Chương 11: First Real Project

Thomas watched Chloe stand frozen over the workbench, her hands still, which was rather uncommon for her. The three cores sat where she had placed them, lined up on the workbench like dark stones pulled from a river no one should have stepped in. Last night they had been proof of victory. Trophies, maybe, if Thomas were willing to admit there had been a thin, ugly satisfaction in seeing something left behind after the barghests died. Dust covered the room like an old blanket.

Behind them, plastic drawers carried old labels written in black marker—the usual supply items: extension cords, spare bulbs, and various fittings. One drawer had been corrected three times and now read only MISC, which Thomas felt probably held most of civilisation. He could feel the cores from across the room where Chloe had them arranged. Every few seconds, something inside them seemed to gather itself and settle again, like a sleeping animal remembering it had teeth.

Chloe kept both hands on the edge of the bench.

"Nobody touch them yet," she said. Will, still by the door, gave a low grunt.

"Wasn't planning to." Thomas looked at his own hands and realised he was closer than he meant to be. He drew them back and tucked one into his jacket pocket, fingers closing around the cold, rough shape of the spearhead. Chloe saw the movement, but her eyes were on the cores. Thomas was looking for danger. She was looking for ways to use the core, which worried her more.

"Right," she said after a while. She pulled herself away from the bench and began taking inventory. She opened drawers, checked shelves, and made piles of wire, tape, small bulbs, a cracked plastic case from one of the portable work lights, two switches, a tin of screws, and a million other small things Thomas did not know the names for. Will watched the windows while she worked. Every so often his gaze moved to the bench, then back to the yard outside. The torch bracket rested in his hands like a club.

He had placed himself where he could put his shoulder into the workshop door if something tried to come through. Thomas should have been doing something equally useful. Instead, he stood near the side wall and tried to decide whether his body felt strange because he had levelled or because he had not slept more than a few broken hours in a stone chapel full of frightened people. The apocalypse was new to them all, and he needed to adjust to what the System had provided.

He couldn't avoid the new reality by refusing to look. He reached inside himself and manually pulled up the status screen for the second time ever. ┌──────────────────────────────┐ Thomas Wren Level: 5 Class: Historical Summoner — Gold Physical Attributes: Strength: 11 Agility: 8 Vitality: 13 Mental Attributes: Intellect: 18 Will: 20 Presence: 16 Unassigned Attributes: 21 Skills: Bond, Summon Echo, Study, Mana Control Titles: None └──────────────────────────────┘ Thomas stared at it for longer than he meant to.

Level Five. That alone should have held his attention, but his eyes kept moving past it to the same number. Will: 20. He felt different, a stark difference between eighteen in a stat and twenty. He hadn't noticed it properly last night, with mana exhaustion flowing through him. But now, with the workshop quiet except for Chloe shifting tools and the occasional creak from the old shelving, he could feel it. Fear had not gone away. Anyone who said that clearly had not seen what a redcap did to Gareth's arm.

Fear still sat in him with the same cold little hands as before. But it had less reach. It made his mana feel more solid and stable, less likely to dissolve away under pressure. Thomas looked at Intellect. Eighteen. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, which did nothing except remind him his hands were dirty. Twenty-one unassigned points sat at the bottom of the screen. In a normal game, he would have hoarded them for a build, waited for a spreadsheet, or asked around online for advice.

But there were no guides for being hunted through a castle by old stories, not with the apocalypse having just happened. He put two points into Intellect and for a second, the workshop stayed the same. Chloe had spread the parts across the bench. The cores still sat in a neat row with everything else piled up around them. Then Thomas looked at the bench again and understood the piles differently. Chloe had made categories, not clutter. Wire near wire. Glass near ceramic.

Switches set away from anything already scorched. The broken work light lay open beside its reflector, the pieces arranged in the order she had taken them out. It was not tidy, exactly. Chloe did not seem like someone who respected tidiness. Thomas had seen the same thing in reverse in archaeology. A few scraps of metal, a stain in soil, a line of postholes, and people tried to rebuild the shape of a room that was gone. Chloe was doing it forward.

She had fragments of something that did not exist yet, and she was trying to force the missing shape into being. His thoughts had more structure, like the mind palace he had watched in a video before. Recall and pattern recognition came to him more easily. The same worries were there: cores, spearhead, redcaps, gate, Gareth's blood, Priya's orders, the hollow under his sternum. They no longer crowded together until one pushed another out of reach. He could hold more of them at once.

"Oh," he said. Chloe glanced up.

"That sounded like a discovery." Thomas looked at the cores, then at the ugly little piles of parts around them.

