So we finally have confirmation of techniques. Dad had a quest to kill the head vamp and it gave a technique. It was simple and connected to his personal sigil. It is strange and breaks every rule. That I am aware of.

  The technique allows Dad to attach a sigil to a specific motion and deploy that effect when he completes the motion. I wanted him to use it on the tool extender to sigil to make a sword that can cut a whole building in half. He’s boring, he used a steady mind sigil and made a bog standard meditation skill. Seriously, meditation, who even does that?

  Day 143, Owen Landers.

  It stood overlooking the fallen civilization below. The world had changed much since its Lord had been driven into Sheol. Where once there had been stone and mortar, now a city of glass and steel replaced it.

  The Herald narrowed his eyes, sniffing the air. Its Lord had told him to track down a nuisance. It had insulted the Master of the Hunt and as such needed to be culled before more insult could be levied. At first, the Herald had been unimpressed, hoping it would be a fast jaunt away from Babylon. But no, this particular human had proven evasive, a worthy hunt.

  He should have been easy to track. His constitution was only human, its scent clear. Even masked by the musk of others, he could smell it from a hundred feet away. What made it strange was the lack of continuity. Its trail broke and reformed, jumped from place to place, as if reality itself bent around it.

  Now the Herald understood why his Lord had chosen him. This hunt required intellect, not just strength or a silent step. Cooperation where others would charge blindly.

  The Herald stepped off the side of the building. Glass and metal flashed past as it fell. It hit the ground and the street buckled beneath his feet, collapsing into a tunnel system beneath the blackstone roadway. A sewage system, not as well developed as the capital of Babylon, but every city had a similar setup. Several of the strange horseless chariots fell in with it.

  That was another thing that vexed the Herald. Where were the livestock? Where were the chariots of gold, the soldiers with spears? What was wrong with this era? Were they all lambs for the slaughter?

  It would have dismissed them entirely, if not for their weapons. It had seen them in action, devices capable of erasing entire cities in a second. If it had not traded its humanity for pseudo-immortality, it might have feared them. Those devices were responsible for some of the most shocking deaths in the Master’s army, with their ability to make children a credible threat.

  The scent grew stronger as it stalked towards a squat building of metal and glass. It was ugly and functional, a structure built with no concept of beauty. The people of this age did not understand glory. No hanging gardens. No grand stonework. They were almost depressing in their simplicity.

  Moving to the side of the structure, it sniffed. The smell was coming from above. Sinking its claws into the side of the structure, the Herald quickly scaled the building. The smell got stronger, a few days old, but fresh enough.

  Standing atop the ugly structure, the Herald surveyed the surroundings. Large broken pipes with fins littered the surroundings. It tried to understand what this structure was for. Maybe a palace of some king. That assumption was only reinforced when he descended into what was likely a servant's wing. At least no king would stoop to using such poor wood for a personal desk.

  It followed the human’s trail into a receiving room. The place was odd with a counter splitting the room in half and a line of those black mirrors that humans loved lining the back wall. Screens, the herald thought he heard some of the slaves of Babylon call them.

  There was another battle a bit further on with a pile of corpses. Servants of Disgeneree. Beyond that was a massive hallway followed by another room. Inside, the smell of blood. Human blood. A battle had taken place here.

  The Herald had no idea what the room was for. Rubble was strewn everywhere and there were odd alcoves in the wall. Maybe it was a wing filled with apartments for the king’s women or children? Nothing these humans did made any sense

  “Who goes there?” a voice called out.

  The Herald softened its voice, relaxing its tone until it sounded like a child. Normally when hunting the sound of an injured beast lured the prey in. Humans seemed to flee from loud noises that denoted agony, so a child was the next best thing.

  “I’m sorry. I’m lost. I thought someone might be here,” The Herald said, adding a light cough near the end to sell the act.

  “Get in here, kid! It’s dangerous out there!” The soldier called, concern laced through his voice.

  The Herald did not enter. Instead, it leapt upward, latching onto the ceiling beams. The hunter was always decisive. The hunter was always silent. It lived up to those lessons as it moved silently across the beams.

  Below, soldiers clustered around armored war machines, metal chariots of a new age. The machines were set up in a triangle and even the Herald was wary of getting hit by their cannons.

