Day 112: Saw that wretch Horlin Dretch again, bless his twisted heart. Half a face, two glass eyes, and a smile like melted wax. He’s been courting the grave-robber’s daughter. Brought her a bouquet of sewer-rot lilies today. She threw up on his feet. He called it a sign.

  Day 124: He stitched poetry into his chest again. Something about her smile being ‘a wound worth keeping’. She ran screaming. He lost a nipple in the process.

  Day 158: Poor bastard shaved his brows, filed his teeth, and smeared perfume over the bone tumors. Asked her to ‘bind their fates’ atop the gallows stage in the middle of the market.

  Day 158, later: She said ‘no’. Loudly. With a shove.

  Day 159: The grave-robber’s daughter sold the rope fragment to me for six coppers. Smells like heartbreak. What a deal for me. Boss is gonna want three of those coppers.

  – Excerpt from the ‘Journal of Elric Varn’, Rot Merchant of Blightmarch

  A week crawled by since the fire. A full week of treating gangsters, patching up stab wounds, sewing split knuckles, forcing half-dead men to drink medicinal sludge until they could sit upright and stagger out of the clinic on their own two feet, and finally—finally—Gael had some time to himself.

  Well, almost.

  Downstairs, in the prayer hall, Maeve was seeing off the last batch of Repossessors, tying flower cords around their wrists as souvenirs. It was a thoughtful little sentimental-slash-marketing gesture Cara had invented ages ago to make sure people who saw the cords knew the clinic existed… and if someone were to ask for Gael’s opinion, he’d say the vibrant, colorful flower cords balanced out the Repossessor’s usual brutality quite well.

  At the very least, the Repossessors didn’t seem to mind the flower cords.

  Halfway up the stairs to the surgical chamber, Gael watched as Maeve stood by the front door, nodding and murmuring polite goodbyes without looking any of the exiting men in the eye.

  Oh, but more than a few of the gangsters muttered under their breath, and they made sure Maeve knew how ‘real pretty’ she was for a doctor. They were only nice to her. They never showed half as much good humor to him, so while he felt like going downstairs to knock them around a bit, he also noticed the slight furrow in Maeve’s brows—the way her jaw was clenched like she was holding back sharp retorts—and decided against it at the last moment.

  He wasn’t imagining it. She actually looked… slightly pleased.

  Not in a ‘please flirt with me more’ kind of way, but more like a ‘this is embarrassing, but I don’t hate it’ sort of thing.

  Then Cara kicked his shins from the steps below, looking disgustingly smug.

  “That’s how you compliment a lady,” she said, jerking her head at Maeve. “Take notes, doctor. The ‘get a beautiful wife’ plan is already working wonders for our reputation.”

  Gael snorted, rolling his shoulders as he looked away. “If she’s getting compliments, that’s her thing, not mine.”

  “Wouldn’t kill you to compliment her once in a while, hm?”

  He didn’t bother responding to that. He just rolled his shoulders and kicked her back in the shins, mumbling for her to keep walking and hauling the box of Myrmur parts into the surgical chamber.

  Dragging the carcasses out of the storage room behind the altar was taking a lot more effort than he would’ve liked to admit. He and Cara lugged the giant, heavy box into the surgical chamber together, groaning as they emptied its content onto the stained surgical table with sharp glass-like scrapes. If they hadn’t already carved out all the good, fleshy bits to eat, there’d be no way both Myrmur carcasses would fit on the table at the same time. But since all that was left was mostly chitin, shell, and whatever organs they hadn’t gotten around to boiling, there was just enough space.

  The two of them took a step back from the table, shaking their arms.

  Right on cue, Maeve trudged up the stairs and entered the chamber as well, looking drained from the receptionist work but still otherwise intact. She barely glowered at Gael for making her send the last of the Repossessors off before pausing at the sight. After all, the mound of dried out Myrmur parts sprawled across the table would make anyone think twice before approaching the table.

  “... Alright.” Gael cracked his neck and rubbed his hands together. “Time for scientific innovation.”

  Cara gave him a dubious look. “Do you actually know how to do this?”

  “I read the book. I know enough to get started.”

