In the end, I agreed. Jessica made some good points about three people providing a better balance than two and how having someone powerful on the council would help prevent people trying to out-muscle her and Calvin. She didn’t want the position any more than I did, but I needed her to take care of Museumtown on a day-to-day basis.

  I needed to get stronger, and I couldn’t do that if I was constantly dealing with the settlement.

  Besides, Tori glared daggers at me when I tried to back out. Her dreams of ruling Chicago hinged on me saying yes, and I couldn’t win a war against her. I could mop the floor with her; I had the levels. But if I did, I’d lose Jessica.

  They had me beat.

  Once Jessica had my word that I’d play along, she let me go, and I retreated to the tower over the Field Museum’s entrance. It was little more than scrap metal and two-by-fours, but it did two important things for me.

  It kept me in between any wandering mid-Twenty-something who thought they could handle the Queen Tyrant. I hated that I needed to blockade the dungeon the same way Saul had, but with the boss roaming its halls, it’d be better to let the whole thing reset in a few hours. No one needed to get killed for their own stupidity.

  More importantly, it gave me somewhere private to set up a workplace.

  I laid out my tools—my ratcheting socket set, the wrenches and hammers, and all the screws, bolts, and nuts I could pack. All the auto parts I’d thought might be useful. The scrap metal from the Redline Tunnels, and the Voltsmithing-specific parts I’d looted. Saul had had a crude bed made from two-by-fours and wafer board; the mattress went out the window, but the bedframe itself made a good enough workbench. It took the better part of an hour to get everything set up more or less the way I wanted it.

  But when it was done, it was…not quite home. Nothing would replace Cindy’s Automotive, except maybe Dad’s shed. But it was comfortable, safe, and ready for me to start working on something big.

  First, though, I had to take a look at my stats, because I had a theory.

  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 41]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 27

  ?Awareness - 42

  ?Charge - 9/44 (35 Used)

  Stat Points Available: 0

  [Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

  Items

  ?Fast-Hoof Boots

  ?Voltsmith’s Grasp (0 Charge) - 0/3 Taser Launchers Loaded

  ?Heavy Trip-Hammer (20 Charge)

  I’d explained to Tori what I knew about stat synergies in the Redline Tunnels, and she’d explained the parallels in video games, but I was pretty sure I was wrong. I didn’t actually need Body. What I needed was enough Charge to replace my Body stat with a creation. Awareness was the same, but a little less; I was sure I could build creations to replace it. I didn’t think this applied to other classes, but the Voltsmith was looking increasingly like an exception to the rule.

  So, from here on out, I’d only be putting points into Charge unless the alternative was death—or if I realized I was wrong. All-in on Charge, all the way.

  I wouldn’t tell Tori, though. She’d be pissed if she knew I could cheat the system like that.

  So, with that resolved, I took a look at the Voltsmith’s Grasp. It had saved my life last night, and I needed to rehab it before I got into any more fights. The emitter in the center of my palm was cracked and split from Saul’s sword-blow; I unscrewed it and removed the wires, then realized I didn’t have a replacement. It was leaking Charge as fast as the gauntlet could produce it, though.

  That wasn’t sustainable; I needed the Voltsmith’s Grasp functional. The emitter went onto the workbench. I wasn’t ready to throw it away, but it wasn’t what I needed right now.

  I grabbed the refiner—a tiny glass lens that had come out of the Tuning Rod I’d torn apart for my Taser launchers. It slotted in nicely, and the Voltsmith’s Grasp started holding charge again. I let it fill up, then tried to activate the shock grip.

  It didn’t fire.

  I’d expected this; the refiner wasn’t an emitter. I’d need to do something different with the gauntlet’s energy, and I had just the idea. It’d also set the gauntlet up for its first major upgrade.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The tasers would have to go, though. I couldn’t run them and what I had in mind—not when I needed their tubes.

  We’d all had that one friend in high school who was obsessed with guns. It started with airsoft and paintball, or hunting deer, but by the time he was a junior—and they were always a guy—they’d moved up in the world to rail guns. Both the kind they’d used in World War One—on trains—and the experimental-ish magnet guns.

  Rob had been that friend. I’d learned more than I ever wanted to know about weird firearms. The rail gun phase had felt like the goofiest, least useful thing I could be learning—why bother figuring out how to make a magnetized arrow launcher when I could use a bow? Why bother with either of those things when I could be working on the station wagon?

  But right now, a rail gun was exactly what I needed. It’d give me stopping power—which I’d need if I ever wanted to fight the Queen Tyrant—and a ranged weapon with more punch than the Taser launcher.

  The core element was the mana coil I’d sliced in half for the ill-fated, temporary Charge Blade. I still had them, and it took a good half-hour to forge them back together into a single coil, then mount it on the outside of the Tuning and Imbuing Rods’ tubes. The charge-conducting ring I’d gotten from draining a magic ring a few days ago circled the tube’s front opening, and I attached wires to the backside and to the ring, forming a circuit with the refiner in the gauntlet’s center.

  “Whatcha making?” Tori asked, poking her head into my workshop.

  I put the rail gun to the side for a moment; I couldn’t test it in here anyway. “An arm cannon,” I simplified. She didn’t want to hear about the physics of magnetic acceleration, even if it was Charge-based.

