Discovery! I can’t believe we didn’t think of this before. If all airborne signals are disrupted, then why does the biotech still have the ability to see others within its previous three mile limit? While we don’t know exactly how it works, it means that some kind of signal can still be sent.

  Unfortunately, this discovery, if it can even be called that didn’t get any further. All of our measuring tools require airborne signals. So we will need to build some new ones. I am currently betting on it being a type of radiation, at least then we might be able to find a way to control it.

  Day 120, Owen Landers

  “This is so freaking awesome!” Bella said, looking at her armor and weapon.

  Silas had needed to get creative to make her armor. His ability only let him affect one bone, meaning Bella’s entire suit of bone armor had to be one piece. He had found a workaround, though one he wasn’t too happy with. The joints were made of a flexible patch of bone not dissimilar to nylon. They were not as tough as the standard overlapping plates, leaving weaknesses that could be exploited. However, it let Bella apply the giant lion monster’s sigil to her whole body.

  As to what that relic was…

  Lesser King’s Herald: Increase or decrease the effect of any action taken by you by up to twenty percent.

  Silas wasn’t sure what to make of it because it was not well defined. It seemed to be applied to momentum, though there were things that didn’t make sense. When Bella yelled at an enemy, it would be far more likely to target her if she used the sigil.

  It was by far the most versatile sigil Silas had ever seen. Any politician, crafter, or warrior would love to have it, while at the same time not being better than a dedicated Sigil. The sphinx gave a better one for politics, there seemed to be a crafter sigil for every type of material, and Lesser Pack Guardian’s boost was many times greater when it came to strength.

  “I’m glad you like it,” Silas said as he considered what to do next.

  Bella spun the blade of her new chainsword, testing its weight. Silas had gotten the idea while working with a wyvern sigil, because what was more terrifying than a spinning blade of bone screaming toward your face? A spinning blade of bone that dissolved anything it touched. They still hadn’t found a material that it couldn’t cut through.

  “I like it,” Bella said, giving the weapon an experimental rev, “Works like a charm. It’s just… all this gear is a spirit hog. I wish there was a way to recover spirit faster or get more of it consistently.”

  Silas nodded. He couldn’t argue with that, “Yeah. I can see why it gives you trouble in a fight. Thirty seconds is a long time when you’re bleeding. However, when you’re building something?” He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  He’d never really struggled with spirit while crafting. Sculpting a single section of bone almost always took longer than thirty seconds anyway, so regeneration naturally kept pace. He’d never felt short.

  In battle, though, Bella could burn through her four spirit in under two seconds. Between her chainsword and her personal sigil boosting her durability, her reserves vanished almost instantly. The only hope Silas had was diversification and whatever changes came with the mysterious third level of sigil development. If it didn’t improve spirit regeneration or raw capacity, he’d be deeply disappointed.

  Silas shook himself out of the thought and looked over, “What about you, Samantha? How’s your stuff holding up?”

  Samantha shifted the bag of sigils and bones she was carrying, “I don’t know. It looks cool, kind of like barbarian armor, but I don’t know if it actually matters.”

  Her armor looked mostly normal, except for one major difference. It was covered in fur. They’d stumbled across a rubber monkey earlier, and while the idea of bone behaving like rubber while retaining extreme hardness had sounded ridiculous at first, it paired perfectly with Samantha’s already rigid armor sigil. A dense, impact-absorbing layer was exactly what she needed.

  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the monkey’s fur manifested as a phantasmal coating over the armor, giving Samantha a savage, almost feral appearance. Like a tiny war-bear marching into battle. Bella’s chainsword had developed a similar aesthetic. The spinning blades resembled jagged teeth, while black feathers coated the back edge all the way to the hilt. The grip itself was wrapped in phantasmal bone.

  The last three days had given Silas valuable data. Spirit relics could be lost. Only two people in the camp had personal sigils. He’d crafted three pieces of equipment for each of them, carefully testing whether equipment could be handed off without permanently losing the slot tied to it.

  When Silas handed a relic to Rahul and had him snap it in half, the sigil shattered with it, leaving behind nothing but ordinary bone. Even then, the material was durable enough to give Rahul trouble. He got a headache from losing the relic, but nothing worse happened and he was left with an empty relic slot.

