"Good morning Oliver." I say after the Court Wizard answers the phone. "I've finished all that armor, and I've come up with another nice surprise for the General."

"That is excellent to hear." He says, his good mood evident in his tone. "Would you mind coming over this morning?"

"Sure, I can head over now. I'll see you in a bit." I say before disconnecting.

After letting the girls know what I'm up to, I fill my inventory and hop on a motorcycle for a quick ride up to the castle.

"Hello General." I store my motorcycle and greet the military man who's waiting out front for me. "How are you enjoying the new vehicles?"

"Quite well, especially now that the men I assigned to testing them aren't crashing every five minutes." He snorts out a wry laugh. "Come on around to the armory and you can offload all the armor."

"Thanks, just the plate alone is taking up half my inventory." I nod and follow him around to a side building. "I mostly went off of the guardsmen's body types, but everything is also somewhat adjustable. So, you should be able to find something for everyone."

"Thank you, I should have specified that." He nods before signaling for a couple squads of men that he had waiting at the armory to come over. "If you could just place everything here, then my men will handle putting it away."

I start laying out cubic meter sized bundles of armor; there's over forty bundles of the softer armors combined, and almost twice that number from just the full plate suits. Each of those are wrapped in an oiled linen bag and then bundled together by the dozen. By the time I'm done, the courtyard looks to be filled with cloth wrapped torsos and giant laundry bags. And, I don't envy the poor bastards that will have to shelve everything.

"Thank you." He gives me a slight bow once I finish and turn to him. "Oliver said that you also had a surprise for me."

"Yes." I materialize a large box next to us before opening it to reveal dozens of smaller boxes inside. "It's said that an army marches on its stomach, and I'm sure that your limited number of mages have better things to do than hauling food about." I grab a small 'can' that reads olives in a darker colored wood, and slice it open.

"These are lined with a thin layer of soft glass, and will last just as long as any food canned in a jar." I explain and pop a couple black olives in my mouth, just because Amelia doesn't care for them doesn't mean that I don't. "And, once it's empty the 'jar' can simply be tossed in the fire." I hand him the olives.

"What do you need to make this soft glass?" He asks while tapping the wood with a fingernail.

"Dirt and magic, same as the food inside." I chuckle at his reaction to my glib response. "Sand or stone will work better, but silica is nearly everywhere."

"And, how of much of this can you provide?" He seems afraid to get his hopes up.

"If I channel the Power from the Mana Well, I can make enough in a day to feed the entire capital for a month." I'm so glad that my guess about higher physical stats helping with Mana burn was right; otherwise it would take me nearly a week.

"You are a logistical godssend." The laughter that escapes from his lips is filled with glee. "That's more than enough to feed a large army for a year. Let's go tell Her Majesty about this, and then we can talk vehicles."

We do just that, and Vivian and Oliver are suitably impressed, but they've had more dealings with me and aren't quite as blown away as Sauer. It only takes a couple minutes before the talks turns to troop transports.

"I'm happy with all the options you provided." The General says. "The large truck and light motorcycle especially. But, I was hoping you could add a forward shield to the bikes. And, make something in-between the two cars, I don't think the armor is needed on the large one."

"That's easy enough." I build a wooden model of an open top Humvee with a tarp that can be attached to roll bars. "How's this? It's not much heavier than the Jeep, but you can still cram a whole squad in there if you need to."

"That looks perfect." He picks up the model and examines it. "Okay, can we get fifty of the large trucks, two-hundred-fifty of these and a thousand motorcycles and bicycles?"

"Not over night." I joke. "But, yeah. There should be enough iron for that many. Will it be alright if I add some security to these?" I mention this because I've been worried about what happens when the other side gets a hold of one. "I have a few ideas on how to keep them out of enemy hands."

"Such as?" Oliver lifts an eyebrow.

"Well, a key, first and foremost." I chuckle. "Right now, anyone that wants to can hop in and drive away with the push of a button." I also plan to add to the key some special functions like the nfc thing modern cars have.

"Yes, that would be a good start." Vivian's laugh fills the room.

"I'd also like to put obscuring Runes on the engine." I should have done this from the start, but I wasn't thinking about having to keep it away from people when I first built the rocket. "This one may already be too late, but better late than never."

"I think you underestimate just how difficult it is to understand, let alone copy your Runes." Oliver is the one to laugh this time. "But, yes. There's no reason to leave it out in the open where anyone can see it. Anything else?"

"Some sort of dead man switch, timer, or remote trigger to destroy the engine." I should be able to tie this into the phone towers, but can always just make a high powered transmitter for it. "I could probably come up with more, but nothing's perfect and I think anything more than these would just be a waste of time. If they really want to, they're going to get their hands on the design one way or another. This will just make them have to work for it a bit."

