An Unbound Soul

The next day I was feeling right as rain and made it to the dungeon before fourth bell. Determined to be a bit more sensible with my life choices, I stayed above the floors where poison started appearing, and worked floor five instead.

The floor's goblin champions were starting to feel very poorly named, given that I was using no enhancement magic and was still taking less than five seconds to dispatch each group. Champions of being ineffectual, perhaps. That must be how the guild master felt about the floor ten boss, or presumably even lower in a deeper dungeon. I wondered how long it would take me to get that deep, and also considered the related question of whether the difference between floor ten and twenty would be as massive as between one and ten. It couldn't be, surely; if things kept escalating at that rate, monsters on the deeper floors would be shooting nukes. More likely that it was something closer to linear, so the deeper the floor, the less comparative difference one more floor made.

The following day I did the same thing again, except that I blindfolded myself with a strip of cloth before donning my helmet, getting an amusing reaction from the guard as I passed through the gate. I didn't want to get out of practice before returning to floor eight, and on the upper floors I had the advantage that a single slip wouldn't result in me getting gutted. I spent some time playing with the floor three boss, learning how to parry attacks using only [Mana Perception], and while my acuity was still nowhere near as good as proper eyesight, by the end I could at least manage to defend myself against the pack of sixteen lower level goblins.

ding

Skill [Mana Perception] advanced to level 11

Aside from the improvements to dismantling, which meant I was now extracting monster cores in mere seconds with single flicks of a knife, my mass of extra skills made no difference whatsoever. Perhaps the boost to unarmed had fed back some negligible amount into my fighting style, but if so, it wasn't enough to notice. The only difference it would make to delving was that I was now free to switch to whatever type of weapon I wanted, instead of being stuck with a staff. Not that I thought I needed to change; this weapon was working perfectly well for now. If anything, I wanted to stick a spike or blade on one end, now that the additional support to [Far Reach] meant that piercing or slicing attacks would be practical and it didn't matter if it got reclassified as a polearm. When I grew taller and needed to lengthen the staff, that would be how I'd do it.

It did make clear that I still needed some way of getting stronger. Maybe I could scrape a win against the eighth floor boss, now that I had experience, but it would be a close-run thing and there were still two floors to go after that. Picking up [Distortion] might aid against traps and archers, but there were no spells in the [Spatial Mage] arsenal to hold back a tide of charging goblins. I still had more levels to go in my weapon style, but it seemed that my best immediate option would be raw stats.

I could squeeze a few more levels out of my enhancement spells. With my maxed [Basic Crafting] I could replace my rings with self-made plus four versions the next time I was in the village, and at some point buy professionally made rank two versions. There would also be the bonus I'd get from completing [Body Mage], and whatever natural gains I made on top of that. After switching class, I was sure I'd be able to manage the floor eight boss, and floor nine on top of that.

Floor ten was still a worry, though. Would raised stats be enough to take out that army, or would I need some sort of qualitative improvement? I was sure enchanted mythril accessories would be more widespread by the time I was ready to try, and maybe I'd have found some way to weaponise fire crystals. Either way, I still had almost two years, so there was no need to rush.

After the couple of days hunting, my income was looking healthy enough to finish restocking on potions. It had been long enough since I'd been exposed to the poison that antidotes would be effective again, so I switched my working area to floor seven. I spent the last few days of summer working the dungeon, before it was once again time to return home.

Kari found my skill-overload misadventure hilarious, but my getting-sliced-open-and-almost-killed-in-the-dungeon story not so funny. Not that I'd been intending to share it with her; it was just that when I'd gone to visit Remous to knock out some new rings and get them enchanted, she'd been there working with him. Apparently they were taking my request to find some way of containing a crystal seriously.

Kari was wearing a steel orb on a chain around her neck, which they explained as being similar to the mechanism that stopped a water crystal from flooding our house. The main difference was that it was considerably harder to prevent mana leaking than unpressurised water, so the tolerances with which it needed to be built were far tighter, and they hadn't yet managed it. The crystal Kari was wearing was actually water affinity itself, and couldn't be weaponised.

That did get me thinking of alternative affinity options. I'd only been considering fire or ice so far, because their flavours of mana could be used offensively without any need for structure. Something like earth had offensive potential, but you couldn't just gather a clump of earth mana and fling it at something. I knew the potential of water from things like jet cutters back on Earth, but I had no way of generating that sort of pressure. Something like space or time no doubt had all sorts of scary potential, but again, without structure behind it, I'd probably just end up killing myself.

That left lightning. The crystal should be easy to contain; rather than trying to prevent the ingress of mana, it just needed to be covered in an insulator to stop the generated lightning jumping anywhere. I did some experiments with a crystal at a distance, and found I could indeed induce the lightning to strike a target of my choice by tracing paths of mana through the air, so using lightning as a weapon did seem viable. Kari agreed, and so instead of a mana-proof container, we spent the next few days experimenting with a lightning-proof one.

