One Month Later

  “Alright, you guys ready?” Rory asked, looking at his helpers.

  Arrayed throughout the forge, Irene, Gil, and John gave him nods of affirmation with varying levels of enthusiasm.

  “I will remind you, once we start, there is no stopping; it’s either go all the way or six months of work go out the window.”

  That got a second round of nods as Rory mentally psyched himself up.

  Here goes nothing.

  What he was about to do was probably extremely stupid, but he wasn’t backing out either.

  “Opening the field in three…. two….one…. open!”

  Each of the three kids had been stationed next to a lever, and as they pulled them down, the ‘planets’ orbiting the Stellar Heart suddenly began to align themselves in a triangle formation, a funnel of ‘planets’ directly pointing to the outer containing field of the Stellar Forge. As the ‘planets’ formed a tunnel that led directly through the field, Rory felt as if he were watching the death star charge up, a building coronal mass budding on the surface of the tiny star.

  Here we go.

  Rory flexed his hands once, clad in thick gloves that could have been mistaken for welding gloves. In fact, his entire outfit looked like a welding outfit, only on steroids. Within each layer of gear, there were countless inscriptions, all meant for resisting and defusing heat.

  Here we go.

  Such precautions were probably necessary, given Rory was about to play catcher with a star, except instead of a baseball, it was a solar ray burst.

  Here we go!

  Held between his hands was a tesseract made of stellarite, and several items were suspended mid-air within the cage of the tesseract. First, there were shards of black chitinous material, remains from the Void Walkers that had attacked in the last Siege Wave nearly a year back. Next was pitch-black dust, the purest form of a concentrated spatial aspected metallurgic catalytic primer he could make, weeks and months of reducing almost every Bane-touched monster corpse that remained into nothing but a powder. Third was another powder, looking for all the world like glass dust. It was not glass but the highest quality crystal he’d ever made, pulverized into dust, a second primer. Fourth was a glob of molten metal that looked like mercury, stellar matter that had been prevented from cooling, a pain in the ass to do.

  Last, and perhaps most importantly, was a tiny fleck of rock. It was, in fact, the single shard of stone he’d managed to chip from the essence spire, the most he was willing to damage the natural treasure and the most he could reasonably have harvested with how damn hard the spire was.

  Together inside the tesseract -which was made to concentrate the power of the star and crush each of the materials under immense pressure and heat- Rory had brought them together to attempt to do the impossible.

  He was trying to make a Unique material.

  Tell me it’s impossible to recreate. Let’s see about that!

  He was, of course, talking about the material left behind by the Architect’s Bane that had become Apostolos’s scythe.

  Ever since he’d gotten his hands on the material, a single line in the description had bothered him.

  “Composed of an impossible material that should not exist"

  I’ll say what’s impossible!

  What had been the most minor of annoyances had turned into a full-blown itch of irritation when he’d seen all the Void Walkers with chitin that reminded him of the Architect’s Bane.

  If the Architect’s Bane had made them in its own image, why couldn’t Rory just… finish the job?

  Watching the Stellar Heart, Rory felt the instant it hit critical mass. He planted his back foot just in time as a solar ray burst fired out from the Stellar Heart through the planetary funnel and slammed directly into the tesseract.

  Staggering, it took everything Rory had to keep from being tossed backward, speared through by a lance of true starlight that would put Apostolos to shame.

  “Mr. Rory!” John yelled, shielding his eyes as the solar ray burst washed the forge in brilliant light.

  “Raugh!” Rory yelled. Even through the protective padding, it felt like his every nerve was on fire, his skin melting.

  Drawing in as much Pneuma as was safe, Rory flooded the padding with power, trying to bleed off as much heat as possible. Even then, it barely felt like it made the tiniest dent in the overwhelming heat.

  I miscalculated.

  After being exposed to Apostolos’s supernova attack, a magical attack involving their combined efforts and half of the settlement’s reserved Pneuma, Rory thought he knew what to expect from the heat of their Stellar Heart.

  He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  There was simply a magnitude difference between the power of a magical projection of a star, and the real thing.

  Gritting his teeth so hard that he felt several teeth crack under the pressure, Rory could only hold on. If it weren’t for the tesseract channeling and funneling the majority of the solar ray burst’s power inward, he was confident he would have died.

  Hold!

  Using his every sense as a crafter, Rory felt for the moment the materials within changed, the timing would need to be perfect if they didn’t want to otherwise obliterate them.

