Isn’t it weird that spirit manifestations have guts. Maybe my future readers will think its normal, but I kinda expected ectoplasm or some other kind of semisolid. Nope, the vampire had many of the organs associated with a human, though there were some significant differences. While there was a heart and stomach, there was also a phantasmal set of organs intertwined with the physical ones.

  While all this was interesting, I spent most of the time trying not to vomit. Dissecting a living creature feels wrong. I hate them for hurting Dad, but cutting them until they die, waiting for it to resurrect, then doing it again feels to savage. I know its important, so I’ll just need to stomach my revulsion. I don’t want to miss anything that could save the adventurer’s and my dad’s lives.

  Day 111 (heh all ones), Owen Landers

  Silas opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He had planned to get a full night’s sleep, actual deep sleep. Unfortunately, of course, Flesh Lord got in the way of that.

  Every time the sigil leveled up, he could stay awake a bit longer. Initially, it had been a bit, but the increases grew larger with each level. As of now, he could probably go five or six months before needing a proper night’s rest. Since he’d only been awake in the other world for around four months while Flesh Lord leveled, his body was only a bit over three fifths of the way to needing rest. So his body only thought he wanted a power nap.

  It was frustrating. He wondered if Mandy was dealing with the same thing. She had the same sigil, but she had it at level one, maybe two after regrowing an arm. That would get her around a week's worth of wakefulness.

  “Nothing to do, but get to work,” he muttered and pushed himself out of bed.

  He supposed he should be happy video games didn’t exist anymore, otherwise he might waste away the extra eight hours a day he had. Boredom, if nothing else, would force him to be productive. It was likely the reason he was so far ahead of everyone else, he had twice the time to advance.

  Silas stepped into the garage where the giant beak sat beside the lift. Currently, the floor was in its raised position. Having it lowered was a pointless vulnerability when Silas could portal them in and out.

  Rubbing his hands together, he smiled at the wyvern beak, “Let’s see what we can make with you.”

  He pulled out his only copy of Thermal Cultivator. The sigil was valuable for its survival and combat utility, but that wasn’t why he wanted it. He wanted it for Bella, to make her a prosthetic arm sculpted from this wyvern bone. Thermal Cultivator wasn’t an obvious match for prosthetics, but its greater form could convert heat into motion. If Bella could feed it heat through two sigils, the arm should obey. Hopefully, it would gain twice the strength it would normally possess. Silas wasn’t sure the idea would work, but he thought it was worth a try.

  Using his spirit, he softened the bone until it became clay-like and workable. Sculpting with one hand was harder than he expected, but not the impossibility he’d imagined. He made a few tools to cut grooves for joints and braces to hold pieces steady, and after that, the hours passed smoothly.

  Six hours later he had the skeletal framework with joints, knuckles, and the forearm core. As he worked, he realized there were multiple ways to design the hand, but he needed something that opened and closed cleanly. If Bella used spirit to articulate the hand directly, it would drain her constantly. One spirit just to keep the fingers responsive was a steep price when it recharged once every thirty seconds.

  Instead, he softened some bone into an elastic muscle analogue, attaching it along the inner fingers near the forearm. Human hands used a similar tendon configuration. His version made the prosthetic naturally clench into a fist. Silas assumed that this would be the position Bella preferred to keep while fighting.

  Along the outer forearm, he added the opposite muscles relaxed, with no inherent pull. Bella would use Thermal Cultivator to contract those, forcing the hand open. Releasing control would let the fist close automatically at no extra spirit cost.

  He tuned the strength carefully. Bella’s preferred fighting style benefited from a strong grip, but he didn’t want her accidentally crushing Samantha’s fingers the first time she held her daughter’s hand.

  Once the musculature was set, he softened more bone and wrapped it around the exterior, shaping it into something with the resilience of bone but the flex of skin. The whole design was absurdly complex, but his talent for sculpting and hundreds of hours of practice made it surprisingly easy for him.

  Bella emerged from the bedroom just as he was finishing the basic form. He’d already fused the individual components into a single piece. He didn’t trust that leaving them separate wouldn’t cause the technique to misbehave. It would be a nightmare if it only infused Thermal Cultivator into a single joint.

  She approached and examined the prosthetic, “It looks good,” she paused for a few moments, “but add some claws.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow. “You want claws on your prosthetic?”

