Six hours was, as it turned out, an uncomfortably long time to be throwing into the creation of items, made doubly so by the intentionally-induced, mind-numbing reality of putting very simple personal touches on runic combinations that someone else had come up with. The occasional jump out and back in to deal with the physical realities of being human wasn’t nearly enough to break it up.

Deyana had thought that she would be entertaining herself primarily by snooping around the forums and chats to try to find which of Third’s crafters had left, and any initial leaks about the rune would be showing up.

To her surprise and immediate annoyance, there was fascinatingly little there that people seemed to know. It was one of Third’s crafters, and they’d been going along a vaguely Vegas-ward trek, but with notable stops at cities that were significantly out of the way. On top of that, their descriptions were vague– and sometimes contradictory– enough that she couldn’t tell if it was Horen, Eddes, Kalina, or Nosef who had actually left.

There was, theoretically, the chance that it could be Cadire, but they weren’t much a fan of her in general– and which would have also meant that the whole discussion with Ell would have been a lot less civil.

Her bet was on Eddes or Kalina.

Still, the lack of information was, in itself, information. With just what she knew, it was possible that they were covering their position the way any guild losing such a high-profile member would until they could find a replacement, but with how much she’d told Ell? And how carefully difficult to figure this whole thing seemed to be?

Her bet was that at least Jene was in on it. Which was… interesting. And, based on the way that Third didn’t seem to be mobilizing directly for, against, or parallel to the Alliance, she’d decided to at least sit this one out.

Mildly disappointing, but she was already doing more than Deyana could possibly have asked.

The bow was first, and a fairly simple matter of balancing the mana costs of using its abilities with effectiveness. Don’s current bow was decent, but it also had the disadvantage of its single primary enchantment taking up the majority of its space.

There were certain limitations to being in the shape of a bow, but one of the truly intriguing realities of modern compound bows, particularly the group designed for Rune, was that parts of the design had been fully separated in a way that let her make some very interesting adjustments to the standard build. Not too much, given that she was intending it to blend in, but still.

[Impart Durability] took up the arrow rest, given its simplistic nature and {Target: Contact}’s requirement to touch the affected item. Triple-set to allow for accuracy with lower-mana shots, it would lose a bit of efficiency, but the mid-high level nature of what she was putting together demanded at least some ability to fire at lower mana costs.

The riser was the primary enchantment, though– increasing the size, and therefore efficiency, of the [Impart Energy] with {Kinetic}, another {Target: Contact}, and {Control: Antiproximity}, making it much more usable in longer encounters. On the other side of the riser, [Increase Inertia] shared the target selector, though it also came with a {Control: Antiproximity} linked up to a {Control: Delay} set to a twentieth of a second with THEN in Control Logic, allowing the arrow to leave the rest and be fully affected by the kinetic imbuement before the inertia increase kicked in.

The limbs were simple applications of durability, trusting that Don was experienced enough of a player to know to turn them on after the bow as at full draw, then release the arrow and durability immediately afterwards. Most bows on the market had an additional ease-of-use feature there, but she didn’t really care to add it.

Finally, she added a somewhat complicated [Copy] group to the cable rest, intended to be tapped during the firing process if the user wanted the more-expensive cluster active on a particular shot. [Duplicate] would have allowed for the mana-formed arrows to be both more powerful and be controlled remotely by bound distances to the original, but [Copy] worked plenty well for a swarm of arrows that didn’t need to be controlled.

Built off the meta-designs pioneered in the Chinese scene, she wasn’t sure if that was really the most effective build for Don’s style and personal quirks, but given everything she’d seen about him, he’d rather learn the style than build his own.

Her own lightning elementalist staff (the twist there being an irregular ability to be used as a slashing polearm and an expensive way to summon a sphere of hydrogen in the air) was no simpler of a project, building on a New York guild’s work.

Finally, Geria’s spear (able to echo any attacks made with it at a variety of different timings, as well as make things hit with the spike more fragile temporarily) was the subject of focus, and Alex had to fight with herself to stay on task when she finally moved on to armor.

There, she just selected three different but unassuming jackets, throwing durability on the outside and a multi-type redirection away from center-mass on the inside. She tended to prefer more complete or interesting stopping effects, like her absorbing armor, but that was unfortunately extremely rare for mid-levels to ever use, and this design, from Hain, was mass-produced enough to be completely unremarkable.

The NPC’s words from a few days ago reminded her to include some guild marks as well– Dread Silence on the armor, but she couldn’t resist sticking Third’s partial-circle over full-circle onto the weapons, Dread Silence getting the three dots on the fang and Third getting the two parallel lines from the centerpoint circle to the middle of the arc that denoted the items as having been sold outside of the guild.

It probably wouldn’t fool close inspection due to the difference in style, but they were mostly supposed to head off interest before it got to that point to begin with.

Going to bed that night was difficult.

