So, two observations. First off: the guild is powerful enough that it can shoulder the burden of providing defense to a city like this in case of emergency, it can respond faster than the King’s authority, and can act in its stead without too much hassle. Especially here, where the arm of bureaucracy is at its weakest, an institution like the guild can become a central point for the whole town. One single clerk running it can call the shots and motivate adventurers who will surely start coming here in search of easy money and rank.

Secondly: Toora. My theory is that she lied about the hordes because she knows that playing tower defense is the best way to farm Guild ranks. What do you think?

“I calculate a probability of over 75% that, indeed, she has lied. Unless she possesses undetectable scrying magic, of course, which would lower the probability to only 59%”

Edmund hummed to himself, lazily walking back towards the guild with Lisa slightly ahead of him. Toora was waiting for them, resting her weight against the small wooden fence that surrounded the grass field and separated this open space from the cramped buildings of the town. The towers and wooden constructions towered, encroached, and their dusty air of abandonment made them look ominous and dark in the dying light of the day. There seemed to come voices, carried by the wind, from inside the creaking planks and stones.

“Did you take care of the thing?” the mage asked, shifting her weight.

Lisa nodded.

“Good. I have managed to register us three as a team and successfully dodged all questions about you,” she said, looking at Edmund. “We’re ready to officially start as adventurers.”

“Good.” He said.

“I also asked to see their items catalog. It’s quite huge, even at my low rank… from what I remember of the things you showed me I think I have found one that’s quite cheap, compared to the others sold by the guild. It’s called Plagiarism Tensor and costs 1633 gold.”

Edmund frowned. “Is that a lot?”

“For comparison, a night at an inn would cost ten silver per person, and the boart that you killed - the kill was confirmed by my token by the way - net us fifty silver.”

“Oh.”

They made their way towards the broken gate of the city, with Edmund immersed in thought. He asked Toora to show him what the Plagiarism Tensor looked like, and indeed it looked like one of the items he needed. To be fair, the name was apt. It had the looks of a small string, suspended in the air between two brass knuckles and held tight by unseen forces. Whenever it vibrated, it emitted a weak reality-bending field that would imitate the closest thing to it in great detail, until the item looked, felt and acted like the thing it was imitating. The effect, however, lasted until another thing came closer to it than the first, and then the Tensor would return to normal for a few seconds before morphing again.

Its real name was Hume Manifold Resonator. He wondered how it even got out of the tower in the first place, before ending up somewhere in the world and eventually in the item catalog of the Guild. At least, as far as destinations went, it was the most logical. It was a useful, non-vital component that could nonetheless increase Hume production significantly.

Speaking of which… Praetor?

“Yes, sir. I have developed an updated visualization for the ‘gamification’ you requested. Shall I send it to your visual cortex?”

Yes, please.

Current Hume production

138H/hour

Pylon upkeep

-44H/hour

Axiom Of Choice upkeep

-76H/hour

Total

18H/hour

Task

Progress

Reward

Axiom preliminary repairs

(stage 1 of 7)

15% (114/762H)

Portal stability +25%

Power of reality-bending increased by 15% when inside the field

Access to stage 2 (outside influence)

Access to more tasks

External sensors optical suite

68% (231/340H)

Internal energy generation

HALTED – 23%

(requires 17712H and manual repair)

Fusion reactor activation.

Energy generation at 100%

Pylon upkeep -24H/hour

Hume production pipeline streamlining

Every H unit will increase generation by 0.001%

Acquire Plagiarism Tensor (Hume Manifold Resonator)

0/1

Hume generation +500H/hour

Spoiler :

Completed tasks

Internal sensors repair

--

Access to full data on explored areas and layout data on unexplored areas

Edmund smiled. Now, that’s what I need. It looked neat, very motivating, and already his dopamine was waiting to be released. He looked for a moment at the artifacts tab, under the pipeline overhaul, and wondered if he had misinterpreted the importance of the artifact he needed to retrieve. Or maybe, more probably, Praetor had adjusted the Hume Pipeline designs to make use of the Resonator’s capabilities in the most efficient way.

