Denver is ‘saved’ that word really needs to be put in air quotes. The city had the absolute crap kicked out of it and has several sizable craters in it and most of the buildings have holes in them. Realistically, the tent city will likely use the rubble to rebuild itself. While it is a great victory for humanity, it means we can finally go home.

  Two gold ranked adventurers fell and four of the law enforcement officers did as well, but the remaining ones are strong now. All of them have personal sigils and have a SIM score of nearly thirty and Dad is at thirty-six. Some of the people threw a fit over our leaving, they seemed to think we owed them our protection. Despite those complaints, only a few dozen chose to follow us back to Greenriver.

  Day 140, Owen Landers

  Silas arrived at the Pakistani settlement fully prepared. His sword was ready, all of his spirit was active, and everyone else was in a similar state. Samantha even had one of her projectiles hovering innocently over her shoulder, ready to punch a hole through whatever jumped out and tried to fight them.

  Silas was not prepared for the sheer disinterest that greeted them. Yes, a couple of people glanced at the bus with mild curiosity, but beyond that, nothing seemed to change. What caught his attention was the sudden spike in people whose sigils were at capacity. The leaderboard lists themselves had changed dramatically, back at Rahul’s camp there had only been about five people at capacity.

  Here, that list was maxed out. One needed to exceed capacity to even be on it.

  Silas couldn’t help but wonder if Rahul had been deliberately controlling the supply of sigils, limiting how many powerful people he’d have to deal with as they drove deeper into what could only be described as a village. All the buildings were made of thick stone and looked new.

  Silas saw dozens of people with phantasmal body parts and spectral weapons doing clearly impossible manual labor, bending steel with their bare hands, lifting massive beams, and reshaping ruined buildings into habitable residences like it was nothing.

  They had arrived ready for a fight, but it quickly became obvious that a single group in a bus wasn’t much of a threat to a place like this. Or of much apparent value, Silas thought as he eyed a parking lot full of armored transports painted a tan camo.

  Sammy and Bella watched through the front windows. The twins gawked at the city through the side windows. Nothing about it was particularly impressive, but the lines of the buildings were alien. The architect had chosen to ignore a few common details that Silas couldn’t quite put his finger on. Sigil construction likely gave them more freedom in terms of materials and structure than they would ordinarily have.

  “This is way different than the other place,” Samantha said quietly.

  Silas could only nod. Yes, there was still a big wall. Yes, there were still signs of destruction everywhere. However, unlike Rahul’s camp, these people weren’t hiding like rats in a hole. They were rebuilding.

  Silas parked the bus near what looked like a shop, though it was hard to be sure. It was larger and several vehicles were parked out front. There were no windows, stretching from floor to ceiling like old storefronts back in America. None of the signs were in English and unfortunately, none of them could read the local language. However, why would a home have signs, so Silas assumed he was correct.

  Silas climbed out of the bus.

  Several pedestrians glanced toward him, their expressions wary. It was interesting that his ethnicity drew more attention than the armored vehicle he had rolled up in. Samantha, Bella, and the others climbed out behind him, which only increased the stares. Silas felt a little strange under so many eyes.

  Tentatively, he walked up to the building and knocked on the door. He really hoped someone here spoke English. It felt a bit arrogant to think that at least one person nearby would. With a few hundred people around, at least one of them had to.

  A woman opened the door. She wore black robes and a face covering, and she said something in a language Silas didn’t understand. He glanced at Mandy, hoping she could translate.

  She shook her head, “Sorry, I know English, Spanish, Mongolian, Hindi, Mandarin, and a bit of Russian. I never thought I would need Urdu.”

  Urdu? That sounded like something a fantasy writer would name their orc tribe. Silas shrugged and gave a lopsided smile to the woman, “Sorry, ma’am. We’re not from around here.”

  The woman replied sharply, whatever she said, it didn’t sound friendly. She then turned and shouted something into the building behind her. A child emerged, listened, and then ran down the street. Silas looked after the child, then back at the woman, who made a vague gesture with her hand, waving downward toward the dirt. Silas hoped that meant wait.

  A few minutes later, the child returned with a large man walking just behind him. The man held what looked like some kind of bottle, maybe beer, though Silas had no idea what people even distilled in this region. He vaguely remembered something about rice in India, or was that China? He regretted zoning out in school when his father tried to teach him geography and geopolitics.

