They decided to try to get some breakfast first. No big meal together, this time. Everyone was trying to stay busy with their own little things—Mikey soon pulled Viv away to get some ideas about plumbing and toiletry, Dez had dragged Ned, Evelyn, and a reluctant Sue into a training session for their Sigils, while Jerome kept a lookout for anything untoward.

At least, Rory managed to scarf down some food before giving in to Miles’s excitement. The fare was still poor since dried nuts and crackers could only do so much, but at least the mango juice was nice. Would have been even nicer chilled in a fridge.

Miles’s reasoning behind his idea was sound. If they could establish some sort of experience mechanic that their personal Tiers could depend on instead of the average of all their Sigils’ Tiers, and then have it so that they could get experience for nearly anything they did, they’d be able to grow stronger much faster.

Problem was that Rory had no clue how to go about making that a reality. Like with everything else so far, he was pretty sure something like that was dependent on Sigils. All the system Sigils they’d received had been through achievements, through things the system itself granted. There was nothing for Rory to Weave.

Apparently, Miles had a solution to that too.

“Can you copy Sigils?” he asked.

Rory couldn’t stop the puzzled look from appearing on his face. “Excuse me?”

“Can you like, use your Weaving on Sigils themselves? What would that even give you?”

“Uh…”

Rory hadn’t even thought if something like that was possible. Sigils were the output of his Weaving. He used it on anything that wasn’t a Sigil to create a Sigil. Using it on Sigils themselves sounded disingenuous. Turning a Sigil into a Sigil sounded like a waste of Mana.

But there was no harm in seeing what really happened.

Rory forgot about breakfasts for the moment and pulled up some Sigils of Distant Detonation. Next, he turned his Weaving on them, the little lines of white light sinking into the Sigil itself. All he got was a strange notification.

[Weaving allows decomposition of Sigils in later Tiers]

When the lines of light were gone, he still had the same Sigil as before.

“Nothing happened?” Miles asked, sounding a bit glum.

“Not exactly.” Rory reported the strange notification. “Looks like I can break Sigils down, but only later. Not sure what they’ll break down to, though.”

“That’s cool though. I think.”

“Yeah, we learned something at least.”

Miles nodded. “Right. My point was that maybe Trish and Allen will find someone who’s got system Sigils that do quests, experience, all that kind of stuff. So, if you could somehow copy those, we could all use them then.”

Rory could agree that wasn’t a bad idea in theory, but they’d need to figure out how to do that in practice.

The rest of the day passed slowly at first. Rory didn’t have much Warding or Weaving to go through anymore. He did make a few tokens to help, though. Viv had a locket he had given her ages ago, and Rory Wove and Warded a Sigil of Support into it. More resilience never hurt anyone. Rory did the same for stuff the others wore too—Dez’s watch that didn’t tell the time anymore, a wallet Ned owned, and the wedding ring on Evelyn’s finger.

For Ned, Rory also Wove several Sigils of Water from the pool in the gardens. He made enough to get the guy to Cerulean I with ease. Surprisingly, he didn’t use his achievement’s reward on his Sigil of the Hooktongue. That one was progressing well on its own.

Instead, Ned reported having received a Sigil of Dogfighting, which improved his combat prowess while flying. That was the one he took straight to Cerulean I.

The “hack”, as Miles and Ned called it, helped all of them. Dez, Miles, Evelyn, and even Jerome were able to raise their Sigils’ Tiers significantly. Just like Viv, all they had to do was use their Sigils, and Rory could convert their ejected element into more Sigils they could absorb.

Rory couldn’t help them all reach Cerulean, though. Dez and Miles were closest with their Abyssal Inferno and Fire respectively, so as two of their primary warriors, Rory made sure they reached Cerulean I just as Viv and Ned had done. The others would need to wait. There was only so much Mana they could use up before they needed a good reserve to actually fight monsters with.

It did make Rory smile just a little sardonically to imagine Trish being outraged at not being offered the same. Ah, well. Maybe she’d find more Mana that would solve the problem.

“I still don’t have anything to fight with,” Mikey said after they’d looked over their toilet issue.

It was nice that at least taking care of their personal businesses wasn’t going to be a problem. The toilets worked fine. Plumbing was driven mostly by gravity so they would be functional for the time being. But the reservoir they used would eventually run out unless more water was pumped in, which they couldn’t without electricity.