When he asked Praetor, the response he got was technical, overwhelming and ultimately amounted to idk, reality bending for 3k years did something to the machines. Which was worrying, but not any more worrying than everything else.

Still, Edmund decided to keep the Humes for himself for now, because there was work to be done.

To that regard, he and the team were walking towards the city walls. Night was coming fast, and the light of day was almost gone, but they had no time to waste. The first thing they needed to do was repair the walls before another attack came, and then they had to think of ways to fortify their position with what they had available. Everyone living in the village, who was in working shape, had joined them and was either waiting them there, or would be there very soon.

There were not many people left after the attacks, especially people who could work. Coming from the corners of the roads, behind slightly ajar wooden doors and open windows, he could feel the aura of sadness, loss and despair of a broken city. People were staring out the windows or sitting with a blank stare against the walls of their half-destroyed house, mothers were hugging their children and rocking back and forth, holding back the tears. He must have seen at least three people cry before he arrived at the gates, and the whole way there felt much longer and tiring than it was. For a ghost town, it was both too empty and too full of sorrow, grief and death.

On the way to the walls, Lisa eyed Edmund furtively and seeing that he was absorbed in his own thoughts ahead of them, pulled Toora close.

“Do not, ever, for any reason be OoM near him. Okay?”

Toora shook her head and smiled innocently. “Why? What happens when I run out of mana?”

Lisa’s eyes were dead serious. “You know what happens. I have seen what he did to that specimen he requested. He said that he was sparing him from his pain, that he was going to just suffer in vain and that he was giving him a purpose but… what I saw made me wonder if we made a mistake, you know?”

Toora’s expression, in turn, became dark as the coming night. “Of course I know.” She squared her team member up and down, thinking back to her first time meeting Edmund. “Being OoM around him… I would be completely at his mercy. He could kill me with a snap of his fingers. Turn my brain to mush. Make a vein pop in my head. Sever my nerves. Or maybe just make a small, imperceptible change somewhere. I would never know…” suddenly her expression cleared, clouds parting in a sunny day. “Silly Lisa,” her voice was sing-song, but the undertones were dark, and she was not being quiet but loud and her voice carried far, maybe as far as Edmund, which made Lisa sweat a cold and uncomfortable sweat. “All worried for your good ol’ boss.” She looked at her, and Lisa felt like her soul was being ripped apart, “who did you take me for? Someone who would intentionally go around OoM? Do you think I’m stupid?”

Lisa gulped, and shook her head. “No, boss.”

“Good.” She nodded.

She turned to leave and join Edmund, but then spun on her heel with a twirl. “Oh, anyway. Don’t be all suspicious of Edmund. If there’s one person I would be OoM with, it’s him. Not you, him. Okay? What happened there was just a necessary sacrifice, a means to an end.” she smiled, but her eyes and mouth were not wearing the same smile.

Lisa nodded again, and made her way towards the city walls in silence and thought.

***

Edmund looked at the battered field from the top of the broken gate, then at the thick but crumbling walls on his sides. He had no idea what had caused this, but it was clear that the monsters that attacked Farcall were much stronger than the boarts he had faced off against in the forest.

Toora approached him from behind. “What are you thinking?”

He shook his head. “I’m thinking that we don’t stand a chance against a frontal attack. We need to play dirty. I need to play dirty…”

“I agree. Well, not like you’re playing it nice and clean anyway.”

He laughed. “That guy I killed? That was just for the language, nothing else. It’s not playing dirty.”

She smirked. “What do you have in mind?”

He shrugged. “Not much. Not until we finish here in this city. Although, if everything else fails, I have a plan B.”

She nodded again. He exhaled, letting the tension out of his body.

“I don’t know… plan B is a bit dangerous. I don’t want to go down that road while I’m this weak. For now, we play by the rules. As for defending the city… Maybe I can cook up a trick but I really don’t know where to even start with the walls.”

Toora had a smug look on her face. “Leave the walls to me.”

