Science is strange, especially when you can give it the middle finger. There is a relatively common and irritating butterfly monster. It can suck the iron out of humans and animals, but thats not our biggest issue. A small swarm hollowed out the iron from our construction equipment. Titus was sooo pissed when he found the leftover piles of carbon and rubber.

  Their sigils were very interesting. They could increase the density of metals by ten percent every level. Before Titus could throw them into the bank vault I snagged one of them and got it to an aspiring blacksmith friend. He had originally used the hobby to make metal lawn sculptures, now he will make adventurer gear. I look forward to seeing what the strongest pack guardian cop can do when we put him in superdense tungsten armor.

  Day 51, Owen Landers.

  Notice: you have made contact with spirit manifestation Famelicus Oculo Dominus. Would you like to purify the taint of Demiurge?

  Notice: you have claimed a second sigil from Famelicus Oculo Dominus you will receive a greater variant.

  Silas smiled as large amounts of black fog bled to electric purple. He contemplated immediately giving his affirmation to manifest his own sigil. However, he was unaware of how the process worked. Would it knock him out? Would it make him sick? It was possible that his other sigils would be inactive during that time. Regardless, it was not a risk he was willing to make.

  That wasn’t going to stop him from seeing what Greater Flesh Lord did. He opened his interface and scanned it.

  Localized sigil effects can be applied to the entire body. Silas wasn’t sure how to take that. If Bella tried to melt his hand, could he instead let her melt his entire body? If so, he was a bit disappointed, he supposed that if he had a sigil for strengthening his hands he would be able to strengthen his whole body. He sighed, that was one of the downsides of being a first mover. None of the kinks were ironed out.

  A thought occurred to Silas, “Hey Bella, can you burn my hand?”

  Bella stood from where they were carving up the non-charred parts of the beholder, “I can try, but I don’t think it will work.”

  She still trudged over and grabbed Silas by the hand. Nothing happened. The full version of Thermal Cultivator let her raise temperature by four hundred percent. Silas should be feeling something if his body temperature spiked to three hundred ninety-two degrees.

  “It still doesn’t seem to work on people,” Silas frowned, “I think anything with a soul is immune to having their bodies tampered with.”

  Bella cocked her head, “It makes sense, but do you have anything other than circumstantial evidence?”

  “Yes, hold on while I look through my history,” Silas was looking for a particular notice, “Ah here it is, Notice: You have manipulated bone sheltered by a spirit. Bone Crafter has advanced due to the feat, memory has increased to reflect this. I reset Samantha’s shoulder and got this. It makes me believe that there is some kind of shield over our bodies.”

  Bella shook her head, “Don’t trust this shield. We already know that sphinxes can affect a mind ‘sheltered by a spirit’. The only safe monster is a dead one.”

  Silas shrugged, he couldn’t deny it. He got back to butchering the beholder. The synergy with Flesh Lord was simply too great for him to leave the body behind. It made him wonder if health and stamina potions were a thing now. Would they glow green and blue? Probably not, humanity had already invented a stamina potion and named it coffee. He missed coffee, which was weird because he liked energy drinks better.

  The trip back took a day and a half, as far as Bella’s watch could tell. Silas would have made it in a little under twenty hours if he had been marching alone. Flesh Lord’s nearly limitless stamina would have made ruck marches easier, that’s for sure. It was unfortunate that the regenerative properties of the beholder only worked for Silas, but that was fine. If they needed to assault the dragonkin camp it would be very helpful.

  By the time they returned, the cloudy sky finally started to rain. It was the first earth phenomenon that had occurred since his arrival. He pushed the door rock out of the way, but none of them entered. They just stood, letting the water rinse the filth off. Silas rubbed at his face to get some of the more stubborn patches of blood off.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, soaking in a sensation that he might not ever feel again. A piece of him wanted to hurry into the burrow and see what an unlocked capacity looked like. Silas resisted it, a few minutes couldn’t hurt anything.

  Samantha jumped into the puddle, splattering Silas with mud. A spike of irritation shot through him. He quickly suppressed it, when had his temper started getting out of control. It had always been something he had to be mindful of, so he supposed nothing had truly changed.

  He looked back up, but the spell of nostalgia was broken. Silas sighed, it was time to get to work. He ducked inside the hideout and then dragged his bag full of beholder in behind him.

