“What in the Abyss have you done!” Tzen demanded, finding his voice as the last wisps of smoke rose above the former Hapain clan leader’s body.

“Huh?” Calvin glanced at the Bolesian prince.

“That was the Hapain clan leader! He had valuable information! We might have been able to end the civil war with him in our possession!”

Calvin saw the veins in Tzen’s temple begin to throb ominously.

Whoops. I need a good excuse.

Thinking on his feet, Calvin pulled himself up to his full height and looked down his nose at Tzen as word-vomit began spewing out of his mouth.

“Somehow I doubt it.” Calvin said archly. “Remember this conflict was begun by human greed, but it’s been stoked by a drug that literally controls people’s minds. Every single human who’s consumed Unity is a vessel for the creature to the east. It’s hands, feet, eyes and ears.”

Calvin pointed.

“So in the highly unlikely event that an infected individual didn’t slip some into the clan leader’s food, you would have to be mad to believe that a large portion of the lower Hapain clan leaders aren’t infected. These people are no longer their own actors, their loyalty isn’t to him,” Calvin gestured at the pile of ash. “It is to that.” he pointed toward the distance black spreading across the land.

“I prevented you from feeding information to that creature by gouging out one of its eyes and ears,” Calvin said crossing his arms and doing his best haughty look.

“Huh.” Tzen grunted. “I hadn’t thought of that. Thank you. I suppose my personal hatred of them made me less objective. There was no way the creature didn’t spread its influence among the leadership.”

“Now you know,” Calvin said, lifting his chin. “This is an extermination. We can’t treat this like a human problem.”

“He made that up on the spot,” Ella said as she walked by, her sharp teeth slicing off a chunk of roast krote. “I can feel it across the guya bond.”

“No I didn’t.” Calvin said, freezing in place.

“Your stance became unnaturally stiff,” Learner said from where she sat against the wagon.

“My Empathy told me that from the beginning. Nevertheless, he’s still correct.” Tzen said, rubbing his chin as he glanced down at the smoldering ash.

“Damnit,” Calvin went back to his workbench with a grunt.

“Seriously though, don’t kill people without thinking about it.” Tzen said, returning Calvin’s haughty look, but better.

“But this stuff is so cool!” Calvin said, picking up a dish of sizzling white fire and dumping it harmlessly over his gloves. The stuff sank into the grass, accomplishing nothing without something to burn. “It didn’t even touch his clothes! This will be a signature spell for sure!”

Learner sighed and rubbed her temples.

“I’m telling Kala,” Ella said.

Calvin’s stomach dropped, and he stiffened as the statuesque Genosian warrior sauntered away.

“You don’t have to do that.” Calvin called after her, but if his wife heard it, she didn’t seem to register. “Hey! Hey! Ella! Seriously! Don’t tell Kala!”

Learner giggled madly, holding her belly as she began having trouble breathing.

“Shit,” Calvin muttered, guts twisting anxiously. He might not feel pain anymore, but he could still feel fear.

Kala’s going to give me a lecture straight from the depths of the Abyss.

Calvin pondered that a moment before he shrugged.

“Welp, I don’t have any control over that. Let’s see if we can perfect the formula for maximum burn, then create a mechanism to mix it on demand, then industrialize production using calvinian mass converters.”

Later that night, Calvin got a stern talking to. It was especially bad because the focus was more on the fact that Kala was disappointed in him than anything else.

Where do girls learn their ‘I’m disappointed in you’ speeches? Calvin wondered. They cut to the bone.

Two days later, when they were satisfied that they had separated out the infected from the non-infected with Learner’s help identifying the changes One made to a human’s brain chemistry, they marched away from the city.

Tzen’s army had swollen from a hundred men and women to several thousand along with families and tents and guar, and pets, and…

Gods, how is he supposed to get anywhere with that many people? Calvin thought, scanning the stream of humanity that followed the natural curve of the land as they wound southwest like a snake, heading for the rich land to the southwest.

The Hapain clan was simply too close to the frontline of One’s invasion to set up effective defenses. The city would be engulfed in a month.

They were aiming for Ming’nai. The massive, fertile river that wove its way southeast through the fortress city would act as a natural barrier, slowing the advance of One, its creatures and its strange forest.

There were few other places in Boles that could afford to feed so many refugees at the drop of a hat, either.

Calvin fiddled with the newly minted spell component the entire trip, slowly regenerating Bent as Kurawe siphoned it out from him.

He called it Soulfire, as it seemed to only consume things that interacted with the System. Only things with nervous systems.

In the end, he wasn’t able to make the fire pass through living things without nervous systems, such as trees, but he was able to make it able to phase through anything nonliving, including dead wood, such as doors, by successfully adding Learner’s suggested Wraith extract.

Should be good enough. Unless someone hides inside a giant tree, this should be able to get to them, Calvin thought, studying the component.

Stone walls, armor, clothes, and all manner of defences were useless in front of the white fire. It would pass harmlessly through them before latching onto the target and immolating them in a matter of seconds.

Once Calvin figured out how to compress it properly, he got it to the point where it only took about a teaspoon of the stuff to immolate the average adult.

How many teaspoons in an adult? Calvin wondered as he inspected the component. The spell component itself had taken on a far more magical appearance than his others. While his other spells were usually contained within a steel tube about the size of a finger, This particular one was made from a carved slab of glittering Nem, reinforced with skeletal bands of abyssal steel to prevent it from cracking or exploding.

Containing wraith mutation extract was a bitch. The stuff slipped through any container not made of pure money. In this case, the container was made of expensive enchanted glass that suspended the three primary ingredients separately in midair, their inert liquid forms shimmering and shifting in thumb-sized spheres.