  “Cool cool. So, I’m Princess Tori now. You can address me as such, or as your highness. Thanks for that.” She pushed my tools aside and sat down on the wooden bed frame.

  “I’m also working on a set of armor,” I continued.

  “Magic armor?”

  “Not exactly. Get off my wrenches and I’ll lay out what I’m thinking.”

  Right now, the armor design only covered my right shoulder, elbow, and half my chest, but it wasn’t finished. A full set of it was a longer-term project, and one that I’d need a lot more Charge to complete. The current set-up would—I hoped—take eight or nine Charge to power.

  I pointed out the framework as I drew it on the workbench in orange energy. “Elbow and shoulder plates, both quarter-inch steel. Same with the chest plate. The straps need to be leather, but reinforced; I got the idea from something Saul was wearing. It was washers sandwiched between two layers of wool cloth.”

  “You’re making a half-plate, half-brigantine? Cool!” Tori was much more interested in this than the rail gun.

  “Sure.” I didn’t know the word, but I trusted that Tori did.

  “Can you make me one?”

  “Maybe. You need some new armor. But yours won’t be powered like mine. I’m not just building a piece of armor here. I also want to hit harder.” I didn’t tell her my theory about Charge replacing the other stats for Voltsmith.

  “You’re looking at making a stat-boosting item?”

  “Yes.” Her question barrage was getting old, so I pulled some scrap metal out and started hammering and bending it into the shape I’d set up for the shoulder pad. The clanging drowned her out, although she pointed out some ‘design flaws’ in my work.

  After a while, she got bored, and I still hadn’t built more than a shoulder pad and wiring harness hanging from it. “What’s the rail gun?”

  “It’s a science fiction weapon, not a fantasy one,” I replied, “so you probably don’t see them in the games you enjoy. I got the idea from a high school friend who built one with electromagnets, BBs, and a ruler. The gun itself is finished, but before I bolt it on, I need to test-fire it. Want to watch?”

  “Sure.”

  I picked up a pair of plastic safety glasses I’d grabbed from Kenny’s toolbox and passed them her way. She stared at them, and I stared at her. “Put them on.”

  “They’re ridiculous.”

  ‘They’re also the only way you can be on the firing range.” I pulled another pair from my inventory and stuck them on my face. Then, I picked up the rail gun and gauntlet. “I’m going to take a shot at the Field Museum’s facade, and we could get some blow-back from the impact. Or the gun could come apart when I charge it up.”

  I didn’t bother waiting for her to put them on. Instead, I headed down to the throne room. She’d either show up or she wouldn’t.

  The rail gun whined for almost a full second as the refiner glowed a violent orange so bright it was almost white. I had the Voltsmith’s Grasp on, but the wires led to the rail gun, which I’d placed at the bottom of the throne room stairs. We were actually outside the fortress for extra protection.

  “Firing.”

  I squeezed my fist and touched a finger to the refiner. It popped like a jaw harp with a loud boing. Tori almost laughed.

  Then she went quiet as something crashed in the throne room. Whatever we’d done, it was bouncing off the sheet metal. I waited, counting down from ten. Then, when it was over, I unplugged the rail gun from the refiner. “Let’s see what we did.”

  What we’d done wasn’t very impressive-looking at first glance. None of the marble chunks the rail gun shot had broken off the stairs was bigger than a fingernail; most of the impacts had been bouncing shrapnel hitting several times, not individual chunks. But the iron bolt I’d attempted to throw was nowhere to be found.

  It took Tori almost two minutes to find the hole in the stairs. It wasn’t any wider than her thumb, and when she reached down to touch it, it was still hot. She pulled her hand back as I joined her and bent down to stare into the hole.

  The bolt’s metal hex end was deformed and twisted, maybe a half-inch deep into the hole. I nodded slowly. “We’re going to need to tone its power down. That was a ten-Charge shot. I’ll keep testing it as I work on the armor.”

  Tori sat on the stairs and stared me in the eye. “We need to figure out what we’re doing next. I want to push some more Tier Ones. Jessica’s cool with Tier Twos if I hit Level Fifty, so I’ve got to keep pushing.”

  “What about Calvin and the twins?” I asked. We needed to track them down; Calvin could probably take care of himself, and he was invisible when he didn’t want people noticing him, but the twins were just kids. Now that Museumtown was safe, finding them felt like a priority—if Calvin hadn’t already.

  “I mean, if we find them, great, but the dungeons—how about them? We could clear three or four a day, really power-level for a while.”

  Tori was right, and we needed the dungeon clears for the City Key, too, but I really didn’t want to abandon the twins. We discussed it for a while and ended up with an agreement: we’d go look for them, and while we did, we’d clear a couple of dungeons. Not the power-leveling pace Tori wanted, though—three or four a day would take all day.

  When she finally left, I packed up the rail gun/gauntlet combo. It needed some serious tuning, but until the Voltsmith’s Grasp finished recharging to eight Charge so I could re-test it, all I could do was work on the armor—and my plans for the gauntlet’s future forms. Tori would have to wait until tomorrow—and so would Calvin or the twins.

  Today, I needed to finish these creations and get my Voltsmithing caught up with my level.

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