Nia removed her gauntlet, showing that a thin film of molten glass-like material had adhered to her skin. She flexed her fingers and nodded to herself, then reached down to peel the close-fitting glove from her hand.

She held it out in front of her for emphasis as she spoke. “This simple glove will reduce my armor’s burden in keeping me safe. Impacts won’t damage me as much as they would without it, so my armor will conserve battery and put it towards other means. And that is with absolutely no enchanting, smithing, or tailoring to maximize its abilities. I mean to have this fixed to the inside of my armor as a heat-insulating inner layer that also minimizes impact damage after quite a few modifications and upgrades.”

“So why wouldn’t that be a part of her armor, then?” Jun wondered. “If I welded a bracelet to my gauntlet, would it count as a trinket or part of my armor? Because Nia’s making it seem like it shouldn’t count at all.”

I watched as Nia bent down and gathered more of the molten glass-rock material and sent it away to her inventory. I didn’t have a good answer for Jun, since I’d never really thought about it before. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe if you don’t have to power it with battery, it doesn’t count as part of the armor? And it wouldn’t have a core mastery requirement then?”

Jun considered that for a little while, then nodded. “Just because a sword is higher than my core mastery lets me equip, that doesn’t mean I can’t just pick it up anyway. I could still block an attack, or cut something, but I wouldn’t get extra stats from it or be able to use whatever functions it might have. So that stuff Nia’s putting on herself, it must be naturally tough.”

“Just like how people used to wear armor.” I chided myself. Because it wasn’t just a ‘used to’; I finally remembered Ali complaining about being too cold when her armor’s battery was low in an arctic hazard. She’d bundled up something fierce, and then noted that her armor had a little more battery than before. If only we’d looked into that a little more way back then, instead of brushing it off as her armor naturally recovered battery while she changed. “Just because someone was piloting a tank, doesn’t mean they didn’t still wear protective gear. I wonder if the shoes we’re wearing in our armor makes a difference.”

“I’d say yes. All we have to do now is find some strong materials that don’t need battery to be strong, and wear them under our armor at all times.” Jun said, then snorted. “Easier said than done, if I had to guess.”

Nia cleared her throat and resumed her serious posture, cutting our conversation short. “The best products are made with functions and skill. But the best materials, such as what I have shown you today, always come from hazards. And not necessarily the most dangerous hazards; a material that is as tough as metal can come from a low-ranked hazard, and might be near useless if attempted to be made into armor or a weapon, but it could be a wonderful supplement.”

She slowly raised one hand up, then jumped when another glob of molten rock splattered on it. “Oh, abyss damn it all.” She muttered, shaking her hand and flinging the material all around her. She looked up at the ceiling and waited for another glob to fall, then shook her head and raised her hand again. A leaf that looked like it had been wrapped in bandages appeared on her palm.

“Now for the final part of our lesson today. How to combine your spoils with armor you already have, and without a penalty to its mastery requirement. Or for a very small penalty, if your chosen material needs a jolt of battery to work.”

I paused the lesson before Nia could keep speaking. Jun looked at me with mild concern and confusion, but didn’t voice either of them out loud.

“Sorry, I just need a second to record this.” I apologized, opening up a small window of my interface as I noted the time we were at this lesson. “Don’t want to have to scour through this entire recording every time I want to double-check something Nia said.”

Understanding lit Jun’s face and she nodded. “Oh, that makes sense. Tell me when you’re ready to start it up again.”

I smiled and opened up the rest of my interface as Jun did the same, fiddling with something or other to keep herself busy. I scrubbed through the lesson to find exactly when Nia had appeared out of the smoke, ignoring the strange rewinding of reality around me, then fast-forwarded to when she’d started talking about the molten rock. I wasn’t sure if there was a hidden treasure somewhere in the lesson about how to find hidden treasures, but if there was, I wasn’t going to miss it.

