The warehouse Len had requisitioned still smelled musty and old. Though his father and few others had checking the structure, walls and roof, declaring it safe.

  Then Len put them to work setting up workstations and work flows—using his knowledge of factories.

  They created assembly lines with raw materials coming in at on end, processed to a set standard and then handed between people adding their own work to the item before it reached the other side—complete.

  Len moved among those that were skilled with carving, teaching them the enchantments to be carved into wood and metal.

  Those with other skills worked on preparing materials, filling molds, creating crystal pieces, and transporting goods along the various lines to speed up production.

  Molds were filled, crystal fused, finished pieces drawn out, cleaned up and assembled. Wooden staves were smoothed out, braziers attached and enchantments added.

  Metal plates were cut out according to set sizes, enchanted and if needed-linked.

  As the hours went on the production speed went up as people got used to their tasks. Letting Len turn his attention back to the other projects, namely the ones that Rick had given to him.

  His father assured him that the lightning fence, while nice, was not totally necessary. Adrian and his people, as well as those from the first company, were now patrolling the farms and beyond.

  At this time, the farmers were probably some of the strongest people in the world, not to mention in Goran.

  A whistle caught Len's attention, pulling him away from the finished design of a fuser enchantment.

  Jed walked towards him with Adrian in tow. Len picked up the diagram he'd made and handed it over to Gretchen.

  "See if you can get a carpenter to carve this up for me, please," he said.

  "Right away, Len." She peeled herself away from what she was reading and took the paper before heading off towards the woodworking stations.

  She’d fit right in with the farmers and there were several of the younger women that had struck up conversations with her, interested to talk to someone from the city.

  Gretchen had fallen in with them easily and some of her nervousness had faded away. Len glanced at her desk and the notes he’d given her on enchantments.

  "Afternoon, Len," Adrian smiled, reaching out a hand. Len grabbed it, shaking it.

  "Good to see you, Adrian. I hear that you're working hard with First Company." They released hands, Jed staying close.

  "I've got my work cut out for me, that's for sure," Adrian said, putting his hands on his hips as he looked around the warehouse. "Though I actually came to ask you a bit about that and a bit about this."

  Len raised his eyebrow in question.

  "First company needs shaking up. Good training, structure and trust. They’re well behind in fighting skills. They’ve had it rough and had to figure out how to hunt and trade in order to eat and keep going.”

  “That’s not good,” Len said.

  “There’s the resourceful ones that came out on the other side and those that got corrupted by the whole thing,” Adrian shook his head. “It’ll take time to work on them, but they’ll come out better for it. Though I came to you because none of the troops have gone through a skill-up like we did at your family’s farm.” Adrian looked at the lines of stations they’d created.

  “I heard that you're working on making all kinds of things, and I can see that you've got carpentry, smithing, building, and spellcasting going on here. And I was wondering if it'd be okay to bring some of the squads over so that they could skill up and help with production?"

  "The more helpers, the better," Len said. "We've got quite a bit that needs to be done. Most of the workers here will need to head back out to tend to their farms. Growing food and feeding people is going to start to be more important than making enchantments."

  “We’ll keep some that are more interested in this kind of work,” Jed said.

  "What you going to do when they leave?” Adrian asked.

  “Got Rick asking his Grandma to hire me on some people.” Len shrugged. ‘I don’t know how that’s going to turn out, so having a group of soldier rotating through to keep up production would be welcome.”

  “Would it be okay to bring them around, say, tomorrow morning?"

  "Works with me. Jed, do you want to give him the tour and show him around the workstations so he knows what you'll be dealing with?" He looked between the two of them.

  Adrian nodded. "That'd be a good idea, thank you. Also, I did have one other question."

  "Shoot," Len said.

  "The sound transmission devices, is there a way for those messages to be intercepted?"

  Len tilted his head from side to side. "Yes, it's possible. It's... a pain, but you could have that happen if someone else was to have a sound transmission device lined up with just the right symbols and it was listening to other sound transmission devices. It's a very complicated device to create, though, so I doubt that anyone's going to be building them right now, though there are ways around it."

  "Okay. The reason I ask," Adrian began, "is because the system we're considering for the sound transmission devices for all the soldiers is pretty simplistic. First company would have number one for first company. Then, you would have, say, first platoon, so that would also be one. First squad, would be another one. Then you have one to ten for the members within that squad.”