  They also found that a relic could be given away. Unfortunately, when a sigil relic was given to someone else, it degraded. Every transfer weakened its effects by half. Again and again, until the bond collapsed completely and the relic reverted to mundane bone. The rules were consistent, if disappointing. Equipment couldn’t be given to anyone with spirit of their own which was frustrating as it meant that mass armoring a division was impossible unless every soldier had their sigils at capacity.

  “All right,” Silas said, clapping his hands once. “You two clean up. We head to the airport in a couple of hours. Eat, rest, and get what sleep you can.”

  Bella nodded. Samantha did too, heading back toward the bus. Space in the outer camp was limited, so the bus had been converted into temporary sleeping quarters. It was long enough for two people to sleep per bench, and if the front seats were reclined far enough, they made passable beds. Not comfortable, but good enough.

  While Bella and Samantha went to the bus for a nap, Silas entered the government building. He had a small office, little more than a closet, but it was enough for his purposes. Silas had preparations to make before the assault on the airport.

  His biggest issue in the last few fights was simple, he had no reliable way to deal direct damage. Life wasn’t a video game. Hitting something with a sharp piece of metal didn’t guarantee it would die or even be injured. Some weapons simply worked better against certain targets than others, and he was learning that lesson the hard way.

  There was a reason ancient peoples didn’t hunt large animals with swords. He’d been to enough museums and he’d never seen a depiction of a samurai hunting using a katana, no they had used bows. Native Americans used bows, spears, coordination, and terrain to hunt bison, often herding them off cliffs. He couldn’t recall a single example where a sword played a meaningful role in bringing down something that large.

  That didn’t mean swords were useless. It meant his sword was. He looked down at the mantis-steel blade in his hands. It had served him well in one very specific way, it hadn’t broken. The metal was absurdly resilient, shrugging off forces that should have snapped it in half. However as a sword? It was terrible.

  The blade profile was completely wrong. He was starting to understand that blade geometry mattered more to sharpness than what the weapon was made from. Without a specialized sigil to assist cutting, the narrower the blade, the better it would perform. His sword was the opposite of that ideal. The back edge was jagged with sharp barbs, the front edge was as honed as he could reasonably make it, but the spine was thicker than his thumb. The thing was likely heavier than most greatswords.

  That thickness was probably the only reason it hadn’t shattered yet. Still, he needed to cut. Not every enemy he faced was a thirty-foot-tall armored colossus made of steel, completely impervious to his weapon. But even so, he needed something grounded in ancient human wisdom about warfare.

  That wisdom was simple. When fighting something much larger than yourself, pointy things beat sharp things. A straight, rigid, three-foot-long blade with a needle-like tip could punch through just about anything he was struggling with right now. It wouldn’t necessarily kill it but it could reach something vital.

  Using the lion abomination as an example, Silas was almost certain that stabbing it with what was effectively a giant sewing needle would have accomplished very little. Maybe he could blind it. Maybe, if he were obscenely lucky, he could rupture an artery. Neither outcome would save him. Even if the creature eventually died, he’d be dead long before that mattered.

  That realization had led him to an obvious conclusion over the last few days. Silas needed a relic.

  Part of his hesitation had nothing to do with their power, or even their limitations. It had to do with Flesh Lord. One line in its description made his skin crawl: any effect applied to one part of his body could be applied to the rest.

  Relics, as far as sigils were concerned, counted as part of his body. At least, that was how Bella’s sigils had interpreted it. He had no idea how that interaction would behave once he started crafting his own relics. Ideally, he wanted a healing sigil. Worst case, he accidentally applied a healing sigil to his entire body.

  Honestly? He couldn’t see much downside to accidentally fully healing himself. Unfortunately, while several people in the IDF community had healing sigils, none of them had spares. Even if they did, no one was going to waste one on a random piece of experimental gear.

  That left him with one real option. To experiment with something that wouldn’t kill him. Silas had acquired a sigil he actually wanted to test and one he intended to apply to his sword. For his test subject, he chose one of the bendy creatures. If he ended up with bendy bones, he already knew it wasn’t permanent. Rekha had suffered the same thing, and it hadn’t caused lasting damage.