  Once it was above them it paused. They hadn’t seen it. Stepping off the metal beam, the Herald dropped among them.

  Gunfire erupted instantly. The bullets sparked harmlessly off its scales, ricocheting into the soldiers or bouncing a second time off the chariot’s armor. One died screaming. Another fell before he even realized he was hit.

  The Herald caught the final round inches from the last man’s forehead. Flinching back, the soldier fell on his butt and dropped his gun.

  Before he could collect himself, the Herald leaned forward until both of its horns almost touched the soldier's eyes, “Have you seen a man with blond hair, blue eyes, and white bone armor?”

  The soldier's eyes widened in shock, “You, you can talk?”

  “Answer the question,” The Herald pushed.

  The soldier stared, shaking that slowly turned to anger, “Y-Yes. We know him. He killed so many of us.”

  “Then you have suffered under his tyranny as well.” The Herald used another tool. Sympathy.

  The man nodded desperately.

  “Tell me where he is,” The Herald asked, pleased with the progress it was making.

  “I—I don’t know. But Rahul does, well did. And the other captains, I heard one of them made a map for Silas,” the soldier said.

  The Herald smiled, all its shark like teeth showed, “Thank you.”

  His claws drove through the man’s chest. The hunt must go on.

  ______

  Silas…

  ______

  “Safe journey back to your home, and be strong,” Uzman called out.

  Silas tried to keep a straight face as he heard those words.

  “And I guess have fun conquering India, or whatever you are doing,” Silas added uncertainly.

  They really didn’t know much about what was going on in India and Pakistan. Silas only knew that both places had been devastated by the monster invasion and that it was all somehow India’s fault. At least, according to an intoxicated Uzman. While Silas was unsure of how to react to the man he had to admit that Uzman was better than Rahul.

  Uzman gave him a half-drunken grin and waved. Samantha returned it with a cheery smile.

  “Punjab will be mine. I’ll take over all of Asia,” he said, then burst out laughing.

  It was clearly a joke, but the people seeing Silas and his group off still cheered. He hoped it was a joke. Silas just shook his head and climbed into the passenger side of the bus. He couldn’t really drive with a broken right leg.

  Bella climbed in on the other side and asked, “You ready to get out of here?”

  Silas nodded. “Oh yes. The sooner the better.”

  He needed to leave before some other idiot challenged them to a fight for honor or because someone shook hands wrong. All their supplies were packed in the back, and Samantha and the twins were already inside. Everything was ready to make it to Mongolia within two or three weeks.

  It still amazed Silas how far off his original travel estimates had been. He had even considered abandoning the bus and continuing on foot, it would be significantly faster, so long as they walked for more than six hours a day. However, having an armored place to rest was hard to pass up. He might be able to go a month without sleep, but asking that of the others would definitely get people killed.

  “Would you mind making us an exit?” Bella asked.

  Silas opened a portal and looked out the window, just to see the locals’ reactions. Their eyes went wide as Bella drove straight through it. A second later, they were gone.

  Bella sighed in relief, “I’m so glad we are leaving. That place is medieval and barbaric.”

  “They weren’t that bad,” Aron said. He was still a bit tipsy as well.

  “They told me to know my place and sit with the children!” Bella growled.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I sat with the children,” Samantha said, “It was not that bad.

  Before he could be dragged into the conversation, he turned to the girl, “Hey, Samantha, would you mind being a lookout for a bit?”

  The girl perked up, happy to finally feel useful again, “Yeah, I can do that! What are you doing?”

  Silas pointed at his shin, “I’m going to see if I can use Bone Crafter to weld my bones back together. It’ll heal in a day or two anyway, but I’d rather not wait that long to walk again.”

  Samantha nodded and turned to watch the side windows, keeping an eye on the bus’s blind spot.

  Silas leaned forward and examined his leg. His tibia was broken, but the second bone was fine. That made it easier to reset. He wasn’t looking forward to what came next.

  His ability couldn’t make bone sticky, and as it was inside him, he couldn’t mash it together and roll out a new bone. The only option was to force the ends together and apply friction to essentially weld them together. It was going to hurt, a lot, but better pain now than being helpless later. At least he didn’t need heat.

