Chapter 204: Benched

Harvey woke up with a gasp as the garage door swung open behind him, nearly falling off his stool. He couldn’t feel his arms at all, but his lower back ached like he’d been moving couches up and down narrow stairwells all night.“I’m up! I’m up,” Cash blurted, rubbing his eyes where he sat leaned against the wall on the floor beside his workbench.

“What are you guys doing out here? Did you both sleep in the garage?” Celeste asked.

That seemed like a stupid question, but Harvey figured actually doing it must seem even worse. He was relieved to see that none of his ink bottles had spilled when he fell asleep inscribing Cash’s armor. A line of drool joined the arrays where he’d used the breastplate as a pillow, but it didn’t sink into the silver the same way his inscriptions did.

“Umm, it looks like it. Honestly, I don’t remember falling asleep,” Cash replied.

Harvey had plenty of experience forging plate armor using the various magical methods that made the process much simpler than anything they would’ve done back on Earth, but he had taken his time on this set now that they could afford to make it perfect. Memories of chatting with Cash while Harvey worked came flooding back, making him smile. The long night in the forge reminded him of all the time he spent with Elena, absently chatting as they both worked on their Professions. That smithy had been the only place he felt safe back then, but now he was strong enough to feel safe no matter where he was. Even hiding in an abandoned apartment while they waited for the wall between Heaven and Hell to come down had felt better than hiding in Veils End, and it made him appreciate how far he’d come. Harvey enjoyed getting to know Cash a little bit better too, since the man had loosened up a lot without any other angels around. Building new friendships was always nice, and he hoped the others from Veils End were doing well too. It had barely been two weeks since he’d last seen them, but every day felt like a lifetime when you were fighting for your life.

“Idiots,” Celeste chuckled, rolling her eyes before closing the door behind her. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

Harvey stood up, stretching through the pins and needles as blood flow returned to his arms. “Let’s start with the good.”

“Good news is I got Brutus to give you enough genesis matter to evolve your weave.”

Cash shot up, looking completely shocked. “No way! How the heck did you get him to do that?”

Harvey was ecstatic, but her lingering apprehension told him things might not be as simple as getting what they asked for. Seeing his look of concern, Celeste chewed on her lip for a moment before adding, “The bad news is that we’re not allowed to fight anymore. Well, I can, but he specifically ordered that you get permanently stationed at the hospital and the Thorne boys go back to school until the end of the trial.”

“What?” Harvey asked.

“You’re kidding,” Cash groaned.

Celeste threw up her hands and slumped against the wall. “Trust me, I’m not happy about it either.”

“What’s his problem? Benching us after we single-handedly turned his war around for him doesn’t make any sense!” Harvey complained.

“He thinks we’re stealing his thunder,” Cash laughed. “He’s dangling promotions over our heads so we’ll shut up and let him take all the credit.”

“That was the gist of it. Or at least what I got out of all the shouting,” Celeste confirmed.

Harvey shook his head and laughed. “Well, he can keep whining. Once I get my weave anointed, I’m going right back to the front lines. He can’t put me in detention.”

“Please don’t make this hard for me,” Celeste sighed. “I went to bat for you, and for a minute there I wasn’t sure if he was going to kill me for leaking military secrets to an outsider. Nobody would’ve questioned him if he did.”

“You didn’t leak anything! I did!” Cash said.

“I wasn’t going to tell him that,” Celeste shrugged.

Cash stomped over to the door and yanked it open. “You know what? You’re twice the angel that snobby prick ever was, and I’m going to make sure everybody knows it.”

Celeste grabbed the hem of his robe, pulling him back before he got too far. “That’s not going to help anyone. We just need to be patient until the end of the trial. Hopefully by then he’ll have gotten it through his System, and we can all go back to our normal lives. I’ll be a lieutenant, you’ll be a Captain, and the three of you can level to your hearts' content!”

“I don’t want to be a Captain if it means taking orders from a wretch like him,” Cash seethed.

Harvey wanted to mock the man right along with him, but he could see the fear in Celeste’s eyes. She was rattled. More than Harvey had ever seen her before. In the grand scheme of things, he really hadn’t spent much time with the woman, but hearing her talk about the pressure she grew up with after starting her military career at 15 years old during their dinner at The Slaughterhouse, he knew how deep those roots burrowed into her. He hated that Brutus was trying to sideline him, especially when the only good reason was that Harvey bruised his ego, but for Celeste, he’d go quietly.

