A Path Forward

After resting the entire day, Mark's eyes fluttered as he slowly awoke. "Ugh..." Mark groaned as he lifted his groggy body into a sitting position.

"Mark! You finally woke up!" Suzy screamed as she jumped into Mark, hugging him with tears in her eyes.

"You big dummy! I told you not to do anything dangerous!" Suzy pounded on Mark's chest in frustration as tears streamed down her face. Seeing her like this, Mark frowned and began apologizing immediately.

"I'm sorry, I really bit off more than I could chew this time..." He said slowly as he rubbed her head gently.

"We weren't prepared enough for that fight. We need to find a way to train your swordsmanship and my mana usage." Clye said to him in a clearly frustrated tone, racking her brain over solutions.

"Mmm." Mark replied seriously as he slowly stood up with Suzy, collecting Jor, and heading out of the room.

Entering the main area, a few people saw Mark and immediately smiled. Many sighed in relief, telling him they were glad he was okay.

Mark thanked all the well wishers, as he made his way to the dining area, starved out of his mind. Seeing him enter, everyone was all smiles. Ruby and Rick both showed up soon after and checked over Mark, before Rick punched him in the shoulder and called him an idiot.

Mark chuckled and apologized to everyone, feeling very warm over their concern. He soon sat down and explained what had happened to him, causing many to gasp and sweat as they thought of themselves in that situation.

"Long story short, I shouldn't have initiated that battle. I thought I would be able to handle it since I can easily kill other apparitions, but this one... this one was far stronger." Mark sighed as he played with his food, contemplating what to do next.

"It's good you learned a lesson and lived to enact it kid." Rick pat his back, as he then looked to Ruby.

"Do you want to go first?" He asked her, receiving a nod.

"While you were recovering, everybody got to work on their own tasks. I'll let them catch you up on their end. Me and my team managed to skin the dog and are letting the pelt dry right now. We should be able to do something useful with it soon. We also collected the meat and stored it all in the freezers that we secured. I also thought about coming up with a better floor plan than we currently have." Ruby said as she looked at her tablet.

"Floor plan?" Mark asked as he took another bite of his food.

"Yep, I hope everyone else also wants to expand past this one terminal, and now with more people we should be able to protect a couple. I think we should reserve this terminal specifically for storage, and move everyone over to terminal three as the sleeping arrangements. We are going to run out of space in this small terminal eventually, so I think it's better to plan ahead." Ruby smiled as she sat the tablet down and showed her plan to Mark, who returned the smile, nodding his head in agreement.

"I think this is brilliant Ruby. No wonder you got chosen as logistics leader." Mark nonchalantly remarked.

Ruby, blushing a bit, as she wasn't used to compliments thanked Mark as she retrieved her tablet and sat down to listen to Rick.

Rick chuckled a bit and began his spiel. "So kid, I got good news and great news, which one first?"

"Let's do a ramp up." Mark smiled, Ruby nodding in agreement.

"Alright, good news is that thanks to the handles from those pickaxes, we managed to make a few decent war picks out of that giant dog's claws. The teeth were a bit short, so those and the kobold parts are still waiting for a home." Rick beamed as he showed off one of them to everyone there.

"So this is a war pick?" Someone standing to the side asked as he looked at the craftsmanship of it.

"Basically, and it should be easy enough to use for just about anyone." Rick said as he hammered it in front of himself; setting it down he continued.

"The great news is that we went into the basement and found a lot of useful supplies. It took a few trips even with the number of people that went, but we managed to get quite the haul. I can use some of the maintenance tools to make weapons as well, though nothing with metal. I'll need an anvil and forge for that." Mark was very happy hearing about the items Rick and his team had procured.

"I guess that just leaves us now." One of the combat team captains said as he walked forward and pointed behind him.

"Me and the others went into the dungeon yesterday and got a few goblins to use as emergency healing stations with Jor's ability. We tried it with her webs, but it seems she needs to be present for the ability to function. On the plus side, no one needs to scramble to find monsters in case of an emergency again." The man gruffly said.

Mark nodded and was about to speak when he was cut off by the man. "Oh yeah one last thing, most everyone spent some time absorbing mana crystals yesterday, but most people are still a couple days away from increasing their core density. I don't know how you do it but you're absorption rate is way higher than ours."

Mark sat there with his mouth agape, only mustering a "Really?" in response. The man simply nodded his head and sat down.

"It might be because of the program I wrote?" Clye was somewhat unsure, as that wasn't what she had intended the program to do, but seeing as it wasn't a bad thing, she didn't plan to mess with it.

'That's probably it...' Mark thought as he took the last bite of his food.

Wiping his face, Mark looked at Vibra and sighed. "Having strength and not knowing how to use it is a real problem. I-" Mark begins, but cuts himself off as he takes a look around the room. "We all need to find a way to train our weapon and magic mastery. That fight opened my eyes."

"What's the point of a hammer if the forger doesn't know how to strike." Rick said under his breath, but just loud enough to Mark to hear.

"That's a good saying, where's it from?" Mark asked.

"Oh, you heard that? Just something my pops used to say to me when he taught me the trade." Rick waved it off and stood up, leaving the dining area. Soon, everyone else dispersed, leaving Mark alone to think.

"...Hey Clye, you can make more programs now, right?" Mark queried as his gaze sharpened.

"Yeah, your mental processing increased quite a bit when your core density increased. Did you have an idea?" She began to perk up, thinking she could finally help Mark out after feeling useless all day.

"Do you know about augmented reality?" Mark smiled as he asked her.

"Of course, I'm getting really curious where this is going..." Clye began speaking as an idea popped into her head. "Wait a minute..." she began as Mark cut her off.

"Yup, I want you to create a program that makes a hologram for me to train off of! It would be great if we could watch videos and recreate the teacher demonstrating to fight, or even past enemies if you can take them from our memories!" Mark excitedly told his idea, to which Clye responded with a cold dose of reality.

"I can definitely make it, but the processing power consumed would be substantial. I think if we do this we won't be able to make any other program until the next stage of core density." Clye calculated.

Mark pondered for a while, before viciously shaking his head. "We don't have a choice! We need this to train, it's the only way to quickly fill in what I'm lacking." He resolutely stated as he looked forward with a steadfast gaze.