Edge was already planning to visit the Sheriff of Puppet Town to see how the warrior was holding up after losing two limbs during the war with the Crimson Claws. So, he decided to take Ander’s advice and talk to Earl now.

  The sheriff was a legend on the feed and had been the settlement’s stalwart defender for years. But after having his right arm sheared off at the shoulder and his left leg removed at the knee, Edge was worried the man’s fighting days were behind him.

  No matter how powerful Earl’s skills were, he couldn’t use most of them without swinging his hammer, and the simple prosthetics available in town wouldn’t hold up against the rigors of combat. He could still serve on the support squad and train new recruits, but Edge doubted that would satisfy someone who was used to putting his life on the line to protect the people he loved.

  Grappling with that kind of loss must take a heavy psychological toll on top of the shock to his system. I hope Earl pulls through and can find meaning from walking a different path. Losing him would be a tremendous blow to Puppet Town, and it would be sad to see such a heroic story end on a tragic note.

  While these thoughts ran through his head, Edge made his way from the Forge to the peacekeepers’ headquarters. Mel had already gone home for the day, but he stopped to chat with the deputies on duty—still a little weirded out by the admiration in their voices.

  They told him the sheriff was in an adjoining workshop, tinkering with some sort of special project. He’d been at it night and day and had only come out to shower, sleeping and eating inside the workshop after being discharged from Doc’s care.

  Good for him. Edge smiled at the news. Immersing himself in a hobby or maintaining the peacekeepers’ gear is just the thing to chase the blues away. It’s hard to ruminate while your hands are busy.

  He walked down a long hallway, turned the corner, and came to a stop in front of a thick metal door. Through the crack in the bottom, he could hear a grinding screech—punctuated by the deep bass of Earl swearing.

  The sheriff had a prolific vocabulary of profanity. Edge caught some slang from a dozen different planets, along with several curses that were new to him. When he knocked, Earl told him to come in, so he pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  When he cast his gaze around the room, his optimism evaporated like water in a hot pan.

  He’s not taking this well after all. The reason for Edge’s shifting opinion was due to the contents of the chamber. The entire workshop was filled with rocks. He couldn’t see the floor and barely had enough room to squeeze through the door.

  There were stones of all shapes and sizes—from bigger than his fist down to tiny grains of sand. He counted hundreds of distinct varieties, including what he strongly suspected were D-grade and even some C-grade materials.

  After navigating a treacherous path between two towering piles of minerals, Edge caught sight of Earl at last. The man was sitting at a workbench, staring down at a collection of rocks with an intensity that bordered on outright obsession. He took a moment to look the warrior over while deciding where to begin.

  The sheriff had dark brown skin and a muscular profile, even by the standards of a stage-two hunter. His body was covered in a latticework of scars—legacies of battles fought and won. His oversized war hammer was resting in one corner, and seeing it reminded Edge just how awesome the warrior had been during the showdown with Yussuf the Red.

  He was trying to come up with a polite way to determine just how severely Earl’s mental state had deteriorated when the sheriff raised his remaining hand and said, “Stand still and be quiet. I’ll be with you in just a minute. It took me forever to find the right mix, but I finally have it down.”

  Edge closed his mouth, shrugged, and sat down on a stone where he had a good view of the table. He was worried about his friend, but he had immense respect for the man and was happy to grant such a simple request. Maybe I can figure out some way to help him while I wait.

  While his heart was in the right place, he had dramatically misread the situation.

  All his misconceptions melted away when Earl ignited his core and cast a spell Edge hadn’t seen before. Mana went flowing out from the sheriff’s reactor, through his shorn shoulder, and into the stones scattered across the tabletop.

  That was when, to Edge’s astonishment, the collection of high-grade rocks began to move. One by one, they floated off the table and toward the stump of Earl’s arm. First, the big pieces locked into place, forming a rigid framework with joints at the shoulder and elbow. Then smaller stones started filling the gaps until his hand and fingers were complete.

  By the time the skill finished working its magic, Earl’s right arm had been restored… or perhaps replaced was the better word. The sheriff cackled in triumph—a shit-eating grin splitting his face as he reached out with his gravelly new appendage, giving Edge a chance to inspect its construction in detail.

  The primary mineral was jet black—even darker than Earl’s skin. Its surface was studded with some of the purple crystals that had been used to craft his hammer. The limb was elegant and looked durable as hell, offering a level of defense that flesh couldn’t hope to match. Best of all, the fingers were fully functional. Given how naturally the man was using it, Edge suspected he could feel what they were touching through some manner of sensory link.

  The sheriff scooped up a pile of rocks and tossed them into the air, adding more one at a time until he was juggling seventeen stones at once. Earl nodded in satisfaction and let the ring of rocks land in his palm. Then, with no appreciable difficulty, the warrior squeezed, producing that grating sound Edge had heard earlier. When the stone hand opened again, only a pile of sand remained—hot enough he could feel it from across the room.

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  He let out a low whistle of appreciation. I didn’t give him enough credit. Those injuries won’t even slow the man down.

  “You thought I was crazy, didn’t you?” Earl asked bluntly.

  “Of course not,” Edge lied through is teeth. “Okay, maybe just a little. I didn’t realize something like this was even possible. Your new arm looks badass. You could say the construction is rock solid.”

  Earl smiled, chuckling and wincing at the same time. “Thanks, but let’s lay off the rock jokes. I’ve heard most of them already. Unless, of course, you enjoy living on the edge.” The sheriff shot him a pointed look.

  Edge raised his hands in surrender. “You win. Seriously though, that arm is amazing. How many skills does it take to maintain?”

