Adam groaned in agony. His head rolled back and forth as he tried to fight off the fatigue and disgust that had been building inside. He rotated his wrist, wishing that the strength he got from his pseudo-skills could provide enough power to conquer what was before him.

With a critical eye he looked at the scene in front, trying to identify the weak spots that he could attack. Flaws that he could address. After a moment he realized that defeat was a certainty, and he launched the item in his hand forwards. Then with a shout of frustration he punched the wall behind him.

"Why is drawing so hard?!" he shouted, infusing it with [Incapacitating Shout] in the hopes it would somehow fix what he had drawn in the notepad on the desk.

Opening the Rift Menu, he lazily summoned the pen he had thrown only a few feet back into his hand. The first few pens had been destroyed, so he had used the Rift to reshape a piece of armor into the pen's outer casing. As a result, it was practically unbreakable, but he couldn't bring it out of the rift.

Knowing how much knowledge mattered, he was trying to take everything he had learned from Cruxannith's memories to put them in a format that could be passed on to the other humans. While everything he had experienced in the tower had been basic knowledge allowed to initiates, it was still more than the Sentinel Army had to work with. What made it even more valuable were the lists of classes and skills available, even if they lacked explanations for how to gain them. Testing and experience could help them figure out the "how" with the roadmap of "what's" that he was putting together. The Red Clan had only cared about countering them, not learning them, since the soul classes were the goal for everyone in the tower.

The knowledge he had in his memories wasn't limited to classes and skills. There had been explanations on how things worked, magic, rituals, runes, inscriptions, alchemy, equipment, beasts, and more. Again, it was only the basics, but it was enough to give those in Jackson a starting point to figure things out. Adam was even drawing pictures of the magical devices he had seen in the memories in hopes they could be reverse engineered with the Leputi's help.

That was where Adam was hitting a wall. He had never been good at drawing. None of his pseudo-skills could help either. If anything, his brute force tendencies interfered with the fine motion controls that drawing required.

"Future Adam went through 68 lives where he had to learn and experience, remembering and applying the knowledge without recording it. Surely, I can recreate what I see in my memories," he grumbled, trying to hype himself up.

For the last week he had been working on this while he alternated with spending time searching Cruxannith's soul for more insight into it. These tasks were like tedious busy work from school, a lot of effort without much gain. Cruxannith's memories might be gone, but Adam could enter his own memories and then pull out what he had experienced in hers.

Like many things, it wasn't that simple in practice. Everything read in her memories had been in the System Standard language. As a result, he had unlocked the language skill on future Adam's status sheet, but that only let him read and write it. He was having to use his own weak abilities to then translate all the materials into English, which was even more tedious.

With a big sigh, Adam leaned backwards. The chair didn't recline so much as comfortably reshape into the position he wanted it in. He raised his legs under the floating desk and the chair reformed a part under his legs.

Cruxannith's former office had been redecorated to be more motivating for him. The pictures and displays of Adam had been changed to be his family and friends, to provide add meaning to the harsh tasks he was forcing himself to do. He had also removed quite a few of her decorations and shrunk the size of the room since it wasn't a place where he wanted to spend a lot of time.

On the desk were piles of notebooks. His inexpert mind had tried to organize the information he translated into who would benefit the most. He also had three laptops that he had typed into so that he could upload them into his Rift network, to make the information easy for anyone to look up.

The pictures and diagrams looked like they were drawn by a juvenile monkey missing its opposable thumbs. With a grumble he tried to erase part of the magic circle he had drawn, hoping to fix the diagram. Even though he could see the original picture in his mind, that didn't mean he could recreate it accurately.

With a large sigh and a lot of complaining, Adam leaned forward and got back to drawing. If he could just push his way through this then he would be ready to distribute the information.

Still, the whole afternoon was taken up trying to get the details of this one drawing corrected.

***

Admiration filled Adam as he walked through the crafting portion of the Jackson base. He looked at all the changed buildings and workshops. There were multiple smithies, none with smoke coming out of them thanks to the Rift Menu options. Quite a few workshops specialized in creating leather and other materials from the invader bodies that they retrieved on boss raids. A few warehouses were around too, using Rift Menu magic to preserve the corpses and dismantled parts.

