Overseer's Rise: A LitRPG Apocalypse, page 16
Sigil of Produce: Exceptional, [Teal IV]
Sigil of Healing: Remarkable, [Cerulean X]
Sigil of Learning: Exceptional, [Cerulean VII]
Sigil of Energy: Remarkable, [Teal II]
Sigil of Crafting Station: Mythic. [Teal IV]
Rory wasn’t sure how exactly he was supposed to be able to perform crafting now, but he decided to go into Zonal Configuration to check if there it had appeared there. It was there, just above the Command Centre. Like with the rest, he just needed to assign a room in the palace that would serve as their main hub for crafting. He decided he’d wait in case Ferdous had any input.
Instead, he focused on something else that was quite intriguing. The Zonal Configuration had reached Tier II.
This change had brought with it an extra slot for several of the different zones in the palace. He could assign an extra location to the Habitation, Storage, and Defence zones. Rory could see how this could be useful if they wanted to increase the palace’s capacity. More people meant more places to sleep and more things to store and more to protect.
As much as he wanted to assign things right away, he once again determined it was best to confer as a group where things would best go. He could pick spots for all of them with no small amount of confidence that the others would appreciate and understand, but he respected them enough to respect their opinion.
Thankfully, Viv arrived with Ferdous in record time. Aaron and Sylvia weren’t with her, but Dez, April, Ned, and Miles had accompanied her as well. Rory smiled. Enough of the gang was here.
“Do you really have crafting available now?” Ferdous asked with an excited shine in her eyes.
Rory had to laugh. “Yes! I’m not yet sure how it’s supposed to work, but I can assign it to a zone just like the other things we’ve got.”
“Crafting as in, we can make whatever we want with that Sigil?” Dez asked.
“Well, it would be like, we can make whatever we need ourselves instead of going out to scavenge them from wherever,” Ferdous said. “Think smithing our weapons or putting together our own tools. Or even making our bricks, mortar, and all that kind of stuff.”
“That’s so… well no offence, but that sounds complicated. And a little mundane.”
Ferdous nodded and turned to Rory. “Which is where Sigils come in, right? Magic!”
“Well.” Rory considered. “That is what I’d ideally want it to be. We shouldn’t need to smith our weapons so much as use the Sigil of Crafting Station to make them with the help of the Sigil. It’s just the exact procedure that I’m as yet unsure of. But there’s no point dithering. We find out by doing it. Any specific place you wanted to set the Sigil of Crafting in?”
Rory had directed the question at Ferdous, which made the rest of them peer curiously at her as though wondering what special expertise she possessed.
Ferdous noticed the looks, then cleared her throat and explained, “My uncle worked at a smithy. I used to visit it with him and tried my hand at it too.”
Rory nodded. “Good enough for me.”
It wasn’t anything like the experience of a real blacksmith but then, they weren’t aiming to do any real smithing here in the first place. All they needed was someone with the experience and mind of a craftsperson.
“I think any place that’s not in the way of anything should be good,” Ferdous said. “But it might really depend on what exact crafting function the Sigil provides.”
She was right. Rory decided to pick one of the ground floor rooms behind the main hall, in the direction of the palace they hadn’t used as much yet. That ought to be out-of-the-way enough. But of course, there were the other extra slots left for Habitation, Defence, and Storage.
Rory told the others about the upgraded Zonal Configuration at Tier II. “Where do you all think should the extra slots go?”
“Well, do we have some free slots now that some of the old ones got destroyed?” Dez asked.
“We do actually. Towers and most of the barricades are down. That frees up two more spots, so we have three in total for those. Same for storage. There are three slots in total there.”
“Can we turn the roof to one of the Defence slots?”
April turned to him. “Can a location be more than one zone?”
“The tower used to be both storage and defence,” Rory said. “Yes, the tower was much larger than the rooftop, but I’m going to assume other locations can hold multiple things until proven otherwise.”
“It’ll be a good thing too,” Dez added. “Because if you’re good with guns, having that close at hand will be better for defending.”
Rory went ahead and assigned the rooftop as one of the Defence slots, focusing specifically on the roof’s front area where he imagined Jerome would be positioned with any rifles, with April’s help of course.
“Now for the other slots,” he said.
After some talking, they decided that they could consider expanding into the rest of the unoccupied portions of the palace. So, Rory set the Storage slot in the large hall where they had killed all those Thundershells. It ought to be safe with the spawn point now eradicated.
Next came the other Defence slots, which they set at the gate again, and the barricades that were still standing. There was an extra one they decided to wait on until they got the dwarves’ opinion.
The extra Habitation slot went to a large room on the second floor above the crafting station. On second thought, he imagined the loud clanking and clattering of metal in typical smithies. Their crafting station wouldn’t be like that, but he still moved the Habitation spot to another room on the same floor but farther away.
“There,” Rory said, feeling rather satisfied. “Now that we’re done with the Zonal Configuration, we can focus on the Crafting Station again.”
He did so, Ferdous and the others stiffening a little in anticipation. The Sigil was strange. It seemed he could focus on it and expand it, opening a bunch of slots much like what was gifted by the Sigil of Stats. He could add more Sigils there.
