Benedict sat cross-legged inside what used to be an abandoned water filtration node beneath Vehrmath's lower district. Now it was a glowing nest of cables, scrap-circuit lattice, and mana-threaded relays.
Around him, five volunteers—former couriers, guild washouts, one retired tinkerer, and a dwarven alloy smuggler—assembled what would become the second production line for Benedict's comms. They weren't licensed. They weren't sanctioned. But they understood tools.
Benedict handed a completed spellcore to the dwarven smuggler, Drom Bristlewire, who promptly stuck it between his teeth and muttered, "I think better when the mana's humming through me molars."
One of the halflings, Nim Tealeaf, bounced in place. "Do we get to make the glow-purple ones next? People love those."
"Color can wait," Benedict muttered. "We need the network up first."
They were working from junk—a discarded arcframe, a half-burned console from a failed reactor lab, and scavenged shielding salvaged from defunct perimeter wards. And it was working.
Each communicator required no bonded signature, no lineage tag, no regulatory key. Just hands.
A new addition to the team, Fira—an ex-battle medic with burn scars on her hands—had taken to assembling the relay nodes blindfolded. "I learned to trust touch more than sight," she said. "Besides, the lights mess with my old implants."
Nearby, another volunteer—a mute elf from the Underdark named Shael—communicated via sign language as he calibrated the mana pulse harmonizers. Benedict had quickly picked up on the patterning. Watching Shael's compact, efficient signs, he murmured to himself, "We could scale this into deeper tunnels. Maybe reach old smugglers' paths."
The idea blossomed. The Underdark routes—deep, secretive, and untouched by leyline surveillance—could serve as the framework for a communications lattice immune to noble interference. Not just horizontal, but vertical freedom.
Eline Vort appeared at the threshold, brushing soot from her shoulders. "Your courier from the Greenglass Ward brought more recycled conduit. They're asking if you'll swap for reinforced boots."
"Done," Benedict said.
Barter. That's how the undercity moved. Benedict didn't charge credits—he let the devices flow. Bootleggers used them to coordinate smuggling. Medics used them to triage accidents across ward zones. One group of street-performers started using the pulses as beat signals.
Everyone found a use.
Not everyone trusted it.
Rumors had begun spreading—planted by Vassian's people, no doubt. That the devices recorded minds. That they could trigger possession. That they were a tool of the Old World.
Others whispered that Shael's presence meant Benedict had begun reaching into Underdark alliances—that soon the comms would carry Underspeech glyph pulses.
There were even whispered talks among tunnel brokers that Shael's kin had already begun prepping deeper paths—paths that could serve as invisible fiber routes for pulse-magic, stretching beneath Vehrmath's deepest wardlocks.
Eline returned with two salvaged signal amplifiers. "We found these in a sub-basement below the firewatch post. You think they'll work?"
"They'll work." Benedict was already rewiring the mounts.
Arden stepped in with a scowl. "Vassian just bought exclusive access to three leyline junctions. He's cornering regulated access."
"He can keep the towers," Benedict said. "We're going horizontal."
He scrawled new schematics on the wall. Relay-stone anchors, small enough to hide in maintenance gutters, but powerful enough to bounce signals between sewer plates and old lightning arrestors. A ratline network.
Drom leaned over. "You're building the Undernet."
"No," Benedict replied. "I'm revealing it."
He turned to Nim. "Get the glow-purple dye. We launch tomorrow."
Later that night, Eline and Arden sat by the relay stack, sharing a bottle of underground-brewed firewine with Benedict.
"You're putting your name on this now?" Arden asked, gesturing to a node casing with 'BAK-6' etched into it.
"No," Benedict said. "I'm putting the people's name on it. Mine's just one signal among many."
They all raised their glasses.
"To open networks," Eline toasted.
"To purple pulses and pissed-off nobles," Nim added, clinking her tin cup.
"To Drom's mana-humming molars," Fira said, blindfold resting on her forehead.
Shael made a flicking gesture that meant progress in Undersign. Benedict translated out loud: "To the tunnels that still carry signal, even when the towers fall."
Far above, in a quiet scriptorium of reinforced glass and humming wards, Calder Vance watched the city's mana pattern shift. One node blinked active. Then four. Then nine.
His scribe construct asked, "Do you wish to flag this activity as anomalous?"
Calder didn't answer. He just watched—and remembered two voices:
Auremax Daelion: "Understanding precedes creation." Yllira Thorne: "Let it spread."
Both lived in Benedict now.
And whatever was coming next?
It was already too late to stop.
The next morning, as the first wave of undernet pulses triggered across maintenance tunnels and black-market clinic rooftops, a curious effect emerged. Guild-run message towers reported mild signal noise—resonant interference just below regulatory thresholds.
Benedict smiled when he heard.
"Interference," he said. "That's what they'll call it first."
Then came the messages—tinkers from the deep wards coordinating with surface medics. Couriers bypassing signal fees by hopping relays. And a mid-tier barkeep broadcasting drink specials on loop to half the undercity.
The signal had gone viral.
By sundown, Vehrmath's lowest class had its own network. And not a single noble could claim they saw it coming.
Not only that, Benedict's side business had begun to sprout from the shadows. In exchange for relay access, many undercity businesses paid not in coin but in barter—crafts, labor hours, or tokens redeemable with trusted vendors. An informal economy formed around Benedict's tech: payment in firebrew, encrypted sigil scrolls, or salvaged alloy.
One of Nim's courier contacts even offered an ongoing delivery service in exchange for a fleet of wearable nodes. Arden began to organize these exchanges, cataloging the underground trade in a ledgershard.
It wasn't about getting rich—it was about staying funded. And staying ahead.
Benedict watched the new network ripple across a map etched in light. And smiled.
They hadn't just made a tool. They'd made a movement.