  The man looked Silas up and down, then smirked. He glanced at Aaron next, and his expression shifted into something like disdain. He muttered something under his breath and sneered at the women.

  The man was a head taller than Silas with a turban and a long black beard. He wore traditional robes, but layered over them was a mix of modern tactical armor and medieval plate. Scars crisscrossed his exposed skin, and his armor was gouged and patched in multiple places. On his hip rested a handgun that looked far too large to be a standard 9mm, and on his back was a spear whose shaft was scratched and worn from heavy use.

  This man had been fighting since the world broke and he had survived. Silas was confident he could beat him in a fight if it came to that. What worried him was that the man wasn’t unique. The entire plaza was filled with people like him, though slightly shorter.

  The man finally spoke, his voice deep and rough, “You are foreigners. What do you want here? Why have you come to my home?”

  Silas inclined his head politely, “We’re just passing through. We want to pick up some supplies before we continue on our way home.”

  The man narrowed his eyes, “Where is home? Were you sent by the Dasi warlord?”

  “No,” Silas said, “I don’t know what a Dasi is.”

  “Indian,” the man said.

  Silas sighed, “No we are not from India. We got trapped on the other side of the portals and the exit we found led to Delhi. We ran across a group led by Rahul, but the man was a thief, so we left. We are currently trying to get home to the United States.”

  A greedy smile spread across the man’s face, “You say you are wealthy Americans, yes?”

  Silas sighed, “Not wealthy. Just American.”

  The man’s smile faded slightly, but he shrugged, “To travel across the world and still have a baby face? Of course, you are wealthy. Otherwise, you would have scars.”

  Silas resisted the urge to touch his face, still unmarked, despite everything he’d survived. Was that the reason why he seemed unimpressed by Silas and Aron?

  It was one of the side effects of eating so much beholder meat in Hell. The stuff had healed him perfectly. Now he regretted not having any scars. Silas suspected it even had the ability to extend his lifespan, repairing the slow degradation of his body over time.

  If he hadn’t been wearing his armor, the Pakistani man would have noticed that one of Silas’s hands was a lighter shade than the other. The hand Silas had grown back over the last week was paler, simply because it hadn’t existed long enough to be darkened by the sun.

  “So what if I am a rich American?” Silas snapped at the big man impetuously.

  The man grinned. “Then you pay for what we give you. You pay a lot.”

  Silas rolled his eyes. He almost wished he had a few dollars, just to see how the man would react to getting paper currency from a superpower that likely no longer even existed. It was one more reason why fiat currency was foolish. It was the ‘trust me bro’ of all monetary systems.

  “I want information,” Silas said, “on any locations in this area where I can exchange weapons or anything of value for items and knowledge.”

  The man smiled and held out his hand, wiggling his fingers in the universal sign for give me. Silas clenched his teeth. The man was ridiculous, scamming him like this. With a low growl, he drew his dagger from his waist and slapped its hilt into the man’s hand.

  The big man examined the short blade, tracing the intricate designs carved into it, and raised an eyebrow. “This is made of bone.”

  Silas nodded. “Trophy of a defeated enemy.”

  “Did you defeat it?” the man asked. His eyes flicked to Silas’s unscarred body and the fancy armor he was wearing. There was something sharp in his voice now. “Or did you have your woman do it for you?”

  There was a hint of scorn in his tone.

  Silas snatched the dagger back. “You know what? I’ll go find somebody else to talk to. I don’t have time for this.”

  The man laughed lightly. “You can’t. I am the leader of this community.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow. Rahul had described Abrar as a man who won people’s minds with words and some sigil based emotional manipulation. This man looked more like a warrior than a diplomat.

  “So you are Abrar?” Silas said. He was preparing for a quick escape if things turned dangerous.

  The man snorted, “No, I am Uzman Ashraf, leader of the Black Spear Company in the great reclamation of Punjab.”

  Huh? What on God’s green earth was a Punjab?

  Silas’s blank look seemed to trigger Uzman, “India. Punjab is part of India. Stupid American.”

