Zehia opened her eyes.

She was in the arms of a man she didn't recognize. She looked around. There was one other person present. The Djinni.

...That's right. She'd been betrayed by Riqre and was infiltrating his lands to get her revenge. She'd had him and then...

Ah.

She'd failed.

The rest was a blur. Darkness. Falling. Rage. Blood. Flesh. And... Laila?

'Zehia.'

The voice was inside of her head.

'Laila.' She replied as she closed her eyes and leaned back. She tried to get an impression of how dangerous the unknown man and the Djinni were... but nothing happened. 'It worked.'

'What did? You seem to be lucid, but the last couple of... days? Everything is a blur. I think, yes, that's it. I tried to help you after we were ambushed and the other presence, the curse, grew stronger. What happened after that?'

'I'm not sure.' Zehia admitted. It was a mistake to show weakness, but Laila was part of her. She was literally inside of Zehia's head. And she was weaker than a child currently. Well, perhaps not. She flexed her hands and felt her claws dig into her leathery flesh.

Her body was certainly still strong, but twisted. The wrong kind of strength. Brute force, not graceful skill.

'You're hiding something.'

'Heh.' Zehia couldn't help but smile. 'Can't you just read my mind?'

'I can. A little. My Skill is how we're talking, but I don't know everything. Just what you saw and that we were both trapped by your curse.'

'My Blood Class.' Zehia opened her eyes and looked up at the man and the Djinni again. 'It's gone.'

'Really? That's great!'

"Laila? Zehia?" The man's accent was odd. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." Zehia twisted out of his arms and clumsily fell to the ground instead of elegantly landing. "It worked."

"Oh? You were aware?" He offered a hand to help her up, but Zehia didn't take it.

"Yes." She remained sitting for a moment. "I'm not sure exactly what happened. Everything past-" Past when Riqre had chopped her up. "Everything is a muddled mess in my mind, but I remember the offer."

"The offer?" "What offer?" 'An offer?' Three voices, one of them in her mind, asked.

"To give up my levels." Zehia looked down at her clawed fingers and opened and closed them. "They're all gone. Every last one of them."

All her Skills. All of her... life. Gone just like that. A more horrible fate than even a [Slave] deserved.

'I'm so sorry!'

'Don't be.' Zehia took a deep breath. 'I should've died when I failed to kill Riqre. I should've died even if I'd succeeded. I won't say I enjoyed what was done to me, but... this is still better than the alternatives.'

That's right. She had to look at the big picture. That was the only way to survive in Roshal... Except she wasn't there any more, was she? She was gone. Missing. Most likely presumed dead at this point. There was nothing back there for her. Everything she'd built up had already been taken away. Again.

In fact, she was sure if the Emirs ever learned where she was...

'Don't worry about that.' Laila softly spoke to her. 'You're safe now.'

**Zehia is confused.
**Zehia is surprised.
**Laila is happy.
**Zehia is happy.
**Laila is concerned.
**Zehia is sad.
**Laila is confused.
**Zehia is melancholy.
**Laila is happy.

It seemed clear that both Zehia and Laila were awake, aware, and communicating with each other. I felt a sense of relief at the outcome. Not only because the Extractor had worked, but because the two Stitchfolk seemed on strangely good terms.

Or, perhaps, not that strange considering they'd spent months together in a far more intimate way than I would've thought possible. It probably helped that Laila didn't seem to bear her owner any particular grudge, and instead had risked her own sanity to try and help her.

It was hard for a non-psychopath to receive that level of help without feeling gratitude in return. It was a pretty standard psychological response. Helping someone, or being helped, were powerful tools for shaping one's perceptions of the other person.

Still... I wondered just what their relationship had been before the incident with Riqre.

I turned to look at Sibby. "I'll give you some time alone." I then sent through our bond. 'It's not just Laila inside there. There are two consciousnesses in the body."

Sibby tilted her head. 'What do you mean?'

'Ask them yourself.' I smiled at her and then walked towards the twisted remains of the Extractor. It was ruined. I focused on my Skills... No [Thread of Fate]. No extra option for Crafting. I'd wondered what would happen if one of my Magi-tech devices was destroyed, and now I knew.

*Annoyance negated by Gamer's Mind.

Oh well. I'd anticipated this outcome. I'd sacrificed bigger things to Limit-Breaker for less. What was important now, was that Sibby's friend was safe.

...And Zehia too, I supposed.

