Not research."
Again, Lee's fault. As Trak had already assumed. Unfortunately, there was definitely a lot of stuff the zhint didn't know, and he wasn't much better than Trak when it came to knowledge about the source. The majority of what he did know was more interesting than useful.
Like the fact that civilized races didn't absorb cores... they got experience. Or that was what the system called it, at least. Z claimed it was them absorbing a fraction of their defeated foe's essence... the part that didn't go into the core. Lee planned to have the alien kill something where he could watch... though it apparently had to be at least the same grade for them to get anything.
So it wouldn't happen soon. Hopefully. Lee had a bad feeling about just how soon that might happen. He really needed to get his attributes higher... and, as luck would have it, he'd just come into possession of a certain contracted fighter that could hunt easily in earth's E-grade lairs.
Lee had sent him out hunting the day before, mostly so everyone could stop looking at him so warily. Z hadn't complained about the task. In fact, he didn't complain about anything. The humans who went along behind him complained enough for everyone. Especially the useless ones.
There weren't that many people being totally useless, but there were some. Enough time had passed by now that Lee could no longer let them coast anymore. Yes, the world had changed drastically. Yes, it was traumatic. But now it was time to pull it together. Never mind that their very presence increased the risk for everyone.
The free ride was over. Everyone had to do something. Anything really. If they couldn't hunt and couldn't make anything useful, then they were pretty much only good as gophers for other people. Including going behind the hunters and carrying back the loot. Which most often involved lugging piles of bloody animal parts back to the fort for food and crafting both.
It wasn't a popular job, but all the cooks charged cores or raw product now, so if you didn't do something, you wouldn't eat.
On that note, Lee dispatched his D-grade back to hunting. Not only hunting, either. Z was likely the most powerful single creature in the area. Which made him a great scout who could even keep up with Lawrence. Together, they were building a map of all the surrounding human settlements.
As well as the lairs.
Some people weren't great hunters, but against specific creatures, they could still dominate. Alejandro coordinated that stuff with the hunters. Both keeping track of which lairs were easier and also culling the ones that were too difficult before the monsters started spilling out into the wider world. Especially the nearby lairs.
Lee was itching to get back out there himself. Hell, he'd settle for some wall duty at this point...
Many of the guards got rotated in and out of wall duty, so they could still get some lair hunting in, or conversely, when they wanted a break from the hunts. That covered most of their everyday defense needs, especially with Wilson handling the scheduling.
Instead of hunting or exploring. Lee headed downstairs to get back to work on his runes. There wasn't a lot to do at the moment. Most already had the gear they needed, and Lee couldn't make much more, regardless. What he could do was experiment repeatedly to find new runes.
He had some ideas for space runes, especially after getting a good look at the prince's magic ring. Obviously, he hadn't figured out how to teleport anything... but he had accidentally made a gravity rune. At least that was what he was calling it, since it made whatever he put it on heavier. Marginally.
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It was limited in practical applications for now, but he had hopes of getting the effect to spread out from the rune instead of inward. If he could make gravity traps for invaders... even if it only slowed them down and didn't crush them into a paste like his imagination wanted to see. There was also a good chance that Martin could use it in his training...
On that note, Gabriel intercepted him before Lee got to his room. "I finished, Uncle Lee."
In his hands, he held a plate covered in runic symbols. Sort of. They weren't actual empowered runes; they were just drawings of them, and they were all incomplete.
Gabriel had filled in the missing sections with a makeshift pen. A task that would definitely help him learn to manually draw runes in the future. Along the way, he identified what he thought each rune was supposed to do.
He hadn't gotten all the answers right, but interestingly enough, some of his mistakes looked like they might work as he'd drawn them... and with the new effect matching his description. The kid had a serious knack for this—so much so that Lee had no more reservations about making him an apprentice once his class leveled enough. It felt like a given at this point that his affinity would be good.
The only remaining question was what would happen with the liquid mana... Would he have to evolve to become an apprentice?
But that was a concern for the future. "I like it, but let me talk to Bradley before we go over your answers."
"Hi, Uncle Bradley," Gabriel said when he saw the other man inside the elevator room.
