We needed to secure an area for a little bit, I needed to recover and Anastasia needed time to craft her army. At the same time we had to outfit the puppets with actual gear. Most had a weapon and a few scraps of armor, luckily I had my Smithing class that I had been somewhat neglecting though not as much as my Gardener class.

  I relayed my thoughts to Anastasia as we planned out what to do. Another aspect was that we needed to stay hidden while we built up our forces. Cause no doubt the Jarl was going to be searching for us.

  First off damage roll count pushing Anastasia off of me for a moment I began taking off pieces of my armor in order to get an actual visual of what I was looking at. A few yellowish bruises and a few more elliptical purple bruises that were healing. However the main injury was a long black burn across my side that I had to look away from as my stomach became nauseous. Shaking off the disturbing feeling I quickly checked my other injuries as I tried to ignore the painful throbbing that coated my body.

  Everything else was good so now it was time to treat the burn.

  'Hey Anastasia can weave a bandage for me please?' I asked her to which she obliged abd began weaving a long silk bandage.

  'Of course you nincompoop, but we must talk about all these near death fights you keep waltzing into like their parties!' the spider exclaimed as she began to lecture me on not dying and not being critically injured.

  'Hey it's not like I knew that the fire was able to go through my armor' I replied as I began securing the long bandage across my midsection.

  'yeah but you also looked at the terrifying black flame and gave it a frickin hug!' Anastasia fired back as he waited for me to finish applying the bandage.

  'First off I did not give it a hug, second off I still won the fight!' I retorted to her as I rested my head against the cave wall for a moment as I took a breather. I appreciated Anastasia's help and dedication but I knew she was lagging behind me power wise and if we where to survive we needed her to grow. She made a great battle field commander with her siblings and with her puppets, but unfortunately we had no access to her brothers and sisters and her Puppets where weaker than the Draugur.

  'Hey, Anastasia real talk for a moment, you have any plans on how to make your puppets stronger?' I asked her and she sat still for a while before responding.

  'Yes, well it's more of maybe but I have an idea' she responded uncertainty was obliviously in her tone.

  'alright what is it maybe I can help?' I asked her looking at her many eyes as she was lost in thought.

  'Okay, well you know my talismans right?' she asked me and I nodded along as I wondered where image was going with it.

  'well I don't have a system skill for it I was thinking I could weave a talisman into my puppets to empower them.' she explained and I honestly didn't know enough about totems to help.

  'So how can I help you help us?' I asked her as I slowly got up and began stretching slightly being mindful of the the injury on my left side. We moved in deeper away from the large cavern full of ruins and undead.

  'I need materials of creatures preferably not undead' she stated before explaining her plan more in full.

  'my plan is that If I can create talismans that grant the user certain abilities that the user the powers that the animal had in life, hopefully it could bridge the gap so to speak.' she explained as I thought for a moment. I knew I had the materials of some of my kills though none left from the [Shard of Ursa Major].

  'will the moles and rabbits work for that?' I asked her. I knew I had taken with me about a hundred full corpses most being rabbits so I didn't know how well they work for empowering the puppets.

  'Yeah they should work I only need their bones and claws to carve the totems' Anastasia said and I supposed It made sense.

  'Alright well my part while be outfitting your puppets for that I need the pelts and other parts as well as ore, but I should be able to easily find the latter' I explained as I was planning on using [Geomancy] to search for denser materials which should be primarily metals. From what materials I had seen from the warriors the primary ore here was probably copper.

  Retracing our steps out contingent made it back to our original spot not running into any undead which was suspicious but also a relief. Using the puppets as movers we made it a nice secluded area of the caves. Using my Mana I created a series of three checkpoints of reinforced earth so that the puppets only had to protect the gates. The other parts where simpleish as I made a room into a cave wall. Anastasia then staked out here area. From there I went to the crafting area, I needed a way to heat the metals high enough to properly hammer them into shape and then cool them.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I had an idea but I needed wood lots of wood. Catching the attention of a passing silk puppet I gave it directions to harvest some trees. Although I told it to be careful in case it was followed. Sending it off, I had to wait on the wood front next though I had an advantage that other people in my position would not have and that was [Geomancy] using it I could remove impurities from the metals.

  Reaching out with thin tendrils I searched through the earth sorting looking for a deposit of metals I found a few deposits of what I think is Aluminum which I knew was a vitally important metal for my plans. The reason why humanity didn't utilize aluminum in large quantities pre industrial era was because bauxite the stuff I was finding right now was hard to refine and produced toxic red mud. Thankfully I could use my magic to leave behind the silica and just bringing nearly pure aluminum without as much of the hassle. Speckles of slivery metal appeared, moving them in a corner I prepared for the next metal.