  “That ain’t half as reassuring as you think it is.”

  But Gael was already pulling out the thick, battered tome from his coat pocket, flipping through the pages with practiced ease. “First things first: gotta figure out what we killed. The special biological properties of these Myrmurs are what’s gonna make any bioarcanic equipment actually do something.” He glanced down at the mound of parts, brow furrowing. “One of them has greenish-black chitin plates and big ol’ compound eyes, while the other one has soft, stretchy black chitin plates. We ate the rest of them, so they’re…” He ran his finger along the page, scanning for anything familiar.

  Though maybe—just maybe—he shouldn’t have eaten them before identifying them, because trying to figure out what class of Myrmur they were with just their organs and chitin plates was probably going to be a difficult, if not impossible task.

  But before he could get far, Maeve pushed up her glasses and pointed at the greenish-tinted chitin plates. “Those ones are from the emerald dragonfly we fought in the clinic,” she said, before pointing to the pure black chitin plates. “And those ones are from the robber fly we fought in Old Banks’ manor.”

  Gael paused.

  Cara paused.

  They both turned to look at Maeve.

  “How’d you figure that?” Gael asked.

  “I saw their identification interface during the fight,” she said plainly, tapping the green chitin. “Emerald dragonfly was the one with the big eyes and the green plates.” Then the other. “Robber fly was the one that could strengthen its oversized limbs.”

  Gael immediately flipped through the book, scanning pages filled with cramped, half-smudged script, muttering bits and pieces under his breath. He searched under the dragonfly catalogue, and then looked for large compound eyes, green chitin plates, lightweight chitin—most of it blurred together in a mess of anatomical jargon, but he caught the important details—and eventually, he found the single page devoted to the ‘Emerald Dragonfly’.

  Lots of words, lots of diagrams, and he didn’t even have a chair to sit on.

  “This is gonna take a while.” He exhaled, rubbing his temple. “I’ll start with just one bioarcanic construct today. The dragonfly’s got better materials.” He waved a lazy hand at the other carcass. “Scrape the robber fly parts off the table, slaves. I’ll deal with those parts later.”

  Cara and Maeve grumbled under their breaths but got to work, picking out the robber fly’s remains and sliding them back into the giant box. Meanwhile, Gael walked around the surgical table, fingers tapping idly against his book as he took inventory of what was left.

  The chitin plates were intact. Sturdy, smooth, with that distinct greenish sheen. The organs, a mixed bag. Some were usable, but most were too far gone. At least the giant compound eyes were still whole, glossy and dark like cut gemstones. The wings, though… He clicked his tongue. Shredded and mangled, what was left of them barely qualified as wings. They were more just pitiful ruins of translucent membranes.

  He shot Maeve a look. “You really did a number on this thing. Couldn’t have killed it any less violently?”

  Maeve scowled back. “I was in a hurry. I thought you were dying, you know?”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  He ignored her. Instead, he hunched over the surgical table, poking lazily at the emerald dragonfly parts. Chitin plates clicked under his fingers, while the big compound eyes sitting off to the side of the table were still glossy, like they could blink up at him any time and whisper boo.

  Maeve, silently watching him fumble around for around five minutes, finally spoke up.

  “Do you want a reference?”

  Gael flicked his gaze up at her. “For what?”

  She lifted her briefcase with both hands.

  “Mistrender.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  She whipped out the umbrella with a practiced flick, then whipped it again to open the umbrella, revealing the dark metal shaft gleaming where sunlight caught it. His gaze immediately snagged on the tiny sequence glyphs carved into the length of it, clustered together in careful formation.

  “This is a bioarcanic weapon, too,” she explained, shifting her grip. “It’s not the highest quality, but it is made from the parts of a Nightspawn—a ‘giant hornet’, I think.”

  Gael hummed, already slightly more interested, and Cara—still sliding the robber fly’s parts into the box—tilted her head in curiosity.

