Chapter 73 – Infusion

The next week had been chaotic to say the least. After getting their rations delivered the morning after the ambush, they had a team meeting to discuss the feedback they had been given. Ioseph had been apologetic and determined to prove himself, but Erika was in a complete state of denial.

No matter how she looked at it, they had succeeded. Her individual training with Prestige had started to chip away at the cold and calculated exterior, and Erika showed signs of more than just fatigue. Her confidence had justifiably taken a battering, which resulted in her attempting to control even more of their actions and decisions. Everything they did needed to be reported to her, even the simple things like mealtimes.

Sal was grateful that there had been no resentment regarding the feedback he had been given. The team was at least functional enough to own their individual performances, rather than pointing fingers accusingly.

Prestige’s feedback had been to the point and highlighted each of their weaknesses. The knowledge that they had just a week to prepare for the next attack had driven them into a corner. Their camp hadn’t been defensible enough to repel their attackers, which was an immediate concern, but their teamwork was by far the biggest problem.

Erika’s solution was to reorganize the camp in such a way that they’d maximize the amount of time they’d have before the barriers were breached. Ioseph had been tasked with adding additional layers of barrier protection to their surroundings, while Sal had been instructed to create a watchtower of sorts at the top of the tent.

His visor and revolver were the perfect combination for scouting and long-ranged attacks, and Erika wanted him to be their eyes on the battlefield. Sal didn’t argue with her but felt like a lot of responsibility was being placed on his shoulders. Rochelle would be paired with Ioseph, who would only work on reinforcing the battle-wards and barriers around the camp. Any that were destroyed would be replaced as they cocooned within their camp. Brophy was to dispatch any combatant who managed to clear the area, while Erika would orchestrate their movements.

The plan sounded good, but it was easier said than done.

Sal cursed as his foot snagged on a shard of broken tree trunk, causing him to stumble and drop the thick branches in his hands. Brophy looked over at him, but Sal shook his head and indicated that it was fine. They needed materials to construct the tower, and the only things available to them were rock and wood.

Ioseph’s battle-wards had caused the vast majority of nearby trees to explode, which forced the team to scour the farther reaches of the forest in the hopes of finding useful pieces.

Sal picked up the thick branches and tucked them under his arm. His mind raced with the words Chatfield had told him in the dungeon about materials and how hard they were to source. Staying in the wilderness had given Sal a whole new appreciation for the materials he had used up to that point, and he told himself repeatedly that he wouldn’t take it for granted going forward.

“Think we’ll have enough with this?” Brophy asked from across the way as he gripped three massive logs over his left shoulder.

Each of them was thicker than one of Sal’s legs, and he marveled at the nonchalant display of strength. Sal ran a quick calculation in his head before giving Brophy a curt nod.

“Yeah, that should do it. I think we already had enough at the camp, but with those we’ll have a surplus,” Sal answered as he looked around him.

No matter how many times he tried to use the visor to pick up useful materials in the surroundings, it came up with nothing other than wood and rock. There hadn’t been enough essence in the atmosphere to forcibly evolve any of the materials into infused variants, nor had enough time passed for it to occur naturally. It was an incredibly limiting factor for him as a Crafter, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Brophy nodded before setting off with a light jog. The collection of small trees on his shoulder bobbed slightly on either end as he made his way back to the camp.

Sal sighed as he looked at his own branches in distaste. It was hard not to compare himself to Brophy, and no matter how many times he tried to avoid the comparison, he was reminded constantly of how wide the gap was in their capabilities. After spending a few moments feeling sorry for himself, Sal tightened his grip on the branches and made his way toward the camp.

Brophy had disappeared into the distance ahead, and Sal decided he might as well check in with the others. Lifting his tablet out with his free hand, Sal ignored the muted group chat and navigated to the shared chat with Divinity and Barry.

Salvatore: Out foraging for wood. How are you guys getting on?

He had made it about ten steps forward when his tablet vibrated in his hand.

Barry: I put the guitar guy into purgatory and now the team is freaking out that there was a psionic ambush.

