38.

  “You alive?” Cameron asked, leaning over Santi and blocking out his view of the warm sun above. Santi grunted as he squinted at his overly large friend and the large shadow he cast. Cameron was nothing more than a silhouette against the sun and even then, Santi could see the mocking smile he was wearing.

  “Yeah,” Santi choked out, struggling to sit up. He felt as if he had been rolled through a press, drained of all energy and left to die as he coughed once as he looked around himself. An hour and twelve minutes had passed since he had lost consciousness and it didn’t look like anyone had come and pulled him away from the pillar.

  “Tank said you were alive after we found you sleeping. I waited around for you to come to, just to make sure though. Cause, I’m your best friend,” Cam said, a bit too innocently.

  “Did you draw something on my face?”

  “No,” Cameron said unconvincingly.

  “Is it genitalia?”

  “Would you be mad if I said yes?” Cam asked, the hidden glee in his voice not quite so hidden. Santi wiped at his face and then rubbed his eyes as he staggered upright. His legs were wobbly and he was having a hard time seeing, his vision blurry and strained.

  “So, what were you doing that made you pass out?” Cam asked as he leaned against the pillar and looked at Santi expectantly. Santi looked down to see the orb sitting there in the grass. He picked it up and held it up to Cameron who peered at with a scrunched up look on his face.

  “It’s a snow globe?”

  “Skill orb. It pulled out one of the spells I didn’t use and stored it in here,” Santi explained. He was ready to look at his new spell he could take now that he had three open slots, but the drain on his body made him nervous to take a new one. The ripping at the soul was dangerous and the last thing he wanted was to somehow fail when acquiring a new spell.

  “You can do that?”

  “Yeah. It costs a good chunk of money and it's incredibly painful, but you can take a skill or spell out of your slot and hold it in one of these.”

  “And you can put it back in whenever?”

  “Probably want to wait a little bit after taking it out, and the orb will shatter when the spell or skill comes out, but yeah.”

  “Could I take that skill?”

  “Yup.” Santi waited as the implications sunk through Cam’s head.

  “So, if I found the right person, I could start taking skill and spells outside of my class selection?”

  “Yeah. They won’t suit you and might be a struggle to use, but you can. For the most part we get offered skills or spells that fit our class or affinity. For me it's wind spells and some basic others like [Identify]. You have tanking skill and earth based spells, etc. etc,” Santi emphasized the point by rolling his hand to show it going on and on.

  “Got any water?” Santi said, mouth feeling dry.

  “Naw, but there’s some at the house. Let’s get a few other people gathered up and hear this. I think this could be big,” Cam said, his hand slipping under Santi’s arm and helping steady him as they walked back to their temporary home.

  “It could, if you had the money, the right set of class types and spell types, and of course, access to a Pillar. Then you could have all sorts of hidden talents ready to go,” Santi said.

  "Just hold it in for everyone else. We were taking a break for lunch and that’s why I was over there,” Cam said quickly.

  “So I don’t have a penis drawn on my face?”

  “Didn’t say that,” Cam said, a smile perking the edge of his mouth. Santi rolled his eyes and they continued in toward the house. He looked around as he walked there, his legs slowly growing firm beneath him as he recovered from the trauma of having a spell ripped out of his soul.

  “It’s looking nice out here. Or at least better than it did,” Santi said. Cam grunted, but there was a hint of pride in that grunt.

  “Torin and Grimvr are machines and all of us being Acolytes has really sped it up. Can do the work of four or five men with ease. And that’s just with stats, not including spells or skills.”

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  The streets had been cleared of debris and paint had been laid down carefully. Santi knew how the design worked, he had helped make it after all, but seeing pieces of it was interesting. He knew Mercy and her band of cursed would have no idea what this was, but Duncan might. A Champion accumulated enough knowledge that it was unwise to assume they were ignorant about anything, even if it was outside of the realm of expertise.

  It wasn’t like the spell form would be dangerous to Duncan after all. Santi doubted the man would worry much about it.

  They walked into the house and Cam let Santi go then proceeded to flop on the couch, a piece of wood cracking as he landed with all his weight on the cheap furniture. He sighed once and then looked up at Santi.

  “Hey, might want to try to scrub your face before everyone else gets here. Looks super unprofessional,” Cam said. Santi flipped him off and went to the restroom and saw that Cameron had indeed drawn a comically large penis across his cheek.

  It took a minute to scrub off and while he was at it he gave himself a bird bath in the sink, scrubbing off the remnants of the dungeon into the dirty porcelain before retreating back into the living room. Over the next five minutes the majority of the inner core group showed up, only the trio out looking for Keegan still missing.

