Eric frowned, taking a good hard look at what had been a well-made fortress, comprised of cemented stone blocks and giant wooden support beams. Now its defensive properties had been utterly compromised, with one entire wall shattered to rubble, the floors inside having collapsed in a great big pile of wooden beams, shattered furniture, and stone.

Eric rubbed his chin thoughtfully, ignoring Ron’s snort as he casually walked to the three other walls of the keep, pressing his weight against each one and closing his eyes.

“What does this fool think he’s doing? He can’t be older than what, eighteen? He sure as fuck isn’t any structural engineer,” Ron said.

“Who gives a fuck? At least he’s doing something,” Yuki snapped. “As opposed to just sitting here, eating his grub, and insulting him behind his back.”

“What the hell’s your problem, Yuki!?” Ron glared at the shorter woman. “It’s this kid’s fault that we’re all in this mess in the first place!”

“Ron does have a point,” Richard gently noted. “I’m not saying Eric meant for any of this to happen, mind you. But Ron does have every right to be angry. We all do. And we should never be letting an outsider get between us, no matter how sympathetic we might feel to someone who was set up to die.”

Eric ignored the awkward embarrassment he felt, having never wanted to be in this position, hating the fact that he had been forced to play the bad guy just to survive, exactly as his enemies had wanted. So he kept all his focus on the ruined building, pretending that his Perception didn’t allow him to hear every word they were saying even as he scouted the farmost wall of the keep, his Mad Bomber perks, ironically enough, letting him know that the three still upright walls were perfectly sound and in no danger at all of collapsing. In fact, there were no weak points that a carefully shaped charge could exploit, surprisingly enough. Just one badly mangled wall, and two inner floors that had been made of nothing but thin light planks to minimize structural stress that had utterly collapsed.

He frowned in thought, no longer having to fake having all his attention on the problems before them, noting the tons of shattered stone, support beams, and minotaur corpses they’d best take care of soon, because he could already hear the distant squeals of scavenger rats.

Despite knowing that it would stretch his cover, Eric decided to take full advantage of his Extradimensional Storage Space that had been big enough to claim multiple giant lizards when he had been a mere level nine. And now, already more than halfway to Level 55 as a Primal Adventurer, he had an ES Space that had once stored half a trillion credits worth of gold. So he had all the space he could possibly need, and more than enough potency from his most recent kills to push Flesh Sculptor to the absolute limit.

“Hey, you guys care what we do with the internals of this fort?” Eric said, catching their attention as they continued to sit and chat at his table as he waved toward the pile of planks and rubble that comprised the gutted innards of the fort.

Richard exchanged a half-smile with his companions. “Nope, the sight’s yours, do whatever you like. You’ve just been elected our group’s engineer for the day. So feel free to knock yourself out.”

“You got an hour,” Ron said, no humor at all in his voice. “Assuming shit doesn’t come heading this way a fuck ton sooner. Once you’re done fucking around, then we’ll get to serious work, and you’ll be putting using those muscles of yours to put those blocks where we tell you and maybe we’ll actually have shelter safe enough to rest our heads, for at least a few hours.”

“Great!” Eric said, and immediately got to work. The hard part was already halfway done as far as he was concerned, having spent a good twenty minutes just studying the sight and the scattered rubble, not to mention getting a sense of the potency trapped within the level 60 minotaur frames he had claimed. Massive corpses that were far stronger and resilient that the greater lizard beasts he had once hunted down in the tunnels under New Gilton.

It took hardly any time at all to actually gather up the rubble and the gutted innards of the keep, before following up with the pair of minotaurs just beyond.

You have successfully claimed 5 tons of stone rubble!

You have successfully claimed 2 additional Minotaur bodies.

You have successfully claimed multiple arrows tipped with eternal flame!

He smirked at the last, even as the air rang with the surprised whispers of his boon companions.

“Did you fucking see that, Ron?”

“Yeah, Emily, I saw.”

“That wasn’t a couple of rocks or one of our logs carted with the extra storage space backpack that cost us a fucking fortune. That boy just claimed the entire fucking innards of our building. How?”

“By being foolish enough to invest an entire node on his ES Space,” Steve Explained. “No doubt he has a skill for it, and can even hit Journeyman status and invest perk points in it. I mean… obviously he is, because he also claimed all the minotaur bodies... and why do I no longer feel like it was quite as stupid as I first thought it was?”

“Because it wasn’t a stupid move at all?” Jack opined. “I mean, just think about all the doors that will be open to this kid as a shipper or courier… or in the construction field, able to store ten tons of rubble and corpses like it’s nothing. And we now have an entire world’s worth of cities that are in need of serious renovation.”

Yuki chuckled softly. “I’ll bet that’s not all he can do with his ES Space.”

