Sam was in a foul mood. “We need to jump to the next Deck soon, but I haven’t been able to create a really powerful offensive or defensive weapon that will protect us and grow as our levels increase! I also haven’t found a mundane weapon in this world that we can use to protect ourselves when we get transported.”

Jen and Sam were flush with money; he had just finished a contract with the Arc Guild which paid them an enormous amount of gold, and his part in it was kept anonymous.

Sam had created some permanent air conditioning and heating enchantments (HVAE – Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Enchantments) out of high-quality steel rods mixed with monster-core dust. He built the enchanted boxes and had them installed in all the rooms of the Arc Guild’s headquarters and then he ran iron “wire” from the boxes to a central power supply that contained a mana charging enchantment for mages to re-charge everything once a week. The downside was that he estimated the entire HVAE unit would only have about a 10-year life expectancy.

He also installed a refrigerator and oven for the Arc’s cooks – they called them cold boxes and hot boxes. These were somewhat crude, because to control the amount of cold or heat the box created, you had to actually switch the enchantment that was made to snap into the top of the box.

He made four enchantment rods for each box that varied in temperature. Just thinking about the crudeness of his temperature control system pissed Sam off. However, Director Devon wanted to pay him to travel all over the Deck building HVAEs and cold/hot boxes in all the Arc Guild branches.

Director Devon knew they were looking for a family member, and politely asked him multiple times to join the guild, offering to help him travel, provide him with all the materials he needed, and even to help them jump a Deck if they were interested.

Sam politely declined, but he could tell they wanted to know how his enchantments worked. He didn’t blame them; he himself stripped the secrets out of the enchantments owned by other people.

Sam was gaining a decent amount of experience with all his enchantments and inventions, but after he made a new enchantment once, he received almost no experience points for re-creating them. He even made it to level 45 in his words of understanding skill. Sam gained 6 more ability points from a few good gambling-quests related to his enchantment work, but unfortunately, he lost 2 ability points overestimating his own skill in fixing a couple of enchantments. To Jen’s frustration he kept putting all his “winnings” back into his luck stat.

Jen beat him over the head about keeping his skill-level secret and constantly reminded him of the risk of being kidnapped, if his true level became known. They were both continuing to increase their stats through training, but they were reaching a limit on being able to challenge themselves within the city and the surrounding area.

“That’s what pisses me off!” Sam thought as he was working on some of the daily charms for the store. “Our rifles work, but for how long! Tamako’s body is probably strong enough to take shots to her tempered body…..Ha! ‘Hot body’ ha! Need to remember that to bug Jen… Back on track, she could take 8 to 10 shots to her body before going down, and unless you got a solid headshot on her, she would still be in the fight.”

Sam continued muttering to himself, going round and round in his mind trying to come up with a weapon or armor solution that would grow stronger as they grew stronger. Neither he nor Jen had enough mana to use the legacy scrolls, but even if they did, that’s not what he wanted to do with them. As he decrypted each symbol in the scroll, that piece of the scroll would evaporate. Sam was almost finished with converting them into enchantments, but he was worried about finding any material on the First Deck that would be strong enough handle the enchantments. He felt like he should have more “something” before they jumped to the Second Deck.

“Shit!” Sam yelped, as a lizard jumped across his arm causing him to cut himself with his engraving tool, and his hand was bleeding all over the minor healing charm he had been working on. Sam quickly charged up the charm to heal his hand.

“God damnit, that is so obvious!” he said quietly and tersely to himself, as he watched the blood-covered enchantment on the charm soak up the mana like a sponge.

“Jen, you got a minute,” he hollered to her in the other room.

Jen hadn’t meant for her little lizard distraction to cause Sam to cut his hand, and she replied using her onboard, “I’ll be over there in just a second. I didn’t think a lizard would startle you so much?”

“Yes sir, what’s up, sir? Did the lizard scare you, sir?” Jen mocked as she walked into the room a few minutes later.

“Don’t call me ‘sir;’ I work for a living,” Sam automatically responded from his military days. Jen thought she just might have found something that annoyed Sam!

“I’ve discovered something, but wait, I almost forgot: how’s that hard body of yours doing?” he smirked.

Jen just looked at him not needing to pretend that she was confused by his stupid joke.

Then Sam went into explanation mode. “You know, strength stat for your body, hard body?” he said looking at Jen for approval for his pun.

“When you feel the need to explain one of your stupid puns, that’s nature’s way of telling you, that you’re an Old Man, sir,” Jen replied shaking her head at him with disappointment.

“Ha Ha,” Sam responded rolling his eyes.

Jen could tell her barb bugged Sam just the tiniest bit, “Two swings and two hits!” Jen thought, and then said guiltily, “I’m sorry about the lizard.”

Sam, looked funny at her. “Thanks, but not your fault.”

Jen cringed and said, “Well….it kinda was. I was practicing my new FPA “First Person Animal” psych app, and I didn’t expect the jump to startle you so much.”

Sam was stunned. “You mean you’re controlling them enough to run them around all over the place. That’s amazing!”

Her app placed a lot of stress on her multi-focus skill, but she was getting better with it. Sam watched as she ran the lizard up her leg and into her open palm. She smiled and said to Sam, “Thank you for the compliment, but I should have known better than playing around in your office. I’m sorry, it was my fault you cut your hand.”

Sam wasn’t that concerned about his hand and wanted to talk about his epiphany. “No worries. I believe I’ve made a breakthrough on the problem of weapons and getting them to power up with us, and partially addressing the issue of being naked and defenseless in a Deck jump,” Sam said, as he started to explain the enchantments he wanted to try, and how they should be built.

Jen interrupted, “Wait, don’t go all enchanting nerd on me. Just tell me what you need.”

Sam replied, “I really just need several weeks with no interruptions, but I don’t think we can simply close the store without drawing too many questions.”

Jen came up with an excellent plan, but it was torture for Sam, because it required him to wait a couple of weeks before he could go “All In” on his research.

Jen explained, “First, make the enchantments on your basic charms simple enough for you to train Long Bi and Ji Bi on how to make them, and we cut them in on part of the profit for the small charms. This also solves my worries about them and their children when we Deck jump. Second, go ahead and fix all the enchanted items you currently need to repair for customers. Third, any enchanted items that come in for repair, we tell the customers it will be two months before we can work on them.”

“What reason do we give everyone for the wait?” asked Sam.

“We say it’s because you have to make more charms for a merchant to sell in another city. This will allow us to keep collecting most of the enchanted items people want repaired. They will continue to drop them off, wanting their items to be first in line for repair in two months. You can then take a quick look to see if any of the enchantments are new or interesting enough for you to incorporate in your research. Fourth and last, you better come up with some good shit for me, because I will be taking care of everything else….Maybe a drone to fly my lizard around in or something.