Jessie’s next bout of wishes actually DID get her to nine thousand, even without additional boosts from renown. I’d actually had ten more days left of wishes to devote rather than a week (I’d had thirty one days total, which in my mind was a month, which I tended to think of as four weeks exactly). That was seven hundred points, added to her existing eight thousand three hundred and eight, bringing her up to nine thousand and eight total points.
Apparently there hadn’t been enough time for her to gain more stats from renown, and as she closed in on E-rank her bond with Randall was giving less and less Might, but regardless, she was within elixir distance of the rank up, and that was all I needed.
We didn’t push Camden to get her pills fast though. We still had seventy nine days left, and seeing Benny make the jump had made it clear that even if your soul didn’t make it to the peak, the further you went the easier you could break through. Jessie’s soul was the weakest of us all. Even after working on it during Benny’s boosting it was only at thirty percent of green, and that wasn’t going to cut it.
On the upside, Benny and I had been working our asses off making blocks, and between his new blue soul and the lack of twenty charge limit per day, we’d made some SERIOUS headway.
“Five sections.” I groaned. “That’s all they’ve finished? I know we have to wait for Camden to wish for more foundations, but still, we’ve done so much work.”
Benny snorted. “Are you kidding?” He gestured at the huge stone monoliths I’d finished merging, all already enchanted and ready for war. “Two thousand blocks? I mean, I know we already had some of it done, but still, that’s great time. Almost eighty days left, if the Enchanters can keep up we’ll get it done.”
“You’re not wrong.” I said with a shrug. “We need those other foundations up quickly. My Dust Construction is up to Intermediate as of today, which should help us speed up. I still have no clue where Camden pulled all those Enchanters from, not that I’m complaining. Speaking of random bursts of power, any ideas on what to do with all those new slots?”
He chuckled at my abrupt subject change. “Hardly. I think I’m going to try to find some passive stat amplifiers. The kind of things you see from racial traits. There are ways to do Enchantments like that.” He grinned at me wolfishly, clearly excited about our new discovery in that area.
After reading over Benny’s new ability a bit more carefully, we’d become aware that we’d both missed an important change in the description. The word ‘inventions’ had become ‘artifacts’. Benny had never tried integrating an enchanted item before, but the change implied he couldn’t have if he’d wanted to. It made sense given Inventing Mastery was part of his ability.
“You’re charging Camden for all this building work aren’t you?” I asked with a laugh. My own payment was coming in the form of elixirs for the others, so Benny wouldn’t need to shell out for his own pills.
My best friend just grimaced. “I am, but the Enchantments I’m talking about are EXPENSIVE. Luckily armor works better for me than weapons, so Sonia can help. She’s just REALLY persnickity about accepting jobs. After finishing up all our armor sets she’s free though.”
I gestured at his new armor. “Why not just integrate it as is?” My best friend wore a black leather suit of light armor with a woven cloak of burnished bronze. The suit was edged with angular bronze designs, with cog wheels set strategically at the knuckles and joints to serve as strike plates. Unlike my set, Benny had gone with a more traditional hero choice of having his sigil put on the chest, a half cog in the shape of a C.
“Because it wouldn’t do anything.” He said in annoyance. “The suit is designed to lighten the burden of using integrated tech to affect my whole body. It strains the soul over time. Not a ton when I’m only doing it once, but spamming attacks gets tiring. I wouldn’t have been able to manage this last week without it, that’s for damned sure.”
I nodded in understanding. “But integrating that kind of defeats the purpose.” I said with a wince. “Plus if its the whole suit enchanted that way you’d need to burn too many slots to get all of it. Not worth the price.”
“Pretty much.” He agreed. “Which means I need custom gear to integrate. I’m hoping to get amplifiers that let me effectively use double my Focus and Might at least. Optimally Perception and Vitality too. Non physical stats are tougher to find stuff like that for sadly, so I’ll have six empty slots to fill even if I get all those.”
I whistled at the idea. I knew about modifier effects. I had a few, stuff that let my hits land twice as hard for instance. But Benny was talking about something else. Persistent stat changes, basically creating his own racial trait. It was a fascinating idea.
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“Let me know how that goes.” I said with a laugh. “Anyway, you glad you didn’t take a commander position when you ranked up?” I asked with a smirk. “You’ve been having a laugh at my expense this last week, Training my century has been rough.”
Even with Randall simulating a Stone Lion in his armor, we’d run into diminishing returns after a while. We’d had our monthly tournament a few days ago though, and that had helped morale at least. Alanna had won, to no one’s surprise, but Ichabod had done shockingly well. She might not be our next month’s victor at this rate.
Benny had been vocal about his relief that he hadn’t needed to bother with them, to the point where Abel had offered to train him since he had so much free time. Not being stupid, Benny had said no, and had mostly just spent all his time working on making blocks with me.
