The outgoing party decided to break up into two groups. One group led by Viv would head towards the grocery store to recover all the foodstuff and the extra freezers they needed. The other group, led by Dez, would hurry towards the sewage treatment plant. They’d find some answers there. Rory was sure of it.

A part of Rory wanted to go along with Dez’s group, curious to see what they’d find. But he had a job to do. So, after kissing Viv goodbye and wishing the rest of them luck, Rory headed towards the bathrooms.

He never reached it for the flood had spread even farther. Miles had been right. At this rate, the entire palace was going to be buried under the muck.

Wasting no time, Rory focused his Weaving on the water before him. There was no need to concentrate too hard. He just wanted to clear up the way. His Weaving responded accordingly. He found he had received a strange Sigil once his Weaving was done and the hallway was relatively clean.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Scummy Water. Some water isn’t meant to be drunk, or used for bathing, or interacted with any other way except to let it go. Congrats, you can now create useless, and potentially harmful, water.

[Cerulean VII] allows creation, manipulation, and imbuing of element in a 51-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Element

Rarity: Uncommon

Tier: Cerulean VII [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [31%]

That description hit the nail on the head. Rory wasn’t sure anyone would want to summon and use water that was so dirty. Nevertheless, he didn’t stop his Weaving. More of the sewage was flooding outwards, and his Weaving was the most effective way of stopping the tide.

Rory hadn’t even bothered calling the others to help, though some of them had come anyway. Arie and Melvin had both arrived, standing at one corner. They were likely too afraid to draw attention to themselves, but at the same time, they wished to be close enough to help if needed. Rory appreciated the gesture.

Evelyn and some of the former hospital staff members were there too, armed with mops and buckets. Rory had thanked them and bid them to stay clear of the muck. He was already on it.

It felt as though Rory was making progress. He kept receiving dirty brown Sigils with images of a swirling river, and slowly but surely, he was having to move forward to get more of the scummy water with his Weaving. A noise grew stronger the farther he walked. It was a strange geyser-like sound, reminding him of flushing but in reverse.

Eventually, they reached the bathrooms. Despite the relative thoroughness of Rory’s Weaving, it still left the floor slick to an extent. Every step Rory took threatened to make him slip and fall. That wouldn’t be great on his aged and aching body.

Not that it would be great on anyone, but Rory was, unfortunately, old.

“It sounds like we grew a waterfall in there somewhere,” Vern said.

Rory could agree. There was a veritable liquid roar up ahead. He was now actually a little frightened to see what madness awaited them.

The bathroom yawned open. It was bad. Rory’s progress had slowed the closer he got to the source because the volume of water kept rising and his Weaving had to do more work to cover the same area. But now that he had reached his destination, he was forced to stop.

As Miles had reported, all the faucets were broken and spewing out their disgusting torrents with tremendous force. But that wasn’t the only source of their flood. Every hole in the bathroom had combined together to throw out huge dirty gouts. The holes in the sinks, the toilets, the urinals, even the holes in the corners that were supposed to collect runoff water. All of them spewed out disgusting liquid muck

“We’re not getting this mopped up anytime soon,” Evelyn said.

Rory shook his head in dismay as well. “I don’t think my Weaving can keep up with all this water, either.”

They returned to the main hall. It wasn’t feasible for Rory to continue to use his Weaving continuously. A potential solution was plugging up all the outlets with something like cement, but sadly, anything of the sort they created via Sigils would disappear over time. That wouldn’t help. What they needed was a more permanent solution.

Even as Rory tried to think, the first of the water started making its way to the hall. It was much more spread out and the dirt was more diluted, allowing them to mop up the flood and keep the area relatively clean. Rory helped with his Weaving there, though.

But they didn’t have much time. The party at the sewers needed to solve the problem there, fast. Rory looked outside and saw the sky darkening as the first forays of dusk claimed the heaven’s canvas. Viv’s group didn’t have a lot of time before nightfall.

“You need something that can give permanence?” Evelyn asked.

Rory nodded. “Can’t think of what might give a Sigil like that yet. But it would help plug up the holes in a more permanent way.”

“But we don’t want to plug up our toilets and sinks. We’ll need to use them later when the water isn’t acting crazy.”

“I can just use my Weaving to clear it up, then. That won’t be a problem.”

“Ah, that’s fair.”

Rory tried to think. Permanence. Ideally, his Sigil of Weaving would reduce anything that represented permanence, eternity, infinity, or some kind of similar concept to a Sigil of that concept. But what?

He looked around. This palace could stand for ages to come, lasting through the aeons. Maybe its future potential to endure could work to get a Sigil of Permanence, though Rory admitted he was stretching the limits of plausibility. He thought about the trees outside, some of which might have been standing for centuries. They might work as well.