  "The quickest and easiest way to change that is to alter the numbers before it. Make company, platoon, squad and member the last five numbers, then the first four numbers you change to whatever code or sequence you have for the day. Then it'll be much harder for someone to break that," Len concluded.

  "Okay," Adrian nodded slowly, digesting the information before he came back to the present. "Well, I won't take up any more of your time.”

  “Did Rick talk to you about all of the projects he has?" Len asked.

  "Word came from on high that we are going to be working on a series of jobs clearing out the forest and taking down lumber, going to the quarries to source stone and clay, as well as building defenses throughout the city. I think the troops are interested by it right now because it's something to do, but I also think we're going to have to rotate groups on and off expeditions depending on how they perform. I wanted to get them working on this stuff as well as it’ll increase their overall strength rapidly and I saw how enchantments could make other things much easier.”

  "Talking about expeditions, I thought that you were supposed to be heading out with Lydia yourself?”

  "That was the plan until we saw the state of First Company when it came in. They wanted some old hands at it, and so they sent Gibson and his squad, as well as a few of the Isendia family guards, off with her,” Adrian said.

  “Gotcha, well I’ll leave you to Jed to get the full tour.”

  “Thanks,” Adrian turned to Jed.

  “Guess we should start at the beginning,” Jed pointed at where there raw materials were coming in.

  Len stretched running a quick eye over the stations, everything looked to be moving smoothly. Crates of enchanted devices were being stacked up at the end.

  Len walked over to them, threads of mana spread out from him, adding in the final touches to everything.

  “Len,” His father’s voice broke him away from the last crate of heating crystal holders.

  “Hey dad, what’s up?”

  “Got ten of them growing formations ready. Couple of the lads are going to head back to the farms and start getting a few of the fields started. You want us to work on those extruder enchantments you came up with?”

  “Yeah that would be good. Once we’ve got a hundred of the water condensing formations then we can get another group working on the Fuser Enchantments—” Len chewed on the inside of his mouth.

  "What's bothering you?" his father asked.

  "It's just... there's this tool, I guess, called an extractor. It basically sucks up whatever's in front of you and throws it out the back. The problem is that it's best paired with a folded space storage device. Because then you can suck up as much as you want, it goes into the storage device. Then you just have to take the storage device to some location and empty it, right?"

  "Okay," Edward said, "and you don't have any of these storage devices?"

  "Right," Len said, "that's the problem. Without the storage devices, we can't gather up all that material, move it around, and dump it easily."

  "So, what are you thinking?" Edward asked.

  "I'm thinking that we have the excavator break up stuff and spit it out then we’re going to need people with shovels to fill up carts. Though I want a better solution.”

  "What about a device like a water tower arm?"

  Len's brows pinched together, trying to piece out what his father was talking about.

  "You know, when steam engines come into town and they have that big water tower, and that big pipe swings out over top and fills up with water?" His dad said.

  "Yeah, okay. Okay." Len's mind opened up.

  "So, if you were to create a tube that's stuck to the back of this excavator, then that would go over, say, a cart. And then you could have one person excavating, and then another person guiding that boom arm over carts, allowing you to fill a cart or containers or rail carts even. You could do a lot more without pausing, right?" his dad said.

  "I'd have to make some kind of brace, like a backpack with a side sling to hold the excavator, then just a big tube off the back of it. Into... well, I could have the carts just follow along, maybe angle the tube it off to the other side,” Len started using his hands to explain the positioning of it all. “So the excavator's on the right side, and then the tube goes around your back and angles off to the left side to make it balance a little bit more. Then the cart can come up on your left side and get filled by what the excavator’s throwing out. Could just use pipe for that," Len trailed off. "If I'm using pipe to guide the stuff that's excavated, why don't I use a pipe for the excavator itself? All I need is a hollow item. Then the enchantment wrapped around it. Okay, that could work very nicely. Thank you, Dad," Len said.

  "Glad to help, I'll get the others working on those different enchantments now." Edward walked off to the workstations, and Len hurried back to his desk.

  "Gretchen," he asked as he reached his and Gretchen’s desk.

  Her head jumped up from the information she was reading. “Len?”

  "I got another request for you. Could you see about sourcing pipe? I want to know the largest gauge pipe that we have in as much supply as possible. I'd like it to also have elbow joints if possible. Then if you can get the frames for a backpack?" Len asked.

  "Okay, I’ll see what I can get," Gretchen said, making a note of his request on a pad of paper, before tearing it off.

  "Thank you, I'll leave that in your hands," Len said. He turned back to his paper and started drawing out the enchantment. "Can just resize it to the size of the pipe," Len thought to himself.

