Daniel continues to carry over his shoulder as we flee the undead, only stopping once we reach the wall, near the entrance we use to get to the top. I’m constantly fighting to stay awake, mostly by using mana to give a little bit of energy, just enough to ward off the encroaching blackness. Once we reach the doorway in the middle of the tunnel through the wall, Daniel puts down, and I send extra mana to my legs in an attempt to keep them from giving out.
Both Daniel and Corvax are breathing heavily, like they just ran a marathon, and turn to look at as I lean against the wall for support with my remaining hand.
“What the hell happened, Ray? We thought you had died!” Daniel exclaims between breaths.
I pull up my left sleeve and show them my bloody stump, covered with a small cap of light green mana. “You should see the other guy.” I manage to get out right before I finally reach my limit and fall unconscious.
***
I wake up around sixteen hours later or so from the mana inside my body building up too much pressure, causing a dull pain all over my body. I start pushing mana out of my body and letting it dissipate until the pressure is manageable, and then start cycling mana throughout my entire body, focusing on my head and arm. My arm!
I sit up quickly, ignoring my brain-pounding headache, and throw off the sleeping roll from on top of , revealing my left arm, covered in makeshift bandages. I start to rember exactly what happened. The quick fight with the Corrosive Assassin, which pushed to my ntal limits just to keep track of it, ended with cutting off my own arm to stop the spread of its poison.
I rember my half-lucid return journey to the tower and getting cut off by that last small horde. Sothing about it was so funny to that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. That was probably more blood loss than anything else. Dying there would have been so la. The last thing I rember is my two friends breaking through the horde and rescuing .
“He’s awake,” Daniel says from behind , and I hear it repeat from my amulet, lying on the ground next to . He walks around and kneels down by my left side. “How are you feeling?”
“I could use… a hand.”
“Lucky for you, I know a guy with a few too many.” Daniel jokes as Corvax climbs the staircase to the top floor of our tower, the room I am currently in.
Corvax hands a full waterskin and so deer jerky as he takes a seat on the floor, on my right side this ti. “What happened? What was that thing?”
I take a few big gulps of water, curing my parched mouth before I answer their questions. “It was a level twenty-seven undead Corrosion Assassin, and it was a bad matchup for . Guy was wicked fast, and by the ti I killed it, my hand was beyond saving and the corrosion was quickly spreading. I had almost no mana at the ti to try and fight it off and knew I would need all that I had if I wanted to make it back, so I decided to cut off my arm, curing myself of the poison." I bite down on a piece of jerky as the other two give each other incredulous expressions.
“That’s… pretty badass. How did you go through with it? That must’ve hurt like a bitch.” Daniel says as he also starts eating so jerky.
I start creating the very sa mana blade I used in my fight instead of responding, as my mouth is full of jerky, and I’m not a barbarian. By the ti I finish chewing and swallowing, the blade is completed, and the spatial edge is giving a high-pitched whine. This is also when I notice the bear’s tracking spell is gone from my chest.
“I made one of these. Cut straight through my arm, bone and all, just like butter. It also cut through the undead as well. I didn't create it just to dismber myself, by the way.”
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Daniel holds out a piece of tal he takes out of one of his pockets, a tube about five inches long. “Cut this.”
I comply and drop the blade straight through, cleanly cutting off about an inch from the end. “Pretty impressive, right? I already have a few ideas for enchantnts, which we should have the supplies for. After I make a new sword, we can get back out there and finish off the bear for good.”
Corvax takes this opportunity to join the conversation. “You want to get back out there already, after everything you went through? You need ti to rest. I will not let you try to kill yourself again.” He has a stern expression on his face, and his tone is that of a father who will not take no for an answer.
“I know I’m not one to usually err on the side of caution, but are you good to fight, Ray? A liability will only get us killed.” He says while looking straight in the eyes.
“I’m good. I just pushed too hard, that's all. A day of rest and I’ll be as good as new.” I say as I look down at my missing hand. “Well, good as new minus a hand, I guess.”
Daniel gives a nod, and Corvax looks skeptical but says nothing. We finish our al together, and then Corvax goes up to the roof to practice with his axe and his sunlight energy. Daniel gets up to leave, but I stop him.
“How did you find ? I thought I was going to die there, at the end.” I ask.