Or it could be something as simple as a symbol of infinite. Maybe someone had an ouroboros necklace or something. If an object portrayed the image of a concept, would Weaving that object give a Sigil for the concept it was portraying? Would Weaving a painting of an ouroboros give Rory the Sigil of Permanence he was seeking?

Questions he didn’t have time to answer or the luxury to explore. Instead, Rory bent to seeing if he could get his Sigil of Permanence from the ideas he’d come up with.

When Rory went outside and used his Weaving on the palace, he tried to focus on the idea of it lasting through the age. Sure, even if his efforts failed and everyone died and the palace became derelict, it would become ruins that future inhabitants could visit. They already had proof of them all over the world.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work. All he got a was a deep-grey Sigil with the image of a castle on it.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Redoubt. Fortify your base to protect yourselves and field a military presence. The true home of any stout-hearted warrior.

[Cerulean VII] boosts all combat actions by 17%.

Stats

Type: Settlement

Rarity: Remarkable

Tier: Cerulean VII [0%]

Efficiency: Extreme [85%]

Interesting Sigil, but not at all what Rory was looking for. He pocketed it, though he did remind himself to check it later when he had more time.

For now, Rory headed to the woods around the palace. It was a good thing that the Safe Zone’s boundary extended beyond the palace’s walls, protecting a large section of the little forest around them as well as the palace and its grounds. Rory was able to walk up to a large ash tree without worrying about being attacked by monsters out of nowhere.

“Will you give me a Sigil of Permanence?” he asked the huge tree.

The ash tree didn’t reply.

Rory also said nothing further, using his Weaving on the tree’s grey trunk. He didn’t want to harm the tree much. To get the exact Sigil he wanted, he focused on the fact that this tree had stood for a long while, and it would continue to stand for even longer, so long as nothing untoward happened.

This time, Rory did receive the Sigil he was hoping for. A grey Sigil came up with his Weaving, showing the image of—as he had guessed it—an ouroboros.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Permanence. Things don’t last. But here’s a little something to help change that.

[Cerulean VIII] allows Sigil effects to last 18 hours.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Remarkable

Tier: Cerulean VIII [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [48%]

There. Rory had what he needed. What they needed next was someone to plug the outlets up. Unfortunately, Trish had gone with Viv to the sewers to provide any combat support needed there. Rory decided it was high time he gave them a call and checked their progress. It was growing quite dark.

It took a while for the call to connect. They had gone to the nearest sewer entrance which would be within the range of the Sigil of Calling. But that reminded Rory that he ought to make more new ones now that he had access to the materials needed thanks to the dwarfs. He could simply replace existing ones with higher Tier ones that had greater range.

“Hello?” It was Viv. She sounded normal, no hint of being harried or having any difficulties or the like. “Is everything alright?”

“We’re surviving,” Rory said. “You guys alright?”

“We’ve… been having difficulties, but none of us are in outright danger.”

The hesitation in Viv’s voice lit up Rory’s curiosity, but he kept it tamped down for now. “The flood here isn’t going to be stopped easily, but we’ve found a temporary solution. We need Trish, though.”

Rory explained his idea about using concrete to plug up the bathroom temporarily. Viv took it all in silence, though he thought he could hear the others muttering somewhere behind her.

“Can’t you give someone a new Sigil of Concrete?”

“I can to some of them. Most received Sigils in Argent from my Looter perk, so they can’t take in any Sigils in any Tiers above Argent, and any new Sigil of Concrete I make would be Cerulean VIII. But there are a couple of people I can grant it to, don’t worry. At the same time, I wanted to know if you guys were coming back or not.”

“We’ve come across a roadblock. The entrances to the sewer are blocked. We’ve been driving around town trying to find a way inside, but all of them have been closed up.”

“All of them?”

“All of them we’ve found so far.”

Rory found himself biting the inside of his cheek. That didn’t sound good. They needed to go within the sewers to find out the root of the problem. “You didn’t try to break in?”

“We did.” Viv laughed mirthlessly. “We tried a lot. But they’ve been blocked up deeply, and the harder we tried, the more attention we started to draw and… it was turning into a mess. We need a different tack, Rory.”

He thought he knew what she meant. “Come back home. It’s getting late. We’ve got things under control, more or less, and we’ll figure out what to do, together.”

Viv didn’t answer for a while, but then she sighed. “Alright, I’ll talk to you later. Love you. Bye.”

Rory repeated the farewell and made the most awful kissing sounds he could, and then Viv hung up. He went back and reported what she had said to the others. Some of them expressed dismay at the lack of a proper solution, but Rory reassured them that things would be fine. They’d just have to be vigilant and careful for the time being.