Nate tried very hard not to be distracted by the thoughts running rampant through his mind. He failed miserably. The night with Britt had been bittersweet but the morning had come and they still hadn’t talked about what they were. It seemed to him that his girlfriend was evading the discussion as much as he was and he couldn’t bring himself to force the issue. Especially given everything else going on. After the night of recovery, they had all gathered around the tables to discuss the next steps in their plans. With Nate having successfully improved the Asmuisillan Champions’ Armour, they were hopeful more than confident that they had bought themselves such extra time. Princess Morgane and her supporters were using that time to rush to the Capital. Luc had made it abundantly clear that an all-out assault on the palace and Bordain's supporters would likely result in his half-brother Thierry bringing Bordain back from the war front. That was the end goal, but they didn’t want to force Bordain’s return until they were ready.

  That, however, left the other remaining thorn in their side. Evelynn Allais still held the Adventurer’s Guild, along with the Jamison siblings. Her forces included four Platinums at a minimum and more than likely a dozen or so Golds. Silvers weren’t worth mentioning as far as everyone at the table had been concerned. The added problem was the guard forces of the Capital. The Guild, under Allais, had been working with them to suppress and basically rob the general populace. It had been a dark time for the people of the Capital and Deverell had been very confident in his assessment that an attack on the Guild would result in the guards rushing to assist Allais and her forces.

  Fortunately, Nate’s proposal to resolve that particular issue had been accepted readily by all parties. All parties, because the person he’d needed to ask was not with them. Cutter, the old smuggler, had been doing his best to protect his family and his people from the depredations of the Guards who had bit by bit been taking more and more ‘liberties’. The people of the Slums were fed up, but they lacked the equipment to pose much of a threat outside of their numbers. Numbers that had been depleted not once but twice by conscriptions for the armies. It was those same conscripts who had been the ones to finally convince Cutter to assist. They remembered Nate and what he had done for them, both healing them and returning them to the Capital.

  Thinking back on the gathering that Cutter had put together and the fervour of the conscripts in their support for Nate made him feel a little uncomfortable. There had been adoration in their eyes and Nate didn’t know how to handle it. Fortunately, Cutter had interceded and, in the end, capitulated, agreeing to help. Nate had given them the Common and Uncommon equipment stolen from the Asmuisillan army, enough armour and weapons to outfit around five hundred individuals.

  Nate just hoped the conscripts could keep a lid on it for five days. Five days, because that was how long they had before they assaulted the Guild and retook Aisling’s dream. Five days for Aisling to call forth a grand storm that would rock the Capital. Five days to prepare. For Nate, it was forever and no time at all. That was how he found himself standing over his three nearly naked friends.

  On tables he had raised from the stone lay Kiri, Britt and Null, all dressed in only their underwear.

  “You sure you don’t want Britt to be naked?” teased Kiri. “I can close my eyes.”

  Nate pointedly ignored Britt’s blushing and was saved from a response of his own by Null.

  “Could you not distract him, Kiri? He’s modifying our bodies and I don’t want to end up looking like some lumpy piece of clay!”

  Kiri rolled her eyes, “He’s fine. Nate’s probably thinking about three other things while he works that are far more distracting than anything I could say. Besides, if I don’t tease him, Luc will.”

  “He already did,” Nate commented, and sighed when he saw Kiri’s expectant smile as she waited to hear it. He was only mildly surprised to see Britt was curious as well.

  “He told me that what adults get up to behind closed doors is their own business…unless I wanted to trade stories. Then he tried to trade stories.”

  Frick cackled from the corner while Kiri just grinned in amusement.

  “You can chat while I work,” Nate added for Null’s benefit. “We’re going to be here a while and you won’t distract me.”

