An Unbound Soul

The guild master rushed off somewhere with his mythril ingot, leaving me to my own devices. Presumably that single ingot was worth some number of platinum coins, at least until they started being produced more widely. I could hazard a guess that the mana control series of skills were about to become a lot more popular. So would silver; it was in short supply in Dawnhold, and I doubted they could import lots more at short notice. I visited the clothing store again and bought out all the silver rings they had before the rush started, costing me six more large silvers and leaving me largely broke. It would be a worthwhile investment, though; I could have one for each finger, even if I had to do a bit of reforging to fix their sizes.

Wait... Perhaps I was too hasty there. Was there a limit to the number of magic items I could use? There had to be some sort of limit, or I'd have seen delvers shambling around while hidden under mounds of clinking metal. Well, whatever. I could resell them after converting to mythril, anyway. Which I couldn't do right now without someone carrying me to lower dungeon floors, but once I got my new weapon and a big pile of level ups from the tournament, that would hopefully change.

Thinking of my new weapon, did I want to change my order to mythril too? I'd never afford that much metal at the prices of these rings, but presumably they were far more expensive by weight than ingots. What floor of a dungeon did silver come from? Mana infused steel was only at twenty-five, and had already taken almost all of my money, so it was safe to assume I wouldn't be able to afford mythril even at raw silver prices.

I couldn't enchant the one mythril ring I did have right now either, not having any tools for engraving the runes or the reagents I needed, but I did still have something else from that run I needed to look at.

Bracelet of Crafting Skill (Rank 2)

The name didn't tell me much about what it did, but given the similarity to my bracelet of martial skill, I could hazard a guess that it would give me a plus one to all my craft skills. I hadn't actually maxed out any craft skills, but I wouldn't say no to giving them a boost. It wasn't as if I was likely to be getting the rank two versions ever, so going further over the rank one cap would be handy. In any case, trying it on wouldn't hurt. I slid it onto the opposite wrist than the existing martial skill version and winced as knowledge of many different skills flowed into my head. Which I should have expected; I had a lot of crafting skills, but only a single combat skill. Of course using this new bracelet would be more... profound. I winced again as I realised that I was going to need to take it back off for the tournament, too. Probably best to do that well in advance, so I could finish throwing up before needing to fight.

The next point to cover was that I now had enough soul points for another rank two skill. I would have liked to increase my mana pool, or increase my stamina regeneration, but I also really wanted to save for [Analysis].

Skills available for purchase:

1 point: [Basic Cooking] [Basic Tailoring] [Foraging] [Basic Farming] [Weapon Proficiency: Dagger] [Weapon Proficiency: Sword] [Weapon Proficiency: Heavy Sword] [Weapon Proficiency: Axe] [Weapon Proficiency: Mace] [Weapon Proficiency: Flail] [Weapon Proficiency: Polearm] [Weapon Proficiency: Bow] [Weapon Proficiency: Thrown] [Weapon Proficiency: Unarmed] [Hunting] [Musician] [Weapon Proficiency: Fired]

4 points: [Enhanced Stamina Recovery] [Extended Mana Pool] [Secrecy]

9 points: [Analysis]

[Analysis] wasn't the only new skill in there, either.

[Secrecy] - Appraisal type skills operate on you at a reduced level. Notifies you of appraisal attempts. Higher level increases the effect. (Rank 2)

It was an interesting one, and I'd quite like it if only for the appraisal notifications, but I didn't want to spend four points on it. With level twelve [Privacy] and the rank four [Abnormal Soul] replaced with rank five [Unbound Soul], it was now completely impossible to see without either a rank five appraisal skill or else a rank four skill above level ten. Besides, my reincarnation was open knowledge now, even if I didn't exactly go around advertising it, which negated the need for hiding my status. It was odd that I wasn't being showered with questions and attention, but maybe that was the not wanting to bother people part of the Law again. As much as I wanted all three available rank two skills, none of them were vital, so I banked the points for now.

That was my set of tasks for the day completed. Today was the last day of the tournament sign-ups, with the roster due to be posted tomorrow, so the next day's tasks were going to include rushing home, passing the info on to parents, then visiting the smithy to enchant my ring and hand Remous his block of magical steel. I might have to return here the same day too, if I was scheduled to fight on the first day. Either way, the day was going to be busy, so I returned to my dorm and turned in early.

I was indeed scheduled to fight on the first day. At least that meant I would be travelling light. In fact, I would be fighting nine days of the first week; the rank two singles had by far the greatest count of competitors, at sixty. Since this was supposed to be training, there was more focus on each person fighting as many individual battles as possible than on finishing quickly or picking a winner, so we'd been divided into six groups of ten, which would each round robin the first week. The six winners would then round robin the following week, turning the whole thing into more of a truncated league than a knockout. Individual matches were taking place in the morning and afternoon, and group matches in the evening; any poor people who entered both categories were likely to need to fight twice in one day. The organisation meant that my opponent for each day wasn't even in the schedule, so we'd all be going in with no idea of who we were fighting.

I hurriedly gobbled my breakfast and rushed home, thankfully being well versed in the direction by now and hardly getting lost at all. I passed on the schedule to Mum, then hurried over to Remous's smithy. He stared at my gift of an ingot of mana infused steel with hungry eyes, and was more than happy to let me borrow his tools in exchange. At least until I pulled out my mythril ring, at which his head snapped around like it was elastic. How did he even notice?

