Mathew

Isolation wasn't good for Mathew. He wasn't exactly an extrovert, but he liked people. Left to his own devices, he could get a bit self-centered. Spending a few days largely to himself did bring him some rewards, though.

His digestion magic was a recurring problem he'd learned to deal with when he had a lower stat pool. As his mind and body stats fueled a significantly increased magic pool, Mathew found that hunger's mental strain and demand to be satisfied grew faster than his willpower. Right now, that was a problem he could manage. Eating anything from air to stone would alleviate this, but the sheer time alone got him to experiment with his options more.

Mathew found that his liquid hunger perk would let him compress his magic even while it was in his pool. Converting happened at a 5:1 ratio of vapor to liquid. All the power was retained, if not somewhat more potent, but the sensation of hunger was only about half again as intense.

He could carry his full reservoir worth of melting power with only eight hundred points. It would feel like nearly twelve hundred, but that was a far cry from the almost 4k he needed to be at full force now.

Full force if he didn't want to take real advantage of this newfound application. In theory, Mathew could compress his magic until all of it was packed with caustic will. Five times the destructive power, all it would cost is a steady clawing against his comfort and sanity.

This was why he didn't need to be spending so much time alone. At some point he would have an ideas he'd regret stumbling across.

Grimacing, Mathew took a deep breath and looked to the Hub. All the neighboring Territories made him genuinely feel like he was in a prison. Having recovered from crafting damage, he was itching to extend the walls of his cage. Which brought him full circle to Clare. Her knowledge was nearly invaluable for conquest. At least safe conquest.

But besides escorting Harper to build a road and emergency shelter, Clare hadn't communicated at all. How could I be so impatient and stupid! Mathew kicked himself again.

There was always time to de-escalate and earn trust over time. Instead, he burnt what confidence she'd had in him.

Not for the first time in the last few days, Mathew forced himself to let go of his regret. What was done was done. With golden rays of sunlight heralding the end of the night, Mathew had a job to do.

Stephanie's therapy was going quite well. No one expected a miracle. The goal, as Harper put it, was not to heal or recover per se. Instead, it was to face life all the time. Recovery and progress were downstream of that mental strength.

Even with all the new bodies, there were no psychologists in the Hub yet. That left Harper as the resident expert. Most of her knowledge came from her own treatment, but the skills seemed to help.

Ripper walked on all fours and bumped into Mathew's hip. Probably because Ripper never talked, but Mathew didn't feel the need to be alone from Ripper.

Ripper's shiny silver body wasn't metallic, but it sure looked like it. It was composed of Mathew's discarded ideas. Ways to use his power and become a living weapon that he'd discarded for the sake of living with the changes. The sharp edges of Ripper's body ensured that no one in their right mind would be getting cozy with it.

"Thank's for the support, bud," Mathew thunked it with his fist. "I'll be just fine."

Walking back to the Hub, Mathew marveled at how much work could be accomplished in so little time. Harper's magic had restructured the rock of the Spire for at least thirty yards around the entrance. The tiered courtyard and its chest-high wall were the results of selectively carving away the material that was then used to build up an outer facade for the Hub.

Even with double the population, only Harper was around the common area this morning.

"Ready?" Harper put a fake smile on to cheer him up.

"Yeah," Mathew followed her to the newly generated infirmary.

After upgrading the Hub with Empower ++, her powers went a lot further and more options unlocked. The infirmary was one of them. While most of the magical benefit was directed to first aid recovery, there was a smaller long-term restoration benefit.

Moving past the stasis and metabolism chambers, Mathew was reminded of the floating organs The Colony had experimented with. Is that an inevitable fate of human activity? Would we walk in their steps?

As much as he'd like to answer his own question in the negative, Mathew couldn't. Not after proving he would force his will on another's mind. Just because he thought it was the right thing at the moment.

Getting to a side room, he and Harper met Stephanie again.

"Good morning," Stephanie's glossy blue eyes didn't keep her from engaging first.

"Good morning. You seem to be doing a bit better today," Harper said.

"Yes, thank you very much," Stephanie nodded.

Mathew sat down and willed up all his mental skill intelectus and reached out with them in a familiar way.