His eyes followed her as she walked down from the vantage point on the top of the gate, then gathered the people waiting around her. As soon as she was sure she had everybody’s attention, which she did via a display of flashy but harmless magic, she started to bark orders left and right.

They gathered together in groups under her direction, then each group went to their task one after the other as she told them. Eventually she was left with a small group of people and went off somewhere inside the city. Lisa was, Edmund noticed, assigned to work with a small group of muscular individuals who were already lifting the huge boulders scattered throughout the field off the ground and carrying them to form huge stone piles against the walls, where they were damaged the most.

I could help out but… my Humes would run out before I achieve anything useful. He kept watching the people move about distractedly, instead focusing his mind’s energies on the upcoming fight when the monsters will inevitably attack. He knew that he could not be very useful with his power if he tried to use it the regular way, because of how little Humes he had, but fortunately he had a way to increase his power substantially.

Magical items. The more complex, restrictive and weird rules I apply to them the more powerful they are.

Idea after idea passed through his brain in an attempt to come up with something that would be strange enough to have a decent power multiplier, but at the same time be effective against monsters and not completely useless or too situational. At times, his mind went back to the plan B he had cooked up, to how easy it looked compared to playing by the rules, but each time the thought of the risks associated with it made him dismiss the idea.

After a while Toora came back with the small group of people she had gathered, and soon after she left again with even more people going back into the city, but not before dumping from an unseen storage dimension a huge amount of wood in the form of planks, bricks of all shapes and sizes, and various pieces of broken masonry.

He made a mental note of the fact that she had a storage magic, but soon he realized that she had disappeared again and he was back to thinking over what to do. Meanwhile, Lisa was lifting huge boulders by herself now, with the other burly muscular men struggling to lift even one rock working together.

He wondered: if everybody in the world has access to magic, how come only some people are adept enough at it to be adventurers? Or maybe most people simply do not have a magic system that’s battle oriented, which would make sense because only some personalities would willingly choose to face death every day just for fame, money and power. He got his confirmation when he saw an older man touch one of the misshapen pieces of broken bricks Toora had brought back, surely from cannibalized houses somewhere inside Farcall. The brick slowly morphed and changed into a perfectly regular, pristine piece of smooth stone. Another younger man stepped towards the broken city wall and used his own power, clearing the rubble and smoothing the stone where the new brick would have to go.

However, it appeared that these two were the only ones out of the two dozen men and few women with a power that could be used for building. Everyone else was helping in their own way: some were mixing some sort of cement, others were digging trenches, while others still were using their own magic in creative ways to help out. He saw a young boy sit on a small stool, and sometimes people would go to him with damaged or rusted tools and he just touched them while saying something not quite audible from where Edmund was, after which the tool was like new. The last few people who he saw were using magic, were using it to illuminate the area, since the shadows were getting quite long and dark.

“Hey,” Edmund said to one of the men, “can you give me your hammer? I need it.”

The man, with greying hair but strong and powerful muscles, squared him up head to toe, squinting against the setting sun. He stared with his mouth open for a moment, then nodded.

“Okay, kid. I don’t sense magic coming from you but ye’r with the mage over there, so I gather you are not a normal one. Show me what you’ve got.”

Edmund took the hammer with a grunt, struggling against the unexpected heft of the tool while doing his best to ignore the giggle from the old man.

“Don’t take me wrong lad. I got nothin but respect for your kind.”

Edmund blinked but didn’t take his gaze off of the hammer. “I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

“Saw you frown at me. I wasn’t making fun of ye kid. I guess I was feeling kinda proud that these arms still work well, tho. But that was that. I know you adventurer types are much stronger than me in all matter of weird sorts. Name’s Maliketh, by the way. What’s your name kid?”

“Maliketh, huh? Reminds me of someth—someone, yeah. I’m Edmund, nice to meet you.”

The old man nodded, and Edmund noticed that there was a sunny, carefree smile on his face despite the trying times. His anger, that he hadn’t even realized was boiling in his veins, left suddenly, and he felt hollow and silly for getting riled up over a stupid comment.

