We had left Alarna with only the clothes on our back and whatever we had on us. Somehow that did include small knives, which the guards seemingly didn’t perceive as weapons and ignored when they searched us, but maybe they were just laser focused on the dangers our scripts represented. Regardless, we were essentially without any tools or resources worth mentioning.

For our immediate survival, this wasn’t too much of an issue. Unlike the first time we were out here, we could now produce water without blue stones, and after weeks of practice, Reurig had gotten pretty good at hunting on their way back to Alarna and while camping in the woods outside. However, if you suddenly decided to build a house, a lack of tools was a bit of a problem. No hammer, no nails, no glue or ropes, I had literally nothing. But that just made the problem more interesting.

I had distinct recollections of getting stuck in a loop of videos about techniques to build structures out of nothing but interlocking wood in the past. I didn’t remember how that had happened—it probably was a very boring day—but this bit of theoretical knowledge served as the basis for what I wanted to do.

The memories that hit me as I started to consider my options then did the rest, providing some very useful information about structural analysis and woodworking. A bit puzzled where this knowledge came from, I soon remembered that Tomar’s father was said to have been a successful carpenter before his untimely death. My best theory was that either Tomar had learned a few things from his father, or that this would’ve been his destined Calling as well. Neither quite explained why I was suddenly getting all this after Tomar was gone, but nothing could be further from my mind than complaining about free knowledge.

Putting some distance between myself and the others, so as to not wake anyone, I looked for another clearing and started getting to work. The first order of business was the abysmal tools situation. If you wanted to be able to create clean planks and beams from raw wood that could hold up itself in the end, you would need a host of tools in my old world. From saws, over drills, to chisels. Luckily, I was uniquely equipped to recreate everything I needed with only one thing: Overpowered mana water. Be it punching holes into the wood, carving parts out of it, or making clean cuts, no meager tree was able to withstand my scripts. Particularly, my newest invention.

Our initial water scripts were... crude let’s say. Really, they were quite brutish. It was nothing but a ridiculously fast stream of water that removed anything in its path that wasn’t prepared to take the hit. Like a death ray, there was very little finesse behind it. The water ball script was an improvement in the sense that it was much more controlled, but it was also a massive step back in destructive power, akin to a simple cannonball. You could hardly create fine working material with either.

Instead, I reconsidered what we were able to do with mana. Thinking primarily about this particular use case at first, I quickly came up with a way to essentially create a circular saw, by creating a water ball that I would then press into a thin disc with additional mana streams from two sides. Caught between these walls, the water had to morph, while I still forced it into a circular motion. Given the right orientation, I got a saw that went through wood like butter. What I was really proud of, however, was my application of two or more saws to cut rectangular shapes in perfect angles.

What I missed most in this entire process was funnily enough a pen. Since I didn’t have an inkwell on me at all times, and wasn’t willing to drain the blood from my body, I couldn’t write the scripts on myself. Writing them on pieces of wood with chalk and infusing them with mana was also out, because the water tended to spray onto the chalk. The solution was once more to carve the scripts into wood. This was quite arduous, but at least I already had some practice from the leg script. I first wrote the scripts into some dirt, refined them, tested them in practice, and then reiterated on them until I got everything right.

This lack of writing utensils actually ended up being a blessing in disguise, because the results of my efforts were reusable tools that siphoned my mana as I used them. They were literal magic tools. Well, at least prototypes. They sprang to life the moment an awakened human touched them, and if a part of your body was in the wrong spot, you would quickly lose a limb. But I could improve the safety standards later.

An hour or two after I started, I was already happily cutting trees into digestible pieces, pushed and rolled thick trunks around with controlled water streams, and began experimenting with how to best stack and interlock the wood to create a stable foundation.

The concept was quite obvious by this point, beams creating an even surface on the ground and planks not only outlining the shape of the house, but also rising into the air already on several sides, where I was testing the best ways to secure them from all angles. I pictured a one-story building with a living space in the center, surrounded by six adjacent rooms, in an area of about fourty square meters. For simplicity and uniformity, everything would be arranged in a grid, and given how little time I had spent on it so far, things were coming along rather well.

I was in my own little world, working along blissfully, until a branch cracked in the distance and I was immediately on edge. Dropping one of my saws, I spun around and aimed my arms in the direction the noise had come from, only to find a familiar, if confused, face.

