Weapons of Mass Destruction

Over the next few days, I go out hunting in the area surrounding our camp, trying to complete side quests to earn more stay tokens.

With the twins, we experiment a bit and came up with a way to make some items to sell for extra shards, gaining me around 15 thousand more and some for the twins as well as I make the different variations of each item. We go through quite a number of attempts and failures, but the boys are eager to earn their share of the shards and have already set to spending their share to buy themselves a decent variety of stuff.

Lily and Biscuit seem to be saving their shards, and so honestly I don’t have anything I want them to buy with my 50% share. I mean, there are plans in the works, but I don’t have the time or space to put them into action yet.

After I get back from Beyond, I fully intend to get myself an undamaged arcane item, even if it means I have to destroy some of the damaged ones currently in my possesion.

I have plenty of materials and ideas, so I should have the resources at least.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Dennis asks me curiously.

He’s watching me from across the border with brother in tow, refusing to cross beyond the point their mana stops regenerating. I, meanwhile, am standing well within the mana desert, directing my flames at the molds I’ve sculpted in the ground.

“Who knows?”

“Nat, tell me, did you use to take things apart just to see how they were working?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Got it. Now get back to your training, Your orb’s going to disappear.”

“There’s no way. I have it under control...” He doesn’t have time to finish, and the evil orb beside him bursts open, “…under control.”

His brother laughs. “I told you he was about to start changing them without telling us! Nat, did I do well?”

“Better than Dennis,” I agree as I watch him handle the sudden spike in his orb, a new way I found to tortu... train the brothers.

Weakening the flame I turn my attention back to the mold and send kinetic energy through the molten sand in the form. I modify the output to create a deep vibration throughout the mass, shaking the bubbles out of the form at high frequency.

Then I continue to heat it up. I’ve started taking things slower than before, watching the surface and the color. Once in a while, I use kinetic energy to help the process along, typically to release more trapped bubbles.

I’m trying to make a simple dagger, a good form for testing as we’ve found over a few days.

“What are you looking to add to the mix today? Do you need another one of my finger bones?” Lily asks, sounding genuinely curious.

She’s sitting off to the side, examining a mana stone loaded with information on body modification.

“We could try to add one of Biscuit’s whiskers,” Dennis recommends.

(Asshole!)

“You know I wasn’t being serious, Biscuit! Nat, what did he say?”

“He called you an asshole.”

“Oh…” His brother laughs at him while Dennis deflates.

“We tried enhancing them with your thermal orbs, random bones, and metals, but we’re kind of hitting a wall by not being able to add mana,” Aaron sighs.

“We did?”

“You did, but we supported you from a distance.”

“Sounds about right. I don’t think I’m going to add anything this time. Someone else might be able to get more out of this sand, but I can’t do anymore at this point in time.”

It’s frustrating. I can’t inscribe it, I can’t add my mana to the mix. I can’t even use mana while making it.

And in the end, as the dagger cools down, the blade is still ugly. Somewhat.

The surface is nice and smooth, white-ish and thoroughly glass-like. Probably the best I’ve made so far. However, the description is no different than it was before and stubbornly retains its upper epic rarity and its ineligibility for sale in the system shop.

I pocket it in the same fashion as the failures that came before.

“Why don’t you make items for the others? Like you did for us?” Dennis asks as he watches me stow the dagger.

“We won’t be meeting them soon enough for that. Do you want to carry all those items for the next few months?”

“I guess we can come back later. But damn, even if we’re taking 50%, you still have a lot of shards invested in us.”

“Yes. I intend to use them to buy materials for crafting, testing, and other stuff. Did you already use the detachment token on [Connection]?”

“We both did, but damn, Nat, it’s not a nice feeling removing a skill upgrade. We didn’t bother using one on [Mana Manipulation] either.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“It’s worth it in the end, and don’t worry, I’ll push others to follow suit.”

The sleepy-looking Lily yawns, speaking lazily as she does, “I used them before we even reached this floor, back when you first mentioned it, Nat.”

That makes me turn to the twins. “Why can’t you guys be more like Lily?”

“We don’t have the Handy Backpack she has.”

“It’s a Chop Sack,” Aaron disagrees with his brother.

“No, it’s an Armory Bag.”

“Disarmory.”

Catching Lily’s gaze, I shrug and she repeats the motion, adding another yawn. “I’m going to get a few hours of sleep. I think the 11th variation of my healing mark is due to be the best one yet.”

“So there won’t be any more veins growing through the surface of my skin?”

“Nope, I fixed it. Night, boys,” she waves before heading off to rest.

Something nudges my feet, and I look down to see Biscuit.

(I require sustenance.) He says, uttering a series of words I haven’t heard him use in a long time.

Knowing what that means, I head to my backpack and open a secret compartment, and pull a sealed box free, taking a single piece of Archdeer jerky from within. A commodity that’s rapidly becoming more and more precious as time goes on.

