After guiding the newcomers for a while, Rory let them off to practice by themselves. He appreciated that it kept them occupied.

He thought he could check up on the others, but if he was being truthful at least to himself, there was no way he could remember everything. There was only so much his brain could hold. That was where delegation and teamwork came into play. At this point, Evelyn, Dez, Trish, and the others who’d been at this for about as long as Rory had been had enough knowledge to guide everyone by themselves.

Rory still got some quick reports from the others, though. Evelyn had observed that several of the hospital staff had received Sigils that allowed them to heal one way or another. Chief of those was the Sigil of Life Link. Apparently, it allowed someone to heal, so long as they dealt an equivalent damage to something else.

But most importantly, it allowed remote healing. That was what Rory’s party had been missing for so long. He grinned in excitement. Evelyn echoed his feelings and promised to look into it more. Rory was glad he could trust her to take care of it.

Neither Dez nor Trish reported anything as interesting, though their groups had their fair share of unique Sigils. Like with Evelyn, he trusted them to make sure the newcomers would be proficient in using their Sigils without needing Rory’s input.

Some of the others who had been here for while had once more organized into exploration groups to scout out more of the palace. Malcolm had been spooked by the Thundershells, but he had rallied himself and apparently dragged in Raj and his son, Sid, into accompanying his group to go out farther this time. They were prepared now that they’d had encounters with monsters.

Rory had wished them luck. He wasn’t overly worried anymore since they could always contact them via the makeshift cell phones with the Sigils of Calling.

Besides, he had been distracted by Leo and Leanne. Both of them had hurried downstairs and informed him that the garden was already well underway, begging him to come check it out. Feeling rather grandfatherly, which Rory hadn’t expected to feel anytime considering Alex’s child-free leanings, he had followed them upstairs.

The climb left him tired, but he had to admit it was worth it to see what April had performed in the short time since they’d adjourned from their early meeting.

“You’ve been busy, huh?” Rory said, looking all around.

April had already pulled in much of the lumber they had salvaged from elsewhere. Bo was up here, as was Alyssa, both of them apparently quite handy when it came to woodworking. They had shaped all the wood into boxes and panels they’d need to make the garden beds, the stilts to hold them already in place on the north section of the roof.

“Yeah.” April wiped sweat off her forehead. “We want to take care of this as soon as possible. Once we’ve got the baseline down, we can start tackling the actual issues.”

“What issues?” Rory asked.

“We need to find a way to get water here without making long trips downstairs. We might also need to start figuring out shelter situations in case we have bad weather or worse, monsters.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Don’t worry,” Bo said. “We’ve got some plans.”

April nodded. “Yeah, we got it covered, For now, what we really need is to figure out when we’re going to recover more of the freezers. We’re going to need them.”

She was right. Another thing Rory and the others needed to decide soon. With all the new people coming in, and likely more to arrive with Viv’s group, they really needed more food soon. Another trip to the grocery store to recover everything they hadn’t gotten in the last outing was absolutely necessary. Not just the freezers, but all the food too.

“We should go to the grocery again soon,” Bo said. “We still have one car free, right?”

“I’m not sure if the convertible is big enough to carry in freezers,” Rory said. “But there’s no harm in trying, yeah. We need… all kinds of supplies, actually. Food, clothes, fuel, and there’s probably more I’m forgetting.”

“Medicine?” Alyssa offered.

“Thankfully, we got a nice supply from the hospital.”

“The most important thing is getting those freezers running,” April said. “We don’t have any power, but is there any way we can use the Sigils for it?”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Rory said. “There are two options. We could figure out how to convert Mana to electricity using the Sigils of Lightning we got off the Thundershells, or we could figure out how to get electricity from the Sigils of Electrium.”

“But that would still need a power line, right?”

“Like cables? I think so, yeah.”

“Cables, wiring, just some sort of circuitry to carry the current. We can use Sigils, but the appliances sure can’t.”

