Horatio took Adil to the side and started to take a more serious look

"What's up?" Adil asked.

Horatio looked a bit weary unsure about what he was going to say. "This fight, are you sure about it?" He asked.

"Well, we need to protect everyone here, we can't let them just be walked over."

"Listen, I know it's right to protect these people, I know they deserve a place to stay. But I don't live here; I have a home, family back in the town."

"I see what you're saying, but no one is keeping you here, you can leave if you want."

"I'm not saying I'll leave! Just. This cave, it's turning people a bit. you know."

"What?"

"Like I've talked to those crusaders, some of them. They think you're more than human, they see this place like something.. And I can't say I disagree, it's special, but I still know you're human, that Seras is human."

"Don't beat around the bush just say what you're going to say."

"This fight. Do you really want to do it? Even if you did fight the other army. How many will have died."

Adil grew frustrated; he pushed away Horatio. "You don't know shit," he said. Adil could get them out if they lost, but why should he care about the army. They aren't the ones in the right, he was. He will build a utopia.

Notification

New schematic: short-range portal stone.

They got back to base, Swift and Adil saw Morganna rush over to Aku as they entered the spawn crystal. She pushed her hand down on the giant's leg,

"Under the crystal," She said.

Holding her shoulder under Aku's the Dryad helped move him as he hobbled. Eventually, he sat down under the crystal and then she brought out the interface, browsing through she started fidgeting, her face a mask of frustration.

"Hold him still and get out some fire," She said. She looked at Swift, "Can you burn away any infection or bad material? And does anyone have the rest of the leg?"

Swift took out some of his cleansing flames and shot a portion into and around the giant's leg. Aku cried out in pain but braced it as he always did, Swift's flame control had improved since Adil was bitten anyway, almost no tissue was irreversibly damaged. Steve seemed to pull the remains of Aku's leg out of a bag in the corner of the room. Morganna lay her hands over the separation between the leg and Aku before sending a shimmering brown aura around the gap. This seemed different from her black and white coalescing magics. The wound appeared to heal, Morganna's mana reaching out from Aku's leg with brown branch-like tendons connecting to the foot and bringing it closer. The break between the foot and leg seemed to reform into the green-blue skin, though a bit bumpy as the tree magic appeared to fill in the missing flesh. Soon the leg appeared almost normal. Aku stretched out and proved that he had still the same functionality he used to have.

"Couldn't we have just used the crystal?" Adil asked.

the Dryad looked at him in frustration. "If that is a function you wish me to unlock then I will have to be allocated some time."

Aku now got up and stretched his new foot, ready again to jump into battle. "I didn't know you could heal," Swift said.

"All dryads' main mana form is in nature and life. The other force you saw me used was my second mana form. Still, I should say. As crude as it is, I believe you should just resurrect instead of hobbling all the way here."

The group looked at each other and back to the dryad, shuffling a bit.

Adil broke away from the others. "Listen. The drones will be done with the research centre soon. When they are done a portal spot will appear here, then I want you to go through the portal and relocate to that spot. So, before you leave, do you need anything else?"

"Oh, that sounds great, I wouldn't mind an apprentice of sorts."

"Got anyone in mind?"

She looked across the area and saw Steve shiver away.

"Oh child, you would do nicely," she said to Steve.

"Great, Steve. Go with the lady."

"But-"

"This is no longer a debate."

Adil went into design mode and inspected the areas under construction. He directed drones to build runic pads in the corner of each room.

Notification

Teleport pad -3x3 (m)

cost: 200 manna

2% user Resurrection cost on use.

build: yes/no

(This message will only show once)

A drone moved to build a portal pad in the corner of the room whilst Adil watched. The runic formations chiselled into the side from the coagulating mandibles of the gooey drone, filling up the blueprint he saw in the design overlay. He set others around the cave, in the new smithy, the war room, the centre of the large cavern being excavated by the drones.

Each pad had shifting symbols allocated to it, a person could manually shift the symbols to one which represented the spot they wished to travel to. upon confirming their selection the portal would charge up and teleport whoever was in the area to the selected portal.

Exiting the design mode he saw the formation come to life, glowing lines on the floor almost inconspicuous.

"Time to test," he said aloud, taking a step on the pad that had appeared in the war room. He portaled into a new room, it was all bare smooth stone, a monochromatic colour highlighted with a few glowing lights. Adil noticed how the room was not yet fitted with glass but still appeared scientific. Suddenly Adil was catapulted across the room, impaling himself on the ceiling. He peeled off in a bloody mess and landed on the floor, about to pass out from both pain and blood loss he saw Swift appear in the corner of his eye and move up to his body.