Thankfully, Ned volunteered to refill it if it ever went dangerously low. All well and good, but that would be yet another drain of Mana on them, and Rory was starting to worry whether they really had enough.

Who knew running a civilization on nothing but Mana would be so difficult?

This apocalypse really needed to throw more at them. The sky was cloudy, so perhaps Rory and the others would be blessed for a change by a Mana rainfall. Well, he could at least hope.

“Not everyone needs to fight,” Viv said. “But I get the worry of not being able to defend yourself. We should find you something soon.”

“The debris,” Dez suggested.

“Oh, true,” Rory said.

Honestly, he should have thought of that earlier. He walked over to one of the piles of rubble from the broken garden structures, then focused his Weaving on a broken stone post. Then he used it on the ground itself, leaving a small crater to get a Sigil of Limestone.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Limestone. If you lick it, it actually has a hint of lemony aftertaste. Note that the after is after you likely die, though.

[Cerulean I] allows creation, manipulation, and imbuing of element in a 25-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Element

Rarity: Uncommon

Tier: Cerulean I [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [35%]

It brought a little smile on Rory’s face to see the blue circle around the Sigil’s image of a block of cream-coloured stone. He gave the Sigil to Mikey, then gave the new Sigil of Earth to him too. Allen had said he’d had problems with his Sigil of Marble, so the other Sigil should help prevent that.

“I’ll get you some too, Jerome,” Rory said.

Jerome forestalled him. “Nah, I’m good. Want to focus on seeing what else I can do with what I got, you know?”

“That’s fair.”

Things weren’t completely idyllic. A couple of times, Rory’s traps activated, little explosions going off in the distance. Most of them had gone to investigate in alarm, finding monstrous corpses trapped atop the burning spikes that had erupted out of the ground.

One trap had ironically caught an Emberteeth, but the other had killed a new monster. It was a large creature with the monstrous head of a boar and gigantic gorilla-like torso, spiky, golden-green skin covering most of its body. Bones jutted out of its back, the end of its tail, and its massive shoulders. Rory’s Sigil of Knowledge told him it was a Rockback.

Rory concurred with the others when they all agreed it was best they hadn’t seen the monster in action

It was midmorning by the time Rory was stumped again on what he could do, but he was given new distractions to pore himself over with. Trish and Allen returned, their small Spyder filled with new people. Rory had to blink when they actually drove in. He hadn’t expected them to return with a whole family in tow so fast.

“Look what we got, old man,” Trish said, while Viv and Evelyn welcomed the new folks.

The family—a man, a woman, their nine-year-old daughter, and a Siamese cat—were being escorted inside the palace. The adults looked tearfully relieved, the kid and her cat both staring around everywhere in wide-eyed wonder.

“What happened?” Rory asked.

Trish looked especially chipper. She started explaining her story as Allen started unloading all the supplies they’d collected from the back of the car.

They hadn’t had to go far before they’d encountered their first survivors. That was thanks to Trish. Soon as they had entered the town proper, she had started shouting about their presence everywhere much like a town crier of old. About twenty minutes away from the palace near Colander Park in the northeast, they’d come across the man.

He had thought they were fake at first, but once he’d seen they were really genuine, he had dragged his family to the car, and they’d all set out for the palace then.

“No monsters?” Rory asked.

“We got attacked by some of those flying ones,” Trish said. “But Trish chopped through them pretty easily.”

“What a difference our Sigils make, huh?”

“Helped that it was daytime too.” Her grin grew wider. “I’m just glad we found more people. Oh, and you’ll be happy to hear we’ve got more Mana too, alongside some food and clothes. That family did well to save stuff up, though they don’t have Sigils.”

“Yet.”

Trish raised her eyebrows. Rory explained his Rescuer perk to her. He was curious to see what they had gone, and if their child had received a Sigil as well. Or the cat.

“Good job out there, Trish,” Dez said. He joined them while Ned helped Allen unload.

“Thanks,” she said. “I think I’m going to go out again. There’s bound to be more people. Even Malcolm said there were more.”

Rory frowned. “Wait, already?”

“Well, yeah. Those monsters aren’t going to wait until we’ve started rescuing them all, are they?”

She wasn’t wrong at all. Rory decided to shove his worries back down to wherever they arose from. Trish and Allen had proven themselves. They deserved his trust. Though, speaking of Allen, Rory wondered what he had to say.

