Today we do our duty as members of mankind. A real representative from Denver arrived to escort a team of five law enforcement members armed with condensed steel armor and five gold ranked adventurers. I was sent to make sure everything was above board. Of course, Dad wasn’t going to leave me to go fight Vampires on my own.

  The representative cried when he saw what we were sending. Evidently, sigils are much rarer in the outside world. People who have them tend to hoard them. Some of that happens in Greenriver, but it is done mainly to equip the combat groups with the best sets of sigils. Metal mantises, Beholders, Werewolves, Hell Chickens, and Glass Ticks all give good combat sigils, it simply isn’t wise to waste those on someone who wants to be safe within a walled city. It came as a surprise when I found out that this representative only had lesser sigils. The world is in trouble if Greenriver is doing better than everyone else.

  Day 83, Owen Landers

  The dragon kin acolyte screeched as Bella connected the finishing blow. It had died a brutal and painful death. Silas was rethinking his stance on using lava as a weapon. It was a horrendous way to die and he was getting unsettled with the fact that he was becoming desensitized to it. Was this how the Nazis felt, horror at first, then acceptance?

  Not that those sentiments would stop him. He would kill his way through a mountain of monsters to get back to Abby. He could deal with the trauma later.

  “I have the sigil,” Bella said.

  “Anything else?” Silas asked.

  “No, I still only have five levels in thermal cultivator and four in sturdy gatherer,” Bella shook her head.

  “I think I got a level in my bubble power,” Samantha chirped, then she frowned, “Or it might be my imagination.”

  Silas nodded, opening a portal to their nearest safe house. Three more had been set up over the last week, each one in line. Only one more and they would be able to strike at the camp itself. When he had first received the objective to wipe out the dragonkin, he had imagined himself striding in like some sort of superhuman and wiping them out. However, guerrilla warfare was proving vastly more effective.

  It was a bit concerning just how effective it was. Without the need to travel through enemy territory, he could just open a portal in the sky and then attack any weak point he found. The dragonkin put up a fight, but they never needed to engage with more than a single one at a time.

  The week of portals and violence had also been good for Silas’s sigil growth. Portal Manipulator grew by two levels. He had assumed that the effect on his mind would be unnoticeable, but receiving control, focus, and memory had been shocking. If his body were like a remote control car, then his mind was the remote. Memory would be the protective shell that held everything together and kept the delicate internals safe. Focus would be the battery that powered it. Wisdom would then be the controls.

  Lacking wisdom felt like it should be a handicap, but nothing adverse had occurred. He didn’t feel dumb or struggle to string ideas together. Originally he had wondered if it controlled the effectiveness of spirit, but he couldn’t really imagine how to improve his portals or bone crafting.

  He stepped through the floating aperture into their safe house, before jumping from hideout to hideout until they reached their home base. Samantha juggled two dragonkin sigils before tossing them into the ever growing pile of purple crystal. They would have to dig another room to hold everything.

  Bella flopped to the floor, “How long can it possibly take to get a single level?”

  Silas shrugged, “I understand your pain, I worked for three weeks before you arrived and got nothing. Then I fought that bear and got two. It really seems finicky.”

  Bella looked at the bone claw at the end of her shield a bit longingly, “You're sure that danger isn’t a factor in growth?”

  “No, I am sure it is. At least to some extent,” Silas thought aloud, “You got three really fast levels in thermal cultivator by using your sigil at a level you weren’t ready for.”

  Bella crawled into the alcove and closed her eyes, “Yeah, but I burned my hand the first time and burned it off the second time.”

  Silas shrugged, he understood why she was eager to progress. Greater Thermal Cultivator had a ridiculous ability. Samantha had believed that it allowed her to change heat to motion, which was correct, though with some limitations. The girls had to be touching whatever they wanted to move.

  For Samantha, this meant making superheated bubbles and shooting them like a fire mage. Bella would be able to have a functional prosthetic. At least that was the hope. Regardless, that was what Silas was working on. Thank God, he had a sculpting talent, because hands were stupidly hard to get right.

  The hand was essentially a glove that would fit snugly over Bella’s ruined stump. Layers of flexible enamel filled out the shape while bone rings formed the solid surfaces that hands tended to have. The end result looked slightly insectile in nature, with a carapace covering the bulk of the prosthetic and the enamel sinew exposed at the joints.

  Silas inspected the prosthetic once it was completed. It was stronger than his own, at least when it came to durability. He wondered if it was possible to upgrade his body. Clearly, the monsters here had quirks that made them better, metal plates, fire breath, claws, flight, hypnotic voices, and much more. Silas knew he could never have them all, but if Bella could get an upgrade why couldn’t he?