"Oh, hi, Gabe," Bradley said, wincing. "You really don't have to call me that. It makes me feel..." He trailed off with another wince while looking anywhere but at Lee.
"Old?" Lee supplied.
The back of Bradley's neck turned red. "I didn't mean..."
"But you are old, Uncle Bradley."
Bradley choked and dropped the stone block in his hand. It hit the floor... hard, and there was a dent in the cement when he scooped it back up. "Sorry, Three!"
"Wow!" Gabriel exclaimed. "Is that super heavy?"
"It is," Bradley said while glancing at the boy and then looking toward Lee. "I think this is about as dense as I can force it. What do you think?"
Lee thought it looked amazing and said so. "Put it in the hole, and let's see what happens."
The elevator room was still half destroyed from when he'd trapped Z in here. While Three had repaired some of the damage, Lee had told it to stop to prepare for this very moment.
Something he'd noticed in the aftermath of the invasion was that Bradley's staff was far more durable than Three... Obviously, once you added source and liquid mana into the mix, it changed things. But he couldn't deny the damage Three had taken from the D-grade. Even with all that power lurking in the runes, Three was fundamentally built of only cement and rebar. That hadn't changed when Lee added the runes.
Not yet.
Bradley set the block into one of the ragged holes left behind and lined up the protruding metal sticking out from the block with the jagged ends of the broken rebar inside Three’s floor.
Nothing happened. Not until Lee sent a thought to the building about what he wanted it to do. Then the rebar ends straightened out, stretching toward the new addition... and merging with it.
Lee grinned as he watched the hole seal up around a new, tougher spot. More importantly, he could see where the tapestry of source and soul that was Three also moved into the new material.
"It worked." He'd had a gnawing feeling ever since seeing how much damage a D-grade could do to his building. A worry that Three wouldn't be able to keep up as everything else got stronger. Now he had a plan. Albeit, one with a few bugs to work out...
"That took me a while to do," Bradley said. "It's going to take forever to do the whole building."
Yeah, that was a major flaw with the plan. "What if you dump some dirt and rocks in here... I'll see if Three can learn to absorb and condense it by itself."
"Wow!" Gabriel whispered, and Lee realized he'd gotten another glimpse of the source peeking through. Luckily, the kid didn't seem at all upset. Instead, he looked up at Lee with a huge grin. "Can’t you make a rune for that, Uncle Lee? For squishing the dirt?"
"I... maybe?" That was a thought. Something like a plate that anyone could dump dirt on, with a rune to condense it, even if it was slow. It could work... if he had the rune.
Lee created a blank plate and held out a hand to Gabriel. "Let me borrow your pen."
The little piece of metal wasn't one of Lee's creations. Rather, an enchanter had come up with it. It left behind glowing lines on whatever surface you drew on, and the lines would last for a few days before fading. Not great for writing books, but fantastic for teaching kids to write. Or in this case, to draw runes.
"What do you think?" Lee asked after drawing his gravity rune on the plate. He didn't think he'd shown Gabriel this particular rune yet.
Gabriel stared intently, and Lee could feel a fascinating process going on in the boy's soul as he studied the symbol. He was ready when Gabriel reached for the pen and eagerly handed it over.
Both he and Bradley said nothing as the kid started drawing new symbols around the first. They waited every time he stopped to think, and every time, he resumed drawing.
Lee actually felt a chill when Gabriel erased parts of the gravity rune and started adding in new pieces. The chill came because Gabriel's additions not only looked sound... but they felt right as well. What the hell?
"Did you already apprentice him?" Bradley finally whispered as the increasingly complex-looking rune came to life. The damn thing looked fancier than anything he'd ever created... sans Three. Of course.
"I didn't," Lee murmured, then tried to smile reassuringly at the boy when Gabriel sat back and looked up from his work. He failed to hide his disbelief. "How... what did you do?"
"Is it bad?" Gabriel asked nervously, looking back at his rune. "Some of it looked... wrong. So I tried to fix... it."
"Let's find out!" Lee created another plate, then recreated Gabriel's design as an actual rune. "I think you really made some..."
It failed instantly.