  The sigil he truly wanted to use, though, was another one recovered from a wyvern. A needle alone wouldn’t do much to a thirty-foot monstrosity. But a needle coated in something that corroded everything around it, would drastically increase the lethality of every thrust and cut he made.

  While a closet was far from the most convenient workspace, it was temporary. Silas only needed to make it to sundown, and that was good enough for him.

  He quickly peeled off his armor. As much as he liked the protection, the gauntlets covering his fingers interfered too much with his ability to work with bone precisely. Once free, he pulled a bone from his bag and jammed it beneath the closet door after closing it.

  Over the last few days, his interactions with the IDF hadn’t been unpleasant, but they hadn’t been pleasant either. The language barrier made real conversation difficult, and while Rahul was cordial, he was also the kind of person who measured relationships by the benefits exchanged. The soldiers were also wary. That was understandable, especially after they had seen what Bella could do to a monster.

  She had ground a juvenile wyvern to pieces. Silas had missed the fight itself, but the aftermath looked like the beast had been partially fed into a wood chipper. He grimaced at the memory. You only needed to see an animal chainsawed once to learn to avoid the person holding the chainsaw.

  He sat down cross-legged and laid his sword across his lap. A large block of bone was removed from the bag along with a pair of sigils and a set of tools he had made over the last few days. No one should interrupt him for the next few hours.

  First, he carefully reread the description of Flesh Lord. It was a greater ability, meaning the second effect should only activate when infused with spirit, but he preferred caution. Pulling out a rolling-pin-like tool, he mashed the bone down into as flat a shape as he could before making it solidify again.

  Once it hardened, he carefully retrieved the sigil extracted from one of the Dr. Seuss looking monsters. These were supposed to grant bendy bones. With such a delicate bone being infused, he needed the option to break it instantly if something went wrong.

  That was the reason for the jammed door. He was ninety percent certain everything would be fine. However, there was still a small chance he’d be extremely vulnerable while Bendy Bones was active. Muscular strength relied on rigid leverage, after all.

  Silas took a deep breath and muttered, “Here goes nothing.”

  He focused, channeled spirit, and activated his technique. The sigil dissolved and flowed into the bone, just like it had with Bella’s gauntlet and every other relic he’d made. The bone’s appearance shifted as a faint, phantasmal shell formed around it. Neon yellow fur sprouted across its surface, short and dense, matching the monster it came from. It now looked like a fuzzy popsicle stick.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Notice: Would you like to bind Spirit Relic: Flaccidus Ossum? (Relics bound: 0/3)

  Silas gave a mental confirmation. That name translated to something like flaccid bone. That was a slightly awkward name for something with the moniker of ‘relic’. A second notification immediately followed, making him blink.

  Notice: Due to creating and binding with a new spirit relic you have pushed your understanding of Bone Crafter. The new baseline of Bone Crafter has advanced. Your wisdom has increased to reflect this.

  He smiled. Silas had been wondering why Bone Crafter hadn’t leveled from previous relics. Normally it was super generous with any kind of cooperative sigil use. At least assuming the sigils cooperating weren’t the same. He frowned, he was using a technique and Bone Crafter, but the technique was attached to the sigil, so maybe he wasn’t actually using two different abilities.

  It didn’t really matter, there would be plenty of opportunities to advance it later. He opened the relic’s description in his interface.

  Flaccidus Ossum: Increase bone flexibility by 100%

  It was both extremely simple and entirely expected. He could already imagine a few engineering applications for an item with variable rigidity, but for now, he needed testing data. He connected his spirit to the relic.

  He applied some force to the relic and the bone began to flex slightly. Bone was already somewhat elastic, doubling that was noticeable, but not enough to do something extreme, like tie it into a knot. That was a good sign for what came next.

  Silas waved his arm experimentally, then pressed his forearm against the wall and leaned into it. If there was any flex, he couldn’t feel it. Relief washed through him. At least Flesh Lord wasn’t going to ruin his body due to a bad sigil interaction.

  Silas wasn’t finished. Keeping his spirit connected to the relic, Silas activated Flesh Lord with a second point of spirit. The effect was immediate.