  Just…a…. little…. longer!

  The last time he’d felt so much like he was being scorched down to the very bone was when battling the Reaping Ash Coscinocera, and that was because it had eroded him down to the flesh and bone.

  Just a little…...now!

  “Now!” Rory half-grunted, half-shouted, voice straining against the sheer power he was holding back. The three teenagers desperately began to heave back on the levers as the planets that had formed a funnel directing the starburst outside the containing field drifted apart. With the planets drifting back to their usual orbits, the solar burst sputtered out, once more fully contained as the Stellar Heart returned to dormancy.

  No longer holding back the force of a starburst, albeit a microscopically miniature version, Rory wanted to do nothing more than collapse, but the job wasn’t done. The tesseract he had been holding suddenly crunched inward, collapsing into a small globe of molten black material, suspended by a field of Pneuma he manipulated to contain it much like the field containing the Stellar Heart.

  “Mold!” Rory shouted as Gil darted across the forge, sprinting back with a small circular mold the size of a ring.

  Waiting until the boy placed the mold upon an anvil, Rory released the field of Pneuma as the molten black material suddenly flowed downward, filling the ring-shaped mold.

  One more step.

  Letting the ring cool for a moment, Rory manipulated threads of Pneuma to attach to the ring as he activated Architect’s Essence Inscription through the threads. Having subsumed his essence manipulation skill, it was a higher conceptual level than either Essence Spark or Essence Projection.

  This was the key, as the affinity Rory wanted to manipulate and project wasn’t blood or lattice, his regular affinities, but an affinity that typically only existed as a passive bonus.

  Foundational.

  While usually it was impossible to manipulate the bonus affinity, Rory could feel the resonance. Foundational affinity was born of his Essence Spark enshrined within a Vocation Testament. The Architect’s Bane was specifically the diametric rival of his Vocation. If there was any material that could draw out his Foundational affinity, it was the one he was working with now.

  C’mon!

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Reaching deep within himself, Rory winced as he felt like he was dragging a blade from his core outward. His Foundational affinity made it clear that it did not like being directly manipulated. Still, Rory wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Manipulating the threads encircling the ring, they began to weave a spun pattern around it before slowly sinking into the still-hot material. It was a bit like watching a 3D printer at work as the thread of Pneuma webbing filled with Foundational affinity was absorbed.

  Coughing, a splatter of blood coated the interior of his face shield.

  Yeah, that’s not great.

  Everything about the process could be described as ‘not great.’ Still, Rory persevered, watching from the corner of his eye as Irene sprinted to grab a bag that he knew was filled with Ossified Blood Gems.

  It's a good thing we covered this scenario ahead of time.

  Well, maybe not this exact scenario, but a scenario in which Rory inevitably ended up fucking himself up badly.

  And… done!

  His instincts as a crafter alerted him the moment he was finished. Releasing his Pneuma threads, or rather he was forced to release them as his body was finally given the signal to fail, the last thing Rory managed to do was snatch the ring from mid-air as he collapsed backward onto the ground.

  “Get his face shield off!” Irene yelled as two sets of hands began tugging his protective padding off; their own heat-resistant gloves needed to handle how hot his protective gear had become.

  “Alright, bottoms up, Mr. Rory!” Irene warned him as a hand pinched his cheeks, forcing his mouth open as a red marble dropped down his throat.

  His body has absorbed enough ossified blood gems in the past that it began drawing in the healing effects even without Rory bothering to jumpstart the process.

  For half an hour, Rory lay on the ground, feeling badly burnt flesh healing and repairing itself as his three assistants paced around, unsure what to do.

  Skin and muscles no longer burnt raw; Rory slowly rose to a seated position.

  “Mr. Rory! Are you okay?” John ran up to him, concerned.

  Good kid.

  “I’m fine.” Rory sighed before cracking a grin. “More than fine, actually.”

  Rory wasn’t looking at the kids anymore, instead looking at the ring.

  Genesis-Bound Baneite Ring of the Architect

  Grade: Rare

  Akashic Record: Architect’s Intent

  Made of the Rare-grade material Baneite. Created without specified purpose, the Ring of the Architect was made solely to impose the Architect’s will upon the world and prove that they are not so easily doubted or dissuaded. Akashic record grants improved efficiency with skills originating or subcategorized from the Architect of the Precursor vocation.