  He looked back at Bella and Samantha, they were sleeping. Likely they still would be asleep in a few hours. Silas sighed and leaned back against the wall. Not needing to sleep was starting to get depressing. There were people around him, but none to speak with. Maybe there would be a secret community of Flesh Lord sigil holders that got together at night. The thought made him smile.

  That train of thought only entertained him for a few minutes. Then he was bored again. Looking around he tried to find something to pass the time. His eyes fell on Bella’s war club, still covered in blood and monster viscera. The Aztec weapon had been brutal and high maintenance. He needed to replace the stone blades lining its edge after every hunt.

  Silas squinted at the weapon. If he looked at it in the right way, it could be something epic. Glancing at Bella, he wondered how well it would work with her sigils. Just to be safe he wouldn’t touch her war club, but he did start constructing a second vastly more awesome tool of destruction.

  _______________________________________________________________________________Bella-

  Bella woke the next morning to cheering. Groggily she rolled out of bed and looked at the source of the cheering. Silas stood in the middle of their home holding her war club like it was a baby.

  “I did it!” Silas said.

  “You did what?” Bella yawned.

  He rotated her club so that the flat was facing her. Placing a finger on one of the teeth, he pushed. They all spun around the bone core.

  “Chainsword!” Silas grinned.

  Bella blinked at the bastardized chainsaw sword hybrid. She was not a morning person, at least not without a minimum of a liter of coffee. So her brain was still trying to picture just how that could work when Sammy woke up.

  Sammy was, unfortunately, a morning person, “Ooooh, can you make her power armor too?”

  Silas glanced at Sammy with a smile, “Giant shoulder pads with skull and eagle decals?”

  Sammy raised her fist, “Chaos shall not overcome us.”

  “If it's not human, kill it,” Silas nodded solemnly.

  Bella frowned, “What is going on? Why did you ruin my weapon?”

  “Oh no, your war club is over there,” Silas gestured to the weapon, which was leaning against the wall where she had left it.

  It was caked in grime and the stone teeth had not been repaired. Bella blinked at it. Why wasn’t it clean? Had Silas really chosen to build some gaudy new toy instead of maintaining her equipment? She grimaced, it was not too much to ask him to tidy up with the eight extra hours a day that he had.

  She was about to start complaining when she saw Sammy laughing while making ‘vroom’ noises and holding the chainsword. Her daughter was actually happier here on an alien death world than in middle school. What the hell, they didn’t have anything on earth, so why not build a different kind of life? Hunting demons didn’t sound like a terrible life to lead.

  Groaning, Bella got to her feet. She was jealous of Silas’s physical sigil, no aches, so pains, and two hands. She started her morning routine of stretches and exercises. That was followed by a bland breakfast of unseasoned meats. It was the only thing to eat in this place, Bella had hoped that some of the weeds would be edible. Unfortunately, she didn’t recognize any of them and they were mostly bitter tasting.

  Once her morning routine was complete, Bella finally had the clarity to focus on what Silas was doing. He was scraping some kind of emblem into Sammy’s chest plate. Her daughter was critiquing him as he used a needle to draw whatever thing had caught her fancy.

  “Why did you make a sword chainsaw?” Bella knew for certain that there was no motor to spin the teeth.

  “Because it's cool. Also once you hit ten capacity, you can convert heat energy into kinetic energy, right? So why not make something like this,” Silas said, then he continued, “I’m also pretty sure that the dragonkin will be unable to defend against it. At least I have not noticed any of them with shields or armor beyond what they naturally possess.”

  Bella paused, that was actually not bad logic. It would be beyond gory, but so was every fight. Melee weapons were not regularly used to hunt for exactly that reason.

  “What about me? I want one,” Sammy pleaded.

  “Absolutely not,” Bella said. No way in hell was she letting her daughter get close to anything that had a chance of getting through her armor.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “But mom, I have better sigils for it than you do,” Sammy responded.

  “Your mom is right, you shouldn’t get near the dragonkin,” Silas said, “Have your sigils given you any Vitality or Body? Because you will need them if you want to slug it out.’’

  Sammy slumped, “I don’t know, I don’t have the biotech. Something is different, but I don’t know what.”

  Silas nodded, “It is likely that your mental abilities are getting the biggest workout. If I had to guess your control, focus, and memory are the ones that have likely seen the most growth.”