"Do you think you're feeling up to trying the next step?" Harper asked while Mathew fed support into Stephanie's psyche.

"Of course," Mechanical words with little inflection didn't inspire confidence.

"If you're sure, we'll get started at your own pace. When you're ready you need to will your status fixture to appear," Harper's calm voice filled the room. "It will feel like a burden on your motivation, but you can do it. After you get used to it, it gets easier."

Stephanie nodded. Mathew could feel her willing up her status fixture. She held it well. No signs of weakness. It didn't even seem as though she'd needed his support. Was their method really so effective?

"Remember, no hurry," Harper took a patient breath.

"She's already pulled it up," Mathew said.

"Oh, how is it?" Harper asked.

"It's like, no biggie," Stephanie replied.

"Can you share it?" Harper asked. "It's another little burden, but you'll hardly notice it if it's really no trouble."

Mathew felt Stephanie hand off her status over to Harper. Just like she'd said, the burden felt like nothing this time.

"Mmhmm," Harper nodded as she read. "Oh god, no."

Harper sent over a truncated version of Stephanie's status.

[Utility skills

Auto-pilot]

"Stephanie, can you tell me what auto-pilot does?" Harper asked.

"It lets me like, check out, ya know?" Stephanie's answer had the words of personality, but the tone was empty.

"Are you using it now?" Harper pressed.

"No," Stephanie gave a hollow laugh.

"Can you select your magic?" Mathew pushed a little more invasively with this spying.

[Highest skill Auto-pilot: unable to perform permanent decision select magic due to being under mental influence]

"No," She frowned. "Ha, well look at that. I'm not real."

Their sessions began to make more sense now. Mathew had a hard time believing that people were as weak as she was. At some point, admitting clear reality had to happen. But her checking out made all the pieces fit together. By skipping time, she'd escaped facing the truth.

It took about half an hour to convince her auto-pilot to let go of the reigns. The next half hour Mathew spent breaking down her efforts to generate the auto-pilot skill. Even with taking breaks every few minutes.

Somewhere between Stephanie crying over her family and her crying for herself, she stopped trying to run from life. Harper held the sobbing woman and nodded at Mathew, dismissing him.

Progress would take time. Sometimes it took so long that you'd give up hope. Mathew was on the edge of giving up on her, but change was a constant. There was time with Clare. The situation would change Mathew just had to avoid giving up.

Behind a simple partition, a voice called out to Mathew. "Hey, do you have a minute?" The deep voice belonged to a newcomer. Mark maybe?

Mathew felt a little bit of guilt about not engaging with newcomers the last few days, "Sure."

The man on the cot had his chest wrapped in pristine white bandages that contrasted against his olive skin. "I just wanted to say thank you."

"I just did what anyone would have done. But thank you, I appreciate the gesture all the same," Mathew paused. "Need anything while I'm up?"

"No, thank you. I think it's time I put some rehab in and walk myself around," The man swallowed thickly. "I haven't gotten a straight answer yet, but where do you think my wife is?"

"We don't know where specific people are yet. Everyone has questions about those they are separated from. Our option is to conquer the wilderness and hope," Mathew laid a hand on him and channeled mental support.

[New skill awarded: Mental support 15. Mental support 15 overrides mental support 14]

With his cognition, it was nothing to hold a conversation with the relatively slow man and assign perk points.

[Mental support ~ perk tier one

Amplify - Increase the effect of another's willpower

Process - Generate an intelectus to aid the processing of another

perk tier three

Psyche expansion - When amplifying the resilience and resistance of a mind increase maximum effective willpower as well]

"Hope, I've never been really good at that,"

The tier tree option seemed to be a continuation of very generic stat level support. With Mathew's growing grasp of all his mental skills, what he was really looking for was new ways to implement the powers he has.

"Always an opportunity to get better at it. If it helps, all you have to do is help a stranger when you can. You doing that is exercising the faith we have that somebody else will do that for those you care for." Mathew was surprised by a notification.

[Wise counsel reward: 200SE]

Wise counsel according to who or what? Mathew wondered.

Saying goodbye, Mathew did get a scan in. Micah, that was his name.

Lost in thoughts about his mental skills that could control people and skills like auto-pilot that took control, Ben stopped him.