  Next came the copper, sifting through the rock once more until I found some that felt right. It was like an alien whisper in mind as it interacted with the metal. My [Geomancy] couldn't control pure metals easily but it allowed me to control the other stuff around it with better ease. It was the reason I couldn't just kill someone with their own bits of metal armor.

  Pulling out the multi colored ore I was almost ready, I needed to create a series of different alloys at different quantities of each component. First off I was going to start at an even split then move from there. My knowledge was definitely a bit scattered and despite my Chemistry teachers attempts I did not in fact know the melting point of copper well not exactly but I did know it was slightly lower than 2000 degrees fahrenheit.

  Creating a crucible was easy all I needed was a rock cup and I could make sure the rock didn't melt. Then I needed a furnace capable of gaining the required temperatures.

  My montage of head scratching and contemplation as I slowly molded a furnace into it I had to settled on using basalt which should be able to withstand the temperature required. If I remembered correctly basalt was weak to rapid changes in temperature however magical powers don't care so neither do I.

  Puppets piled wood hide, unfortunately there was only spruce and pine trees which where soft woods which made worse charcoal but they would work in a pinch. Creating a indentation in the ground I set the wood in their and then covered it completely before sticking my finger in their and using [Spark Induction], an ability from my jacket, and then covering the finger hole I had made.

  ...

  Anastasia P.O.V

  ...

  I heard the shifting of movement as Kien got his workshop area ready. Taking inventory I decided to start with something poorer quality before using the high quality materials like the hares and moles. Having one of Kien resource gathering puppets to gather some of the Necrotic Contaminated critters was easy enough.

  I had a squirrel at level five it was pitifully weak, next I began to remove the extra parts, leaving the pelt intact Incase Kien wanted to use it. Next I began to craft a crude totem. It began with tying the small bones of the squirrel first before carving the Mana flows. Those where the easy parts of the process, the hard part was accessing and Awakening the dormant records of the creature she was creating a totem for.

  I saw flashes of the creatures life a short and unremarkable one Anastasia focused on its memories of climbing and then focused on imbibing those memories into the mana which she then weaved into the totem. Finally the first part of her experiment was completed now it was time for step two.

  Her idea was that by placing her totems into the right spots the mana would flow into the totems and activate them. Theoretically I could weave multiple totems into one puppet, theoretically of course as I didn't know if this was going to work in the first place.

  Crawling over to the mostly finished Puppet I began weaving the totem into the spine area, the idea for this one being that the command magic which would flow through the spine would activate and carry the totems magic into the limbs and fingers of the puppet...

  ...

  Back to Kien

  ...

  I ended up using the charcoal and some [Cosmic Flare] to bring the metals up to temperature. The unnaturally hot Cosmic flame melted the copper rapidly far faster then I thought was logical.

  I had tried a one to one copper and aluminum ratio for the alloy. It had turned into a pale gold ingot but was a pain in half to work into shape and the the dam thing was to brittle to be a proper weapon. The system description of the metal was interesting.

  ...

  [Star flared Aluminum Bronze]

  Rank Two Trash Quality Alloy

  This item made of pure copper and aluminum at a 1:1 ratio was melted using cosmic flames bathing the metal in those energies. However the poor mixture of this alloy makes undesirable for most crafts.

  ...

  I tried other alloy mixtures, the higher aluminum content ones were worse than the original one I tried. My next move was going to high copper ratio alloy until finally I hit a perfect amount. Ten percent aluminum and ninety percent copper.

  ...

  [Star Flared Aluminum Bronze]

  Rank Two Rare Alloy

  This Bronze alloy made of a 10:1 ratio of copper to aluminum is a powerful and valuable low ranked alloy. Heated with cosmic flames this metal has absorbed those energies.

  ...

  A far more glowing review by the system now that I was ready for my crafting session.

  My first attempt at forging didn't work out right, it wasn't a failure but it came out hard but brittle as I had forgotten about tempering the gladius shaped metal.

  Trying again I remixed the bronze and began shaping the resulting ingot. Slowly the first of the [Star Flared Aluminum Bronze] It was slow going but it was made easier with my enhanced strength. Slowly working Divine power into the blade I tried my class trait [Concept Manipulation] and I saw it. Hundreds, no thousands of strings appeared from the metal at my hands. With my mind I slowly shook away the ones giving feelings of weakness and strengthening the ones of stars. Time passed and it came to fruition. My class skill whispered to me not to quench it, rather let it air cool after a round of tempering.