  Rory wasn’t sure how to feel as he stared at the ring. He’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams while also simultaneously failing. He’d set out to create unique-grade material, but he had failed.

  Instead, he’d made the first rare-grade material, Baneite. Had he not already gotten a Testament from making Apostolos’s scythe, the ring would have qualified him for the rare-grade Testament prerequisite.

  Second, he hadn’t expected the Akashic record. The description wasn’t wrong; he really had only made the ring to prove a point. Sure, he’d figured that he could do something interesting with it after it was made, but the intent had always primarily been to prove that he could.

  He’d failed in that regard, but only sort of.

  Banenite. A rare-grade material. Considering what he’d needed to make it, it was finite but not inherently unique. If there were bane-touched creatures, baneite could be made. It didn’t even necessarily have to be from his Bane.

  “Is it good?” Gil questioned, staring at the ring from a few feet away, giving Rory some space.

  “It’s… potentially amazing,” Rory said after a moment of consideration, sliding the ring on his index finger. “Just don’t take an axe to it or try to throw it in any active volcanoes.”

  Gil shot him a dirty look, but Rory couldn’t resist the tease; it was too obvious to ignore.

  “What does it do?” Irene questioned.

  “It lets me do, uh, me things easier.”

  “That’s not very… descriptive,” Irene said. “Is this stuff that we’re too young to know or…?”

  “Oh god, no.” Rory vigorously shook his head. “I mean, it’s specifically only usable by someone with my exact vocation and probably my exact matching affinity, so it’s a little vague.”

  Hence the ‘Genesis-Bound’ tag. Rory figured it was likely an even more exclusive version of the ‘Custom-Fit’ tag that Apostolos’s scythe carried. While anyone could technically use his scythe, its maximum potential could only be drawn out by Apostolos or someone with a similar affinity and skill set.

  Rory’s ring, meanwhile, being Genesis-bound, meant it was likely that only Rory could use it.

  At all.

  “Well, are you going to test it?” John spoke up, nearly vibrating with excitement.

  “I guess,” Rory said. Raising his hand, instantly a knife appeared, looking almost unmistakable from his crafting knife, albeit with an edge that promised violence, unlike his actual crafting knife.

  “Wow,” John’s eyes widened, impressed by the display.

  For Rory, it hadn’t been that impressive. His knife was his most familiar tool and was thus the easiest to project. What Rory had taken note of was it had felt… different. The best way he could describe it was like a bench press. Usually, benching a heavy weight was, well, hard. That was until your spotter had decided you’d had enough and began to lift with you.

  That’s what it was like, like a magical ‘spotter’ had suddenly stepped in and assisted him. On the one hand, that was exceptionally useful.

  On the other hand, Rory could already see how it could become a crutch. Much like if your spotter never gave you a chance to rep out weight by yourself, using the ring would prevent him from ever growing and improving his literal skill at using magic or manipulation of Pneuma.

  Still wishing to test the ring out, Rory dissipated the knife. Instead, he locked in a new image into his Mental Palace, and moments later, a scythe began to form rapidly.

  Yeah, it makes it easier, but in a counter-productive way, something I should only use if I’ve got no other choice.

  Sighing, Rory didn’t bother finishing the scythe, once more letting the conjured Pneuma dissipate.

  “Aww.” John groaned, dismayed as Rory ended the display early.

  Rolling his eyes, Rory humored the kid, once more projecting a plain-looking scythe. Finishing only ten or so seconds later, far faster than he could generally manifest an object of such size without cramming a settlement’s worth of energy down its metaphorical throat, Rory handed the weapon over to the young boy.

  Oh, how things change. Back on Earth, I wouldn’t give a kid his age plastic scissors, much less a full-on scythe.

  Perhaps Rory was a bit hyperbolic. John was almost fourteen, or maybe already fourteen, given they didn’t have an Earth-to-Aelia calendar, and in only a few years -perhaps as short as two- the boy would gain his own tier. Holding a weapon would hardly kill the boy.

  I mean, it could, but whatever. Semantics.

  “This is… awesome!” In his excitement, John began to swing the weapon like a toy, only for Irene to step in and snatch it away from him.

  “And that’s enough from you,” Irene sighed before looking at Rory. “So, do you need my help anymore?”

  “No, you’re free to go,” Rory said, dismissing her and the Pneuma holding the scythe together. Rory wasn’t sure what she needed to be doing, but he’d made it a point to let the kids have their free time and hobbies outside his sphere of influence. He was their benefactor, not their parent, after all.