  Rayleigh came too, but left her few people standing guard with the newcomers. She sat down next to Yessenia and the two whispered to each other as the rest of the family and friends showed up.

  “Alright, so what happened?” Bianca said the moment everyone had settled down.

  “Why were you out cold in the middle of the lawn?”

  Santi explained everything to them about the skill orb holder and how they could replace their skills or spells. And the cost to do so.

  “So, you could give me your wind spells?” Bianca asked.

  “Yeah. They wouldn’t suit you at all, but you could take this one and absorb it if you have the space to slot in a basic level spell.”

  “What’s to stop people from mixing and matching to their hearts content then? What’s the point of having a class?”

  “They wouldn’t be efficient. Like you would be able to maybe cast this spell two or three times before your mana starts getting drained. I can spam it as much as I want. My affinity and class are better suited for it. Same with any of yours or Chloe’s endurance skills that enhance your physical stats. I could do it once or twice, but the boost just isn’t worth it,” Santi explained.

  “What about spells or skills that work in concert but are out of your class?” Mom asked, she was leaning over and very intent.

  “Cost is quite prohibitive. Then the pain of having it ripped out and you're no longer able to access that spell again. If I give [Crosscurrent-Orb] to one of you, it's no longer available in my spell inventory to choose again. This isn’t a way for you to spam instant skills for other people, but a drastic way to make a bit of coin or retool your build.”

  “Make coin?” Cam perked up at that.

  “The market option on the pillar. You will be able to sell goods across to other pillar owners for money. The System will take a bit of the money and the owner of both pillars will take a piece, but you’ll be able to trade goods. Like these spell orbs,” Santi said, hoisting said orb up for everyone to see.

  “So you owning that pillar means you get continuous money by people buying and selling goods?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah. I’m the government basically.”

  “Good.” She nodded her head and sat back.

  “For our group and close friends, I can keep the tax low while others are charged higher. It’s another way to incentivize cooperation. The more of these pillars I control, the more nodes we have to trade. After this is over, we’ll be working on acquiring more pillars and establishing small trading outposts around the area, all tied to our central pillar. But, that’s for the future.”

  “So if we fuck up or find a skill or spell that someone else has that we like, we could have them trade us?” Bianca asked.

  “Yeah, but again. It’s expensive and painful as fuck. I don’t recommend it.”

  Yessenia was looking at him with a frown and Santi had a sudden idea that she had seen a ritual in her spell book that he had hoped wouldn’t be there. After that, the group broke up and ate lunches of ration bars and just chatted with each other. It was good to see Yessenia in the group setting and not hiding off to the side or retreating to her room.

  As the group broke up and everyone went back to their respective jobs, Yessenia remained behind. She waited till the door closed and then pulled out a thin piece of chalk from one of the myriad of pockets she had on her cargo pants. She went over and made a quick Silence rune on the door and imbued it with a brush of mana. Santi felt his eyebrows raising at the quick and efficient use of the rune.

  It was a relatively quick and fast method of ritual magic and quite weak by itself. The rune would keep all sound from escaping the house for a few minutes or until someone with the right knowledge broke it.

  “There’s a spell in the book called Skill Extraction. Could it be used on someone unwillingly to take their spells or skills and store them in one of those containers?” She was looking at him with an iron gaze that Santi both admired and was a little scared of.

  “Yes. It can strip someone unwilling of their skill or spell. It can’t be targeted though, so it just rips them out one at a time.” It had been a way of punishing transgressions for some of the more authoritarian groups. Or a way of blackmarket peddlers to sell in demand skills and spells.

  “The ingredients are easy and it doesn’t take much to power it.” The question was left unsaid.

  “I don’t want us to be those types of people. The pain of what I just did was excruciating and it was on my own free will. It’ll likely take me the rest of the day to feel better and be ready to take on a new spell. We won’t force anyone to do that.”

  “Even people like Duncan?”

  “Especially people like Duncan. He’s ruthless and dangerous and it doesn’t matter what wealth we can obtain from him. It's morally wrong and it's how people like him became people like him. He wasn’t born evil, he just kept making these types of choices over and over again. We end the threat, quickly, cleanly, and permanently. I don’t want to hear about these spell holders popping up on the market place, ok?”

  “As long as we’re on the same page.” Yessenia turned and left, wiping away the chalk rune on the door before walking out and into the street to continue her preparations. Santi sank into the couch and looked at where his little sister had just left and thought of her words.

  She had been more than willing to do it. There had been hints of eagerness there.