  He created a mana blueprint, altering and tweaking as needed.

  The excavation tool was composed of two enchantments.

  One was a vibration enchantment that would agitate and break up what it was aimed at. The other was an air-based enchantment that created a suction force that would draw it through the opening of the excavator and expel it out the back.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The two enchantments had to be used on an uncommon material at least, and it had to be a sturdy material, as rocks, dirt, and all kinds of other materials might pass through it.

  The enchantment was best placed on the exterior of the excavator, as the interior is usually scraped up by the passage of materials, which could gouge the enchantment.

  It would also be powered by the user's mana to create an on-off ability. That way, it couldn't operate by itself or accidentally.

  It took him several tries to balance out the enchantments so that they would work together instead of interfering with one another.

  He checked it over several times before unfolding it from the form it would take on the pipe, searing it into a fresh page.

  "All right, dinner time," Des said from behind him.

  Len nodded, he’d noticed him through his mana domain, the region that he drew mana from a few minutes ago.

  He turned back to Des looking grumpy.

  “Thought I’d jump through the ceiling?”

  “A brother can dream,” Des said.

  Len looked around, the warehouse was empty.

  “What happened?”

  "You were in the zone, so I didn't want to interrupt. Seemed like you were close to figuring something out. Everyone gathered up the gear they made today and headed out to put it into the fields, and have dinner. Mom won't be pleased if you miss out so I stayed back to make sure you stopped.

  Len spotted the pipe for the excavator and its boom arm. He itched to get a chisel and start engraving the enchantment.

  He took a deep breath, pulling out a second piece of paper and copying over the plans onto it before storing both of them away into his messenger bag and slinging it over his shoulder.

  Des turned and walked towards the warehouse's exit, Len following right behind. There'd be work to be done tomorrow.

  They'd made a damn good head start today.

  They left the warehouse district behind, moving along the tracks out of Goran and picked up speed as they got to the open land.

  “Focus on pushing along the ground instead of against it straight up,” Len coached his brother on how to use his newfound strength.

  They dashed across the ground towards the farming houses. His mana sight showed the changes that had happened. Growing formations were set up around fields, the heating crystal formations had been planted and activated.

  Plows were working through the fields, seeds going down into the furrows they created.

  The section they’d planted before heading off to the warehouse were now a foot tall and reaching higher.

  Smoke rose from the houses and light crystals illuminated the interiors.

  Len and Des waved to people as they arrived at their family’s new home. They pushed open the door, the house warm as their mother was moving throughout the house.

  “Jed and your father is out helping in the fields and Laurie should be back soon, if you could lay out the table that would be great!”

  “Sure mom,” Des said.

  Len took off his messenger bag and put it to the side and followed him.

  They laid out the table, the front door opening as Jed and Edward’s voices filtered through.

  “Smells good!” Edward said.

  “Get yourselves cleaned up and grab a bowl!” Adeline said.

  They came into the dining room, laying out the hot food from the oven.

  Laurie came through the door as the last plates and bowls were coming out of the kitchen. “Hey everyone!”

  She put a bag to the side and quickly took a seat next to Len as they all sat down at the table, passing around Adeline’s labors.

  “Mom this looks great, thank you,” Len said.

  “Just a little here and there. I know how you’re all more hungry since we started leveling up,” She smiled.

  "I heard that you were off in the town today. What were you doing?" Len asked as he took a bowl of beans from Laurie.

  "I was looking into information around nursing and healing. Goran has a lot of clinics and people working with wounds. I heard that a large number of chemists have started working directly under the family in those warehouses down near the tracks that you were all working at," Laurie pried.

  “Mhmm,” Len replied, causing Laurie to roll her eyes at him. "So what did you learn?"

  “There’s classes on treating wounds that you can go to. I was able to drop in on a class where some people from the dell were talking about the use of spells and potions in healing people. They taught us the cleanse spell." She scooped food onto her plate rapidly.

  "Yeah, that one's invaluable, especially if you're dealing with any kinds of wounds," Len said.

  Laurie cocked her head to the side, studying him. "Have you dealt with wounds before? I know that you were healing people when you came to the farm, though I didn't get time to ask you about it."

  "I know a fair bit about healing the body with magical and non-magical means," Len said, passing the beans on and reaching out to grab a piece of meat and drop it onto his plate.

  "If you know how to use spells to heal someone, why would you need to know the rest of it?" Laurie asked.