"Just make whatever judgment you have to make! You've been brooding for days. Just get it over with! I know I'm guilty," Ben's outburst caught him off guard.

"I haven't been brooding—"

"Yes, you have," Ben interrupted.

Mathew cleared his throat, "As I was saying, I haven't been brooding over you and Grant. You or him show any of that shit behavior now, and we'll find out how much of a prison the Hub can be."

Sighing, he continued, "While I will enforce law and order, I don't see any good reason to punish what you did without it. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite, but my demands of law and order are downstream of it being established."

"That doesn't make any sense," Ben shook his head.

"I know it doesn't. I don't really have words for it," Mathew shrugged. "Most of the time, I think that people who harm others need to be held to justice, period... but should I really expect everyone to make law and order all on their own? Anyway, the long and short of it is that I won't be giving you any penance."

"But I deserve something," Ben whispered.

"That's why not punishing you works. You'll beat yourself up," Mathew patted his shoulder. "I need some scouting done. I'm looking for another target for expansion. We need to target Territories that are particularly hostile to low leveled people. Survivors in a less dangerous territory have a chance to get picked up by you or Grant, or make their way here on their own power."

Ben picked at his necklace, "uh, yeah, that's the Warp Swarm for sure. I didn't bring it up because you're the only one who can survive them for now."

Creating a three-dimensional map illusion, Ben showed him the Territory beside Clare's, on the side that didn't host the colony.

Ben couldn't escape his guilt; apparently, Mathew couldn't either. Why did it have to be beside her Territory?

Then again, wouldn't it be a good thing if they could bolster her defenses? A gift of fewer things to worry about.

"Why that Territory?" Mathew asked.

"They swarm anything that moves except plants, and I'm pretty sure some of those as well," Ben said. "Heck, I don't even know if they're the Alpha species of that Territory or not, but it's hands down the most hostile-to-human-life of any adjacent Territory."

"I've got some prep work to do then," Mathew said. His mind already making a to-do list.

"Do you really believe I don't deserve to be punished?" Ben's voice was heavy as he spoke through a lump in his throat.

"Not by me, no,"

"Overall, don't I deserve something?" He was desperate.

"No one deserves grace. We just get it anyway," Mathew added under his breath. "At least I hope I get it."

To be fully prepared for another Territory conquest, he'd have to spend about twenty hours refilling and compressing liquid digestion magic. Or burn reserves to accelerate the process. Eyes on scouting would also help. Mathew knew they threw themselves into their targets. How they dealt with armored foes was still unknown.

He wouldn't be comfortable throwing himself into that danger without knowing more.

Ripper had joined him by the time they got to the border of the Territory. Maybe Ripper was armored enough to join him?

Standing at the corner of the junction between Territories, it looked like a knife sliced off a section of barren land and replaced it with spiraling plants. Each one was curved, spiraled or shimmered. As reported, there was no living being to be seen. That was okay; Mathew didn't need to see them.

In his mental senses, they were clearly there pinned to the air relaxing in pockets. Just a half step out of reality, they made a home of the bubble of space they pushed outward. With mental attack, Mathew fed one the vision of a monster where a tree was.

Two pairs of three claws and a bullet-shaped head poked out from a ripple in the air.

[Warp Swarm Grain

An important resource for those who make spatial devices and quick transport systems. These beasts generate panels of warped space to accelerate their jump. On their own, they can grow to be cognition/agility monsters. When exposed to a break in space, they can absorb outworld energy to rapidly reproduce and develop into a monster swarm

Highest stat agility]

Mathew laughed. Take time to get ready? He was the counter to high agility builds like theirs.

The Warp Swarm Grain sprung from its burrow in space, and a panel of light appeared in front of it. Hitting it, the monster was projected like a casual toss. Sure it picked up speed but even pre-abduction Mathew could have thrown it harder.

The half dozen monsters that followed it sandwiched the original panel with more of their own craftings. Each launched harder into the brush until the last one buried its head into the inoffensive tree.

That was how they took down armored foes. Literally chucking their bodies at the problem until it went away. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to get some more preparations ready, just in case.

Mathew looked over at the web wall and crushed rock of Clare's Territory. Mathew could afford to take his time and do this right.