An Unbound Soul

The next day I visited the guild master's office as scheduled. As well as the guild master and Grover, who was wearing a sizeable backpack, presumably carrying ingots, there were a couple more mages present. One was Kari, in her usual red dress. I stared at her in surprise, but didn't get a chance to ask questions before the guild master clapped his hands. "Right, we're all here, so let's get going. We're headed straight to floor ten."

He grabbed his axe and started jogging without even waiting for a response. Seriously? Couldn't I get at least some explanation of what was going on? I mean, I could make assumptions that Kari somehow got roped into the mythril manufacture, but he could at least have introduced everyone.

"I've never been to the dungeon before. How exciting!"

"Why are you here? You aren't exactly dressed for visiting a dungeon." Actually, if the guild master behaved in the same way as last time, that wouldn't be an issue. Kari would have to be careful not to blink to even see a monster.

"There was a request up on the guild notice board for anyone with [Greater Mana Control] or better, so I offered my services. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, I guess. Just remember that today isn't how dungeon trips normally go, when there isn't a rank four beast stripping whole corridors bare in front of you."

"Oi, I heard that, kiddo. Which is a good time to mention; there's more of us today, so if you want to loot the boss chests again, you'll need to justify yourself. I'm going to have you fight the bosses."

No new magical item from floor ten for me then. Speaking of which, my ring of endurance was still working well, so it had already outlasted an enchanted silver ring. With the tournament over, I had all my items back on now. Would my bracelet of martial skill have any effect on my newly forming skill? The more I thought about it, the more I realised how mad the whole concept was. Surely it couldn't work in the same way as a normal skill...

We reached the first floor boss, and I took the trio of goblins out without slowing down. Kari watched me extracting the three coppers from the chest. "That's not much money. Not even enough to divide between us."

"This is only the first floor. Floor ten has fifty times this amount, plus a magical item."

The third mage in our group wasn't one I'd met before, and while properly armoured, she seemed the worst off of anyone in our group. She was breathing heavily, obviously struggling to keep up the pace. I was about to yell at the guild master to slow down, when I had another idea. My rank two spells were vastly superior to their rank one versions, but it wasn't just in terms of magnitude or duration; my rank two buffs could be targeted. I'd used them on kids back in the village from time to time, but the ability to target had never been relevant in the dungeon, where Xander's party didn't need them, and since when I'd been running solo. I tapped her on the back and grinned at her look of surprise as her breathing immediately became easier.

"Whu? What did you just do? Woah, my endurance more than doubled!"

ding

Skill [Endurance] advanced to level 8

Oh, cool. Bonus. "It's the rank two spell [Endurance]. Plus seventeen to your endurance for seven minutes. I need my mana for the bosses though, so once it runs out, the guild master will need to slow down."

"Pah, if her endurance is too low to keep up a pace this slow, she should be pushing herself so that she gets more."

"Nope, I'm afraid no-one goes jogging in dungeons other than you, and neither is this pace slow."

I took out the next two bosses without trouble or magic. Once we reached the floors with dart traps, the guild master started doing his corridor stripping trick, presumably deciding it was easier than teaching Kari or Grover where not to step. Floor four and five were nothing I couldn't handle with minor buff spells, but thanks to our ridiculous pace I didn't come close to regenerating what I'd spent by the time we reached the floor six boss. I still had plenty for a full round of buffs, taking out the pack of five goblins without injury, but that left me dangerously low. I didn't fancy my chances against the next floor's dire wolf pack.

While the first few bosses were too weak to bother with such trivialities as fighting styles, on floors five and six I made a deliberate effort to use my combo of unarmed and staff attacks alongside spatial magic, and now with my proper weight-shifting staff. It was remarkably intuitive, especially after putting up [Minor Wisdom]. Enough that I was starting to get suspicious. Was it really me coming up with this? The old me on Earth could never have invented a whole new type of martial arts. How the hell could I do it so easily here? Once again, I was left concerned and confused about what exactly the System was doing to my head. It was far too easy to treat the whole world as a game, and I needed to keep reminding myself that while I may be immune to the Law, that didn't mean the world had no effect on me at all. I found it more plausible that all I'd come up with was an idea, and now the System was somehow putting it into practice, dribbling knowledge into my head as it went.

With my mana dry, the guild master didn't stop for the seventh boss, erasing it in one swing and continuing his run. Given the earlier conversation, I ignored the chest as we ran past. As we jogged on towards the eighth, I tried to take my mind off uncomfortable System thoughts by pondering the way my mana regeneration worked. It was easy to believe it was completely System controlled, given how well defined regeneration rates were, and the existence of skills to boost pool size and regeneration, but exactly the same skills existed for stamina too. Stamina was not something that should be so easily quantifiable. It was very possible that mana shouldn't be either, but I had no experience of dealing with it outside of the System. Mana control skills let me shift mana around, and I'd previously used them to move mana into materials. Could I use them to move mana into me?

With [Mana Sense] I could feel out my own mana pool, knowing how full I was. With [Mana Perception], the range turned down to focus on my own body, I could see where my mana pool was; a clump of mana situated just above my heart. With the extra levels of perception I'd gained from the tournament, I could see even more; veins of mana snaked through my body, very much like blood vessels or nerves. I could also see how the clump was sucking in more mana from the surroundings. It raised the question of why regeneration rates didn't increase in the denser mana of the dungeon.

While I wanted to experiment with trying to suck up mana faster, that would be best done on the surface, where I'd be less likely to hurt myself. Not to mention being able to sit still. Trying to mess about with what appeared to be an important internal organ while jogging would be foolhardy to say the least. If it was a real, physical organ, that would be the first direct evidence I had of humans here not being biologically identical to Earth.