  He grabbed the top of his shin with one hand and the lower part with the other. Just gripping it sent white-hot pain through his leg. He lined the broken ends up, pushing them back and forth until they were aligned perfectly.

  That hurt, but the next part was worse. He softened the bone with Bone Crafter. That didn’t hurt, until he pressed the ends together. It felt like slapping two pieces of wet clay together, then twisting them so they fused. Except it was his shin.

  Silas growled as tears filled his eyes. It wasn’t the worst pain he’d ever felt, but it was the sharpest. Having to focus on it made it almost unbearable. He massaged the crack together, hoping he was doing it right. It wouldn’t be as strong as a fully healed bone, but it should turn a break into something closer to a fracture.

  After ten minutes that felt like an entire day, he was done. He formed a makeshift cast from cracked bone grieve and locked everything in place. He leaned back, lightheaded. Only then did he realize he’d been hyperventilating.

  A notification appeared. One that was almost expected at this point.

  Notice: Due to the use of Bone Crafter on yourself, your proficiency has increased. Your Focus stat has increased to reflect this.

  Silas stared at it. Of all things, Focus? He’d been hoping for Body. Still… operating on his own skeleton probably counted for something. Could he strengthen his bones? Bone crafter said it couldn’t make things harder, but if he made them slightly thicker and a bit more flexible, he might get significantly more durable. Maybe he would do it when he had a few pounds of painkillers on hand.

  “Everything okay?” Bella asked, concern in her voice.

  Silas exhaled slowly, “The worst part’s over. I’m not at 100%, but welding the bones should’ve done most of Flesh Lord’s job. I’ll be walking by tonight.”

  “That’s good,” Bella said. “Because I’m going to need your portal again.”

  Silas followed her gaze out the windshield and flinched. A massive worm-like creature was crawling across the landscape. Hundreds of tiny legs carried a bloated body made of white, wobbling flesh. It looked like a skyscraper tipped on its side and inflated.

  It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t even aggressive. However, it was enormous. Worse, hundreds of smaller creatures clung to it, feeding upon it as it moved. Every so often, a few would jump off, attack something, then return to feast again.

  The monster was so large it didn’t even care. Its wounds regenerated faster than the monsters could eat it. The whole scene was an unholy blend of symbiosis and parasitism.

  Samantha whispered. “What is that thing? Do you think it turns into, like, a doomsday butterfly?”

  Silas didn’t want to think about that. He opened a portal past it. Then another, a mile further. Even from two miles away, the creature was still visible on the skyline.

  “I am really glad we don’t have to fight that,” Samantha said.

  The twins nodded vigorously and Silas couldn’t help but agree. They didn’t see anything else that size up close, just distant shapes moving far away. Silas had started calling them kaiju, though the word felt almost exaggerated until he saw that caterpillar.

  The others were big, bigger than blue whales, but still tiny compared to something like Godzilla. Still, there wasn’t really a category between huge and kaiju, so the name stuck in his head.

  Back in Hell, he’d thought the dragon and the fox were enormous. Now he wasn’t so sure. They had been large, but he lacked any human structures to compare them to.

  He had claimed that he would be able to fight things like that one day. Back then, he was more naive about the horrors of the new world. And honestly… the thought still intrigued him. Should it even be a goal?

  If someone could crush cities underfoot, if entire civilizations feared them would someone like Rahul ever dare challenge him again? Would anyone? Fear was a valid tool to protect those he cared about.

  Before Silas could worry about making a name for himself on the national stage, he had to make sure the next nation he entered would even understand him. He started by opening the bag of supplies he’d gotten from Uzman and passed out the two thermal cultivator sigils.

  “Aron, Mandy, these are yours,” Silas passed back the pair of sigils.

  The twins hadn’t earned their sigils yet. They had lesser variants, but two lessers could be used to get a standard sigil. To get a greater sigil, they would have to earn it themselves. Still, this upgrade alone pushed the power of their thermal cultivator sigil from 300% to 400%. It didn’t sound like much, but a 33% increase in anything was massive.

  “Get these absorbed and start practicing,” Silas said. “I want you to try melting one piece of metal without letting a single drop of molten metal leave your hands. If you need to pass it back and forth, that’s fine.”

  The twins nodded. Each of them picked up a dining utensil Silas had packed in their luggage. They weren’t able to melt the stainless steel, but they could get it dangerously hot.

