“You’ve got the new slot?” Viv asked, her eyes shining with excitement. Rory had no doubt his expression looked much like that too.

Rory quickly checked the [Settlement Status] again and confirmed that yes, he had one more Sigil slot there at the bottom of the list. A place to put his Sigil of Crafting Station.

“Yeah, I’ve got it,” he said. “We can finally start on crafting.”

“Perfect!”

“I’m not sure how any of this works but this sounds amazing,” Sylvia said.

Rory laughed. “Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet. Just you wait. This is going to be even more amazing once we’re done setting things up.” He turned to Viv. “That said, can you go call Ferdous? She wanted to be a part of making crafting a big thing here.”

Viv nodded. She glanced a little slyly at the Homeworlders, then proceeded to wave at them to follow her. “Come on, you guys can be useful while you’re here and help me find our elusive friend. Let’s give Rory some space to get things done.”

Rory held his smile until they had gone, then sighed. He could understand her paranoia at leaving him alone with people who had once tried to kidnap him—well, one of them had at least done it willingly. It seemed she still hadn’t fully forgiven them, much less trusting them.

While they were gone, Rory bent to pulling out and inserting the Sigil of Crafting Station into the Sigil of Settlement.

[Settlement Status]

Belcourt Palace

Type: Base

Leader: Rory McIlroy

Tier: Teal I [0%]

Stats

Population: 53

Area of Influence: 125m2

Treasury: 24,620 Mana, 30 Credits

Defences [Selectable]

Passive Reconstruction [Major]

-

Components

Sigil of Shelter: Ordinary, [Teal IV]

Sigil of Finance: Uncommon, [Cerulean VI]

Sigil of Security: Remarkable, [Teal IV]

Sigil of Produce: Exceptional, [Teal IV]

Sigil of Healing: Remarkable, [Cerulean X]

Sigil of Learning: Exceptional, [Cerulean VII]

Sigil of Energy: Remarkable, [Teal II]

Sigil of Crafting Station: Mythic. [Teal IV]

Rory wasn’t sure how exactly he was supposed to be able to perform crafting now, but he decided to go into Zonal Configuration to check if there it had appeared there. It was there, just above the Command Centre. Like with the rest, he just needed to assign a room in the palace that would serve as their main hub for crafting. He decided he’d wait in case Ferdous had any input.

Instead, he focused on something else that was quite intriguing. The Zonal Configuration had reached Tier II.

This change had brought with it an extra slot for several of the different zones in the palace. He could assign an extra location to the Habitation, Storage, and Defence zones. Rory could see how this could be useful if they wanted to increase the palace’s capacity. More people meant more places to sleep and more things to store and more to protect.

As much as he wanted to assign things right away, he once again determined it was best to confer as a group where things would best go. He could pick spots for all of them with no small amount of confidence that the others would appreciate and understand, but he respected them enough to respect their opinion.

Thankfully, Viv arrived with Ferdous in record time. Aaron and Sylvia weren’t with her, but Dez, April, Ned, and Miles had accompanied her as well. Rory smiled. Enough of the gang was here.

“Do you really have crafting available now?” Ferdous asked. She had an excited shine in her eyes as well.

Rory had to laugh. “Yes! I’m not yet sure how it’s supposed to work, but I can assign it to a zone just like the other things we’ve got.”

“Crafting as in, we can make whatever we want with that Sigil?” Dez asked.

“Well, it would be like, we can make whatever we need ourselves instead of going out to scavenge them from wherever,” Ferdous said. “Think smithing our weapons or putting together our own tools. Or even making our bricks, mortar, and all that kind of stuff.”

“That’s so… well no offence, but that sounds complicated. And a little mundane.”

Ferdous nodded and turned to Rory. “Which is where Sigils come in, right? Magic!”

“Well.” Rory considered. “That is what I’d ideally want it to be. We shouldn’t need to smith our weapons so much as use the Sigil of Crafting Station to make them with the help of the Sigil. It’s just the exact procedure that I’m as yet unsure of. But there’s no point dithering. We find out by doing it. Any specific place you wanted to set the Sigil of Crafting in?”

Rory had directed the question at Ferdous, which made the rest of them peer curiously at her as though wondering what special expertise she possessed.

Ferdous noticed the looks, then cleared her throat and explained, “My uncle worked at a smithy. I used to visit it with him and tried my hand at it too.”

Rory nodded. “Good enough for me.”

It wasn’t anything like the experience of a real blacksmith but then, they weren’t aiming to do any real smithing here in the first place. All they needed was someone with the experience and mind of a craftsperson.

“I think any place that’s not in the way of anything should be good,” Ferdous said. “But it might really depend on what exact crafting function the Sigil provides.”

She was right. Rory decided to pick one of the ground floor rooms behind the main hall, in the direction of the palace they hadn’t used as much yet. That ought to be out-of-the-way enough. But of course, there were the other extra slots left for Habitation, Defence, and Storage.

Rory told the others about the upgraded Zonal Configuration at Tier II. “Where do you all think should the extra slots go?”

“Well, do we have some free slots now that some of the old ones got destroyed?” Dez asked.

“We do actually. Towers and most of the barricades are down. That frees up two more spots, so we have three in total for those. Same for storage. There are three slots in total there.”

“Can we turn the roof to one of the Defence slots?”

April turned to him. “Can a location be more than one zone?”

“The tower used to be both storage and defence,” Rory said. “Yes, the tower was much larger than the rooftop, but I’m going to assume other locations can hold multiple things until proven otherwise.”