  He opened his interface and went to his old notifications and went to the one about capacity.

  Warning: You have hit ten capacity without achieving the greater variant of all sigils. Manifesting a personal sigil and unlocking spirit will preclude you from the greater variant of the following sigils: Flesh Lord. Would you like to proceed with activation.

  He gave his affirmation. Flesh Lord was greater, so there should be no loss. He made himself comfortable and prepared for something painful to happen. Because of course it would be painful. Instead he got a notice.

  Notice: Move to promotion requirements or meditate on your past actions.

  Silas raised an eyebrow. Was meditation a requirement for progress without an interface? If it was, he would be happy to be part of this apocalypse as opposed to the one in the past. He moved to the tab in his military handbook labeled ‘Promotion Requirements.’

  He let out a sigh of relief when he saw that text that he initially blocked the tab’s use was gone. Wait, it had said that he needed a ten capacity to unlock his spirit. Had it simply been telling him what to do without explaining any terminology? Silas once again renewed his desire to punch the president of Commune Inc. in the face. Regardless, that was behind him. He had ten capacity, time to see how exactly that helped.

  It was not what he expected…

  Select a Sigil you would like to manifest. Sigils are based on past actions and habits

  American Citizen- Zero Titles

  Greater American Citizen-One Titles

  Midwest Hunter-One Titles

  Greater Midwest Hunter- Two Titles

  US Soldier - One Titles

  Greater US Soldier-Two Titles

  Specify Action- Varible Titles

  Note: All Titles not used in the generation of a Sigil will be converted into the baseline Spirit stat.

  Silas frowned, checked his titles again, then looked back at the options. He had twelve. They sounded like a kind of currency, and from what he could see, he was rich. Frowning, he looked over his options, true to the descriptions, they were all things he had done or been for good chunks of his life.

  He wondered what American Citizen had going for it. Was it a love of freedom and aversion to authority? Silas chuckled at the thought, it would be the only way for him to be more of a stereotype than he already was. Still, the cost was one for the greater variant, leading him to believe that it was a sigil granted for the simple act of existing. That in itself was a mark against it.

  Greater Midwest Hunter and US Soldier were likely very similar. The two jobs could be summed up in a few lines with one difference. Hunters killed things they wanted dead solo or in pairs while Soldiers killed things other people wanted dead in squads or units. Honestly, they also seemed pretty basic. Both would likely help Silas kill things and that would help him escape. Spirit would also instantly be his highest stat, instantly rising to ten.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Still, Silas couldn’t help being a bit disappointed. He wasn’t particularly needy when it came to power. There was no need for him to be the most powerful on the planet. Simply strong enough to get home and protect Abby. His eyes landed on the variable option.

  “God damn you Commune Inc.” Silas growled at the interface.

  He wanted to test out what that final selection did to see what the limits of his options were. Unfortunately, he doubted that the interface would explain itself or let him shop around. The first variable sigil would likely be the one he was forced to take.

  What did he need? A piece of him wanted to ask for a Doom Guy sigil. That would solve all his problems, but knowing his luck he would get something that increased his twitch fibers while looking at a screen. So something to do with this Hell, his eyes flicked to the top of the menu. It also had to be something he routinely attempted.

  An idea came to him. For the last three months, he had been attempting a single thing.

  “I want a sigil that lets me use portals,” Silas asked, hoping that was a viable request.

  The last entry at the bottom shifted.

  Portal Manipulator- 5 Titles

  Greater Portal Manipulator- 10 Titles

  The specify action selection was gone, making Silas glad that he had not experimented. He went to accept the sigil, but paused. Ten Titles was a lot of points. Spirit was likely his strongest stat as it was the only one that seemed to deal with the supernatural, and he would be reducing the amount he got from ten down to two.

  He wanted a second opinion, “Hey Bella, I have some questions for you.”

  Bella ducked inside, her black hair soaked from the rain, “How can I be of assistance?”

  Silas quickly explained how capacity worked and the promotion requirement tab, “So I want to know if you think it's likely whatever portal ability I get is better than simply getting ten spirit and killing our way to a portal?”