Rory snorted. “True, though circuitry sounds more like an engineering problem than a Sigil problem. I think.”

“Going to request your wife’s expertise?” Bo asked with a grin.

“Cut it out, Bo.” April glared. “But yeah, we need to get those freezers up and running as soon as possible. I don’t know which option would be better, but we can’t let any of the food spoil.”

Rory agreed. “We need to not use up any more Mana than we need to, but if using the Electrium takes too long or is too difficult, then we’ll got for what’s more convenient.”

Rory left them to their gardening. Bo climbed down from the roof with him, fully intent on carrying out his goal of retrieving the freezers from the grocery store. Trish no longer trusted anyone to handle her Spyder with the respect that it deserved, according to her, so she demanded to be included on the trip.

Just to ensure safety, Rory requested Dez accompany them as well. Trish didn’t take kindly to that, confident that she was more than enough to handle anything they came across, but they all insisted it was better to be safe than sorry, even if it meant being overly cautious.

Of course, that left a lot of the newcomers to their own devices. It was fine. They weren’t children who needed constant chaperoning. Well, not most of them.

Rory met Samson again after the others had left.

“Do you have anything else I need to find?” he asked.

“Uh.” Rory’s thoughts were preoccupied with finding out how he could power their freezers. But then, he had another idea. It was far-fetched, but he was curious to see the results. “Here. Can you find these?”

Rory led Samson to where Leo and Leanne had set up their computers, now no longer running. The little table also held most of their stationary supplies. He took some paper and scribbled on it, before handing the page to Samson, who frowned down at the writing.

“What are these?” he asked. “War-torn Stones? Moonsilver? Poultry Gallbladders?”

“Trust me, these are real ingredients,” Rory said, unable to hold back his laughter. “I need them to Weave Sigils of Wielding. It will help you guys use items that have Sigils Warded into them.”

Samson’s frown didn’t go away. If anything, it became worse when Rory had laughed. “I don’t get all of that, but I’m going to assume they’re important. I’ll see what I can find.”

He muttered about some of the ingredients being ridiculously easy, and the others being just as ridiculously difficult to find. Rory controlled himself so that a grin was all he showed, though he did so only when Samson was out of earshot. He felt a little guilty for laughing at the poor guy, but the list of ingredients was nuts.

But more importantly, if Samson really did find them, they’d finally be able to start filling up their item slots properly. The prospect was exciting. Hopefully, Samson’s search would prove fruitful.

It took a second for Rory to recollect what he’d been thinking about before Samson’s interruption. The sight of the kids’ dark, powerless laptops helped the issue settle in a little too deeply.

Rory searched through his backpack and pulled out several of the Sigils of Electrium he had received. There was even the lone Sigil of Mythic Electrium. It was sad the system didn’t tell him what the difference was between the Mythic and regular versions.

He went outside. From what he knew, Electrium was like solar panels. They produced electricity under the presence of sunlight. He wasn’t totally sure about the physics behind that, but that was for Viv and other science-minded folk to care about. All Rory needed to make sure was that it worked.

Problem was that any material summoned using Sigils invariably disappeared after a short while. The lack of permanence meant they’d only be producing electricity temporarily when in truth, they’d ideally need it for the rest of time.

Rory considered trying to figure how he could get a Sigil of Permanence or something similar, but he didn’t have the first clue what he could Weave to attain that.

“What are you doing?”

Rory turned to see Oliver leading some of the young office workers. They had all come to a curious stop before Rory, and he suddenly felt a little self-conscious standing at this lonely stretch of the palace grounds.

“Trying to upgrade the traps?” Diane asked.

“Not really,” he said, shrugging the feeling off with a little laugh. “I’m trying to figure out how we can produce electricity.”

“Ohhhhhh.” Diane turned to where Harlow was peeking from behind. He froze when Diane turned to him. “Harlow. Didn’t you minor in Electrical Engineering?”

“Uh, you can’t minor in Electrical Engineering.”

“Whatever. This is your area of expertise. Go wild!”