  Sammy slumped as her dreams of being a berserker were crushed. Bella felt a pang of irritation at how well she responded to Silas. She had never been an easy child at home, more interested in playing outside than doing her chores or schoolwork. However, it felt wrong for her to respond just as well to Silas as she did to her own father. Maybe Silas was filling a void left by Connor.

  Bella sighed as she began donning her armor. She couldn’t really blame Sammy, Bella herself felt like a different person. Australia felt like a part of the distant past, despite only having been gone for three months. She had covered over the trauma of one death with the constant trauma that was her life.

  She picked a bit of dried meat off her clawed shield. It didn’t disgust her anymore. Sure a shower would be nice, but it was a thing of the past.

  “You ready to get going?” Bella nodded to the blank wall they had made for portal travel.

  They had found that while the interior of the portal couldn’t cut them, the exterior could. It would slice through stone with no issues and could cut them if they accidentally walked into it. Fortunately, it wouldn’t open inside a living creature, they had tried to slice a dragonkin in half and failed.

  Silas glanced up, “Yes, let's get going. I was thinking about what you said. Struggle is part of growth, we need to find something a bit more dangerous, a pair of lesser warriors, or maybe just a single regular one, if one exists in this tribe. We need something that will push us to the advancement threshold.”

  Bella frowned, “Next one? I thought you had already advanced and gotten your sigil.”

  Silas shrugged, “there’s one after that, something called diversification and it requires thirty capacity. My biotech is frustratingly vague about what any of it means.”

  “At least you know what capacity is now,” Bella smiled.

  He chuckled as the crackling purple oval opened before them, “Kind of, I know that it is either levels or stats. My Portal sigil makes those two things not quite line up.’’

  They stepped through the aperture into the dark interior of a safe house. Thirty seconds later, another portal connected them to a second safe house. This process was repeated another two times until they reached the one closest to the nest. Silas couldn’t quite reach it with his next jump, but he could get really close.

  Bella was not sure how many people could realistically get portal manipulator, but the sigil was insane. They had just traveled eight miles in four minutes. Bella wasn’t the best at the miles to kilometers conversion, but she was sure that it was faster than most sports cars.

  “Alright, let's look for a target,” Silas said.

  They sat down on the floor, something that Bella had made a mandatory rule. She didn’t want Sammy falling through and splatting on the ground miles below. The portal opened on the floor, giving them a bird’s eye view of the cracked plains below. From above it looked like a large plate of fine china had been dropped. Bella found the landscape unsettling, like an angry god had struck this world with a hammer. She glanced at Silas, she watched him pray every morning, so maybe he actually thought a god did it.

  Small figures were moving about below. A few noticed the portal and scurried for cover, they had likely become a nightmare for the dragonkin. In the distance, Bella could see the dragonkin camp. Smoke rose from the place it was located. She frowned, smoke meant fire. More accurately something getting burned into particles that were light enough to be carried upwards on a warm updraft.

  “Silas, can you get a better look at the nest?” Bella asked, leaning in a bit for a closer look. She stopped herself when she remembered that it was a two mile drop, not a computer screen.

  “Sure, but it will be at more of an angle, most of the nest will be obscured by the formations,” Silas paused as he searched for the next place for the opening, “Why, what did you see?”

  Silas likely assumed that he would see better than her with his higher stats. Bella wasn’t sure how all that worked, but she was a decade older and had more experience in the ways the world worked. She pointed to the smoke, “See the smoke, that’s not normal.”

  “It's not normal that fire monsters make smoke?” Silas asked.

  “Not here, but especially not black smoke like that,” Bella explained, “Either they are cooking something really nasty or they are burning rubber.”

  Silas’s eyes widened, “You think they are harvesting resources from Earth?”

  “Why would the monsters want to pollute their home,” Sammy asked innocently, “It is better to recycle rubber than to burn it. Some places have figured out how to build houses from it like big lego bricks.”

  “I’m pretty sure that hell and pollution should go hand in hand,” Silas muttered as he opened another portal, this one much closer.

  Bella had to agree with Silas. These spiritual manifestations had killed Connor, a complete genocide was the only logical response. Destroying the planet so they could never recover would simply be thorough. Maybe they could use portal sigils and turn the place into a dump.

  The second portal opened, and it was much closer. However, all they were able to see was the top of a few rock formations.

  “Sorry, give me a minute to get the angle right,” Silas stood and started experimenting to get the opening correct.

  It took a few minutes, but eventually they were looking at a portal sitting at an eighty degree angle from the floor. The ten degree slant let them see the valley that the nest was in, but the formations stopped them from seeing what was going on. With the amount of smoke billowing out, it had to be quite the fire.

  “I’m at the edge of my range,” Silas said.