  Bella wiped some water from her eyes, “I don’t have your military handbook. Though I assume it is similar to the Task Manager in my calendar add on. Either way, I only have two titles. One is for being a mother, while the second is called True Love. No explanation for either one.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow, “True Love?”

  Why hadn’t he gotten that one? His entire life in hell had been about getting home to his true love. He even had an oath to prove it.

  “I got it after sacrificing my hand for Sammy,” Bella shrugged.

  Silas nodded in understanding. The army’s favorite Bible verse was “Greater love has no one than this; to lay one's life down for his friends.” It was used by Chaplains at many funerals and by commanding officers to encourage the living. No sacrifice for a brother in arms is in vain.

  Bella took a deep breath, then continued, “I would assume that it is possible, even likely for more titles to be achievable. I don’t think sigils will be interchangeable.”

  Silas nodded, “My mind was working along a similar line, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t talking myself into what sounded good to me.”

  Bella shrugged, “emotional decisions will always be ones that we regret.”

  Silas was not sure he agree with that. It was an emotional decision when he bought flowers for Abby, yet he never regretted it. Still, confirmation was good and he hoped that five times the cost meant that this Portal Manipulator was five times better than either the soldier or the hunter options. So he mentally accepted the final option.

  Notice: Your personal sigil will be created shortly. Please find a comfortable location for the pathways to be carved in your soul.

  Pathways? Carved into his soul? That did not sound pleasant. He looked around at his surroundings, rock and furry pelts as mattresses were all that surrounded him.

  “Hey, you might want to get Samantha in here, my interface makes it sound like this could incapacitate….Ow, ow, Damnible sin!” Silas cursed.

  He had assumed carving was a metaphorical comparison. Maybe it was. That did not stop it from feeling like knives were being used to scrape the skin off his bones. It started at his heart and the base of his skull, next to his brain stem. The scraping feeling intensified to a burning.

  Silas felt like tiny people had grabbed welding torches and started melting him from the inside out. Then it spread like an oil fire over the surface of water. Silas learned why the famously uncaring interface told him to find somewhere comfortable. They likely didn’t want to get sued. He arched his back, smashing the back of his head into the stone floor. Something cracked and a wet feeling competed with the burning one for his attention.

  Then as quickly as it started, it finished. Silas was left with a pounding headache and a loose feeling, like he had just gotten out of a sauna after a good workout. He blinked, looking up at the ceiling and Samantha’s face. She was doing something to him. For a moment Silas considered resisting, but he trusted her.

  Samantha pried his teeth apart and shoved something rubbery in. The raw flesh tasted good, so Silas swallowed it. Then he was a bit disturbed by the thought. Did he really just react to raw meat like a kid to chocolate? Whatever, if that was the only lingering scar he got from hell, he would think he got a good deal.

  The piece of beholder quickly healed Silas, removing the headache letting him relax, “When you guys do that, make sure you’re laying down.”

  Bella snorted, not at all concerned for Silas’s health, “We will do that.”

  Samantha, showing just as much concern as her mother, chimed in, “So what does your new sigil do. Its personalized right? I bet you could make portal swords and cut monsters up.”

  Silas blinked. He hadn’t even considered portals as offensive tools, but relocating body parts should be effective on everything. Even kaiju.

  “Hold on, let me read it,” Silas opened his interface and noticed three changes. His titles were gone, the placeholder now simply had the number twelve beside it. The second difference was his spirit stat now had the number two beside it. He had been hoping it would start with one like everything else and get bumped to three.

  The last change was the sigil, Greater Portal Manipulator. Silas was a bit disappointed by its effect. He read it to his eager audience.

  Greater Portal Manipulator: Mentally designate an area you can see or are familiar with, open a portal to that location. Distance is limited by spirit. Greater: Focus, Memory, and Control increase with Portal Manipulator’s level.

  “That sounds good,” Bella said uncertainly.

  Silas had nothing to compare it to, so he shrugged, “I was hoping to make a portal home, but I doubt that Earth is within range.”

  There were other issues. The greater part was mostly useless. All three stats were useful, but not in a fight and not with the portals range. The only real benefit was the easy escape it offered, which he supposed was nothing to scoff at.

  “Let's test it out,” Samantha said, “I want an infinite falling loop.”

  “Uh, no,” Silas shook his head, “Even if I can do that, jumping into a hole at terminal velocity should not be an encouraged hobby.”