Not in the sense that he planned to follow orders. Nobody was going to stop him from leveling up. This was just another example of how important it was that he could evolve to E-Grade at the same time angels like Brutus did. But what Celeste didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

“Alright,” Harvey sighed. “I won’t make things hard for you. At least I’ll try not to make it any worse. You stuck your neck out for me, and I appreciate that.”

Celeste sighed with relief, while Cash looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “Thank you. Hopefully this will all be over in a few weeks, and we can just put this all behind us.”

“Fine, but I can’t promise to keep my mouth shut once this stupid quest is over and the Commander doesn’t get to just sit in his stupid bubble all day while the rest of us do the work,” Cash lamented. “I don’t want to be stuck in the medical tent all day. I was excited to test out my new armor!”

“Is that what this is?” Celeste asked, picking up the helmet resting on the workbench and inspecting the arrays.

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“Yep. We pulled an all-nighter to finish it in one session. The reinforcement and self-repair arrays are the same as the ones my dad’s, Tyler’s, and my armor use, but we used the rest of the space on retaliation damage since Cash can already heal injuries and turn his wings to metal and use them as a shield.”

“Impressive! I’m excited to see you try it on!”

Cash snatched the helmet out of her hand and put it into his spatial ring. “Well, you’re not gonna until Brutus pulls his spear out of his ass.”

“I thought you liked healing people?” Harvey laughed as Cash walked into the house where the smell of bacon and eggs wafted out from the kitchen.

“I do! But nobody’s getting wounded now that we’re up a lieutenant! I’m just going to be sitting around all day!”

Harvey and Celeste followed him inside, joining the rest of the family for breakfast. He was happy with how Cash’s armor turned out. Waiting to forge it had left Cash vulnerable longer than he would’ve liked, but it did mean they had access to a wider variety of inks and arrays when Harvey finally got around to finishing it. Even just the extra levels and expertise as a blacksmith made a huge difference on the final product, and Harvey guessed Cash was now one of the most well-armored angels around. Not that he was better than Heaven’s blacksmiths who’d practiced their craft since birth. He was just willing to spare no expense when it came to materials. Harvey had some extra aethersteel lying around after forging Cataclysm, and used the insanely expensive metal to reinforce the most vulnerable parts of Cash’s armor. It took some effort to get the metals to properly fuse, but they’d managed it in the end.

When it was all said and done, forging the armor set had netted him 2 Profession levels and 1 Race level, bringing his lagging Profession up to level 54 and his Race up to 58.

“I think this might be a blessing. You guys worked so hard to protect us, and now you get some time to rest! A great reward for your sacrifice,” Cassandra encouraged.

Tyler angrily stabbed his fork through a chunk of sausage, nearly chipping the plate. “Screw that! I want to keep leveling up!”

“Language!” Steve warned. “There’s nothing we can do about it, so we might as well make the best of what we got. I know you two can’t level up in the classroom, but that doesn’t mean the information isn’t helpful. Life isn’t all about levels.”

“Yes, Dad. It is!” Tyler groaned.

When they finished up, Celeste had Cash take Harvey and Tyler to Elysium for their date with Lily while she prepared for the day’s battle. Lily could barely contain herself when the three of them walked through the door, screaming, “How in the world did you convince Brutus to give you this? I’m not even supposed to know about it, so I can’t fathom how you got your hands on some.”

“You already know what it is? Guess the secret’s not as secret as we thought,” Cash laughed.

Lily made them wait in the storefront while she painted another round of Tyler’s pattern on his skin, sending him waddling out in a loose robe to fetch them after he was done. Genesis matter was nothing like anything she’d ever worked with before, so she expected refining it and forming a viable pattern was going to take a while. Luckily, the bricks of heavily condensed rainbow light were more than potent enough for them to make a massive batch of oil. He hadn’t known what he expected the material to look like, but the endless swirl of color made sense when he thought about what it really was. Raw, unbridled power waiting to be given form. The two of them combined his blood with her own, poured in the mixture of E-Grade herbs that would be doing most of the heavy lifting when it came to actually evolving his weave, and carefully lowered the bricks of genesis matter into the liquid. Harvey pumped as much of his mental energy as he could into the cauldron, feeding it his Architect of the Veils End Imprint to guide the raw creation towards his own path. Lily was pale as a ghost and shaking like a leaf by the time the oil was finally done, and Harvey felt like his spirit had been completely wrung dry. Instead of getting started on the pattern right away, the four of them left to get lunch while they recovered. Cash, being the only one who wasn’t suffering from a mind-splitting headache or the feeling of sandpaper being dragged across his skin, ordered for them.