There was an armory, where they stored equipment to test before they were distributed to the Sentinel Army. A small yard was next to it where craftsmen and a few mid-level soldiers were trying out the equipment on dummies, blocks of various metals, and other durable materials.

A deep breath filled Adam as he sniffed around, pleased that the tell-tale stink of leather processing from history books and stories wasn't there. Even the two alchemy shops they had set up for the Leputi didn't release odors.

While the smells weren't there, the sounds were, though not the expected noises for traditional Earth crafting. There were sounds more like steak sizzling on the grill and leaf blowers running than hammering or brushing out the leather. The Rift Menu shop had allowed them to bring in more [System] used equipment and magic, as well as figure out other options, which they tried to understand and combine with human historical techniques.

They could have dampened all the sounds in the area, but the craftsmen liked the noises, feeling that it made them more productive. Instead of feeling like they were working in isolation, they could hear the efforts of their fellow craftsmen, keeping their motivation and competitiveness high.

Garrett Starf was still the leader of the crafters. That didn't mean he did all the work himself or refrained from crafting with his own hands. Quite a few non-combatants who didn't craft were assigned to him to organize various projects and research, compile the gained information, and bring reports back to Garrett regarding progress.

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Still in love with his smithy and the alien techniques he learned or discovered, Garrett would have preferred to spend even more time crafting but understood the importance of everyone working together. Since many of those working here had been his acquaintances, brought in by Garrett before the invasions took hold, and the fact he had joined with Adam and the fledgling Sentinel Army prior to others, he couldn't escape the view of seniority.

Due to all that, Garrett's workshop was where Adam entered.

"What is all that, Adam? It isn't like you to bring us a project," said Garrett as he eyed the three laptops and thick stack of paper. Adam looked like an inept student nervously on his way to present a thesis. At least until he unintentionally glared at Garrett after glaring at the papers. Then he looked like a man ready for violence, the General of the Sentinel Army.

Garrett froze and then took a step away from Adam's look, and Adam sighed while triggering his [Soothe] pseudo-skill.

"Apologies, your excellence," said one of the alchemists assigned from the Leputi mid wives. The three present Leputi bowed deeply to him. "We beg for mercy. The craft master did not mean offense."

"I know," sighed Adam. "This just isn't what I'm good at. Here, take these."

Garrett received the stack of papers and placed them on a thick shop table. A display appeared and he fiddled with it, causing the smithy temperature changes and air currents from those still working to stay away from the table. Then a noise barrier appeared around the group, less for security than just to make it easier to hear their discussions.

As Adam gently placed the laptops on the table, receiving curious looks from the Leputi, Garrett began flipping through the papers. He went through quite a few, before pulling out one of the better drawn ones and looking at it with confusion. It looked like a series of imprecise geometric shapes, with squiggles and swirls that reminded him of a kid's spirograph. There were notes scribbled all over with notations and arrows pointing to references, but Garrett frowned even harder at the words being used.

"Crush the dubrakity into the third trigistal loop, making sure the arcreon clink can foment along the piloament?" Garrett looked in askance to Adam.

"Yeah, yeah. I know I have sloppy handwriting and am bad at art," stated Adam with a grumble.

Meanwhile the Leputi were staring hard between Adam, Garrett, and the stack of papers. Their mouths were open in such surprise that their over-the-top deference was forgotten.

"I'll ask again, what is all this?" asked Garrett as the other human attending got closer to see. There was another smith, two armor crafters, a lead researcher that had been a civilian engineer contracted to the military, and one of the administrative staff who organized the various workshop discoveries. Plus, the three Leputi.

"When I was captured, I had the opportunity to see a lot of the Red Clan's basic texts about a lot of topics," explained Adam. "I've translated it to English as best I can. The class and skills info, including ways to unlock them, were given to Jordan Lane and Colonel Davian to review and distribute. This is all the crafting stuff that I read. FYI, the drawings suck. You'll need to adjust them to get them to work."

"They let you read and learn while you were captured?" asked the former engineer suspiciously.

Very few people knew what Adam actually went through. Since the fighting had stopped and people realized he had been a prisoner, he was getting sympathetic and concerned looks from the people whenever he went around Jackson. They all must be picturing a typical P.O.W. situation. He didn't bother saying anything, just shrugged.

"Anyway, as much as I hated transposing it, I thought I should get it down so we can figure it out and use it."