  As the three talked, Nate did exactly what Kiri had alluded to and went over his other plans. With his current Intellect score, he could split his mind four ways. One part was focused on using Multi Conceptual Material Shaping. With its current Skill level and with his Stats, he could now alter three materials at the same time. At face value, that might look like a threefold increase in his output, but it was in fact closer to sixfold because Frick could make use of the Skill as well - and the Skill’s power was purely based on Nate’s Stats. For the first time in almost a year, the mana stockpile Nate had been accruing was decreasing rather than growing as his usage outpaced the rate at which they could collect it from the Capital’s mana pipelines. That, of course, included Jacque and his apprentices' usage as well. The Artist’s Emporium staff were working on some runecrafted barrier equipment to be given to Cutter’s people to help them keep the attention of the guards during the attack on the Guild.

  As for Nate, while he had been gone, Evindal had reviewed his work on Kiri and Britt’s skeletons. The verdict had been that there was no noticeable negative impact. With the elf’s approval, Nate was now pushing the same changes to the rest of their bodies, or in Null’s case, adding them for the first time. Previously he had just altered the legs, which was arguably about a third of their skeleton by size. Now he was applying those same changes to the rest of their bodies. He was also pushing the changes from Epic to Legendary. If he’d had more time he might’ve tried for Mythic but five days wasn’t long enough, even with the decreased time it took for him to tier-up materials. As with his previous design, he was focusing on adding the affinities for Reinforcement and Durability to the bones. In addition, specifically for Britt, he was carving runes into one of her femurs using Conceptual Runic Mastery coupled with Conceptual Spatial Authority.

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  Similar to himself, he was creating an expanded spatial pocket for her to make use of. It would be a drain on her mana reserve, but then, he intended to give her plenty of mana gems to use. She had agreed to the changes and promised to raise her Mana Reserve to account for the extra drain on her mana going forward. Nate hadn’t wanted to force her down a particular path but Britt had agreed to the changes because of Nate’s other proposal. He still retained one set of Champions’ Armour and, at this very moment, Frick was working on it to Nate’s specifications. One of the things Nate had gotten out of his trip to the Asmuisillan army was some new Sigils. The Master Enchanter mistakenly had assumed that because Nate understood how their armours worked and knew how to improve them, that he must know the Sigils involved in their design. Thanks to that, Nate had gotten to see three new Journeyman-ranked Sigils. Empower, Transfer and Body had been added to Nate’s repertoire. Learning them had not triggered any Divine Energy and he was still wondering about that. If knowledge of Concepts was just handed to him, did that mean he wouldn’t trigger that connection with reality? He didn’t know, but it was in the back of his mind.

  While the new Sigils hadn’t helped him advance any of his other Skills to Divine, what they had done was let him figure out how to redesign the Champions’ Armour in its entirety. He would rather have just made minor changes to it as there was less work involved, but at the end of the day, it was an Enchanted armour-set meant to work with an Enchanted empowering array and Nate was not an Enchanter. He was a Runecrafter. While he could copy the principles and ideas involved, he needed to come at the problem from a different angle. Frick was hard at work reshaping the armour itself, extracting the enchanted mana pathways and replacing them with complex runes that interlocked to distribute themselves throughout the armour. Nate had debated using Conceptual Insight to improve the Sigils’ tiers to make the armour even better, but he had the stored mana earmarked for a different Sigil. Either way, by the time it was done, the armour would be Legendary quality with an affinity for Empowerment and linked to a runic empowering array that could work with either regular mana or processed mana. This of course would make the effect less powerful than being backed by a small army, but it was still basically a boosting Skill equivalent. The empowering array could be stored inside of Britt’s own spatial pocket and activated at her will. It should also interface with her own armour projection Skill. Ultimately, this was the best he thought he could do for her, for now. He hoped it would be enough.