"Aaaah, fuck, shit... Sorry man. You need like an *in use don't use* thing for the portals... Uh, I'll see you soon."

Adil opened his eyes once again and saw that he was being rebuilt at the spawn crystal, a blanket over his half-naked body. Swift was in-front of Adil. Adil sat up seeing that the crystal had only an arm left to finish.

"Hey, Swift," Adil said.

"Yes, my old buddy old pal?" Swift asked.

"Fuck you man, just fuck you."

Then Adil collapsed onto his back unable to see Swift's apologetic smile whilst the spawn crystal finished the reconstruction of his body. He looked around and saw he was in a new location. The crystal was above him, having moved into its new location. Around him, he saw the drones bringing in more resources to the crystal and above he saw the drones fitting glass around the research centre.

"Sorry again," Swift said

"It's ok." he got in reply.

Morganna moved in between "The renovations are underway and the Crystal seems to be comfortable in this new location," she said and then motioned towards her assistant.

"Steve, could you be a dear and get me some tea?"

"Right away Ma-am," Steve said and rushed off to another location.

"Apprentices." She announced proudly.

Adil got up and saw his equipment and resources laid out in front of him, he started putting his clothes on and turned to the Dryad. "Can you sort out the portals, I need some indication they're in use. I'll be making equipment in the smithy." He got a nod in reply. "of course" she said.

Looking across the room, he saw the crystals and even leather hide neatly laid in piles. The leather and crystals seemed like a valuable material, something they wouldn't get often.

Before Swift portaled away he shouted down towards him, "Tell Griffon to get a combat-team, the resources out there are way too valuable," Swift gave a mock salute as his very being appeared to puff out into a blue-silver smoke. Then finally, before moving out Adil went into design mode, focused on the forge and moved it to the new location in the smithy. Then stepped on the portal-pad and selected the smithy as the location to go to.

He was transported into the room and as he emerged space lit up with a cascading activation of glowing rocks. The smithy was in the centre a lot of space to expand. The area silent and empty, he could already imagine the echo as he smashed away on the ores and crystals.

Adil tossed the sack he was holding to the side of the anvil. Before making the jewlery he tried to figure out how the gems handled the mana.

He held the mana shield token he had made before in his hand and looked into the purple of the amethyst. He passed mana through the device and saw it exude with power. Lighting up a deeper purple. It was reminiscent of the attacks on Earth, how the strange dark mages used staves topped with glowing purple crystals to shoot down people in the street. Adil put the crystal away and tried to purge himself of those thoughts.

He brought out another one of the crystals from his bag — a chunk of opal, similar material to what was in the original priest's token. Focusing, Adil could push his mana through the crystal. He tried to understand how the mana interacts with it, how the process works to change its properties. As he had seen before, when the mana goes through the crystal it changes. Though it was not drawn to anything before it touched it the mana would cling to whatever it touched, then once it was altered it would only stick to whatever had changed it. This was how the smithy worked; mana could be infused into the material and strengthen it. The more it was tempered into the material, the more it bonded with it until it was intrinsically a part of it. It was different with the crystals; they were able to store and bestow their properties on the mana easily. The mana would be stored int he crystal, pushed out or drawn in by the pressing of further mana into it.

Adil checked the difference between amethyst and opal. The opal could seemingly take a much smaller amount of mana and reacted quickly to any transfer of mana. It seemed efficient. This was the opposite for the amethyst, though it could absorb large amounts it would leak into the outside world. Further, as more mana was pushed into the crystal, it seemed to become volatile. As it grew more unstable, the colours fluctuated, the crystal vibrating. Adil stopped putting in mana and left it alone. Two more crystals to test.

He pulled out the red quartz, better known as Jasper. He tested with a small amount of mana; it appeared to flow readily. The crystal appeared to be highly stable and able to hold large amounts. As the mana pushed towards the crystal it changed to the red colour, the mana was being drawn in from him. He stopped pushing mana but felt more being forced out of him, as he closed the link his blood came to the surface of his hand, and in excruciating pain, he felt it shoot out into the crystal. Adil threw the crystal across the floor, separating its strange pull from him.

"Fuck," he said aloud.

notification

Minor resistance to blood magic.

You have analysed the processes of a crystal used for blood magic whilst pushing mana through it. Resisting its effects whilst inspecting its process has given you an understanding of its processes and minor resistance to its mechanisms. *To unlock increased resistance, further understanding, experience and experimentation is required.*

Adil walked over to get the crystal and saw how the mana was still comfortably inside flowing around as though it were alive. *I guess that one's out* Adil thought. The crystal seemed much too dangerous to use, though he was glad for his newfound resistance. He instead moved to the last one, the pink quartz. As he pushed mana into it he again found a decent amount of stable mana storage, though not as much as the jasper. As he poured more mana in he felt his heat rising, he began to sweat and soon heard the sound of his own heartbeat. He stopped pouring in the mana and it easily abided by his decision. He noticed he had started breathing heavily and glanced a look at his reflection as he held up a piece of shiny metal to the forge. His eyes were fully dilated. Still, though, it wasn't stealing his blood or about to explode. To Adil, this was a success and possibly with its increased storage, a substitute for the opal.