  “What about me?” Samantha asked.

  Silas rolled up a small paper bound pamphlet he’d found in the dashboard. It was the owner’s manual from what the bus used to be before the twins’ father had bolted steel plates onto it. He handed it to her.

  Samantha looked at it, confused. “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “Your bubble sigil, the one that makes armor. You can make other things too, right?” Silas asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. Bubbles are the easiest. I can also make those cone projectiles.”

  “Good. I want you to make a telescope. Get the lenses right so you can see as far as possible.”

  Silas wasn’t even sure it would work, but glass didn’t have any special magnifying property on its own, it just allowed light to pass through in a controlled way. Solidified air that was transparent should do the same thing. She even had an advantage due to bubbles having a concave or convex surface depending on how one worked on them.

  Silas turned to his own task.

  He’d found a stopwatch in the glove compartment and disassembled it. While reading a Mandarin to English dictionary, he absentmindedly started recreating the internal gears using bone. Since he could alter the rigidity and flexibility of bone, there was no reason he couldn’t make a fully functional watch out of it.

  The gears were delicate. Too thin and they’d snap if he wasn’t paying attention, which happened quite often, because he was reading at the same time.

  A few hours later, Silas took a break. Chinese was ridiculous. Or rather, Mandarin was. Supposedly there were fifty or sixty different languages across China. He just hoped this one would be enough to get by.

  He didn’t know why a Pakistani group had a book published for English speakers to learn Chinese, nearly one hundred years ago, but he appreciated the phonetic spellings. The language was weird. Why did “ng” sometimes make a “w” sound? That made no sense, though he supposed English didn’t really have any consistency either.

  He’d always thought names should be translated phonetically, until he realized Chinese names actually meant something. His own name didn’t, or at least that was not why it was chosen. His parents had chosen “Silas” because it sounded nice and was in the Bible.

  Chinese names carried meaning in a way that reminded Silas of certain Native American tribes. That made translating foreign names awkward, since the written characters almost mattered more than the sound. At least, that’s what the book said. It had been published in 1958, almost a hundred years ago.

  Reading it was dry and boring, but there was one benefit. Silas could remember every single word he read. He wasn’t fluent, not even close, but if someone spoke a word he’d already studied, he could instantly recall its definition. A few more days like this and his focus and memory stats would really start paying off. With a double-digit focus stat, learning a language felt unfairly easy.

  “Are you done with that book?” Samantha asked as Silas climbed into the driver’s seat on their second day.

  Silas blinked. “Yeah. You want it?”

  “Well, we’re going to China,” she said flatly. “So yes, I’d like to speak the local language.”

  He handed it over. Almost immediately, Mandy started giving Samantha Mandarin lessons. Silas nearly facepalmed at the wasted opportunity. Right. We literally have a fluent speaker in the vehicle.

  The next few days passed uneventfully. His leg still hurt off at irregular intervals, which slowed them down. He had to hunt a few animals for food, but otherwise, nothing major happened. Now that they were out of the big cities and into rural areas, monsters were far less common. They’d go hours without seeing any. Occasionally one would fly overhead or attack the bus, but it was rare.

  It gave Silas hope for his family. They were in the rural Midwest. Sure, there were people, but nothing like the cities. Green River was a small town with a few thousand residents at the last census. If anywhere was going to survive this new world, it was places like that.

  They kept driving until they reached an abandoned guard outpost. The building was some kind of port of entry. A sign stood beside it, written in characters Silas recognized, but struggled to read.

  “What does that say?” he asked.

  Mandy studied it for a moment. “You are now entering Tibet.”

  “Tibet? I thought Tibet was its own country. Aren’t we entering China?” Silas asked while pulling out his map to double check.

  Mandy rolled her eyes. “Were you born under a rock? No. Tibet is a province of China.”

  “I uh, I didn’t realize that,” Silas said, a bit embarrassed.

  He looked around for a way to change the subject from his complete ignorance. His eyes fell on the building beside the road. It was a large structure, and it had a scale on it, as if it was meant to weigh semi-trucks passing through. There were a few vehicles parked nearby, all looking military. Instead of the usual camouflage, though, they had a black paint job with the word POLICE written on the side in Mandarin.