  Maeve traced the lines of the glyphs with a finger. “My mama told me that the muscle fibres of a giant hornet are naturally capable of heating up their blood to extreme degrees. That’s why this umbrella that is absolutely filled with those same muscle fibres—” she tapped the curved grip, “—has the same property. When I press this button on the handle, a mechanism makes the microscopic needles on the handle stab into me and draw my blood. At the same time, another mechanism makes the glyphs inside the umbrella complete momentarily, which rapidly heats up the blood it sucked to make it easier to fire.”

  To demonstrate, she thumbed a small, barely visible button on the underside of the grip. A faint green and red shimmer flickered across the glyphs, like something shifting under the surface, and Gael watched as her fingers flexed slightly, her expression slightly pained.

  “So, when I thumb the first button, I activate my Art to turn my blood poisonous as it's pulled up through the shaft and heated,” she said, grimacing as she pointed at her blood flowing up through a clear glass tube inside the shaft. “Then, all I have to do is press this second button above the first, and a mechanical contraption inside the umbrella will…”

  A small, controlled spurt of glowing green blood shot out from the umbrella’s tip, quickly dissipating in the air like curling smoke.

  It really is a firing mechanism.

  I see.

  So that’s how she’s able to shoot her blood that far.

  Cara took an impressed step forward. “Oh, that’s brilliant. Can I see it?”

  Maeve blinked. Then she brightened, visibly pleased, as if nobody had ever said that to her. “Yes! Here!”

  Gael sighed as the two of them shifted off to the side, Maeve eagerly handing over Mistrender while Cara inspected the glyph work, muttering something about how pretty the swirly patterns looked on the shaft. He let them chatter, only half-listening as he returned to his book, flipping through the pages until he found the page on the emerald dragonfly again.

  Mistrender was a good example of a bioarcanic construct that utilized the natural properties of the Nightspawn it came from, and took into consideration the strength and magic of its user. It was the ‘ideal’ bioarcanic construct.

  I wanna make something cool like that.

  He continued reading, skimming for anything that made the emerald dragonfly stand out. Fast. High perception. Good at flying. Yeah, yeah, he already knew that. He’d fought the damn thing, after all. But beyond the very obvious, the notes didn’t mention anything particularly useful about its parts.

  As he mulled it over, he tapped the chitin plates absently, “Can’t I just slap these plates onto some clothes, carve a glyph like ‘toughen’ on them, and call it a day?”

  Maeve barely looked around at him as she continued showing Mistrender off to Cara. “Only if the bug could toughen its chitin naturally.”

  “And this one can’t.”

  “I don’t think so.” Maeve gestured vaguely at the carcass. “Dragonfly chitin is just… chitin. Basic, everyday, standard-issue exoskeleton. It could never harden its chitin while it was alive, so it’s not going to start hardening even if you’re the one carving a ‘toughen’ glyph into its plates now. If it were a Beetle-Class with chitin plates that specialized in hardening or something, you might have a shot.”

  He slumped against the table, a little deflated as he started reading the page from the top again. No more skimming. There had to be something worth making out of the dragonfly.

  Maeve must’ve sensed his annoyance, because she quickly added, “But bioarcanic engineers still use Nightspawn chitin on clothes all the time. After all, the essence inside the plates makes a difference. A Nightspawn claw slashing a Nightspawn chitin plate won’t cut as cleanly because the essence in both will disrupt each other. If you layered your clothes with normal metal plates instead, the attack would most likely slice straight through. Take a look at my dress?”

  That got his attention.

  “Like your dress?” Cara asked.

  Maeve nodded, pulling at the hems of her tight-fitting combat dress. “It may look like normal fabric, but the entire dress is woven with muscle fibers from another Wasp Class Nightspawn. After all, once someone goes past four levels in strength and speed, that’s when normal clothes and equipment start being unable to keep up with your movements. A normal dress would just tear if you’re moving and fighting four times as hard as the average human, right?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “So you need to make sure your clothes, at the very least, are made out of more durable material, and this dress made out of Nightspawn muscle fibers is…”

  She looked to the side and squinted, pulling up an interface in front of Gael.

