the last week before the school start

After the bulk of the work done, Alex rapidly added the slanted roofs on the two parts, supported by pillars on both sides of the house. The stone's external and internal surface was covered, as the softly pulsing light emit from the alive veins would be a dead give-away.

The external walls had a clay-like colour, while earthly brown beams of wood separated it into sections. The slates used for the roof had an ash-grey colour, giving the house a more natural feeling that the rising skyscraper in the city.

The rest of the day was left for Alex to furnish the house with different furniture pieces, leaving the bookshelves momently empty.

He would remedy this by crafting books CS had memorised and put them in his library. At the same time, he would fill the common one through available literature of this world, before or during the outbreak, following how things go.

Thinking a short moment, Alex raised a second building behind the house to serve as a warehouse, while a wall similar to the one surrounding the old house at the feet of the mountain was added. Not only it would protect the private area but also serve as a boundary for the future wards.

"Now that it is taken care of, we have a last task before the night."

Hiking down the mountain, Alex terraformed a wider and paved walkway as he descended, enough for a car to pass. Arriving at the mountain's foot, he crafted wooden double doors linked to the wall he raised on the side, closing the private walkway.

Walking to the house, he passed several rooms and external corridor, until stopping in front of the door, he left the four stunned boys to transfigurate in spam cans and put in stasis. Cancelling both stasis and transfiguration, he didn't enervate them and morph.

As his imposing form, barely contained by the room roof, was above them, he swiftly bites all four boys. As he wasn't seeking to form diamonds from them, all their bodies were used as fuel to create the mithril, while the remaining elements separate into the highly nutritious ashes.

Turning back to his human form, he summoned all the ash into a crate before sealing and storing it. All that was left from the four boys were four nuggets of mithril. Taking the tiny bits of metal in his hand, he weighted them.

"There should be around 90 to 110g per nugget, around 360g at least; I hope it would be enough; I don't particularly fancy murder peoples just for growing my reserve." While not much found of human in general, Said Alex wasn't a mindless beast taking pleasure in slaughtering sentients creatures if not needed.

-Well, there still some criminals roaming the streets at night; a rapid legilimency would do the trick.- Offered CS, Alex thought and nodded.

"It should do if I don't found a solution."

Returning to his house, he mindlessly threw a locking spell on the gate and rode his bicycle back to the house. Entering the second-floor workshop, Alex craft a small 10*10cm wooden box before adding runes. Powering them, he emptied the 40,000 plus gold coins he had in his storage inside the bottomless box.

He put a fist-sized chunk of Rorik Demise on the bench, some magic iron ore and the freshly processed mithril. Sending a pulse of magic in his forge, Alex rapidly melted and spelt the bubbling magic steel to keep hot.

Taking a handful of gold coins, he threw them in the fire chamber, rapidly melting the precious metal. Exposed to the magical fire in the seed, a large part evaporated, making him add some at regular intervals until he was satisfied with the quantity. Activating the switching charms, he kept the pot of magic gold on the side, along with the steel, before putting the mithril in.

When the three pots containing the three bubbling metal infusion were in front of him, Alex poured the mithril in the gold, stirring the forming alloy, until he had the perfect ratio.

Now, entering the uncharted area, he looked more carefully and felt the alloy forming with the magic steel. As soon as the first drop entered the alloy, Alex felt the reaction. With the mithril's conductivity and the natural presence of magic in the steel, he could feel it already built in the alloy.

Focusing on the alloy pot, Alex felt the steel form a veinous pattern while entring the fusion metal. Both marvelled at the alloy forming nature, feeling that the veins kept liquid but still retain their shape.

When he neared the saturation point, Alex slowly put back the pot of steel, cancelling the charm and solidifying the metal in a backhand wave movement.

Turning to the block of stone, Alex pondered for an instant before CS spoke.