There was a spread out pile of them behind us that would need to be hefted up out of the dirt and carried to the new foundations when they got made, because we’d run out of room and if we wanted to keep up with demands we’d need to keep going as we had. They’d partially sunk into the ground, but one of the locals had rigged up an earthen platform that had mitigated the problem at least.
Benny was smiling at my misfortunes, but when he glanced at the wall sections his smile wilted. “You sure they’re ready for this Shane?” He asked quietly. “You sure WE are? Like how are you even going to access all the sections with the gaps between them for the spear formations?”
I pointed down. “Foundations connect to each other.” I said with a smile. “Each of them is a highly sophisticated piece of engineering. It’s why Camden is burning an entire wish on them. You know how high my Might is right now, not to mention my Impact. Triple those values? You can make some scary stuff.”
I’d been shocked at the results of that first foundation with. A solid block of dense, powerful stone shaped to withstand quite a bit of weight and containing natural formations that allowed the wall to operate more effectively.
My wish power was so versatile, sometimes even I forgot how much. It made me look forward to building up our own territory more than ever. Callie had been workshopping ideas with Camden and the others when they had free time, and making a list that she wouldn’t show me. She was also pocketing quite a bit of cash saving up for the wishes.
“And this gets easier right?” He said gesturing the the massive stone blocks. “I’ve noticed you’re merging them more quickly, especially the last one we did today. I assume ranking up your Skill helped?”
I nodded. “More than you can imagine. Once it’s done we’ll still need to improve our coordination, of course. I’ll need to train with the centuries in their spots between the sections, learn how to avoid crushing or stabbing them by accident. But other than that…I think this can work. This is a huge undertaking Benny, but making something like this? It’s basically an oversized siege engine made just for me.”
“Trust me.” He laughed. “I know. I AM an Inventor. I can see how useful this is. I’m guessing that was partly inspired by the tower we made during the scavenger hunt?”
“Partly.” I admitted with a chuckle. “Why? Are you flattered? That building was damned useful. Shame we can’t have you make more now. Unless we could?” I hadn’t considered that, but it might turn things around.
He just shook his head. “Intermediate Inventing means Intermediate materials. F-rank stuff basically. Given how suppressed those kinds of things are here, the buildings are pointless.”
I hadn’t considered that, though it led me to another question. “Can you integrate a building?” I hadn’t really considered that, but it might be pretty useful. Invented buildings could have amazing effects, as we’d already seen.
“Probably.” He admitted. “But there would be a lot of caveats. I’d have to have enough strength to handle the weight of the materials, plus nothing with a high Impact could be used, because trying to push that into myself might crack my soul. I imagine once my stats are high enough it wouldn’t be impossible, hell I could probably do a planet in the later ranks, though it would be pointless. Most of them don’t have abilities?”
I raised a brow at that. “Most?” I asked with interest. “There are planets with abilities?”
He waggled a hand. “Sort of.” He looked to be deciding how to phrase something. “Formations are naturally occurring enchantments, and they can vary in size. Gems can naturally form runes, and so can planets. That’s what dungeons are, at least the natural ones. Obviously stuff like the Glade isn’t naturally occurring but its based on a formation the same way our armor is. Studying dungeons lets you recreate them.”
“So there are man-made Enchanted planets out there?” I asked curiously. “Because that sounds amazing.”
He shrugged. “I think so? I researched this kind of thing a bit after hearing what Sonia could do. I wanted to see if it could improve my own crafting abilities. It was interesting but I don’t exactly have many sources on planet. I spent a couple days after block making over at the library though. Syl is a fountain of knowledge, when she bothers to speak to you.”
I chuckled, remembering Anna’s researcher friend. I could see how she might be able to help digging into that kind of thing.
“Anyway.” I said, getting back on topic. “Buildings would be useful as hell, at least if you could rank up your Inventing Skill. Well, useful or deadly. Inventing IS still pretty random, isn’t it?” I’d been wondering how that was going for a while now. I knew Benny was trying to learn to steer the Skill a bit more, but only the strongest mad scientists could really do that. If he could manage though it would be a huge coup, especially if he ranked it up soon.
Benny looked amused. “I’ve been working on it. Steering Inventing is a matter of soul strength, surprisingly. Guiding the mad inspiration of the Skill. Once I hit Sapphire I think I can at least get close.”
That was fantastic news. It meant one more possible weapon in our arsenal, and not a minute too soon. Seventy nine days left, and we still had so much to do, but I knew we could pull it off. I wasn’t letting a monster like Spencer Tolbert get away with hurting my friend. In fact, if I had my way, he wouldn’t even be leaving Stratholme alive.