  That strange, crawling sensation filled his body again. He leaned into the wall and this time, he felt it. His arm flexed distinctly. Again not enough to bend into a U-shape, but enough that walking like this would take serious adjustment.

  He glanced down at the sword resting across his lap, eyebrows rising. Flesh Lord is kind of overpowered when coupled with relics. If he could apply relic effects directly to his body, didn’t that mean he could effectively stack six sigils instead of the usual three? Everyone else could only use relics like auxiliary tools but his body was the tool.

  Silas cut the spirit flow to Flesh Lord. Instantly, his bones straightened, returning to their original shape rather than remaining bent. That was a very good sign. He’d need to keep an eye out for other powerful sigils and find better ways to apply them than weapons alone. Armor. Crowns. Jewelry. Items that would be harder to lose and things less likely to be targeted and destroyed.

  He imagined losing a fight because his sword shattered and took its relic’s power with it. That or Bella’s armor breaking mid-battle, stripping her of her enhancements from Sturdy Gatherer. That was not acceptable.

  What he really needed was a sigil that permanently increased density. If he could find one, he might be able to craft relics that were nearly unbreakable. Unfortunately, Bone Crafter didn’t allow that yet. Hopefully, whatever diversification was, it would allow for that.

  Smiling Silas said, “First priority: build a wishlist of abilities. Second: hunt them down. Third: become a force of nature that can protect Abby from anything.”

  He snapped the bone relic in half. A sharp pain lanced through his mind as the soul connection was severed, but it wasn’t as bad as Rahul had made it sound. Maybe they had different pain tolerance. After getting cooked alive several times in hell, Silas would put the pain somewhere around a three on the one to ten pain scale. The power dispersed in a puff of purple smoke, dissolving back into nothing.

  Silas’s interface was still open, and his eyes drifted to the Sculpting talent. When he’d first been dumped into hell, he’d been furious that sculpting was his talent. At the time, he’d have preferred the juggling that Mateo had or the organization that Bella had, anything that was useful. However, the more he created, the more grateful he became.

  He suspected most people were the same. It made him wonder, were people made for their talents, or were talents made for people? Did a talent influence how sigils grew? Bone Crafter was objectively low-quality, it had come from a squirrel, after all. However, its synergy with Sculpting made it his most valuable ability by far. Flesh Lord was powerful, but Bone Crafter was the reason he was still alive and mostly sane.

  For now, though, it was time to move on. These tests had allayed his fears. Silas reached into his pack and pulled out the Wyvern Sigil. That one interested him. Before he applied it, he would need to remake his sword.

  Four months ago, Silas would have said that the mantis blade was a perfectly good sword. After using it, and comparing it with the common knowledge he had absorbed from his friends, he knew it was made of great material but the wrong shape. It was balanced like a club and had little maneuverability. Silas’s sigils were making it clear that body was his dump stat and he needed to get with the program.

  With that in mind, Silas peeled open the mantis claw and removed the bone rod he had inserted when he first made it. The jagged metal was then rolled into a long bar of metal before he started flattening it out. This version of the mantis blade would be longer and much straighter.

  It took him a few hours, but before long he had a blade that was about as wide as three of his fingers. Both edges tapered into a point, perfect for stabbing. The cross guard was new. Silas had a bit of spare material so he had the base of the blade flare out where it connected with the grip.

  He had no idea if that was how a cross guard was supposed to look, but he liked it. The grip was made of bone, with a wrap of even more cloth like bone to dampen the shocks his hand received. Something Silas hadn’t intended was for the handle to be so long. It was nearly two feet of the five foot long weapons length. However, that was what it took to get the center of gravity down to where he wanted to hold it.

  Stopping, he took a moment to admire his creation. A part of him regretted not having a camera, this was something he would definitely want to show off to his parents and friends. He never thought he would miss social media.

  “Now to cover up this beauty with an illusion,” Silas sighed.

  He picked up the wyvern sigil and held it next to the sword. A quick activation of his technique caused the sigil to dissolve into a luminous purple cloud and flow into the sword. Silas’s aesthetic concerns turned out to be for naught. The blade turned a bleached white, like the wyvern's beak while the bone grip simply took on the dirty black color of the wyvern’s feathers.

