“Soooo,” Lumi began after a few minutes had passed. “Don’t keep us hanging here. You said that your gear is like, an actual set right? What’s the bonus do?”

“Er… well about that,” Jason said. “I.. don’t actually know, and that’s apparently because I’m not finished. As soon as I started activating the third piece, I got a new quest. Here, look.”

Jason pulled up his status, noticing as he did so that he’d received another level-up notification, this one for Golemist. He left it hidden for now, and brought up the quest notification he’d minimized earlier.

You have received a new personal quest: Enchant 8 separate pieces of the Machine-Mage Armor Set with a minimum of 4 medium-complexity enchantments. Pieces Remaining Until Completion: 3. Reward: Bonus Set Item Functionality.

“I did leave off enchanting the boots for now,” Jason said, “which, uh, I guess the Voice is dinging me for or something. The legs and belt only have the shape change enchant too, and I guess it’s not counting Shard, any rings, or all the storage space.”

“Well that’s kinda lame,” Lumi said.

Jason just shrugged. “It’ll happen eventually.”

Kera pulled their attention back to Jason’s spider-turret by tapping Shard on the barrel that formed its head. She was leaned over slightly, pacing around the creature to examine it from all sides. “So… is this thing actually alive, or what? Does it eat?”

Jason scratched his head. “Sort of? I mean I guess that kind of depends on what you’d call ‘alive’. I mean, the rune itself is called ‘False Life’, after all, so maybe there’s the answer. If you mean like, is he self aware and has feelings or free will, then… not really. He’s like a really sophisticated robot instead of like… an android or a synthetic, because he’s really just a mixture of clockwork trickery, shape-altering enchantments, and animate object. He doesn’t have ‘feelings’ so to speak, but he does ‘think’ after a fashion. He can make decisions on his own about orders I’ve given thanks to Intellect and Perception enhancements, and move about on his own depending on the order’s I’ve given. But he also can’t act outside any parameters I’ve given, and even within that, his ability to make decisions only goes so far. Without the Intellect boost, he’d be about as smart as you’d expect an animated chair to be.

“Oh, and he does eat,” Jason added. “Kind of, anyway. He runs on mana crystals.”

Kera gave Shard a gentle pat on the head. “Well, I guess that’s good then. It might be a little awkward if Ceri or Echo decided they didn’t like… him? Why a him?”

“Because he’s got a long, hard barrel,” Lumi said with a wicked grin as Kera quickly snatched her hand away from Shard’s head.

Jerrik choked, and even Nissette laughed.

“Anyway…moving on,” Jason said, changing the subject before anyone else could comment. He turned to Tersk and Jerrik. “Did you happen to finish the other stuff I asked about? I don’t want Kera here to be left out. A single robe doesn’t compare to a whole new set of armor, and I need some of that stuff if I’m going to get her outfitted as well as I can in the next two hours.”

“We did,” Jerrik confirmed with a nod. He reached under the counter, and pulled out a large sack that clinked heavily against the counter-top, followed by several other items: A small pouch tied tightly with string, a pair of arcanite earrings set with lightning-element mana crystals, a small arcanite sphere, several simple bracelets, both arcanite and otherwise, and a spool of arcanite wire to go along with the thread.

Jerrik nodded to the pouch. “The powder there is all ready to go, just needs to be added to your ink or dye. As for the money… believe it or not, it turned out an associate of mine knew of an outstanding order for something quite similar to the ring you made, so I was able to pass it on down the chain right away. Didn’t even need to draw on funds from the Vendors Association either, as the money was already on hold.”

Kera meandered over while Jerrik was speaking, and peeked into the sack. She put her hand to her mouth with a sharp intake of breath, and looked at Jason with huge eyes.

“Later.” Lumi whispered to her.

Jerrik also pulled out a pair of bags made from stiffened cloth.

“Wait, aren’t those ours?” Kera asked. “Those look like those grocery bags you made awhile back.”

“They are,” Lumi replied. “I ran them down to Jerrik earlier because Jason was busy with the armor.”

Jerrik nodded. “It’s all here, though I had quite the time tracking down enough farmers who still had the fruit for trade. I don’t know why you needed enough food to practically feed an army…”

He trailed off as realization dawned.