  Silas had to squint for a few seconds before he could make it out. He pointed at the building. “So what’s that over there? I think we should go check it out.”

  Bella looked over at the port of entry with uncertainty. “Are you sure? I mean, we were lucky Uzman wasn’t a problem, even if he was a total asshole. Is it really worth the risk of throwing yourself into Chinese custody?”

  The concern in her voice was clear. America and China had never exactly gotten along, and showing up in the country with no sovereign protection was probably a bad idea.

  Silas shook his head. “No, I can kind of speak Chinese now. I can pretend not to be American. It’d be better than having them chase us if someone notices us.”

  They couldn’t exactly say they were heading to America regardless. Mandy and Aron wanted to head toward Mongolia, and it was in the same general direction. That was good enough for now.

  Bella sighed in exasperation, but she pulled over in front of the port of entry and waited. Nothing happened, no one exited the building to inspect them. After a moment, Silas got out of the vehicle, he wasn’t healed completely but it was close enough. He walked up to the building. He knocked on the door.

  No answer. He tried the handle and found it was unlocked.

  The door slowly swung open, and silence spilled out. Inside, the place was empty aside from a few offices and a security checkpoint. Beyond that, there was a large banner made of some kind of paper stretched over an easel. It reminded him of a whiteboard, except it was much bigger than anything he’d seen in a classroom.

  It had writing on it and a rough sketch of a map, with an arrow pointing to a specific location.

  “Hey, Mandy, could you come take a look at this?” Silas called.

  He could make out some of the characters, but the writing was complex, an entire paragraph’s worth. Mandy got out of the car and walked over. She studied it, mumbling to herself, then started reading aloud.

  “Those traveling for supplies or looking for trade, go here. We will trade food, water, supplies, rest, and sigil,” She frowned as if making sure she was reading it correctly, “For the glory of the Heavenly Fox and her sect masters.”

  Silas blinked, “What’s a sect master?”

  “Something that shows up quite often in eastern mythology,” Mandy answered, “I guess that sigils made some of that true as well.”

  At first, he was surprised they’d left a message like that. However, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Portals were still opening, still disgorging monsters. They assumed it happened more often in high population areas, but Silas hadn’t seen a single portal since returning to Earth, only heard about them.

  The number of monsters in Hell and on Earth had to be equalizing by now. Not that they had to obey physics like water through osmosis, but eventually there had to be a point where the portals stopped flooding the world like a broken spigot. When seen like that, it made sense that they would congregate in a more defensive position.

  “Do we have any reason to go there?” Bella asked.

  Silas scanned the map. “That’s Route 219, right?”

  Mandy nodded.

  Silas sighed, “Then yeah. That’s literally on the road we’re taking. I don’t know if it’s a new city or something like Rahul’s camp, but it’ll be easiest to go through it.”

  Aron frowned. “With your portals, you’re going to get noticed. Your range is three miles, right?”

  Silas nodded, “For now.”

  Aron continued, “That means they’ll see you coming or going. Any competent settlement is going to have scouts with binoculars watching the roads for survivors. At least that's how dad would’ve set it up.”

  Silas frowned, “Alright. So we assume they’ll see us. Worst case, I portal around them. It’ll take maybe an hour, but I can make a big loop and completely avoid them.”

  Aron shrugged. “Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about it. Worst case scenario? They try to steal everything we have. The second they put up a roadblock, you just jump past it. It’s hard to stop someone who can skip space.”

  There was a note of jealousy in his voice. Silas smirked at that, “Alright. Let’s get going.”

  He climbed back into the vehicle.

  As Bella drove, Silas used the time to build new relics. First, he fused one of the permanent adaptation sigils into his armor. The bone turned a muddy brown color, which was honestly disappointing, he’d expected something more imposing. Considering it came from a slime monster, maybe that made sense.

  The second was a shockwave sigil, which he turned into an amulet. Originally it would let its wielder vibrate any object they were touching. Unfortunately, this sigil followed the path of thermal cultivator when made into a relic. The relic could only affect itself.

  He still made a slot in his armor hoping it would still work with permanent adaptation. His joints buzzed faintly. It felt weird, but he could get used to it. He also had Samantha apply her thermal cultivator to his gear. If nothing else, he was getting harder to kill by the minute.