"Use what, exactly?" asked another craftsman as Garrett pulled out a few more papers. His brow furrowed deeply as he tried to make sense of the notes and drawings.

"I know they are just the basics, but I figure they must have some use for us. We have no other starting points," said Adam, unhelpfully.

"I still don't even know what I'm looking at, or half these words," said Garrett, placing the papers on the stack. "At least tell us what they do or mean."

The lead Leputi very hesitantly reached out and picked up the top paper. The two bunny people looking over her shoulder gasped as they saw the drawing.

"Your excellency, this is an enhancement rune!" exclaimed the Leputi in shock.

"That's right," answered Adam indifferently.

"You say it comes from the Red Clan's library?"

"Of course," nodded Adam.

"This is amazing!" shrieked one of the other Leputi. "It is unthinkable that you managed to plunder their secrets. These are never revealed to other races. You can even see a destruction equilmian around the edges to prevent the rune from being seen upon exposure. Runes of these quality are only known by a few dozen races!"

"No, no, no," said Adam, shaking his head in disbelief. "These were the basics. The only ones initiates are allowed to read about before gaining a class and being accepted into their tower. It's like kiddy crafts to them."

"Apologies for disagreeing with our most esteemed sovereign," said another Leputi nervously, with fearful side glances at the head alchemist and Garrett. "These might be basic for such a mighty race, however these are highly skilled for anyone else."

"Does that mean we can't use them?" asked Adam.

"It will take time, testing, and materials we don't have, at least for many of them, before we can safely adapt to them."

"Well, I'm terrible at this stuff, so it's on you guys. Enjoy yourselves," said Adam as he turned to leave.

"You would just leave this sacred knowledge with us?" asked a Leputi at the same time that Garrett said, "I still don't know what's going on."

Adam turned and answered the Leputi first. "Yes, I'm leaving it with you. I said I'm terrible at this stuff. It wouldn't serve any purpose if I held it. I brought you my original papers, but I also added them to the Rift Menu library if you need to reference them. I'll leave Garrett to assign permissions to the appropriate people."

Then Adam tried explaining to Garrett. "What you pulled out are runes. These can be crafted to enhance equipment and objects. I think I found a few that might be good at preventing the energy kickback on the guns you made, protecting the shooters. They can also be used on weapons or armor, buildings and machinery. It might be a way around always needing to use the highest tier materials we get.

"There are also rituals explained on the laptops, as well as crafting methods that I don't think you guys know, material lists, and recipes for various things. I was hoping the Leputi could help explain the terms that I didn't understand. The library has versions poorly translated to English by me as well as in the original [System Standard] in case I got something wrong."

"That sounds incredible, Adam!" shouted Garrett, turning back to the pile to find anything he might understand. "If we can understand this stuff then we should be able to seriously strengthen our forces. And it sounds fun just trying to figure out these puzzles."

"Of course," responded Adam disgruntledly. "Why else would I spend so much time doing busy work? Anyway, check the laptops first. There are books explaining how some of it works. I needed to draw the diagrams on paper since I couldn't move them from my memory to the computer. They should be numbered between the digital books and papers."

"Your excellency," squeaked the head Leputi. "You show us much honor and trust by allowing us to work on this. It will benefit our tribe as well as the humans."

"Great," answered Adam without emotion. "Enjoy it."

"Oh, we will, your excellency."

"That all sounds great," said an administrator, "but we're undermanned as it is. There is too much to learn and not enough resources, people, or time."

"Good thing we recently had an influx of people from Carmichael's convoy," muttered Adam.

"Is it safe to trust them?" asked another crafter. "I heard they were trying to take over the base."

"They were. They failed. I'll stop them if they try again," said Adam with a shrug. "Besides, most of the people they collected weren't military. There must be some mechanics or pharmacists, engineers or just creative people among them. Just do some vetting and assign any civilian to something they are capable of or have an interest in."

"Wow, Adam," said Garrett. "If this is what you said, then we can really benefit from it. I'm sorry for what you went through, but it's nice to know some good might come out of it."

The captivity might not have been ideal, but it provided more benefits than anyone else realized. Strengthening his Soul Forger skill set, more knowledge about the universe and its races, as well as the stolen knowledge that will help build them up.

As Adam walked away, a smile crept onto his face.

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