As the man from the battlements comes to approach us, I whisper to everyone. “Just follow whatever he says, we need to gather information first. We can’t afford to start a commotion already.”

The man descends the ramparts and inspects each of us critically. “None of you have tags, guess you are new. Follow me then.”

As we walk through the city, I note patrols of guards made of these crystals. My heart stops for a second when I see them, but they all look absolutely identical, so I’m reassured they didn’t suffer the same fate as these walls. I do inspect one, however.

Corrupted Smoky Quartz Guard Golem

Traits: Crystal Corruption, High Endurance

Description: A guard golem made of corrupted smoky quartz. It has enhanced combat abilities and the corrupted quartz it is made of is highly durable to both physical and magical attacks. The corrupted energy that flows through these crystals is capable of corrupting any non-living substance as well as plants that aren’t charged with mana, converting the affected into corrupt smoky quartz.

From the looks on everyone’s faces, I can tell they’ve inspected the guards too. The guard isn’t being very talkative and blatantly ignores questions from us.

Becky is starting to look scared herself, but I can tell she’s trying to keep a brave face. She keeps looking at the castle, hints of fear apparent. Any time she catches me looking, her face smooths back out to a placid expression.

We enter into a large building with him. It appears to be made of the wood of houses crystalized, and not just random objects like the walls and some of the homes we’ve seen.

The guard turns to face us. “Alright, so standard procedure is you need to wear these tags to get in and out of the city. You’ll feel a pulse when it’s time to head back from collection. Don’t be late for curfew. Also, no introductions, I care about you having tags, not what your names are.”

“Wait, collection?” Colt takes a small, brassy orange earring from the man and equips it, wincing slightly when it suddenly pierces his ear.

“Right. Newbies. Every day you need to go out and scavenge more houses and collect materials from them for the walls and buildings. Unless you have some other Talent to share, that’s how it is.” He glares, challenging any of us to say anything.

“I’m a Fledgling Chef, I could make food.” Colt smiles slightly at the man.

The man glances at his hair, frowns, and makes eye contact once more. “Fine, we’ll put cabbage patch kid here in the kitchen. Anyone else? No? Great.” Colt looks slightly offended but doesn’t comment.

He carts us off to an overfilled building after giving us tags as well, somehow we can’t Inspect them. People are sitting around or sleeping on every surface available inside. Colt is brought off to go to the kitchens, apparently, it’s a communal meal type area.

Moving through the room, we find an open floor space to sit on. Swallowing any level of social anxiety I have, I turn to the woman next to me.

“Hi, weird question but, what happened here? We just got here, why is most of Portland gone?”

She gives me a fearful look and glances around. “He’s keeping us safe here! It’s terrifying when we have to leave the walls, there are so many monsters out there!”

“And this is better?” Becky looks around the room, her brows creasing with displeasure.

“And who is ‘he’?” Adreanell leans in closer to the woman.

“The king of course! He creates all the guards and keeps us safe in this city! We certainly can’t defend ourselves!” She chuckles as if she’s told a joke.

“...But you could defend yourselves. There are Construct Shops that provide you with a free starting weapon and some potions.” Looking into her eyes, there’s a strange lack of comprehension.

“No! The king told us the shop is not to be trusted. His crystal golems keep us perfectly safe! We just need to keep gathering and make his kingdom bigger so he can protect more people!” The lady’s voice is getting faster and more hysterical as she talks.

Scooting away, I apologize and leave the lady to her ranting, which she continues with the man next to her.

Looking around the room, I note that not a single person appears to be carrying a weapon. Thinking back, not even the guard from the gates had one.

Deciding to ask around about Colt’s mom, I give people her description, but no one has any concrete answers for me. Most of them seem just as zealous for the “king”, however. Many promise me that he could find her for me.

Giving up, I settle down next to Adreanell and Becky, instructing them on how to use Hydrokinesis.

“What are you doing!?” A man rushes over to us, concern evident on his face.

“I’m showing them Hydrokinesis, do you want to learn?” Meeting his eyes, there’s a deep fear in them and he keeps glancing out the windows.

“You can’t practice Skills! If the crystal guards notice, you’ll be punished! Never mind, get yourself in trouble, I want no association!” He quickly walks back to his previous spot, other people eying us now as he does.

Sighing, I give up after a few more looks from people around the room and enter Meditation and Pranic Breathing to rest my mind a bit.

------------

The guard guides Colt to the kitchens, instructing him to follow the head chef in the dinner meal preparation. Once he arrives at the kitchen, the guard leaves immediately.