“I’d ask to come along,” Dez said. “But you don’t have much space in your car as it is.”

Trish smiled, sharp as a pinprick. “Yep. Sorry, Dez. No room for a third wheel.”

Dez snorted.

Allen finished emptying the car and called Trish over. Apparently, he was all for heading out again. Now it made sense why Trish seemed so confident about it. They soon departed, the car trundling down the driveway with the engine grumbling lightly.

After Rory waved them off, he headed inside to meet the newcomers. Malcolm and Alyssa were both on the shorter side, dressed in night clothes covered by winter coats.

“Thank you so much for all this,” Malcolm said, rubbing Rory’s hand vigorously. He pulled back and rubbed his balding head in nervousness, laughing a little. “You have a whole palace to yourself.”

“Please, we only came here yesterday,” Rory said with a nervous smile of his own. “But yes, make yourselves at home. Though I’ll warn you it’s far from homely just yet.”

“Oh, don’t worry… Rory, right?” Alyssa greeted him with a smile. “We’re just happy to find other people still alive and fighting. We were starting to think we were the only ones left.”

“Come on.” Viv took Alyssa’s hand with a smile. “I’ll help you and little Darcy freshen up.”

Once Alyssa and her daughter left, Rory asked Malcom what sort of Sigils they had. He said they had received Sigils only after arriving at the palace. His Sigil of Scavenging highlighted necessary things in the vicinity of the Sigil’s area of effect. Alyssa’s Sigil of Obfuscation kept them all safe and hidden from outside observation.

The weirdest one was their daughter, Darcy. She had received a Sigil of Transported Vision. She hadn’t explained what exactly it could do, but from what little she had dropped, it wasn’t anything dangerous. It just let her see things at a distance.

All in all, it was a strange set of Sigils. But it made sense to Rory. Back at the bank, the souls of the lich’s victims had given him Sigils that related to what they’d been experiencing before their death. He could easily imagine Malcolm’s need to find things for his family’s survival, Alyssa’s desperate wish for no monsters to find wherever they’d been hiding, and Darcy’s hope that she could see what was going on outside.

While the new family was settling in and having some food—funnily enough, some of the food they had brought—Trish and Allen returned with another group of survivors. Rory was amazed at their success in just one day. They were only starting lunch and already, two whole groups of newcomers had joined them thanks to Trish and Allen.

Rory definitely gave up on names this time. The group consisted of four young office workers from one of the larger buildings in the local area. They’d all hidden on the higher floors, desperate to find their friends and families but unable to get out thanks to the monsters prowling the area. The braver ones had either gone with the other evacuees or had died.

“There’s a lot more of them than we had thought,” Dez said.

Viv was getting the new group settled in again. She was explaining things about the palace, what they had with them, and a general gist of what was going on. The group still looked a little shocked. It was going to take them some time to get used to this new reality. Rory couldn’t blame them. Not everyone had the same kind of adaptability.

“There are,” Rory agreed. “We’re going to need to send out more parties to find more people.”

“Right. Plus, more supplies. Our food’s going to run out even faster at this rate. Even after the stuff Trish and Allen brought.”

The last trip had included a trip by a destroyed general store as well, and they’d managed to scrounge up a lot of food and other things. It still wasn’t going to be enough.

They’d also brought a monster, for some reason.

Trish had tied a serpent-like creature to the back of the car and dragged it along behind them. The monster was easily thirty feet long, its draconic head sporting a large, bloody wound where Trish’s axe had chopped into its brain.

“Another round?” Trish asked Allen.

“I’m up for it,” he answered. “After lunch, though.”

“Oh, definitely.”

Rory wasn’t paying much attention. He was staring at the new monster’s direction, though he wasn’t really observing it. His Sigil of Knowledge had just advanced to Cerulean I as he learned the creature was called a Muddrake.

And with it, his personal Tier had reached Cerulean I as well. He now had another Sigil slot.

New Achievement!

Tier Breaker! You’ve broken through to the next Tier level. You’re now blue as the unbounded sky. The only limits that matter are the ones you set on yourself.

Rewards

Sigil of Experience

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Experience. Now you can gain experience for all that you do. Make sure you note down everything. The Court of Experience Arbitration doesn’t take cases lightly.

[Cerulean I] allows earning Experience for combat and crafting.

Stats

Type: System

Rarity: Uncommon

Tier: Cerulean I [0%]

Efficiency: Low [23%]