  Samantha gave Silas her best pleading eyes.

  “No!”

  Samantha huffed, then sat down and waited for Silas to figure out how to use the new sigil. He looked around at the shelter. It was cramped and he had no idea how large the portals would be. If Samantha was right and their edges were like razor blades, this was a bad location to open one.

  “Come on, let’s go outside,’’ Silas gestured for them to follow.

  It had stopped raining, leaving the dusty ground as a muddy mess. Silas wondered how the dragonkin were managing the new hazards. They didn’t seem adept at moving through mud and water.

  Taking a deep breath, Silas steadied his thoughts. None of the sigils came with an innate understanding, they simply affected how he interacted with the world. He assumed that his personal sigil would be the same, though it had one major difference. It needed him to use his spirit to activate it.

  “Hey, do you think spirit is like mana?” Silas asked.

  Bella frowned, not understanding. Samantha gasped in horror, “I hope not, imagine what would happen if your spirit was a consumable resource.”

  Silas paused, that was a very good point. His spirit was not a resource to be consumed. Phantasmologists hadn’t been able to damage spirits, but by the same token, that meant they had been unable to heal them. Any problems he created would be permanent.

  He shook his head, it was a bit late to consider safety. If he had wanted safety, absorbing the crystallized remnants of a spirit manifestation would have been counterproductive. Pushing his worries aside he looked across the lake and activated Greater Portal Manipulation.

  Nothing happened. He tried again to no effect. It felt like trying to create flexible bones all over again. Thankfully he knew that the sigil did not require a verbal component. Opening his interface, he looked at the spirit stat, could he move one of those points to his sigil.

  Something clicked. The cracking of electricity startled Silas, causing him to jump back. He had half drawn his mantis blade before he realized that a portal had opened before him. Silas leaned around it and looked to the opposite side of the lake. A swirling purple oval hung in the air.

  “Can I go through?” Samantha asked, bouncing up and down in excitement.

  “Please wait,” Silas asked. He ran his finger lightly along the edge of the oval. It felt like touching a balloon covered in static electricity, which masked just how dangerous the portal was. He showed Samantha the bone deep cut on his index finger, “I really don’t want this to shut on you.”

  Bella’s eyes widened and she placed a restraining hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Silas felt a surprising amount of relief at the action. They had a lot of testing to do before anyone was going through. Even then, Silas would be the first one, he could likely grow back missing limbs if they got chopped off.

  He walked around the portal. One side was the swirling purple that he had come to associate with hell, the other was a gate that exited on the opposite side lake. Silas frowned, he was starting to see why this sigil had been so expensive. With enough spirit, this could allow him to plant explosives, transfer supplies, and escape tricky circumstances. All that was possible with the utility he saw in the first use.

  It was time to test its limits, “We need to see how long it stays open. Bella, can you use your watch’s timer?”

  A few light beeps later, a timer started. Then they went about their day. Well Silas and Bella did, Samantha threw rocks through the portal. Twelve hours later, they were gathered around the still open portal.

  Samantha gave her thoughts, “I think this works by folding space and poking a pencil through it.”

  Silas frowned, what did portals have to do with pencils? Thankfully, Bella was there to translate, “There is a theory, the same one many physicists are using to attempt portal travel, that claims space can be bent. They will often demonstrate this by folding a piece of paper that represents space and jabbing a pencil through it. The resulting hole should allow someone to skip the center of the paper when traveling between both edges.”

  “What does that have to do with the portal being open for hours on end. I assume bending space takes a ridiculous amount of energy,” Silas asked.

  Bella shrugged, “Only if you intend to use physics. It's in the name, the study of physical things and how they relate to each other. You aren’t using physics, you are using something supernatural.”

  Silas nodded slowly, “Somebody knows their science.”

  Bella did something odd. She looked away and blushed. Silas frowned, hoping that she was just unused to praise. Regardless, he had other things to focus on.

  If this followed the logic the two girls put forward, the metaphorical pencil was his spirit. If he took that away, it should close. So he called back the spirit. Something slotted back into him, filling up something he hadn’t even realized was missing. So spirit was not like mana, it was a power source he could slot his sigils into.

