Chapter Thirty Two

A hectic two days of experimentation with the loot was interrupted when the clock started ticking again. Loap's astute ears for the time gave a midnight start time.

That made Harmony's project of spider lights all the more popular as the nighttime challenge approached. The latest batch waited beside Harmony for the finishing touches. With a grunt, she wiped off the sticky feeling of fate that adhered to her fingertips. It was easy to see why the stuff was often alluded to like spider webs. The best she'd managed to do was extrude some through her fingertips but had yet to find any use for it. Maybe if she could [Claim the Remains of Power] a fate-based skill she could understand it better.

Picking up an unfinished spider-light, Harmony got to work sealing and activating it. The accidental discovery came ten failures into working with elemental gems as a power source. It took an elemental gem suspended in lake water inside the body of a small spider with two broken pieces of a skill acting as a connecting arc. Activating it, however, took a drop or two of her blood as a catalyst with spiritual energy to start the process.

Harmony sealed the physical damage and spiritual container with [Manipulate Dead] and flooded it with [Renew spirit], focusing on the damaged skill shards within the dead space. The lightning gem inside the container flickered on as the energy reached capacity, with an arc of charged energy joining it to those anchored skill pieces. It worked best if it was two halves of the same skill. The dark spider's body transformed into a glowing yellow orb.

Fire gems produced a red light, water blue, and earth green, oddly enough. They had secondary effects when people operated under the glow of different lights that boosted some skills minorly. For Harmony, the lights were more of a sign of reclaiming civilization from the nude wilderness they entered, a status symbol. For that reason, and people wanting to play around with the benefits, was enough to drive up their demand. The real prize of the experiment season sat Harmony's dwelling.

Twin crystals of lightning and earth supported an attached collection of six equally split shards of a skill and rather than the energy-feeding illumination, a skill sat preserved in the creation within a pseudo-cage. The idea came from watching the army unit construction tables at work. Harmony's end product was neither living nor dead, a merged creation to create a container to hold skills. It wasn't perfect. The degradation was slow, but it had the potential for her to save good skills collected with [Claim the Remains of Power]. That potential solution to a problem that had been bothering her pleased both her newly evolved situationships with her class and profession. Removal of a problem, revival of a skill, and use of the dead.

It wasn't the only problem tackled. Some of which were farmed out on the contribution board. [Eternal Fable's Heart]'s true sight ended up pulling more information from the obelisk for Loap, and as the spiders grew tougher but not unmanageable they didn't want a re-triggering of increased danger. True sight proved useless with crafting as it was like staring into a blinding light while trying to work. Spying on Tyler with it proved to be good practice for another issue on her mind. "One step closer to undoing what Saccerate is doing to Maxwell."

"Gweep?"

"Talking to myself, Squeaker."

Eight lights later, Harmony hauled the spider lights up to distribute among the buyers from the contribution board.

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"Socks can move even faster under this light. I have to convince him to wear a harness for it though." Owlsley proudly bragged about her sloth as she took two green spheres. "Now, be careful with this. I don't want to blow yourself up. Only break the paper if you're going to use it quickly."

Harmony carefully took Owlsley's experimentally explosive contribution to the tribe as payment.

The explosive combinations took a few people by surprise. Kenny needed more healing after nearly killing himself again, but his new half-step body took to burn recovery fast.

Even with the excitement of new toys, anxiety was growing in the camp. Gareth had blabbed that he suspected the next competition would make their team's numbers a disadvantage. "That's how these games work. They have to rig it to keep it balanced." The logic was too sound to fault.

That wasn't the only source of discontent. Dinner tasted of soap and spiders with only a hint of outside flavor, a continuation of how bad lunch was. People swallowed it with grimaces that matched hers. The full meal bars were prioritized for pets and their value on the contribution board rose quickly. King spiders had created a wall of webbing as an additional barrier to get past to reach the mimics for farming. Another thing to deal with. Felix, Maxwell, and food supplies meant the problems to tackle were building up.

Adric poked his soup's floating bits with a spoon.

"Eat. You don't operate well on an empty stomach. Unless you wish to bow out of supporting me against the targets?"

Adric's response was to pout. "Like I'd leave you to danger."

"Then eat." Harmony took her spoon, balancing a bite of root and spider together, and shoved it into her mouth, chewing to make her point.

The taste did make her get inventive with [Recall] focusing memories of the taste of Ma Bell's dinners. The other option was to feed her sense of taste to [Eternal Fable's Heart] for fate, but that did nothing to manage the texture. The one time she tried that level her whole mouth went numb and she bit her tongue.

Grimacing Adric took his bite.

The food problem would need to be solved after the midnight competition.

A few choked-down bites later, Adric spoke, "If things get heated with Felix we might need to find a permanent solution for him."

Was he worried she'd have to kill him? She'd nearly taken out the assassin at the Harvest of Talents with him there. Adric wasn't around for Max's little dead-end alley party. Those she'd killed in the deadwoods were away from the group. There were the ambushers in Nae's Garden, but those she'd neglected to mention. That all ignored tough choices on the streets before she even met the prince. It's not like she'd talked about her little killings in detail. Maid or lady, one doesn't talk about the garbage they've thrown away.

"Kenny is only alive by the grace of all our combined healing efforts and rewards. If Felix proves intractable to reason I know we'll do what needs to be done."

Adric's eyes flickered to the sky. "And I'll be your blade if need be."

The scrying. Was this really a case of not wanting to put that side of her on display to the world or those watching? There was dancing in front of a crowd, but that was a far step from killing someone. Adric's skills at seeing it mystified her as much as her seeing death confused him. It's not like she'd planned on letting Hyacinth eat Felix while he was sleeping, as convenient as that would be. Not to say an open confrontation was without risks. Adric admitted he didn't know the political ramifications of killing a contestant from the Broken Isles. [Recall] reminded her how he cut through her creation. Assuming they'd manage to survive such a conflict.

There was no guarantee she'd run into Felix Campbell, or even Maxwell to get access to Saccerate. That didn't mean she couldn't be prepared to do both.

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