Our first prototype complete, Kari and I stood outside of the village. I was in front of a wooden target, wearing the crystal on a heavy bracelet over the top of my armour, with Kari a long way behind me. In retrospect, her distrust there should have been a warning sign, as should the way that I could feel my skin pricking despite the layers of leather between it and the crystal. I pointed my braceleted arm at the target, used my other hand to pull back the shielding, started to trace a path through the air to the target, then screamed as goodness knows how many volts of magical electricity decided to ground itself through my body instead of my target.

I fell to the floor, spasming. With the unshielded crystal in contact with the ground, it had less reason to run through me instead, giving me the second I needed to activate my physical buffs, which in turn gave me enough freedom of movement to rip off the damn bracelet and throw it a safe distance.

ding

Well, not a complete loss then. At least I got a skill level for one of my spells out of it.

New title acquired: [Self-Destructive]

Uh... What?

[Self-Destructive] - Despite your seriously lacking instinct for self-preservation, you've somehow managed to cling to life. Reduced wisdom stat growth. (Rank 1)

Darn. I suppose I had done more than my fair share of stupid things recently... New item for my to-do list; look up how to get rid of titles.

So, lesson learnt. A couple of layers of leather were not sufficient insulation to stop this crystal doing whatever it damn well pleased, even if I traced a nice path for it through the air. That was a bit of a show-stopper; it wasn't like I could wear a couple of inches of rubber between it and me. These professional crystals were just too much stronger than the weak little ones I could make, by an order of magnitude at least.

Wait, if one of the professional crystals was an order of magnitude stronger, then...

I was vaguely aware of Kari running over and shouting something, but I was too busy having another stupid idea to pay attention. Instead of trying to keep one big crystal under control, what about ten little ones? It wouldn't have worked with fire or ice, because trying to scoop out and merge the mana from the individual crystals would take more finesse than I was capable of, but with lightning I would just need to trace a slightly more complicated path. The overall amount of mana would be the same, but each individual crystal wouldn't need as much shielding. My crystals could literally be picked up in bare hands. Or at least, they used to be; that might have changed with my acquisition of [Versatile Crafter], but surely my leather armour on its own would still be sufficient.

Kari reminded me of her existence by hitting me with a [Heal]. "I've got it!" I burst out, jumping back to my feet and turning to her. "Rather than one big crystal, we just need to interlink lots of little ones!"

"Uh... Okay? Sure you don't want to take a moment to lie down or something?"

"No, not enough time! I need to make some more lightning crystals and see how much they've changed with my higher skill level."

"One, two, three," Kari started counting with a look of amusement.

Why? What was wrong with... Oh, right. Making crystals took components, and I didn't have any. "Okay, maybe it'll have to wait till my next trip back from Dawnhold."

"Four seconds. Well, this is a refreshing change; normally I'm the one getting overexcited."

"But we're so close! Forget it, I'm running over there now! I'll be back by this evening, so we can try again tomorrow."

"Seriously? Fine, see you tomorrow, you little madman."

Okay, maybe I was being a bit over-enthusiastic. There was no guarantee this would work any better than the last attempt, but it was the best shot I had at finally getting access to offensive magic, and it could be the thing that gave me the edge I need to conquer the dungeon. It was worth a try, and it wasn't as if I had anything better to do right now.

I rushed home, grabbed some coins, and set off for Dawnhold without even bothering to change. Fortunately, my little electrical mishap hadn't burnt a hole in my armour or anything, so I was good to go. Although, given that I was going to be running both ways, perhaps it was time to start buying skills again. I had the three soul points from my level ups to spend, which was enough to pick up a stamina boost.

ding

New skill acquired: [Clock]

New skill acquired: [Enhanced Stamina Recovery]

I was a long way from being Cluma, and it would be a while yet before I could sprint to Dawnhold and back flat out, but I could at least manage a speedy jog. Given that we'd been conducting our experiment in the morning, that was more than enough to get there before stores started closing. In retrospect, I probably should have changed; the delvers might be used to me, but the rest of the town were doing double-takes at the armoured kid running around. Not that it impacted my plans; I was in and out in a quarter hour, jogging back towards home and leaving the surprised faces behind.

ding

Skill [Enhanced Stamina Recovery] advanced to level 2

Hah, that was quick. My equivalent skill for mana hadn't been levelling all that fast, given how long ago I got it. Given that I was jogging at a rate that consumed stamina very slightly above the speed it regenerated, perhaps that was the trick? Instead of using spells in bursts, I should use them to consume mana at a more consistent rate, giving the regeneration a chance to even it out. Something to try in the future, anyway. For now, I had more important things to do.

Arriving home again, I swiftly created myself a lightning crystal. I could happily hold it in my gauntleted hand with no additional shielding needed, and no suspicious skin prickling. I could unhappily hold it in a bare hand; it resulted in a constant low-level electrocution that hurt and made it hard to move, but my health wasn't taking damage. I whipped up another nine of the things, happy to find that simply putting them near to each other wasn't enough to cause destructive interactions, but that I could still trace paths between them to generate sizeable arcs of lightning. I could even pick up the whole handful while armoured with no harmful effects, although given my embarrassing new title, I didn't try that bare handed.

So far, all my experiments were looking promising. Tomorrow we'd mount them all into a bracelet or something and see if I could start throwing lightning around without zapping myself again.