“Nice name. Now, don’t mind me. I’m recovering my mana with a quick rest here, lad. You do you, I’m only watching.”

Mana… Edmund felt the man, and noticed that while he was low, he was not completely out of mana. He also wondered what the man’s magic system was. He found that he couldn’t focus on his work until he knew, and so he pretended to work on the hammer as he nonchalantly asked.

“What’s your… what’s the name. School of magic?”

The old man laughed. “No need to use fancy names for it. Leave those for the real mages, ye know. This I have… is simple brute strength. Nothing more. I use magic and magic makes me strong. My old man taught me the ropes when I was a lad, then told me to go figure the rest out myself.”

Edmund kept looking at the hammer, while letting the man’s voice lull him into a thoughtful trance. He wasn’t paying attention, but at the same time he was, and for some unknown reason his mind seemed to work better than if he was alone.

“Now after all these years I realize. My old man I thought he was a genius or something, letting me do my own thing for fear of influencing me. Dunno, magic works weird. Maybe it does. But truth was, that was all he knew. To be strong. And you know, lad? That was all he needed. He chopped trees, same as I did before…” his voice cracked. “Before this shit.”

The man went silent, but Edmund was too focused on the hammer for it to matter.

“Life was harsh, out here in the middle of nothing… but I liked it. I had my little slice of heaved that I build with my own hands. Had my family. Wife, two sons. They were strong, much more than me. They could have become so much. Now they are dead. I won’t see them become the men…” he broke. “I’m sorry, don’t mind this old fool. I cried enough already, and we all swore coming here we wouldn’t cry no more, not until we were safe again. Then we would cry, cry until we felt like not crying anymore. But now, now is no time to cry.”

How about this… Edmund stared at the hammer, the words of the old man echoing in his head and poured a substantial amount of Hume Energy into the hammer, forcing it to follow the blueprint, rules and limitations he had envisioned for the reality-bending tool he was supposed to make. For a moment, the energy was going right where he wanted it, but then he noticed the some was slipping away from him, reacting with the magic of the world and vanishing. Some other Hume Energy was going where it was not supposed to go, and with a sweaty brow he had to concede that he couldn’t keep the flow coherent for much longer. He grunted, muscles contracting as the adrenaline flooded him, but with it his mind’s clarity got even worse and soon the flow was about to go haywire. It was going to backfire on him.

He held his breath and tried to concentrate. In a few seconds it was going to explode unless he managed to regain control, but the more he tried the harder it got.

He could already see it: his death. Death by hubris.

“Sir, may I intervene?”

Praetor!

“I sensed danger. I can help you stabilize the process.”

Do it! As soon as he said it he felt it: the cold, exquisitely complex and yet perfectly logical and ordered presence of the AI managing the more chaotic parts of the infusing process. With it taking care of the danger, Edmund’s mind was left free to do its creative thing, shape the tool into what he wanted it to be. The process ended in a few seconds, and the hammer stabilized into its final form.

How is this?

“Hume power multiplicator: 5x”

Good enough. Let’s put some serious juice in it now. He touched the transformed hammer and closed his eyes as he felt most of his supply of Hume Energy be drained inside of it.

However, despite the success, he wasn’t feeling good about it. In fact, he felt awful. He couldn’t even make a magic tool, a silly little toy, with how weak he was both in magic and in mind.

“Hey,” he said, and the old man looked up.

“Sorry I was staring. That was some interesting work you did.”

Edmund studied the man’s face. “Say,” he said, looking at the sky, “what do you have left to live for? Why do you do this?”

The man hummed. “Tough question boy. I don’t really know. I cant give ye an answer you’d find to your liking, I don’t think. But I still have it in me to fight.”

Edmund nodded. “You’re a nice person.”

“I don’t know. I like to think myself one, and try to be the best I can be.”

“It’s honorable. The world doesn’t deserve people like you, but you still do your best. It’s… nice.”

The man nodded.

“If one day you decide that you had enough,” Edmund got to his feet, “and that the world can just fuck off. If you ever find yourself without purpose… just come to me.”