Helping Hand

      (Alex)

I woke up feeling bruised and beaten. But the fact that I wasn't dead was a good sign. I was sitting on my couch in the office The last thing I remembered was shoving my staff and hand inside a 90-meter giant and then blowing it up from the inside. But I don't remember the details so who knows. Actually, that's probably not true. I sent a mental pulse to scrap.

It took about 5 minutes but scrap came running in. "How long was I out?" I asked. His pulse shocked me. "A week!!!" I yelled. Shoot I need to talk to beth. She probably thinks I skipped out on her. "Or she thinks I'm dead," a small treacherous part of me thought.

"Ok what to do, I need to figure out what I missed and how the city is doing," I asked Scrap to send me the going on's of the base and what I had missed. It seemed that I had jumped into the beast killing it but also exhausting every ounce of my mana in the process. On the bright side, I was looking forward to the increase in power killing it had probably granted.

I had found out mid-flood that killing the monsters had been raising my capacity for mana and the amount I could absorb from the video as well as increasing my power. In addition to this, Scrap had told me that the Giant's body had dropped a special mana metal instead of stone. But Before all that I was hungry. Thankfully my storage rune didn't age the items that were in it so I had some melons and carrots I could eat.

Pulling a nice slice of watermelon out. I reached to grab it with my right hand when the melon landed on my bed. "Weird," I thought. Maybe my hand-eye coordination was off after the explosion. I looked towards my outstretched hand. Only there wasn't anything there. I chuckled a little. "Must be numb no wonder I didn't catch the melon" I said. I looked further towards my shoulder. "Ya, it's gone," I said.

Well, It could be worse. I could be dead. Well normally I would probably be screaming in sadness but with magic being a thing. I could probably find a way to regrow it. Or maybe make it into an arm staff with all the latest magic technology I could stuff into it. I grinned at the prospect. "Scrap you were saying something about mana metal?"

Thirty minutes later, I was inside the lab room with Scrap showing me the metal that he pulled from the remains of the giant. It had a silver sheen to it despite its color being cyan. I could feel the mana radiating off of it. Unfortunately, it was only about an inch-sized lump. I checked the book for the first time in a long while. Mana Metal was only created by creatures who consumed enough food that had metals in it such as copper, iron, bronze, and even steel.

I imagine that the giant had eaten quite a few things in its life before coming to our world from the void. The metal though could be a wide range of things. The process tended to imbue the creature's natural properties into it. For example, the giant mana metal had the property of being strong as hell. In addition to the property of the creature, all mana metal acted kind of like a harder more capacity mana stone.

Scrap had recovered the tungsten rod from my staff. But the steel ball had melted into slag. I sat down "Hm, since we don't have much mana metal. Why don't we make it the frame of the arm?" The metal was strong enough to be stretched super thin in a lightweight framework. We had to experiment with its melting point but surprisingly the book explained that mana-fueled fire could melt the metal just fine.

We melted the framework into the shape of an arm with gaps to conserve metal. The base of the framework was a thin sheet of the metal that rested right up against the nub of my arm. We centered the tungsten rod in the middle of the framework.

The tungsten rod still had its previous runes on it so we didn't have to re-apply those. Unfortunately, we did need to re-apply all my spells. We decided to apply those onto a steel tube that ran the length of the center arm. It would act as my rune holder. Every time I needed a new spell we would just add it on there. Once we were done I had all my original spells on an arm framework complete with fingers palm and the two arm segments that attached to my nub and palm connected at the elbow. It looked like a super-futuristic robot arm. The gaps we had left to allow for more material had a nice look to them.

All that was left was to add the runes that would allow me to use it as a regular arm. Without people freaking out when they see it. Illusion, connect, and metal mold. Illusion would apply a simple illusion that would make the arm look real. Connect would allow my nerves to be connected to the metal mold formation. Metal mold had some limitations compared to its other rune formation brothers. It couldn't mold it in the same way as they could. Only moving already formed pieces. I would use it to act like my bones had as if controlled by muscle.

Finally, we braced it to my arm through straps and connected the runes. It felt like I suddenly had my old arm back. I tested it out by moving my arm around. It was perfect and smooth. Next, I activated the illusion rune. Suddenly I had my old arm back complete with the freckles and scars. "Wow, that's pretty freaking close."

I had to test the spells now. I ran up to the giant's body that was busy rotting still being held up by the redwood trees. Wow, it was huge. I couldn't get a good look at it before, because I was fighting for my life. But now I could get a good look at it. It was taller than the redwood trees. The trees themselves were beginning to die, unfortunately. The ground they had been grown from didn't have the sustenance that It needed to produce a healthy tree.

I needed to get rid of both the body and the trees before they collapsed onto my base. Thankfully I had the perfect flamy spell that I needed to test out. Raising my hand up to the trees and giant I cast flamethrower. A massive stream of fire shot out of my hand. It hadn't changed much from when I was killing the flood but thanks to the mana metal I could keep it up longer. I felt like I could keep the spell up forever. Which I couldn't but probably a few hours.

The body and the trees were completely burned to ash before they could even hit the ground. "Wow, this is going to be good," I said. Now I needed to get back to the city to see how it fared "and see Beth" I thought.

My cloak had thankfully been undamaged thanks to the harden rune on it. I pulled it on before getting ready to head to the city. Turning I reached out for Scrap. Practically flew up my arm to his perch on my shoulder. "Had Scrap gotten faster?" I thought to myself. Flying up I shot off towards the city again.

I found myself flying over the same path Scrap had taken to get to the base. The landscape was ruined completely. The forest below had a large gash spanning the entire way to the city. The trees looked like they had been ripped from the ground and thrown, which may very well be the case.

I made it to the city happy to see that it looked to be undamaged. The monsters I hadn't dragged into the magma were still being harvested a week later. The lizards must have been quite the prize considering their durable scales. Looking down at where the magma pool used to be I couldn't help but think I should probably check on that. It was after all a giant stone slab of mana stone and who knows what else.

Ignoring the clean-up for now. I flew over the wall. I landed in a familiar-looking alley. I turned off my invisibility formation and walked out. I headed straight for Beth's shop. Walking near her shop I was able to see that it was open. I looked in the window. She was taking a haggling with an old man, probably a customer. Relieved that she was ok I walked in myself.

I got in line behind the old man. She must have been really into the haggling because she didn't notice me. Eventually, the old man walked away smiling so I assumed he had gotten a good price. I walked up next. Beth was looking away stashing whatever she had gotten in trade.

"Man all these merchants am I right," I said in a mocking tone. "I'll have you know, tha…" she stuttered off. "Alex!!!" she said while rounding the counter. "Are you ok" she grabbed me. "Yep ok," I said while being squeezed. I was a little taken aback by the hug. I mean we had hit it off but it wasn't like I was in danger. Or from her perspective at least… right?

"You better start talking," She said after she let me go. "Sorry I was taking care of the-"

"No, I'm talking about the fact that you and the flying dude have the same cloak" That had been an oversight that I had not paid enough attention to.