An Unbound Soul

The way people had talked about class feats as being a common soul point source, I'd expected to pick them up from time to time, yet that was my first ever one and it took me pushing against the System to get it. Was I doing anything wrong there? Maybe they were more common at higher ranks? Not that I could imagine anyone ever getting as many soul points as I had through [Researcher]; I'd waited ages for enough soul points for [Analysis], and now I'd overshot.

ding

New skill acquired: [Analysis]

It didn't eat [Appraisal], but then [Appraisal] hadn't eaten [Inspection] either. Let's see what it can do! I looked over at my armour and fired my three appraisal skills in turn.

Leather Armour

Leather Armour (Rank 3)

Dire Wolf Leather Armour (Quality: 46)

- Enchantment: Comfort (Rank 2)

- Enchantment: Durability (Rank 2)

Nice—that was a sizeable step up from [Appraisal]. I could see the material and enchantments, and the rank had been replaced by what appeared to be a more granular quality rating. I'd bet that would show the difference between an item made with a level one basic crafting skill to one at level ten. On the downside, I didn't get the exact quality rating on the individual enchantments, and I felt a significant expenditure of mana when using the skill. A check of my status confirmed it had dropped by ten. The lower rank skills only used one third of a point, and despite being unaffected by [Greater Mana Finesse], were cheap enough that I didn't care. This one wasn't going to be something I could use thoughtlessly, but for now I still had a nearly full mana pool, so I pointed it at a few more interesting things.

Wood and Steel Staff (Quality: 45)

- Enchantment: Durability (Rank 2)

- Enchantment: Weight manipulation (Rank 2)

Ring of Strength (Quality: 21)

- Enchantment: Strength (Rank 2)

- Enchantment: Comfort (Rank 2)

Mythril Ring (Quality: 49)

- Enchantment: Endurance (Rank 1)

Fabric Bag (Quality: 26)

- Enchantment: Storage (Rank 4)

- Enchantment: Durability (Rank 4)

Mythril Ingot (Rank 4)

The display of the ingot hadn't changed, but I supposed there wasn't really much to say about a solid lump of metal. It would have been useful to give me its weight, but it seemed that wasn't something I was going to get at this rank. The dungeon made item had a descriptive name that didn't include a material, unlike everything else. From the spread of quality ratings, I would hazard a guess that one to twenty would be rank one, twenty-one to forty rank two and so on. Rank zero would be a quality rating of zero. Or maybe something negative, given how much the System liked to mock me.

I was interested in what it would say about a person, but there weren't any around. No, wait, I was being an idiot. Of course there was a person available. I looked down at myself.

Peter, Human

Huh? That was only an [Inspection]. What was going on there? If it wasn't self-targetable, it shouldn't work at all, not just... No, wait, I was still being an idiot. And now I was out of mana. I disabled [Privacy] for the first time since I'd bought it, waited for sufficient regeneration, and tried again.

Name: Peter

Species: Human

Class: Body Mage (Level 11/31)

Class History: [Commoner] [Apprentice Mage]

Soul Points: 1

Health: 27/27

Stamina: 55/55

Mana: 1.37/71.28

Strength: 16(+5)

Dexterity: 18

Endurance: 17(+1)

Intelligence: 22

Wisdom: 19

Charisma: 18

Rank 1 Spells: [Minor Strength 12] [Far Step 12] [Minor Speed 12] [Minor Dexterity 12] [Minor Endurance 12] [Minor Intelligence 10] [Minor Wisdom 11] [Minor Charisma 12] [Far Reach 12] [Minor Slow 12]

Rank 2 Spells: [XXXX] [XXXX] [XXXX]

Rank 1 Skills: [Inspection 10] [Meditation 12] [Enlarged Mana Pool 12] [Privacy 12] [Weapon Proficiency: Staff 12] [Basic Carpentry 9] [Basic Smithing 11] [Enlarged Stamina Pool 10] [Dismantling 7] [Concealment 6] [Basic Alchemy 2] [Basic Runecrafting 4] [Weapon Proficiency: Unarmed 9]

Rank 2 Skills: [XXXX] [XXXX] [XXXX] [XXXX] [XXXX]

Rank 3 Skills: [XXXX]

Traits: [XXXX] [XXXX] [XXXX] [Xenophilia]

Titles: [XXXX] [XXXX] [XXXX] [XXXX]

Quests: [Conquer the Dawnhold Dungeon Solo]

That was just my usual status, except that I couldn't see anything higher than rank one. At least now I knew how it worked, so I couldn't complain about wasting mana. Tomorrow I'd get to see what monsters looked like with this skill, but for today, it was time to sleep.