  “Two so far. Manipulate Mineral hold it together and Nerve Bond to create the feedback loop. I plan to add Counter Disruption, so I don’t have to worry about it being broken by a random surge. It’s a lot of skills to replace one arm, and it’s taking my development in a different direction than I planned. But it’s a small price to pay to step back onto the battlefield, and they all have other uses too. Best of all, I should be able to use the same process to restore my leg. Maybe grow an extra dick if I get bored.”

  That last bit caught him completely off-guard. When he peered into Earl’s eyes, the man looked deadly serious. Wait. Is that a real thing?

  Edge learned the answer when the sheriff’s fa?ade shattered and he began laughing so hard that he started to cry, and soon Edge was laughing too. When they could talk again, Earl asked him to walk over to a cooler sitting in the corner and fish out a six-pack of beer.

  After they removed the caps with a flick of their thumbs, the sheriff turned to him and said, “So, what brings you by the station? Were you just checking in on me, or is there something I can do for you? Either way, I’m glad you stopped by. I wanted to thank you again for everything you’ve done. The settlement would have fallen if you hadn’t stepped up and helped us take out the Claws.”

  “Just doing my part. Puppet Town is my home too. You’re one hell of a fighter, by the way. Your battle with Yussuf was the most intense melee I’ve ever witnessed.” The men shared a nod of respect, clinked their bottles, and took a sip.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask if there was anything I could do to help the keepers. But the reason I darkened your doorway today is because Ander told me you’re the best person in town to teach me how to create a Disruption surge. I’ve been meaning to learn anyway, but I need it to use the crafting on my new friend here.”

  Since Earl and Dialla already knew about his Spatial Storage Rune, he reached into his vault and pulled out the ivory scythe, divulging the details of how it worked. When Edge was done, the sheriff hummed while running his fingertips across the blade.

  “That’s an unusual design. The energetic signature is unlike anything I’ve seen before, although I can sense Ander’s touch on it. And it uses Disruption you say? Fascinating. Nothing says ‘I’m going to fucking kill you’ like a hammer, but a scythe that cuts through magic is a close second.”

  When the warrior was done poking at the weapon, Edge put it away. They cracked open fresh bottles as the sheriff began his explanation. “I assume you’re familiar with how Disruption usually works—both your natural Disruption field and skills that use it to counter other skills.”

  Edge nodded his agreement as flashbacks of his fights were dredged from his subconscious. “Creating a surge is similar to flaring a rank-three skill, with one major difference. With a flare, you’re taking a process that’s easy to sense—magicytes being refined inside your reactor—and forcing it to work harder at the cost of efficiency.

  “However, the flow of magicytes charging your Disruption field occurs below the threshold of awareness. Before you can flare your field, you need to control it consciously first. This requires two steps. First, you need to learn how to sense your Disruption at will. Until you attune yourself with your core’s antimagic aspect, you can’t move onto the second step, since you can’t find your field’s representation inside your inner world if you’re not cognizant of it to begin with.”

  Earl paused to drain his bottle then continued his lecture. “Let me talk you through stage one now. It takes most people a while to master it, but your field is strong enough that we might get lucky and have it sink in right away. What does it feel like when you raise the attribute with potentia?”

  Edge took a sip and rubbed his chin. “I’ve noticed a few different effects. It’s usually soothing, like an annoying noise in background fading away. Sometimes, the silence between sounds deepens. In the dungeon, I could feel it filtering out the corruption, making my Generation more efficient. On several occasions, it felt like there was a silk blanket wrapped around my body, which made the mana in my environment slide around me instead of bouncing off.”

  Earl had been nodding along, but he raised a hand at that point.

  “That last one is what we’re looking for. Disruption serves several purposes beyond protecting you from hostile skills. But I’m pretty sure what you just described is your conceptualization of your field. The rest has to do with reducing the interference caused by countless billions of skills being used across the planet, but we can talk about that some other time… when we have more than one six pack to sustain us.”

  Edge hadn’t realized the man knew so much about magic and listened intently as the sheriff pressed on.

  “You need to learn how to sense that silk blanket at will. Once you’ve got that down, you need to focus on the origin of the sensation until you’re in tune with the disruptive component of your core. It’s different for everyone, just like the contents of your central chamber.”

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sent his focus inward, running his awareness across the contents of his core along with the sensations arising from his body. But no matter how hard he tried, he didn’t sense anything like what Earl had described. “It doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “That’s all right, and it’s totally normal. Do you happen to have any attribute points available?”

  For the first time since binding Skill-Eater, Edge did have some unallocated free points. Being behind Puppet Town’s walls offered him the rare luxury of being able to contemplate his development at length, and he had wanted to put some thought into the matter before investing his last two points. “Yes. I can spend one now.”

  “Hold up just a second. First, I want you to focus your senses on the world beyond your body. The sound of my voice echoing against the walls. The smell of stone and the energy emanating from my core.”

  Edge followed along and directed his awareness as Earl had suggested, tuning out the rhythm of his heartbeat and the gentle hiss of his lungs drawing breath. “Okay, I think I’ve got the hang of it.”

  “Good, go ahead and spend it.” The sheriff waited while he summoned his Guide and sent his intentions into the System. Once the potentia was released from his core, he nodded, and the sheriff continued the exercise.

  “The next step is to shut out everything inside and beyond the boundary of your skin at the same time. Ignore within and ignore without until every scrap of your attention is centered on the thin line where you end and the world begins. When you get it right, you won’t be able to hear me anymore, so remember to search for the source of your field once you learn how to feel it.”