“Yes, I actually made those as an experiment.” She tapped her temple with her index finger. “I could never quite get it before, but I was working on it all morning. It just sort of clicked. Guess it’s the new smarts.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, I figured I can just try to make emitters similar to those utilizing the Etheric Flame. That’s why I’ve been practicing on them.” She gestured to the table. “I researched everything I could find on them. Most of these books are from the archive, so I’ll need to return them. I read everything they wouldn’t let me take thanks to my Rank there, though, hence the notes.” She waved a hand through the air like she was wiping something away. “Anyway, I’ll be ready to try making the emitters for the gateway soon. So just let me know when you want me to start.”
“I’m thinking two days, tops.” I touched my sword, feeling bad Gwen would be trapped two more days, but there was nothing for it. If we couldn’t get her and get back, we couldn’t save her. Rushing in would just get everyone killed, and I wouldn’t sacrifice everyone just to save her, no matter how much I liked her. That wasn’t fair to everyone else.
“Okay, I’ll be ready,” she said, running a hand through her hair and combing it out of her face. “If that’s all, I think I’d better get back to work. Buffy says these sell well, so I’m going to make as many as I can so we can buy more materials for me to practice. I’m trying to get really good at it.”
“Alright, I’ll leave you alone.” I nodded to her before turning to the apprentices. “How are they doing?”
“They’re doing better than expected. It actually helps a lot because I can show them how to do helpful tasks and not have to waste time on it myself.”
“So, they do grunt work,” I said, turning back to her.
“Everyone does grunt work for a while. It’s how you learn.” She shrugged. “Trust me, you gave me the smarts.”
“Hey, I do trust you,” I said. “I just wondered. Oh, what about the dragon scale?”
“We’re making dragon scale shields and armor,” Sam said, waving to the apprentices. “Well, they are, mostly. I’m just taking off the rough edges. It won’t be quite as good as if I did it myself but it’ll be close enough that me spending the extra time probably isn’t worth it.”
“All right,” I said, turning to go. I was just happy they were working. The sooner we got better gear for our people, the sooner we’d be ready to go after Gwen because I really didn’t want to finish the Nexus Gateway and then have to wait for our people to get weapons and armor made. “Keep up the good work, you two.”
“We will,” the apprentices said, both watching my every move. I wasn’t sure if they were going to pounce on me, but I definitely did not want them to do that here. As fun as being with Maribelle had been, I was worn out and needed a shower.
Before they could say more, I was out the door and headed toward Sally’s alchemist shop. I wanted to know how she’d progressed in her Etheric Flame Skill, and besides, if upgrading Sam had helped so much, I’d better just upgrade Sally too. Doing so would probably reap greater dividends.
A few minutes later, I was walking through her door. She sat in front of a giant bronze bowl that looked both new and used at the same time. A shelf full of Etheric Flame glittered behind her, and as I approached, she looked up. Her face was flecked with bits of silver dust from whatever she was working on so she glimmered in the light of her own firebrands. Sam wasn’t kidding. She really had made a bunch of them.
“Hi, Arthur,” she said, swallowing hard. “Did you need something?”
“Not really, I just wanted to see you,” I said, moving to examine the shelf full of Etheric Flame. These looked much higher quality than the one she’d made while we’d been traveling, and as I glanced back at her, I opened her Skill Tree and saw her Specialty: Etheric Flame had been raised from one out of ten to six out of ten.
“What about?” Sally asked, turning to watch me as I picked up the brightest Etheric Flames she’d refined.
Etheric Flame - Red
Material: Gemstone
Grade: S
Contains the essence of a fallen red dragon. Has finished the refining process.
“Wow, you really have gotten good at this.” I held up the Etheric Flame. “This is S grade.”
“Thanks,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’ve gotten quite good at it, actually. I think I’ve gotten a few more S grade ones.” She frowned. “It’s hard because the difference between a S grade and an A grade isn’t very much really, but there’s a huge range of A grade.” She pointed at two green ones sitting on a shelf, and one was clearly better than the other. “For instance, both of those are considered A.”
