A fine mist of river water sprinkled Andrew as he worked. A small cheer went up in it's wake and he allowed it to distract him for a moment as a smile crawled across his face. Clearly Po was enjoying his exciting new appendage. He returned his attention to his most recent project. The circular shields were the perfect base for rune inscription but the light mana accumulation runes made him nervous. He knew all too well how dangerous it was, mixing air and fire mana, and it didn't help that it was by far the most complex formation. Worse still, he was inscribing the circles on a shield. A clean hit in the wrong place could easily crack the inscription, and they tended to explode when that happened. Not something you want your shield doing. So he did his best to mitigate that chance, inscribing the light accumulation circle on the inside of the shield, then pressing a leather backing over that and empowering the whole thing to conduct mana. A very simple and deeply carved battery, trigger, and expulsion rune went on the front, near the center. It was configured to release every bit of stored mana evenly in a wide half-sphere flash. He hoped it would be bright enough to blind a hobgoblin in the dimly lit forest of Kalam. It certainly came close to blinding Andrew when he tested the first one, and it was facing away from him at the time. The sun was well on it's way down and with it his chance of finishing his third shield of the day. This was not the kind of work Andrew wanted to do by torchlight. One mistake and a third of the day's work would explode into a million pieces and probably put out someone's eye.

I'm not sure how many of these I even want to make. They're meant to be single use for this fight anyways, and the more people that have them, the more likely someone is to explode, or set one off at the wrong time and blind all of us instead. Three is plenty, just need to finish this up before I run out of sunlight.

It was the evening of the ninth day since the scouts departed, eleven since they took the camp. People were beginning to get nervous. The plan was for them to explore for seven days, then come back. Everyone knew they wouldn't be back for another two at least, but still, they were nervous. What if they never came back? They would have to leave anyways. They might never find out what happened to them if they did disappear. They had another week until they expected a hobgoblin response, plenty of time for the scouts to get back, bringing six of their best back into the fold.

At least two more days. Then I can start to worry.

Andrew finished the Light accumulation circle with a sigh, picking it up and carrying it out a short distance from camp. He uncoiled his long mana conducting rope and connected it to the circle before walking it back to the boulder he used for protection. The mana transference rate on this thing was abysmal compared to what he could do with his current level of Mana Control, but maybe that was for the best. He pumped fifty points of mana into the rope, then waited. A boom echoed out and mist sprinkled over him once again. Andrew smiled and peeked around the boulder. The shield was sitting there, glowing merrily, entirely intact. He trotted over and picked it up, taking it back into camp where a circular panel of leather was awaiting their union.

The sun was truly setting by the time he finished and the crowd gathered by the river began to file back into the confines of camp after some much needed entertainment. They were entirely out of booze and entertainment was hard to come by. At first they swapped stories of their past lives by the bonfire each night, but with each day that passed those memories brought more pain. No one knew if they would ever make it back to their homes, back to their families and friends. The bonds they made here were connections of convenience, their previous lives, interests, hobbies, their very identities were a world away. Literally. Each time someone spoke of home, it was a reminder of all they lost. When the booze dried up, so did the stories of home.

The hollow cheer of the incoming crowd was suddenly too much for him. He decided to take a walk, there was a project by the tree line he had been meaning to check on anyways. He grabbed the woodcutting axe and headed towards the faint glow of active runes in the fading light. Twelve trees with large, relatively low to the ground branches circled in mana accumulation and binding runes. The earth branch was now a stony grey, the bark had a sharp, brittle texture. Small cracks and crevices formed between the plates of bark, like cracked desert dirt. The leaves were stiff and sharp and they snapped off easily when he tried to shift one. The shift in texture was uniform all the way out to the binding circle on the trunk, after which it started to meld and blend back into the trunk's natural color and texture. When Andrew looked closely though, it was clear the entire tree had been altered. The bark was more brittle and sharp across the board, and cracks between sections of bark were more pronounced. When Andrew grabbed a piece and pulled it snapped off with a crack. The wood beneath was greyer than typical, and definitely felt harder than usual when he tapped it with a fingernail. Andrew grabbed a rock with one hand, then activated his Siphon affinity skill. He was starting to get a feel for how dense the affinity of an object was when using the skill, though he didn't have as much experience with earth as he did fire, or metal. The difference here was unmistakable though, the tree had an immense amount of earth affinity compared to the wood he was used to working with. He would have to siphon the affinity from a wagon full of stones to get this kind of density in a piece of wood.

