An Unbound Soul

"You sent me a message?"

"You aren't here because of my message? That was a waste of a messenger, then. I called for you because I'd finished your weapon."

So the dwarf the delvers' shop mentioned was Grover all along? As a [Master Enchanter] he would certainly have a rank three or four runecrafting skill, definitely higher than the rank two our shop had. Hopefully, my new weapon would be a good one, but with all the time we spent together, he could have mentioned it. The timing was great too; I'd just finished my tour, so could go with him immediately. I thanked Chris and followed Grover to his workroom.

He obviously did some smithing himself, given that it held the usual paraphernalia, but the whole place was a mess. Not just ingots and tools lying everywhere, but half-finished projects, clothes and even half-rotten food, too. I had to tread carefully around detritus to follow him to a work desk, on which was sat a rod of mana infused steel.

"Here it is. Give it a few swings and tell me what you think."

I went to pick it up, but massively underestimated the weight, immediately dropping it. It fell from the desk, and I had to jump backwards to avoid it crushing my feet. Whatever I landed on made a suspicious squishing noise. So much for being careful on my way in... The staff smashed into the floor with a clang, and Grover glared at me like I was an idiot. He was probably right; of course a staff of solid metal would be massively heavier than wood. I fired up [Strength] and picked it back up.

Mana Infused Steel and Mythril Rod (Quality: 50)

- Enchantment: Durability (Rank 4)

- Enchantment: Sharpness (Rank 4)

- Enchantment: Weight manipulation (Rank 4)

- Enchantment: Spatial affinity enhancement (Rank 4)

Four enchantments, all rank four? A quality that—if my guess about the way it worked was correct—came from someone with a level ten, rank three skill. But, on top of all that... "Mythril?!"

"You spotted that? You do indeed have a good eye," Grover commented, stroking his beard. "Yes, I suddenly found myself with quite a lot of it, so why not? By forging the core out of mythril and cladding it in steel, you get the advantage of the tougher material, without the enchanting penalty. The mythril will hold the enchantments forever. I've been watching you fight, and while I'm sure you could use body affinity enhancement or a mana cost reduction, a spatial affinity enhancement would better fit your fighting style. But I'm going to have to charge you the full two gold coins for it, along with the metal you provided."

So was the reason he was watching the tournament so that he could decide what enchantments would best suit me? That was some serious dedication... I gave it a twirl. It was very slightly longer than my old staff, accounting for my growth over the past half year. There was no outside sign that the core was a different material; it just looked like a solid rod of metal. The weight manipulation was no more responsive than my old weapon, but I could push it far further, cutting it down to a quarter of its original weight, which was enough that I wasn't worried about being able to carry the thing after [Strength] wore off, at least with my ring on. I tried to push the weight upwards, but after more than doubling it, I had to stop, even with my boosted strength. The upper bound was out of reach for now. As for what effect it would have on my space magic skills, I had no idea. This wasn't a viable place to test it.

"Well? What do you think?"

"It's awesome! Definitely higher quality than my old one. I look forward to bashing a monster with it."

"Of course it is," Grover snorted. "You know how many rank two delvers are walking around with masterwork weapons like that? Not many, that much I can tell you. Don't you dare go losing it in the dungeon."

Eep. Well, if he was that worried about it, he should have put some sort of lost-and-found enchantment on it... It was too late to go dungeon diving today anyway, but I intended to head straight there tomorrow. This was going to kick some serious goblin ass. Or bash some serious goblin head, more likely. The only problem was that I could already just about manage floor seven, and no matter how powerful a weapon I had, I wasn't going to touch floor eight without some method of locating the goblin assassins.

Thanking Grover, I set off back to my dorm room. The next day I ran the dungeon down to floor six, because I refused to fall victim to arrogance, and only after I'd got used to my new weapon would I risk soloing floor seven. It really was impressive, and if I'd thought I'd had some good head splashes before, now I was able to paint entire rooms in goblin gore. The spatial affinity enchantment combined with [Weapon Style: Flowing Mist] meant that I could now put the full force of a blow into [Far Reach], and the [Sharpness] enchantment meant that their iron armour performed worse than my leather, and effectively turned the goblins' skulls into eggshells. Once again, I was irritated about my helmet leaving the eyes and mouth open, but now for a completely different reason. Maybe I could find some goggles?

Buoyed by that success, the following day I risked floor seven, and successfully dispatched the boss without taking so much as a scratch. Given the rewards I picked up over the day, I suspected once more that having powerful teammates standing by harmed levelling even if they didn't take any action.

Skill [Greater Mana Control] advanced to level 10

Skill [Strength] advanced to level 9

Skill [Weapon Style: Flowing Mist] advanced to level 7

It went so well that I would have been prepared to attempt floor eight there and then, if not for those assassins. We'd previously been focused on the hidden dart traps, but even if I couldn't avoid triggering them, they were obvious once fired, and I had options to deal with them. The assassins were different; they could get right up close to me, and I couldn't perceive them at all, even with [Mana Perception]. No skills from my planned [Spatial Mage] class change would help either; the best option I could come up with was to use [Weft Walk] to speed run the whole dungeon floor without stopping, but that would be far too risky, and wouldn't help against the assassins in the boss chamber. Why hadn't Xander thought they would be a problem? Given that he'd based his whole class change suggestion around the dart traps, he must have had something. Was there a bit of information he'd forgotten to give me?