“Oh, you mean like smuggling gold? No, there are hard limits,” Steven noted. “That’s one of the reasons why gold’s so valuable. It’s incredibly useful for high powered wizards far beyond what we have here on Earth, and it can’t be stored in ES spaces without rupturing them.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of our own play. You think Bronze Tier artifacts will be a problem in a personal ES Space?”

“Shit, Yuki. That’s a good point,” Jack noted. “And didn’t he imply he once worked with an outfit or something? Our dream of a heist might be right up his alley.”

“Maybe. But sure as shit, we got no shot of getting him on board with Ron’s attitude.”

Eric smiled to himself, pretending to be completely oblivious to their conversation as well as Ron and Richard’s murmuring as he closed his eyes and visualized exactly what he needed to happen, sensing that he was pushing his Flesh Sculptor skill in profound ways with his mental exercise alone. Or perhaps it wasn’t all in his head, since he really was forming the shape he needed, infused with the essence of Dominion, or at least his profound understanding of that concept, not caring a lick that he was about to invest a full tenth of the experience he had already earned down here with this single formation.

Yet as excited as he was to bring his construction to life, it was dampened considerably by the words he couldn’t help overhearing.

“Please, Richard. We need to get out of here! We’ve already been down here for far too long. I’m starting to feel really claustrophobic, and I can’t pierce a single one of those fuckers with my ice bolts!” Elisa’s voice was raw with barely suppressed emotion.

“Don’t say that, sweetheart. Your ice slicks allow you to help us control the flow of battle. I mean, how many charges have you managed to stop with that and all your other abilities? Combine that with our bulwark, and we’re golden, you know that!” Richard’s voice was a soothing counterpoint to Emily’s increasingly anxious tone.

“Yeah, I know, babe. It’s just that before, I knew we could leave whenever I wanted… and how often have you guys put up with me calling an early end to the day?” She gave a helpless little laugh. “I didn’t mind delving before. It was an honest to god sweet fucking rush. But that’s because I could always count on seeing the sunlight whenever I wanted it. Needed it. Even when our fort was a hundred percent, and we all had our own rooms, even with all the lights on… you know I hated sleeping down here. And now? Fuck, Rich, we could be stuck down here wandering this endless labyrinth til we die of old age!”

“It will be okay, sweetheart, I promise,” Richard soothed. “You know about Yuki’s gifts. How frustrated she is that she’s never had the opportunity to use that node that will one day make all the difference, for all of us. Right now, she just needs time for her disorientation to pass and to adjust her bearings after we were all ripped from our moorings. So for now, we just gotta take things nice and slow. First we’ll fix up the fort, and you can have your own private room where you can rest and meditate with all the magic lights you like, and I was even able to get you a present before things went completely to shit, see?”

“The Silver Queen’s Adventures? Fuck, I love this series.”

“I know, babe,” Rich said with a soft chuckle. “And you don’t want to know what I had to go through to get the entire series. I was saving it for when we got out of here to celebrate our anniversary. But, all things considered...”

“No, this is great. Perfect! Thank you, love!”

Eric grinned despite himself, wondering if they had any idea who played the series heroine when it hit the big screen. In fact, Eric was almost positive that the series, along with absolutely dozens of others that had been littering most fantasy book shelves in the libraries and bookstores of America and most of Europe until the day society collapsed, had been soft propaganda sponsored by his mother. The official story was that she had been playing the odds that at least one of those books would hit the bestseller lists, green-lighting the possibility of a movie, for which Elonia would be absolutely perfect for the role. Just like she would the other half-dozen best-selling series that no one had time to convert to Zon-Flix or big-screen formats before the world went to absolute shit, long before his mother had predicted.

His bemused smile turned to a disgusted shudder, once more recalling his mother’s final glance when that awful dreadful collar had snapped about his neck.

“They were all in on it,” he muttered to himself. “The gnolls, orcs, goblins, and mother fucking dearest. They all knew what was going down. And each and every one of them are happy to gamble with us all, like pieces on a fucking chess board. While they all do their damnedest to snatch up yet another freshly blossomed world for their galactic fucking empires.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat recalling how brightly his mother’s eyes had lit up when she had claimed that fragile little girl that had looked just like Elonia, just like her… from the goblin smelting pit she had been hours away from being sacrificed to. He told himself that he was genuinely happy he had played the paladin far better than the dozen or so newly ascended children sworn to Aurlia’s service likely ever would, and his heart warmed at the thought of that child, like 70,000 others delivered from horrific nightmare to be rescued by people who would genuinely love and care for them. They deserved that.

Each and every one.

He just hated the fact that his mother had never once looked at him with eyes as soft as those she had favored the little girl with.