The next day, I again accompanied the guild master, Grover and Isla into the dungeon. Despite the guild master's hopes, we'd attracted no new members for today's expedition. Either there simply weren't any mages around with the required mana control skills, or else they were all occupied with the tournament. It may have been more efficient to wait until it was over, but Grover seemed excited to get his hands on any amount of mythril at all as soon as possible.

The guild master had me fight the bosses again, and we got to the fifth floor without a problem.

Orc (Level 10)

Health: 40/40

Stamina: 40/40

Mana: 10/10

Strength: 40

Dexterity: 25

Endurance: 35

Intelligence: 5

Wisdom: 10

Charisma: 1

So monsters had the normal stats, but no classes, skills, traits or titles, and there was no indication on there of his special roar attack. Those physical stats were impressive; even with my buffs, he was still stronger than me. Fortunately, he was comparatively slow and stupid. I dived in and danced around him, my staff and I never quite where he expected.

ding

Skill [Weapon Proficiency: Unarmed] advanced to level 10

You have formed a new skill: [Weapon Style: Flowing Mist]

Class [Body Mage] advanced to level 12

Class level increased intelligence by 1

[Weapon Style: Flowing Mist] - You are a ghost on the battlefield. Your location, your stats and your weapon can all change in an instant. (Rank 2)

And there was my new skill, along with yet another class level. That made five in less than two weeks. If I could keep that up, I could be rank five in a couple of years. Actually, thinking of it like that, it was obvious why no-one ever reached rank five; even at this utterly insane levelling speed, it would still take years to get there. I gained the skill at level five, and there wasn't any sudden influx of knowledge. I'd have to see what happened as it levelled up.

Running along the sixth floor, I funnelled mana into myself. Now that I knew what I was doing, I could keep it up while jogging with ease, and even on this lowish floor it tripled my mana regeneration. This was going to be great for my staying power in dungeons. It was just a shame that I didn't get another new skill from it, and I had to keep concentrating. If there wasn't a one man demolition team in front of me, I wouldn't be able to get away with splitting my attention while moving. Hopefully that was a weakness that would improve with practice, as I picked up some of the magical equivalent of muscle memory.

On engaging the sixth floor boss, it was immediately apparent that despite the lack of new knowledge, my new skill did have an effect. I could suddenly put a lot more force into attacks with [Far Reach] without breaking the spell, and could sustain the force for long enough that piercing attacks may now be viable. I could still hit harder the shorter the phased distance, but I was suddenly an effective mid range fighter, able to deliver heavy blows from far outside of what I would have considered melee range. The set of goblins went down with greater ease than I'd ever handled them with before. Enough that if the guild master had given me time to regain more of my spent mana, I'd have attempted the seventh floor boss too.

Of course, this sudden change didn't escape the notice of the others. The guild master just grunted, because of course being able to whack someone with a stick from five metres away wasn't at all impressive to someone who could wipe an entire room out of existence from whatever distance he damn well pleased. Isla didn't seem to have much knowledge of melee, so while she noticed a change she wasn't interested in why. Grover was the one who ended up questioning me, and I spent the rest of the journey to the tenth floor explaining my new skill and the combination of proficiencies and spells that it came from.

Once we got to the bottom, I spent a boring day pumping mana into silver, bereft of further skill gains. With my level up from the previous evening, I worked a little more efficiently, and I managed more than two hundred ingots. My share came to twenty-one, which I stashed into my bag. On the way out, no-one even mentioned the door to the core room, giving me confirmation that all memory of it had been erased.

One other change from yesterday was that the chest contained no magic item. The guild master snorted again. "Dungeons don't like giving out rewards when they aren't warranted. It obviously got fed up of me tearing it up already."

That was a pity. I was hoping I'd get to loot the magical items all week.

