Chapter 115: Crafts (1/2)

The dragon did not fit in the courtyard.

They had to lay it out across the whole eastern terrace, and even then the tail hung off the edge and trailed down the cliff face toward the water.

Every production unit on Aegis Isle came to look at it. None of them said anything for a while.

Then Molten Core Vulkarn made a sound Logan had never heard it make before, and walked directly into the corpse up to the shoulder.

"Is it all right?" Alice asked.

"It is extremely all right." Xairon was already sliding between shapes at the edge of the terrace. "That is the sound it makes when it is happy. You have never given it anything worth being happy about before."

Ironbound Siege Kroth arrived with a cutting rig it had built while walking. Tideglass Flow Maren brought empty racks and started filling them with blood before anybody told it to.

Runic Sigil Draventh laid one hand flat on a scale plate and stood there without moving for a long moment.

"This will hold an enchantment," it said. "Any enchantment. I have never worked with a surface this receptive."

Logan looked at the four of them swarming a Mythic-rank corpse and felt something that was not quite pride.

’One dragon. Three portals of material. And a production line that has been sitting here getting stronger while we were out.’

"Take all of it," he said. "Nothing gets wasted."

Kroth had already started cutting.

---

Sonic had been hovering at the edge of the group for a while, pretending to supervise.

He was doing a bad job of pretending. He had drifted closer to Alice about six times.

"Sonic."

"I am not asking."

"You have not stopped asking since the shelf." Alice pulled the Stormheart out of her ring and held it up.

It was about the size of a fist, dark grey shot through with white, and the light inside it moved like weather.

"It is yours," she said. "Take it."

Sonic took it with both hands and then just held it, which was somehow the most surprising thing he had done all day.

"I hover," he said. "Everybody thinks I fly. I do not fly. I have been faking it since the day Logan pulled me out of a summoning circle."

"I know."

"You never said anything."

"Why would I?" Alice shrugged. "You are the fastest thing any of us has ever seen. Nobody cared how far off the ground you were."

Sonic looked at the Stormheart, and then he ate it.

There was no ceremony to it. He just put it in his mouth and swallowed, and then he stood very still while the light came up through him.

It started in his chest and ran outward along both arms, then down through his legs, then out past the edges of him into the air.

The storm arrived about two seconds later.

It came off him in a ring, a hard crack of pressure that knocked three production units back a step and blew every loose piece of debris off the terrace.

Then Sonic rose off the ground.

Not hovering. Rising. He went up ten meters, then thirty, then a hundred. There was no drifting to it at all.

```

[ Stormrunner Wraith has consumed Stormheart of the Skyrend. ]

[ Sustained flight acquired. ]

[ Storm attribute strengthened. All Storm-attribute skills gain significantly increased effect. ]

[ New: Skyrend Current. While airborne, Speed increases continuously. Resets on landing. ]

```

Sonic came back down fast enough to crack the plaza stone and stopped six inches above it with nothing holding him up.

Nobody said anything.

Then he went up again, and this time he kept going, straight out over the water in a line of white lightning that went from the island to the horizon in under a second.

The sonic boom arrived a moment after he did.

Alice watched the shockwave spread across the sea and started laughing.

"He is going to be insufferable."

"He earned it." Logan was grinning too. "Also, yes, he absolutely is."

---

Terry found him later, up on the southern wall.

Logan heard him coming from a long way off. The new plating made a different sound against stone, heavier and more layered, and it took Terry a while to reach the top.

He stopped beside Logan and looked out at the water and did not say anything for a while.

"Lord."

"You do not have to call me that."

"I know." Terry kept looking at the water. "I wanted to ask you something and I could not work out how to start it."

Logan waited.

"I remember it," Terry said.

Logan turned his head.

"The beam. I remember holding it. I remember the plate coming off my shoulder and Living Armor trying to put it back."

Terry’s voice came out flat and even, the way it always did.

"Then I remember the bomb. And then I remember being inside Thessaris, in pieces, and knowing I was in pieces."

’He was awake for that.’ Something cold went down Logan’s spine. ’The whole time. Cracked in half in a garden’s chest, and awake.’

"I did not know that was possible," he said.

"Neither did I." Terry finally turned. "I am not telling you so that you feel bad about it."

"Then why?"

"Because you asked me once what I was for." Terry planted both hands on the wall. "When you first summoned me. You asked what I wanted to be good at."

Logan remembered. He had asked every unit that, back when there were four of them and a hundred meters of sand.

"I told you I wanted to be the thing that does not move," Terry said. "I still want that. But I have learned something since then."

"What?"

"That not moving is not the same as not falling." Terry looked down at the crater on the terrace below, the one nobody had filled in yet. "I held the beam and I still fell. I want to be better than that."

Logan thought about Second Stand, sitting in Terry’s skill list unused.

’Once per battle, upon taking fatal damage, remain standing at 1 HP for ten seconds.’

"You already are," he said. "But if you want more, we will find it."

Terry nodded once and went back down the stairs, and the sound of him faded slowly across the courtyard.

---

The forge ran for a long stretch, and what came out of it was worth the wait.

Xairon presented all of it at once on the plaza, which was very much its style.

It had not built two pieces. It had built two full sets.

"You have both been wearing gear you bought," Xairon said. "Bought gear is made for whoever buys it. This was made for you."

Logan’s set came out first, laid across the plaza stone in four pieces.

```

[ Skyrend Emberglass Set (Mythic / Tier-4) ]

> Set Bonus: Cinderveil Aegis (Passive)

> Skyrend Emberglass Coat (Armor)

+400 Attack | +400 Constitution

> Skyrend Emberglass Treads (Boots)

+500 Speed | +300 Constitution

> Skyrend Emberglass Bracers (Gloves)

+400 Attack | +400 Constitution

> Skyrend Emberglass Circlet (Helm)

+400 Arcane | +400 Speed

```

```

[ Cinderveil Aegis ]

> While your Speed exceeds your Constitution, physical strain taken by your own body is reduced by 30%.

```

Logan read the set bonus three times.

’Physical strain taken by my body.’ His pulse picked up. ’Not damage from enemies. Strain. That is Reaper’s Stride. That is the exact thing that has put me down twice.’

"Xairon."

"You told Draventh about the mountain," the Creation Sage said. "And about the Hive. It told me. We built around it."

Logan stripped off the Obskalon Brimstone Regan Set and put the new one on piece by piece.

Three thousand two hundred stat points settled across him at once. He felt it in his knees first, then his shoulders, then everywhere.

```

[ Skyrend Emberglass Set equipped. ]

[ Total set bonus: +800 Attack | +1,100 Constitution | +900 Speed | +400 Arcane ]

```

"Eleven hundred Constitution from the set," he said quietly. "Plus the twenty points I just spent."

’The cap moves again.’ He flexed one hand and watched it obey faster than it used to. ’It keeps moving.’

Alice’s set came out second, and hers was lighter.