  Bella shrugged. “It’s a fake arm. Why wouldn’t I want it to be a weapon?”

  Fair enough. Adding points to the fingers wouldn’t be too hard.

  Silas lifted the prosthetic in one hand and the sigil in the other. The sigil glowed faintly purple in his hand as he pressed it toward the bone. Normally, techniques dissolved into the body upon contact. He expected something similar here.

  Nothing happened.

  He frowned. The technique in his own body had bonded to Bone Crafter. At least that was where it was on his interface. Maybe he needed to use spirit instead of physical contact. He reached for the sigil with his spirit and was rejected.

  Notice: You cannot claim this sigil. You have already claimed two sigils. You cannot claim another. To advance your sigils further please reach the rank appropriate for diversification.

  “That’s not what I’m trying to do,” Silas muttered.

  He refocused, directing his spirit into the technique rather than the Thermal Cultivator sigil. This time it worked. His spirit activated Bone Crafter, though a part of it that hadn’t been there before.

  “So that’s why techniques need to be attached to schedules,” he murmured. “Are we limited to three at a time?”

  “What are you muttering about?” Bella asked.

  “Remember how I said the quest to escape gave a reward? The reward was a technique.” Bella nodded. Silas continued, “Well, that technique is listed in my interface with Bone Crafter and gave it a completely new ability..”

  Bella raised an eyebrow, “So you’re saying sigils can be built even higher than greater?”

  Silas shrugged. “I assume so, but I doubt it is as impressive as it looks. I’m fusing spirit into a solid object which sounds impressive, but it's nothing we haven’t seen before.”

  Bella cocked her head in confusion, “What do you mean, you're literally playing god with souls.”

  Silas wasn’t keen on that phraseology, “Remember, the dragonkin were able to infuse something suspiciously similar to a sigil into corpses. There’s no reason we couldn’t infuse purified, crystallized objects into other objects with enough effort.”

  Bella nodded slowly. “I suppose that makes sense. Are you saying that you are mimicking a monster’s parasitic life cycle, just using an object as the victim?”

  Silas shrugged, “That’s the theory, anyway. I still need to check if I’m talking nonsense.”

  Bella took a step back to give him space, on the off chance that there was some kind of explosion. He smirked at the caution, then connected the technique within Bone Crafter to the sigil in his hand. A burning sensation formed in his fingers and grew steadily worse. The edges of Thermal Cultivator warped, losing whatever integrity held it together.

  A good sign, probably, the two times he absorbed a sigil, it dissolved the same way. He pressed the melting sigil into the bone hand. The prosthetic absorbed it instantly, the same way his body had absorbed his own sigils.

  There was an instant change. The color of the item shifted, turning red with a scale pattern forming on the surface. Silas dropped the prosthetic limb in surprise. When nothing beyond the cosmetic made itself evident he poked it with his toe. Then jumped back at an unexpected notification.

  Notice: Would you like to bind Spirit Relic: Ardenti Manum? (Current Relics 0/3)

  “Uh, I think it's alive,” Silas muttered.

  He felt a bit dumb for not predicting that shoving a crystallized soul into an item would make a living thing. It even had a Latin name like the other manifestations. At least it only shared an appearance with the dragonkin and not a name. There was no way he would let Bella have it if he thought Nimrod could use it in any way.

  “You made me a living hand?” Bella snickered, “I’m not sure if that’s awesome or disgusting.”

  “Let's hope it's awesome,” Silas knelt and placed a hand on the prosthetic. He ignored the notice and reported what he found, “So the cosmetic differences are not solid, they are phantasmal, like Aron’s wings. It's still bone,” He pushed spirit into it, and his eyes widened, “I can’t manipulate it. I think the fact that it has a soul is stopping me. I think binding it is required to influence it.”

  “You think it's safe to bind?” Bella asked.

  Silas picked the arm up and passed it to her, “Even if it is a problem, the prosthetic is still bone, we can destroy it.”

  Bella took a deep breath, nodded, then accepted the prompt. She slipped the prosthetic onto her stump, then opened and closed her new hand. Then she sucked in a deep breath, not of pain but ecstasy.

  “What happened,” Silas asked, concern lacing his voice.

  “It paired with Sturdy Gatherer, my durability and strength just went up a bit,” Bella grinned while looking at the arm, “Do you think you can make me a particularly hefty set of armor?”

