It had taken two days for Fiona to recover from her imprisonment. She said it wasn't like when she had resided in my mind. It was just an endless void that seemed to tear at her very nature, where time seemed endless. Her short time trapped had felt like a thousand years to her.

She had left after that, saying she needed to do something and would be back in a few weeks. I tried to stop her but she refused to listen. I wished her good luck and let her know I would be here if she needed me. Making sure to show her that I trusted her. In reality, I wanted to scream and rage because she was going away and I wouldn't be there to protect her.

I knew I couldn't keep her locked up for her own safety but I should still have gone with her. I knew she needed the time to cope with what had happened. I would be ready when she returned.

That reminded me, I still hadn't looked at the skills I unlocked for my new level.

Mana Boost: Boost mana recharge by 50% and mana pool by 10% for 10 min. Cost 150 mana, cooldown 30 min

Body like Stone: Increases resistance to knockback, stumble, and disorientation effects by 20% for 5 min. Cost 70 mana, cooldown 10 min

Both seemed like decent options and I had no other pressing need for spells so I took both with my free points. Now I felt more ready to take on more dangerous foes.

Speaking of being ready, I looked at my building.

The constable had gone too far. Refusing to help at all during that last battle was one thing but then she got angry with Martin for helping me after. I was done with this town. But, I wanted to keep the building. That was when an idea hit me. I didn't know if it would work but it could be possible.

I had seen a toy in one of the Bazaar stalls during my very first visit. If a toy could produce the effect I was thinking about, then so could I. It wouldn't be cheap or easy so I needed to earn more credits.

The battle had earned me quite a windfall of income. Martin's sister had tried to claim it as recompense for my actions. That was one of the reasons Martin had gotten into a shouting match with the woman. In the end, he managed to secure everything for me.

I moved slowly up the stairs, still a tad sore from my ordeal. Martin's ring didn't have enough storage space for all the gear so he had piled it up in one of the unused bedrooms. I opened up the room to see all the gear piled up in the corner. Sorting through it was going to take some time.

I spent the next four hours cataloging everything. None of the weapons were magical in nature. None were above average quality when inspected. The Psion had no weapon because his mind was the weapon. That didn't mean that he had nothing. Martin had taken two rings off the man, both turned out to be storage rings.

One had a large selection of random enchanted gear. The other had a large number of credits. I pocketed the credits, bringing my credit total to 11724. That was a large chunk of cash but it may not be enough to get the gear I needed for my plan. I looked toward the pile of enchanted gear. I would get the most out of it by selling it at the Bazaar. Then again I may earn some goodwill from the people of Arman by selling it to them. Plus it would piss Constable Jenning off.

That made it an easy choice, plus I wasn't well enough to make the trip to the Bazaar yet. I would have to give Martin a list of items I needed. I dug around in the little desk in the room until I found what I was looking for, a pencil and a piece of paper. I needed to test my hypothesis before I sent Martin to spend what amounted to a fortune on items I required.

Since there was a nice convenient desk to work at, I plopped down in front of it, setting one of the cheap daggers on the work surface. I would have used some scrap metal but I was out so this would have to do.

Almost immediately I ran into an issue. I didn't have any runes for what I was trying to do, well... nothing that specifically applied to what I was trying to do. So I did what I always did and combined a bunch together to see what happened. Probably not the best idea to do this with a sharp object.

As soon as I finished the knife shot across the room ricocheting off the walls. I had to reach out and grab it to stop its demented assault against the plaster, losing two fingers in the exchange. I swore as I used Rejuvenate to heal the wound while holding my severed digits in place. The knife had to go into my ring. It would be one hell of a surprise for anyone that tried taking it out. Of course, this was when my mind recalled the scrap metal in the yard.

I sighed and headed outside to grab some.

The week went by quickly. Most of my day was spent trying to figure out how to do what I wanted while working on customer and promised orders. I was forced to scour the town's empty homes for scrap to test with. A pile of old silverware and pots littered my workspace. All had been failures and I had been forced to hold more than one in place while I destroyed the runes I had carved.

I knew it wasn't going to be an easy project but still. I thought I would have made some progress. My best attempt had been the flying killer knife. I even went through all of my books to see if I had missed anything. Turns out I may have.

When I was flipping through one of my occult books I spotted a page dedicated to alchemical symbols. I remembered skimming past it since I didn't want to make potions and whatnot. While other sets of symbols had earth and air, this set had them as mirrored and rotated images of each other. The Earth symbol was a downward-facing triangle with a line through it, while the air was flipped one-eighty with the point of the triangle pointing up.

It also had a symbol for a magnet. I knew with a strong enough field you could float so I drew the design on a spoon. I set the earth on the bottom with air on top and I set the magnet pointing away from the earth to the air between the two.

It worked... sort of.

The spoon did float, it also started rotating so fast that it melted from the magnetic field it was contained inside. I would have thought it would stop after the runes were consumed but it kept spinning, getting brighter and brighter. Now I started to panic, I looked around for something to contain the molten metal. I remembered a bag of cat litter in the hall closet so I ran out and grabbed it, dumping the entire bag on the glowing orb. It finally stopped spinning and fell to the ground. Luckily it landed in the spilled cat litter as it hissed angrily as it cooled.

I sat back down and rubbed my temples while I looked at my latest failure. I couldn't even be mad because it was an improvement.

For shits and giggles, I carved a symbol that said it stood for answer or solution into a new spoon, then I just carved equals levitation. I didn't expect anything to happen but the spoon consumed itself, along with a dozen other spoons made of silver before a firey image filled the air in front of me.