“Wait, this is for the raid?” Tersk asked.

Jason nodded emphatically. “Sure is. Remember the cookie? Think bigger.”

Tersk began laughing uproariously, slapping his thigh. After a moment, he turned to Jerrik and explained. Jason remained silent and tried not to grin as he listened to the dwarf relate Jason’s entirely misleading explanation about applying traditional potion-making techniques to food, without even realizing that he was putting his own advice for Jason into play for him.

“Well now I’m curious to see how it all turns out,” Jerrik replied afterwards. “Save us some of the next batch if you get a chance,” he said with a friendly smile.

Jason nodded noncommittally as he gathered up everything Jerrik and Tersk had brought him.

“Well… I think that just about wraps everything up then. I’d better get to work finishing up Kera’s stuff. If that’s all?”

Tersk reached up and gave him a hearty pat on the back. “Go on and give us all a good showing. With that gear, you better be the one bringing back a dead core!”

“I absolutely intend to,” Jason said emphatically. He turned to his Contraption, which was sill silently standing in place.

“Shard! Time to go,” he called. “Return and sleep.”

With a series of whirrs and clicks, Shard jerked upright, turned around in place, and ran to Jason. It climbed onto him, where it transformed back into the semblance of a backpack.

He turned back to Nissette, Jerrik, and Tersk, giving them a slight bow before turning away and exiting.

Upon reaching the house, Jason immediately unloaded all the supplies he’d assembled onto the kitchen table, but left the food inside their respective refrigerated bags for the time being.

He turned to the girls. “Ok, I know that normally I’m not supposed to do my work down here, but we’re on a time crunch, so I was hoping you two would be willing to assist me with both some of the cooking and refinement. I can easily direct you both from here and jump in where I’m needed, and that’ll give me the opportunity to do more engraving while we prep the last of our raid supplies.”

“Aww, I was hoping to get some sleep,” Kera grumbled. “Me and getting up at dawn don’t really mix.”

Jason grinned at her. “I’ve totally got something in mind that’ll make it worth both your whiles to stay up.”

“Oh?” Lumi asked. “Do tell.”

“It’s a surprise… but also if you’re helping me make more gel candies, you get to choose the flavors, too.”

“Well in that case…dibs on the sour ones,” Kera said, sliding into a chair. “What do you need me to do?”

Jason gave the two girls instructions, and they began pulling beets, honey, and fruit from the bag while Jason conjured up numerous smaller tools.

While the girls got to work with the food, Jason got to work on something he’d been practically dying to do since a few days after he’d first arrived.

He began by snagging a few lemons and rigging up a very simple lemon-battery, as he had once before, in order to produce some new lightning shards. With a bit of judicious use of [Synthesis] and [Mana Catalysis], he shortly has several small, weak lightning shards.

Next, Jason assembled a strangely shaped, rectangular arcanite box, perhaps a foot in length and a few inches in width, divided into three segments. The box had several small sockets set into the back, which readily accepted Jason’s weak lightning shards, and a sloped, rectangular depression on the top center, almost like a sort of slot, except that it had a tiny bit of arcanite wire sticking out inside. On each of the side segments, Jason fastened a taut square of layered cloth and leather.

Around the lightning shards, Jason engraved a series of linking runes that would treat the shards as a power source, rather than the normal passive absorption runes that most magical items relied on. From there, he split the mana flow off into two separate sets of sequences: One that should amplify sound, and another that collect, store, and release lightning-aspect mana at a controlled rate.

“That looks like.. some kind of radio if it were put together by someone who’d neveractually seen a radio before,” Kera commented as he was finishing up.

Jason looked down at his creation for a moment.

“Ah, but it’s far better than a mere radio,” Jason said. With a flourish, he produced his phone from his haversack, which was sitting on the floor.

“I present to you… a smartphone stereo-charger.”

He lay the phone across the horizontal slope, focused his mind sharply on what hereally wanted, and activated the enchantments.

The arcanite glowed as mana drained slightly from him, and he and the girls watched as the small bit of wire stretched, snaked across the top of the box, and then split into a series of small clamps, two for each side of the phone. Meanwhile, the depression the phone sat in conformed itself to the correct proportions, and the cloth and leather coverings twisted into the circular approximations of speakers.