  “Do you know what Saguache is,” Silas snapped. He didn’t wait for Uzman to answer, “It's a county in America. But I bet you you didn’t know that because you're not from America.“

  A fire lit in Uzman’s eyes. He balled up a fist and swung at Silas. It came out of nowhere and reminded Silas that not everyone had the same opinions as him on assault.

  Despite the surprise, Uzman still had all the tells that a normal person would have. A shift in bodyweight and the tensing of his triceps. Silas stepped back, letting the fist slide past.

  “Whoa, you got some thin skin. Did your mom not teach you that you shouldn’t give what you can’t take,” Silas mocked as he avoided another punch.

  “My skin is marked by struggle,” Uzman roared, “It is not for the likes of you to speak of.”

  He almost expected Uzman to draw a weapon or use a sigil. Silas would have responded in kind. Still, he wasn’t sure where the bounds of civility ended. If he crossed that line, all those warriors currently watching with interest would become threats.

  Silas was glad to see Bella gather everyone into a huddle. He prepared a portal, but did not activate it. Then he struck back. His gauntleted fist hit Uzman in the upper ribs. The man was shockingly sturdy, barely reacting to the blow.

  Uzman’s arm whipped back down catching Silas in the shoulder. He was physically stronger than Bella. Thankfully, it was the forearm, not his fist that made contact. It still felt like getting hit by a battering ram. The man wasn’t quite as strong as the dragonkin chief, but he wasn’t far off.

  None of the people spectating did anything when Silas struck back. He quickly cataloged their reactions and was surprised to see approval on some of their faces. Wait, was this some kind of trial by strength or something equally ridiculous? That was absurd. People like that didn’t really exist… did they?

  Everyone knew strength was a poor measure of a person. Emotional strength and self-control were what determined a person's maturity, not how much damage their body could inflict.

  Yet that seemed to be exactly how this group functioned. Maybe not the entire culture, but at least this unit. The man had said it was a military division, after all, maybe it was actually a warrior tribe of some sort. Silas once again cursed his lack of attentiveness to geopolitics.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Still, if they weren’t going to dogpile him, and this was some sort of rite of passage, then he couldn’t afford to lose. Or rather, he had to give as good as he got.

  So, Silas rolled with the momentum of the blow, letting his armor and body absorb the impact of Uzman’s forearm while slipping out of range of a follow-up strike.

  Uzman was fast. Shockingly so. Silas barely avoided another punch that smashed into the dirt. For a moment he couldn’t understand why someone would throw a punch at the ground like that until he saw the concrete crack under the impact.

  Don’t get hit while braced against something, Silas mentally noted. Silas took advantage of the man’s awkward position and drove a kick into Uzman’s chin. Uzman was crouched, neck muscles bulging as he took the blow like a champ. While ignoring the pain he reached up and grabbed Silas by the ankle, wrenching himself upright and dragging Silas with him.

  Fine. If Uzman was going to fight like that, Silas would take advantage of it.

  He jumped, driving his other leg upward into Uzman’s hip. At the same time, he yanked the trapped leg backward. The kick connected cleanly. Silas expected Uzman to stagger, maybe even collapse as his hip shifted under the force.

  Uzman didn’t shift, not even a little. It felt like kicking a metal plate. Instead, Uzman twisted his torso and tried to fling Silas into the wall of what he had originally thought to be a store.

  Silas wasn’t weak, but this was different. He felt weak by comparison. The man wasn’t just strong he was freakishly durable. Still, the kick had done something.

  Silas heard the creak of strained straps as his foot slipped out of his boot. He fell backward, avoiding being slammed into the wall but still ending up in a terrible position. Uzman tossed the empty boot aside and charged, launching into something that looked disturbingly like a WWE tackle.

  Silas rolled out of the way and sprang back to his feet.

  Uzman was stronger, faster, and growing up in a warrior culture probably meant he was more skilled too. So Silas leaned on the one thing Uzman didn’t have. An obscene amount of vitality.

  If he could outlast Uzman, he would win. And even if Uzman was more skilled, he wasn’t so much more skilled that Silas couldn’t read his movements. The world slowed as Silas focused. Unfortunately, he slowed too, but it gave him time to think.

