Chapter 88: Chapter Eighty Eight

The other showed up a few hours later without incident, Grimmengap  first and then a few hours after that the rest of our team. I was  relieved that no one ran into any problems on the way, the homing rocks  clearly having done their jobs. Once Cark, Jessie, and Benny arrived we  officially convened a meeting.

I turned to my  teammates."Alright, now that we're all here we can officially start  construction of our forward operating base. Agria, we need you to  reinforce the walls with the most powerful plants you can grow, make  sure they're pumped with life energy. Clowckwork, once she does that  you'll be up, we want to use the inventing skill on this place. Any  ideas on the result?"

Benny just shrugged. "I mean, it'll  be a building. Nothing insane, even with the shadows and plants we  probably won't manage much past H rank if that. Other than that it could  be literally anything. Probably won't try to kill us, they usually  don't directly, but even that isn't a sure thing. I for one can't wait  to see what happens." He grinned happily, ignoring the death glares from  the rest of the people in the clearing. I was on his side, which made  me wonder if just having the Inventing Skill gave you a bit of mad  scientist recursion.

Jessie interrupted. "If you two are  finished contemplating and then subsequently dismissing our gruesome and  horrible deaths at the hands of an evil house we're about to create I'd  like to get started on actually creating the thing. If it's going to  kill and eat us I'd prefer to get it out of the way early. Stagnant  water attracts mosquitos once it starts to get dark, and if I'm going to  be murdered be experimental architecture the least you can do is make  sure I get to avoid the bugs while I do it."

I shot Callie  a glare as she snickered at that, and she glanced away innocently as  she tried to force herself to stop smirking. The rest of us backed up.  Jessie was going to use her new ability, and all of us were interested  to see how it worked given the massive powerup and the much higher stats  she had now. She reached into her belt pouch and pulled out a handful  of seeds before holding out her hand flat and closing her eyes.

It  took a second, but I saw the seeds begin to glow, green light flooding  into them. I expected them to sprout, but apparently she was using her  lifeweaver abilities to flood the seeds with energy without letting them  grow, packing the Vitality as densely into them as possible. As she  stood there to glow intensified, building and building in strength until  I had to squint looking at her hand. Finally, once she seemed to have  imbued enough power into the seeds she flicked her wrist, tossing the  handful of seeds onto the shadow and wood structure, making sure to get a  decent spread.

The seeds scattered, hitting the walls in  different spots, and whatever effect was preventing them from growing in  her hand vanished as an explosive wave of vegetation burst forth from  the seeds and began to writhe its way over the walls, wrapping around  the entirety of the hut before beginning it's climb up toward the top.  Jessie was clearly steering the plants because they wound around each  other tightly, configuring themselves into complex webs of interlocking  designs that looked intricate and gorgeous before reaching the top of  the hut and spilling over to weave themselves into a roof.

Jessie's  eyes were glowing green as she stared hard at the shifting plants, her  veins blazing under her skin, and I had to admit her new lifeweaver  ability was much more impressive than her old florokinesis power. I was  pretty sure most of the speed and fluidity of control was Might based,  but I was also sure the having her Vitality energy embedded in the  plants and able to help with control made her able to leverage that in  ways someone else with her Might probably couldn't. This power was  absolutely perfect for someone with Jessie's skill set.

By  the time the place was covered, with the exception of a doorway she  left in the side, Jessie was swaying on her feet, sweat dripping down  her forehead. Callie and I moved up on either side of her. "Whoa there,  you ok?" She nodded tiredly. "Alright take a rest, you should be good  for now. Clockwork, is that good for you to do your thing? Any other  materials you need to add in?" The hut was looking tight and imposing at  this point, clearly made with care and hopefully ready to be  transformed into something a little more useful for us.

Benny  shook his head. "No. Inventing doesn't need even this many points,  though having mine at Beginner will let me make anything up to G rank.  Honestly you could probably have managed it, but it's better for me to  do it just in case." Inventing could cobble together Impact for higher  ranked objects, but it needed support from a high enough level skill and  enough materials. If there wasn't enough Impact in the combined pieces  to hit G rank it wouldn't matter what other stats there were in there,  it would stop at H, but even that wasn't doable without at least Lesser  Inventing.

The further I got into Inventing the more  terrified and impressed I became. The Skill was hands down one of the  most terrifying I'd seen in terms of potential. Even a weaker Inventor  could make some truly terrifying things without much needed in the way  of personal power. I was glad Benny decided to synergize it with his  Iron Hide ability, but I was even more glad he hadn't ended up with  Inventing as an ability. More and more as time went on I began to  understand the terror people felt toward mad scientists.

