My body spasmed as the erg surged through me, causing me to flop on the ground, before I finally let out a low, deep-bellied groan and shifted into a sitting position once again. “That was intense.” My voice came out rough even to my ears, while the world seemed fuzzy around me.

  I soon found Artemis’ hands on my shoulder, helping to keep me steady. “Yeah, I can imagine. It’s a fucking trip when you get hit by all that erg at once. How many levels did you get?”

  “Four.” I coughed a couple times before lifting an arm to wipe at my mouth, managing to come away with mostly spit.

  “Damn! That’s more than I’ve heard of before,” Artemis said, “And I got to hear from damn near everyone back in town. What are you going to spend the points on?”

  “Not sure. I could get a couple advanced perks, could get cooking, might look to see if there’s any other paths that I could pick up.”

  “Multiple paths can be very handy.” Artemis glanced around conspiratorially before taking a seat next to me. “I have three of them. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with Jen over there with just one, so I started thinking about potential combinations, figuring how to bring the strengths out of each path to cover the weaknesses of others. It’s worked well so far.”

  “Honestly,” Jen said, “when it comes to her specialty, she’s the best around.”

  Artemis looked over to Jen and offered a small grin. “Yeah, maybe, but we don’t have a lot of comparisons.” The exchange had the rhythm of a familiar conversation, so while they chatted, I opened up the path store.

  After selecting to purchase a new path, a massive screen opened up, full of options to select from. Unfortunately, all the ones I could see were grayed out, and I could tell that I couldn’t pick them. Remembering what I had seen in the Chosen help menu entry, these paths must not have been compatible with my Chosen path, which was particularly picky when it came to that according to the librarian.

  Looking to the bottom of the screen, I saw some filtering options and quickly filtered out all unavailable paths. The list of paths collapsed rapidly, all of the grayed-out options disappearing, but still leaving a vast array of options listed, more than could fill even the massive screen in front of me. I scrolled slowly, scanning over the options.

  [Artisan], [Smelter], [Team Leader], [Shift Supervisor], [Data Parser], [Calculator], [Metal Worker], [Blacksmith], [Silversmith], [Whitesmith], [Alchemist], [Lumberjack], and so on went the list, all crafting and support paths. I frowned at the sight of them, knowing that none of them would be helpful in the upcoming operation. I needed something with a bit more punch. So, I returned to the filter list and took out all crafting and support options. In an instant, the list emptied out completely; I groaned softly.

  Artemis looked over and tilted her head quizzically. “Not finding any good options?”

  “It looks like all I have access to are utility paths, probably because my Chosen path limits my options.” I frowned and returned the crafting and support paths to the list and scrolled through them listfully. “And I have no idea how being a Whitesmith, whatever the heck that is, would help with me making a distraction or getting people out of there. Maybe some of these leadership paths, but, well, honestly, I’d rather not take on a leadership role anytime soon. Too stressful.”

  Artemis nodded in understanding, before leaning in, elbows on her knees as she looked me up and down. “Hm, well some paths have multiple roles. You can add in a required role, and it’ll show you all the hybrid options.”

  My heart surged with excitement as I went to the filtering options once again. There, I left the crafting and utility options untouched, but took a moment to study the other two: “combat” and “meta.” Meta might prove interesting to look over, but that time would probably be best spent on when there was more opportunity to just mess around with the system options. Instead, I toggled combat from a blank to a plus, and the list once again contracted.

  This time only three options remained, and I looked each of them up in the help menu.

  This would be a very useful path for building defenses, which would help build up the factory, but the factory itself seemed in a good defensive position already. It would be far less useful for going on the attack though, and considering the reasons that I was looking for a new path, that ultimately cut it out from consideration. Perhaps if I had some points to burn at some point, but I lacked those at the moment.

  Yeah, this one didn’t seem quite right either. If I had failed to make the demo bomb, then maybe I might be more inclined to pick this one up, but I already had tools to take down walls. It might also show its strength against someone with a field engineer path or something similar, but from what Artemis and Jen said, it sounds like there’s not a lot of overlap between the combatants and the crafters at their town.

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  With that in mind, I moved to the final option.

  Yeah, that would do.

  With a mental command, I processed the selection and felt new knowledge flare into my mind, new concepts forming new connections, new circuits flaring into existence within the meat of my brain. Erg flowed along these paths as I grit my teeth and forced my eyes shut in an attempt to ease the pain of this transformation.

  A voice whispered in the back of my head, one I recognized as belonging to Teldin only after it was done speaking. “Humans were not meant to bear the system or to process erg. To have this forced on you is a cruelty.”

  I could only nod in agreement, even as the pain slowly faded, leaving only a firm throb in the back of my head. As I opened my eyes, I saw Artemis and Jen looking on with concern, though Artemis’ gaze also held understanding. I waved them off, not wanting them to be concerned for my sake. I was fine, all things considered.

  Besides, I had more things to look into via the system.

  I briefly looked up each of those perks in the help. Rapid Deployment increased the rate that I could deploy things from my inventory in battle, shockingly enough, the first level increased speed ten-fold. It had no skills associated with it. Armor Platform allowed for the attachment of larger scale construction than what my armor should otherwise be able to hold, but came with a sharp decrease in movement speed. It did, however, offer a skill that would counter this decrease. Finally, Armor Forge was more a skill holding perk, though it did offer a flat erg efficacy increase in the creation and usage of armor, with its skills focusing on armor of varying weights.

  After some careful consideration, I selected Rapid Deployment I and Armor Forge I. If I had some time to train up Armor Platform’s skill, I might have gone with that, but with the limited time available, I simply couldn’t afford the speed reduction. I could definitely see some advantages to its usage in the future though.

  With the purchases complete, I studied my status screen once again.

  “Okay,” I said as I closed the screen. “I need to get to actually making things, but that shouldn’t take too long, all things considered. But also we need some rest.” Jen and Artemis nodded firmly at that. “I’m sure you’re looking forward to having an actual bed to sleep in, too.” That brought grins to both of them. “So, let’s meet up in the morning. Feel free to make yourself comfortable in the meanwhile.”

  The three of us entered the building together, split after that, with the couple heading upstairs while I moved into the factory floor proper. I briefly scanned the space and considered the necessity of increasing efficiency via building more structures. I’d need storage and conveyors and sorters and even more of the construction facilities. As the needs increased, I’d rapidly begin to spill out of the space available on this first floor.

  I made a mental note to talk to the librarian about that at some point, but for now, I went ahead and set up queues on the facilities, setting the component parts to construction. As queues filled up, I took note and began building more facilities in my internal processor. By the time everything was properly humming along, the sun had begun to set, and while I knew that I should be using my time more productively, exhaustion had settled deep into my bones.

  This had been too busy of a day, too much work, too much social interaction, too many revelations and plans and pains. My bones were weary, and I couldn’t keep my shoulders straight. By the time I left the factory, my hands had begun to shake and I knew that I just couldn’t do anything else. So, even before twilight’s end, I went up to my bedroom, stripped down to my underwear, and crashed on the bed. Sleep came fitfully, and when I was finally enveloped in it, I was haunted by nightmares.