Colt walks into the kitchen and finds a short, portly man yelling at people who are running from station to station in the kitchen. It looks like they’re all working on one giant soup pot with a few working here or there on some side dishes.

Colt walks up to the man who is clearly the head chef. “Hi, I just arrived in this city. I’m a Fledgling Chef and they told me to come here to help out.”

The short man stares up at him, looking up at his hair for a moment. “...Teenagers these days.”

“Uh, actually, I’m 22.”

“Whatever Greenie, just move over there and help chop vegetables.” He waves a hand dismissively and points to a large section of crystal counters where people are feverishly chopping away.

Moving to this station, Colt picks up a crystalized knife and begins chopping. The “vegetables” are all kinds of Construct-changed ones.

Inspecting a few, there’s a purple onion called a Tonion which increases your body weight temporarily. They also make Colt’s eyes water up when he chops them.

There are bell peppers that are light blue, bright red, and a golden yellow. The blue one gives a temporary ice breath, the red a fire breath, and the yellow a lightning breath. The blue pepper is called a gell pepper, the red a flare pepper, and the yellow a bolt pepper.

Taking a slicing of the onion’s base and some seeds from each of the peppers, Colt stores them in his bag of holding. They’ll all be great additions to the garden.

Attempting to talk to anyone about the situation at hand results in zealotry for the king and very little in the way of helpful responses.

After finishing a large pile of chopped vegetables, Colt turns to the kitchen worker beside him. “Won’t this be dangerous? These are a lot of mixed food effects we’re adding into one dish.”

The worker looks at Colt as if he has two heads. “Just put it in the pot, the crystal takes out the effects.”

Colt shrugs off the insulting expression and moves over to the large, boiling crystal soup pot. He dumps in his mound of vegetables. An Inspection of the soup shows absolutely no magical effects, it’s just a meat and vegetable soup.

Taking a small taste using Hydromancy when no one is looking, it turns out to be an incredibly bland soup. Not bad, but there’s not a lot of flavor to it.

The rest of Colt’s night continues with chopping vegetables or meat into chunks on occasion. At one point he’s given a bowl of soup, which he downs quickly, grimacing slightly, and returns to work.

Every time a soup pot is finished, it’s carted out by a group of kitchen workers and replaced with another. Apparently, there’s such a high population in this city that it’s necessary to cook this much.

Finally, the night comes to an end and Colt is guided back to Lucas, Becky, and Adreanell.

------------

My heart rises when I see Colt come through the doorway. A scowl on his face melts away once our eyes meet and he runs over to me.

We sit down together, holding hands. It’s become dark in the room over time, but with our enhanced stats and some perks, we can see in the night fairly well.

Apparently, there’s a sleeping curfew as well, as we’re all instructed to go to sleep immediately or face punishment. Laying down, Colt pulls me close. He drifts off quickly, tired from the work in the kitchen.

It takes me a while to fall asleep, I haven’t been this inactive in days and my body feels jittery. They apparently take the curfew pretty seriously as crystal guards come in and scan the room every hour.

Eventually, sleep takes hold and I don’t wake up until a small buzzing sensation on my ear startles me out of my sleep.

Feeling at the earring the guard gave us, it’s apparently a wakeup call. Everyone gets up at once and we follow a guard to the gates. The people around us look scared to leave the city.

Colt isn’t needed for this shift in the kitchen, so he’s told to go with us on collection duty. We’re surrounded with an entourage of crystal guards that guide us to the selected location.

It’s just a group of houses off in the distance from the city, but it takes us about 15 minutes to walk there over the cleared ground.

It’s strange, but the people in this city don’t seem to talk to each other very often. The walk is strangely quiet.

Adreanell and Becky are set to tear down houses using various chisels, axes, or hammers handed to them while Colt and I are set to load the materials into wagons.

The heavy physical work helps get rid of some of the excess energy I had last night. Colt and I casually chat while moving materials along.

Moving into a house to grab some of the materials from inside, I note a tall, ornate mirror. Looking into it, I realize how long it’s been since I’ve seen myself.

Glancing over myself, I notice all the changes that have happened since The Construct and The Restruct came.

My entire body has significantly more defined muscle, I have areas of lighter skin from where my flesh has regenerated, and it even just seems like my bearing is different in an ambiguous way.

A small pit of melancholy settles in my heart at seeing how much has changed. My thoughts are interrupted when a scream sounds out from somewhere outside the house.

