An Unbound Soul

I awoke to the bonging of the town's timekeeping bell. From the number of rings, it was already midday. That was probably about as much sleep as I could get away with if I intended to sleep the normal hours tonight, so I suited up and dragged myself down to the bar for a very late breakfast. Today I intended to do boss runs to the fifth floor. Hopefully, I could get a few runs in, but it would depend on how little mana I could get away with using on floors four and five. Monsters stayed in their rooms in the top half of the dungeon, so I could meditate after each boss, but recovering mana still took time.

I also needed to train my ability to use [Mana Perception] without being violently sick. That unfortunately didn't seem to have anything to do with the System, and levelling it would only make things worse instead of better. I found that I could limit the range, which helped. I was trying to keep it active within a small bubble around me, gradually spreading it out.

The gate guard frowned, but didn't try to stop me passing. Floors one and two went as easily as ever. On floor three I carefully followed the map, which I would swear took me the exact same way I was trying to go when I got lost the last time. With the way all the rooms look the same, I must have got myself turned around at some point. I beat down the boss using only a single [Far Step] and a [Minor Strength], to save a few points of mana and because having it stuck in my skill list one level below max was annoying me.

ding

Skill [Minor Strength] advanced to level 12

At the floor four boss I didn't hold back at all, not wanting to take any risks. I started by repeating my strategy from the first time around, destroying the ranged attackers first, then tripping the whip wielder. This time I didn't expect them to separate and immediately jumped in to engage in melee. With my higher stats and using [Mana Perception] to keep an eye on them, there was no repeat of my accident from the first time.

ding

Skill [Far Reach] advanced to level 12

Boss defeated, I hung around at the fifth floor entrance to recover mana, practising [Mana Control] in the denser mana environment. With [Mana Perception] I had a far better view of what I was actually doing, but I still had no idea how to turn it towards any sort of practical use.

ding

Skill [Mana Control] advanced to level 12

Wow, I was on a roll of maxing out skills today. The fifth floor orc went down as easily as last time, too, but I had more problems getting there. The hidden dart traps on the fifth floor couldn't be picked up with normal sight or [Mana Perception] and I had to resort to dodging each time I set one off. [Mana Perception] was able to pick up the incoming dart as it was fired, and with [Dexterity] up, I could twist fast enough to turn a direct hit into a glancing blow. I had a few more scratches on my armour by the time I reached the boss chamber, but none of the hits had drawn blood. This would be good training for floors nine and ten, where being struck would be far more problematic. Did the darts move faster down there or something? If they were the same as here, a few more points of dexterity would be enough to render them safe, even without [Distortion]. Although it would be harder to dodge with a bunch of orcs attacking me...

I managed a total of four runs, getting more used to the bosses as I went along and dropping down to rank one spells to save mana where I felt safe, continuing my roll of dings.

Skill [Minor Endurance] advanced to level 12

Skill [Minor Slow] advanced to level 12

That was five skills maxed out. It was a shame I hadn't had any boosts to anything rank two, but I was happy with just finishing off [Far Reach]. Also my four shiny ingots. Those weren't to sell; they were coming back home with me to Remous' smithy, both to make my next attempt at a music box and as payment for his help. Normally he only used cheap iron, so he'd appreciate some higher quality metal. I continued my efforts for the rest of the week, collecting cores on the fourth floor early in the morning and switching to boss runs later on. With my lack of tracking skills, finding occupied rooms on floor four was too hard once other parties had cleared out significant chunks.

Skill [Dismantling] advanced to level 5

Skill [Mana Perception] advanced to level 3

Class [Body Mage] advanced to level 5

New skill acquired: [Greater Mana Control]

Skill [Mana Control] consumed by superior skill [Greater Mana Control]

Skill [Greater Mana Control] advanced to level 2

The extra soul point from my class level was enough for another rank two skill, and my upgrade to [Greater Mana Control] had a huge impact on my staff, which I could now switch between weights instantly with barely a thought. I found I could also push the enchantment a little further, making it slightly lighter or heavier than before and making the bosses even less of a challenge. Perhaps I was ready to step onto floor six... Not today though; I no longer had any reason to push myself, so I intended to play safe as far as possible.

On my way back into the guild, I spotted a new notice that had been posted. The tournament, advertised as a mass communal training session, had been scheduled for late summer and was accepting sign-ups. Of course, I headed straight to reception to get my name down. Ella was on duty today.

"Greetings. I assume you only want to sign up for rank two singles, since you aren't in a party? And you're late. I wanted you to sign up half an hour ago."

Singles? "How many categories are there? And why half an hour ago?"

"Rank one, two and three, singles or party. So six in total. And we had a betting pool on how quickly you'd appear to sign up. Some people were convinced you'd manage to get wind of when they opened in advance and finish your day's work early, but in fact you're here late. Now I've lost the bet."

Ella pouted at me. I wasn't sure how to take the knowledge that the guild staff were betting on me, but I guess they had to have their fun somewhere. "Yes, just rank two singles then. And if you wanted me here at a specific time, you should have just asked in advance."