Barry: Pretty sure he knows it was me, but he’s not saying anything.

Divinity: Hey Sal! We’ve been foraging ourselves and Melanie keeps finding bones. It’s creepy.

Divinity: Barry! You’re the Controller. Stop being petty.

Salvatore: Don’t suppose you guys came across any materials I could use? It’s just wood and rock around our campsite and I’m going crazy.

Divinity: Sorry, Sal. Nothing but bone here and I’m not sure how I feel about them being used for crafting. Ugh.

Barry: You don’t understand—he doesn’t stop playing! He tried to compose a battle song when we were fighting!

Salvatore: Sounds rough. Want to trade teammates?

Divinity: I would love to see an Erika and Barry combo! I’m shipping this.

Barry: No thanks, I’d rather have a team I can control. She sounds like she’s being a nightmare, though.

Salvatore: Ah, she calmed down a bit. Just not enough to make her pleasant yet.

Barry: With the material stuff, why aren’t you using your essence to upgrade the materials? Or are they too shit to improve?

Divinity: Not that it’s much use, but I checked the future and it looks like you don’t find anything useful out here anytime soon.

Salvatore: So…there’s hope? That I’ll find something eventually?

Barry: Are you still practicing your illusions?

Divinity: Sorry Sal, didn’t mean to give you hope. You don’t find anything useful in the wild.

Salvatore: No worries, just wanted to check. And yeah, every night before I sleep. Thanks for sending over more notes.

Barry: Cool. Gotta go, but I’ll catch up with you guys later.

Divinity: You’re going to go back to trolling the main group, aren’t you?

Barry: We’re literally days from Victoria’s nervous breakdown. I’m not missing it for the world.

Salvatore: Chat later!

Sal smiled as he pocketed his tablet. It was great that he was still able to chat with them throughout the exercises, because without them he likely would have gone insane. Just knowing that the other teams had been struggling with the excursion had been a huge relief. The group chat had devolved into people talking about useless stuff with many spouting conspiracy theories as to why they weren’t allowed to go back to the academy.

Sal had wondered how Bastion had managed to get its hooks into the next generation of Controllers, but after seeing the stupidity from some of the group chat, he understood how easily they could be swayed. It wasn’t all useless, with some of the Controllers offering a detailed rundown of their own ambush encounters.

Erika had joined the chat but didn’t contribute anything from their team. They did manage to learn that the ambushes had all taken place on the same day. Some groups with low-ranked members only had three assailants, with the maximum being ten. It made sense for their team to have a higher level of difficulty because of the tournament results and their overall ranks, but it didn’t stop Sal from being jealous. Facing off against three attackers seemed way more preferable to what they had endured.

As the camp came into view, Sal saw that Brophy was busy stacking another set of retrieved branches on the large pile in front of their tent. It was way more than he requested, and Sal wondered whether there was merit to Barry’s suggestion of refining the materials with his essence. He stepped into the camp and deposited his paltry number of branches in the stockpile before stepping back to look at them all.

“What are you thinking?” Brophy stepped off the pile and stood beside Sal, following his gaze to the wood.

Sal frowned as he picked up a small branch. “I’m wondering if it’s worth infusing the wood with my essence. It’ll improve its capability as a material by removing the impurities, but it’ll drastically reduce the amount we’ve got stockpiled.” Sal’s gaze moved to the empty space above their tent. “Alternatively, I could create the tower and try to upgrade it afterward with whatever we have left?”

Brophy nodded. “Let’s say you had unlimited amounts of wood. Would that make the decision easier?”

The question caught Sal off guard. Prestige had already made it clear that they wouldn’t be left wanting for essence in the camp, which he already knew was true from his illusion practice. His essence recovery rate had drastically improved, and that was down to Prestige’s Catalyst ability. She had likely altered the atmospheric essence to suit each of their needs.

“Since I don’t need to worry about conserving essence, my first choice would be to refine the materials and build it afterward.” Sal bit his lip as he studied their stockpile. “I could maybe change the structure of the tower to require less materials, but it’s really hard to quantify it without making a blueprint first.”