“Miles?” Berla asked, her gaze wandering over my work area.

“Oh. Morning,” I said as I lowered my arms.

“What in the gods’ names are you doing? Are you... building a house?”

“Yea,” I said, grinning. “Aelene seemed disappointed by the living standards, and you guys were still sleeping, so I thought I’d give it a try. Looks pretty good so far, doesn’t it?”

Berla came closer, walking on a mana leg that had presumably been filled by Aelene. I was delighted to see it. She had struggled with concentrating her mana like this during our tests and lessons in the temple gardens.

“Oh, did she manage to put some mana into your leg?”

Berla didn’t respond. She blinked in total disbelief, wandering in my direction, past fallen trees and piles of timber.

“You’re building... a house...” Berla mumbled. She came to a stop in front of me, looking at the foundation next to us. “For Aelene?” she suddenly asked, her voice sharp.

I frowned lightly at her tone, worrying what she was thinking. “Not exactly. I needed something to get my mind off things, and this seemed like a fun project that might benefit us all.”

Her head pivoted slowly until her gaze met mine. She seemed deeply conflicted.

“You’re really not planning to go back to Alarna? Are you going to build a house for your wives and just live here?” she asked with a hinge of ridicule.

I grimaced, thinking, Wives? Is that how she sees the situation?

Thankfully, she didn’t, as she quickly changed course. “I... I didn’t mean for it to come out like. You know what I mean...”

“Yea...” I said with a sigh.

Between all the craziness I wasn’t always considerate of how weird this must’ve been for her. Though it was clearly only a small part of why she was unhappy right now. She thought we needed to go back to Alarna and finish our job.

“Listen, Berla... When I stood on that stage, and Grom announced that they were locking me away, some citizens looked genuinely disappointed that I wasn’t going to be executed outright. I honestly don’t know if we can turn that around. And that was before I heard about this brainwashing nonsense the Rulers came up with.”

“Is it nonsense?” she asked inquisitively.

I was a little heartbroken for a second. “Please tell me you don’t actually believe I somehow tricked you into liking me.”

“Of course not,” she scoffed. “I mean, I briefly considered it, but no. That would be ridiculous. I practically had to force you.” The mood changed ever so slightly for the better as she shot me down, thinking the notion absurd that she might’ve believed these claims. “But what happened with the guards was weird.”

“You’re right about that. I honestly don’t know what that was.”

“If you were able to do it though... Wouldn’t it be possible to use it to take back Alarna?”

“That’s a big if, but let’s assume it were possible. Would you want to take back Alarna that way? By brainwashing the entire population into following us unconditionally?”

Berla thought my question over thoroughly before responding. “I don’t know... But it would be an option.”

“Potentially. But to what end? What awaits us after everything is said and done? Regardless of how we do it, is it worth the trouble? A significant portion of them doesn’t currently want us there. I don’t see what we have to gain by forcing that issue.”

“Tomar...” Berla whispered, so quietly that I could barely hear it.

“Huh?”

“It was Tomar’s dream,” she said, louder this time.

“Oh...”

“You know, we talked about this plan back in Cerus.” A sad smile formed on her lips as she thought back. “It was the night right after you came up with it. He said he was up for it, and that he was ‘done playing their game.’ He would do what’s necessary, should anyone stand in his way of improving the lives of everyone. I think... he would’ve wanted us to continue... And even if not all of the people are on our side at the moment, there are still some. I know it.”

I realized I had messed up as she tried to convince me not to give up on Tomar’s dream yet. I had done a terrible job conveying my thoughts on where to go from here to her and the others. I thought it was obvious, but that was a poor excuse.

“You think I’m done with the entire plan? Ugh, I’m an idiot. I get why you’re mad.”

Berla looked at me in surprise. “Isn’t that what you said? You don’t want to go back to Alarna.”

“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to retreat to some hut in the woods and hide from the world.”

“Uhm...” Stone-faced, her eyes scanned our surroundings again and she gestured at the strewn around timber, pointing out what I was doing right now.

I followed her gaze. “Oookay, point taken. But this is a multi-purpose project. There’s a few more days until the moderators are supposed to arrive, and we can’t leave the immediate area, because they might attack Alarna—just like they did with Cerus. Having accommodations during our wait time and potentially past that will be convenient. I also really needed a little break from everything after the last couple of days. A fun side-project is just the right kind of distraction for a day or two. And while I’m at it, I’m developing new scripts. Look at this,” I said excitedly.