  Silas wanted to say no, armor was only good so long as it didn’t inhibit important movements, “I’ll need to see how Sturdy Gatherer scales. If your strength goes up faster than the weight, then yes. If not, then we’ll need to find the best point between protection and power. Does the arm have any abilities?”

  “Hold on, let me check my interface,” Bella said, her eyes glazing over as she scanned her interface.

  He didn’t hold out much hope for the interface. Commune sucked at communication, despite that being the business they were in.

  Silas was mentally prepping himself for a grueling time of trial and error with potentially volatile items when Bella cheered, “Yes. The section for techniques also has a portion for relics.”

  He had forgotten about that. Due to the technique being listed on his main interface, he hadn’t thought to check the section made for it.

  “Well, what does it do?” Silas asked impatiently.

  “It is a lesser version of Lesser Thermal Cultivator. I can use spirit to raise the relic’s temperature by two hundred percent,” Bella held up her hand, focusing intently, “So that would be eight hundred percent after my sigil is stacked with it.”

  Silas frowned. This was objectively a good thing. He could make incredibly powerful weapons and equipment, but this upside came with an immense downside. They could only have three each and making them would require a bit of trial and error. Potentially irreversible trial and error.

  Even if Silas had an infinite number of companions, he would still need to find a source for the sigils and a way to identify them. His first instinct was to make bone armor with a healing sigil, it was made of bone after all, and bones could be healed. However, if he were wrong, he would have just wasted an extremely valuable item.

  Other problems were how the abilities would manifest. Bella’s hand only let the relic heat up. While Thermal Cultivator had a straightforward interaction, what about other sigils? Flesh Lord needed food to function, would an item made from it need food? Also, would the item be covered with phantasmal eyes, teeth, and pink flesh? That was some demon lord material that he wanted no part of.

  “Ooh, that's so cool!” Samantha chirped as she stepped out of the bedroom, followed by Mandy.

  “You think,” Bella said with a smile.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “How does the greater part of Thermal Cultivator interact with movement,” Silas asked, still taking mental notes on potential experiments.

  “Well, as you know converting heat into motion requires the use of spirit,” Bella said, “We were worried that it would be one spirit expended per motion, well it isn’t. I can move until the energy of the heat is expended.”

  “How much have you spent so far?” Silas asked.

  “One,” Bella grinned, “I don’t understand the science behind it, but it's awesome.”

  “Uh, it probably works by converting joules into a calorie equivalent. With one calorie being about four joules and your ability raising it to around four hundred degrees, you likely get about a hundred calories of motion from the sigil,” Mandy flinched back as everyone turned to look at her.

  “Why do you know that?” Samantha asked.

  “I uh, I wanted to be a chemist,” Mandy mumbled. She turned and walked back into the room. Evidently, Mandy didn’t like being the center of attention.

  Not giving the girl any more thought, Silas turned his eyes on Samantha, a smile crossing his face, “So, Samantha, do you want to take a look at your personal sigil?”

  Samantha returned the smile while bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, “Yes! Then can I get a cool new hand?”

  “Uh, no, we’ll find something else for you,” Silas said, “So tell me what you know about your personal sigil.”

  Bella leaned forward, evidently not knowing either.

  “I feel like I made a smart decision,” she said proudly.

  “Oh really? I was going to ask. How did it even work picking out a personal sigil without an interface? We had a whole list of options handed to us, so how did you do it?” Silas asked. He started working on a replacement set of armor for Bella while he talked.

  Samantha shrugged, her smile turning smug. “If you’d just told me about those options, I might not have known what to do. But you said you wished for an option, and then you were able to get that option.”

  Silas went still. So Samantha hadn’t gotten a list, or if she did, she was not aware of how to access it. Yes, there had been a specific option, but the category meant for specialized or designed sigils. From what Silas understood, a person could ask for something unique, and they would receive the associated cost but the interface only gave one chance. Without the interface Samantha wouldn’t know about her titles or if she could even afford it. She had gotten very lucky.

  With growing trepidation, considering her age and the disaster potential of a twelve-year-old’s whims, he asked gently, “What did you ask for?”

  His concern sailed right past her. “Well, I was watching this TV show a while ago—”

  Instantly Silas’s hopes plummeted. Liking TV was one thing. Taking your power from a cartoon was not.