Lee pulled it back and then pointed at the drawing. "This curving line forced too much mana into the corner over here." He had a pretty good idea of how to fix it himself, thanks to Gabriel, but wanted to give the crestfallen kid a shot first. "How would you fix that?"
Gabriel's expression lit up as he quickly erased the line and redrew it at a slightly different angle. "Like this?"
"Let's see." Lee tried again, but the rune still failed. Only, not at the spot Gabriel had fixed. "Now it's this linkage between..."
They went back and forth. Lee only pointed out problems and let Gabriel offer solutions, some of which he hadn't even thought of until hearing them.
Bradley left before they finished, but he did dump a pile of dirt in the room at Lee's request.
They kept working until Maria came into the garage some time later. Lee only then realized that she might not have known her son was down here all this time and quickly opened the door to wave her over. The relief in her soul at seeing him didn't last long, shifting into anger instead, and Lee knew they were in trouble. Both of them.
He held a finger to his lips pleadingly as she stormed over... and Maria hesitated in the doorway, exhaling softly instead of unleashing the angry tirade he'd felt coming. Her expression softened further as she stood there and silently watched Gabriel fuss over his lines.
His every thought played over his face as clearly as the sun across the sky, and she drank in the sight like... well, like only a mother could.
The boy didn't even notice her until he finally looked up. "There! I think... Mama!"
Maria had long ago lost the anger in her soul, but it came back quick and she still glared at him before demanding to know where he'd been and what he'd been up to. At least, Lee was pretty sure that was what she said, since it was all in Spanish.
Gabriel wilted beneath her words, and Lee felt the warring feelings in Maria's soul as she struggled with a very reasonable fear versus the all-encompassing love she held for her child.
Lee gave them an out by putting Gabriel's completed rune onto a plate. They both looked over when he pushed it under the dirt pile and the soil immediately compacted to less than half its original size. Then it kept getting smaller. Though slowly.
Class Skill Level Up: Artistic Rune Creation
Class Level Up: Runic
"It works?" Gabriel asked meekly, almost whispering and afraid to look at his mom.
"Yes!" Lee exclaimed, not overplaying his exuberance at all. "You did it!" He didn't even mind Maria's glare now being redirected at him.
The proud, beaming smile on Gabriel's face made it all worth it.
Maria finally relented and told her son to go upstairs in a much softer tone than before. He went, reluctantly but beaming all the way. Then she studied the rune as the dirt atop it kept crunching very slowly into a smaller area.
"Lee..." Her gaze moved to his and back again. "He make this? Truly?"
"Almost all of it."
"But... is so... much." Her soul hovered on the edge of pride... and worry.
Lee guessed what she was thinking. Because he was thinking the same thing. "Maria... I'm so sorry. I think I must have done something to him... when I made Three."
Gabriel had been right there, literally in the room with him. He'd had a front-row seat to the event. He'd watched Lee create a legendary structure out of the source and his soul—a structure Lee still didn't fully understand. "He's amazing... maybe even better than me."
A lot of different emotions went through the woman hovering over him, and Lee waited patiently for her judgment. Perhaps Gabriel was just a complete natural that was always meant to become a runic, but given the circumstances, he wasn't buying it.
That wasn't to say this was a bad thing. Runic was a powerful class, legendary even. It was great news if Gabriel could kick ass with it.
But he'd almost certainly done something to make that happen. Changed him somehow. He'd changed a child who'd never had a chance to resist or make his own choice.
Her child.
Maria put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Gently. Surprisingly gently. "Teach him, Lee. Help him survive. All I ask."
Lee looked silently at his new rune. Now that he could see it in action, he could see a few places to tweak it. Both to make the effect stronger and how it could work as a training tool in the courtyard upstairs. He was pretty sure that a little more work might even turn it into a viable weapon.
Then he looked at his newest class level. One he'd gained thanks to a classless child who wanted to become his apprentice.
"I will do my absolute best," Lee said, then thought silently to himself, Though I might need Gabriel's help with that.
He groaned at the sudden realization that he was about to give Martin a new way to torture him. Well, shit.
He would still do it. Because he would do whatever he had to do. Whatever it took to survive. To make sure they all survived.