These circles have been running for a week and a half or so, sure, but this level of affinity is a little ridiculous. Is this tree even alive still? Either way I'm taking this branch with me. If the rest of these trees are packed with as much affinity as this branch is, I'll have some seriously potent materials to work with for the next week. I don't want the hobgoblins getting their hands on this stuff once they come through either. I should get rid of these circles as well.

Andrew wrapped his hands around the branch and pulled, snapping the branch off with a sharp crack and an explosion of sharp little slivers of stone. The inside of the branch was grey and stony all the way through, and it cracked off in brittle little plates of semi fibrous material. The material in the core of the branch was so fine it reminded him of fiberglass insulation or asbestos. It was fluffy and brittle and made up of fine fibers that instantly set his palms itching. It certainly didn't look alive to him. He set the branch aside and shook off his hands. Within a few minutes the itching subsided, though Andrew was sure that had more to do with the passive healing granted by the system than his efforts in shaking the little slivers out.

I'll have to wrap that thing up when I bring it back to camp, and put a warning on it or something. Probably causes cancer or something too if any of us make it that long.

Andrew pressed his palm against the glowing runes still carved into the bark around the branch and tried to activate Mend. As he poured mana into the skill he felt some kind of, resistance, pushing against him. The mana crawled it's way along the inscribed lines and after a moment Andrew deactivated the skill and pulled his palm away. About half the rune was filled in, and the filling material looked more like stone than wood. It would be far quicker and easier to strip the bark off instead, so that's exactly what he did. When he was finished he moved on to the water accumulation tree. This one looked remarkably like a typical tree. Andrew circled it carefully and found several breaks in the bark where copious amounts of sap gathered in sticky amber globs. The ground beneath the modified branch was a hive of insect activity and when Andrew looked closely he could see that the branch was periodically dripping little globs of a far less viscus sap into the dirt below. Andrew gathered up some large leafy underbrush and started wrapping the offending branch with it. It stuck easily and soon he had a significant portion of the branch wrapped in leaves. He placed a hand on the branch and activated his Siphon Affinity skill again confirming that this branch had similarly dense water affinity. He grabbed the branch and attempted to break it off, but where the last one snapped easily, this one simply bent. He continued to pull, making full use of his enhanced strength to wrench on the branch. He pulled it fully down and around, well beyond ninety degrees, all it did was bend. He released the branch which swung back into place, launching droplets of sticky liquid from it's unwrapped tip.

He grabbed the woodcutting axe and swung it with two hands into the crook where the branch connected to the tree. It cut halfway in and stuck. Andrew wrenched it out and a huge glob of sap came with it, creating a waterfall of thick syrupy liquid that began to pour out of the cut branch. Andrew grabbed the loosely hanging, bleeding branch with one hand and used the other to strike the same spot several more times with the axe until it was chopped free. Then he used the same flat leaves to wrap the rest of the branch up, his best efforts to stay clean still leaving his hands coated in sticky residue. The tree itself still streamed a thick, continuous flow of sap into the dirt below and Andrew took a moment to rip up the bark where the water accumulation and binding circles were inscribed before moving on.

The air branch looked about as Andrew expected. It had an oversaturated pale appearance, and the branch itself curved upwards instead of down. A light breeze passed through the forest and the branch swung along with it unnaturally. Andrew grabbed this branch and pulled. It snapped easily with a light series of pops and cracks. It broke like a regular branch, but the pale interior was filled with tiny little open pockets and crevices. It was also incredibly light. Andrew released the branch and watched as it just floated there, bobbing and weaving with the light breeze. A gust of wind blew through the forest again and Andrew had to quickly pluck the branch out of the air before it went flying away with the wind. He crammed it into the crook of some roots so it wouldn't float off and picked his way through the forest of carved trees, ignoring the mixed element circles while he debranched and de-runed the other single element trees until he had two of each: earth, air, and water infused branches. Once his collection was properly secured he moved on to the mixed element branches.