-Put it in the fire, too. Not to the point of melting it entirely, but soften the core. With its proprieties, it would be more receptive to the intake of the triple alloy.-

Following CS advice, Alex put the stone near the forge's edge, rapidly raising its temperature but far enough to not rapidly melt it. To their surprise, a thick deep blue smoke started to exit the stone, while the veins slowly turned whiter and whiter.

The more the stone was burned and the more the veins pattern extend. When they covered a third of the entire surface, Alex retrieved it from the forge and manipulated the alloy to merge with the hot stone. Ropes of metal in fusion raised from the pot, keeping it veiny structure and wrap around the forming ring. The more he added, and the more alloy seep in the stone through the opaque white veins.

Feeling the stone saturate with the alloy, Alex stopped feeding the metal before focussing all his mind and the innumerable amount of runes he had to carves to for the core.

~~~

Unlike the first time, Alex had far less difficulty forming the reactor ring core. The activity was still draining, but he had both grown since then and had better tools. Pouring as much magic he could spare in the ring, Alex broke the charms keeping the mix heated. Said heat rapidly vanish, absorbate by the ring to further its solidification.

There wasn't flash, nor explosion or grand phenomenon following its creation, but a soft humming sound, which rapidly died. Looking at the ring, the result was quite different from the previous one. The stone had crystallised into a deep but clear blue crystal, with opaque veins of white marbling its surface. Inside, the alloy had taken a similar shape than previously, giving the illusions of thousands of trees trapped inside the crystal, all rooted on the white rivers crisscrossing the blue crystal.

Palm-sized, the ring had a cylindric shape, a centimetre thick. Spurred by a spark of inspiration, Alex took out a runecore, mounting the small hexagonal gem on mithril support in the middle of the ring. With simple transfers runes, Alex created a loop.

The core would create raw magic, travelling to the mithril pathway and feed the runecore. Once purified by the runecore, the magic would be attracted to the ring core through the second one-way mithril pathway.

Alex could feel the initial charge transfer and return to the ring in a seven-second loop, two times stronger before the second charge follows. Letting the core gather magic, Alex started to build a case to extract and feed the wardstone.

The building magic wasn't dangerous as long as it was contained inside but would if the ring was breached, something that would need an absurd amount of power to initially passing the natural hardness of the material, then overload the magic stored inside to blow it up. This could only be possible in a seven-second time frame, as the feedback would bolster the magic present at the end of those seven seconds.

The case would drain the magic excellent and feed the wardstone, powering the wards. As the ring storing powers and runecore purifying one were virtually limitless, all that would be need was time to obtains a suitable amount of magic.

If Alex had millenniums, he could virtually power wards protecting the entire planet with the amount of magic it would produce. Due to this, Alex had built several limiters inside. He didn't need someone to be able to override the protection it would power, stole the ring and turned it into a world-ending weapon.

As he wasn't aware of how much magic the house, then the island would need to power the wards, he would progressively turn the limiters down until equilibrium. Later, it could also power the island if need, replacing plants.

~~~

The case did; Alex needed a large part of the time crafting the three series of wardstones. The first was for the house, made of an assortment of wards, mostly securities ones, as the Rorik Demise was already heavily protecting the home. It would be incorporated in the wall surrounding the propriety and include the pathway leading to the mountain's foot. The second set was to emulate the wards around the tracks of the Hogwarts train. As it folds the space on itself, there would be no trace of the pathway, useless passing through the double doors.

As they were incorporated in the first set, Alex would have a Fidelus on the initial set, hiding the house and pathway completely to any, not in the secret.

The last set was for the island, essentially made to repel physical matters and radiation of all types, not keyed in them. The calibration needed Alex to possess extensive knowledge as humans still needed some particular radiation from the sunrays.

The wards should stop missiles, blast and radiations of a nuke shot at point-blank. It would also not allows any modern vehicles in its air zone. Plane, helicopter and the like would crush themselves in striking against the wards or had their electronic fried if coming to near.