"The remote trigger, yes." Sauer speaks up. "The other two will likely just cost us vehicles needlessly."

"Okay." I nod. "Is there any order I should work on the vehicles? I brought enough steel that I can make the bicycles before I leave, if you want." After all, Momma always said 'never leave home without a cubic meter of high-grade steel'.

"Oh, that's going to be fun to watch." Oliver snorts. "A thousand soldiers falling on their asses. But, seriously. It doesn't matter what you make first if we don't have the conduit set up to charge them. How is that coming?"

"It's tedious and time consuming, but not very draining. So, I was able to work on it at the same time as the armor and now have enough to reach Riverton." I materialize a large spool with a hundred kilometers of Mana conduit. "I've got ten more of these at home."

"When do you plan to make the run?" He fingers the loose end of the cable. "And, how goes the plans for your charging stations?"

"Good, I had a breakthrough on the data storage Rune while working on all this. There's still a lot of work to do, but that was the biggest hurdle." A couple computer science courses would really be useful right now, but I should be able to muddle through. "As for when, that depends on how quickly I can develop a few things. I'm sure Kyle, and Rea have told you about the appliances and plans for Arcadia."

"We're most interested in your ideas for healers." Vivian leans forward. "Do you think you'll be able to have any of them ready before spring?"

"That's the plan. But, I still need to build the runes, develop some medicines, find good people, then train them. And, that's on top of everything else on my plate." I heave out a sigh. "It seems like every time I check one thing off of my list, two more pop up."

"You're not alone." She tells me seriously. "If you ever need anything, you have but to ask."

"Thank you." I bow my head to her. "And, I do know that. I plan to ask for some qualified healers later on, but most of what I'm working on is stuff like this conduit or Runes that only I make. Though." I pause as one thing I can pass off pops into my head.

"After Jessa gave me the idea for a sewing machine, I came up with several other power tools that could be powered by the engines." I quickly sketch out plans for some industrial devices. "I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some enterprising soldier will end up ripping the guts out of a car or bike and using it instead of a windmill. But, I can provide the engines, and you can set a team to building machines from them."

She takes the plans from my hand and scans through them. "Saws, sanders, grinders, cutters, drills, lathes, a power hammer. Just the wood working tools are invaluable..." She pauses at that.

"I know." I speak up before she says anything else. "You've got earth mages to make swords and what not, but every fletcher and bowyer is working non-stop to outfit the troops. I haven't changed my mind about making weapons." 'Not yet, at least.' I can't help but think. "But, I don't mind making tools, no matter what they're used for."

I'm obviously not opposed to war, otherwise I wouldn't be doing all that I already am. But, killing, even by proxy is not something I'm ready to deal with.

"I understand, and it's alright." She speaks soothingly to me. "You're already doing more for the country than we have any right to ask."

"Just trying to keep my family safe."

***

After I made the bikes, I headed back home to get my mind off of war by making a game about worms going to war. It took most of the day to get it all working properly, and I'm just now trying to get the multi-player mode working.

"I thought you were working on the new game. Why are you messing with the phones again?" Apricot asks after sensing what I'm doing.

"I'm only sorta working on the phones." I'm actually working on wireless networking so the games can talk to each other. "I'm trying to get the games to send information back and forth, the same way phones send sounds back and forth. But, yes. I do plan to upgrade the phone towers to use something like this in the future to work with the new data Runes."

"Doesn't that mean you'll have to replace the phone relays?"

"They'd need replacing eventually anyways, and this way I can future proof them a bit more." I shrug. "At least, that's the long term plan. These actually work with the towers and system I already built. They're just a bit slower than I'd like because they turn data into sound first. Right now, I'm trying to work out a good protocol for that data that can still be used with the future system I have planned."

"But, what about the game? Is it done yet?" She gets back to what's important.

"Needs a bit of testing still, but yeah." I smile at the excited look on her face, and hand over one of the prototypes. "Here, let me know if you have any issues."

She squees and plasters me in kisses before taking the game and dancing over to her favorite seat.

"What about me?" Amelia puts on a fake pout. "You don't want me to be left behind, do you?"

"Here." I let out a put-upon sigh and give her the other prototype before making two new ones.

"Thank you baby, I love you." She leans over and gives me a peck on the cheek.

I just shake my head and go back to working on the network router. Worms is more than a two player game, but the phones can only connect one at a time. So, they'll all call one device and it will read and deliver the data packets where they belong. Later on I can tie this directly into the relay towers, but it'll work for now.

"Sorrel, how do you use the rope?" Apricot's already pestering me. "Never mind, I got it."