“That’s very intriguing,” Viv said, after Rory had reported his finding to the others. “You think we can add different kinds of crafting Sigils to it, if there are Sigils like that?”
Rory agreed, though he wasn’t looking at her, not really. His eyes were unfocused, his mind lost in the potential for the Crafting Station. “There should be Sigils like that, yeah. But the thing is, Sigils let us perform a lot of creativity. We can make the Crafting Station function however we want it too…”
Ferdous was tapping one finger against her cheek. “Why don’t we go check it out and plan things there?”
Rory nodded. They went to where he had set the Sigil of Crafting Station as a group. The others were surprised he had set it that far back, especially Viv, who recognized the room at the end.
She stared around at the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. “This is…”
“The room with the Thundershells’ spawn point, yeah,” Rory said. “Thought I’d repurpose it and make use of it.”
“Thundershells’ spawn point?” Ferdous asked, with quite reasonable nervousness.
Dez and April took turns explaining how this chamber had once held a ton of Electrium, which had the unfortunate effect of giving birth to many Thundershells. They couldn’t have that, so after a bit of a difficult encounter, they had destroyed all the monsters and their sources.
Ferdous looked around, clearly trying to calm down her fear. “As fine a spot as any for crafting.”
Rory almost laughed at that, but decided that would be unkind to her efforts to not give in to her misgivings.
“Alright, but how would we actually do any crafting here?” April asked.
“Good question,” Dez said.
Rory considered. There was nothing here and the Sigil of Crafting Station had ultimately given them nothing except several slots to add more Sigils. Likely, crafting Sigils of some kind. That meant the method of crafting was up to them. Their imagination was likely the limit. Of course, there was the Sigil’s own words to take into account.
“From what I remember, the Sigil’s description said that the Crafting Station absorbs blueprints of objects and creates objects using materials,” Rory said. “I think we need to add a Sigil that can crate those blueprints from different objects, then another Sigil that can recreate those objects using materials we provide.”
Viv snapped her fingers. “We do have something similar to a Sigil that can use blueprints! What was that Sigil called, the one that lets you see the future of your Sigil?”
“Oh, right! It’s literally called the Sigil of Progression Blueprint. Hmm…”
“So, we’d need a similar Sigil, but for objects instead?” Ferdous asked.
“Possibly. But the thing about that Sigil is that it projects the future of a Sigil. It doesn’t recognize what a Sigil is made of or tell us how we can make one. Now that I think about it, the only thing it has in common with what we need is the name.”
“Ah, right.” Viv sighed. “Drats.”
“No, that’s a good lead, actually. I’ve got a good idea of what exactly we’re going to need here. The problem comes in regarding how we can get those things.”
Rory did his best to explain what he had come up with so far. His first idea involved some combination of the Sigils of Knowledge and Progression Blueprint to come up with a Sigil that could make exact plans about how to create any given object from scratch.
The other Sigil needed a function they had already seen in action—Trish’s Sigil of Reinforced Steel. It could make certain shapes at her behest. What they needed was a Sigil that could follow the original blueprint the first Sigil created, then follow the same procedure of the Sigil of Reinforced Steel to manifest the object into being.
There was going to have to be a lot of complexity involved, according to Ferdous and Viv. Trish made simple objects, after all. If they wanted anything more complex than a simple axe or a spear, they would need to add more conditions and functionality.
“Do you think you can get those Sigils, Rory?” Viv asked. She looked concerned for a second, unsure of how that might even be possible.
Honestly, Rory didn’t feel much differently. But he suspected a part of that was simply being tired after the long day. “I think I need to sleep on it.”
He didn’t voice that it ought to be easier once he had reached Viridian, but at this rate, that was going to take a while. Time they didn’t have if the Misericords decided to come back sooner rather than later.
“Don’t worry,” he said, trying to instil some confidence in his voice, and by proxy, in the rest of them. “We’ll figure it out. In the meantime, we’ll be prepared and deal with anything coming our way the same way we did today.”
“Didn’t we run out of towers?” Dez asked, chuckling.
“Who needs a tower when we’ve got you?”
They all laughed at that. Rory admitted that their excitement at getting the Sigil of Crafting Station had ended in a bit of a damp squib, but he wasn’t really discouraged. Because there was a way for him to raise his Tiers faster.
He needed to focus on getting more extra Tiers using the Sigil of Quests.
Chapter 20
The next day dawned with promise, despite the lack of a sun. When Rory was woken up by Viv for his early morning watch, he found no sunlight to greet him. Instead, the sky was once more overcast, clouded over with a heavy blanket of grey. But there was no rain falling now.
No, there was only Mana.
Rory smiled as he stepped outside and felt the chill air on his face. He held out his hand, which was soon coated with tiny blue crystals. “We’ve been blessed with replenishment.”
“That we have,” Viv said.
Melvin and Angus had been on watch before it had been Rory’s turn, and before they had retired to their well-deserved rest, Viv had instructed them to wake up basically everyone else. Considering how much Mana they had burned through trying to raise their Sigils’ Tiers the other day, it was imperative that they used an all-hands-on-deck approach for the current Mana-fall.