"I think so," he said.

"Mostly it means I have better questions." His head felt less crowded. That was the neatest way to put it. Thomas looked back at the screen. Presence, sixteen. That one bothered him because he did not know what it meant. Strength was obvious. Agility had been humiliatingly obvious every time he stumbled. Vitality was the difference between standing and becoming Priya's problem again. Intellect made sense, at least in outline. Will had announced itself by refusing to let fear take the whole room.

Presence sounded like something actors, politicians, and people who enjoyed group projects had. Thomas didn't enjoy group projects, but they needed to know what the stat did, so he spent a single point to increase it. The change was smaller than Intellect, harder to discern. The room remained the same, but Thomas became more aware of the space he occupied within it. Not how his body stood there. This was not balance or strength.

It was the shape of his attention, the faint pressure of his mana, the way the spearhead in his pocket answered when he noticed it. Before, reaching for that bond had felt like finding a thread in the dark. Now the thread felt closer to his hand. He looked at Chloe. She hadn't reacted. Will hadn't either. So not charm, then. Not some awful magical version of being popular. Good. Thomas focused on the spearhead without summoning the spear. The old iron sat cold in his pocket, but the bond around it felt clearer.

Not stronger exactly. Better defined. As if his intent had stopped mumbling.

"Oh," he muttered. Chloe looked up.

"Another one?"

"Presence." Her eyes narrowed.

"And?"

"I think it has something to do with making yourself understood more clearly. My bond feels more alive than before." Chloe stared at him for a second, then pointed the screwdriver at the cores.

"That sounds useful. Also worrying. Mostly useful." Thomas looked at the number again. If twenty was a threshold, leaving it there felt like stopping halfway across a bridge because the first plank had held. He spent three more points and Presence reached twenty. The System appeared before he could look away. ┌──────────────────────────────┐ World First conditions met. You are the first integrated human on Earth to reach the pre-mana human maximum in all mental attributes.

Title acquired: Awakened Mind All Mental Attributes increased by 5. └──────────────────────────────┘ Thomas forgot the workshop for half a breath. His mind widened again, but this time it did not stop at thought. Fear drew farther back. The spearhead in his pocket came into focus so sharply it felt less like an object and more like a promise waiting to be shaped. The tired mana under his sternum settled, easier to control than ever. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent.

Report it. The room seemed aware of his attention. That was the only way he could think of it, and even then the thought felt wrong. The room was not alive. The tools did not care. The cores were not his. But the difference between noticing something and reaching for it had become clearer. The cores pulsed. All three at once. Chloe's hand paused over the workbench.

"What did you just do?" Thomas looked at the dark stones. Their pulse had already fallen out of sync again, low and hungry and waiting.

"I got a title." Chloe closed her eyes.

"Of course you did." Will looked between them.

"That's good?"

"Probably," Thomas said. Will sighed.

"That word's getting a lot of use today."

"It has a broad range." Chloe opened her eyes and pointed the screwdriver at him.

"What title?"

"Awakened Mind." She was quiet for a second.

"Well, what does it do?"

"Honestly, it feels like the rich get richer. I am supposedly the first to reach the pre-mana human maximum in all mental attributes, so it gave me more attributes."

"Pre-mana human maximum? So the smartest person ever could have started with a twenty in intelligence. Maybe that means stats are trainable. No one would be born with twenty strength, but if that was the maximum, maybe people are walking around with fifteen or sixteen already." Will looked over from his position by the door.

"Yeah. I started with sixteen Strength. Twenty now." Thomas looked over his physical attributes. Strength eleven. Agility eight. Vitality thirteen. The Agility number was insulting. Will started with sixteen Strength and a measly eight Agility. That had to be less than average. Then he remembered stumbling on the stairs, swinging too late, and seeing something move and waiting for his body to catch up. He remembered the redcap's hooked blade coming in and knowing, with perfect useless clarity, that he was too slow.

He put one point into Strength. Eight into Agility. Three into Vitality. The change was explosive. Thomas's hand clenched around the edge of the shelf. His knees locked. Heat ran through him in a hard wave, down his spine and into both legs. His ribs pulled beneath the bandage. The half-healed places Priya had worked on tightened, then loosened. His ankle prickled where the mana fire had bitten him. For one ugly second, he thought he was going to fall sideways into a stack of plastic bins labelled CABLES.

Thomas stood very still until the room stopped shifting around his sense of his own body. His body had adjusted its new margins. He knew where his weight sat. He knew how much pressure he had in his right foot, and that he had been avoiding his left side without noticing. His shoulders rose, then dropped. His breath deepened before the bandage reminded him not to get ambitious. Will looked him over from the doorway.