Biscuit patiently waits, but I can see him tippy-tapping with his front legs, even jumping subtly as he struggles to contain his excitement.

“Paw,” I say as I squat in front of him.

He immediately lifts his right front leg, and I grab it, shaking it and feeling the soft toe beans beneath.

Feeling refreshed, I hand the jerky to him, which he gently takes into his mouth, then turns around, heading to his usual resting spot at which point he proceeds to nibble on it.

“Did you have any pets back on Earth, Nat?” Aaron asks, in an uncharacteristic show of Initiative.

I shake my head. “Never. But I remember a time when I was younger, there was a boy who got a puppy for Christmas, and for a year or two, his mom often brought it with her when she went to pick her son up from school.”

That memory flashes in my mind.

“The dog was always so happy, just seeing that boy, and the boy was happy as well. It didn’t matter if he got bad grades, or someone was bullying him, or if a teacher chewed him out. Every time he saw that dog, a smile would light up his face.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Yup.” I stretch and activate the burden enhancement inscriptions, forcing myself to move kinetic energy throughout my body. “It’s time for some light sparring. Your goal is to maintain the evil orb while we fight.”

“I wish he had better names for these things. It makes me feel lame that I have so much trouble with it.” Dennis sighs, fixing his clothes as mana starts flowing through his body.

“We should have known what we were getting ourselves into when he named our group: group 4.”

The sparring match takes off, and they don’t have the luxury of speaking anymore.

Just two days remain until I start my next Beyond expedition, and my training is in full progress. I cut down on my sleep planning to make up for it before I go to Beyond.

Be it day or night, all of us train, my companions deciding to follow my example and stay up for the next few days.

Much like before, there is no hunting, we only resort to killing monsters when they attack us. And this close to the Mana Desert, that rarely happens, leaving our campsite unusually quiet.

Here on the 6th floor, days are hot, and the sky makes it impossible to see where the light’s coming from, almost like we were caught in a perpetual storm or the sky was covered in sand or something.

Day is also the time when the monsters seem to be the most active, and yet the nights are cold and quiet. And I’ve grown to enjoy the nights here, even as hostile as they are. If only for the view I still can’t get enough of.

It almost looks like I can reach my hand and touch the stars. Myriads of them in the sky, mixing with purple nebulae that cover a huge part of the sky as well.

Sometimes I just like to sit there for a few minutes and watch it, thinking about just how real it is. How far does the tutorial reach? Did it stop at recreating the moon, this Astral Prison. Is everything beyond the borders of this satellite just an even bigger fake? A projection set there for convenience? Like some giant TV screen? Is it just an illusion? Graphics that only bother to load when we look at them?

Or does the system do more? Back on the 2nd floor, old Liss said she couldn’t leave the planet, so maybe it just ends. But there’s a chance it doesn’t.

I’ll have to find out next time we’re on a floor without aerial defenses. I’m curious to see if I could fly up to outer space and survive there.

A few minutes remain, and I adjust my backpack, it’s already been loaded up with all my most important stuff. I have the Flamebearer, I have my Echo Gauntlet, I even have a few weapons made from white sand, and plenty of other odds and ends.

I also have somewhere around a dozen healing marks dotting my body, though most of them are confined to my left arm. The current and 12th variation has been tailored to send a scan through my body to find the wound and focus its healing there.

Though it would certainly cause problems if someone were to sever my left arm—which is, sadly, not impossible—so we decided to space out a few more marks across some of my other body parts, even though it made things a bit more difficult for Lily.

I endure a second long hug from Lily, suspecting her of milking the situation while fully aware that she might try it again.

“So, You’re planning to be back in three to five days right?” Aaron asks.

“Yup,” I confirm. “I’ll start with a one day token, and use more based on how that goes.”

“Take care, Nat,” Lily cries, seizing the opportunity to give me a third hug, and I look over her head at the smirking twins.

Then I push the baby koala away and lift Biscuit to eye level, letting him lick my face a few times.

Trading a final round of well wishes, I take a few steps and grab the nearby stack of boxes. Each one made from melted white sand, sealed airtight, and impossible to open without breaking the container itself. Inside, there's nothing but a hollow space filled with loose white sand.

Yup, I’m using white sand to store white sand. I have a dozen boxes just like it, each the size of my head.

“Later,” I shout, waving as I use a Beyond Stay token and the environment around me fades.

And there she is, my beloved Lady handler, seated within the same endless space, behind the same, old wooden table.

I follow her eyes to the boxes filled with white sand behind me and can’t help but feel proud. It took a lot of testing to get it right and even more effort to create them and store the white sand within.

“You can’t bring those to the Entrance floor or into the dungeon,” she says resolutely.

Yeah, I never liked this old hag of an asshole lazy handler.