  "Sometimes, magic can be too much for the body. There's a fine balance. Say you want more blood, your patient is going to take in more water and the building blocks of blood. If they don't have those building blocks, liquids or otherwise, and you're overusing mana their body runs out of resources. They’ll fall into shock.”

  Laurie nodded along, listening to him while only paying half attention to the food on the table.

  “When I'm dealing with injuries, I'm looking to make sure someone's survivable to get later care or if they can get back into the fight as quickly as possible. We call it triage."

  "Oh, we talked about that,” Laurie perked up. “It's about looking at the people who need immediate help, those people who need say like an hour and others with a couple of hours and those who could be needing days before it becomes serious," Laurie said excitedly.

  "Right," Len said, "it's just the same thing in a different situation." Len speared a piece of meat, finishing up his plate.

  "Healing with magic is a balance of the body's resources and the resource of mana?" Laurie checked.

  “Correct, so its good to learn the manual ways to heal someone and not rely on mana all the time. Also mana will regenerate, but if you’re dealing with a lot of patients or a complicated case you could run out of mana fairly quickly. Its best to use it only when completely necessary,” Len dug into his meal.

  "Okay, so then these potions and the use of bandages and other materials make sense because you can use those instead of the body's resources to help them along."

  Len swallowed down his mouthful. "Yeah, the more that you can do for your patient without drawing upon their reserves, the better, because you never know if something goes wrong and you have to use their reserves right away. The only time that it's good to really dip deep into their reserves is if you know there's no threats around and that they're safe.”

  “Actually for you, it's okay to take them down to that baseline working at a clinic. With healing, the other flip side of that is cooking and potions. The better the food, like this meal, the faster you’ll regenerate mana and stamina—build up the body’s resources. Potions are great for covering a lot of things. On a battlefield a potion can be more valuable than a spell.”

  “So you have all those chemists making potions that we can use?”

  Len made a show of eating his next bite.

  Laurie growled in her throat, and ate while glaring at him.

  “Another thing to consider when utilizing spells is that they can alter what you have in front of you. It can be quite taxing to do so, but it's less mana-intensive to combine things together that are made of the same material. Consider rocks, for example, or skin,” Len said when he was done with his display “Changing water into blood would be incredibly difficult, but if you were to stimulate the bone marrow within a person's body to produce more blood, the effect would be much more significant.”

  The rest of his family were listening in. “The goal when casting spells is not to completely transform the environment, but rather to subtly shift it. That's why, if there's heat in the air, you can combine it to create flames or some kind of thermal spell. If you have stone, you can mold it into different shapes and utilize it, but you can't create more stone. Mana is energy, it is not a physical creation. Mana stone is a type of material that has been suffused with and holds mana.”

  “Mana allows you to bend the rules,” His mother said.

  “Right, and using it as about all the little rules and ways you can bend the world through mana into what you want,” Len said.

  Laurie sunk into thought.

  “Have you talked to the dell co-op see if they’re interested in buying some of these enchantments?” His father asked.

  “Not yet, do you want to ask them if they’d be interested?” Len asked.

  “Can trade them enchantments to pay back for the dungeon materials.” Edward pointed out.

  “They can keep farming through the winter too,” Jed said.

  “How is it looking out there?”

  “The crops are already starting to come in on the first plot. We set up another ten fields. We’re going to need more of everything but those growing formations,” His father said.

  “Might need some in a bit, could be a good idea to set up a growing rotation a few weeks apart if they’re really going to grow things as fast as you said,” Des said. “That way we can have rotations of people sowing, looking after the fields and then harvesting them.”

  They talked about the farms, the enchantments and Len shared some of his knowledge on healing with Laurie.

  * * *

  A sigh of monumental proportions broke Len from his thoughts as he walked down the corridor to his room. He paused, looking into the kitchen where Rick was nursing a beer while looking through reports.

  "Sup?" Len asked.

  "Losing my fucking mind doing paperwork. Paperwork. Fucking bullshit. I thought I'd come back to save everyone from the apocalypse and I'd get, I don't know, adventures or something?" Rick sighed back into his chair, drinking from his tankard.

  "Got more of that?" Len asked.

  Rick swallowed it down, pointing over at a cask with his tankard. "Right over there. Tastes okay. Doesn't really do shit. Body stat's too high."

  Len shrugged, finding another tankard and starting to fill himself up.