Calvin held the spell component by the center, flicking the forcefield on and off, tapping the floating liquid with his gloved finger, trying to push it out of the force sleeve The glove worked on the two primary ingredients, but he could feel the wraith slime on his finger.

He considered mixing the wraith extract with one of the other two in the proper ratio to lower the number of containers required by one, but decided not to as a safety precaution. It would highly dangerous if either of the other two ingredients leaked and were capable of going through protective gear.

My next great creation, Calvin thought, idly spinning the floating balls of liquid around his finger.

It looks like a fidget spinner.

…

I mean, it’s a really fancy fidget spinner, but still…

Visualize

Calvin brought up a visualization of the component, then began building around it. He connected the circle in the center to a bracket that held it easily in place. He added a simple locking mechanism to the back of the bracket, along with a handle.

He visualized nem-coated glass tubes running from three separate canisters, running through the floating materials. The tubes had a stretch on either side of the gap composed of force enchantments, where the isolated parts of the components could easily slide in and out of the tubes.

I’m starting to get it the idea here.

Calvin swept the three tubes forward, where they would mix, pressurize and release the mixture in a violent spray.

Did you just design a magical flame-thrower? Elliot asked.

I don’t know… Calvin thought, spinning the design in Visualize, inspecting the inside and outside carefully, looking for problems, ways he could make everything simpler. Simpler was always better wherever possible.

Once he was satisfied with the design, he mentally passed the Visualize design to his knick-knacks before he started work on a bomb version.

What’s the point of making a flamethrower when you could just use Gradual Split to do the same thing? Elliot asked.

If I ever get stuck in a situation like that again, I want a devastating weapon that doesn’t rely on Bent constructs.

And Nem enchantments are okay?

I don’t know, Calvin thought with a shrug.

It took another day before Calvin had a workable design. Calvin hefted the blue glass and shiny steel, appreciating it’s weight. Calvin opened the latch and the component slid into its place with a satisfying click.

As a safety precaution, there were only a couple teaspoons of undifferentiated matter in the tanks on the side of the shiny metal weapon.

Alright, time to test this out, Calvin thought. Shouldering the ‘flame-thrower’ as Elliot called it, Calvin looked down the shiny smooth barrel, imagining it sweeping away hordes of One’s monsters, turning them into so much ash without damaging the surroundings. It felt good.

Calvin handed the weapon to Kurawe and instructed him to run several hundred feet into the forest before testing it.

Calvin watched, sitting crosslegged on his palanquin as his zealot ran out into the distance, shrinking until he was the size of Clavin’s thumb. The tiny figure shouldered the weapon and squeezed the lever that controlled the flow of undifferentiated matter in the tanks.

BOOOM!

An explosion of white engulfed the woods in the distance, a massive fireball that roiled outward, expanding until it was only a couple dozen or so feet away from the caravan before imploding again, disappearing in a blink of an eye.

“Attack!” Someone bellowed in Bolesian, and all abyss broke out.

Civilians dove under wagons, clutching their children close while the soldiers rushed to the edges of the trail, spears up and forming a decently respectable line, anxiously awaiting the next stage of the ambush.

“Mommy, are we gonna die?” Calvin overheard a toddler asking his mother as they hid from arrows under his palanquin.

“I should’ve taken it out further,” Calvin muttered.

Agreed. Kurawe said.

“On the bright side, it didn’t do any damage to the forest itself,” Calvin said, noting the completely unmarred surfaces and total lack of a forest fire.

Partial success. You’ll have to figure out what went wrong. Might be hard considering the explosion won’t leave any damage on the weapon.

“Oh right,” Calvin muttered to himself, thumbing his chin as an anxious hush fell over the caravan. “Kurawe, could you retrieve the weapon? Disconnect the tanks and make sure the thing’s empty before you do. It’s obviously far too dangerous to keep loaded.”

Yes, ravager.

It was interesting to think the explosion could have actually killed him, despite all his various abilities. If he’d been a bit less cautious, he’d be a pile of ash, clothes, and a wedding ring on the vibrant forest floor.

No coming back, no second chances.

Exactly why I’m so pleased with it. Nothing better to wipe One from the face of the planet. Calvin knew the only way he would be able to prevent Elliot’s ill-advised creation from coming back would be to erase it from existence.

Calvin heard the crunch of soil to the left of his palanquin and glanced over to spot Tzen looking at him, hands on his hips and brows raised.

“Know anything about the explosion just now?” He asked, glancing at Kurawe running back from the forest, carrying the shiny, unmarred contraption against his chest as he did.

“I refuse to testify on the grounds that I will incriminate myself,” Calvin deadpanned.

Tzen snorted. “I’m going to cover for you. In exchange, keep your experiments much further away from the people. Sound good?”

Calvin nodded.

“Listen up!” Tzen shouted above the murmur of the nervous civilians. He must have used some kind of Skill, because his voice cut through the din perfectly, rich with persuasive power. “Elder Gadsint discovered a detachment of enemy forces waiting in ambush and wiped them out before they had the opportunity to attack. let’s keep moving in case they had reinforcements!”

The Bolesian civilians gave Calvin grateful nods and got back to the trail. A few of the higher level hunters looked a little suspicious, but they didn’t bother to rock the boat, falling in with the march.

“Man, I wish I was that good with people,” Calvin said as the panicked civilians calmed down in a matter of seconds, getting themselves back on the trail with little to no problems.

Kurawe handed him the weapon, and it tore Calvin’s attention away from the surroundings. Now, where was your point of failure? Calvin thought as he turned the flamethrower over in his hands.