I'll be honest, I thought I accidentally opened a doorway to hell. Instead, I saw a symbol floating in the air in front of me. It was a simple thing, a circle on top of three straight lines that got smaller as they went down. Immediately I knew it stood for levitation but how?

The glowing lines disappeared as quickly as they had come, plunging the room into darkness. I swallowed hard, deciding not to ask questions of whatever had answered me again. Still, it had given me what I sought. The new symbol had been added to my knowledge tab in my interface. The system recognized it as such and all the knowledge associated with it was filled in.

You would think having the exact symbol I needed would solve my problem... it didn't. The rune worked, my next carved item floated an inch above the surface of the desk. The problem was, that was all it did. Pushing it to the floor caused it to float an inch above the floor. No combination made it any stronger.

I would need to combine it with other runes to make it effective. I got back to work.

It was another three days before I came up for air. I had a wide smile on my face. All of my hard work had resulted in a six-foot plate of steel that I could make land or hover slowly into the air. I came to my backyard because I needed to find the limit of how high I could make it float.

I did this all the while sitting on the plate. It required a constant feed of mana to increase the height. I figured I would need to embed mana hearts into the device to keep me from having to manually power them.

The plate kept climbing in the cool night air. I didn't want the Constable to get wind of what I was working on.

I had to stop feeding mana into the crude plate as I topped the building in the city. This put me well above the treeline. I couldn't help grinning.

"What are you doing?" Fiona asked from behind me, startling me and causing me to stop feeding the plate mana.

I dropped with a surprised squeak, falling thirty feet before I got control of the plate again.

"Goddammit, don't scare me like that," I said glaring at the laughing woman.

"Sorry, it was just too easy. I was sitting on the roof when you floated past."

"Well, I'm glad you're back," I said honestly.

"Sorry about that... I just needed to blow off some steam."

"No need to apologize, I understand."

"So... what are you doing?"

I smiled, "giving us options."

With Fiona back, I felt better. Things returned to a semblance of normality, with Fiona and Martin hanging out and going on patrols together. With those two busy doing that I got to business laying out the requirements I would need to put my plan into action.

At first, I only figured on needing material for the bottom. Looking at the building though, I thought it prudent to strengthen everything. It also gave me an idea to enhance my project. Whether or not I had enough money to cover everything was another matter.

One thing I knew I would need was mana hearts. I was going to have Martin look for the largest one he could purchase. Even the one used to hold Fiona was only as big as my fingertip. From my experience with my levitation plate, I knew it was going to require a large supply of mana to do what I wanted. I wrote a minimum of five-thousand mana into the notes next to it.

More would be better but I figured I could get away with that. The other major requirement was mithril. I was going to need a lot of it. Each two-by-two-meter plate needed to have the design inlaid with mithril. Even the plates wouldn't be cheap. My first thought was to use cheap iron or steel. I changed my mind on that, not wanting the plates to rust as that could damage them. Titanium or aluminum was a possibility. I figured that titanium may be too expensive for the amount I required. While aluminum was too soft.

I ended up settling on bronze. It was cheap and durable. Larger plates would have been better but even a two-meter square plate an inch thick would be difficult to move.

I finished my list and looked it over. I had a feeling I would not have nearly enough money to cover even half of the items on the list. I had been thinking about a way to supplement my income. While I wanted to sell the enchanted items to the townsfolk, mostly to annoy the Constable, I doubted it would cover my expenses. I did have all the unenchanted pieces. While none of that gear was of stellar quality, that might work to my advantage.

I could give basic runic enchantments to the items, hiding them with the Odin rune. That way while they could see the effects of the rune they wouldn't be able to discern how it was added to the item.

With my mind made up I got to work. I kept the weapon enchantments simple; fire, ice, and electrical damage. The armor I just added increased resistance to basic damage. It wasn't worth making them any better as the quality was subpar. It took me about a day to finish up the work on the pieces. I stuck everything I wanted Martin to sell into one of the rings I was giving him. These were both of the rings from the Psion. I was letting Martin keep them for his help, although he didn't know that yet.

Fiona and Martin returned later that day. Ever since the attack things had been relatively quiet around the town. No more than a few monster encounters occurred each day. Other than that at least one group went into the Slime Church to gain some experience each day.

"Hey, Martin... Fiona, how did the patrol go?"

"It went great, I managed to level up," Martain said, beaming.

"Congrats man. Hey, since you're here I got something to ask you."

"Oh?"

I had been thinking about asking Martin this for the past few weeks.

"You know that I plan on leaving eventually, right?"

He nodded cautiously.

"Well... why not come with Fiona and me?"

"I-," I cut the man off, "take a night to think on it. in the meantime could you take a trip to the Bazaar and pick up everything on this list?"

Martin raised an eyebrow in curiosity at what I could want. I handed the list and design over. As he read the list his eyes went wide.

"Um... this is some pricy stuff. What do you need it all for?"

"I'll tell you if you decide to come with us," I said, handing him the two rings. "Sell everything in these rings to help cover the costs. I also included all of my personal credits."

"Are you sure, Paul?"

"Trust me, I'm sure. Also, the rings are yours for helping out."

"No, that's too much," Martin said.

"Keep them, you earned them, for saving me, for helping Fiona, and for helping me with this. It's the least I can do."

The man reluctantly accepted the gift. "I'll think on your proposal."

I nodded, it was up to him to conclude that Arman was a dying town. If not for the lack of people, then due to his sister's mismanagement.