"You were favouring your left side before," he said. Thomas glanced down.

"Was I?"

"Aye." Will did not add anything else. He just watched Thomas take one careful step and gave the smallest nod, as if a fence post had been set straighter. Thomas tested another step. His foot went where he wanted. No lurch. No clumsy correction. He was still tired, injured, and wearing clothes that smelled like smoke and old fear, but the delay between choice and movement had shrunk.

"I put Intellect to twenty first," he said.

"Then Presence as well. That gave me the title. Then Agility and Vitality up so I don't feel as clumsy and fragile." Chloe stared at him for a moment.

"You spent points while standing next to a shelf of rusted brackets and monster batteries."

"I was not standing next to the monster batteries."

"You can feel them from there, can't you?" Thomas did not answer fast enough.

"Brilliant," she said, and turned back to the bench.

"Nobody in this room is allowed to criticise my experimental procedures." Will made another low sound. This one was definitely amusement, though he tried to bury it. Thomas let the status fade. He knew the new shape well enough. Strength twelve. Agility sixteen. Vitality sixteen. All of the mental attributes at twenty-five. Three unassigned. Three still felt like a safety line. Thin, but real. Enough to react if something awful happened, or make a choice later when he understood more. Understanding.

That word hooked into him harder than he expected. His class was not called Soldier. It was not called Spearman, no matter how much of his survival currently depended on a rusty bit of iron and his ability to make it golden. It was Historical Summoner. The System had given him a spear because he had touched a spearhead and had known just enough for the magic to fill the missing parts. Thomas looked around the workshop.

Chloe had found a cracked plastic tray and was using it to keep the smallest parts from rolling away. Behind her, beneath a stack of inspection forms, sat a maintenance log with a bent cover. He pulled it free. The first half was full of notes in Gareth's hand, and at least two other people's, but Thomas found the blank pages at the back.

"Can I take these?" Chloe had a wire between her teeth and only raised one eyebrow. Will said, "If Gareth complains, tell him the world ended."

"Strong argument." Thomas found a pen clipped inside the front cover. He wrote slowly at first, because the words felt ridiculous until they didn't. Spearhead / Bond / Summon Echo A few lines beneath that: Mana Control Then: Known Creatures Monster Weaknesses Beast Cores Mana-Affected Materials He paused, tapped the pen against the page, and added: Questions That May Kill Us Later Chloe glanced over.

"That last section is going to fill up."

"I know."

"Start a second volume."

"Let's survive the first." She gave him a look that was tired enough to be almost soft, then went back to stripping the wire with a pair of old cutters. Thomas began with what he knew. The spearhead was iron. Old iron. Found near Scolland's Hall, probably late eleventh or twelfth century, though he needed to confirm that with something better than memory and terror. Bond had attached to the surviving object, but Summon Echo reconstructed more than the object itself. Shaft. Balance. Weight.

A weapon implied by the fragment. He wrote that last part down. Then he underlined implied, because that felt important in a way he could not yet explain. Real iron had mattered against the redcaps. The golden spear alone had hurt them, but not enough. Placing the true spearhead at the summoned tip gave his strikes the staying power to make them fear him. He wrote that too. Across the bench, Chloe began the first real test.

She used pliers to move the nearest core into a little nest made from a metal clamp, two ceramic fuse pieces, and enough tape to offend any qualified electrician. The core sat there, doing nothing before giving a faint pulse. She touched the outer metal clamp with the screwdriver. The hum that rose from the bench was low and unpleasant. Not loud. Not even dramatic. It went through Thomas's teeth anyway. Chloe withdrew the screwdriver. The hum stopped.

"Path," she murmured. Thomas wrote: A conductive path causes a response. Hum through metal. Chloe tried again, this time with a short length of copper wire between the clamp and a dead bulb fitting. The wire heated so fast Thomas smelled it before he processed the colour. Chloe jerked back. The wire sagged, red along a small section, then dulled. Will took half a step forward. Chloe held up one hand.

"I'm fine." She blew a loose strand of hair away from her face and stared at the blackened wire.

"Too much." Thomas wrote: copper carries too fast? Heat. Surge. He hesitated, then added: barghest movement = lunging. Core output may match. That sounded stupid on the page. Then it didn't. The creature had not flowed. It crouched, waited, and sprang. The core's mana did the same thing when given a chance. Chloe tried a bulb next. Not the same one. She had already decided the first wire was a bad path and rebuilt the holder with a steel bracket, more ceramic, and a bit of glass from a cracked cover.

