5.15

Haiko seemed to pick up on the technique for making twine almost as fast as he had, except she’d done it without the benefit of the blueprint knowledge. Kalter had said that she made pottery in her downtime; perhaps her finger dexterity had come from her own experience with making things. It was probably a good thing that she was so adept, as the fourth set of leaf-based clothing had ended up using the remainder of their recently made twine.

August took one of the sets and handed it over to Haiko, who was now closest to his own spot by the fire.

“I’ve never received a handcrafted set of clothing,” Haiko said brightly, “What a special gift—thank you so much.”

August just nodded at the attention, letting it slide off of him before handing over a set to Kalter—whose own response was to mumble something he didn’t catch under her breath while simultaneously avoiding looking in his general direction. The disparity between the two was enough that he had to fight his amusement from making its way onto his face as he took the largest set and handed it over to Rittan.

“Thank you, August,” Rittan said smiling, taking it gently. “I will make sure to take good care of it.”

Rittan seemed to take receiving things with far more reverence than he was used to; gifting him the [Greatbow] had drawn a similar reaction. In this case, August didn’t think it deserved the effect because it was literally just a set of strung together leaves.

August slipped up to his knees, then to his feet, before untying one of the pieces of twin on his own [Leafy Pants]. He wrapped it around his waist, the action of getting dressed with people nearby somehow far more embarrassing than simply being naked.

He retied the twine, tightening it until the piece of clothing hung around his waist without issue. He pulled the [Leafy Shirt] up next, slipping it over his head and then letting it settle over his shoulders. The three Voithos set about climbing to their feet and investigating their own sets.

It took a little bit of messing around with the twine to get it to sit better against his chest, but he managed it. For the first time since he’d arrived at Devil’s Nest, August felt like he wasn’t entirely exposed.

“How does it look?” Haiko said once she’d squeezed into the [Leafy Shirt]. “Am I showing enough skin?”

August snorted; the style of clothing wasn’t exactly conservative.

“It’s a bunch of leaves, Haiko,” Kalter said dryly, securing her own in place. “That’s all you’re showing.”

“I think that top was a fantastic investment,” Rittan smiled, patting his own shirt.

“Yes—I’m quite invested in it,” Haiko said, winking.

“Ugh,” Kalter sighed. “Just stop.”

August shook his head at the terrible puns and sat himself down by the fire as the others continued to chat amongst themselves. With his main task for the night completed, he turned his mind to some of the other things he’d been thinking about earlier—namely, the Runes.

While the [Summon Pit] had been ‘fixed’ with the most recent summons, it was too dark to set about trying to note down any more of them, but given that his Mana was currently topped up, it would be a waste to not use it. August opened his [Inventory] and removed the black cube that he’d retrieved from the hostile [Efkini].

Sure enough, squinting at the tiny symbols that covered each face of the cube in the flickering firelight, he could see that they had a lot in common with the ones inside of the pit. He could even identify several instances of the [Energy Connector I], [Energy Storage I] and the [Split I] runes that he already knew.

“[Analysis],” August said.

A rune that has been etched into an Efkini Core with Mana.

[Contact Absorption I] Unlocked.

So the cube itself was called an ‘Efkini Core.’

A rune designed to absorb a predefined energy type from the immediate environment, compatible with; Mana, Kinetic Energy, Thermal Energy, Electrical Energy.

A rune that absorbed energy, and there were multiple battery runes present on the cube. The chains growing out of the cube must have been created by some combination of runes as well. With the battery rune and the wire rune transferring Mana across the device?

Ladybug had a low amount of Mana available to her—something like [1 MP per level], which put her at [5/5 MP]. If the core required energy to produce, direct, fire and reel in the chains, then why wasn’t she running out of Mana whenever she fired off a chain?

It couldn’t have been that cheap, surely, not when a simple directional boost like [Burst] cost [100 MP]. Was there a separation between her visible mana pool and an invisible well of power that only went towards managing internal systems? The summary for the [Efkini] explicitly said that they fed on ambient Mana—that had to be referring to the [Contact Absoprition I], didn’t it?

“What is that?” Kalter said, noticing the cube for the first time.

August held it up near the light so they could better see it.

“It’s an [Efkini Core],” August said, holding it out for her to see. “I took it from the one Ladybug killed in the forest.”

Kalter took it from him, carefully holding it to avoid touching the spikes emerging from its face of it.

“There is a runic system inscribed on it, which means it was made by the Gaians,” Haiko said curiously, glancing over towards where Ladybug was sitting, just outside of the door. “The monsters on this island are products of the Automaton Array?”

That wasn’t the first time he’d heard those words before; it had been brought up in one of the earlier conversations with Rittan.

“Rittan mentioned that to me once,” August frowned. “Something about clearing out the Automaton Array when the culling sequence went wrong?”