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Benny  put his hand against the side of the hut and closed his eyes. The glow  in the vines hadn't faded yet, but as he focused the pulse of green  started to shift. It got darker, not like hunter green, but more like  Emerald, it still reminded me of life but more at an abstract level than  just plants. There was a corresponding brown glow from the wood wed  used as well as a black radiance from the shadows. I wasnt sure how  black could glow, but it did.

The glows started out at  different levels. Different intensities and even pulsing at different  rates. I hadnt really seen someone Inventing from the outside,  especially not at this scale, and it was fascinating to watch. As he  focused the rate of pulsing seemed to equalise, the color intensity  seemed to synch, and then, as we watched, green, black, and brown began  to bleed into each other. As the colors mixed together they brightened  again blurring the edges of our vision. Not as if it was too bright, but  as if the image had lost focus, it was like someone was mixing paint  together and the picture was getting blurred in the process.

Once  the colors had all mixed into a uniform sort of muddy brown-grey the  blurring coalesced, merging with the glow to create one mixed image  before solidifying into...something else. A new and different shape that  was bigger and more expansive than the original hut. Not just bigger  though. Heavier. In the way that spoke of Impact. I turned to Benny who  looked winded but still fine, and got a pleased nod. I rolled my eyes at  my friend. "Yes your nod was very informative. Wait, no, that tells me  nothing. How did it turn out, ass?"

He chuckled at my  impatience. "Look for yourself." He stepped up, opening the door for us  to peer inside. "As the creator I know that it does, and it wont try to  kill us, which is nice. Honestly I'm a little surprised by how it turned  out, but it'll be useful for sure. Take a look at the results though, I  want to show off the interior before I distract you with the  usefulness. I honestly don't know why more people don't make buildings  with inventing. The results are amazing."

Callie cleared  her throat. "Because anything bigger than this wouldnt be controllable  if it potentially went bat shit crazy and started spawning mutant worm  dragons or turned into a giant cannon and blew a hole in the moon?" We  all stared hard at the thing before taking a slight step back and she  rolled her eyes. "He would know if that had happened. If Clockwork says  it won't kill us it's fine...probably."

Benny just  snickered and gestured us in again and I sighed heavily before stepping  through the door. The inside was...spartan, but still nice. Dark wood,  black walls with splashes of green around the edges. It was pretty basic  though. Aside from now seeming slightly bigger (not like spatial  manipulation just good layout) and a new entrance to higher floors, it  didnt seem like anything special. Benny gestured to the stairs (which  were sturdy and well made and right next to a door that hadnt been there  before) and we started climbing. The second floor was the same size,  and the third. I paused. "Wait. There are doors. Does this move back  into the cliff face? Also why havent we hit the overhang yet?"

That  got a grin from my friend. "There are adjoining rooms inside the cliff.  The overhand became part of the place. Not the whole cliff face, but I  was able to incorporate the stuff touching it. You didn't notice because  the hut blocked your view from the angle we were at. Anyway the cliff  expansions are literally just another room the same size on each floor.  But the cliff is just a random add on. The real purpose of this place is  on the third floor." He seemed excited to show us the big secret and  rushed us up the steps to the third and apparently final floor. The  second had been the same, bigger but empty, and I expected the third  floor to be similar, but I'd been wrong.

For one thing the  third floor was open, showing the clearing and the surrounding woods,  though invisible from the ground or above because of the angle, clearly  recessed into the cliff side. There was no door here just in big room,  and the whole thing was filled with wooden basins stuffed with straw.  They were open to the air, showing a ton of eggs sitting on the straw  waiting to be hatched. There were probably a hundred of them, maybe a  bit less. The place had an obvious point for whatever was in the eggs to  take off and fly away and back, but it didnt make the rooms any more  understandable in terms of purpose.

He pointed at the  eggs. "Agrias life energy made that possible. The eggs are ravens. This  place is called the hatchery. They're perfect for infusing with Vitality  and controlling. Non sapient birds that can be used as spies and  scouts. Eighty five of them. This place will be a massive help to us  looking for the stuff on our list of the Heartrippers." He made a wide  gesture, showing it all off, clearly smug. "I call it the hatchery."

I  felt my own face split into a grin under my mask. He was right. This  was a gamechanger. We could do so much with a building like this, I  could see how useful Inventing could be in projects like this. I kind of  wanted to try something like this again, see what else we got, but  Callie's talk of worm dragons and moon cannons made me think twice.  Regardless though, we had a first step to winning this now. I turned to  Jessie. "Alright rest up Agria. After you're topped up you can get  started on the eggs. We have a hunt to win, and assassins to find."

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