  “—and there was this wizard with earth powers,” she continued. “He made himself a suit of rock armor even though he was an old man. He became super powerful by using his mind to control the earth armor. So I asked for air control since I have air armor.”

  Silas blinked. Wait. That was actually pretty clever. Could he have asked for bone control and fixed his lack of a body stat? Could he have used his armor to fly? He almost slapped himself. Portals were better, at least that’s what he told himself.

  “Samantha, you’re a genius,” Silas smiled, “How strong is it? Let’s find out.”

  He led her into the weight room and positioned her under the bench press. “Try to pick this up.”

  Samantha grabbed the bar. None of her sigils were designed to enhance her body, meaning she had the strength of an average twelve-year-old girl. She struggled, but managed to lift it. Living in Hell had hardened her more than most kids her age, but she was far from the strongest pre-teen out there.

  “All right,” Silas said. “Put on your bubble armor. Do you know how it will work? Does each motion cost one spirit? Or does it consume an alternate resource like temperature? Those are the main questions we want answered.”

  Samantha gave him a sheepish shrug, looking very uncomfortable under the bar, “I don’t know.”

  Silas softened his voice. “No worries. We’ll figure it out.”

  Bella leaned against the doorway. “Don’t hurt yourself, sweetie.”

  Samantha smiled at her mom, then coated herself in a thin layer of condensed air. The bubble-armor shimmered with a rainbow sheen, looking delicate despite how hard it was. They weren’t going to add weight, Silas wanted to compare what was different not the extent of the ability.

  Samantha scrunched up her face, “Uh how do you use spirit?”

  Bella laughed at her daughter’s comical expression. Silas smiled as well, “I picture my sigils like old electronics and my spirit like a wall outlet. I just need to plug them in.”

  She frowned in concentration for a few seconds. “So that’s how it works, it feels kinda funny.”

  Then she shoved upward. Her eyes widened at the strength she generated. The bar shot straight up without resistance. Silas couldn’t be sure, but the child’s strength had at least doubled.

  “All right, Samantha. The power you used to push the bar, is it still active? Or do you need to use another point of spirit to pull it back down, and another to push it back up?” Silas asked.

  Samantha frowned. “I, I have to use another spirit for the second motion.” She was clearly disgruntled. “This is way less useful than thermal cultivator.”

  Silas shrugged. “Well, that should’ve been expected. You basically asked for one of the most broken abilities out there. Without limits you would be looking at storm control, the ability to stop anyone from breathing, creating clouds of noxious gases, and so many other things. There had to be limitations or it would have cost hundreds of titles.”

  Samantha’s eyes widened. “Ooh. I didn’t think about that.”

  The ability might have seemed underwhelming, but it definitely had growth potential. Silas suspected it would scale as her level rose. His own Flesh Lord sigil didn’t just increase his appetite for meat, each level had also strengthened his regeneration, decreased his stamina expenditure, and reduced his reliance on sleep. Bone Crafter at level one had barely done anything to chitin, while at level seven it molded the chitin exoskeletons of insects like putty. Something similar should happen with aerokinesis.

  Silas also knew that it would be foolish to underestimate the power of multiplying the speed of a punch. Maybe doubling a twelve-year-old’s strike wasn’t impressive, but give her a warhammer, let her age a few years, then accelerate that hammer to near-supersonic speed with her sigil? Samantha would hit harder than a .50 caliber bullet. Silas had seen many powerful things in Hell, but very few could withstand that.

  “Hey, Samantha,” Silas started as his mind raced with different applications of the sigil. Still, there was one limiting factor.

  “Huh?” She looked up, arms locked straight, holding the bar above her.

  “I want you to push that bar up and down as many times as you can until you run out of spirit. Once your spirit is gone, tell me.”

  She nodded. She lowered and raised the bar a few more times. Samantha had four spirit. That put her equal to her mother in spirit capacity and slightly above Silas. He hoped she’d at least gotten a high enough value sigil to gain at least two stat points every time she grew it. Anyone who picked a sigil giving less than two was going to fall behind quickly.

  “Follow me to the garage,” he said. “We’re gonna need more space.”

  Samantha frowned in curiosity but followed. As they walked, Silas asked a few questions about her bubble schedule.

  “So the greater version of your armor sigil lets you change the shape of the construct you create, right?” Silas asked.

  “Yeah. I thought about making swords, but the closest I can get is something like the water drop picture. It really doesn’t like sharp things, ” Samantha sighed.