  Uzman chambered a punch. Silas moved before it was thrown. Uzman raised his leg to stomp down on Silas’s knee. With the extra forewarning, Silas did something he normally wouldn’t even attempt.

  He kicked out with his free foot, planting it behind Uzman’s ankle. Uzman’s eyes widened. His foot came down on Silas’s leg. Bone armor cracked under the force. Silas’s leg screamed under the pressure, but it held. Barely.

  Uzman’s punch shoved him backward. Silas let it happen. His planted foot slid, unimpeded, yanking Uzman’s only supporting ankle out from under him. Uzman’s weight shifted suddenly, all of it collapsing onto Silas’s extended leg.

  The scream of stressed tendons filled Silas’s mind. Uzman let out a war cry as he fell, elbow first on Silas’s shin. The bone gave up, snapping in half. Silas hopped back on one foot cataloguing the injury. His tibia was broken, but his fibula was still intact. Resetting it should be simple after this fight was over.

  Unfortunately, it looked like it would conclude with Silas on the losing end. Fortunately, death didn’t seem to be the goal and if there was one thing Silas was good at it was healing from a beating. Silas tried to think of his next plan of action as he watched Uzman rise, just because he was broken did not mean he was beaten.

  Realistically, Silas was not built for a fistfight in a world filled with superpowers. So he stood there contemplating what to do next while balancing on one leg, the other raised like some sort of crane-style martial artist. Instead of having his hands spread wide, though, he held his fists up in a standard boxing stance, something that was borderline useless while standing on one foot, he knew. However, he didn’t know where else to go. Unless he intended to go all in, but any escalation would be against his better judgment, risking Uzman and the watchers taking action with their weapons and abilities.

  Uzman grunted as he got to his feet, standing to his full height. The big man was half a head taller than Silas. He grinned, wiping blood from his lips where Silas had kicked him, and made a show of wiggling a loose tooth before smiling again.

  “So you’re not a coward who lets his woman fight his battles.” Uzman’s voice was jolly, like some sort of violent Middle Eastern Santa.

  Silas raised an eyebrow, “Yeah? You think many people survive out in the middle of nowhere by being cowards?”

  He had an image of the man saying something like ‘you strong. Grog, like strong man’. It was a stupid thought, but then again, this whole situation was ridiculous.

  Uzman pointed at Silas’s raised leg, “Do you have some Shaolin temple monkey-fu, or are you really just standing there with a broken leg? I’m sure I heard it snap.”

  Silas shrugged, “Yeah. It’s broken.”

  Over the last few months, Silas had had a lot of bad things happen to him, things that would be life-changing for most people. Compared to everything else, this barely registered. He had been burned, broken, stabbed, bitten, hit with acid, poisoned, lost limbs, and still kept going.

  Yes, it hurt. However, losing a hand or having a stinger the size of a kitchen knife shoved through his torso were way worse. There were two components to pain tolerance. One was the sensitivity of the nerves responsible for sending the pain signals. Constant pain would deaden them, Flesh Lord had made that impossible as his nerves would repair themselves.

  The other method was simple mental resilience. Resilience, likely assisted by the focus and control stats.

  “You have healing, don’t you?” Uzman said. “This could have been avoided if you had just said you were a warrior.”

  Silas would have facepalmed if he weren’t balancing on one leg.

  “I do,” he said. Then clarified so as not to be used as a vitality battery, “Self-healing. It’s slow.”

  He didn’t know how long it would take, hours, days, definitely not weeks. If he had some beholder meat, it would only take minutes. He actually missed that monster. Back in Hell, they’d been common. Not so much here.

  Silas wasn’t sure what to expect next, but Uzman surprised him again by shifting from aggressive to hospitable. He picked up his drink from the ground and chugged the rest before tossing it to his wife.

  “Come, come. Let us eat.” He gestured toward his house. “I will be your host today.”

  Silas nodded slowly. This felt like the reverse of Rahul, Uzman had been hostile first, then friendly once he realized Silas could take it. Honestly, the man reminded Silas more of a biker than a military leader: rough, crude, violent on the surface, but with some strange internal code.

  Silas remembered a story his father had told him about a biker gang that had found a young girl wandering alone in the mountains of Colorado. They’d given her a ride home and then beat her father for his negligence. His own father had come home confused that day. On one hand, the bikers had assaulted someone. On the other hand, the dad had deserved it.