“Really?” Rory beckoned Harlow forward, though the guy looked awfully shy at being the centre of attention. “Don’t worry. I don’t bite. At this point, I’m not sure engineering is going to help me, as I’m just trying to figure out how to create electricity using the Sigil. But I don’t mind good input, even if it only applies later.”

Harlow cleared his throat and dragged his feet until he was standing ahead of the others. “Well, you’re going to want cables or wiring or something to carry the current, right?”

“Right.”

“I can look into setting underground cables if you want to set up your power source here. Not sure of we have cables though, or how much of so…”

“We can call the others. Tell them to search for more cables.”

Diane nodded, ponytail bobbing behind her head. “Good idea. I’ll go tell them.”

She ran off before anyone could say anything. Hopefully, she remembered that they had Sigils of Calling for this very purpose.

“After that,” Harlow continued. “It’s just a matter of getting the wires inside the palace and hooking them up with any electronics we want. It’s not really that difficult. Just a process that might take some time, depending on what we’ve got available.”

“Yeah.” Rory looked down at the Sigil of Electrium. “So long as we can generate electricity in the first place.”

They fell silent, all of them momentarily stumped. Rory thanked them for their input and bid them to continue their patrol of the grounds. He’d figure it out on his own.

“We don’t really need to go around on patrols,” Oliver said. “We’ve got the traps now.”

Harlow looked away before replying. “Well, we could do with the exercise.”

“You’re right!” Rory said.

Harlow froze, a panicked look on his face. “I-I am?”

“No, not you. Oliver. Well, you too, of course. But your talk about traps just gave me an idea.”

Rory focused on the ground before him. Maybe he wouldn’t need some vague Sigil of Permanence to keep the Electrium working all day. Conditional operators, as Diane had said.

Maybe all he needed was a way to make the Electrium work was a similar thing that made the traps work.

Rory got together the same Sigils he needed to make his traps. That required a trip back to the palace’s interior to get Sigils of Automation, Activation, and Mana Empowerment. He didn’t get a Sigil of Monstrous Essence this time. Instead, he Wove a Sigil of Sunlight from the environment around him. The new yellow Sigil showed a plain image of a sun surrounded with rays of light.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Sunlight. Who knew the light of a ginormous ball of fire in space would be the first ingredient of higher intelligence.

[Cerulean V] allows creation, manipulation, and imbuing of element in a 27-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Element

Rarity: Ordinary

Tier: Cerulean V [0%]

Efficiency: Low [18%]

With everything gathered up, Rory used his Weaving to combine them all and get a new Sigil.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Diurnal Electrium. Use the heady light of the day to make your Electrium into potent traps.

[Cerulean V] allows creation of minor 0.6-meter Electrium traps.

Stats

Type: Element

Rarity: Exceptional

Tier: Cerulean V [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [37%]

The Sigil’s image showed a small pyramid with lightning flashing off its peak. Rory smiled. He needed to Ward it in a spot where it would receive adequate sunlight throughout the day.

This wasn’t it. The front of the palace would be shaded during the afternoon, the rear gloomed over in the morning, while the middle areas on either side would be covered up around noon when the sun passed its zenith. Thankfully, Rory knew the perfect spot.

By the time Rory had reached the roof, he was huffing and puffing quite hard. April and Alyssa greeted him in surprise, but he distractedly waved at them before getting to the roof’s centre and Warding the Sigil of Diurnal Electrium there. He had positioned it far enough away from the two plots for April’s raised garden beds.

As soon as he was done, electric sparks flashed over the ground and mounds of metallic blue rocks grew out like crystalline growth sped up a billion times. Rory grinned as the mound of Electrium reached waist-high, small electric arcs shooting off them in every direction.

“The heck are those?” April asked, joining him.

Alyssa came up as well, then jumped when an arc of electricity flashed in her direction.

Rory had difficulty stuffing his grin back where it had risen from. “Cheers! We’ve officially found ourselves a source of electricity.”