Beauty X Beast ~ Twenty-Nine!

The next few hours turned into several days passing in a flurry of activity. Danielle churned out blueprint after blueprint, switching to doing the actual task of making the toys she’d designed when the system swapped the requirements for her level to increase. After reaching the Basic tier—level four in the skill—her frantic efforts finally hit a point of diminishing returns, and Danielle conceded that it was no longer possible to put the Beast off further.

Skill increase! Holistic Refinement [Level 3 (Rudimentary) → Level 4 (Basic)]!

Holistic Refinement allows the user to synergize and direct all previous skills into a powerful enhancer. When actively and intentionally crafting something new, whether it is an object, design, or idea, all factors of the final product are taken into account and enhanced [40%] by the System. Legacy creations will only benefit half as much as new creations. 

All previous skills remain permanently and passively effective on the user of this skill, but the user now has [Basic] control as to what is otherwise impacted. 

Requirement to advance: Collaborate with another highly skilled Craftsman to create a new, effective tool or concept neither of you could have developed alone. 

Once she shared the requirement with the Beast, in hopes he would have a better option for them to work on, the machine could only speak in the negative. “With the short amount of time remaining, the only possible item which would increase your level further would be the heart of my master. Otherwise, we would need to likely create several different projects, hoping against hope that one of them would be considered by the system itself to be a ‘new and effective’ tool. Based on the language used, creating something for creation alone would not suffice to meet that standard. It is time.”

At that moment, a breeze fluttered through the open door of the library where Danielle had holed herself up for the last few days. Several of her loose papers went flying, and she rushed to collect them. “Celestial feces… who would open a door? We've been soundproofing the manor for days, and it isn't that stuffy in here yet-”

“Danielle? Are you truly here?”

She froze in place, her words dying in her throat, her tired eyes going wide as the voice echoed through the hallway. Without a word, she sprinted around the table, bursting through the open door of the library and running with all her might toward the still-open entryway. 

Danielle careened into her father, the duo only able to keep from falling in an ignoble pile on the floor thanks to the timely intervention of a headless metal soldier catching them. She buried her head in his travel-stained shirt, further mussing the garment with her tears and a hint of leaking snot. “Father!”

Questions and answers bounced between the two of them rapid fire, from how they were treated, how they got here, what had changed, and finally—most importantly—what came next. Stepping away and using the inside of her wrist to swipe away the last few tears of joy, Danielle sniffed hard and reined in her excitement. As quickly as possible, she brought her father up to speed on the Artificer and his need for a working heart, as well as her part in making it happen.

When she explained that she had an active ability which was triggered by creating things, Henri looked positively sick with excitement for her. Reaching out a hand, he used his thumb to catch one final tear, and his expression melted into a soft, fatherly smile. “Just like that, your future is secure, no matter where you go. I've been so, so worried about where life would take you… and here you are, mapping out your own path forward one choice at a time—just as you always swore you would.” 

After allowing the tender moment to stretch an entire three seconds, the Beast rumbled his internal engines loudly to catch their attention. Henri looked over, his eyes going wide before narrowing as he carefully examined the towering machine. 

“Abyss, you're a big one, aren't you? Now who would go to all the trouble of getting you to work but stop when they were only four-fifths of the way done? Look at that cable management! It's terrible! I can see at least three places with a casual glance that would cause you to stop moving within three minutes, were they cut. Do you have a welding torch I could borrow? I can fix those right up-”

“You will not touch-” the Beast squawked indignantly, words failing him as Henri hobbled closer, using a tree branch as a makeshift crutch. “It was you. You’re the reason she acts the way she does!”

“A complement if I've ever heard one,” the man muttered, closing in on the Beast.

“System forfend, now there are two of them!”

As her father and the Beast got to know each other, one far more willingly than the other, Danielle took the opportunity to make her excuses and return to the library. For the next short while, she simply studied the diagrams of the human heart, comparing what was in her borrowed anatomy book against the actual measurements, shape, and somewhat difficult to understand imagery the Beast had provided her. 

As she struggled to visually interpret what she was seeing, the Enchantress muttered with gentle annoyance, “How’d he put it? He wasn't going to slice the Artificer's chest open and collect a proper image for me? How does he expect this to be enough? A drawing would give me a better representation of the surface structure. Oh…”

With dawning realization, she tossed the near-useless image to the side and gave her full attention to the other reference material. “I’d forgotten, the structure of his heart is damaged. Mimicking what is currently there would be the wrong thing to do. Good, that narrows down the scope of possibility somewhat. Instead of replacing what he has now… attempting an idealized version the same size is a better starting point.”

She continued to work, until at some point she blinked a little too long, and awoke to the sensation of a large blanket being draped over her shoulders. Sucking in a breath, Danielle sat up and turned to the side, her sleep-addled mind not sure if seeing her father standing there was a trick or reality. “You have both of your legs again?”

Henri let out a quiet chuckle, offering a hand and pulling her to her feet. “Sorry to wake you, but it's time to go to bed. As for the leg? Turns out, they had nearly three dozen options to choose from. Gave me the run of the place for a bit. It was a good time, and I had an interesting tour. One odd moment, I had to convince a creepy-crawly whispering soft promises to me from the ceiling that I didn't want spider legs.”