I wondered if the pair could be apart now. Normal Selphids had to occupy new bodies from time to time, but that was because they inhabited corpses. Dead Stitchfolk were just cloth. I suspected that Laila couldn't inhabit such a body. Even if she could, would it have the magical spark that transformed cloth to flesh?

Huh.

I suddenly remembered Chantilly - the Monstrous Cape that had been a little girl that had been turned into cloth. I'd helped her before. Or, rather, Riley had. I wondered what insights my little sister would have if she was indeed in this world.

It probably didn't matter. It was Chantilly's Shard after all that had done the same thing with whatever Shards did that Stitchfolk accomplished with magic. Unless, that was, if some Shards used magic. That... seemed possible? Likely even, given the tremendous age of Entities. A separation of powers. A specialization. That was how Shards worked.

My musing came to an end as I stopped next to the remains of the Extractor, and what it had extracted.

[Knife]

I winced a little as I channeled mana through Observe.

[Blade of Revenge

Cursed.

Extracted revenge. Exacts revenge.]

I gave it a flat look. That seemed more than a bit ominous, but Threat Sense wasn't detecting anything. I damaged myself by pushing some more mana into my precognitive Perk to let it predict how magic would affect me.

Nothing.

I reached down and picked the weapon up. It was heavier than I'd expected. Odd. With how much it seemed to weigh in my hands, it should've left an indentation in the ground. Also, shouldn't an [Assassin]'s blade be lighter?

Oh. I got it. It wasn't a physical weight. Rather, it was a metaphysical one.

Interesting.

Okay, so while I still had mana running through Threat Sense, I brought the tip of the blade to my chest and prepared to stab myself.

Ah.

Yep. That would be bad. Very bad. Threat Sense promised a world of pain if the dagger impaled me. The weapon wouldn't just hurt my body, but also... my mind, my mana, my soul? I wasn't sure exactly, but I knew that I would get off lighter than almost anyone else due to Gamer's Mind.

And that wasn't even its full power. Just holding it in my hand made me want to kill Jack. I knew it would be most effective against the former leader of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

He was already dead, so the urge was faint, but I guess that's the person I wanted revenge against the most?

Although... there was someone else I needed to get revenge on. I wasn't sure who. It wasn't someone I'd met before...

*Obsession negated by Gamer's Mind.

Whew. I'd seen that coming with Threat Sense, but it still felt nice to shake it off.

I certainly couldn't just leave this laying around. Plus, it might come in handy in the future. I un-Inventoried some cloth and carefully wrapped it around the weapon while adding 'buy a sheath' to my list of things to do. At least the surprisingly heavy blade was small. I could wear it under my armor easily enough, at least until I could spend the mana to constantly keep it in my Inventory.

I turned around and made my way back to where Sibby was speaking with Zehia. Or Laila. The woman's demeanor had completely shifted. Her head was slightly bowed and her hands were hidden behind her back. It reminded me of when I'd spoken with her as Gandalf.

"Hello." I smiled at her as I stopped next to Sibby. "How are you feeling, Laila?"

"I'm, er, I'm doing much better. But really it's Zehia who's had the big change." She bowed to me. "Thank you, mister Pixel, sir!"

As she straightened up, her expression shifted and she met my eyes while putting her hands on her hips. "Yes. Thank you, [Archmage]. I am in your debt." Her fanged maw twisted into something that looked almost like a scowl. "I don't think I'll be able to repay it for a long time. All my levels and Skills are gone." She looked down at her clawed hands. "I'm not sure how I'm even going to become an [Assassin] again, not without going back to Roshal, and I'm not doing that."

"Why be an assassin?" Sibby asked. "You could be a runner like Laila. Besides." Her eyes glowed yellow. "Killing the wrong person is wrong, even if it's really fun and easy." Sibby nodded to herself. "Though not always. The hard part is deciding if someone should die."

Did... did the Siberian just almost say that 'killing is wrong'?

*Pride negated by Gamer's Mind.

Come to think of it, I'd killed a lot more people than Sibby in the war. Even before I doubled down on inflicting damage to Nerrhavia Fallen's army, I'd been more than willing to kill my targets. I didn't want to, but I hadn't shied away from it either.

Sibby had gone out of her way to horrifically injure people instead. I couldn't say if her attacks would've been more effective in the long run if she'd simply tried to kill as many as possible, but it was certainly more work to hold back.

I looked at her animatedly talking with Laila and felt my pride swell up again, along with other emotions.

I also felt a little awkward. Sort of like a third wheel. Or at least a forth.