Just as Sal was about to dismiss his own thoughts, Brophy clapped his hands together.

“Okay, that settles it. Ioseph!” Brophy called out to the Defense, who was inspecting one of their barriers. “Help me get more wood in the forest, would you?”

Rather than answering immediately, Ioseph looked to where Erika sat with Rochelle beside the stove. She gave him a nod of approval, and Ioseph moved toward the exit of their camp.

Brophy grinned as he clapped Sal on the shoulder. “Leave the supply to us and get started on the refining. We’ll make sure you don’t run out!”

Sal laughed. “Are you sure? It might not improve the structure all that much.”

Brophy shrugged before turning toward the exit. “Worst-case scenario, it fails and I’ll make your life miserable during training tomorrow. No pressure!”

Sal’s laugh turned into a sigh. Training with Brophy had only grown in difficulty, and he had to suppress a shudder to avoid thinking about the torture that awaited him the next day.

Pushing those thoughts out of his head, Sal took a knee beside the large stockpile and picked up a small branch. He needed to know what he was going to build before refining the materials, so he loosely sketched out his idea on the dirt.

The large logs were perfect for support beams while the rough shards were thick enough for flooring or panels. With the components in mind, he drew out the mock blueprint and designed it in such a way that the base would clip over the top of the tent. Sal compensated for the slope of the tent by having the tower base slot seamlessly between the jagged rocks.

When the blueprint finally took shape, Sal activated his Mythcrafter ability to see whether it picked up his intentions. The visor scanned the drawing but didn’t register the design. Sal sighed as he got to his feet and dusted off his knees. His scrawl on the ground had been sufficient for the tent, but there was a lot more complexity to the tower. Drawing in dirt wasn’t going to cut it, and Sal decided to try a different tactic.

He navigated to the Illusion ability on his visor and activated the weave, conjuring the image he had in his mind of what the tower should look like. It was going to be rough, but Sal didn’t care. There were no textures and it was incredibly blocky, but he managed to place the illusion of a tower over the tent.

Sal paced around the camp and looked at it from every angle to verify that it would work. He ignored the questions from Erika and Rochelle as he fought to maintain his concentration to keep the illusion in place. When he was satisfied with the placement, Sal activated his Mythcrafter ability and tried to create a blueprint from the illusion. It was the first time he had tried to use two of the abilities together in this order, so he wasn’t sure it would succeed.

Much to his relief, the blueprint materialized in front of his eyes and meshed over the illusion. He kept it active while deactivating the illusion, feeling a huge wave of relief. It required far more concentration than he had anticipated, and Sal had to thank his visor for keeping him sane. Deduction flared to life as Sal ran the calculation of material costs. They had more than enough to create the tower with the basic wood from the forest.

Instead of trying the essence infusion and running the simulation again, Sal attempted to make the calculation with his visor. There were so many variables at play that he didn’t hold his breath. Sal guessed it would fail, but to his surprise, the visor changed the blueprint to reflect the new materials. Estimates and totals flooded his vision, telling him that he had around forty percent of the required raw materials. There was a breakdown of a predictive analysis, highlighting his chances of infusing each piece of wood successfully. Atmospheric essence and his own internal core were factored into the project, with Sal being informed that the project would take over fifteen hours to complete with the essence available to him. Those calculations even took Prestige’s influence into consideration.

Sal shook his head at the pile of wood. Fifteen hours was an absolute age, and he couldn’t understand why it would take so long. He inspected the blueprint again and saw that it had factored in the rock enclosure he had made with the tarp. There were two phases to the blueprint, with one of them taking only four hours, and the other taking the original fifteen. Sal realized that the longer estimate had proposed recreating the enclosure with the new design.

When he explored the blueprint, Sal was disappointed to see that the Mythcrafter ability seemed unwilling to accept his design and instead offered multiple variations of it. It still incorporated the same infused wood as a material, but the scale and scope of the projects kept creeping away from his intentions. One of the proposals was to create a wooden barrier around the entire camp. It was all very overwhelming.

He groaned as he rubbed at his eyes. They were going to need a lot more wood.