It takes me another half hour to get the networking sorted out, I tried to make it simple but still somewhat future-proof. Only time will tell if I did though. But, what I have works, and even routes through multiple relays with seemingly no problems. So, I'm happy.

"Thank you Temmie, I don't think I'd ever be able to work this stuff out without you making me smarter." She *Dings* a coy response. "I'm serious, I barely knew how to turn my laptop on before. Now, I'm building hard drives and networks." *Ding* Her typical brazen nature comes back.

"So, we can all play together now?" Apricot puts her controller down. "Please say it's all done." She begs.

"Yes, it's all done." She flying tackles me straight from her seat. "Just give me a second to copy the changes onto yours." I laugh and try to peel her off so I can focus on what I'm doing. "Now, go into multi-player, select join game, and put in this number. Yours also have numbers for when you host a game." I'll simplify that later, and maybe add in a matchmaking server, but it works for now.

The girls and I quickly set our team names, and started a match. Apricot named hers after Tinkerbell and some Disney princesses. Amelia went with the Avengers, likely hoping that Apricot won't want to go after Thor. While, I just went with worm themed names like Wiggles, Curly, Nightcrawler, Castings, etc.

"Hey, what are you doing with that bat?" Amelia says after Apricot gets first go. "No! Come on. What did Hawkeye ever do to you?" She gives me her most vulnerable looks. "Sorrel, baby. You're not going to let her treat me like this are you?"

"Sorry, babe. But, all things are fair in Love and Worms." It's my turn now, and I use it to drop an exploding Rune(grenade) at Cap's feet before jumping away to safety. The explosion was placed perfectly and sent him soaring over a hill and right into the drink.

"Nooo!" She whines, but Apricot and I laughing our heads off. "Fine, you want to play it that way? Then eat Fireball." She has Iron Man launch a 'Bazooka' at where Ariel and Castings are right next to each oher. Only, she didn't take the wind into account and had it fall short right onto Hulk.

""Hahahahah."" I thought we were laughing hard before, but when that happened we completely lost it. So much so, that we didn't even care when our turns ran out.

"Oh, I've got you now." She has Hulk rope up above our worms and drop a big Rune(Dynamite) before setting him on the hill above them. But, he was still inside the blast radius and got knocked off and lost a third of his health. And then, landed next to, and set off an unstable Rune(Landmine) taking off another third.

"Stop it." I beg in-between gasping out laughs. "You're going to kill us for real if this keeps up."

"Arrrgh!" She growls out her frustration.

We try to take it easy on her after that, but she still lost... horribly. Apricot took the first match, mainly due to hitting me when I was still catching my breath. Kaitlyn and Turner show up right before we start the second round, and Amelia quickly roped them in to try and help her.

Her dad probably did more harm than good, but her mom was a real terror, and it quickly became a two on two match with Apricot and I trying our best to hold out against them. If not for Turner hurting their worms early on, they would have won. As it was, Apricot was left with only two worms that had a sliver of health each. While I had one with half health, but only because he grabbed a couple health crates early on. After the mother and daughter team were defeated Apricot and I grouped up and went out together with a bang.

*Ding**Ding**Ding* My phone goes off right afterwards.

"Hey Lan. What's up?" I greet the foreign mage.

"Sorrel, I hope I'm not disturbing you." His accent is already much lessened even after just a few days. "I just wanted to warn you that I may have let slip to Oliver that you have Mana Mastery already. He seemed a bit surprised when I said it."

"Oh, that's no big deal. I'm sure they would have figured it out soon enough anyways." Likely as soon as they tore down one of the vehicles I'm about to deliver. "I was just trying not to stand out anymore than I already do, most of the Awakened around here don't even have Control yet."

"Truly?" He seems a bit shocked by that. "We don't even consider a Mage to be a Mage unless they've ranked Mana Manipulation up into Control."

"I'm guessing that you've mostly been speaking with Oliver and maybe Devlen." He mostly spoke with Oliver at the party, but chatted with Devlen for a bit too. "They're the two strongest mages in the capital, and probably top three in the country." Nev was around the same level as Devlen, maybe a little higher. Most of the 'elites' are only level fifteen, with nearly everyone else being around five.

"You're right. I have been mostly speaking with Oliver. I suppose I just didn't think about it, with that tree of yours putting out Mana like it is, the ambient levels are nearly the same as back home."

"Yeah, culture shock can be like that."

"Culture shock? Yes, that's a good term for it." He pauses for a moment. "Since I have you on the phone. Is there any chance I could buy some of those Rune games of yours? I tried visiting the Guild when I heard you gave them some, but the lines were crazy."

"Sure, I just finished a new one, and could use another tester. Why don't you come over? I was going to make dinner in a bit, and it's no trouble to add an extra plate."

"Thank you, I'll head over now." He disconnects.

***