"Why an [Assassin]?" Laila heard Zehia ask out loud. It was a little disconcerting to both hear her thoughts, and also feel the same information being relayed back to Zehia's brain through her ears. "It's what I'm good at. There are problems that can't be solved any other way besides eliminating the person responsible."

"Yeah, but you'd always be worse at it than I am." Sibby's voice wasn't condescending or belittling, instead it was like she was stating a fact. The sun was yellow. The sky was blue. The Siberian was more skilled at murder.

Laila didn't know what she thought about that. She... didn't mind if Sibby killed people. As much as Laila felt bad about how... most of them wound up, she couldn't gainsay her twice-over rescuer. Zehia looked out over the field that the [Archmage] had created.

Others saw an invading force. People coming to kill or enslave the people of Tiqr. Armies marching due to a conspiracy instead of for a good cause.

Evil.

Laila saw people who had no choice. Not [Slaves], but certainly not those that had wished to be there. Cogs in a machine. Threads in a tapestry. They had been no more capable of deciding what had happened to them as a piece of string decided to be pulled by a needle.

Did they deserve to die?

Some of them undoubtedly, but Laila knew that she'd never be the sort of person that could make that decision. Or who could watch from behind Zehia's eyes as she killed people.

'I don't think you should be an [Assassin] either, Zehia.' Laila interrupted half of the conversation, but Sibby was taciturn, she wouldn't mind. 'We've both been given a new start. We've lost our respective Blood Classes. We're in a new country. I don't have to obey, and you don't have to kill. That's not who we are anymore. We can choose a new path. A new Class. You didn't always want to kill people, did you?'

'I... Killing people is necessary. It keeps order. It lets society function. Roshal exists because it's needed.'

'We're not in Roshal anymore.'

'...No. We aren't. And we're not going back!'

'Then why go back to what you were, when you were there?'

Laila could feel Zehia thinking, so she withdrew. Now that her former owner was thinking for herself instead of being trapped by her Blood Class, it felt wrong to listen in - even as it became easier. She sent Zehia a wordless request to take control of their body and got a begrudging acceptance in return.

Laila took a deep breath in and looked at Sibby. "So what do you think Zehia and I should do, Sibby?"

"Whatever you want." The Siberian smiled.

Away from Sibby and her friend, I thought about what to do next. The obvious answer was Roshal. The idea that such a place could be out there, that they were hunting Earthers, what they might do to my sister if they found her before I did!

*Anger negated by Gamer's Mind.

Right, right. Riley can take care of herself, if she's even in this world. The more pressing concern is that I strongly suspect that an Earther has already been captured by them. Whomever was using Kent Scott's phone on the call that Aaron had put together was my enemy.

And it was highly likely that it was Roshal.

It wasn't like I could personally wage war on a whole country. My fight with Nerrhavia's Fallen had demonstrated that. While I'd won in the end, they clearly had strategic weapons that could hurt me. Besides, even if that wasn't the case, a one-man war would take years, if not decades. It wasn't like all of the [Slave Masters] of Roshal would gather in one spot and wait for me to blow them up.

Even if they did, it would be behind a living shield of [Slaves].

No, what I needed was something far more precise than the trump card I'd brought.

...Or a way to remove the innocents beforehand.

Yes. That could work. I'll need to talk with Zehia and find out about the inner workings of Roshal as a whole, but I could definitely come at them in a way that they weren't expecting. It's a shame the Extractor broke after a single use, but I also couldn't use it on each [Slave] one at a time.

No. There was a simpler solution, even though I didn't have an end goal yet.

Right. I nodded to myself.

'Sibby, I'm going to go to the desert real quick to get some sand. Do you want to come with me, or stay and talk with Laila?'

'I'll stay here.'

I was a little worried about stretching our connection again, but better to test it now than be surprised by it in the future I supposed.

I mentally scanned my Inventory. More than half my jet fuel I'd stored had been used up in the fight with Nerrhavia's Fallen. I sighed. That was the problem with relying on non-MP resources. Even with Crafting my own fuel and adding Inventory to it to let me compact it - it still took up a lot of space.

I had room for more after dropping off the biggest items, but Crafting it took time - and liquid resources.

I should've set a seed to produce it back at Wistram. Plenty of water there.

Still, the Zeikhal Desert wasn't very far away. Okay, several hundred miles, but relatively speaking that was decently close. It would only take me an hour to get there. The fuel was the much bigger cost than the time spent flying. I'd easily lose most of what I had left if I went full thrust there and back.

