Chapter 964 - Ducklings

The Brotherhood's meeting ends, and Tacita is gone first. I don't even know what the meeting was actually about, but I don't let it bother me and instead stare at the back of Blackie's head.

I know what you are.

"Ehm, ehm," someone coughs softly, and I look back at BenDover, who stares at his feet, "Could you move a little so I can get out?"

"Jump out of the window."

"Come on! It has been fucking years! I said I was sorry so many times!"

“I always erased those apologies from my memory so my own weakness wouldn't make me partially accept them, and so I wouldn't start feeling bad for you.”

"Stop joking, please."

"It is not a joke, I actually did that."

"..."

"..."

"Please."

"The window is this way."

"Benny, my boy," Dennis moves closer, putting an arm around the man's shoulder, "I wouldn't jump out of the window. You might think that you, as a Hell Difficulty attendee, might survive it, and usually you would be right."

(But that is only if there isn't sneaky outside interference!) Aaron adds.

"Min-Jae." Dennis nods.

(Fucking Kim Min-Jae.) his brother adds.

They turn to the young Korean man lingering by the door. He leans casually against a table, eating his snack slowly as he keeps his unblinking gaze fixed on us.

"Nathaniel is petty beyond belief," Dennis says.

(We experienced it a lot. You could say we are veterans at this point. You cannot even comprehend the damage that pettiness caused to our minds.)

Dennis lets his brother finish before leaning in close to BenDover. He points at Min-Jae. "Nathaniel and our boy over there have been speaking through the telepathic link we set up. He wants Min-Jae to do some scary stuff with gravity if anyone decides to jump out the window."

"Isn't that right, Min-Jae?!" Aaron demands, pointing at him like a lawyer cross-examining a hostile witness.

Instead of answering, the Korean young man just puts some other snack into his mouth and continues to stare.

BenDover looks at me pleadingly.

"I would never do that. Jump." I tell him.

"Stop blocking the door." At this point, even the unhealthily patient Savant complains.

"Oh no, are you maybe too late for your date?" Dennis sighs and lets go of BenDover, who runs away as all of us refocus our attention on the handsome man.

(This is as good a moment as any to talk to the guy. Sophie is naive and might not realize that all men are wolves. It's our duty to protect her.) Aaron takes control of their body, stepping so close he's almost kissing Savant. He stares right into his eyes. (Young man, what are your plans with our scary, unstable, sister-complex tsundere mindblender?)

"We have a date," Savant says simply, causing both of the twins to freeze, and Min-Jae, who tried to act tough, to choke on his snack.

That causes Savant to put his hand on the twins' face and push them away. "Have you been expecting me to deny it?"

Delivering that stun attack, he exits the room, and we follow him into the hallway, walking behind him. There we watch as, in one of the bigger communal rooms, he reaches up to Sophie, smiling at her in a short greeting when he puts his hand on her arm, and then they both leave.

"How manly and cool, isn't he?" Lily appears by our side and shoves my shoulder.

"Well, you should ask him out, then," I say, watching the twins and Min-Jae fighting with their programming and not knowing what to do.

"Savi looks like the sort of guy who always pays his taxes. I'm more into bad boys," Lily sighs theatrically.

"Ever since the start of the tournament, I've been secretly stealing a tiny bit of mana the people from Earth are leaking out."

"Wait. Without telling them or getting their consent?"

I shake my head. "I take it as a tax on them."

"Illegal taxation without giving them a say in where it's invested?" she gasps in horror.

"I tell myself they're funding the military." I look at her. "I am the military."

"Sadly, that just makes you an asshole, not a bad boy. The search continues." A tragic little smile crosses her face, looking exactly like someone who just realized how much of her first salary goes to the government.

I pat the top of her head.

"Miwa has been asking after you," Lily says.

"Yeah, I will go meet her. Has she asked for anything from you?"

"I guess it must have been you who told her to. Yes, she asked me to grow a few bones into some weird shapes. I even gave her a few of my actual bones, but they are probably too durable for her to do anything with them."

"Is this what they call humble bragging?"

Lily entirely ignores that accusation. "She is quite good at crafting from what I have heard, she just lacks the right tool that would allow her to work on the more specialized materials. Otherwise, she is much better than you."

"That is bullshit, and you know it," I defend myself. "As long as I continue to grow stronger and brute force stuff, I don't see her catching up to me. So what if she makes a sword capable of destroying a city if I can do the same even if in a much simpler way and not making it that aesthetically pleasing."

"Nat, swords are meant for close quarters combat. It breaks my heart that no one ever taught you this, but they are not supposed to act as city erasing bombs."

"That sentence is causing me distress and severe anxiety from how unfair it is. I will go and catch up with her, so see you later, and please, yell at Taci that I will be coming for Veto in two hours. She ran away before I could tell her."

"Will do!"

Miwa and her band seem to enjoy the upgraded smithies, though they are still just at level one. At least there are no holes in the roof, and the floor has drains for molten metal or some dangerous liquids or whatever they are for.

All of it looks very blacksmith-y.

"Did the place get bigger?" I ask Miwa.

"By ten percent exactly," she says, and with her hands on her waist, she stares at the group of Earth's best crafters. There are eighteen of them, Miwa included.