The following day, with the same set of teammates, I skipped the sixth floor boss in favour of attacking the seventh; the goblin captain and his five knights on their armoured dire wolf steeds. I lived up to my skill description as I went for the captain, and wherever the knights were, I wasn't. Whenever he guarded, my weapon was elsewhere, or the weight shifts caused him to misjudge the parry, or I simply phased straight through his sword. The constant uses of [Far Step] and [Far Reach] were leaking my mana like a sieve, but it was seriously effective. Even eleven on one, they couldn't touch me. I did find that I couldn't concentrate on the captain, despite wanting to get rid of the buff effect he had on the knights; he was too tough to take down in a few blows, and staying near him would let the knights box me in. I had to attack opportunistically.

There was one difficult moment when I used [Far Reach] to jab my staff between the legs of a wolf, and while I successfully tangled it up and sent it sprawling, it tore my weapon from my hands in the process, leaving me needing to expend another [Far Reach] to grab it again. In the end, my mana ran out before the supply of opponents did, with me only managing to dispatch two wolves and a knight. Perhaps if I hadn't spent mana on the fifth floor boss I could have done better, but on this occasion I needed to back off and let the guild master finish the job.

Grover was watching the whole thing intensely, stroking his beard and obviously absorbed in my fighting style. I wasn't sure why he cared, given that he was an enchanter who didn't fight at all. I expect he could deal with this boss simply by virtue of his ridiculous rank four stats. Wait, I was still being an idiot. When would I ever stop? Why hadn't I used [Analysis] on him and the guild master? I couldn't now that my mana was so low, but I'd had plenty of time yesterday, and hadn't thought of it once.

We reached the tenth floor and got stuck into the grind of high rank metal manufacture. There was no way this was going to become my life, however much they paid me. A few days to a week here and there, sure, but I could never make a permanent job out of this. For that matter, what about the guild master? How much paperwork was he building up, spending all day in the dungeon for days on end? Speaking of the guild master, by this point my mana had recovered sufficiently.

Cassian, Dwarf, Axe Lord (67/147)

Whu? Why couldn't I see his full status? It couldn't be [Privacy], or I wouldn't be able to see his level. And that level was immense. He was more than three quarters of the way through rank four already, so why was hitting rank five considered mythical? What about our dwarven enchanter?

Grover, Dwarf, Master Enchanter (25/125)

His class level was lower, but given the total level, he'd been through two rank two classes. Dammit, why couldn't I see his full status? It worked fine on Isla, but there was nothing particularly interesting there. Maybe this was like [Appraisal], and I needed to be higher level than the target?

By this point, Isla could make mythril, but she was slower than me, and since she could make an ingot of mana infused steel in under a minute, she focused on that. By the end of the day, it was obvious that tomorrow would be enough to finish off the pile. The following day, there were still no additional helpers, still just me and Isla, so our group of four headed in once again. I didn't know why Grover insisted on coming; he wasn't serving a purpose other than standing around to watch. It wasn't as if he needed to keep an eye on the Emerald Cavern's metal supply; no-one was going to steal it. No-one but me knew what stealing was.

This time around, I left all but the easiest bosses to the guild master and took a stab at the seventh floor with full pools. With more mana, and knowing what to expect, the fight went far more smoothly. As I crippled or killed more goblins and wolves, the frequency with which I had to jump around slowed, lessening the drain on my mana. It took practically my whole tank, and my armour gathered a few more scrapes by the end, but this time I emerged victorious.

ding

Skill [Weapon Style: Flowing Mist] advanced to level 6

And got a skill level out of it, too. I didn't feel any new knowledge trickle in with the level up, but rather I seemed to have been improving gradually since I obtained the skill, so it was indeed behaving differently from other skills. I wonder if my martial bracelet affects this skill? How would I even tell? My status had handy plus signs from my rings, but nothing for skills. Another UX failure. Next time I talked with Erryn, I needed to have a chat with her about user interface design.

On the tenth floor, we finished up the pile of ingots, and Grover thankfully didn't pull out another bag. That was four days of long work, from which I'd gained enough mythril to last a lifetime, if all I made from it was accessories. I traded some for mana infused steel with Isla, which Grover informed me was actually a more durable metal, and only had disadvantages for enchanting, or if you cared about weight. With that over, I wanted to head back to the village, but I felt I should at least stick my head into the research institute to see what they'd been up to. It was my fault it existed in the first place, after all, and I'd been studiously ignoring it ever since.