Chapter 35: Back To Base, Turning Lead Into Gold

The walls came into view a few hours later.

The base still looked like his, still standing whole and solid despite everything that had apparently tried to knock it down while he was gone. Scorch marks scarred the outer wall in a wide ring, black streaks radiating out from what had clearly been a real fight, but the stone underneath had held firm regardless.

Billy was first through the gate to meet him, grin already in place before Logan had even finished closing the distance.

"There he is." Billy fell into step beside him as if no time had passed at all. "You missed a good one, boss."

The rest of them filed out behind him one at a time. Solveig’s light caught the afternoon sun. Juggernaut’s footsteps shook loose dust from the nearest wall. Stitchgrin trailed along behind with something that might have been an actual bounce in his step.

"I saw the notification." Logan looked over the scorch marks lining the wall. "Tell me everything."

Billy gave him the short version on the walk-in. Blitzhawk cutting the Flame Drake out of the sky. Vex unraveling the Voidscale Wyrm from the inside. Juggernaut flattening the Ironclad Paladin outright. Solveig walking through everything Marcus had left to throw at him without so much as stepping back once.

Motes didn’t linger the way ash or rubble would. They just vanished, same as they always did, nothing left behind by a single one of Marcus’s summons.

"What about his actual gear?" Logan asked. "He had to be wearing something."

"Already grabbed it." Juggernaut tilted his head toward the storage room. "Figured you’d want it kept safe instead of left sitting out."

Marcus’s own gear sat waiting inside. A sword, cracked but mostly intact, dark iron with a chipped edge. A breastplate, scorched black across the front but otherwise whole. And a storage ring, still sealed shut, still full.

```

[ Thornveil Saber (Legendary) ]

[ Duskguard Vest (Epic) ]

[ Storage Ring - Rare ]

Contents: assorted raw materials

```

Logan opened the ring and grinned at what was inside. Ore, crystal, hardwood, a solid haul just sitting there waiting to be picked up.

He turned his attention to the map instead, the newly marked Champion Boss location glowing steadily in one corner.

He ran the same problem through his head for the third time since finding it.

’I want everyone there. All twelve of them, together, when we fight that thing.’

But that meant emptying the base entirely, and the Champion Field Boss wasn’t the only thing in this match that wanted his walls torn down. Two players had already tried once. A third would eventually get the same idea, and if nobody was home to answer for it, there wouldn’t be much of a home left to come back to.

He sat with the problem a while longer before an answer actually clicked into place.

’I don’t need combat units to hold this place if the walls themselves can fight back. I need better defenses, not more bodies standing on them.’

He opened the summoning circle interface, set it specifically to Production-type units, and started spending.

He went through ten thousand Tower Points in one long stretch, a hundred summons in a row, watching the results stack up faster than he could really process each one individually.

```

[ Production Summons: 100 ]

Normal: 30

Uncommon: 35

Rare: 25

Epic: 9

Legendary: 1

```

He didn’t bother sorting through all one hundred at a time. He opened Boundless Genesis and started pairing them off by rank instead, same as always, letting the cascade do the actual work.

Normal paired into Uncommon. Uncommon paired into Rare. Rare paired into Epic. Epic paired into Legendary. By the time the light finally stopped flaring across the courtyard, what stood in front of him didn’t look anything like the assortment of Normal-rank golems and carpenters he’d started with.

```

[ Merge Cascade Complete ]

9x Mythic-rank Production Units

```

Eight of them settled into roles around the base almost right away, drawn toward whatever work already existed, more hands for Bob’s construction crews and Martha’s kitchens and Tinkerbell’s workshop.

The ninth one didn’t move toward any of that. It just stood there waiting, something molten shifting and glowing faint behind a chest that looked more like a furnace door than actual flesh.

It stood roughly Logan’s height, its whole body some kind of shifting alloy that never settled fully into one color, orange light bleeding through cracks across its arms and shoulders like something was burning steadily just beneath the surface. Its hands looked less like hands and more like a pair of small crucibles, palms open and glowing.

```

[ Material Conversion - Mythic-rank Talent ]

Converts any material fed into it up to two ranks higher than its original rank into whatever specific material the wielder specifies. Requires the wielder to know exactly what they want.

```

"Well." Logan looked it over, something close to disbelief creeping into his own voice. "That’s exactly what I needed."

He named it Crucible on the spot. It dipped its head once, molten light flaring brighter for a second as it approved of the choice.

Logan pulled up the blueprint he’d been sitting on since the reliquary, the one he hadn’t had any real use for until right now.

```

[ Blueprint: Mounted Solar Beam Cannon (Legendary) ]

Required materials:

4x Sunforged Crystal (Legendary)

6x Voidsteel Ingot (Legendary)

2x Heartwood Focus Core (Legendary)

```

He didn’t have a single one of those materials sitting in his storage ring. What he did have, after two raids and half a day of farming everything that moved, was more Rare-rank ore and crystal and hardwood than he knew what to do with.

’I don’t need to find Legendary materials. I just need to make them.’

He dumped a pile of Rare-rank crystal in front of Crucible first.

"Turn this into Sunforged Crystal. Four of them."

Crucible’s palms closed around the pile, and the molten light behind its chest flared bright enough to throw shadows across the whole courtyard. When its hands opened again, four crystals sat there instead, glowing with a warmth that hadn’t been in the original material at all.

```

[ 4x Sunforged Crystal (Legendary) acquired ]

```

He fed it Rare-rank ore next, then hardwood after that, giving the same kind of instruction each time and getting back exactly what he’d asked for.

```

[ 6x Voidsteel Ingot (Legendary) acquired ]

[ 2x Heartwood Focus Core (Legendary) acquired ]

```

He handed the full set of materials off to Tinkerbell, the blueprint’s schematic already glowing in her hands the moment she took them.

"Ooh, fancy!" She was climbing the nearest watchtower before she’d even finished the sentence, tools spinning to life around her in a small storm of gears and sparks.

Three more rounds of the same process gave him enough for every tower on the wall, Crucible working through pile after pile of raw material without so much as slowing down.

By the time Tinkerbell finished mounting the fourth cannon, all four watchtowers carried something that hadn’t existed on this battlefield an hour earlier, long barrels catching the light, each one humming faintly with banked solar energy waiting for a target.

```

[ 4x Mounted Solar Beam Cannon (Legendary) installed ]

```

Logan looked over the finished work, four Legendary-rank cannons standing where nothing but open wall had been that morning, and let himself feel good about it for a second.

"Let’s do a little test."

The cannons required MP, so only the Mythic-rank production units could shoot them consistently.

"Shoot this stone right as it starts falling." Logan threw a palm-sized stone in the sky.

The long-necked Dragoon Alchemist easily moved the cannon with his two handles, a magical screen opening above the barrel as it locked on the target of the rock.

BEEEEM!

The stone turned into dust.

Instantly.

Logan grinned. ’That should hold, even without me here. Even without any of the seven.’

The cannons could rotate 360 degrees, target-lock, and had serious damage of 5000 with 20% Defence Penetration, at the cost of 500 Mana per shot. Tower Minions had only 1000 MP, which would be over with two shots of this cannon.

He turned toward the twelve waiting behind him, dust and satisfaction both settled easily across all of their faces.

"Alright." He rolled his shoulders. "It’s time to hunt a Champion Field Boss."