  Silas thought about the image Samantha referred to. It was not quite as good as he had hoped “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what you're describing does have a pointy end right?”

  “It’s only sharp at one point. A sword is sharp along the whole edge. Except where you hold it,“ Samantha held out a hand manifesting a bubble that was indeed sharp on one end. It was simply a cone with the flat end rounded off, “See, not that useful, I even have it at level four and this is the best I can do.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow. Samantha’s assumptions were false, she was just limiting herself to melee combat. Once they reached the underground garage, Silas pointed at the cone-shaped construct and gestured to the concrete wall.

  “Alright, Samantha. What I need you to do is hold this with the point facing the wall. Then heat it up with your Thermal Cultivator, get it as hot as you possibly can,” Silas directed.

  Samantha nodded and began raising the temperature. The air shimmered around the cone, though it didn’t produce any light.

  “Okay, now what?” she asked.

  “Next,” Silas continued, “I want you to use the heat-to-motion conversion to launch the cone at the wall. At the same time, spend another point of spirit on your air control to accelerate it as fast as you can.”

  Samantha’s eyes widened as she finally realized what he was suggesting, “You think I could be like a cannon? Or some kind of mage?”

  Silas nodded. He had once imagined Thermal Cultivator would allow his companions to act like fire mages and had been disappointed when that turned out to be impossible. This wasn’t quite the same as casting fireball, but the principle was close enough. Samantha would shoot superheated, shaped constructs fired like bullets. He could absolutely see her launching knives or needles inside her air bubbles at frightening speeds.

  Samantha grinned and pointed the cone forward.

  “Wait a moment,” Silas said quickly. “Before you fire, make sure nothing you want attached to your body is touching the edges. If I’m right, this thing will be moving insanely fast.”

  He wasn’t certain how fast, but he knew a few things. Momentum was mass times velocity, and the less mass something had, the easier it was to accelerate. This “projectile” was literal air, absurdly aerodynamic air if that was even possible. Nearly all the energy should convert directly into speed. Even Thermal Cultivator alone might push it near bullet velocity, and with Samantha’s areokine-sis layered on top, ludicrous speeds were guaranteed.

  He had no intention of letting her lose a finger over this.

  Samantha held the air cone gingerly, careful to keep her palm flat. Thankfully, there would be no recoil. It wasn’t firing in the normal sense, no combustion, no explosive force which meant no recoil.

  Still, she sucked in a deep, shaky breath, “Alright, here goes nothing.”

  She concentrated, activating the three sigils involved. This was the most complex manipulation any of them had ever attempted, armor shaping to form the object, thermal manipulation for heat-to-motion, and her air control. It used everything Samantha had, so Silas had some high hopes for this.

  The cone simply vanished from Samantha’s hand. No sonic boom. No streak. No blur. It was just gone. Then the sound hit.

  A massive crack echoed through the garage, not unlike a shotgun blast. A chunk of concrete as big around as Silas’s head and a few inches deep exploded out of the far wall. Even Silas jerked backward in surprise, he hadn’t expected quite that level of destruction.

  A shout came from the bedroom, followed by a thud. Silas, Bella, and Samantha all turned to see a very flustered Aron stumble out, rubbing sleep from his eyes and clutching the wyvern claw knife.

  “What’s happening?” he demanded.

  “You sleep like a baby,” Silas said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve slept in this late.” And now, thanks to finally gaining sun access, he could happily say that he had gotten lazy. A bit disingenuous when he only needed to sleep a few times per year.

  Aron frowned, but Bella answered first, “Babies don’t sleep that well. Trust me, Samantha was a very noisy baby.”

  Samantha smiled, “I cried a lot.”

  Silas reached over and patted Aron’s shoulder, “Don’t worry. We’re just testing out one of Samantha’s combos. And it works pretty well. Right, Samantha?”

  Samantha nodded, staring between Silas and the massive crater in the wall. Silas was suddenly very glad they were underground. Without the packed dirt behind the concrete, she might actually have blown a hole clean through the wall.

  “I’m happy,” Samantha said softly, “I won’t have to sit back and hide anymore. I can actually help.”

  Silas nodded, though Samantha’s expression shifted, “The only downside is it takes three spirit to pull off. I can’t exactly throw it out with any regularity.”