Instead, I navigated my Cawthorne high into the air, and deployed its forcefield as wings again.

Gliding would take longer, but save fuel. The really problem was that I couldn't play video games while doing it.

But... I did have other things I needed to do. Mainly, I needed to sort through the Messages that had constantly been coming in since the fight.

...

'How dare you?'

'Business opportunity.'

'Let's be friends.'

'You don't want to be my enemy.'

'We can pay you for stuff.'

'You suck.'

'You're so cool.'

Those were the basic gists of most of the magical spam I had aimed towards me. Not the worst, but... ugh. If I could make a program as easily as I could Craft things, then I could come up with an intelligent filter. However, all my programming I had to do by hand.

I KNEW how to do it thanks to my Computers skill, but it still took time and effort that I couldn't afford. Even setting up a PHO knockoff had been boring and tedious, and I'd gotten to copy most of that code.

No, it looks like I have to handle my mail by 'hand'. Thank goodness the Black Box is encoding the Message Spells in a way I can peruse with Ears of Babel. If I had to listen to each one...

Blegh.

There were a LOT of countries that were eager to speak with me, but that wasn't what I was interested in. I was looking for Messages from Earthers who'd seen or heard of me. While I couldn't go and visit them in person, I could relay their information to Wistram.

The [Mage] school had a very long reach, and had saved a great deal of kidnapped people from all over the globe. If this world was actually a globe. It was certainly rounded, but there was something strange about its shape from what I could tell.

...

My connection with Sibby thinned.

It was just like when I'd gotten close enough to her, but in reverse. It became a vague direction and I couldn't speak with her through it.

But it was still there. That was the important part.

...

I landed, and looked around the dunes.

The project I had in mind wasn't super complex. It didn't need moving parts or Shard-assisted technology. It just needed to not be Crafted with my Perk.

If Tiqr was heavily forested, I could have built it without having to fly hours away to a desert. Wood would've worked just as well as glass, but taking anything from Tiqr at the moment felt wrong.

The Cawthorne was perfect for what I had in mind. The forcefield generator on it was much more precise than my pylons. Even so, this was going to be the most complicated shape I'd ever made. Not that I'd ever done anything more complex than wings or swords.

I'd had plenty of time to visualize what I wanted, and I began to form my cast. It still took a while to shape the forcefield so precisely, but not that long. As I finished the bottom layer, I used Inventory to grab sand and place it within the hollow portion.

Then, I activated the Cawthorne's lasers.

The sand glowed brightly as the beams of concentrated light swept over it. It melted almost instantly. The liquid mass spread out from the impact point as nearby grains of sand fused with the spreading heat. I raked the laser back and forth until I was left with a mass of liquid glass hovering in mid-air on top of the forcefields.

Then I did it again.

More forcefields to make the vertical and horizontal structures. Sand to fill the 3D shape. Lasers to keep the glass molten.

There was a crack, and one of the wings broke.

I grumbled to myself and reapplied the heat after adjusting the forcefield to make it bigger and adding more sand.

Making something with Tinker-tech instead of just using Crafting was a lot more work... but strangely rewarding. The end result was large, misshapen, and undoubtedly fragile, but none of that mattered. It cooled quickly and I Inventoried my creation.

Along with some sand. I had the space and I might need more raw materials in the future.

Satisfied that my project would work, I took off. The jets from the Cawthorne left more patches of blacken glass in my wake as I ascended.

...

The flight back was uneventful.

I finished going through the Messages and contacted Aaron at Wistram about the ones that needed to be followed up on.

When I got close, I felt my bond with Sibby snap back into place. It was definitely a good thing that she could be farther away from me now, but it was still comforting to have her close by.

She (and probably Laila) were back in Oliphant. I landed just as I could see the city on the horizon, and walked back the rest of the way. It was getting dark, and there was no reason to potentially scare anyone. Besides, I'd rather not draw a crowd if I could avoid it.

I made my way to where Sibby was. She and Laila were in the same small shack amongst the refugees around the city.

"Welcome back!" Sibby smiled at me. It was still a little disconcerting to hear her speak out loud. "Did you get what you were looking for?"

I nodded. "Yes. Now we have a way to get to Roshal."

"Why would you want to go there?" From her posture, I assumed it was Zehia talking.

"To destroy it."

"What?" Her monstrous features twisted in surprise. "Destroy it?"

"Yes. I don't think I can eliminate slavery the world over, but I can certainly crush the central pillar holding it up." The hard part would be minimizing the impact it would have towards the enslaved.