  Notice: Would you like to bind to Spirit Relic: Gladium Sectus? (Relics Bound 0/3)

  At least that sounds alright. He wouldn’t be embarrassed to wield the Blade of Separation. Actually, that was kind of cool. He gave his affirmation, then looked at the description in his interface.

  Gladium Sectus: slowly liquefy any foreign matter in contact with this relic.

  He already knew how this worked from how Bella used her chainsword. It was truly slow, though that was only comparatively. Yes, it would take a few hours to completely emulsify a body, but the small area around the blade only took a few moments.

  Silas took a few minutes to admire his new sword. It was long and keen-edged, the bone-white blade sharply contrasted by a strip of black leather along the hilt, giving it a distinctly intimidating presence. He had spent another thirty minutes crafting a sheath for his hip. The weapon was now far too long to be worn comfortably on his back.

  There was one more thing on his to-do list before they went to the airport. He had gotten a map from Rahul, but he had a few questions about what was on it. He found the commander in his office poring over lists of names and supplies. Silas recognized a few of the people he had made relics for on that list.

  Silas had briefly entertained the idea of simply taking an airplane across the Pacific Ocean, but he knew better. He wasn’t a pilot and had no idea how to refuel an aircraft while keeping a plane flying. Also flying straight line sounded simple in theory, reality had a way of punishing that kind of optimism. Being stranded in the middle of the Pacific would be a death sentence. Yes, monsters seemed to fear water, but the sheer distance was just as deadly without a way to rest. There was a chance he could drink seawater and somehow purify or process it with his abilities, but that was not something he wanted to test.

  After passing his newly made sword to a guard at the door for safekeeping, Silas stepped inside, “Good afternoon, I hope things are going well for you.”

  Rahul looked up from a list of names and supplies. “Hello, Silas. Yes, things are coming together. I hope your people are ready to help handle the airport situation this evening.”

  Silas nodded. “I just finished my final preparations for that. Did the three people with personal sigils adapt to the equipment I made for them?”

  Rahul nodded in return. “Yes. Having weapons capable of dealing with tougher creatures without wasting precious ammunition will be very helpful. Though I doubt that’s why you came here.”

  Silas placed his laminated map on the table and pointed. “This is the route we’ll be taking. If we want to reach Mongolia’s capital, we’ll need to pass straight through China, then angle slightly east. There are several large areas along the way that concern me.”

  The map was a standard world map that one could find anywhere. Certain areas were drawn on with a permanent marker before being laminated for Silas’s benefit. The legend made it clear that anything marked in red was considered a no-go zone. As far as the IDF knew, everyone in those regions was either dead or evacuated. Typically, red zones marked areas where a kaiju had emerged.

  Silas listened grimly as Rahul elaborated. Kaiju were just as terrifying as Silas had feared. Like regular monsters, they revived after ten minutes. Unlike regular monsters, they were functionally immune to any conventional weapons. Nukes could destroy them, but to no effect, radiation didn’t seem to have any adverse effect on them. Physically, they had no trouble toppling skyscrapers or tearing through fortified defenses. One such disaster in China had resulted in a dam being destroyed, flooding the cities downstream.

  Yellow zones marked areas with monster activity where resistance still existed. They weren’t safe, just survivable. Mongolia, for instance, was almost entirely yellow. Most of China was as well, with intense red concentrations clustered around cities with populations over one million, giving the map an unsettling, blotched appearance.

  Green areas were believed to be clear of monsters. Silas was surprised to see how many of these were vast deserts or uninhabited coastlines. The common thread was obvious, these were places humans had never found particularly valuable to live in.

  What confused Silas were the names. Scattered across the map were regions outlined in black, shaped roughly like countries, but labeled with unfamiliar titles. Half of Pakistan and a small part of India were circled and labeled Khalifa Abrar. Most of China was encompassed by a single name: The Fox of Heaven.

  Rahul followed Silas’s finger and nodded. “These are local warlords or government figures who’ve managed to maintain control after the portals appeared. It’s not uncommon for individuals to grow beyond a government’s ability to meaningfully restrain them.” He gave Silas a knowing look, “You are one such individual. Difficult to kill. Hard to contain. Incredibly dangerous to those who oppose you and invaluable to those you support.”