  [Appraisal Complete]

  [Name: Potter Wasp Combat Dress]

  [Penetration: 1, Sturdiness: 2, Resilience, 6]

  [Bioarcanic Effect: None]

  “... Rather well-made,” Maeve said. “All bioarcanic equipment have different attribute levels. Instead of strength, speed, and toughness and the like, they have ‘Penetration’, which measures the maximum level of toughness a weapon can effectively damage and penetrate. Then, there’s ‘Sturdiness’, which measures how much external force they can take before they get damaged and destroyed, and then there is also ‘Resilience’, which measures how much structural stress and strain they can withstand before breaking, warping, or tearing.”

  Gael hummed to himself. “Hm. So two levels of sturdiness means…”

  “My toughness level is two, which means when I’m wearing my dress with two levels of sturdiness, I effectively have two plus two toughness if I’m hit on the fabric,” she said, raising a pointed finger. “Not four toughness, mind you. Two plus two. After all, if I take off my dress, I’ll immediately lose that additional bit of defense, so it wouldn’t say I have four levels of toughness on my status interface. Sturdiness for clothes is like additional toughness only where it’s covering my body.”

  “Right. And six levels of resilience means—”

  “It would effectively require at least six levels in strength or speed from my part before I can tear the dress accidentally,” she finished. “Since my strength and speed levels are only three at the moment, there’s no way I can move fast and hard enough to rip up my own dress in battle. However, once either my strength or speed level exceeds the resilience level of my equipment, I’ll have to get higher grade equipment so I don’t… risk going naked in battle.”

  “Interesting,” he murmured. “And I’m assuming the dress has one level of penetration because it’s literally not a weapon.”

  Maeve nodded, and then pulled down the interface so she could make room for another one.

  [Appraisal Complete]

  [Name: Warrior Wasp Morphing Briefcase-Umbrella]

  [Penetration: 8, Sturdiness: 8, Resilience, 10]

  [Bioarcanic Effect: Furnace Core]

  [Brief Description: When the glyphs are completed, the warrior wasp muscle fibers within the umbrella activate a specialized thermogenic process, generating intense heat with muscular contraction. The produced heat is transferred to any liquid drawn inside the umbrella, rapidly elevating its temperature and making it become more fluid and volatile]

  “Notice how both of my bioarcanic equipment are also Wasp Class.” She pointed out. “Typically, an Afflicted can only equip or come in contact with bioarcanic equipment of the same class. It’s not a hard biological rule that’ll kill you if you break it or anything, but the preference exists because of essence compatibility. When a Wasp Afflicted is forced to wear Beetle Class clothes or use Beetle Class weapons, they’ll feel itchy and uncomfortable. It’s just a natural response to the incompatible essence within the equipment, so even if you can make something out of these emerald dragonfly parts… we’re Wasp Afflicted.” Then she stared at him pointedly. “Depending on what you make, you may not feel like equipping it for long.”

  Gael tapped his fingers against the book. All of it tracked with what he’d read before: bioarcanic armor, clothes, and weapons worked better against Nightspawn because of the way incompatible essence clashed. It was why bioarcanic weapons containing essence could actually hurt them through their essence-enhanced chitin.

  So the plates of the dragonfly aren’t anything special, but they can still be made into something useful.

  I’ll just find some time to layer them between the fabrics of my coat. The additional sturdiness should just be nice to have.

  Fuck, I might as well also try to make a sharp edge out of the chitin so my bladed cane can actually hurt Myrmurs.

  But for his first ever bioarcanic equipment, he wanted to make something interesting. Something with a real effect. He wanted to actually carve a glyph or two onto something just to know he could make a fun bioarcanic equipment work, so he pored over the book again, scanning for anything he’d missed.

  Then his eyes caught something.

  ‘... The emerald dragonfly possesses a pair of highly specialized compound eyes, each comprising thousands of hexagonal ommatidia. These structures grant exceptional visual acuity, allowing the insect to detect rapid motion with unparalleled precision. Most notably, however, its eyes are adapted for both diurnal and nocturnal activity, featuring a unique photoreceptor composition that enhances low-light perception. This enables the dragonfly to hunt and navigate effectively even in dim conditions,which is an extremely rare trait among its kind.’

  His lips curled into a small, small grin.

  “Oh,” he murmured. “Now that’s something.”