Now that I stretched my mind back, hadn't he said something about already having [Mana Control] and [Mana Sense], without saying anything about why that was important? Maybe that was for the assassins? What about the mana x-ray I'd given myself when investigating my mana storage organ? Would a similar process work for the assassins?

I decided to set that aside for the moment, given how much was already on my plate. Besides the fact that I hadn't been home in a while, I wanted to practise gathering mana from crystals, to experiment more with enchanting mythril rings, to search for any other rank one skills I could unlock, of which I knew I was at least missing masonry and the timekeeping one, and to spend more time in the research lab in the hopes that I could finish forming the new skill. Family came first, so the following day I went back home. Besides, I was looking forward to seeing Remous' face when I gave him an ingot of mythril to play with.

It was... disappointing. I think I'd backed myself into a corner there. I'd been doing ridiculous stuff for so long that it was getting hard to surprise people. It was getting to the point where if I didn't come back with fifty new levels and world-breaking new materials, people were more surprised than if I did. Really, that should have been a sign that it was time to take a break, but I was getting into the flow of things here, so instead I decided to treat it as a challenge. All I needed to do was find something even better. What could I one-up mythril with? It was supposed to be the highest rank material available, but maybe that was just because people hadn't discovered more yet. Could I force more mana into silver, like the way I could supposedly force more into steel to make a higher ranked material? What about the other metals dungeons produced, like copper, gold or platinum? Or could I go and find some titanium or aluminium ore somewhere, and manufacture them. Lots of options, but... not right now. I was already plenty busy enough as it was.

I moved on to enchanting experimentation next. One ingot was enough for hundreds of rings, and I had considerably more than one ingot. I'd also long since bribed my way into as much time in Remous' forge as I needed, as long as I didn't get in the way of his own work, thanks to the ingot supply I'd been feeding him. The limiting factor was reagents, given that recently I'd been shedding money as fast as I earned it, but I had enough for a dozen attempts. My poor smithing skill and Remous' tools, which weren't really aimed at detailed jewellery work, didn't help either, but fortunately all I was trying to do was produce unadorned metal bands.

ding

Skill [Basic Runecrafting] advanced to level 5

Skill [Basic Smithing] advanced to level 12

Skill [Basic Runecrafting] advanced to level 6

The quality of the rings I was making jumped from twelve to thirteen when [Basic Smithing] levelled, which more or less confirmed my thoughts on the way quality worked. My enchantments now provided plus two to each stat, so while I had less data to work with there, I would guess one more point every four levels. Again, I felt like this should be something that was well known by any enchanter, but apparently they'd got as far as 'manually made stat enchantments are useless' and not bothered experimenting further. Or if anyone had, the knowledge hadn't spread to the pair of enchanters I knew.

As for stacking, the limit turned out to be one of each enchantment type. Beyond that, I didn't run into any problems, but I didn't have many enchantment types to play with, so it wasn't even as if I could manage one ring per finger. My products still weren't as good as the dungeon-made item, but a plus two to each stat wasn't something to turn down. And this was just me playing around with a rank one skill; once professional enchanters started getting their hands on mythril, and new products started filtering through to stores, standard delver gear was likely to improve massively. In turn, we'd get more supplies coming from dungeons. The amount of change I was bringing about, most of which was completely accidental, really showed how stagnant the world was. Or had been.

With that over, I moved on to training my ability to wield the mana drawn from an ice crystal. Given my skill level increases since my last attempt, I now matched Kari, so icicles here I come! I would really have preferred fireballs, but messing around with fire in a village made mostly of wood, surrounded by lots of flammable scrubland, seemed like an exceedingly poor life choice. Of course, I still didn't have any easy way of weaponising them; I had the crystal in a dungeon stone box, which I set down on the ground a short distance from the village, and opened to give me access. I couldn't carry it around while open without freezing myself.

I ended up spending a few days getting the hang of it, during which time I managed to break quite a few of the crystals. Even if I found some method of keeping the crystal close and accessible without freezing myself, I still wasn't fully confident I could pull it off in a combat situation. In the more peaceful setting here, where I could take my time, I now had a wooden log that was full of holes, my later attempts piercing straight through. I gained another level of [Greater Mana Finesse] in the attempt, but I still had another couple of levels of both finesse and control I could gain. By the time I found some way to safely carry the crystals, I was sure I'd be able to put them to use in the dungeon.

Maybe I could just attach them to the end of a long stick? Ideally I'd want them as close to me as possible, but that much shouldn't be a problem. It would take up a hand I needed for my staff, though... Perhaps a pole attached to my armour somewhere? Ice crystal antenna for my helmet? That was an amusing thought, but these crystals were fragile; I doubted one would last long without getting smashed. It would still need an off switch too, for when I was out of the dungeon and not wearing it.

In less than a week, I'd made some damn good progress on my to-do list. I think I could call my enchanting experiments complete now; anything else I would be better off leaving to professionals. Utilising externally produced affinity mana was blocked on some way of safely carrying the crystals. Remous and Kari had both promised to have a think about it, but I suspected that was more in the domain of an enchanter. I should have asked Grover... Ah well, I was sure I'd bump into him before long. Then the time had come for the next thing on my list; learning some masonry!