Chương 14: Lattice Guard

They left the ridge at dawn on the third day. The Wyvern corpse already looked smaller from above, bones jutting out where scavengers had started their work. A few large birds wheeled in lazy circles, waiting for the strange trio and their lingering scent to get far enough away before they resumed feasting. The land sloped downward as they walked south. The broken rock of the high ground gave way to thicker soil and scrubby bushes, then to real trees again. The air warmed.

The wind picked up scents of damp earth instead of acid and burnt scale. After that, the road became repetition. They walked until midday, rested in whatever shade they could find, walked again until the light started to thin. Small things tried to eat them. It never went well for the small things. A trio of lean-horned boars burst from underbrush one morning, tusks low and eyes red. Ivan put the first one down with a [Lightning Spear] before it finished snorting.

Rys met the second with a neat sidestep and a casual backhand that shattered its neck. The third got close enough that Ren had to step in. He stabbed it in the eye with his dagger, hands shaking, but it died all the same. Two days later, a spotted panther shadowed them for half an hour, slipping between trunks with the patience of something that had never been the prey. When it finally leapt, Ivan caught only a flicker of motion at the edge of his [Mana Sense] before its weight hit him square in the side.

They went down in a tangle. He got an elbow up in front of his throat and a knee between them. The beast raked claws along his ribs anyway before Rys appeared and tore it off him with a snarl that did not sound entirely human. She broke its spine with one jerk, then stood over the corpse breathing hard, eyes bright and pupils thin. Ivan lay there for a moment, staring at the sky. His HP bar had taken a satisfying chunk downward. His lungs felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to them.

"Whoa," Rys said, looking down at him.

"Is this infrastructure too?" He wheezed a laugh and let her haul him upright. The pattern repeated enough times that he couldn't ignore it. Monsters died. His spells worked better every week. His brain and mana reserves were doing fine. His bones, less so. He had Levels now, stamina, a decent Mana pool, and a unique Class. None of that changed the problem. Whenever something fast slipped past his geometry and teeth actually touched skin, he folded like the office worker he'd once been.

If Rys wasn't there, or if she were busy, or if he made one mistake, that would be it. He'd spent ten years making tools for other people's survival. Now that he finally had the chance to build for himself, starting with offense and ignoring defense felt… stupid. Which left the problem of what the hell to carve into his own body. [The Living Vellum] had settled into his Status without fanfare. There was no helpful tutorial bubble nor any System-Approved Guide to Flesh Inscription.

Just a quiet line informing him that he could now permanently tattoo spells onto his skin and fire them like instant-scrolls. He had too many options, and for once, the System refused to narrow them down. Some ideas were obvious. [Lightning Spear] as a quick-draw assassination tool had appeal. [Minor Shield] over his head was safer. A custom [Glyph Suspension] variant might let him hang a trap in the air as a reflex. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He turned them over in his head while they walked, while he ate, while he tried and mostly failed to sleep. Every time he thought he'd made a decision, another scenario wandered in and pointed out all the ways it would go horribly wrong. By the time the panther had clawed his ribs open, the pattern was clear enough that even he couldn't pretend it wasn't. He didn't need more ways to kill things first. He needed to survive being second.

He brought it up that evening. They'd made camp in a hollow between two low hills, shielded from wind by bracken and thornbush. The light glyph rock from their ridge campsite now sat in the center of their little triangle of bedrolls, glowing dimly. Rys had dug a narrow trench for waste water and warned Ren very seriously about not using it for anything else. The boy had gone to sleep clutching his dagger and a chunk of dried meat, tail wrapped around his legs.

Ivan sat a little apart on a flattish rock, shirt off, squinting at his own forearm like it had personally wronged him. Rys wandered over and dropped onto the rock opposite him, stretching her legs out. She wore a new pinched expression that probably meant she was torn between mocking him and genuine concern.

"You've been staring at your skin for an hour," she observed.

"Should I be worried, human? Have you discovered vanity at last?"

"I'm considering upgrades," Ivan said.

"Mm." Her eyes dipped over the faint scars and bruises mottling his torso. The panther had left claw marks that were already fading under the influence of Level Ups.

"You could use them." He snorted.

"You're helpful."

"I try." His Class did not need ink for ordinary casting. Those spells were mana arranged into geometry and held together only long enough to fire. [The Living Vellum] was different. The pattern had to remain on his body after he stopped holding the shape together, which meant giving the Skill something physical to bind there. Maybe there was a way to make permanent inscriptions from mana alone. Ivan had not found it, and his own flesh was not where he wanted to start guessing.

Rys's nostrils flared slightly as he uncorked one.

"That stuff smells like a bad idea."

"That's because it's a powerful idea," Ivan said.

"And like all powerful ideas, it'll either make me terrifying or kill me." She watched him pour a careful measure into a shallow dish and mix it with the soot and crystal dust. The resulting ink took on a dull metallic sheen, like oil on water.

"So this is it," she said.

"You've chosen your first little curse-mark." He nodded.

"Defensive. Something between Stone Skin and a very angry shield."

"Stone Skin?" She frowned.

"You intend to turn yourself into a statue?"

"Not quite." Ivan dipped a fine brush into the ink. Monster hair, bound tight. Not the expensive brush from Sky Reach, unfortunately, because that one had been sitting on his worktable instead of in his inventory.

"Stone Skin is brute-force. Good against falling rocks, bad against moving. I don't want to be slow. I've scribed it for Adventurers before, watched them wade into fights like walking anvils. I can't afford that."

"No," Rys agreed.

"You are already slow. No offense."

"Some taken," Ivan said with a chuckle.

"I want a mesh instead. A lattice. Something that catches the force and spreads it before it hits bone. Short duration, instant on. Think… spiderweb instead of wall."

"Spiderwebs rip, you know?" she pointed out.

"So do I, apparently," he said dryly.

"Maybe we'll be compatible." She made a face, but her eyes were curious now.

"You're really going to draw that on yourself?"

"That's what the Skill says. Body as grimoire. Might as well see if it lives up to the hype."

"In some worlds," Rys said, tone shifting, "people who inscribe magic into their own flesh are considered cursed. Or stupid. Often both." I scribed a corrupted System spell that rewrote my entire existence, Ivan thought but didn't say aloud. He didn't trust her that much.

"I don't know about you, but I personally am several miles past cursed and stupid."

"Hard to argue with cursed and stupid," she allowed. He rested his left hand on his knee and lifted his right forearm, palm up. The skin there was pale under the usual faint ink stains that never quite washed out. A scribe's mark. Familiar.

"Start small," he murmured to himself. He loaded the brush and touched it to the skin on the back of his right hand. The Wyvern-ink was colder than normal. It dragged in a way ordinary ink didn't, thin threads of mana catching under the brush tip. [Architecture of Mana] flickered to life without conscious call, showing him not only the line he drew but the way the energy wanted to flow along it. He started with a single loop, a closed circuit no bigger than a coin. A crude test node.

The first segment went down smoothly, a dark, faintly gleaming curve. The second line joined it. Pain flared like a hot needle.