As much as she’d created a number of useful items, it had also been simple enough that her mind had been wandering, and those ideas in incomplete pieces continued to bounce around behind her eyelids for almost an hour before she managed to get to sleep.

The next morning, Alex rolled blearily out of bed, only managing to get dressed enough to not be a problem by pure force of habit before she was back in VR, those fragments pulling together into three distinct builds that used |Merge|.

Don was primarily an archer, and his was the simplest– a bracer that used a combination of [Absorb] and [Transport] that could shift an arrow’s starting point a decent distance from the actual point of fire to a fair distance away.

Geria got something more complicated in a few parts. The one intended to be kept on her person took a form somewhat between a cape and a scarf, a billowy thing intended to be work around the neck so as not to get in the way of anything else but still be grabbable. Five copies each of [Power Link] and [Mental Direction Link] took up almost the whole thing, only a few tricks for temporary setting playing into the creation, and not a single major rune on the whole thing.

Those were on the five disks she bought, sharpened on their edges and solid through, though made of a different metal past the actual blade section. They were heavy, but not extraordinarily so, though the total lack of safe places to hold them led to her spending a couple of minutes to create what were essentially armored gloves.

The power link was quickly separated into two primary sections, one using the transfer to run around the edges in smaller segments while the other shifted to the other flat plate, the large size putting off some of the remoteness costs. The ring was the most time-consuming work, being several carefully-spaced [Durability]-[Edge] |Merge|s, but not the primary thrust of the design.

That honor went to [Impart Energy], typed to kinetic and targeted to the item itself, merged with five distinct other runes– each with their own unique minors.

Each only got the simple testing of being bound, fired at a target, and dumped back in her inventory, both because of the time constraint Alex was working under and the fact that she simply didn’t have enough mana to do much more.

The idea was based on what she’d already seen Geria do with that stone pouch but simplified so as to allow her more direct attacks in the cases where they would be appropriate.

Finally, the project intended for her own use.

That first sword she’d made was decent, still. Void wasn’t the most versatile of the magic elements, but it was quite good at what it did. The final project played on that idea further, using [Copy] and [Bolt] to make a thrusting sword that gave her some access to midrange without sacrificing much at closer ranges.

Putting the finishing touches on her work, Alex logged out.

Shuffling into the classroom with her hair hurriedly thrown into a ponytail, wearing sweats and a loose hoodie, Alex was well aware that she was paying for her obsession in the breaking of her image.

It didn’t matter so much, really, but she still felt a piece of her remaining ego wither and starve the moment she was in public.

It was better than skipping without actually being sick.

“Oh, shit. Alex?”

Ell’s visible double-take didn’t do much for keeping her convinced of that.

“Ah. Yeah. Tired today. Couldn’t sleep, plus working on something.”

There wasn’t assigned seating in the class, but the obvious habit-forming nature of it plus being in the middle of the semester made it surprising when Ell didn’t even start towards the front of the class like they usually did, pulling up a seat next to her instead.

“It’s surprising to see you looking like you got run over by something. Not enough coffee or something?”

Alex shook her head in primary response, before realizing she should elaborate. “Runecrafting stuff. It’s tough work, and I’m operating on shitty timescales. Three people, two offensive, one defensive set per.”

Ell winced. “Ouch. Yeah, okay. That’s a couple of days capping out unless you’re just following patterns, which is gonna be easy to counterbuild.”

Alex made a noncommittal sound, thinking her answer over somewhat before giving up on subterfuge. “No, I um. I finished it this morning. I just barely slept.”

She’d been expecting a look like Geria’s from the previous night, maybe some sort of complaint, and almost entirely missed their response in her preparatory cringe away.

Ell closed their eyes, took a deep breath, and shook their head once.

“I need to remember who I’m talking to.”

“Yours are going to be more efficient, probably more useful, not have any misalignments…”

“And they’re going to be obviously meta choices, tailored very slightly to what the person I’m making it for is specialized in. What did you make?” Ell asked, a little bit of extra force on the words.

A moment later, the professor interrupted by starting class, but it was only a few minutes later when they’d been freed to work in small groups on a series of problems that she’d designed.

Even half-delirious with tiredness, Alex was able to shift together the primary pieces of the solution almost instantly, but as she started on the math, she could tell that it needed to be simplified in at least a few places and resignedly began to dig through her bag for the reference sheet she wasn’t allowed for tests and could never remember.

She didn’t even have the paper out before Ell shrunk the mess her formula had turned into to something half the size and input it into their own calculator to get the answer.

Alex managed to check two of the substitutions Ell had made before she threw in the towel.

“I’m just going to assume everything you did is right,” she said, trying for a joking tone but sounding resigned even to her own ear.

Ell blew out a breath. “Yeah, cause you’re tired. If I was, getting to where you did would’ve looked like fucking magic.”

Alex tried to laugh, but it came out more like a sigh. “You really don’t need to lie to me. I know I’m bad at this. I’ll start the other ones. Thanks for the help, both yesterday and today.”