Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 883: New Kink Unlocked

Talia’s smiths were already theirs, and now that the guild management that had nearly crushed them was Eclipse’s responsibility instead of Runewoven’s, they were free to do what they’d always excelled at.

Ward stakes sank into the compressed earth at intervals Talia measured by pacing them herself, each one linking to the next in a chain of protective energy that would eventually ring the entire compound.

Smiths pressed runic templates against structural steel, and the inscriptions flared, settled into the metal, and hummed with a contained energy that would outlast the material beneath it.

Calibration arrays tested resonance while portable platforms produced enchantment cores sized to the building’s specifications.

Talia directed it all without raising her voice, without crude threats of sacking anyone’s wages, corrections flowing in the technical shorthand her smiths understood on instinct, adjustments made with careful taps of her fingers against glyphs that burned bright in the air and faded.

The Ironveil structural engineer overseeing integration paused his own task to watch her lay a ward sequence, and the respect on his face was the quiet kind one professional gives another when the gap in specialization is unmistakable.

Runewoven had their struggles as a standalone guild.

That wasn’t a secret. Talia’s father, the creator of Runewoven, died, leaving it all behind for his daughter, who was only really interested in the art of smithing. The guild was built on steady foundations, but one thing led to another and they were in such a dire situation that they had to hire the ragtag merc group known as Valhalla’s Sinners or face serious punishment.

But watching the smiths at their stations, the reason why was obvious, and it had nothing to do with skill.

Running a full guild meant recruitment, logistics, finances, territory management, and a hundred other burdens that had nothing to do with craft.

Now that Eclipse carried those, Runewoven only did what they’d always been brilliant at.

Kaiden watched them lay inscription after inscription, and the merger that had brought Runewoven into Eclipse looked smarter with every one.

The girls stood at the edge of the Runewoven ring for a while, and the shift from spectators to participants happened the way most things happened in Eclipse.

Calypso got bored.

”Let this beautiful demoness help.”

She walked toward a team of four wrestling a mana-forged support strut that was twenty meters long and far heavier than their dolly was rated for.

”Hey! Lady, stop!” One of the workers waved her off. ”That’s fifteen tons of mana-forged steel. You’ll snap yourself in half!”

Calypso looked at the strut. Then at the four men who couldn’t budge it. Then back at the strut.

”What is this, a hidden boss monster? Do I need to call my Darling?”

The worker blinked. ”...What?”

”It’s a structural support, Lady Calypso” his partner said, wiping sweat off his forehead. He was more familiar with the famous demon who had some struggles integrating into human society. ”It’s just really fucking heavy.”

After work, he often laughed at the girls’ antics as they tried to introduce technology and other human curiosities to her, with varying success.

Let’s just put it like this: the tanned felinid was a lot more successful at learning new things.

Not that Calypso minded. She was happy to let her prissy friend help her when she needed it.

Calypso grinned. ”Then it’s fine.”

She planted her feet, crouched low, and wrapped both hands around the strut.

The muscles beneath her red skin bunched as she pulled, swelling into hard, sculpted ridges that traced from her forearms up through her shoulders.

Veins surfaced along her biceps and the sides of her neck, her back tightening into defined lines that her outfit did nothing to hide, and the raw physical power radiating off the demoness turned every head in sight.

She grunted through her teeth. ”Here we go...”

The strut came off the dolly with a groan of protesting metal, and Calypso rolled it onto one shoulder with a shift of her hips, straightening beneath fifteen tons of mana-forged steel as though the weight were a minor inconvenience rather than the reason four grown men had been losing their fight with a dolly.

A hard hat hit the ground somewhere to her left. ”Holy mother of god!”

A welding torch lowered. ”New kink unlocked.”

A woman on the rigging team stopped mid-sentence and watched the red-skinned demoness carry the site’s heaviest piece of hardware on one shoulder, and the expression on her face said she’d just discovered something about herself she’d need to think about later. ”Mommy...”

”Where do you want it?” Calypso asked, tail flicking behind her, barely winded.

One of the original four workers recovered enough to point.

Seeing this sight, the rest of the gang couldn’t help themselves.

Nyx took position beside the placement operators and raised both hands, fingers spread.

”Let me help!”

The next girder on the transport truck floated off the flatbed with a smoothness that made the crane operator shut his engine off and lean back in his seat.

When a worker called for a correction, half a meter left and fifteen degrees of tilt, the girder moved before the man finished his sentence.

Nyx didn’t even look like she was straining so much as arranging mere shelves.

Luna became the fastest supply runner in construction history.

”Where?” she inquired, was told, and was gone.

Rebar bundles, reinforcement mesh, fastener crates, insulation panels: whatever was needed appeared at its destination in seconds, delivered by a purple blur that left static crackling across the materials in her wake.

She’d appear at a supply depot, load both arms, vanish, and reappear at the drop point before the request had finished traveling down the radio chain.

One of the regular haulers watched his entire afternoon schedule completed in under fifteen minutes and turned to his partner with a look that contained an entire existential crisis.

”What is the purpose of my life?”

Aria hovered above the fabrication zone, silver hair catching the late afternoon light, and the moonlight crescents she sent down cut structural steel to exact specifications with edges so clean the lead inspector tested three samples, put his calipers away, and told the plasma saw operators to take a break.

Kaiden handled the footings.

He knelt beside cured concrete, pressed his palm flat, and laid Pride glyphs into the material, arcane pressure fields sinking through and reinforcing the structure from within.

The Ironveil engineer who tested the first treated section ran his readings twice, went quiet for a moment, and then asked Kaiden very politely if he’d be willing to do the same for the remaining forty-six blocks.

Bastet walked to the western perimeter where the terrain was still wild, uneven ground choked with boulders and root systems the grading team had flagged for a full day of clearing. She stopped at the edge, considered the landscape, and began walking forward.

The ground flattened beneath her bare feet.

Boulders sank into the soil as she passed, root systems compressed beneath her stride, and the earth settled into a surface so level and so stable that the grading lead didn’t trust his instruments until the third reading.

Bastet crossed the entire marked area in four minutes without breaking stride, her tail swaying behind her in lazy arcs, and she did not look back.

The grading lead stared at the freshly perfect terrain, then at the barefoot woman who’d produced it, then at his fleet of bulldozers that had just become the most expensive lawn ornaments on the continent.

Together with the girls, it was time for Kaiden to build the foundations of his guild!