After ten minutes of pondering the tome, I realized something.

  This wasn’t going to work. Not the way I wanted it to, at least.

  My initial plan had been to decipher the spell, convert it into the Spellcode I needed for the player-piano-looking Spellcode Scroll-Reader, and simply strap the whole thing to my armor—or jam it into the Warrior’s Sheath. Either way, I’d planned on treating it like a component in a machine.

  It wasn’t a component, and I could not figure out how to take it apart and put it back together—at least, not without breaking it irreparably. The Tome of Iron Body wasn’t even that complex; Tori was digesting a much more challenging spell in Contingent Cast, and she wasn’t struggling. But with Voltsmith’s drawback, I simply couldn’t understand it.

  “Tori, take this. Give me your tome when you’re done,” I said. I tossed the Iron Body tome toward her, and she nodded. A bead of sweat ran down her face—maybe she was struggling a little with Contingent Cast. Either way, the look she shot me with the nod told me everything her gritted teeth didn’t. She wanted me to leave her alone and work on my own stuff.

  I sighed and pulled out the Rose-Tinted Compass. Tori had said something about eels and sharks being able to sense their prey with electricity, and Charge was a lot like electricity. That plus the Compass gave me an idea.

  “Bobby, was there anything near you worth fighting before I ran into you?”

  “You mean before we found your knocked-out body? No. Just the cave. We were following the screams and howls as best we could,” Bobby said. He still looked irritated, but he hadn’t said anything about the Tome of Iron Body—or about me handing it off to Tori and not him.

  I pulled a ball-peen hammer and got to work, tapping along the edge of the Compass’s case and using a screwdriver to pry the metal back and reveal the guts of the thing. And it had guts; it wasn’t just a piece of iron floating in a sealed chamber. I pulled tiny components out of it as it lost its magic, its Charge already drained to fuel my newest—hopefully—creation. That gave me fourteen Charge to work with, a few switches, and what could only be described as a steel coffee filter the size of my thumbnail.

  I grabbed one of my remaining Small Charge Batteries and stocked it up to five Charge, then emptied it into the air. As I did, the filter slowly sucked the Charge toward it, and a glowing orange ball appeared over it, slightly to the side where I’d emptied the battery.

  That was an egregious waste of power, but it proved the concept. I could use the filter as the core of a…radar wasn’t the right word. I didn’t have the right word, but I knew conceptually what I wanted. I pulled a few strands of wire from my inventory and stripped the rubber off of them, leaving me with about three feet of copper. Then I got to work slowly wiring the switches back onto the filter. I attached each switch to an LED light and flipped the whole gizmo to ‘on.’

  Unsurprisingly, nothing happened.

  Surprisingly, nothing happened even when I wired it into a battery and fed Charge into the system to turn it on. So that was frustrating. I tinkered for a good half hour on the device before Tori cleared her throat. “What’s that supposed to be?”

  “Uh, a radar,” I said.

  “Ah.” Tori went quiet, then handed me the Tome of Contingent Cast. “Here you go. I’ll get Iron Body to you soon.”

  “Thanks.”

  I kept working on the radar. It did a great job of sensing Charge, but I couldn’t figure out how to convert that into detecting electrical impulses or magic, and I needed it to do one of the two. I didn’t get Charge from monsters, but they were alive—and if they were alive, they had electrical signatures. I knew that much from the biology class I’d tried not to sleep through in high school.

  The radar also wasn’t directional—at least not yet. Between those two problems, I’d ripped apart a utility item for nothing.

  I shoved it aside and went back to trying to decipher the tome, but that wasn’t any better. The whole crafting session felt like a complete waste, and honestly, I didn’t need either of these items. Between Tori learning Iron Body and the two Chthonic Pills we’d picked up off Leana’s body, we had everything we needed to fight the Floor Two Boss.

  But I wanted something for my effort.

  “You’re going about it wrong,” Tori said.

  How long had she been looking over my shoulder? I had no idea, but I didn’t have any better ideas. “So show me?” I asked.

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  “I can try.” Tori sat down and picked up the Tome of Contingent Cast. “Look, its magic is gone. I absorbed it. You’re not going to get a spell effect out of it, even if you could cast it. But what you can do is learn the patterns and try to replicate them. It’s like a minigame world quest or something. You don’t get the full reward, but you get something.”

  “I have no idea what you’re saying,” I said.

  She sighed dramatically. “Okay, in my games, there’s quests and busywork grindy quests. Some of them include stupid matching puzzles and stuff. You’re doing a stupid matching puzzle right now, not trying to learn. It’s monkey-see, monkey-do, not rocket science.”