I looked, and sure enough, they were both A grade. “Is it like comics and stuff? Where some flaws weigh more heavily than others?”
“Basically,” she said, coming and pointing at the darker one. “This one is perfect but has bad luminosity, which drops it from S to A. Otherwise, it’s absolutely perfect.” Her finger moved to the other. “This one actually has internal fractures, but otherwise is perfect. That’s what’s dropping it.” She looked back to me. “You almost need a really good one to start with to get S grade. A isn’t super difficult, but S? S requires good stock to begin with.”
“Hmm, is there a way to tell before we buy them? Maybe we can get rough ones that are more likely to become S grade?” I asked, moving down the shelf. Now that she’d explained it, I could see what she was talking about in a few of the others. Sometimes it was a small nick, other times it was a weird inner darkness.
“Not particularly,” she said with a shrug. “Not that’d be worth it. The ultimate problem is that I can’t sell these for squat. Even S grade is only worth a bit more than A. So, it’s probably not worth the manual effort to sort them.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “Mostly, I’m just practicing since I finished refining all the Dark Blood and Demon Horn. Granted the Demon Horn is so common, it really doesn’t do much…”
“Do you know what Annabeth is using in her sculptures? What grade?” I asked, turning my gaze back to her.
“A grade mostly, but that’s because we’ve been saving the S grades for the final construction of the Nexus Gateway Conduit. If you’d like, we can change it up?” She pointed to the shelf where I’d grabbed the S grade Etheric Flame. “That’s all the S grade we have though.”
“Just six?” I asked, surprised because there were almost a hundred on the shelf.
“Just six. As I said, it sort of depends a lot on the Etheric Flame itself. A few I messed up, but it’s not that many. Maybe three.” She flushed a little. “That was before though. I haven’t messed any up in a while.”
“Makes sense,” I said, rubbing my chin. We had six of them, and we’d need at least three for each Nexus Gateway attempt. That would let us try twice, but since I was sure we’d need S grade for each of the components as well, that meant each one would require nine. Not good odds.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, looking at me nervously. “You seem worried.”
“I was just thinking we need at least nine S-grade per attempt, and maybe more.” I sighed. “How many more roughs do we have?”
“Another hundred or so. We should be okay.” She gave me a weak smile. “If it’s anything like the last batch, I’ll get another six on the low end, maybe more.”
“Not good odds, we may have to buy more.” I stared at the shelf. “I’ll go talk to Buffy.”
“I don’t think we can. I already had Buffy buy everything from Blade’s End. It’s on its way, but it’s only about double what we have here.” She nodded furiously then. “I’ll work harder though. It’ll be okay. I will make sure of it.”
“I know you will, I’m not worried about that.” I gave her a thumb’s up.
“My firebrands are getting better too,” she said, pointing at the ceiling. “I used the emitters from Sam and got Annabeth to make some conduits. It was actually Elizabeth’s idea to try.”
�
��Not Sam’s?” I asked, somewhat surprised. “I thought she was making them.”
“Well, it was sort of a group thing. I guess Sam can take credit.” Sally flushed slightly. “She wanted the materials to make emitters, and when we asked her why, she explained her thought process. Then Elizabeth got it in her head to just make the whole thing so all of us could practice.”
“Ah.” I nodded. Sam had an idea, and Elizabeth had monetized it. That made perfect sense.
“Don’t be upset with Sam about it,” she said, shaking her head. “It really was mostly her idea.”
“I’m not.” I shook my head back at her. “Not even slightly. I love how well it worked out. Gives us a way to practice for profit. That’s the best thing ever.”
“I’m glad.” Sally let out a relieved sound. “Really.”
“There was just one more thing,” I said, opening her Character Sheet.
“What’s that?” Sally asked, not looking at me.
“I want to go ahead and upgrade your Stats. It may help with the refining. Is that okay?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. That would be great.” She gave me a strange look.