  Uzman said something in Urdu to his wife. She nodded and went inside with their son. Uzman gestured again for them to follow. Silas looked down at his leg, then hopped after him. Bella moved in to support him.

  “Do you think it’s safe inside?” she asked quietly.

  Silas sighed, “I don’t know. I’ve heard Middle Eastern people take their hospitality seriously. If he serves food, I’ll eat first, let Flesh Lord warn us of anything poisonous.”

  “But what if he has bad intentions?” Bella whispered. “How would we get away? Is it wise to lock ourselves in a room with someone that strong?”

  Silas could practically see the thoughts racing through her head. Their fighting styles were similar, direct, and brutal. Uzman had demonstrated the ability to match her, without showing what his sigils could do.

  Once again, they sat down, and culture shock was the only phrase Silas could think of to describe the experience when Uzman decided it was time for a meal.

  Silas had pictured it like family dinners back home. When his father wasn’t working the night shift, they would all sit around the same table, his dad at the head, his mom to his right, and siblings wherever there was space. Food was either portioned out or placed in the center to be shared.

  Uzman, evidently, had very different ideas.

  Women and children were seated separately, and Bella was informed, politely, but firmly, that her place was at the small table in the adjoining room. Even Uzman’s wife looked reproachful at Bella’s assumption that she would sit with the grown men. Bella clenched her jaw, clearly wanting to argue, but ultimately deferred to their hosts.

  Uzman sat cross-legged on the floor with a mat beneath him, while Silas and Aron were offered seats opposite. Food arrived quickly, so quickly that Silas suspected some kind of heat or preparation sigil had been used.

  The meal was goat and vegetables, slathered in sauce and stuffed into a pocket of bread. Silas wanted to call it a taco, but decided that might be offensive, assuming Uzman even knew what a taco was.

  “Please, eat,” Uzman said with a smile, setting down three bottles of beer or something like it. He opened one and took a long swig.

  “Please forgive us if we have poor table manners,” Silas said. “We haven’t been informed about your customs.”

  He vaguely remembered hearing that in some parts of the world burping after a meal was polite, while in others finishing everything on your plate was an insult to the host. As the opposite was true in America, Silas was wary of offending the hot headed man.

  “Of course, of course,” Uzman waved it away. “Everyone knows Americans are uncivilized.”

  Silas’s eye twitched but he said nothing.

  “We will talk of trade and important matters after the meal,” Uzman continued.

  Silas and Aron exchanged a glance. Silas nodded and took a bite. The food was surprisingly good. More importantly, there was no notification warning him of poison. He eyed the alcohol next. He’d heard plenty of stories where alcohol counted as a toxin.

  Tentatively, he took a sip. It was bitter and almost flavorless aside from the disgusting taste of alcohol. The burn warmed his chest.

  No notice. Huh. He considered whether or when something would turn from medicine to poison.

  “What are you waiting for? Drink up!” Uzman asked, eyeing him curiously.

  Silas considered his answer. He could lie, but he wasn’t good at it, and the best lies were usually wrapped in truth anyway. Best to save it for when questions about his personal sigil came up.

  “One of my sigils is called Flesh Lord,” Silas said. “Are you familiar with it?”

  Uzman shook his head. “It sounds powerful. Is that why you look like a baby?”

  Silas paused, then made a deliberate decision to assume the question was genuine. “It heals me slowly and perfectly. It also resists poison and toxins, but I’m not always sure what it considers a toxin or why.” He lifted the bottle. “For example, this isn’t.”

  Uzman frowned. “Why would it be toxic?”

  “You’ve never heard of someone dying of alcohol poisoning?” Silas asked.

  Uzman laughed. “Only fools.” He slid another bottle over. “Let us see which comes first, you getting drunk, or the Lord of Flesh stopping you.”

  Silas shrugged. He didn’t like the taste, but if it improved Uzman’s mood, negotiations would be easier. He drained the first bottle. Nothing. Halfway through the second, a notice appeared.

  Notice: Flesh Lord has resisted the effects of alcohol.

  Silas reread the sigil description and sighed. Of course. It kept his body running at peak efficiency, intoxication itself would register as poison. Toxic was quite literally in the center of intoxication.