Three hours later, Lily finally felt sharp enough to start working on his pattern with the help of her mannequin. It took hours, and Harvey was worried they’d need to ask Brutus for even more genesis matter to make a second batch of oil when Lily finally found one that worked. They refined it as much as they could while still having enough oil to guarantee his weave evolved, then the others left the room so Harvey could strip down.

Gaining over 500 points in Strength and around 440 Dexterity had helped his physique, but surpassing the limits of any mortal hadn’t transformed him into a bodybuilder. He was more toned than he’d ever been, but still felt embarrassed as the alchemist’s eyes wandered over his naked body.

“You can move your hands,” she laughed. “My brush will touch every part of you by the time we’re done, and it’s not like this is something I haven’t seen a thousand times before.”

Reluctantly, Harvey moved his hands away from covering his more delicate regions and turned to face the ring that would suspend him in the air while she painted his new weave.

“Would you be more comfortable if I stripped too?” she teased.

“Nope! Let’s just get this over with.”

At first, the brush coating him in rainbow genesis oil tickled his skin, making him glad he was locked down by the machine. Otherwise, his jerking away might’ve ruined the pattern they had worked so hard to perfect. Not being able to move a muscle added to his vulnerability, but at this point he was committed. Suffering through the tickling brush, he felt the oil start to burn. It wasn’t actually on fire, but his weave certainly was. The inky veins carrying essence throughout his body, powering all of his skills and facilitating his improved stats, screamed in pain as they were bent into shape. He thought he’d already known what to expect after feeling the loom’s thread burrowing into his skin when he evolved to F-Grade, but this was 10 times worse.

That experience was his weave being filled with power. This was his weave being fundamentally changed.

It made the need to evolve your weave before trying to evolve your Class and Profession make sense, since trying to stuff the power of an E-Grade Class into an F-Grade weave would make it burst at the seams. He didn’t know if the Loom would let him try, but he needed to get back to Hannah and Elena to warn them in case it didn’t. Focusing on them, he distracted himself from the searing pain invading one limb at a time. Lily worked quickly, her hands a blur as she completely covered him in the intricate pattern. The first sections she painted had already sunk down to his bones by the time her brush completed the circuit. All he had to do now was wait for the oil to push deeper and deeper until it ran out of energy.

The reason upgrading your weave was so complicated is that the network wasn’t just skin deep. It needed to reach every inch of your flesh, so the pattern had to account for that. It was basically trying to create a 3D model out of a 2D pattern, where the amount of oil used in each line was used to bleed out the complex network by giving certain sections more power so they could worm deeper into his being. To be honest, he didn’t fully understand how to make it work, but he needed to learn if he was going to help the rest of humanity push past F-Grade.

When the oil finally ran out of power, Lily flipped him upright and had the machine gently lower him to the ground. The fire returned as his feet pressed into the tiled floor of her workshop, and Harvey grimaced as he tried desperately to keep his skin from rubbing on anything.

“Good job. Put this on. It’s going to hurt, but the pain will fade fast. The fact your weave has experienced this before when you injured it fighting that elemental means you should recover faster than most.”

“Are you sure?” Harvey asked. “This feels a lot worse than back then.”

“Well, the oil we’re using is pretty strong. Let’s just say it could be worse.”

[I highly doubt that. I can’t actually feel your body, but the signals shooting through your spine right now are wild,] Julius added.

Harvey waddled out to join the others, where she made them both promise they would come back tomorrow. “What was it that you said last time, Tyler? No pain, no gain?”

“Yep,” he grumbled.

Cash clapped them both on the back, recoiling when the friendly pat elicited pained yelps from both of them. “Oops. I’ll make sure to drag them by first thing tomorrow morning. Thanks, Lily!”

Harvey had a dozen things to work on now that Brutus had thrown a wrench in his original plans, but they could wait. The first thing he was going to do when he got home was take a long nap.