"You can't do that!"

"No. I certainly can." It would be dangerous, but I could do it - if I was willing to use my newest Perk.

Zehia crossed her arms and almost scowled. "Roshal is far more powerful than you think. No [Archmage]. No [King]. No country can stand against it. We've horded artifacts, magic, and knowledge that can overwhelm any such attempts!"

"We?"

"I... er... uhm..." The Stitchwoman seemed to deflate. "THEY are more powerful than you think. Freed from other concerns, elite [Slaves] are the fiercest fighters in the world. Nerrhavia's Fallen might be bigger, but Roshal is richer in every other way. THEY have faced opposition before and come out stronger for it."

"By enslaving those who opposed them?" I raised an eyebrow. "I cannot allow such evil to exist." Especially when there's a decent chance that they'll go after Sibby again someday. Or Riley.

"Slavery is not evil!" Zehia's face twisted in surprise as Laila and the rest of us reacted in shock.

"What?" I crossed my arms.

She glared at me as she took control of her body back. "You heard me. It's just pragmatic. If a man commits a crime, killing him accomplishes nothing. He's gone and that's that. Using him as a [Slave] is both more kind and rewarding."

"Kind?" I said incredulously.

"No. Not 'kind'. 'More kind'. As in, it's better to be alive as a [Slave] than free and dead!" Zehia looked down at her clawed hands. "Not... not everyone is like Riqre. I treated my [Slaves] well, didn't I Laila?"

Her expression twisted as she answered herself. "You made me flay my skin."

"That's natural for Stitchfolk."

"Not for our heads!"

"That's why you were special. Don't you see? You had what other Stitchfolk dream of. You elevated yourself instead of having to settle for elevating your children."

"I was still a [Slave]."

"That-"

"What did I do to deserve that? What wrong did a little girl commit that resulted in the same punishment as... as... as a [Murderer] or worse?"

"I..." Zehia's shoulders slumped. "I don't know. Okay? I decided to quit getting to know my [Slaves] at a young age." She looked up at me. "That doesn't mean that the entire institution is flawed. The world needs Roshal."

**Zehia is conflicted.
**Zehia is afraid.
**Zehia is sad.

I think she was trying to convince herself more than she was arguing with me or Laila.

"Soon the world will HAVE to exist without it." I un-Inventoried a Communication Cube and handed it to her. "I'd like to ask you some things, but that can wait until I'm in the air." I turned to look at Sibby. "Ready for a trip?"

She tilted her head. "A trip?"

"In the air?" Zehia asked from behind.

"That's right. We're going to fly to Roshal."

...

Outside of Oliphant and the crowds of refugees, I un-Inventoried my creation. The plane-shaped mass of glass appeared on the grass. It was a smoky brown color, not clear like I'd first envisioned.

'Ah!' Sibby's eyes lit up. 'You want me to carry you again!'

"That's right." The 'plane' was hollow, but it didn't have a door. Instead their was a hole in the back that let us enter the cabin with the molded seats. "It's not a real plane like last time, but you can still make it work, right?"

Sibby sat down next to me. Technically, neither of us really needed seats. Gamer's Body let me contort myself for long periods of time without discomfort, and Sibby sat wherever she wanted. The insides were for if I ever had the need to carry other passengers.

'Of course I can!' She looked around the insides. 'You didn't need to give it wings, but whatever!' She put her hand on the wall and the world vanished except for a small window on the bottom that she allowed light to pass through.

I watched the ground fall away from us at a breakneck speed as the Siberian manipulated the forces impacting the glass sculpture. Since it wasn't something I'd made with my Crafting Perk, she could manipulate it to negate gravity and other forces and let us fly.

It was... significantly faster than I could fly in my Cawthorne once she got up to speed. Sibby didn't have to worry about air resistance or fuel consumption. I would say that the plane wasn't as maneuverable as my armor, but Sibby could literally stop on a dime.

She just couldn't turn. She negated forces. She didn't redirect them.

But as a way to travel quickly, it worked wonderfully. Barring a charged Teleportation Pad at my destination, this was the quickest way to get to Roshal. Time was of the essence. There wasn't a particular deadline, but the longer the [Slavers] existed, the more chances they had to abduct a random Earther.

...Or even Riley.

That was NOT a possibility I was willing to entertain. I'll crush them before it gets that far.

...

[Artificer level 20!]

[Skill - My Hands Made Wonders Obtained!]

[Skill - Imbue With Purpose Obtained!]