  Most of these figures weren’t physically capable of conquering nations on their own like some comic-book superhero. They were still mortal men. But their abilities made life dramatically easier for anyone aligned with them.

  “The two we know the most about are Khalifa Abrar and the Fox of Heaven,” Rahul continued. He smiled faintly. “We do have others in our employ across India, but we won’t be sharing our weaknesses.”

  Silas snorted, there was a good chance that Rahul would be on the map if he had gotten it from Abrar, “Fair enough. We’re leaving anyway, and I see no reason for us to come into conflict in the future.”

  Rahul nodded. “These two, however, are extremely dangerous, not because they can cut buildings in half or incinerate cities. Abrar’s sigils affect how his voice influences emotions. When he gives a speech, people become far more inspired than they should be. On top of that, he can boost the physical capabilities of anyone who hears him, including himself.” He sighed. “Abrar would be a tremendous asset to humanity if he weren’t also a warmonger. His gang has taken over most of Pakistan and is pushing into India. Resistance has been minimal, not because India is weak, but because it’s vast. We can’t protect everyone.”

  Silas frowned. It was exactly what he’d feared. Ever since getting his abilities, he had wondered who would be more monstrous, the abominations or the people. Still, something bothered him. From what Rahul described, Abrar didn’t sound strong enough.

  If the man were truly powerful, why hadn’t he displayed signs of a dominant personal sigil? His abilities were dangerous, yes but not insurmountable. In this new world, logic could be bent and the nature of influence had changed. With the right sigil combination, someone could assassinate a leader regardless of defenses. Invisibility. Long-range strikes. Mental attacks. Hell, Silas could open a portal miles above a city and drop rocks on a location until nothing remained and there would be no way to stop it.

  That reality meant governments either had to retreat and decentralize or become powerful themselves.

  “What about this Fox of Heaven?” Silas asked. Whoever this was, they had the largest territory on the map by several orders of magnitude.

  “Ah, the Fox. She is the only known holder of a Kaiju’s sigil,” Rahul said, “Her abilities seem to be related to gravity control and emotional manipulation. From what we can tell, she is the most powerful individual in Asia.”

  “Is she stronger than me?” Silas asked.

  “If you are asking, does she have more sigil levels than you, I don’t believe so,” Rahul said, “You and your friends are anomalous in that regard. However, she has abilities made for violence, while you are a crafter. Don’t make the mistake of estimating a person’s capabilities from a statistic sheet.”

  Silas scratched the back of his head, his question had likely come across as arrogant. He quickly searched for a way to change the subject, “So how do you even get information on these warlords? Long-range communication is nonexistent.”

  Rahul grimaced, “Unfortunately, you are right. Our information comes from refugees. People traveling home to find family. India is enormous, and movement like that is still common. They bring news from everywhere they pass through.”

  Silas hesitated, “Has anyone crossed the oceans?”

  Rahul shook his head. “Not here. Possibly from Russia to Alaska, or Greenland to Canada. We’ve had people arrive from Australia, though, so we know it’s theoretically possible. But ocean travel has regressed to near Stone Age levels. Small fishing vessels, short distances. Nothing suitable for deep-ocean crossings.”

  Silas was surprised there were even that many survivors. New Delhi had once been massive. Even thousands of refugees didn’t amount to a single percent of its original population. There were likely other camps, some tied to Rahul’s network, others independent, but even together, they numbered perhaps ten thousand. A city that had once held millions was now less than one percent of what it had been.

  How much of humanity was left? Silas didn’t know, and a part of him didn’t care. He wanted to feel bad about that, but he had a list of people he cared for. So long as they were fine, the rest of the world was largely unnecessary. Yeah, I would make a terrible leader, Silas thought.

  “I assume you’ll want the bus to help carry a few soldiers?” Silas asked as he turned to leave.

  Rahul nodded, “Of course, the airport is about eight miles away. That is beyond your portal range, correct?”

  “Yes,” Silas answered. He had told them that his range was only one mile per unit of spirit. Which was true, but Rahul had taken it to mean that he only had a single point of spirit like everyone else.

  He took back his sword and went down to the parking lot. It was time to kill off his second camp of monsters.