“Awesome,” I said, looking over her Stats. “Now let’s see.”
Name: Sally
Experience: 36,543
Strength: 10/100
Agility: 40/100
Charisma: 25/100
Intelligence: 56/100
Special: 86/100
“Okay, looks like it will take about seventy-five-hundred Experience to raise your Special, Intelligence, and Agility to ninety-five.” I looked back at her. “You have about thirty-six thousand, so that’s okay, right?”
“Of course,” she said, and I made the change. As blue light surrounded her, she blinked at me a few times. “Wow, thanks.” She gave me a mischievous grin. “I feel way smarter.”
“Well, I nearly doubled your Intelligence, so that’s not too surprising.” I smiled at her. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. I definitely need a shower.” I sniffed at myself. “I stink.”
“Not going to work out with Sheila today?” she asked, moving next to me.
“No, I’m too tired for that. I mostly just want to be clean.” I tugged at my shirt, and it stuck to me.
“Ah, well do you mind if I walk with you? Crystal is there, and I want to ask her about something.”
“Sure, let’s go. You can let her know I’m waiting, that way she doesn’t use all the hot water again,” I said, moving out of the shop and heading toward the bathhouse. Like it normally was at this time of what passed for day in Hell, it was empty, but even still, I could hear one of the showers inside. That must have been Crystal. It was always a little weird because I had to wait until it was empty to go inside since it was communal.
“I’ll go tell her,” Sally said as we approached, and before I could say anything, she vanished into the building. I waited there, leaning against the wooden frame and wondered if it was worth it to have Maribelle build me my own shower. It seemed like a waste of resources, but at the same time, sometimes it was too hard for me to get one because of all the people.
A few moments later, Sally poked her head back out. “She’s almost done, it’ll just be a second.” She moved out from the doorway. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.” I smiled at her. “Thanks for checking.”
“Of course,” Sally said, moving toward me and taking up the spot on the wall beside me. “I wanted to ask you something, anyway.”
“What’s that?” I said, raising an eyebrow at her. “Do you need some more materials or something?”
“No, it’s more” She cleared her throat, “Well, here’s the thing…” She shut her eyes for a long moment. “I guess I should just say it.” As she squirmed, I started to get worried. Was there some kind of problem?
“That would be best, yes. Trust me, I’m pretty amenable.” I tried to give her a disarming smile but it must not have worked because she looked back toward the entrance of the showers.
“Yeah, okay.” She took a deep breath and turned to look at me. “Here’s the thing. Crystal drew number fifteen in the, um, schedule.” Sally looked away again, studying the wall like it was terribly interesting.
“Ah, I see. Are you okay with that?” I said, not sure quite how to take that. I’d always thought Crystal and Sally were a couple, so the fact that she’d taken a number was, well, I wasn’t even sure.
“Not really, that’s kind of the problem.” She shook her head. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh? Well, if it’s a problem,” I said, reaching out and touching her shoulder. “Honestly, I’m not even sure—”
“No, that isn’t my problem. Not really.” Sally waved off my train of thought. “My problem is I got number two, and we were wondering if maybe you’d be okay with sharing? Like maybe we could both go at the same time?”
“Did you just say what I think you said?” I asked. She’d just blown my mind.
“I think so?” she asked, blushing. “If it’s not okay, I totally understand.” She gave me a weak smile. “But would you think about it?”
“You’re asking me if it’s okay if we all three have sex at the same time?” I said, still a bit dumbstruck.
“Yes, but it’s okay if you don’t want to do that. I don’t want you to feel pressured. I just sort of hoped…” She touched my arm. “It was probably wrong of me to ask. I’m sorry. Um… maybe I can make it up to you? You were going to shower right? I could wash your back.”
“Just give me a second,” I said, shutting my eyes for a second while I did a little mental cheer. This was really happening. Oh my god.
“I really wish I hadn’t brought it up now,” she said, and when I opened my eyes, she wasn’t looking at me. “If you want, I can give up my spot.”