So, Rory wasn’t the only one up at dawn. Pretty much everyone else had risen as well, doing their best to collect the Mana and hoping it kept on falling from the sky.
It was strange to consider the portents in an overall sense. They were faced with monsters who couldn’t be killed by the use of Sigils. At least, not directly. Yet, here they were, being gifted with more Mana, something they solely needed to power their Sigils.
It seemed a strange, cruel joke. What was Alex up to if they were even in charge of the war now?
“Rory,” someone called from behind.
He turned to see Allen bringing in the walky-talky with groggy eyes, and his free hand clamped over his mouth as he tried to stifle his yawn. “Thanks, Allen.”
“No proooooo—” Allen snapped his mouth shut for a second after another big yawn. “No problem.”
Rory grinned at him. “Stayed up late last night?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he muttered.
Chuckling, Rory waved him off and picked up the call. The Sigil of Calling had been blinking all the while, indicating a rather relentless caller.
“Hello,” Rory said.
“Rory?” It was Hakim. “Are you and your people alright?”
“Uh, yes, we’re all fine. Good to hear from you all. I’m guessing you’ve heard most of what happened from the other Homeworlders.”
“I know of your help in rescuing our fellows, yes. We are quite grateful for it. However, I do wish to know when you will allow them to return.”
“I’m not holding anyone back, Hakim. It’s just not safe out there right now with all those Misericords. We’re trying to come up with a way to fight them, and once that gets going, I think we can equip your Homeworlders and then you can all reunite.”
“Yes. I heard of that as well. But it also sounds as though you can’t make what you planned, can you?”
Rory hesitated a moment before answering. “I know a way I can get it, but… it’s going to take me a little while.”
“I see. Well, this call was mostly to inform you that we are sending a party to retrieve the ones who are stranded at your palace.”
“Another one? The last one you sent—”
“We’ve learned from our mistakes, and we’ve learned what exactly works against this new breed of monsters. We will be much better prepared to deal with them. Trust me. We’ve been going over many methods. Rest assured that there won’t be another fiasco for you to rescue us from.”
“What exactly have you learned?”
“Regular weapons. Sigils that can harm indirectly. Those are the things that will work against the Misericords. Thankfully, we are well-stocked with both.”
Rory frowned. “Oh? That’s good. Do you mind sharing some, in an appropriate deal, of course?”
“We can certainly discuss when we arrive.”
They cut off the call. There was something about the general feeling from the call that had bothered him, something left unsaid by Hakim. It had been unmistakeable, though, that he didn’t approve of the Homeworlders staying at the palace.
Rory decided to put it out of his mind and focus on more Sigil Weaving. By midmorning, they had collected enough Mana to take their coffers up to 30,000 again. They had selected one of the rooms in the back as their new storage space. It was a slightly longer trip than the tower, but they had to make do with the circumstances.
Thankfully, no more Misericords attacked. Rory had to wonder, distantly, if they had dealt a significant blow to the monsters’ population.
With the lack of that threat, they were able to calmly focus on raising the Tiers of their own Sigils. Rory helped Viv take her Omnipresent Thunderclaw to Teal IV, before crossing into Teal V. Dez’s Chthonic Inferno, Miles’s Stormfire, Trish’s Reinforced Steel, Allen’s Wooden Gargoyle, and even Arie’s Portals received similar treatments.
By the time they decided to pause for lunch, Rory had raised his Weaving to Teal V. Another hard few hours of work, and only one Tier raised. It was looking less and less effective the more time went on.
They got a very curious visitor when it was time for lunch, however. Rory was happy to stop eating and greet a returning Truck into their midst.
Well, not exactly into their midst. The talking Otherworlder donkey got shy whenever he saw new people, which was quite at odds with his personality. It was like seeing a monster truck trying to hide from a bunch of SUVs in the parking lot.
“Ho there, dear man,” Truck said as Rory approached him at the corner of the gate. “How goes?”
Rory smiled at the donkey. He looked much the same as ever, with his long ears and white snout. “Hey there. Been a while. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon.”
Truck eyed him. “You speak as if you had other visitors in mind.”
“I did, actually!”
“Ah. You must tell me all about your amazing endeavours. I regret not staying to witness your greatness in action.”
“Please. I don’t blame you for running away when the Corebeast came, but some sort of heads-up would have been appreciated.”
He was not about to let Truck off the hook for disappearing when the Corebeast had threatened to destroy everything. Just because the donkey could go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted, didn’t make it a right decision.
Unfortunately, Truck didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with it. “Ah, yes. I am certainly pleasantly surprised to see that you survived.” He looked past Rory and frowned at the state of the courtyard and the palace’s lack of a tower. “Though I see there has been some… redecorating.”
“Forced redecorating, yes. But it’s not from the Corebeast’s attack.”
“Oh?”
“No, we were dealing other monsters. Ever heard of Misericords?”
Trish stiffened, his eyes widening. “Tell me that is not true.”
“Why? What’s wrong with them?”