Shocking me out of my morose, I sprint out of the house in time to see another collecting group being attacked by a massive, slender snake.

There are no crystal guards close enough and the yellow, red, and black banded snake looks ready to strike.

‘Inspect’

Silk Snake

Traits: Silk production, Entanglement

Description: This snake has silk-producing organs under every scale, allowing it to produce exceedingly durable silk to entangle its prey. Its massive size is a testament to the strength of this creature.

Pushing forward, knots load into my movements, causing me to speed across the landscape in a blur, shattering the earth from my initial burst of speed.

Just as the snake strikes forward at the group that I now realized is trapped in gossamer threads, I appear in front of the strike.

“Argo armed and ready for saving!”

The strike lands into the anchor held aloft in my hands. The ground under me breaks as my legs strain from the strength of the blow. A pair of scissors flies in, cutting away the threads that were tangling the group of collectors.

Colt yells to them to run once they’re free, which they’re more than happy to do while I struggle with Argo inside a giant snake mouth.

Bringing him back into storage mode, he’s unstuck from the serpent’s maw. Just as soon as I brought him to storage mode, I bring him back to full size in an overhead swing.

I slam the silk snake to the ground with a Devastating Impact empowered by ballasted weight and a generous amount of knots. Using this forward momentum, I flip on to the snake’s back and raise the anchor to slam once more.

Threads of silk fire out from underneath the snake’s scales, wrapping around my entire body and weapon. Pulling against it, I can’t break the threads at all. The snake’s tail whips up, slamming into my body, sending me tumbling across the cleared landscape.

Just then, a mass of thorny vines slams into the snake, but Colt can’t seem to get a good grip on the smooth scales of the snake. He swaps to earth projectiles, but the lithe body of the snake allows it to move enough to deflect the projectiles off its smooth sides, mitigating damage.

Any projectiles it can’t immediately dodge are caught in silk threads and slung back at Colt at high speed.

A scattering of coins slams into the snake, but it ignores all of them as they don’t even manage to pierce its scales.

Pulling myself up, I wince in pain as Promethean clears up the worst of the damage and my ribs pop back into place.

Sprinting back to the snake, I activate Storm’s Rage. The gusting winds catch on the snake’s silken threads, making it harder for the snake to maneuver them properly.

Empowering a Flame Swathe with a heavy amount of mana, flames gush forth from my hands, bathing the snake’s body in fire.

Strangely, its threads don’t burn at all. However, flashes of silver through the air cleave away any threads that approach to entangle us. Becky looks on with a face of sheer concentration, unable to assist more than this as she’s controlling four scissors at once.

Testing if I can help Becky out, I fire several blades of water, but they simply aren’t as sharp as her Trim and can’t cut the incredibly tough fibers.

A shuffle on the ground indicates to us that the crystal guards have finally noticed the situation and approached us. A group of them immediately subdues the snake with sheer numbers before one of them stabs a glowing brassy orange crystal directly into its head.

Immediately, the snake’s eyes glaze over with a slight orange tint to them. The guards then turn to us, raising their weapons and surrounding us. From how easily the guards took out the snakes, its apparent to me that they would win this encounter.

“Guys, we’re gonna need to just follow whatever happens and hope for the best.” They all nod in agreeance with me. Just in case, however, I use my Equipment Loadouts, which I loaded a pair of clothes into slot 2.

Argo disappears as I load my second set of clothes on. This way he can’t be confiscated. As the guards guide us back to the city, I take everyone’s weapons and store them away in my Personal Hold.

Once inside the city, we’re all thrown into a cell together. It’s made of the same crystal as everything else, but there’s a strange energy to it. Touching the bar briefly to test the strength of it, I’m sent back by a blast of energy and slam into the wall of the cell.

Colt rushes over to me. “Lucas! Are you okay?” His face is filled with concern.

My head is spinning, but a quick use of Promethean and Spellbound Physique brings my HP to full quickly. “I’m fine, but damn that hurt.”

Adreanell is holding on to Becky, much to her annoyance, but she allows the normally peppy girl to do so. They’re whispering something to each other, but I can’t hear them over Colt fussing over me. She keeps glancing at the door in fear herself, however.

The door opens up, causing Becky to jump, which then causes her to blush slightly. A human guard walks in, rather than a crystal one.

“For use of weapons and Skills, you will have to be punished. The king will be coming down shortly to determine your punishment personally. He’s apparently very interested in the description of one of you.”