Jude had more than ever to work on, but he was undaunted. Getting to work was his top priority, not only would it increase his offensive output, but more importantly it was just plain cool. Combining skills and magic? Heck yeah! That was awesome!

Being the leader of Heroic Retribution meant that he now had more responsibilities. He couldn’t go off and tinker with magic all the time. Now that he had the offensive segment of his group, he needed to build up the crafter portion.

Krinn and Wen were busy training the new recruits, so that left it up to Jude to find the required craftsmen. Sure, he had Ellie, but there was only so much she could do as she was still apprenticing under Theodwin. Plus, he needed other classes like Tailor, Cook, and Merchant.

The Tailor would cover the clothing and leather working responsibilities of the company. The Cook was needed the most as they now had nearly 30 mouths to feed. And the Merchant was necessary to handle the financial responsibilities of the company as a whole. Plus, there was a number of regular Craftsmen needed for various jobs.

Luckily his fame was now big enough to get an unending stream of applicants, the real problem was sorting through them. This is when he heard that most people do background checks with the use of the Town Stone and the Switch who controlled it. Theses background checks were only good for those who lived inside Longdale, but the majority of the applicants lived in Longdale so it wasn’t a problem.

Lord Merek’s citadel was built around the Town Stone, so Jude wasn’t particularly excited to use it. But to his surprise, he found out that he wouldn’t have to interact with the lord at all. Once he got to the citadel he found out that a lot of people tend to use the Town Stone for various reasons. Some public and other more private. Some required a fee while others didn’t.

The first one he saw was a youth changing his class from Warrior to Rogue.

The Switch placed a hand on the Town Stone and the other on the youth. Then she chanted, “Fnimm phirjy ctup zoytaey du taijy.”

The stone glowed and that glow flowed from the stone into the Switch lighting up her tattoos and then flowed into the youth. Without even thanking her, he turned and left.

Jude watched the whole thing in with turned on. Keeping it on all the time would occasionally make him dizzy or nauseous, but he really wanted to get it to Rank III as soon as possible. The whole process of changing classes looked entirely different to Jude.

The Town Stone had the same magical complexity of any human, although the neon lines of magic were angular rather than curving naturally. Peeling away the layers of earth magic in the ground he could see that the stone was much vaster than the simple obelisk that stood by the Switch. Without on, the stone looked like a traditional obelisk with various runes carved along its surface. But with on, it looked like a dense cluster of circuits. Occasionally a pulse of unknown mana would emanate out of the Stone.

The Switch also was much different than normal humans. Under humans looked like a colorful model of the human anatomy, but she was much more structured. Each neon line that made her up was squared or angular. There wasn’t a single curved line in her magical makeup. It was almost like she was part of the stone!

When she changed the class of the youth, he could see the intricate workings of both the Switch and the Town Stone and their clear symbiosis.

Jude kept watching as more and more people came up to the switch to offer up their request. The private ones would have a shield pop up around them and the stone, it would block sound and distort vision to keep the transaction private.

Jude’s wasn’t affected by the shield, he couldn’t hear nor could he see like normal so it wasn’t really invading any privacy. But what he could see was the workings of the Town Stone and Switch. To him, this to him was more interesting anyway.

Jude continued to wait in line and before long it was his turn to speak to the Switch.

“State your business,” the Switch said in a monotone voice like she did with everyone else.

“I need to run background checks on these people,” he replied as he handed her a list.

“Staxife thuinb,” Switch said with a wave of her hand and the privacy shield sprung up.

“What is the fee for this many people?” Jude asked.

“I will waive the fee if you can help me,” Switch said for the first time with emotion.

Jude was shocked, “What can I help you with?”

“I am the Switch of Longdale, so I know the character of all the people who reside here. You, by far, are the most interesting and upstanding.

“My problem resides with the Lord of Longdale, Merek. I have reasons to believe that Lord Merek is planning to cut my connection to the Town Stone. If this happens, in a matter of days, I will die. I’ve seen how you’ve handled yourself with Merek and I have confidence that you will not back down if you come to a disagreement with him.

“I also know that the way you conquered the dungeon was unlike any other. That dungeon was set up by Murl and only someone like Murl would be able to change it. So now my only hope resides in you. If you could find a way to help me, perhaps we will stand a chance to the coming darkness.”