The ward was essentially forced fields, forming a protective bubble above and underground.

~~~

When Alex buried the last wardstone, he passed a sleepless night to craft and install; he felt the ward activate and was over him.

As they would form a bubble based on the radius between the wardstone and the powering core, Alex needed to burry them offshore, on the seafloor. As he hadn't added wards against living being the notion wide, he needed to make the wards opening for keyed his blood. To allow people in, Alex would need to sneak off a small something into peoples bones to let them go and came.

Due to this, Alex expanded the wards outside of the island since no one would approach boats if not keyed in. Using the common border he had with Japan, Alex put the wardstone 8.25km from his house, as the height from the core had no incidence on the ward, only its spatial coordinate.

Even if left alone, no one would be able to go further than less than a hundred metres from the gate. He had no doubts peoples would want to invade the island as he was the only one living there, meaing it's a haven.

With the wardstone so far, it was an area of 200.96km that Alex made in the safest place on earth. Returning to his house to sleep, Alex turned off the wards around the island, for now, unwilling to attract attention. As they were linked to him, he would be able to raise them back no matter where he was, a primordial point when he wasn't aware of the uprising's exact day.

He thought of adding a fidelius on the island but abandon the idea, considering how much of a drag it would be to protect an area that vast from the rest of the word. And creating slips of paper with it on it was just stupid, and invite Murphy to come knocking.

~~~

With less than a week before turning in for his first day at Fujimi high, Alex passed the time in preparing some gifts and bring some change to the land.

One of the first change was direct access to the cavern of Rorik Demise stone. Using the same principle of the wards used for the Hogwarts train's track and the pathway, Alex created a door linking the two, from his warehouse, to the cavern. In a simple step, Alex would cross hundreds of meters and directly arrive in the cavern.

With the experiment's success, he was thinking of establishing similar corridors later, allowing one to cross a considerable distance in a single step. As this was a rather complex and sensible piece of magic, he would need comprehensive studies, unwilling to assist at some gruesome accident and peoples fused into other for overlapping corridors.

As he had kept in mind Souichiro interest in his craft and knowing the incoming outbreak, Alex crafted a high-quality katana made of Damascus steel. He pondered as to use magic steel until CS point that, first, he can't use it to its fullest, and second, the pattern would be a dead give away of its supernatural origin. Alex just rune it with unbreakable and everlasting-sharpness, powered with runecore, mounted as decoration in the tsuka.

The saya was made in a black lacquered piece of Ash and 'Takagi Souichirou' carved in kanji, with gold lettering. The sageo and tsuka ito tsukamaki were made of his finest deep silk, woven with magic steel.

Other than the similar deep-blue hamon running the blade's length, and the light ash-grey, the grey pattern of the blade, the rest of the katana was deep black. Just under the habaki, Alex carved the blade name, 'Kibikiri'.

He wanted it to be a hint for Souichiro and became as famous as the original blade of the same name, even if crafted into a butcher knife rather than katana.

For Yuriko, Alex created a similar blade, only in the form of a tanto knife, called 'Soken-tan'. The meaning of 'Healthy end' could seem ironic, but Alex wished that the zombie she killed with would free the souls of those turned to a better end.

For Saya, he crafted a bracelet made of the remaining alloy from the gold, mithril and magic steel, which took an artic blue colour when cooled with his breath. To it, a charm made of white jade extracted from the island, crafted in a chibi Evans. The charms, powered by the bracelet, had a shield linked to its bearer's emotional state. If she was in any danger before he could fetch her, the shield should protect here from the zombies.

It was slightly defective because Saya needs to be aware of her impending doom and wish for protection. If she weren't warry of her aggressor, it wouldn't appear, and since he wasn't sure if they possess will, he could only add an intent-based ward to counter it, saving her at least for ill-intentioned humans. It would also activate if she were unnaturally put asleep or knocked out.

With his gift-ready, Alex stood in front of the border gate for the first time since he enters the island, much to the surprise of the soldier's poster there, more so when they so him with Fujimi high uniform and several bags.