He squeezed shut his eyes, refusing to shed bitter tears, forcing himself to accept just what her final stare had meant.

Bitter regret overladen by fierce satisfaction.

Like a professional who had the tough call: trading a beloved pawn for a future queen.

“Eric? How are you, man?”

Eric forced his eyes open to behold Richard giving him a concerned look immediately replaced with his trademark smile. “I have to say, you’ve done an absolutely fantastic job cleaning up the rubble. That’s going to be incredibly helpful to us, so it’s very much appreciated. Now I don’t suppose you can retrieve the blocks and the wooden beams from your storage piecemeal? If so, me and the gang will get to work putting it all in place before Elonia binds it all in eternal ice.”

“Which she’ll have to cast thrice a day, tapping into her reserves considerably and limiting her ability to control the flow of battle with her ice, because we don’t have any fucking cement,” Ron sniped, still glaring Eric’s way.

“How long will it take to put together that way?” Eric curiously asked.

“A fucking week, and that’s if we’re busting our asses the entire time, and not getting ambushed by minotaurs!” Ron snapped, Emily paling as her supposed bodyguard made it clear just how dire their situation truly was.

Which was of course the very moment that Jack gave a desperate cry. “Minotaurs! More minotaurs are coming! Three hot pockets coming our way!”

Surprisingly, Elaine wasn’t the only one who blanched at that dire bit of news.

“Fuck, I’m out of juice! I need at least an hour’s fucking sleep. My power-move pool is tapped!” Ron said in a ragged whisper.

Richard’s jaw clenched, his haunted gaze making it clear he was in equal straights.

Jack’s voice increased in pitch. “Make that four!”

Elaine trembled. “Rich, all I got is ice! I can boost our fort but it’s broken… I can make the ground slick as fuck so they crash, but you know my ice spears don’t to shit! They’re too high level. I’m not skilled enough to pierce their vitality wards!”

“Good thing we got Steve,” Richard declared, putting a hand on his far more slender companion’s shoulder. “Feeling up to pulling off a miracle, my friend?”

“Uh… yeah. About that. Eric’s sandwich helped a fuck ton, but I still need some fucking rest before I can safely cast my go-to spell again without risking disaster… or shriveling myself to a smoking corpse.” His humorless chuckle turned to an anxious grimace. “Fuck, Rich! You all saw how close my last to obsidian balls came to skewing right off target. It was just as hard pushing the dark from tapping into my sweet life force.”

“Well you won’t have any life force, if those minotaurs close!” A now panicked Ron roared, glaring at a shrinking Steve.

“Fuck! Will you guys get your shit together?” Jack shouted as he raced back to them, a wild look in his eyes as he summoned javelin and shield once more. “What the fuck! Why are you all standing around here for? Why aren’t you idiots getting into position?”

“Because they’re tapped,” Eric said, cutting off a now glaring Ron. “It looks like it’s just you and me for this round, buddy.”

Jack blinked, eyes widening. “Shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I KNEW doubling up my nodes and hyper-specializing in the one true power this fucked up orc class gives me, burning my level up points to get an absolutely fucking absurd Epic tier rank, was the only way to go. Gimp myself? Fucking bullshit. It’s saved my bacon more times than I can count! Almost as much as declaring myself your squire and spending another priceless node on getting access to your ‘leet Shield perks, Rich. Three fucking nodes invested in javelin and shield. Because I knew we’d need it! But I can’t handle more than one at a time. You all know that!”

Yuki slipped free of shadow, glaring at them all. “Are you fools done ranting? We got four assholes coming our way! Someone’s gotta serve as tank… Elaine you have to at least put up an ice slick! I can flank and hamstring them, but I’ll be a fucking pancake, trying to stop their charge!”

“Guys, you’re missing something very fucking important!” Steve squawked in an oddly strained voice.

“And what would that be?” Richard asked, his voice cracking with tension.

Steve flashed a strained smile. “Our necro-tower’s fully operational once more.”

Eric did his best to tune out his party’s growing panic, all his attention carefully focused on the problem at hand.

Scholarship check: Successful!

Rituals of Summoning and Binding skillcheck: Successful!

Flesh Sculptor performed with FLAWLESS execution!

You have successfully repaired and enhanced: Flawed Fortress.

Eric couldn’t wipe the grin off his face when he took a good look at the improved fort, grateful to see that the structure he had visualized in his mind had been executed perfectly. Because he already knew just how effective even Level 15 beast flesh, bones, and hide was in terms of structural stability. It had already proven to more than capable of hosting an entire battery of 3000 pound long guns on multiple occassions. So why not serve as the equivalent of mortar and support struts for a damaged fortress, when he already had all the stone blocks used in the original construction? And even if a few blocks had been shattered, certainly his undead minotaur glue… like horse glue, only a thousand times stronger, was a hell of a lot better than any half-assed cement.