  “Looks like about a bottle and a half is considered unhealthy,” he said.

  Uzman snorted. “A terrible sigil. If you can’t get drunk, what’s the point?”

  Silas disagreed wholeheartedly. The health benefits without the drawbacks sounded perfect. He pushed the remaining bottle toward Aron, who, being a recently graduated college student, seemed far more appreciative.

  The meal continued. Uzman’s wife was an excellent cook. Uzman shared stories of monsters he’d hunted, gesturing to old scars. Though he didn’t mean to, he taught Silas a great deal about the new world.

  Survivors, it seemed, usually clustered around a powerful or charismatic individual. Rahul’s conclave was the norm, not the exception but it wasn’t the only model. Some leaders had realized they could achieve more by empowering others raising warriors and sending them out to form a network of allied camps. They would in turn grow their domains and send out more warriors. It sounded like a multi-level marketing variant of civilization building. Silas wasn’t sure about what he thought of that, though it appeared to be working.

  Silas also learned that sigils came in quality tiers. Healing sigils, in particular, varied widely. Some were fast and crude, excellent for keeping people alive during combat, but leaving scars behind. Others, like Silas’s, worked slowly but restored the body to a state of perfection. What counted as “perfect,” however, depended on the sigil.

  His healed him to the best state his body had ever known. Others simply reversed the damage, making them useless for things like building muscle or any kind of conditioning. Uzman’s wife had one of the fast and crude healing sigils.

  “Then I shoved my arm down the beast's mouth spear and all,” Uzman pulled up his sleeve, revealing four parallel lines running from his knuckles to his elbow, “This is where the beastie got me. However, I ate it just as it tried to eat me!”

  Silas nodded, trying to look impressed. Uzman was a battle junky who would rather fight in melee than ‘waste limited ammunition.’ If his wife had any other sigil, Uzman would be a cripple by now.

  “That sounded like a fierce battle,” Aron said, his eyes wide in amazement.

  “It was,” Uzman bragged, soaking in the awe.

  “All right, the meal is finished, so can we move on with the deal-making?” Silas asked as soon as the last bite was finished.

  “You’re in quite the rush, aren’t you?” Uzman said. Despite the disappointment at the interruption to his boating, he stood and walked into another room, rummaging around in what sounded like a dresser drawer. He returned wearing a pair of dainty spectacles that looked odd on him, holding a three-ring binder overfilled with lists. From what Silas could see those lists were handwritten in Urdu, so Silas had no idea what they said.

  Uzman slapped the papers down on the table and gestured for them to look at, “This is a list of everything we are willing to trade. Please look it over and select the items you want to discuss.”

  Silas stared at the stack, then back at Uzman, “You know we don’t read Urdu, right?”

  Uzman blinked. “Oh. Well then.” He picked up the papers and started reading from the top. “Dried meat (assorted monster) five pounds, quantity four thousand three hundred twenty-seven. Dried meat (goat), five pounds, quantity one hundred eighty. Dried meat (elephant) five pounds, quantity—”

  Silas raised a hand, “Stop, stop. There are like seven hundred pages there. We don’t need you to read them all. How about we tell you what we’re looking for, and you tell us if you have it?”

  Uzman let out a sigh of relief. “Praise Abrar. I thought I was going to have to read everything.”

  He set the papers down and glanced at Silas, waiting. Silas had started to notice that Uzman became much more congenial after drinking. He wondered if Uzman was the type of person who was pleasant when drunk and unbearable when sober. No wonder his wife kept giving him alcohol.

  “Well, for starters,” Silas said, “we’re looking for sigils, anything that lets you make materials harder or denser. If we pick up new companions, I want to be able to outfit them properly.”

  He removed a cracked piece of bone from his leg plate and crushed it in his hand, “I can make just about anything, but bone only goes so far on its own.”

  Uzman smiled. “You’ve made that knife you tried to barter earlier, yes? Not only a trophy, but the craft of your own hands.”

  Silas nodded.

  “Anything related to healing would also be useful,” Silas added. “We don’t have any way to heal others.”

  Uzman shook his head. “We do not trade healing sigils. They are far too valuable to leave our care. I assume you understand.”