  As for John and Gil, the two remained where they were. They had taken to following Rory around as his ‘aids,’ as they called it, wanna-be apprentices.

  Well, Gil isn’t that much of a wanna-be. He’s got actual skill, the literal kind, for this stuff.

  He wasn’t much of a builder but was shockingly good at handling metals and rocks.

  Guess he really did embrace that dwarf culture.

  John was less helpful. Part of that was simply being almost two years younger and a rather excitable kid who struggled to hold still. At the very least, the kid genuinely enjoyed architecture—the actual building kind, not his esoteric take on being an architect.

  As far as vocations went, Rory wouldn’t be shocked to find out Gil had a vocation the moment he was fully ‘awakened’ to his tier. Of the three teens who had awakened, Irene, Greg, and Violet, only one had a vocation already, that being Greg, who had unsurprisingly received the Vocation of ‘Chef’ with no extra bells and whistles attached.

  Irene, if anything, would end up with some managerial Vocation if such a thing existed. The girl had taken to acting as an ‘overseer’ over the rest of her ‘clan,’ her adopted family. It was helpful, Rory wouldn’t lie and say it wasn’t, but it also didn’t interest him in the slightest.

  Finally, Violet, the prematurely awakened one. Ever since she’d reached tier one, she’d spent more time with Apostolos as he took her under his wing. A wing that Violet clearly enjoyed being under, much to Apostolos’s chagrin.

  “What do you mean she has a crush on me? I’m, like, nine or so years older than her!”

  “You also barely look a day over eighteen or maybe nineteen,” Rory had pointed out, chuckling.

  “What are you laughing about? This isn’t good. In fact, it’s bad! This isn’t funny!”

  “It’s funny to me,” Rory had smirked. Part of the reason he could laugh it off was because he knew Apostolos had no duplicitous intent. He would have beaten Apostolos black and blue if he had gotten even a whiff of that. Father to them, he was not, but he was still their guardian, damn it.

  Inwardly laughing at the memory, Rory refocused. Under Apostolos’s tutelage, Rory was curious about what Vocation Violet would achieve. Vocations were strange things, almost like a class in a video game, except not at all like a class in a video game. You didn’t ‘pick’ your Vocation so much as you discovered it. Your Vocation was -at its core- simply a reflection of who you were. Before Aelia, Rory hadn’t realized how much he enjoyed the things he now did, and he discovered as much only by being named ‘Architect.’

  Speaking of Vocations.

  “Now that we’ve finished this,” Rory said, brushing himself off and standing up. “You two are free for the day.”

  “But we want to do more stuff,” John said, as Gil nodded in reluctant agreement.

  “I don’t have any more forge stuff planned for the day, and I’m not doing any further wall construction for the week,” Rory answered dismissively. Over the last few months, Rory had been working on reinforcing their walls, using available materials and the stored Fabricate Materials, building matter that could only be used as a supplemental material for whatever reason. While working on the walls, he’d let John tag along to ask questions, watch, and sometimes even help where he could.

  “Aww, c’mon.” John pleaded, but Rory was adamant.

  “Sorry, bucko, but I’ve got other plans. Mariah and I will be doing Inscription work.”

  Instantly, John’s interest waned, shrugging a moment after.

  “Okay, if you say so.”

  Rory smiled at himself, amused. To John, Inscription must have felt like taking an essay or doing homework, rather unexciting, as most of it was spent planning the runic arrangement best suited for a task.

  “Is there anything I should do?” Gil questioned. Unlike John, Rory trusted Gil to work in the forge without supervision.

  “Just process some charcoal, would you? Oh, and if you get the chance, you can do a bit of hobby work, but-”

  “Only with the mundane forges, not the Stellar Forge. I know.” Gil grumped, earning a chortle from Rory.

  “Keep it up, and you’ll really wake up a dwarf one day.”

  “Yah.” Gil waved it off as he turned to begin working at one of the smaller, mundane-looking forges.

  And I’m only half joking.

  Considering Apostolos had undergone a race change, there always existed the possibility. Dwarves may have only ever existed in fiction, but whatever Apostolos had become had never existed.

  Ehkorrus will be a right menagerie at that rate, Rory inwardly chuckled, imagining a bustling city filled with diverse people.

  But, until then, priorities.

  It was time to plan out how to make alchemy a reality.