I picked up an unassuming piece of wood, and right as I did, a round, spinning blade appeared in the air in front of it. I proceeded to make two quick cuts into a log, and a chunk of wood fell out of it.

“Wow...” Berla said, her eyes wide. She immediately understood what I was getting at. A magic saw could be used for more than just cutting wood. “Do you think this will be effective?”

“Maybe,” I said. I was hopeful, though I couldn’t guarantee it. “We’ll have to test it. It might not do anything against beasts of Arax’s level, but I’m fairly certain that it will slice through mods. We could use a few more hands if we want to survive an onslaught of eighty beasts after all... It just so happened that this script also made a great tool.”

Berla glanced back at me, starting to seem a little more hopeful. “And once they’re taken care of?”

“I can’t say for sure yet. The gods are not going to be happy about the mods, so we might have to react quickly to whatever they throw our way next. Having a limited number of innocent bystanders nearby will be beneficial in that case, so we might want to stay out here until then. Long-term we should spread the mana wall script past Cerus, to make the surrounding roads and towns safer, and we should continue to improve ourselves to fight or potentially negotiate with the stronger beasts, to realize his dream. The situation in Alarna probably won’t change overnight, but it will definitely change with the times, and I have ideas in mind on how we can influence that development. I’m also curious about what lies behind this small part of the world. Now that we’ll be free to move around, we might find untold wonders awaiting us somewhere. Things that nobody has ever seen because they were too scared to venture into the Wildlands. Oh, and magic tools! They could seriously revolutionize the world, assuming that I can figure out a way to easily charge them. But I—”

Berla suddenly closed her eyes and chuckled silently to herself as she hung her head. “I’m an idiot too,” she said. “How could I think that you were lacking plans, and that you would ignore the goals we all set?”

“I naturally assumed we would continue as planned, but I could definitely have communicated it better. I’m sorry. I don’t know if I would want to return to Alarna, but for now we’re probably in a better situation this way. We don’t have to worry about the citizens, the risk of someone kidnapping a member of our circle to put pressure on us is lower, Aelene is out of that town where people still glanced at her sideways—”

“Alright, alright. I get it. You thought everything through.” Berla smiled at me warmly.

I wondered what my actions had looked like to her. On one hand, you might argue that she should have known better, but then again, she had also seen how easily I could get distracted. I spent entire nights on things that didn’t benefit us in the slightest, like that time I created pixel images from the black stone flakes. Seeing how I tended to obsess over whatever piqued my interest at a given time, and also how I could change my mind at a moment’s notice, who was to say that I didn’t mean to torch all bridges and live in the woods for a change? And why not take a fiance and a mother to be too? Though I really wanted to address this part.

“I’m glad that we’re on the same page again. Speaking of Aelene and Hayla though...” I began.

“It’s okay. I do understand it.”

A feeling of luck washed over me as she nodded at me kindly. I could vividly picture someone looking in from the outside, thinking this was a harem in the making. Her accepting this wasn’t a matter of course. She might’ve understood my plight, but I felt I wasn’t doing enough to reassure her.

“Yea... Still, let me say it. I feel responsible for them, but that’s all there is. I love you,” I said, looking deep into her eyes.

It was the first time I had said it since we thought I would merge into Tomar. To a degree, it had been out of desperation at the time, because I didn’t want to vanish without having said it. Now, however, it felt natural. We had barely had any real time alone together recently, and reaffirming my feelings seemed like the way to go.

Berla appeared to be of the same opinion, as she embraced and kissed me. If there were still worries on my mind, this sensation blew them right out the window.

Life can be so nice.

After a few moments, she loosened her grip on me, though her arms were still wrapped around my neck. We smiled at each other longingly.

“I love you too,” she whispered. “That reminds me though...”

Suddenly, her expression changed. She had a devilish glint in her eyes as she raised her fist and punched my shoulder.

“Ow! What the...”

It wasn’t her full strength, but it was enough to sting quite badly. I didn’t understand what was going on until she clarified.

“I said I’d smack you if you made me say it and it wasn’t the end after all.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or complain about my throbbing arm.

Life can also hurt.