  Silas nodded, he would never trade a life giving sigil if he had one. The ability to turn a random civilian into a super doctor was just too valuable.

  “As for durability or density sigils,” Uzman continued, flipping through the pages, “we do have some effect adjacent ones. Metal-related and common weapon sigils are reserved for Abrar’s military, but less practical variants are on the trade list.”

  He stopped near the back, “We have a fiber density sigil. It increases the density, durability, and weight of any cloth made by the owner. It would be excellent for spider silk armor, but acquiring spider silk dramatically reduces its immediate use..”

  Silas thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I’d have to learn weaving. That’s too much time investment. I can make a crude shirt in minutes, but mastering fabric production isn’t worth it for me.”

  Uzman nodded and kept reading. There were sigils for wood, stone, even lava, affecting density, durability, and even structure in the case of the liquids. Silas was losing interest until Uzman paused.

  “This one doesn’t increase density or durability, but it vaguely fits your category,” Uzman said. “We have a man who absorbed the sigil and reached the greater variant. From what we can tell, it’s… underwhelming. It’s called Permanent Adaptation.”

  Silas’s eyes widened. Permanent adaptation? That’s one of the most broken abilities in every story it showed up in.

  Trying to keep his excitement from showing, Silas asked, “So what does it do?’

  Uzman smiled. “The name makes it sound impressive. In reality, it’s very literal. Environmental stress will eventually be adapted to.”

  “So if I threw him into lava—”

  “If his vitality was high enough to survive long enough, yes, he’d adapt. But that’s the problem. You must survive the environment first.” Uzman stated. “It only works on environments. Not attacks. Not weapons. Bullets, explosions, blunt force, none of that counts. And there’s a limit based on the user’s vitality. The greater variant only speeds up adaptation by using spirit.”

  Silas frowned. In theory, it was absurdly powerful. Vacuum resistance. Extreme gravity. Alien atmospheres. A person could become the perfect explorer. Silas had always wanted to explore the ocean floor. In practice, it was useless unless you were already wealthy or powerful enough to expose yourself safely to extreme environments for long periods.

  Unless…

  “What is the exact phrasing of that sigil ability?” Silas asked.

  Uzman looked at Silas a bit suspiciously, then shrugged and read it off, “Adapt to any unilateral stress at a rate equivalent to how perilous the stress is.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow, the word environment was not used. He had one last question, “Does it help resist poisons?”

  Uzman blinked and thought about it, “I do remember old man Bilal bragging about how he had built a resistance to dust vipers.”

  So armor could have heat from thermal cultivator shoved into it and attain heat resistance. It would be an item that could grow into a legendary piece of equipment. Instead of expressing interest, Silas moved on. He asked about several other sigils before making his offer.

  “I have two pack guardian sigils and a few others that I have not had the opportunity to identify,” Silas said, “the monsters they came from were a large lizard with frills running down its back, a set of goat monsters, and a floating pink sphere with large teeth. In exchange for those I would like two thermal cultivator sigils, the seismic shock sigil, the stain transmitter, fault-line detector, and kinetic enhancer.”

  Uzman leaned back, “That's quite the list you have. Also, I was right, you’re a wealthy American.”

  “Do we have a deal?” Silas asked.

  Uzman shook his head, “No, the pack guardian sigils are the only sigils of high value right now. That lizard one allows for gliding, so in the future, it will have tremendous value. But it's not the future, as for the others, I am not familiar with them.”

  “What if we remove the kinetic enhancer?” Silas asked.

  “Then we would almost have a deal,” Uzman said.

  Silas suspected that he was overpaying, but he would rather pay too much for what he needed than not have it, “Alright remove kinetic enhancer and…” he paused as if thinking, “Throw in three of those permanent adaptation sigils and I’ll add my third pack guardian sigil.”

  Uzman frowned, “Now I think you have more than three pack guardians.”

  Silas shrugged, “You said that I had almost enough and that permanent adaptation was almost useless.’

  Uzman huffed, though he didn’t seem mad, “Two adaptation sigils and we have a deal.”

  Silas smiled and went to shake Uzman’s hand, then paused, “You wouldn’t happen to have a Chinese to English dictionary in that catalogue, would you?”