  He pushed spirit into the sigil again. This time he paid attention to how it felt for whatever spirit was to be removed. The movement came from his sigil, it connected to something inside him and another portal flared to life. He had used the same exit point to reduce variables. The second portal functioned just like the first. So he closed it and tried it again, this time he would throw a cockroach through.

  Portal Manipulator tried to connect, but there was some kind of barrier. He tried to force the connection, but he barely understood how his sigils worked, let alone how they interacted with his spirit. It wasn’t that his sigil was on cooldown, it felt the same as ever.

  Silas turned his attention to the two points of spirit. He lacked the experience to know how they should feel. So he opened his interface hoping to see what the holdup was. Something had changed, his spirit stat had a countdown beside it. The number was currently at fifteen seconds. Did spirit have a cooldown period?

  While he was surprised, he supposed that he shouldn’t have been. The monsters were spirits and they had a cooldown to revive. Maybe this was something similar. The countdown hit zero before immediately resetting to thirty seconds. Silas opened a portal with no trouble. Thirty seconds later the countdown ended and no new one started. He closed the portal and the timer started up again.

  “Strange,” He muttered.

  “What is it?” Bella asked.

  “It seems that there is a recharge period for spirit. Thirty seconds per point, though they don’t seem to be a consumable resource, at least from a power volume point of view. It's like whatever connects them to the sigil needs a bit of time to recover,” Silas tried to explain. He wasn’t doing a great job of it, but they weren’t too far off from being able to use spirit themselves.

  Again he felt that opening portals every thirty seconds was a bit too strong. There had to be a distance limitation then. He could get around to testing that later. First, he needed to close the portal on a baby roach to see if it would get cut in half. Logic dictated that it would, but logic also said that all heat was the same, yet Bella was only immune to her own.

  Just like before, the bug at the corpse pile didn’t care when he scooped up a few of their children and experimented on them. The first he tossed through the portal to no effect. It went through just like Samantha’s rocks had. That gave Silas the courage to step through, himself. There was no weird feeling, no membrane or other division between one side and the other. For all intents and purposes, it was a doorway, but the wall it was set into was space itself.

  “Sorry little guy,” Silas felt a bit silly. People weren’t supposed to have compassion for bugs. Even if they were harmless babies who ate trash.

  Then he closed the portal on it. It collapsed until it touched the insect’s carapace and stopped. Silas quickly checked his interface and found that the countdown had restarted. He wasn’t the one keeping the portal open. All his dreams of slicing enemies in half faded, if a bug could keep it open, so could a dragonkin.

  Silas released the insect, letting it scramble through the opening, which closed behind it. Maybe any spirit was able to keep the hole in space open? It did mean that he could safely do one thing. He opened it for the fourth time and stepped through.

  “Alright, you should be good to go through,” Silas said to Samantha.

  She cheered and dashed through. Samantha stopped on the other side, looking a bit disappointed, “I thought it would feel different. It's boring.”

  Silas smirked before closing the portal, stranding her on the other side of the lake. She yelled for a few minutes, but started swimming after she realized that he wasn’t reopening it. Several other things needed to be ironed out. Primarily could he change the orientation of the portals?

  The answer was yes, though the two entrances always pointed in exact opposite directions and one entrance always faced Silas. If one pointed down the exit would point up. If the entrance was up, then Samantha would jump in, so Silas only tried that once. Thankfully the exit had been over the lake.

  “Is there a place where these wouldn’t be useful?” Bella asked.

  Silas was well and truly over his disappointment. Even if it took a year, they would be able to safely kill off the dragonkin. Dropping lava just became a viable, risk free strategy.

  “Honestly, I can’t think of one,” Silas said, “the base sigil will be worth ten titles all on its own.”

  Bella nodded, “Let's test the range, then see about getting my final greater sigil.”

  There was no reason to delay. So Silas climbed up to the top of their home formation and activated the sigil at the farthest point he could see. Nothing happened. He selected a closer point. Again nothing happened. He was about two miles out when the portal finally opened.

  He checked his interface and found that both points of spirit were needed. So, it was a mile per point. That was less than he expected. It would still let them escape the dragonkin as well as drop stuff on them, but they would need to be dangerously close to begin with.

  Plans to make a path of forward bases started forming in his head. For the first time in a while, escaping hell was more than just a hope driven by desperation. They had a real chance to get out alive.