  Rick sighed. "We got the quarry started up as well as the clay pits and there's gonna be a group heading out to the forest tomorrow to start clearing lumber and finding whatever's hiding out there," Rick said. “And it's all kinda pretty fucking boring."

  Len raised the tankard to his lips, taking a sip. "Passable." He took a bigger gulp, refilling his mug and tilting his head to Rick.

  Rick polished off the rest of his tankard and handed it over. Len filled up his tankard, returning to the kitchen table.

  "We have to get them up to speed if they're gonna be able to get through this thing," Len said.

  "Yeah, but do we actually have to be the ones to do it?" Rick asked.

  "Well, who else is gonna do it?"

  "I don't know. They could read a book or something," Rick said.

  "And all the books are in dungeons," Len said.

  Rick finished off his swallow midstream, getting a bunch of it on his shirt as he slammed his tankard down on the table. "That's what I'm talking about!" He swallowed whatever was still remaining in his mouth.

  There’s a lot going on there.

  Rick let out a burp. “Nearly came out my nose.” He sniffed to clear the sinuses.

  "I thought you'd have some fucking, I don't know, manners as a noble," Len said.

  "Eh, bullshit." Rick rubbed the back of his arm over his mouth, clearing the rest of his beer. "But as I was saying, we should go and start doing first clears." Rick looked at him with wide eyes, a wide smile, and a 'let's get into some shit' nod.

  Len barely held himself back from agreeing. That expression had got them into plenty of shit before. Supposed to get wiser with age or some shit.

  Len tapped his fingers on the tankard, pressing his tongue against his back molars. "All right, what are you thinking?" He drank from his beer.

  “The forgotten library is out there, and I know that Lydia is going to get to it eventually, but it's going to be real dangerous,” Rick wheedled. Shouldn’t be against all of the trained people and Lydia.

  Rick continued. “There's going to be a lot of creatures there, and daddy wants to get his kill on."

  Len nearly choked on his beer.

  “Please never say that sentence again.”

  “What? People say it all the time.”

  “They don’t and you know it and whatever you say next to defend it will be utter bullshit of the highest order.”

  Rick shrugged as if saying ‘be that way’ as he drank his beer.

  “They already have the spell to read the stuff. We get them some books, they learn it all, start teaching themselves and we get first clears. First Clears. Dude! We’d be fucking legends!”

  “And we would have first claim over all those resources and gear,” Len said.

  “Right, yeah, like man! The shifting sands has weapons and armor right?”

  “Yes,” Len drew it out. “What you getting at?”

  Rick leaned on the table. “Our gear is, this side of not shit. Now we can make new armor, super cool, awesome. Or we can pull it off of the dead creatures we fight along the way and upgrade the dungeoneering way. Also teach these guys to make better gear,” Rick waved at Goran in general.

  Len pursed his lips together. He pulled out his knife and started flipping it through his fingers absently.

  Rick’s grin grew as he sat back confidently. Len flipped the blade between his forefinger and thumb, holding it there.

  “Lets get some first clears.” His face split into a grin.

  Rick laughed and reached out with his tankard the two of them crashing them together. They drank deep.

  “If we’re hitting the library we should hit the whispering grove too,” Rick said.

  “They have ingredients right? Stamina potion industry got set up there right?” Len asked.

  “Yeah, though they got that clay too. Harder than stone when it hardens up. We can use that as an easy material to build houses from. Put it in shape, dry it out with a bit of magic and you got a wall.”

  “Okay,” Len frowned. “There’s that sap in the library that you can use to make a waterproof resin too.”

  “That’d be perfect, build walls with one, seal it in with the other,” Rick said.

  “If we can get the plants out of the grove and ship them back here we can get them producing ingredients at scale. Depending on how much we create we could supplement people’s need for food with stamina potions,” Len said.

  “Never a bad thing to have more potions,” Rick said.

  Len held up a finger. “Though first we got to get the Xinta’s to agree to make us trains. We’re going to need those still.”

  “People are going to start saying something about you and trains,” Rick gave him a serious piece of advice as he drank from his tankard.

  “Says the guy who spent fifteen years playing instruments terribly to come up with the resonating strike. The broken minstrel?”

  “Hey! It was all research!”

  “It wasn’t because you wanted to be a wandering bard getting all the ladies?” Len squinted at him as he drank.

  “Would’ve worked too, I just needed the right instrument. Who was to know it was the hammer?” Rick stuck his nose up, all prim and proper.

  His eyes slid over to Len, the corners of his mouth twitching.

  They devolved into laughter.