"Where?... How?..."

As ever, a man of a few slow words. "Dawnhold has learnt how to manufacture it from silver. There's not much of it around right now, but before long it shouldn't be much harder to get hold of than regular silver."

If I thought his eyes were hungry before, they were now deep, ravenous caverns. Not that regular silver was exactly cheap, but at least it was available. Trying my best to ignore the drooling dogkin, I unpacked my reagents and started engraving runes. Which succeeded only in blunting the tools. Stupid me; in my excitement, I hadn't considered that I was dealing with some sort of super-material. Of course normal tools wouldn't scratch it.

Remous laughed, then quickly heated his ingot and fashioned a new graver from mana infused steel. It was still hard going, and my [Basic Runecrafting] was in no way up to this task. If I wasn't able to use it in conjunction with [Basic Smithing] I'd have had no chance.

Something I'd needed to choose, and had thought long and hard about on my way home, was what stat to boost. More strength? A different physical stat? Intelligence? In the end, I'd decided on endurance. Intelligence was what I actually wanted most, but endurance was a close second, and given my low skill level, there was no way this was going to give a five point boost. I'd take a small endurance boost now, and if it turned out that mythril really could hold an enchantment indefinitely, I'd pay a proper enchanter to do the rest.

ding

Skill [Basic Smithing] advanced to level 11

Skill [Basic Runecrafting] advanced to level 4

Mythril Ring (Rank 3)

Huh? Rank three?! How could it be that high? It occurred to me that I hadn't appraised the ring before enchanting it. I hadn't forged the ring myself, after all, and it was probably rank three to start with. Having a high rank base object didn't mean that the enchantment would be an equal rank.

Wearing it, it did indeed only give a plus one boost, which was no better than rank one dungeon items. If I sold this at the delvers' guild, it would go for less than the cost of the silver ring. Combining the best material in the world with a low levelled, rank one runecrafting skill was, of course, completely idiotic, but it would be enough to tell me if mythril could hold the enchantment, and I got a pair of levels from it. Also, from what I remembered from the library, enchanters could buy a [Disenchant] skill, so I could always get this ring redone. I couldn't pick up any mana leaking, but that was equally true of my armour and staff. Still, even if it lasted a year like my other equipment, that would be good enough to keep a few of them around. The reagent costs weren't exactly onerous.

Next on my list was seeking Kari's opinion on the mana control skills. She was very enthusiastic about them, despite the guild master seemingly considering them a waste. My guess turned out to be spot on; Kari could use [Greater Mana Control] to toss a fireball despite having purchased no fire affinity spells, but it didn't have the speed or power that the real rank two [Fireball] spell had. I'd have thought it would still be worthwhile for the sake of variety, not to mention the lack of mana cost, but even that turned out not to be important. If you were a fire mage, you'd delve in dungeons where the monsters were vulnerable to fire. You wouldn't enter a lava dungeon where fire spells were useless and rely on a mana control skill to carry the day. I'd have thought it would be useful for non-combat tasks, like cooking food or heating water, but of course delvers would have magic tools or crystals to do all that sort of thing. I could see why delvers would consider it a low importance skill.

She did make a suggestion that I hadn't thought of. When sparring, we weren't trying to kill each other, so just like front-line fighters would use wooden training weapons, mages would also hold back from putting lethal force into their magic. Real spells would still possess a speed advantage, but would lose their strength. And what could be made from mana could be unmade, or at least deflected. While I couldn't produce fire affinity mana of my own, I could control what Kari produced, and was able to halt her fireballs in mid air. She could use her own control to cancel out mine, but that would be an option other delvers wouldn't have. It would be a potent ability against other mages in the upcoming duels.

That question answered, I provided Kari with the schedule, warned her about the two person limit and to coordinate things with my parents, and set off back to Dawnhold. With my extra endurance point on top of my regular gains, keeping up a jog the whole way was no longer a challenge. I removed my bracelets that evening, and as expected, taking off my craft one was a truly miserable experience. Dealing with it the night before was definitely the correct choice.

The next day, I reported to our group's assigned arena. There had obviously been some preparations made, maybe for the rank three fights more than the ones I'd be taking part in, with some sort of barrier installed around the arena. I saw Kari leaning against a wall next to Mum, who was now visibly pregnant, at least to people who knew her before. Apparently Dad had been abandoned today, but it wouldn't be too much longer before Mum ended up housebound again, so best to let her out while she had the chance. The guild master was in the audience too, standing next to another dwarf.

Grover, Dwarf, Master Enchanter (?/?)

Interesting; so that was the Grover he'd mentioned. A fourth rank enchanter too. Despite the supposed dearth of rank four personnel, there did seem to be a lot of them coming out of the woodwork recently. Or out of the mountains, in the dwarven case. None of them were human or beastkin though, with the possible exception of Lord Reid, despite elves and dwarfs being very much outnumbered. Maybe it was just the high levelled ones who travelled?

On my side of the room there were fewer familiar faces, mostly some delvers I'd seen around the guild but not really talked to. Among the names in my group I had read in the schedule, there was only one I recognised, and I was hoping it was just coincidence. Alas, it turned out to be exactly who I thought it was. And then it got worse, as the referee called out my name.

"First up, Peter and Freya."