The bulb flashed white-blue and died with a tiny pop. Everyone froze. Nothing came through the door. No claws scratched the wall. No laughing redcap answered from outside. Chloe exhaled through her nose.

"Well," she said.

"It can release the mana."

"That was a release?" Thomas asked.

"Honestly, it was a tantrum." Thomas wrote that down, then crossed out 'tantrum' and wrote 'uncontrolled surge'. Chloe looked over his notes, laughing.

"Coward."

"I'm building a useful academic record."

"You're taking the poetry out of dangerous nonsense."

"Historians do that."

"No wonder everyone fights over the past." Thomas almost smiled, happy that she got the offhand joke. The work settled into a pattern after that, though pattern was a generous word for singed tape and muttered complaints. Chloe changed one thing at a time. More glass. Less copper. Different pressure from the clamp—ceramic between the core and metal. Metal touching only one side. Metal touching two sides. A switch was added to the path; it clicked once, stuck, and had to be pried open with the screwdriver.

No one said anything during that last part. Thomas simply wrote: mechanical switch unreliable after mana contact. The workshop grew warmer around the bench, and Will opened the door a few centimetres without turning his back to the room to let cold air slip in. Chloe glanced up.

"Thank you." He nodded once. That was how Will helped. He didn't talk or gain sudden expertise. He watched what people missed while they were trying not to die by other means. Thomas added a new line under beast cores. Containment may be as important as output. His handwriting was getting smaller. The old maintenance log balanced on his knee while he sat on a low crate near the wall. He had meant to stand, but the stat change had left a strange tiredness in the bones beneath the new steadiness.

His body was still learning its own settings. Chloe rebuilt the holder again. This version used the steel bracket as a frame, ceramic wedged along the inside, two glass spacers, and a strip of tape that looked too close to the hot section for Thomas's comfort. She had scavenged the reflector from one of the portable work lights and propped it behind the core, though there was nothing yet worth reflecting. Chloe tightened one screw. Stopped. Tightened another less than half a turn. Thomas felt the pulse change.

He lifted his head. Chloe had gone completely still. The low rhythm inside the core stretched. The sharp lunge of mana did not vanish, but it slowed, dragged through the ugly little frame she had built around it. The air over the bench no longer tightened and released like a fist. It pressed outward, thin and steady. The core began to glow. Blue-black light gathered deep inside the glassy surface. It spread slowly, not like a bulb switching on but like embers waking under ash.

The reflector caught almost none of it. The light was too strange for that, too dark at its edges, but it painted Chloe's fingers and the old workbench in bruised colour. Thomas stood before he consciously decided to. Will leaned slightly away from the door, eyes fixed on the bench. Chloe's mouth parted. For once, she had no immediate comment ready. The glow held. Seconds passed. Five, then ten, as Thomas counted without meaning to. The core kept glowing.

Chloe's smile arrived slowly, dragged up through exhaustion, fear, and the knowledge that this was nowhere near safe. It did not make her look happy. It made her look alive.

"Okay," she whispered. Then the tape began to smoke. The smell reached them all at once. Hot glue and burned dust, with just a hint of metal warmed past what it had any right to do. Chloe moved fast. Too fast. She grabbed the side of the holder with her bare hand.

"Chloe," Thomas snapped. She hissed and let go, but not before the metal frame scraped sideways across the bench. The core rolled half a centimetre inside the holder, still caught between the ceramic and glass. The glow did not stop. If anything, it deepened. Will was beside her in two steps. He gently caught her wrist and turned her palm toward the light.

"Show me."

"It's fine."

"Show me." She let him look. Her palm was red across the base of the fingers. Not blistered yet, but angry. Thomas looked at the core. The holder smoked in thin lines from the tape near the bracket. The metal had darkened where Chloe touched it. Heat shimmered faintly above the frame.

"Can you stop it?" he asked. Chloe pulled her hand free from Will and reached for the switch with her other hand. She flicked it down. The glowing continued regardless, as Chloe clicked the switch again and again. The light did not flicker. The hum through the bench stayed low and steady, almost pleased with itself. Chloe stared at it. Will looked at the smoking holder.

"That going to catch?"

"Possibly," she said. Thomas opened the maintenance log to the next blank line. His pen hovered for a moment. The core glowed on, hot and stubborn, spilling dark light across the workshop bench that had been normal yesterday. Chloe's jaw tightened.

"Right," she said.

"That's going on the list of deadly questions, isn't it?"