“Doc is pretty excited about how things have turned out for him.” Danielle couldn't help but lean on her father slightly, basking in his presence, and the surprisingly missed warmth of actual human contact. “How many times did you have to turn down the harpoon?”

“So you knew about the harpoon.” Henri walked her out of the library and back to her bedroom, his movements more fluid than Danielle could ever remember seeing. “We'll talk tomorrow. All I need to know is: what can I do to help so we can all get out of here as fast as possible?”

“I'm sorry we don't have much time,” Danielle sleepily murmured as she pulled away and lumbered over to her bed. “We need to finish the design for the Artificer's heart, then actually make it before anything else can happen. I just don't know how long that's going to take.”

“Don't you worry about that,” Henri softly called as she collapsed into her bed. “Between the four of us, we’ll make amazing things happen.”

The next thing Danielle knew, she was blinking in total darkness. For a moment, she didn't know what had woken her, then a loud, rhythmic pounding caused her to sit bolt-upright in bed. “Are they already here?”

Flinging open the door to her room, she found that machines were flowing into and out of the manor at a normal pace, none of them seeming overly concerned. A frown crossed her face, then her eyes were drawn to the source of the sound as it started up once more.

*Tap, tap, boom-boom-boom!*

A groan escaped her lips as she saw sheets of metal being lifted into place over the windows, then bolts were being forced through them and into the walls. “It's too early for this ruckus.”

“We are tireless and ever-productive, a huge upgrade over the fleshy form of our creator. Early? Late? These terms mean nothing to us.” Sneezy spoke with his elongated nose in the air, only able to hold the position for a moment before cracking a smile. As he handed over a platter, he pulled the silver cover off to reveal a delightful assortment of breakfast foods and hot tea. “The kitchen sends its regards and asks that you visit it a few more times before you flee the estate.”

“Oh…” For a moment, her excitement over breakfast was overshadowed by a troubled expression. Then, Danielle paused and looked at Sneezy sharply. “We don't need to leave the kitchen behind! It must have a core as well, right? We’ll just remove that and bring it with us when we leave! In fact, we should start collecting all the cores of the large utility items Beast and the Artificer created.”

“That's a fantastic plan, madame Danielle.” For some reason, though the words and the smile on Sneezy's face showed happiness, the Enchantress felt a chill run through her—as though he were hiding a sad secret. Before she could inquire further, he turned away. “I'll actually go and get that process started right now. Have a productive day!”

Chomping into her fried eggs and twice-baked potato, she was pulled from her musing as raised voices echoed from the library. Making her way over to the area she had practically claimed as her own, Danielle watched as her father and the Beast argued over the design she’d been working on when she fell asleep the previous night. Planning to join in the conversation, she took a single step inside the room, only for the Beast to spin toward her and thrust an oversized digit in her direction.

“No food or drink in the library!” The words made her falter, and a sheepish grin appeared on her face as she began to scarf down the twice-baked potato as fast as she could, happy that it had a soft, creamy texture that went down smoothly. In no time flat, she had finished her meal and was able to dive into the heated argument.

Between the Beast’s understanding and his long-term tenure as the hands of the Artificer while the Comte inscribed the powerful runes, Henri’s deep understanding and experience with working on the smallest of mechanisms, and Danielle's rapid increase in knowledge which bridged the gulf between them, the final design slowly began coming together. 

When considering the heart itself, they found the organ wasn’t an overly complicated shape, nor did it have strange functions they needed to account for. It only needed to do a few things, all of which boiled down to having blood flow into a certain chamber, open a small valve and make it flow into the next space, then be pushed out back into the body. In essence, it was no different from a multi-use water pump.

The difficulty they ran into was ensuring it would integrate properly with bodily functions, increasing and decreasing blood flow as needed. Beyond that, the most intense argument was on the actual material of the final product. 

BST model three had decided on an alloy of tungsten and carbonized steel to ensure that the heart could never again be broken. Henri immediately and violently opposed this choice, his experience with making fine instruments and delicate creations shining through as he explained that such a heavy object placed inside of a human was a guaranteed way to create damage in the surrounding tissue—which would quickly lead to the man's death.

Obviously, this was the outcome they were attempting to avoid at all costs, and so the argument raged. The day passed both quickly and with agonizing awareness, each moment experienced to the fullest as their minds were pushed to their physical limits in search of answers for each question that cropped up. Evening came and went, and they worked long into the night.

 Finally, as Sneezy pounded on the door of the library, insisting that the humans come and eat breakfast, Danielle completed the final annotation on her parchment. Size, shape, material, functionality, components, durability and weight, all balanced with the knowledge that there would be no way to make repairs.

As she put the quill down, the parchment began to shine with light, which quickly swept across its surface and left behind glimmering sparkles. Wherever those motes of light remained for any length of time, the ink below writhed and adjusted itself. When the process had fully completed, a spark of light jumped across to Danielle, and her arm lit with the golden illumination of a level increase. 

The three of them leaned in to look at how the system had improved the final design, each of them intrigued as well as frustrated when they saw how the minor improvements compounded on each other to bring the design beyond what their combined capabilities had allowed for. 

Eventually, it was the Beast who spoke, just before taking the design and carefully slotting it into his chest cavity.

“Three hundred and sixty-five miniscule pain points changed by one and eleven hundredths of a percent, and somehow the aggregate total efficiency of the heart as a whole was increased by exactly forty percent. Truly… the system does things in a confounding way.”