After helping the gnomes bring their village over to their new spot, Oliver asks the gnome elder he learned was named Kob and asks him, “I've looked through everywhere in that part of the wall and couldn’t find what caused the water damage. Is there something I should know?”

  Kob rubs the back of his neck. “That's our fault. We tried to start a farm there, sorry?”

  Oliver shakes his head. “So it only has an outlet and no pipes in it. Do you know if it's load-bearing?”

  Kob shook his head. “No, there is a steel beam above the wall.”

  Oliver nods, heads over to the wall, and begins to remove the planks. After breaking the top part of the wall down, he does find the steel beam Kob was talking about and continues to break down the rest of the wall. Breaking down half of the wall reveals that the two rooms used to be one room, but someone separated them with the wall. He is about to begin with the other part, but the doorbell rings.

  Oliver puts the crowbar down on the dining room table and tells the gnomes to stay in the kitchen while he goes and sees who is at the door.

  Oliver makes his way out of the kitchen and towards the door and opens it, where he finds a young man waiting for him with a toolbox in his hand.

  “Hello, I'm David. You called to get the lock on your basement door changed?

  Oliverr nods and says, “That's right, I’ll show you to the basement.”

  Oliver lets the man in and shows him the locked door at the bottom of the basement steps.

  David lets out a whistle when he sees the door. “Where did they get this thing?” he traces some fading letters on the doo. ‘its a military armory door.” he fiddles with the handle and tells me “your in luck with this if it was the newer model i wouldn’t be able to open it.”

  “What makes you say that?” Oliver asks

  “The newer model has an electric keypad after it was found that the lock supplier had sold them subpar locks.”

  With a press of the hook tool and the tension tool, the lock turns and opens up. David takes a new lock out of his toolbox and explains,

  “This one is a multi-point locking system with great protection against lockpicking, but I could also make a new key for this one or replace it, but I would have to drill into the wall to make the holes for the locking system.”

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  Oliver shrugs and tells him, “I would prefer the new lock after seeing how easily you could open the lock. Also, don't go into the basement; there is some confidential material in there.”

  David nods and says, “I'll get started right away. It won't take longer than half an hour.”

  Oliver nods and lets david do his job while he goes back up the stairs and back into the kitchen that is now filled with the scent of coffee i look towards the coffee machine and a gnome waves him over and tells him “we made coffee for your guest.”oliver goes back out into the foyer and stands atop the basement stairs and asks david “do you want some coffee?”

  David smiles and tells me, “Oh, yes, thank you.” Oliver goes and gets the cup of coffee from the kitchen and brings it to David before returning to his work of breaking down the wall.

  He begins to break the parts out from where the doors once stood and begins to work on the second part of the wall. This part goes a lot smoother as there is no gnome village here. When he is ten percent done with breaking down the wall, David knocks on the kitchen door. Oliver says, “You can come in.”

  David steps into the kitchen and is surprised as he sees the gnomes building their village in the corner of the room and running along the countertop.

  Oliver places his tools down and asks him, “How much will it cost?”

  David doesn’t stop watching the gnomes as they build their village but does answer, “It will be three hundred dollars.” Oliver hands him the money, and David asks him, “What are those?”

  “gnomes. Found them living in the wall a couple hours ago.”

  “Is that common?” David asks, going pale.

  I ask one of the gnomes, “Is it common that your people live in walls?”

  The gnome shakes her head. “No, we prefer the outside but that damned cat is still out there, i can feel it,” she answers. It's obvious to Oliver and them but not to David.

  “There you have your answer.” After hearing that gnomes don't commonly live in walls, David seems to calm down and says, “The lock has been replaced. Here are the keys.”

  Oliver thanks David and opens the door for him so he can get far away from the little people that distress him so much.

  With the keys to the basement, he can finally begin removing the side effects from the anomalies and turn them into proper artifacts.

  He goes and takes some cleaning supplies from the storage room and cleans up his uncle's Roman transfer formation. It doesn't take long to clean up the pain,t having long ago gone bad from disuse. He goes to his walk-in closet/bedroom and takes his duffle bag with him downstairs to the basement. He takes out a can of ash paint, a box of sealing amulets, his notebook, and several tools to carve or paint runes.

  Oliverr flips through his note book and weighs the pros and cons of each formation; “the egyptian one immediately destroys the side effect so i wouldnt need the amulets but its slow, the chinese one is only good for when your on the move but the others are better for permanent formatoins, the roman formation is the fastest but it needs the amulets and doesnt even puts them on it permanently, the celtic one is fun with it just giving the item a new side effect but im looking to sell so the only one i could use if i want to put the side effect on an amulet permanently is the nordic one”

  Oliver skips over several other formations until he finds the Nordic transfer formation. Oliver reads his old notes on the formation:

  “the noordic foremationn keps the side effect good to destroy side effect melt several amulets tegheter?” Oliver struggles to read what twelve-year-old Oliver wrote, but at least he was better at drawing than writing at that age.

  Oliver opens the can of ash paint and dips two fingers into it. He begins by painting a dot in the center of where the formation will be. Then, he draws four circles around it, each spaced exactly ninety degrees apart. Next, he adds another circle between the north and west circles and another between the north and east circles.

  Once that is done, he connects the six circles and draws four more. The two circles closest to the outer edge are drawn close together, while the other two are spaced a bit further apart. He drew a triangle inside the formation and started to inscribe the runes.

  After three hours of drawing and correcting his mistakes, the transfer circle is complete. He places an amulet in the south circle, and at that moment, the six circles begin to glow, signaling that he has finished the formation.

  https://imgur.com/a/sdtkPXF