With an audible snap, the phone clicked into place. The screen flicked on, and the charging logo appeared.

Jason quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ok, that was actually pretty cool to watch,” Lumi commented. “But I fail to see why you felt it was important to do right now…”

“Tell me that again in twenty minutes,” Jason said with a grin, “when we’re working hard, cooking and engraving and brewing, while we jam to music none of us thought we’d hear again.”

Lumi’s expression of “Oh!” was all the response he needed, and he grinned back at her.

He slid the charger over to the girl’s half of the table, and addressed Kera.

“Ok.. so now that that’s out of the way… I have an idea I wanted to ask you about, Kera. Did you ever get a chance to go through and learn more snake forms from your belt? I haven’t seen you use it much recently, even in our sparring sessions.”

“Oh… uh, not really,” Kera replied. “I keep meaning to, but then get distracted by other stuff.”

“Ok, so next question then,” Jason continued. “I’ve been meaning to ask…you seem to be really enjoying the kitsune form, yeah? You’ve kept it pretty steadily in one variation or another the past couple days.”

Kera ducked her head shyly for a moment, and tucked an errant strand of hair back into place. One of her ears twitched. “Um… well I mean you and Lumi liked it, and... and I mean I did turn off that trait because other people were staring a little too much but I...um.” She paused a moment.

”Yes. I like it,” she finished. “Having a tail to swish around is fun.”

“Well…” Jason said slowly, “how’d you like an actual fox shape to go along with kitsune? For some reason, back when you were demonstrating your forms for Ravs, I learned some kind of beast rune for foxes from your kitsune sculpt. I’m not really sure why, though there’s the obvious answer in there.”

“Anyway,” he continued, “I was thinking… maybe I could try and make you a fox version of your snake belt? I can’t make it quite so broad-ranging, but I could do something like attach an elemental rune as part of the sequence. It might even get you some new mana-touched forms or spells.”

Kera bounced a bit in her seat in clear excitement. “Ooh, yes! That sounds great. New forms are always good. What elements can I pick from?”

“No need to pick, really,” Jason said, “I was just thinking I could do several different versions on some of these plain copper bracelets I got from Jerrik. Then you could run through them and see what you get. If it works really well, I might be able to make you a variable version kind of like mine and Lumi’s barrier enchant, like an amulet with a socket we could plug a shard into, instead of being reliant on my elemental runes.”

“Ok, let’s do it.,” she replied.

Five minutes later, Jason had engraved one of the bracelets with four separate activations tied to the elements of fire, shadow, light, and lightning.

“What happens if I do two at once?” Kera asked.

“Uhhh… that sounds dangerous,” Lumi said. “Maybe you should—”

“Nope, trying!” Kera exclaimed, sliding the bracelet on.

Her form blurred, becoming shadowy and indistinct as she collapsed down into a much smaller form. Small, heatless sparks wisped off of her fur, as if blown from a campfire by an unseen breeze, and she gave off the distinct odor of smoke. Her eyes glowed like coals, and flashes of half-seen reds and oranges glowed beneath wispy fur that bore a distinct resemblance to the mistwolf.

“Why even ask?” Lumi said, rolling her eyes. “Also, you’re getting soot all over the chair.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Kera said.

“I have to admit… this was not my expectation,” Jason said. “That doesn’t look like fire or shadow… it’s like… smoke. Or ash. Some combination of the two.”

“Well Nissette did say the Voice kind of helps transformation along a little,” Lumi replied.

“Still…” Jason said.

“Oh well, who cares?” Kera asked. “New forms! Here let me see if….oh. Huh. Nope, can’t just add any old thing in. Interesting.”

“Huh?” Jason asked.

“It won’t let me just add elements together at random,” Kera said. “Like, shadow and lightning together doesn’t do anything. Light and lightning does though. I think it maybe has to either be a valid creature?”

“Does your current one have any special skills?”

“Ummm… hard to say. I’d have to goof around a bit and see what came to me instinctually. Maybe not the best idea if I’m part-fire right now.”

Lumi cautiously extended a hand in Kera’s direction.

“You don’t feel hot,” she said.