  Bella grimaced, “Should we check it out? They might have resources we can use.”

  She could only imagine what they could do if there were things from Earth there. Pillows, blankets, tools, non-meat food, and clothes. Bella would even be happy with random metal bits she could melt into utensils, bone was great with Silas’s sigil, but it couldn’t do everything.

  “There might be people,” Silas said, “we have enough heat cultivator sigils for thirty people. I’ll need to make another distiller. No, rescue first, logistics second.”

  Bella paused. Yeah, people, she decided not to say anything. Who had pillows as a higher priority than people? Well, she did, Bella supposed.

  That was when her second surprise arrived. Silas jumped through the portal onto the dirt five meters below. Bella frowned, how could they save anyone with their current setup? There had to be a hundred dragonkin, it was a problem they could solve in time. Unfortunately her decision was made for her when Sammy jumped through after Silas.

  “Catch me!” She yelled as she fell.

  Silas did, with no apparent strain, “You should figure out how to handle a jump before making one.”

  “That's what you are for,” Sammy said haughtily, “Wait, don’t you…ow.”

  Silas chuckled at her grumpy expression as he dropped her on her butt. Bella would have thought the scene was funny if they weren’t less than a kilometer from the nest. She jumped through, easily making the landing. Her body was improved and the excess weight of the armor was not great enough to make the fall problematic.

  “We need to be quiet. There is an army of monsters just over there,” Bella hissed, pointing to the plume of smoke that took up a good portion of her field of view.

  “Sorry,” Sammy mumbled.

  Silas just shrugged, “We aren’t getting any closer until my spirit recharges.”

  They were interrupted by a screech. All three of them swiveled to see a dragonkin warrior pointing a bone staff at them. A further three noticed them and started rushing over. Bella sighed, this was why she hadn’t wanted to go through immediately. As much as she disliked it, they needed to dig out that final hideout before they tried to do anything in the nest. Now they were stuck out in the open while Silas’s portal was on cooldown.

  Fortunately, only one of the dragonkin had a direct line of traversal. It leaped from formation to formation, making use of the smaller ravines to arrive far sooner than the others. Bella had never experienced how dangerous these things were. Silas had told her, but the two that she had seen were either compromised or dying.

  Silas was also a very different person from his first encounter with the fighter. He met the creature while it was still in the air, between ravines. The monster tried to block but it had no leverage, simply spinning itself to the side. Silas’s spiked knuckles drew blood as they split the dragonkin’s lips and pushed it back into the ravine.

  Bella ran to the edge, she wasn’t sure what she could do, but she wouldn’t be caught unprepared again. Looking down, she was surprised to see the dragonkin had caught itself on the formation. It skittered back up, climbing like some kind of demonic bug. She grabbed the nearest rock, intending to drop lava on it. The stone heated around five degrees a second, quite fast for everyday use.

  “Sammy, I need your help,” Bella called. Pooling their abilities led to much quicker and safer results.

  “Busy, there is another one on this side too,” She yelled.

  The calmness with which her daughter responded to life threatening creatures made Bella proud and sad. Proud because her daughter was handling her present circumstances better than many adults. Sad because Sammy had to develop those skills as a child.

  “Go, help her, I can handle this one,” Bella ordered.

  Silas understood and moved to Sammy’s side. Bella felt a weight taken off her shoulders, even if she couldn’t win, she only needed to buy enough time for Silas’s portal to reactivate. The rock made a cracking noise as any fissures within were exacerbated by the heat. That had to be good enough.

  She pitched it at the fighter as hard as she could. The monster raised a forearm to protect its face, letting the oven temperature rock shatter on it. It hissed in pain as some of the resulting pebbles bounced down, finding a resting place in the crevasses made by its natural armor.

  Bella hefted her club, still covered in the gore of the last dragonkin she had killed, and yelled at the monster, “Keep climbing if you want to die.”

  The monster didn’t even pause. She wound up as best as she could with one hand and waited for the monster to come into range. Whether it was aware of its disadvantageous position or not, Bella didn’t know, but it did nothing to stop Bella from hitting it.

  Her war club hit it in the side of the head. The horn protruding from just above and behind its ear protected it. Stone blades chipped and broke, unable to cut through the bone. They were able to score it, the dragonkin yowled in pain as the horn creaked. Bella frowned, were the horns connected to the nervous system? Most creatures were able to shed their horns, maybe she could use this.

  The thought was brief, as the dragonkin grabbed the club and attempted to pull Bella off the edge. She had no choice but to release her weapon. The monster threw it down into the ravine. Bella considered trying to kick it in the face, but she had no interest in following her club.