A goblin assassin tried to attack us. It failed miserably, body bisected by a backwards axe swing by the guild master, who didn't even turn around to look. Kari flinched at the display. Not at the casual use of power; he'd been tearing whole corridors to bits for most of the journey already, but at the way a monster had got so close without her noticing. I'd previously thought those goblin assassins were using something similar to [Stealth], but now that I had [Mana Perception] I knew that wasn't the case at all. I could see through [Stealth], whereas those goblins were still invisible to me. We were putting a lot of trust in the guild master to keep us safe here.

The eighth and ninth floor bosses vanished without a trace, along with sizeable chunks of their rooms, and we rapidly found ourselves on the last floor. Rather than remaining in the entrance room, we moved to a dead end room a couple of corridors away. We would probably be here a while, so it made sense to work somewhere the guild master only had a single entrance to defend. The poor third mage was panting, leaning against a wall and struggling to stay upright. Actually, now that we'd finally stopped...

Isla, Human, Water Mage (5/25)

ding

Skill [Appraisal] advanced to level 11

Another bonus; I hadn't levelled [Appraisal] for quite a while. And she was a water mage? Not the most common choice, but not one I hadn't seen before. And now I finally had her name. Meanwhile, Grover threw his pack to the floor and started undoing the straps that held it closed. From the size, there may well be a couple of dozen ingots in there. I should be a little faster than last time with my extra skill levels, but I was still glad we had a team. By myself, it would have taken an hour to work through.

What he removed from the pack wasn't any sort of metal, but rather a smaller bag, large enough only for a single ingot. Did he pack them all separately? That seemed a bit weird, but then rank fours were allowed to be a bit eccentric. Then he turned the small bag upside-down, and the bars of silver started falling out. Many many bars; more than a hundred by the time the clattering stopped. Right, of course a [Master Enchanter] would have flipping storage items. This was going to take more than an hour... And if he had more of them in his pack... Heck, for all I knew, the pack could also be magically expanded, and he could have a million of the things. Could you nest storage items like that? I was glad I had my normal delver gear on me; I was going to be in need of water and rations before all this was done.

The guild master snorted at my slack jawed expression. "What did you expect to happen? After finding out you could make mythril, the Emerald Caverns sent over most of their stock of silver. There's no way any sane dwarf would pass up an opportunity like this. Just be thankful news hasn't spread yet, or you'd be dealing with half the continent."

The Emerald Caverns? I'd never heard of them, but from the name and what the guild master just said, I could make an assumption. "Are the Emerald Caverns the original settlement of dwarfs?"

"Yes. The mountains north of here."

Wow. That sounded like the sort of thing I should know already. Actually, I think I almost did; wasn't I in the middle of looking up our surroundings in the library when I got interrupted, all those years ago? Anyway, one more depressing question I needed to ask... "So how much is there?"

"A thousand bars of silver, two thousand of steel."

Yay for base ten time units making the maths easier. At five minutes per ingot, that would be fifteen thousand minutes, or a hundred and fifty hours. Fifteen days. Even with three of us, it was five days' solid work. And all three mages were human. I dunno about dwarfs, but humans needed to sleep. It wasn't just food and water I needed here; it was a tent!

Kari raised her hand. Thank goodness I wasn't the only one complaining, but this wasn't a school. She was allowed to just speak... The guild master peered at her, which she took as her cue. "Excuse me, but how do I go to the toilet around here?"

Oh, right. First time in a dungeon. It's not like they contain bathrooms. And orcs wander on this floor, never mind invisible traps, so it wasn't safe for her to nip into a corridor. The guild master had no sympathy. "Just pick a wall. Don't leave this room, or my sight."

Kari blanched, apparently not having done her research before agreeing to this job. Despite how long ago the whole nappy episode had been, I still took perverse satisfaction in someone sharing some portion of my embarrassment, but I wasn't cruel enough to rub it in. Instead, I turned back to the guild master. "You know we aren't going to be able to convert that many bars today, right? That's a week's work. Do the Emerald Caverns not have a dungeon of their own?"

"Of course they do, but dwarfs can't learn [Mana Control] even if they wanted to. Just do what you can today. We'll leave this evening, and maybe tomorrow we'll have more volunteers."

Couldn't they? Why not? I knew beastkin had a mana penalty, so maybe there was something similar for dwarfs? And today was a day off from the tournament before things got going again tomorrow, so if anything, I'd expect less. "Hey, Kari. Are you staying for the week?"

A weak voice responded from the back of the room. "No, I'm heading back tonight. I have work to do in the village tomorrow."

I wasn't sure I wanted to do this all week, either. Hopefully, I could get a few more skill levels out of it, and I really wanted my new weapon before I got stuck in to dungeon delving again, so I suppose I wasn't too adverse. Plus the pay was ridiculous... Goodness knows what I'd do with all the mythril I'd get from it though, apart from perhaps making Remous extremely happy. Buying those silver rings was certainly a complete waste.

Kari turned out to have [Greater Mana Control] at level ten already, and could convert a silver ingot to mythril in a couple of minutes. Isla only had it at level three, and couldn't convert silver at all. She could just about manage the steel, so thankfully her trip wasn't wasted. I attempted a steel ingot too, in the hopes of producing the rank four version, but had no luck. I stuck to the silver; with my greater skill level, I could do an ingot in three minutes, and I settled into a steady groove of processing.

ding

Skill [Greater Mana Finesse] advanced to level 9