  While he worked, a third part of his mind went over the details that had been gathered by Deverell about what they would face at the Guild. There would be Golds in the mix, but Nate didn’t give them a second thought. Perhaps it was arrogance, or perhaps just the reality of the situation, but he was convinced that there wasn’t a Gold in Etrua that could face him, except for maybe Kiri, and even that was doubtful as he knew all his best friend’s tricks. For now, anyway. No, it was the Platinums that occupied his thoughts. Deverell had been very thorough in sharing what was known about the four Platinums they might face. Allais shouldn’t be his problem, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been given a rundown of her known capabilities. Evelynn Allais was a powerful Platinum that was primarily known as a Light Mage. Where most Light Mages tended to lean towards Illusion-based Skills and Spells, Evelynn Allais used Light offensively. Deverell didn’t say it, because Etrua might not have a word for it, but Nate was pretty sure Allais was basically using lasers. Unfortunately, that was the extent of what was known. The woman had a powerful veil and had rarely been witnessed in battle by anyone who spoke of her other capabilities. The Jamison siblings, however, were far more well known. All three siblings were Blood users. They, however, all took different approaches to their use of the Concept of Blood. Portos and Kartier Jamison were both blademasters. While Portos used his Blood Concept as a weapon itself, able to harden his blood into armour and weapons, Kartier was far more insidious. It had been Kartier that had taken Deverell’s arm and left the lingering Blood Concept in the wound that made it refuse to close. If Kartier was pure offense and Portos was something of a hybrid, it was their sister Helen that turned the trio from powerful into a nightmare. Helen was a Blood Mage. For Nate, that had initially conjured mental images of ropes of blood slicing across the battlefield and ripping blood from their enemies. That, however, was as far from the truth as possible. Deverell had explained that Helen was a pure support. The youngest of the Jamisons was capable of healing and empowering her siblings and Nate had to wonder if she was using a secondary Concept. Blood would be enough, but what if there was a Concept for something like ‘family’? He wasn’t sure, since he hadn’t made much use of the Blood Concept, but the idea niggled at the back of his mind.

  Focusing back on the general problem, he went over it again. Allais had four Platinums and somewhere between twelve and twenty Golds, compared with their three Platinums and six Golds, factoring in Jorge, who had emphatically stated he was going wherever his daughter went. The numbers were stacked against them, and as powerful as Evindal and Luc were, they were also confident that the Jamisons would defeat them given enough time. It didn’t help that both Luc and Evindal made use of poisons and toxins, which would likely be countered by Helen Jamison. Defeat didn’t mean death as Luc, by his own omission, was a slippery bastard. Evindal, as a powerful healer, was also incredibly difficult to kill. But, in a drawn out battle, both would be forced to flee. Then there was Aisling. In many ways, Nate had for a long time considered her the strongest fighter on their side. In the skies above Morgane’s army, his mentor had defeated not one but two Platinums. The tall, Amazonian woman was a force of nature. He could also see in her eyes that she wasn’t confident in defeating Evelynn Allais.

  So, to even the playing field, Nate and Kiri would need to step up. Deverell had been the first to admit that he likely could no longer compete with Kiri in a direct confrontation. He had made it clear that his apprentice still had work to do on her information gathering and stealth related skillsets, but in pure combat, he had admitted he would lose. The shock on Jorge’s face when the Dagger Dancer had explained that was a memory Nate would cherish. That same look of shock had, however, quickly given way to a swell of pride that could’ve swallowed the room. In that moment, seeing Kiri’s reaction as she blushed and tried to avoid eye contact, watching her push down tears of happiness, Nate had known she was truly on the road to recovery from Coralie’s betrayal.

  His sister's improved mood didn’t help with the stepping up part, but it would definitely help with her morale. Besides, that was what he was for, this time anyway. Because when he had time to prepare, he was unbeatable. They were all Blood users. Well, he had a Sigil for that, and five days to prepare some nasty surprises. Blood Control, Blood Drain, Blood Release. When the battle was finally joined, he would see how well those three Platinums fought while he contested the control of their weapons of choice. After all, they might be Blood users, but he was a Conceptual Runic Artist. He painted with the tools of reality and knowing theirs, he would make it his own.

  He grinned and finally paid attention to what the other three were saying.

  “Nate, why do you look like you're plotting something nefarious?” asked Kiri, eyes narrowed and a smirk on her lips.

  “Oh, no reason,” he assured her.

  Kiri didn’t look like she believed him. She knew him so well.

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