  She looked smug when I looked over my shoulder, but I did my best to ignore the expression on her face and got back to work. As much as I hated to admit it, she was right. I’d locked myself off from spellcasting, and I’d never be able to do more than imitate it. Understanding was beyond my class’s skills. That didn’t mean I couldn’t learn to imitate it, though, and the Spellcode Scroll-Reader was absolutely my key to that.

  I just had to think less hard.

  Thinking less hard was difficult.

  It took almost an hour to clear my mind to the point where I could begin seeing the patterns in the spellscroll. Tori didn’t help; she kept offering pointers or trying to explain what each part of the spell did from a magical perspective, which was frustrating, since she’d just said I needed to imitate, not understand.

  Eventually, I shooed her away, and she went back to setting her Contingent Casts. Bobby rolled his eyes at her, making sure I could see it.

  I didn’t bother replying. The Spellcode was still intact, even if there wasn’t any magic left in the Tome of Contingent Cast. I just had to imitate the code. That’s all.

  I pulled an awl from my inventory, along with a piece of aluminum car body I’d scrapped from Cindy’s Automotive. Then I got to work.

  The hammer pinged off the top of the awl as I punched a tiny hole through the metal, then another. Then I dropped down a few millimeters and kept tapping, driving row after row of almost-invisible divots and punctures in the aluminum. The sound reminded me a little of Bobby’s bell-ringing punches. I kept going and going, even as Tori fell asleep in the corner. Even Bobby crashed, leaving me alone with the ringing hammer and metal.

  Spells had their own language, but it wasn’t exactly foreign—at least not mostly. It only had four ‘letters:’ short, long, blank, and harmonic. But it was ‘read’ like some strange combination of music and Morse code. I’d never been much for music; Mom had tried to teach me piano, but that was more Beth’s wheelhouse. Morse code, though? Morse code was cool.

  I could almost understand the pattern, but not quite. And that was okay. I didn’t have to translate it, just transcribe it from the Tome to my piece of aluminum.

  That piece didn’t work. Neither did the next one. I worked for what must have been hours, piling up scrap and plowing onward, correcting mistakes and making new ones.

  And eventually, I learned a new skill. Not a spell, but a skill.

  [Skill: Spellcoding (Rank Zero)] unlocked.

  Congratulations, [Hal Riley], on learning [Spellcoding].

  My shoulders ached, and the spot between my eyes felt like someone had taken the ball-peen hammer to my head, not the metal. My tongue felt like sandpaper. How long had I been working on this? And what could it really do?

  The second question felt more important than the first. I grabbed the Spellcode Scroll-Reader and delicately worked the—hopefully—Contingent Cast code into it. Then I attached another Small Charge Battery to it and started filling it up.

  It took ten Charge. And when it was done, I only had one use of Contingent Cast, not the three or four Tori had gotten. But it was something. It was a spell.

  I’d successfully Spellcoded something.

  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 49]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 30

  ?Awareness - 42

  ?Charge - 2/57 (55 Used)

  Stat Points Available: 0

  [Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

  [Skill - Spellcoding - Transfer spells from Tomes to Spellscrolls, allowing weaker versions to be cast with Charge instead of Mana]

  Items

  ?Autoplate Pauldron (8 Charge)

  ?Voltsmith’s Grasp (15 Charge) - Rail Gun Module

  ?Heavy Trip-Hammer 2.0 (25 Charge)

  ?Warrior’s Sheath (Spellcode Scroll-Reader)

  [Skill: Leadership (Rank Zero)] unlocked.

  Congratulations, [Calvin Rollins], on learning [Leadership].

  When Hal had told Calvin his theory about The Captain’s class, he hadn’t believed a word the mechanic had said. A class that gained power from the number of people following you or loyal to you felt…weird. Like it wasn’t about the man at all, but about the power he commanded over others. But Hal had been right.

  And now Calvin was stepping into The Captain’s shoes.

  He’d only taken command a handful of times before. Once out of Da Nang, when the platoon’s lieutenant took a bullet to the chest and another to the forehead. A couple of times on the streets, getting other veterans to work together long enough to survive a snowstorm or move before the cops cracked down—or to get them into a shelter for a few nights. He’d never asked for power, or rank. And if anyone but Hal had asked him to do it, he’d have turned them down.

  He’d have turned Ms. Silvers down without a second thought, and she wasn’t bad-looking at all. Had her heart in the right place with Tori and Museumtown, too. But no, he didn’t want power.

  But he had it—the System was proof. People were listening to him. Maybe it was the twins and Tommy following him around, or maybe all the guys in shredded business suits and gals in shorts and T-shirts needed someone to tell them what to do, but Calvin was in command.

  And he hated it.

  “God dammit,” he muttered, rolling over in his sleeping bag. Someone had to keep these civvies in line. Someone had to keep them from getting killed. And right now, that someone was him.

  Across the room, Tommy slept quietly. Calvin appreciated the silence—last night, the man had snored like a freight train.

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