  Bella hugged her daughter, her concern leaned more toward keeping her daughter alive than increasing her lethality, “Sweetie, it’s not about how much damage you can do. It’s about how safe you are while doing it. Yes, it takes three spirit, but not much can survive something like that anyway. Plus, your armor doesn’t cost spirit to maintain. You’ll be safe.”

  Silas nodded in agreement.

  “Actually,” he added, “some sigils can be amplified spirit. My Flesh Lord can’t, but Bone Crafter can. If I spend spirit, it lets me mold stronger materials. So there’s a chance your last point of spirit could go to reinforcing your armor. Then you could just turtle up and let your reserves recharge every ninety seconds.”

  Samantha blinked. “So I’d be like a turret in one of those base-defense games?”

  Silas searched his memory. He vaguely remembered tapping little icons on his parents’ old phone.“…Sure. More or less.”

  It really was a good role for her, safe, reliable, high impact. Her kit made her naturally resistant to swarms, and effective against big single targets. That did make it difficult for her to go solo, but with the team covering her vulnerabilities, her “flaws” became strengths.

  Also if she wanted something else to help with crowds, Silas could make it. A Warhammer had been his first thought, but she didn’t need help with single-target damage. A long nodachi she could swing at near sonic speeds might be far better. Something to look out for as it would need stronger material than bone.

  Samantha grinned. “So, next! Anything else you want me to try?”

  Silas rubbed his chin. If he were being honest, he could spend an entire month testing combinations. Abilities that broke physics always created chains of consequences, some useful, many wildly destructive. But he didn’t have that kind of time. He needed to get home and to do that he needed to make armor and get Aron operational. Then they needed to leave.

  “Well,” he said finally, “you’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you.”

  Samantha deflated instantly.

  “I need you to go to the gym and run on the treadmill for an hour. Slow down as much as you want, but never stop moving. While you do that, activate and deactivate your bubble armor as fast as you can, and use spirit every chance you get to create and hold shapes with your air sigil.”

  Samantha groaned. “That’s boring.”

  “It won’t be boring if you find out you can’t run and use your abilities at the same time,” Silas said. “You couldn’t train that back in Hell. You can now. So I expect you to,” Silas tried to channel his inner P.E. coach while explaining.

  With an exaggerated sigh, Samantha slouched off. A few minutes later, the treadmill whirred to life. Bella gave Silas an approving nod, anything that kept Samantha alive had her blessing.

  Silas turned to the last member of the group. Aron. He was less enthusiastic about working with the boy but that didn’t mean he couldn’t turn him into something effective quickly. In fact, Aaron had one thing no one else did. He could fly or at least he could soon.

  What was better Silas had the perfect materials for potential relics. A few of the cartoon monsters dropped sigils of the bendy-boned variety. What if he made a crossbow with a variable draw based on structural flexibility? Something easy to pull, but retaining full rigidity on release. It would be the most destructive ranged weapon Silas had ever made.

  If he was right, the wyvern sigils had some acidic properties. A bolt made from them that activated inside a target? The damage would be catastrophic. Aron could pay back his equipment debt quickly. He’d go from the least effective to one of the most devastating members of the entire team. There was a reason modern warfare favored guns over swords. This would just be magic guns.

  Aron frowned, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You said you wanted to get strong right?” Silas asked.

  “Y-yes,” Aron stuttered uncertainly.

  “Do you know how baby birds learn to fly?” Silas asked.

  “Uh, yes,” Aron said, taking a step back, “But there are no trees to throw me, uh baby birds out of.”

  Three minutes later Aron was screaming Mongolian curses at Silas while falling. Silas smiled at his handiwork, Portal Manipulator might not let him redirect projectiles or slice apart reality, but it could certainly make a portal of infinite falling.

  He frowned, rubbing his chin, this could likely be engineered into a perpetual motion machine. It would likely involve a large tube and some copper coils. When he got home he would need to ask Owen and his robotics club to help him make something.

  “Pleeeeeeeese!” Aron screamed, “Heeeelp

  “You have wings, get yourself out,” Silas said, “I’ll toss in some food in a few hours.”

  Then he sat down and started making armor and weapons. Thankfully he could open multiple portals or Aron would have needed to pause his training. The approaching wyverns had stripped the dead one down to the bone which was fine with Silas. Even with hollow bones, there was enough material to make a set of plate armor for everyone.

  Despite Silas’s hurry, it still took almost five days of work to get everything in order.