Ella looked at me blankly for a moment, before relaxing and starting to scribble on a bit of paper. That confused me for a while, until it twigged that arranging things with me in advance would have been cheating, and thus presumably against the Law. At least I knew the tournament was going to be fair... Well, that was something else to look forward to in the summer then, alongside revisiting school.

The following day, I was due to return to the village. Fortunately, I could stash the heaviest of my luggage—a dozen ingots and my staff—into Henry's cart, which was limited more by volume than weight.

Skill [Endurance] advanced to level 5

Skill [Enhanced Mana Recovery] advanced to level 7

Despite my gains while jogging alongside the cart, I wasn't able to keep it up for the whole distance. It was pretty darn close, though, and one more skill level would likely have been enough for me to cover it. I watched Henry pull ahead into the distance as I slowed to conserve stamina. He'd promised to drop my luggage off on the way, and there wasn't enough distance left for me to get lost in.

Back at home, Dad was once again subtly unhappy at my arrival. I couldn't disbelieve him when he said he was happy to see me, which meant that he was unhappy with something else. Was there anything my return made him do, or stopped him doing? Oh, right. I was being an idiot. My very first morning on my own in Dawnhold, I'd thought to myself that it was the first time I'd ever slept without Dad's snoring. Dad was always out in the fields in the day and I was home at night. I'd pretty much never left the two of them alone together, and given my adult intelligence, they must have always been too embarrassed to do that in front of me. Sheesh, I'd have happily given them some privacy if they'd only asked. Was this another case of the Law making them not want to bother other people? Ah well, I'd be leaving again in a week. Dad would have his opportunity to continue to release his eight years' worth of pent-up desires, and maybe next year I'll get a baby sibling.

Actually, when I thought about it, the idea of getting a sibling was disturbing in some way, like a feeling something would go wrong when it came. It was a very strange feeling and didn't seem to have any basis in reality. It wasn't as if I had a foresight skill, so I had no idea where that was coming from. Maybe it was just triggering my own memories of being a newborn, and all the embarrassment that entailed.

In exchange for my pile of high quality steel ingots and me taking over all of his work that didn't need high levels, Remous was happy to help me produce a better music box. I really wanted gold or silver for the decorations, but we had to make do with what we had. I'd at least found a copper ingot to give it some highlights, but there was no way for me to afford precious metals. This was still only a second prototype, though, so getting it perfect didn't matter. We used a cylinder to store the musical score, Remous able to produce far smaller features on the surface than I ever could, and we managed to get a minute long loop of music engraved, this time with a couple of octaves' worth of notes. It was still hand cranked, but again, second prototype.

We also had nothing with which to properly tune it. I wonder how normal instruments are tuned here? Was there anywhere I could buy a bunch of tuning forks? I certainly hadn't seen a music shop. It sounded okay to me in any case, so it should be saleable as it was.

It took us the entire week to complete, after which Remous was smiling to himself, obviously pleased about something. "It looks and sounds great," I commented, assuming he was pleased with our creation.

"Oh?... Yes... It did... come out... well."

Huh? Was that not what he was pleased about? What else then? Oh, I recognised the way he was staring off into space; he was reading System messages. Did he level up?

Remous, Beastkin, Expert Smith (1/31)

Nope, a whole rank up! No wonder he was happy. "Congratulations on your new class."

"Thanks."

Skill [Basic Smithing] advanced to level 10

I'd wanted to spend some time with Kari picking up tips for [Greater Mana Control], since with the skill ranking up I should be able to actually put it to some practical use beyond the passive benefits controlling my weapon, but smithing took up too much time. I'd have to do that on my next village visit. Instead, I ended up running alongside Henry's cart once again.

Endurance increased by 1

No skill ups that time, but jogging between the village and town must have lost its novelty by now. Besides, stats were still stats.

Before long, I found myself before Eric once more, showing off my more functional and somewhat decorative steel music box. It turned out that the town was so small that the merchants' guild actually functioned as brokers to some extent, taking a cut of the sale price to pair up items with buyers where demand was too low to bother with a traditional shop or auction. Dawnhold didn't have dedicated jewellery, ornament or music shops; some stuff could be custom ordered, since the smith skills covered both blacksmithing and goldsmithing alike, but anything high class would need to come from elsewhere. He'd let me know what happened with it later in the week. There wasn't even a written contract or anything, which kind of made sense with the Law, but even if I could trust the people involved, that didn't mean I'd trust their memories. Hopefully, someone was making some sort of notes somewhere about what was being sold to who...

I spent the rest of the week running the dungeon. A complete lack of skill ups informed me that I'd probably milked the top floors for as much as they were worth, so I really would need to consider moving down one or two, but at least I made myself a few more silvers. I wouldn't need to worry about paying my school fees when the time came.

Nothing else of interest happened until my final day in Dawnhold, when Ella spoilt the entire week by informing me that I'd been summoned by Lord Reid.