Finally, it was time to make. He brought out scraps of metal, hammering them into new materials. Getting used to the process, he again was rebounded with electricity through his arm. Smithing in this mana imbued forge took a deep focus he was unaccustomed too. Soon though the wind seemed to pick up and he struck the metal with sparks of electricity coalescing in the air. His eyes glowed bright White as the metal began to reshape and forge into his desired object. He carried this on, reshaping scraps of metal until he had ten gem-less tokens for use. He fitted eight with opal and two with the pink quartz and started the phase of testing.

Waiting for a drone to arrive took a while, he saw it materialise out of the wall, as the strange silvery creature took its shape from the mass of silvery mana coagulating through the wall. Soon under Adil's instructions, the creature had set up several dummies to be shot down. He theorised that the mana shield tokens would even protect inanimate dummies when they are charged. This did not work out. Though the shields would protect the dummies from a small amount of damage, the shield soon ran out of power. It seemed that the storage amount the crystal had equated more to the strength of the shield than how much it could reserve in an energy bank.

He instead set up a makeshift trap. A string he pulled let loos an object from up high which would swing towards him. Giving the object enough weight for a decent amount of momentum, he thought it was ready to test. He wore one of the shields and stood ready in position for the trap to come. Pulling the lever he was prepared as the trap came down, it smacked into Adil just after he activated the shield, the impact hit into him but only pushed him back, the kinetic energy spread over his body and reduced as the mana was used up.

It wasn't good enough, somehow Adil needed to test the limits and also, as he pondered. Get his revenge. He went to get Swift.

Speaking through the drone, Adil managed to find him, seemingly meditating in a room on his own.

"Hey man, I've come to a bit of a snag and think I need your help with one of the mana shields,"

"Struggling with smithing again?" swift asked.

"Not quite, I've made the shields, but there are some technical problems. It'll be better if you come to see."

"On my way."

A few moments passed, and Swift appeared through one of the portals. Adil was waiting there the trap already having been set up. He handed Swift one of the opal tokens.

"You have to try and push mana through it and direct it to shield you."

"like this?" he said.

"Yeah that's it, I think you have it working."

"didn't seem too hard."

"Yeah, you have to stand here so I can see it properly."

Swift moved to the location Adil pointed, placing him on a makeshift "x" scrawled into the ground. A strig was held in Adils hand, and he pointed in a direction for Swift.

"Could you look over there?" Adil said. Swift then saw where the string was connected, a makeshift trap hidden in the shadows of the room, only obvious from the purple glow of a crystal. A crystal Swift noticed to be an overcharged amethyst on the end of the trap, which was suddenly falling towards him.

The crystal shattered and a massive explosion ruptured the air, almost bursting Adil's eardrums. Swift's body flew to the side of the room, his token seeming to absorb most of the impact. He hit into the wall and knocked away some of the stone. As the dust settled, Swift was collapsed on the floor, gasping from the impact."

"Why.." He said as loud as he could as he was still trying to catch his breath.

"Your valuable contribution has been noted," Adil said.

"Round two?"

Swift made a groaning noise.

"Sure" he replied reluctantly, though he took a beating he was aware of how valuable the testing was. Swift was given the pink quartz token and repeated the experiment. The impulse knocked him back a few feet, but it was not enough to send him flying into the wall. Swift had still collapsed to the floor, his eyes dilated and his breathing heavy. He got up and shouted:

"Whoooo."

"That was a rush."

Using the Pink quarts clearly tapped into some sort of adrenaline-inducing mechanism. *time to test its limits* Adil thought to himself. He asked Swift to stand in the same place and used half the remaining amethyst on the trap, nearly two and a half times as much as the original blast. The rocket blasted Swift into the wall and took away a further large chunk of stone. This time, the token had not run out of power, still able to mitigate more damage. Swift though was so shaken by the original blast and stimulated through the strange pink quartz effect he was little more than a jittery mess on the floor gasping for air.

"Ah aa ar- a - ar- a- a- a- a-rree we - a--"

swift stopped as he tried to catch his breath and take a breather.

"Yeah, we're done pal, thanks for the help."

Adil passed Swift one of the opal mana shields with a smile and tried to direct a drone to get him a cup of water.