Something pricked where my neck met my shoulder. I slapped a hand over it as if it were a mosquito, then said a quick apology when it turned out to be Jun’s hair. Still, I swiveled to see if anything was behind me, then paused in confusion. The mismatched entry rock now perfectly fit with the claw marks around it. There was no real reason for me to feel suspicious about how Nia had probably gotten in, but there was something off about it that just set me on edge.

My finger slid back to when I’d recorded that Nia had come in. The pattern still matched perfectly. I pressed rewind and let it go for a little while, waiting as nothing much happened for a good few seconds in which minutes of the lesson rewound. And then, as if by magic, the entry stone was wrong. It never disappeared completely, never lost its molten claw marks, and never once explained how Nia had gotten in.

I fiddled with the lesson for a little while longer until I found the exact moment I’d been looking for. “Hey, Jun.” I said with a gentle pat on her shoulder while staring at the entrance. “Look at this. Something weird’s going on.”

Jun looked up at me briefly before closing her interface and turning fully. “Really? What’s… oh, the rock’s all wrong. That’s how Nia got in here, right?”

I shook my head. “That’s what I thought, too, but check this out.”

I rewound ten seconds, then let the footage play out. Jun watched with curiosity as the improperly aligned entry stayed the same way for exactly nine of those seconds, then blinked to be in the proper alignment without leaving any time for Nia to pass through.

“Whoa. Did Nia cut a part of this lesson?” Jun asked, leaning over the couch to try and get a little closer. She grumbled in annoyance when she met the end of our viewing area once again. “No, that doesn’t make any sense. We wouldn’t be here watching a two-day long video if she did any editing at all. But, uh, how do I say this…”

Jun gestured widely at the exit. “Does it matter?”

Harsh. But true. “I have absolutely no idea. I thought it was interesting.”

“I thought so. We can take a closer look when we’re not one wall away from Okeria and Rootia.” Jun said, then tapped my side and swiveled around to sit back down. “Let’s see what else Nia’s lesson has for us. The symbol for this looked like her core, and I haven’t seen anything like that here. Maybe there’s a whole lot more than we’ve seen so far.”

She had a good point, and I didn’t have enough evidence to push checking out almost a day’s worth of random footage. “Yeah, maybe. Here we go.”

Nia resumed exactly where she’d left off. “Finding someone who has the skill to customize your armor, and not just surface level, is the first step. Okeria Perek is renowned as a master tinkerer, and is the one I personally approached to aid me, but all of you will have to find your own smiths and enchanters to work your armor. Not all armor is compatible with an interior layer, either; some armor is a solid piece that cannot be changed whatsoever. I have found that the pieces found within hazards or those with their own innate functions cannot be modified whatsoever.”

I wondered if I could just corrupt an underlayer into my armor. I distinctly remember earning some modification to my core function that would let me modify my already corrupted pieces, but would that override the fact that Nia found armor with functions couldn’t be changed. Now that Okeria knew what had saved me, maybe I could ask him for some advice on the whole ‘creating’ thing. Who knew if me knowing more on the subject could reduce potential costs or improve the quality of my corrupted items.

“Taking your armor and modifying it is a risky process. Pieces can be lost in the modification process, or severely damaged, and repairing them is normally just as costly as creating an entirely new piece.” Nia tapped on her forearm for emphasis. “I went through eight of these before I managed to properly integrate an inner layer that my interface and core accepted as part of my armor. When I eventually combine it with an underlayer created from a combination of the molten glassrock and some other materials I’ve found, I will have massively fortified myself for the price of two additional core mastery level requirements.”

“Didn’t she say she was going to show us how to do it?” Jun asked. “Not just ‘find someone else to do it’, but how to do it ourselves? Didn’t she start off with that?”

“Something like that.” I agreed. It didn’t make sense that she would’ve just told us to find someone else to do this for us. And that was when it hit me. I turned and peered over my shoulder, and lo and behold, the entrance blocking stone was off-kilter again. “The entrance is messed up again. There’s something we’re missing here, Jun.”

“And that’s probably how we’ll learn how to augment our armor.” Jun added. “Fast-forward through the rest of this lesson first. Just in case we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”