Best of all, he had plenty of bone left over to both reinforce the external structure with struts, as well as put up a row of nasty looking bone spurs all along the wall of the keep he had repaired, just at charging minotaur head height, which would hopefully discourage those bastards from charging right into the reinforced wall, if they had had any inclinations of doing so.

Even better, when he closed his eyes and took a quick look at his Interface, it was clear that his latest stunt had raised his Flesh Sculptor skill to just a hair under Rank 25. Considering that he had just used his ability in unorthodox ways in a high pressure situation, even investing a bit of his own experience point pool into the crafting, he thought the skill growth made perfect sense.

“What the hell are you talking about, Steve?” Yuki snapped, the strain getting to her as death rapidly approached. Then she turned, actually looking where Steve was frantically pointing.

Her eyes widened. “Oh fuck, are those bone spurs jutting out of the north face?”

Emily whistled. “Bone everything. The entire face is covered in… wow, is that minotaur hide? And what are those red glowing runes all over the wall?”

“Runes for Resilience, Dominion, and Strength,” Eric explained. “I just depleted a shit-ton of Potency, Mana, and temporary Soul Reserves reinforcing the North face and the floors inside, so if you want to dash into an actual shelter, I’d highly recommend you do so right now!”

Steve’s eyes widened. “Are those bone spurs covered in your blood?”

Eric nodded. “The tips? Yes.”

“Um… why?”

Eric grinned and flexed his will once more.

Your Crimson Orb is now visible to those who have the eye to see.

You have successfully bound your essence to: 30 bone spur tips!

Bone Spur tips now blaze at 4000 F!

Heat Surge is now Rank 13!

You have depleted your Soul Reserves by (30)(1/2) = 15 points. You have 50 points remaining before you are fully depleted and must rest for a minimum of: one hour to fully recover.

Eric smiled. “Because our horned friends had it way too easy before, appearing from the tunnels with a perfect run-up to charge headfirst into our fort. Now they won’t find a head-on charge to be quite so effective at bringing down your entire fort.”

Richard’s eyes were wide with wonder, a relieved smile lightening his features. “This is absolutely fantastic! Thank you, Eric. This is a game-changer!”

“It bows out,” Ron said with a scowl. “Clearly our boy’s not an architect, there are no straight lines to save his life.”

Eric raised a polite eyebrow. “It’s deliberately convex to spread and dissipate the force of a level 60 charging bull without buckling under the strain, much like a roman arch.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t do shit for the other walls.”

Eric blinked, gazing at the man in disbelief. “Let me get this straight. I actually manage to make a wall that could save your sorry hide, at considerable cost to myself, in a tiny fraction of the time you were hoping for, right before our new friends charge in for the kill… and you’re bitching because it doesn’t match the other walls?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth!” Ron snapped. “There’s a reason why military commanders favored box structures for thousands of years, and if you’re too much of an idiot to understand why, now’s not the time to educate you! We got to get in position and pray we can push those fuckers away before they get it into their minds to flank our one ridiculously reinforced wall and hit us where it hurts, which is everywhere else, since you couldn’t do your job. So shut the fuck up and get into position, new blood!”

Eric glared hotly at Ron’s contemptuous gaze. It was all he could do to rein in his furious outrage at the man going out of his way to disparage and belittle every single damn thing he did to help the party.

It was almost like the man was looking for a reason to hate on Eric and make him look like a clueless fool. Like nothing would make Ron happier than if Eric actually took a swing at him. That hostility made absolutely no sense, particularly when they should be working together, showing at least basic respect for one another, all the more so when they could all sense bellowing death rapidly closing in.

That’s when Eric stole a glance at everyone else staring so intently at them both as they stood right outside the thick door of reinforced flesh and bone that Eric had made by his will alone.

“Well, get moving! You got a problem with that, boy?”

Eric’s fists clenched... before sensing the entire party’s sharp discomfort with the sudden tension rapidly heating up between Eric and Ron.

Yuki cursed softly under her breath. Emily whimpered softly.

Eric reined in his temper as best he could, slowly shaking his head. “No, Ron. No problem at all.”

He gave Richard a meaning-filled glance as his bone door opening effortlessly at his silent command as he lead the way inside, his thoughts racing as he tried to figure out Ron’s game. Because if his Social Perception, Nose For A Bad Deal, and What The Other Party Wants perks were anything to go by, the man despised him, and would love nothing more than to tarnish Eric’s image in the eyes of everyone else. The asshole was holding a dozen unseen cards close to his chest, and none of them were good. But if Eric did anything but play softball with the man, he was the one who would be branded a troublemaker and kicked out of the group.