Chapter -2147483631 (Revelation)

  Nyssos was mildly concerned that he was going to have to make his way back to Ranger HQ alone and early. He didn’t know if a sentinel had made it in time to save his team from the small army, and it had now been several days since he dispatched the courier with no word from either direction. On top of that, there weren’t many options available to occupy his time at the guard barracks, but they had provided accommodations -- really just a cot set up in a rarely used storage room -- but at least there was stew available in the mess hall whenever he needed to eat. Checking the funds that he’d had with him one more time, Nyssos found that it still hadn’t changed from the same ten iron coins that he always carried on the road for emergency bandit payoffs. As he had nothing better to do, the ranger decided to go for a run around the city walls again, which would make it the third time that day.

  Marcus and Atalanta ran the entire way back to Odessos. They did not reach the town by nightfall, but they continued on as there was plenty of light available thanks to the twin moons being close to full phase.

  “Hey, so, what’s going to happen to all this iron equipment? All the bodies are gone, but this is going to rust if it all just sits out here waiting for someone to come out here and collect it,” said Ada.

  Lucius looked up from where he’d been pulling at one of the fallen tents. “That’s a good point, but it’s not really our problem. The legion these idiots were assigned to should have been looking for their own missing cohort, and the replacement of all this will likely come out of their own coffers. But, that also is not our problem. Is there a specific reason why you’re asking?”

  “Well, if all the iron is just going to sit out here and get ruined by rust, do you think there’d be any problem with me using some of it? “

  “You know what? At this point, I legitimately do not give a single fuck. Go for it.”

  Ada emitted a high pitch squeak of excitement, then ran off.

  “Alex, your girlfriend is rather odd.”

  “Yeah, she’s pretty great, isn’t she?”

  A little over an hour later, Ada had created a large pile of iron breastplates, helmets, swords, spear points, pila, and plumbata. It was all different qualities of iron, but some of it could vaguely be considered steel, at least by the loosest definition.

  She’d studied metallurgy and material sciences in college and had even intended on making blacksmithing a career, but had stumbled into cybersecurity when she’d taken an elective on a lark. Unfortunately, all of the hacking experience she’d obtained over the 8 years wasn’t currently applicable to, well, anything really.

  None of what she had in this pile was anything comparable to the forged steel ingots she’d had to practice on in her previous life, but the Skills she had to work with now. Properly hardening and tempering steel was a difficult process that could easily go wrong, but Ada had Magic with a capital M . [Spellforge] was able to completely take care of all the nuances of carefully controlling boundary interfaces between the grain structures in the steel. All she’d need would be a few pounds of carbon, and charcoal would work well enough to satisfy that problem.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Taking care not to immediately burn through all of her mana, Ada manipulated all of the iron pieces in front of her, coaxing them to compress into individual bars. Removing impurities and adding in new trace metals and the appropriate amount of carbon would have to wait. Ada thought about that last part for a bit, and wasn’t quite sure where she was going to be able to source manganese. There were a few different ores that contained it, and she had no idea what would be available. Oh well, another problem for future Ada to deal with.

  She hefted her new collection of iron bars and returned to the armored ranger wagon, where the others were slowly returning with a meager assortment of food items.

  Lucius looked around at what each of them had managed to acquire and sighed heavily. Addressing the gathered group, he gave their next orders, “Alright team, let's pack up and get pushing.”

  They didn't quite make it to the road before dusk and ended up camping out along the barely cleared path leading from the encampment to the road. It has been cleared of most of the largest debris, and Ada noticed several uprooted tree trunks that had been casually tossed into the underbrush. Even so, the path appeared to have at least a year's growth, despite apparent frequent use by the former legionnaires turned bandit to make raids on passing merchants as recently as the previous day. Ada decided that some fuckery involving skill bullshit had to have been involved, especially since the path was almost completely flat, and their overweight armored wagon wasn't so much as sinking into the dirt.

  While the rangers decided on watch rotation, Ada climbed up onto the roof of the wagon and put some thought into what she would do with her new stash of iron. She wasn't happy that she'd been decapitated and then smashed into the ground so easily. Even though she'd survived both events, each time, she'd lost mass and had to recover in some way, ultimately requiring her to create a self image of being considerably smaller than she was comfortable. This was fine for a temporary emergency, but that didn't mean she had to like it. The addition of armor onto the outside of her body hadn't even helped keep her together from the impact. On top of that issue, Ada had noticed while clashing swords that the sentinel had been toying with her and easily had the speed and strength to take her apart in mere moments. If Gravity hadn't been curious about her surviving a veritable meteor crashing into her head, Ada was sure she’d have been killed for real.

  Thinking back to when she’d reconstructed herself from the pile of molten slag, Ada realized something significant: her body had no structure. She had no bones, no muscles, no circulatory or nervous system -- she was a pile of metallic sand held together by... something. She wasn’t sure what or how exactly it worked, but pulling herself back together took mana, and not an insignificant amount compared to what she had available. That act had required her entire pool and then some time consuming it as quickly as she regenerated. Even after being able to stand and move, Ada remembered thinking that her mana wasn’t coming back as quickly as she expected. But if she had no biology, how was she able to even move?

  It finally hit her.

  Mana. It was all Mana.

  Her entire body was held together by it. Her physical stats were fueled by it. She could only move because of it. But could she improve things by providing some physical structure?

  Thinking about the pile of iron bars she had collected, Ada now had a goal to work towards. She’d need some help with the design, and luckily, she knew just the person for that job.

  The rangers lit no fire that night, and slept inside the wagon, each pair taking their turn at watch atop the wagon with Ada who remained there the entire night. The wagon made it to the main road by mid day, and a few hours later, they spotted two horses with a pair of uncomfortable looking riders and a familiar silhouette running alongside.

  An hour later, those horses were hitched and the rangers were once again under way on their scheduled round.