"Stop hiding, he won't bite your head off," she tells them in a firm tone and looks at me. "You won't, right?"

"I probably won't."

"See, Nathaniel is friendly, just don't do the usual ass-licking stuff."

"Usual?" I ask her.

Miwa looks confused for a moment before she shakes her head. "Most of us don't exactly have great combat capabilities, so how, in our case, do you clear the floor and gain experience? You help powerful people on the floors, work for them, and you are nice to combat-oriented attendees."

Her voice turns different and much more polite than when she speaks with me now. "Oh, I saw you fighting during the last tournament, lady, you were so powerful then! What do you mean that is not true? No, no, I can tell, I've seen a lot of tutorial natives and other attendees. Me? I'm just a mere crafter, thank you for asking. Makes me wonder, perhaps you and your friends are looking for new items? I'm confident I could make ones just to fit your needs!"

"Can't you just find a group and clear the floors with them?" I ask.

It gets a chuckle out of one of the women nearby, and when I look towards the source of the noise, she hides behind one of the men.

"You say that as if it's easy. For Hell difficulty, you would probably do that, but Hard and lower difficulties have more people in each round, and your party often might just decide to stay on the floor, meaning you have to search for a new one."

At her words, some of the people gathered begin nodding, agreeing with her statement.

"Many crafters might decide to stay on certain floors as well, but then there are people like us. All of us here are on the 11th floor or higher. I can probably predict your next question. Why? Because we move on after we think we learned as much as we could, so we can learn more on new floors. And for the rewards as well. It carries a risk, and you would think we could learn as much as possible on one floor where we travel a lot and search for more. But so far, it has proven true for us that on a higher floor we can gain better knowledge, and that outweighs setting up some sort of base or reputation on just one floor."

"I see."

To skip over the awkward silence that I see coming, she leads me towards the others. It is a mix of Hard, Normal, and even two people from Hell difficulty who dabble in crafting on the side.

Miwa doesn't even bother introducing them all, accurately suspecting there is no chance I would remember seventeen names. Instead, she pushes a few of them to ask me questions. It seems they all spoke about it previously, and now she is giving them a chance since they seem too worried to take it on their own.

"Are you using an item to hide your mana signature?"

"No, it's a technique."

"What is the highest rarity of item you've seen?"

"Mid pristine. Now that you reminded me, I might steal a few from the beyond before this ends. Don't tell anyone."

"What sort of mana compression technique are you using to create the weapons you made? Also, is there a reason to make them so... interestingly shaped?"

"I will interestingly shape your ass. And I just compress mana, there is no need to be so fancy. There are a few skills and passives that help me, but I won't be telling you about those."

"Are you single?"

"This is harassment."

"Was it you who made those endurium javelins for Tess Hansen and the mana balls Kim Min-Jae is using? You had to be, right? What sort of skill do you have to be able to manipulate the weight of your constructs?"

"Yes, I made them, and I often upgrade them to newer versions if possible. You are a girl, and you breathe. If you ask Min-Jae, I'm sure he will show you his balls."

"This is harassment."

"Sue me."

"Do you have any other way besides thermal energy to heat up materials to mold them? What I want to ask is if you have been using any sort of specialized kiln, wood, or item, and which one you prefer."

"I did once smelt on Noodle's body. By the way, Noodle isn't an actual noodle. It's that six eyed snake belonging to an angsty teenager. But so far, I have found myself most comfortable with thermal energy. I think you should just do whatever feels the best at the start, and as you get comfortable, use the experience to try new methods."

"Miwa said you mentioned that it is possible for your so called manabloc constructs to maintain their structural stability for decades, and very likely for a hundred years. Due to the fundamental theorems of ambient mana behavior and construct dissipation, I consider that declaration demonstrably untrue and a sheer, arrogant overestimation. If you actually had to apply the energetic decay theorem and run the degradation calculations, how long would you say they would realistically endure?"

"Probably longer than you will live for."

"I'm sorry, Nathaniel. Björn can sound a bit rude sometimes, but he's just that clueless about social interactions. He never actually means it."

"How many hours does it take you to create one of your mana constructs?"

"Hours? I don't have that much time. Here, take this one. It's not the best I can do, but it should be quite good."

"T-thank you, are you sure?"

"Aren't you from Hell difficulty?"

"It-it is a cool construct! And I mostly focus on body reinforcement and ranged combat!"

"Okay everyone, give Nathaniel some space," Miwa interrupts, noticing that everyone else becomes more daring when I don't explode at them for asking their questions.

I always find situations like this fascinating, and often fun, too. I might have personally killed a few of them during the first event, and they probably have the notifications to prove it. Yet, this is the fourth tournament. They're used to this kind of thing by now, and they don't hold it against me over some silly grudge.

Seeing their excitement, I find myself enjoying this. It doesn't take much effort from me, just some talking and probably a bit of crafting, and the entire time, I can continue training and dying without them even noticing.

And, as always, I will learn from this as well. There is only so much an individual can do alone. Even humans on Earth only got to where they are by passing on knowledge.

Björn is the one who asks me for help, leading me to a corner to look at his project, something he calls a "closed loop sub-mana resonator." I follow him, with the others trailing behind us like a brood of ducklings.