I woke up from my quick nap to the voice. I wasn't surprised. I did just make something... potent.

Just a shame it broke and cost a Skill.

Still, sacrificing Skills for levels seemed like a good deal.

...

"So Roshal has three major ports?"

"Lailight Scintillation is the only major one, and there are sixteen others along the coast... but yes. Two of those sixteen have docks capable of housing more than a dozen ships." Zehia spoke into the Communication Cube I'd left her.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Even without my notifications, I could tell that the former [Assassin] had mixed feelings about informing me of Roshal's defenses. Not that her position had provided her much knowledge that was personally useful to me. I wasn't going to be infiltrating, so counter-espionage measures weren't really relevant.

Still, the fact that she was willing to say anything was promising - for both her and Laila.

I understood indoctrination. Every organization did it to some extent. People didn't view themselves as 'evil', and it seemed to me that that held true for the people of Roshal. If not the [Slaves]. In Zehia's mind she'd been doing good by helping root out corruption in the system.

The fact that the system was based on slavery didn't matter. Roshal's entire economy and culture was based around buying and selling people. It was ingrained in their belief system that if someone was a [Slave], they'd done something to deserve it.

The examples she'd given of buying people that would have been put to death otherwise was convincing enough. She viewed it as the lesser of two evils, and a necessary one. The flaw was in a few corrupt Emirs and not with the system itself.

The real flaw was that the system was set up to reward corruption. Of course, that was true of many systems. It was difficult to make laws that couldn't be manipulated in one way or another. The basic fact was that once you viewed people as a resource, you treated them as such.

I... had no idea where to start with reforming such a country.

Well, that wasn't quite true. I had an idea and I felt it stood a good chance of success after speaking with Zehia all night long. It's just that there wouldn't be much of a country left after I-

'There.' Sibby pointed through the section of the plane she let light in from. The sun was rising over the horizon and the warm light illuminated a crater hundreds of feet in diameter. 'That's where the mansion was.'

"Let's land then. I don't see anyone around."

The glass vehicle came to a gradual stop. While Sibby could instantly negate its forward progress, she couldn't directly stop the momentum my body had built up. So she had to slow the plane enough so that I wouldn't crash into it. It was an impact I would lose, Gamer's Body or not.

We landed in the middle of the destruction.

"Yes." I nodded. "This will do nicely." Close enough to the border that we didn't have to risk going in further, but deep enough in that we didn't have to worry about people from the neighboring country spotting us.

I took a deep breath... and equipped Limit-Breaker. One by one, I started sacrificing my Skills to my Crafting Perk.

[Lesser Strength]

[Basic Crafting]

[Extend Shot]

[Expand Explosion]

[Expanded Link]

NEGATIVE.

Okay, [Expanded Link] can stay, Optimize.

I also kept [Body of Stone], [Reinforce Armor], [Alter Ego: Various], [Ambient Mana Gatherer], [Heroic Tolerance: Mana], and [Don the Mask]. Everything else went into my Crafting Perk - including the two Skills I'd just gained. Then I used them for the biggest blueprint I'd ever made.

The thing was massive. It required a lot more parts than I could include in a normal design. That was where the sacrificed Skills and other Crafted Tinkertech came into play. Just like how I'd used up most of my Skills, I started emptying my Inventory. Anything that I could disassemble into components that could slot into the blueprint was added to the growing construct.

Months and months of Crafting used as resources for a device that could take down a country.

All my ordinance, spare suits, pylons, and more vanished into the swirling mass that was growing bigger and bigger with each passing second. I was starting to get worried that the house-sized seed could be seen from far enough away that someone might come to investigate.

I kept a few drones, including the golden sphere that I don't think I could replicate. The Mega-Buster and my Sensor Tower were also spared, because I wasn't sure that I'd waste the Skills I'd used for their construction if I used them as a component. The Black Box, because it was important to be able to interface with my broken scrying orb. My Cawthorne... and that's it for my Tinkertech. Everything else I could replace given time and materials. It was more important to get this right on the first try, because there wouldn't be a second.

I did, however, keep all of my regular electronics.

Finally, I arranged everything properly in a pattern that could repeat itself as it spread, and allowed the massive seed to sink down into the ground. It would take a while, even with the resources I'd expended, but it would slowly make its way across the entire country.

Deep enough to avoid the known dungeons. Smart enough to avoid things it didn't recognize. Subtle enough to hide from most information gathering powers.

Once it was finished growing, I'd make my move.

...and probably get better replacement Skills from the levels in Artificer I was bound to receive.