“Thanks a lot,” Kera said drily. She gave Lumi a fox-grin and stuck out a fiery-red tongue to show she was being facetious.

Jason though it was incredibly adorable looking.

Lumi leaned forward and scooped Kera up into her arms.

“Ack!” Kera exclaimed as Lumi gave her a big hug. She rubbed her face against Kera’s head, which left a big, sooty mark on Lumi’s cheek.

Then she put Kera back down on the floor.

“Comfortably warm, and rather soft too,” she commented.

“Uhhh… Lumi,” Jason said with a snicker. “You might need a damp towel to clean off, there.”

Her lap and the front of her armor was covered in ash.

“Errr… oops.” Lumi said sheepishly. She got up and headed to the bathroom area.

Kera sighed. “Maybe we should do this later.”

Her form wavered, and she sprouted back upwards into kitsune form.

“Did you get anything though?” Jason asked.

Kera brought up her status. “Yep! Looks like I learned the form. No mana-touched, but maybe ‘Ash-touched’ isnt normally a thing.”

“Or it isn’t for that particular species,” Jason suggestion. “We can try some of the others out in the field, maybe.”

“Good idea.”

Ten minutes later, Jason’s phone booted up. By then, Lumi had cleaned herself up, and Kera had wiped down the floors and chairs to remove any traces of soot.

A kind of impromptu mini-celebration esnsued as they each took turns picking out songs and forming a playlist. Jason had rather broad tastes in music, and his phone was packed with an extensive collection that he’d accumulated over the course of nearly a decade, so everybody was happy. Kera turned out to have quite the singing voice which she wasn’t shy about showing off at all, preferring pieces with strong melodies and vocals, while Lumi was more into rhythmic beats good for dancing, as well as leaned more on the instrumental side of things. More than once, she interrupted Kera or Jason’s work to pull them away for a few minutes of carefree, up-close dancing. Neither of them minded in the slightest, and everyone enjoyed themselves immensely. Even Ceri and Echo joined in to an extent, picking up on their mistress’ excitement.

Through it all, Jason continued to engrave new, smaller pieces of gear, most of them for Kera. Jason filled out her ring enchantments with additional resistances, upgraded her staff with improved energy projection of varying types, and enchanted her earrings with an ability that would, with luck, allow her to siphon off another mage’s elemental barrier and claim it for her own for a time.

In addition he enchanted five separate rings, one for each member of the group, which would assist them in underwater travel. When activated, the rings projected a kind of barrier around portions of the user’s body. The barrier would alter the temperature of the surrounding water, attempt to purify it of contaminants, aid with visibility, and produced purified air in breathable form. Mixed with a simple potion designed to improve the imbiber’s ability to swim, and small stones that could be popped into the mouth for an hour’s worth of air for emergencies, Jason was more than confident in their ability to navigate aquatic terrain.

Over the three hours he had until midnight, with the girls’ assistance Jason also continued to mass-produce additional potion supplies, this time in the form of his gel candies. While he applied mana catalysis and synthesis to create sugar and gelatins, the two girls decided on flavors. Lemon sours became stamina potions, apple and strawberry sweets became health potions, and the orange-flavored ones were, by process of elimination, assigned to mana potions. He also made more of his ‘Calming Mint’ candies at Kera’s suggestion, made with mint flavoring, sereni-tea, and a bit of stamina potion. Jason decided that they were his favorite, as they provided an effect not dissimilar to a really strong cup of tea: relaxing, refreshing, and it woke you up more than a little.

Then of course, there was the food for the raid. There, Jason went for lighter fare, choosing a mixture of spiced jerky, bread, and spinach-and-fruit salad that didn’t require heating, went down quickly and easily, and didn’t weigh on the stomach. They would be fighting, after all. The jerky and the light oil and lemon dressing provided the vehicle for his alchemy, which provided a small ‘well fed’ effect which boosted all of your stats slightly for several hours.

By the time midnight finally came around, Jason and the girls had worn, or perhaps partied, themselves out, and collapsed into a well-earned, exhausted sleep.

The following dawn all three friends awoke alert, refreshed, and ready to face whatever the dungeon had to throw at them. After a set of quick showers and even quicker breakfast, they set off for the main square to report for duty.