Jude now had a lot of questions, but the most serious one came from that last comment. “What is this darkness that you are talking about?”

“I am not even sure myself. But I can see and feel the entirety of Longdale and things are just not right. Spots inside of Longdale have grown dark, most of the citadel has been lost to me and I can see… shadows that shouldn’t be there. Whatever it is, it’s not good for Longdale and it’s not going to be nice when it comes out.”

“What is Lord Merek doing about it?”

“That’s the problem, he’s part of it! I don’t know what his connection to it is, but it all started with him. Where ever he goes and whatever he does, the shadow spreads.”

“I see…” Jude considered. He was now a part of this world, whether he originated here or not. He was just beginning to like Longdale. In addition to the fact that Ellie was here, Jude didn’t want to see anything bad happen. Krinn and Wen would go where ever he went, but could he really just abandon this Switch and the thousands of people to whatever this shadow was?

“I don’t know how much I can help you,” Jude said. “But I’ll do what I can. I don’t know what Lord Merek will need to do to disconnect you from your Town Stone, but I can at least help you delay it.”

Jude then closed his eyes and began concentrating. The Switch stood by not speaking and she could feel the fluctuations within Jude. She knew that he was about to do something that few would ever have a chance to see.

After about 10 minutes Jude waved his hand and said, “!”

A cube of appeared around the Town Stone, then slowly became transparent. was the Rank V . Few people trained in preferring the prowess of and the other more advanced magics. So even fewer people knew what was.

With Jude was able to erect a permanent version of his spells in a specific area. One use of this was to protect an area like he was doing with the Town Stone. Imbued into the was , , and . Only would be used with .

This was the first time Jude had used to this extent. Before, he had gotten it just far enough to get it to Rank III. But now that he used it for a real purpose, he gained some insight into that he was excited to try.

“That will only give you limited protection,” Jude warned. “My level as a Wizard is too low. If someone twice my level comes, they might be able to easily bypass it. But I’m not exactly sure as I’ve never tested this magic to that extent.”

The Switch, on the other hand, was quite excited, “I think it’s a lot better than you think. If someone tried to use enough force to break this that you just made, they would have to use enough force to get a reaction from the Town Stone itself. No one would dare to do that.”

“That’s good. This spell will only last two weeks to a month at best. But it should also be hard to detect. I didn’t have enough time to fully fortify it.”

“That is better than before,” she responded. “Here is your list back. We’ve run out of time so I marked the best ones for you already. Would you like me to send them a message?”

“Thank you, that would be great.” Jude smiled.

Jude would have like to stay longer and examine the stone in more detail with . Especially the connection it had with the Switch.

***

Jude felt an even more pressing need to get his skills to a more advanced level. Now that there might be danger in Longdale he would need to prepare. But skill advancing wasn’t going to be his only priority. He would need to gain levels as well. But first, he would need to find a good place to level.

He began focusing on once again. The insights he had gained from were still playing through his head. Now that the training area was filled with new recruits, he had Wen setup a practice dummy inside his office. It was a little cramped with the desk, a few chairs, and the dummy, but it was better than nothing.

Jude continued to setup his links between and like he had before. This time the links didn’t just connect the two skills together, he also connected the outputs into a conjoined state before entering the register. This, of course, is a simplified explanation of what Jude actually performed.

After connecting the two skills together, he tested it out in . Barring a few minor issues, the combination worked!

Now he tried it for real.

“!”

A single spectral blade flew out from Jude, the edge of the blade shining. In a flash it swung at the practice dummy, instantly slicing through the study metal plates that made it up. The spectral sword disappeared as quick as it came and the top half of the dummy slowly slid down as it was clearly bisected.

The damage from that single blade was enormous. It combined all the bonuses from and . He was pretty sure that with all 8 blades, he could one shot any of the bosses he had faced so far.

It was a terrifying amount of power.

The only drawback was that Jude had to connect up the two skills each time he wanted to use . Setting up the link between the two took several minutes, so it wouldn’t be useful in combat. But right before a boss room? That would be quite nice.

But Jude wasn’t satisfied with just the link between these two abilities. He wanted to link more! He wanted to combine and to increase his defense. He wanted to connect to to create swords that could attack and defend on their own. and for extremely long ranged attacks. There were so many possible combinations, Jude was excited to start working on them.