  She stepped back and drew the butcher's knife. The tool had seen better days but the edge was sharp and more importantly, it conducted Bella’s heat. She couldn’t melt it without Sammy’s help, but she could raise it to around two hundred degrees. Even using the flat was a viable attack, burning whatever flesh it struck.

  Unfortunately, she was not the only one with fire powers. The dragonkin scoffed at her small square of metal as its entire body lit up in flames. It took the vague outline of armor with the faint outline of wings spreading out behind it. The flames would do little to stop anything passing through, but they would burn anything that did.

  Bella frowned at the unfairness of it all. Why could their sigils hurt her, but hers not do the same in kind? She had to find roundabout methods of doing damage, it was almost as if the sigils had to be bent towards harming others. Corrupted. Bella did not have long to ponder the line of thought.

  She couldn’t afford to let the dragonkin dictate the flow of battle. Bella had been getting better at fighting humanlike foes, but she was by no means an expert. Strong warriors fell to weak ones all the time in history, simply due to stamina, desperation, and luck. Bella had done little to expend stamina, she was definitely more desperate, so all she needed was a bit of luck.

  Shield raised, she rushed the dragonkin. Her plan was simple, get it to engage the shield then chop it with the butcher’s knife. She did not expect it to blur into motion, darting to the side in a stream of fire. It grabbed her shield and spun her. Bella tried to maintain her balance, but the tail swept her feet out from under her.

  The world inverted as she was lifted off the ground. Then returned to normal as it brought her crashing to the dirt. Bella coughed as the wind was driven from her lungs. So this is why Silas was so hesitant to fight them. Something hard hit her in the chest. She instinctively slashed at it with her knife, getting a yelp for her efforts.

  The dragonkin had punched her. A strike that would have shattered her ribs, but had instead broken only the first layer of armor. Bella had started to think Silas was paranoid for putting each of them in three layers of bone, but now she thanked him for that.

  She tried to get back up, but the tail whipped across her helmet, knocking her to her side. Again she tried to rise, but a foot came down on her knife, pinning it to the ground. Then the dragonkin hissed jumping back as the superheated metal burned the sole of its foot.

  “That's what boots are for you naked lizard,” Bella yelled. She didn’t know why she was yelling, but it let her burn off some steam.

  Without rising, she pushed off the ground, sliding towards the dragonkin’s legs. She had just gotten her luck. With a scream and tensing every muscle in her core, she chopped into the monster's Achilles’ tendon. It tried to stay upright, but with a severed tendon and a burned sole, it had nothing to stay upright.

  Bella rolled away, getting back to her feet. The dragonkin was down, but not out, it could still crawl and was still far stronger than she was. So she grabbed the horn. The dragonkin’s eyes widened when she ignored its flames and jerked on the horn.

  “Prosthetics, simpleton,” she growled as she hauled back.

  The dragonkin released a low pitched crooning noise, and just like Bella did every time Silas had her in an arm lock, it moved with her to reduce the pressure. Bella dragged it in a circle, the horn cracking as she pulled viscously on the bone. Then she kicked the monster in the chest.

  Heat scorched her boot, but her foot was there long enough to feel the heat. Bella almost yelled “THIS IS SPARTA!,” as she kicked the monster off the formation. The horn snapped and the dragonkin fell. A second or two later it hit the ground, but didn’t stop crooning in pain. Bella was not about to let that stand. The dragonkin curled up in the fetal position, perfect for the large rock she pushed off the edge afterward.

  Looking down she felt unsatisfied. Too much of her success had been due to luck. If it hadn’t lost its staff when Silas punched it, she would have died. If it had thrown her off the edge instead of the ground, she would have died. If they had been in the ravines, ledges would not have been available, and she would have died.

  Glancing back she saw Silas accepting some beholder meat from Sammy. His gauntlets were scorched black, as were large portions of his chest plate, and half of his helmet. One pauldron was cracked while the other was missing outright. The burn on the side of his face rapidly healed, the eye refilling like a balloon as his sigil healed him.

  At his feet were two dead dragonkin. One had its head crushed in, likely by the bloody stone next to it. The other had the mantis blade driven through the back of its neck. Bella smiled at the image, that was what desperation and stamina did. Her smile only got larger when she got a notice.

  Notice: You have used a prosthetic as intuitively as your own body. Sturdy Gatherer has to accommodate this new appendage. Due to this control has advanced.

  Notice: You have reached ten capacity with a set of greater sigils. Move to promotion requirements or meditate on your past actions to generate your personal sigil