“It’ll be a good thing too,” Dez added. “Because you’re good with guns, so having that close at hand will be better for defending.”

Rory went ahead and assigned the rooftop as one of the Defence slots, focusing specifically on the roof’s front area where he imagined Jerome would be positioned with any rifles, with April’s help too.

“Now for the other slots,” he said.

After some talking, they decided that they could consider expanding into the rest of the unoccupied portions of the palace. So, Rory set the Storage slot in the large hall where they had killed all those Thundershells. It ought to be safe with the spawn point now eradicated.

Next came the other Defence slots, which they set at the gate again, and the barricades that were still standing. There was an extra one they decided to wait on until they got the dwarves’ opinion.

The extra Habitation slot went to a large room on the second floor above the crafting station. On second thought, he imagined the loud clanking and clattering of metal in typical smithies. Their crafting station wouldn’t be like that, but he still moved the Habitation spot to another room on the same floor but farther away.

“There,” Rory said, feeling rather satisfied. “Now that we’re done with the Zonal Configuration, we can focus on the Crafting Station again.”

He did so, Ferdous and the others stiffening a little in anticipation. The Sigil was strange. It seemed he could focus on it and expand it, opening a bunch of slots much like what was gifted by the Sigil of Stats. He could add more Sigils there.

“That’s very intriguing,” Viv said, after Rory had reported his finding to the others. “You think we can add different kinds of crafting Sigils to it, if there are Sigils like that?”

Rory agreed, though he wasn’t looking at her, not really. His eyes were unfocused, his mind lost in the potential for the Crafting Station. “There should be Sigils like that, yeah. But the thing is, Sigils let us perform a lot of creativity. We can make the Crafting Station function however we want it too…”

Ferdous was tapping one finger against her cheek. “Why don’t we go check it out and plan things there?”

Rory nodded. They went to where he had set the Sigil of Crafting Station as a group. The others were surprised he had set it that far back, especially Viv, who recognized the room at the end.

She stared around at the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. “This is…”

“The room with the Thundershells’ spawn point, yeah,” Rory said. “Thought I’d repurpose it and make use of it.”

“Thundershells’ spawn point?” Ferdous asked, with quite reasonable nervousness.

Dez and April took turns explaining how this chamber had once held a ton of Electrium, which had the unfortunate effect of giving birth to many Thundershells. They couldn’t have that, so after a bit of a difficult encounter, they had destroyed all the monsters and their sources.

Ferdous looked around, clearly trying to calm down her fear. “As fine a spot as any for crafting.”

Rory almost laughed at that, but decided that would be unkind to her efforts to not give in to her misgivings.

“Alright, but how would we actually do any crafting here?” April asked.

“Good question,” Dez said.

Rory considered. There was nothing here and the Sigil of Crafting Station had ultimately given them nothing except several slots to add more Sigils. Likely, crafting Sigils of some kind. That meant the method of crafting was up to them. Their imagination was likely the limit. Of course, there was the Sigil’s own words to take into account.

“From what I remember, the Sigil’s description said that the Crafting Station absorbs blueprints of objects and creates objects using materials,” Rory said. “I think we need to add a Sigil that can crate those blueprints from different objects, then another Sigil that can recreate those objects using materials we provide.”

Viv snapped her fingers. “We do have something similar to a Sigil that can use blueprints! What was that Sigil called, the one that lets you see the future of your Sigil?”

“Oh, right! It’s literally called the Sigil of Progression Blueprint. Hmm…”

“So, we’d need a similar Sigil, but for objects instead?” Ferdous asked.

“Possibly. But the thing about that Sigil is that it projects the future of a Sigil. It doesn’t recognize what a Sigil is made of or tell us how we can make one. Now that I think about it, the only thing it has in common with what we need is the name.”

“Ah, right.” Viv sighed. “Drats.”

“No, that’s a good lead, actually. I’ve got a good idea of what exactly we’re going to need here. The problem comes in regarding how we can get those things.”

Rory did his best to explain what he had come up with so far. His first idea involved some combination of the Sigils of Knowledge and Progression Blueprint to come up with a Sigil that could make exact plans about how to create any given object from scratch.

The other Sigil needed a function they had already seen in action—Trish’s Sigil of Reinforced Steel. It could make certain shapes at her behest. What they needed was a Sigil that could follow the original blueprint the first Sigil created, then follow the same procedure of the Sigil of Reinforced Steel to manifest the object into being.

There was going to have to be a lot of complexity involved, according to Ferdous and Viv. Trish made simple objects, after all. If they wanted anything more complex than a simple axe or a spear, they would need to add more conditions and functionality.

“Do you think you can get those Sigils, Rory?” Viv asked. She looked concerned for a second, unsure of how that might even be possible.

Honestly, Rory didn’t feel much differently. But he suspected a part of that was simply being tired after the long day. “I think I need to sleep on it.”

He didn’t voice that it ought to be easier once he had reached Viridian, but at this rate, that was going to take a while. Time they didn’t have if the Misericords decided to come back sooner rather than later.

“Don’t worry,” he said, trying to instil some confidence in his voice, and by proxy, in the rest of them. “We’ll figure it out. In the meantime, we’ll be prepared and deal with anything coming our way the same way we did today.”

“Didn’t we run out of towers?” Dez asked, chuckling.

“Who needs a tower when we’ve got you?”

They all laughed at that. Rory admitted that their excitement at getting the Sigil of Crafting Station had ended in a bit of a damp squib, but he wasn’t really discouraged. Because there was a way for him to raise his Tiers faster.

He needed to focus on getting more extra Tiers using the Sigil of Quests.