“No, look, what you just offered would be great,” I said, nodding to her, “if it’s what you two want.”
“It is,” she said, her face lighting up. She grabbed my hands in hers. “Thank you so much.” Then she kissed me, pressing her lips against mine as she pulled me toward the shower door.
45
The next few days went by in a blur as we assembled the pieces for the Nexus Gateway Conduit. We’d wound up using Sam’s idea and forging the emitter and the conduit itself like they were in the firebrand since despite our best efforts, we couldn’t find another way. Hopefully, it would work. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. That would be for damned sure.
Still, even though Annabeth’s statues were done and the apothecary had crafted potions to temporarily boost both luck and skill, I was worried. If it didn’t work, Gwen would remain trapped in the Graveyard of Statues for even longer. The only thing that made me able to even tolerate that was that, somehow, she seemed to be gaining strength. With each day that passed, I’d felt the pulse of her power grow. I wasn’t sure why, but it did make me feel better.
“I guess there’s no time like the present,” I said, turning my gaze to Sally. She was standing with Sam and Annabeth on her right and Crystal on her left. We were in the spot where Nadine had opened the gateway to escape. I wasn’t sure if it mattered where it was, but since I knew one had been formed here, I figured it was better safe than sorry. After all, it had to be easier to reopen one instead of making another, right?
Then again, it wasn’t like we were actually going to open a gateway here. No, we were going to craft the item and then siege the Graveyard of Statues. Once that was done, and we’d rescued Gwen, we would use it to escape. At least that was the plan.
“Okay,” Sally said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
She raised her hands high overhead. As lightning lit up the sky and thunder boomed, she began to chant. I couldn’t understand the words because they were in that weird demonic language I couldn’t comprehend, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t feel the power in them.
It swelled up all around me, thrumming through the air like an electric storm. T
he hair on the back of my neck came to attention, and my heart hammered in my chest as the sky turned into a churning mass of darkness.
Lightning scoured the horizon as Sally brought her hands down in a decisive arc. Power tore from the sky and smashed into the spot in front of her where we had laid out the conduit, the emitter, and the Etheric Flame in a triangle. There was one set for each of the three colors, and as power coursed from the sky, I felt the ground beneath our feet heat up.
I turned my gaze downward as a tornado of swirling blue, green, and red sparks sprang to life in the center of the triangle. More power buffeted outward, and the wind howled, sweeping down through the town and throwing dust and debris in every direction. A chill wrapped around me as I stared at the glowing mass of objects. I couldn’t tell if it was working, but as Sally channeled more power into the spell, I saw blood on her face.
My eyes widened as I realized it was coming from her nose, eyes, and ears to collect on her chin and spatter across the ground. A quick look at her Stats told me why. Her Health was dropping. Fast.
“Dammit,” I said, grabbing Clarent and pulling it free of its sheath. I’d intended to use it to increase her Health or give her some innate regeneration Abilities, but as soon as the sword came free, it began to blaze with sapphire fire.
My eyes went wide as it began to pulse in time with the swirling vortex of color around the Nexus Gateway. Then a message popped up.
Do you wish to augment the process? Y/N.
I had no idea what that meant, but the word augment was glowing. After taking another look at Sally’s Health, I swiped my hand over it.
Augmenting the process allows the Builder to sacrifice Health to increase the odds of success. In order to increase chances, 2% of the Builder’s Health will be sacrificed to increase the chance of success by 1%. Health will continue to drain until success is achieved or the user dies. Do you wish to augment the process? Y/N
I stared at the message. Of course, I wanted to augment the process, but I didn’t actually know how much Health I had nor if we were close enough to success for it to matter. For all I knew, I was at eighty percent Health, and we only had a twenty percent chance of success. After all, most of the people I worked with seemed to naturally fluctuate between about seventy-five percent and one hundred percent depending on if they were hungry, tired, or just plain beat up.
The Builder's Sword (The Legendary Builder Book 1) Page 26