“Rember when rrick voided out sothing in our amulets and you guessed it was the tracking part of it? You were right, and rrick gave his amulet to Corvax, which was untouched. After we managed to escape the bear, we hauled ass to get to you.”
I stand up and get dressed, as they stripped down to just my underwear when they bandaged up my arm. My coat has been washed, as most of the dirt and gri is gone, but it still has plenty of bloodstains. Soone even sewed up a few holes and cuts in it with a black thread. I put my storage core back in one of the pockets after emptying it of all the crystals I keep in there.
“Want to help make a few weapons?” I ask Daniel.
“Yes.”
Daniel and I start on the first weapon a few hours before noon. It’s a replacent for my sword, which was left back in the city when I got rescued. I set out one of the orange crystals from the Ant Sentinels in the dungeon and three smaller red crystals, also from ants. As I work on enchanting the crystals with the parts of my own skills by creating specific channels and nodes for mana to run through, Daniel works on the fra of the weapon. The wires we pulled from the inside of the other tower will make up most of it, with regular steel acting as the outer shell.
The orange crystal will be the battery and the simplest of the crystals to enchant. After I finish with it, I move on to the difficult part, inscribing parts of my skills into the red gems. The first one gets [Mana Shaping], and its purpose is to pull mana from the battery and create a specific blade shape. The shape is a straight, double-edged sword, like a jian. The second red crystal will hold parts of [Space Control], and it will be used to create a spatial edge along the blade. The last crystal will have [Condense] and will compress the mana in the blade and also the spatial edge at the sa ti.
Daniel finishes the fra, which is just the hilt of my soon-to-be new weapon, a few hours before I finish with the crystals and starts working on the next weapon. I take the hilt in my hand and examine it, making sure everything is right before I start to fit in the crystals. It’s perfect, mostly because it’s a simple design. Next, I attach the three red crystals, one in the poml and two on either end of the crossguard, with minimal difficulties. I just need Daniel to make a few adjustnts so the crystals stay in place.
The final part of the sword, the battery crystal, goes in last, right in the middle of the crossguard, above the handle. After I ensure that everything is connected well, it’s nearing dinnerti, and the three of us sit down for another al. We don’t talk about fighting, or leveling up, or even of this planet much. We talk about ourselves and our hos. It’s not sothing any of us ever agreed on or even talked about. We each simultaneously decided not to talk about that kind of stuff at als on our own.
After the al, I give a demonstration of my new sword to the other two after making sure it works. It’s a bit less efficient than what I can make myself, but that’s a fine tradeoff for not needing any ntal strain to keep active. Another great thing about it is it takes less than a second for the blade to snap into place, and the spatial edge forms after three. I estimate a full charge can keep the blade up for about five minutes or so.
The next best thing is that anybody can use it, since all the skills necessary are in the crystals, unlike my storage core, which needs a space mage to work properly. I don’t even have to fill it with my own mana, but I do anyway, as I can always pull it back out of the battery if I need to, making the sword also just double as a mana battery.
“So then, mine next?” Daniel asks.
“ too!” Corvax says as he shoves his axe towards .
It takes until nearly midnight to finish both of their weapons. But in the end, I upgraded Daniel's gauntlet with the second orange crystal, which also got turned into a mana battery, and created a dagger with a spatial edge on it for him. It has no internal battery and is designed to pull mana directly from his gauntlet through a few connection points on its handle and on the gauntlet's fingers. I offer to make a bigger blade, but he says he wants sothing small and deadly that he can easily wield in his offhand.
Corvax’s weapon is not new, as I just upgraded his axe. I remove the old enchantnt and put in a spatial edge along the ax blade. I also add in a few more mana batteries using the rest of the red crystals, depleting the last of my unused crystals. I wish I had another of the orange crystals, but I don't, so the handle of his axe is now filled with half a dozen new mana batteries wired into the old ones, all feeding into the spatial edge crystals.
“We should have made these earlier, before you had to cut off your arm. I bet we would have killed the bear by now if we had.” Daniel says as he and Corvax test out their new weapons.
“I needed the inspiration of almost dying and pushing my skills to their limits to really get a grasp on the whole ‘cutting things with space’ thing.”
“Well, let's get a few hours of sleep and get back out there.” Daniel says as he puts his new knife away.
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