Blacksmith vs. the System 36-40 (Patreon)

— Chapter 36

The moment I stepped through the gate, I got charged by multiple monsters. I could easily count forty of them around me, making it a challenge. That would have been dangerous enough, but a few of the insect monsters had stopped their charge to spit out some kind of discharge.

Eleanor had mentioned that their attacks only damaged armor, but I wasn’t willing to test it. Instead, I dodged them first before I turned the momentum into a charge, shattering the armor of the first beast. I was glad that I didn’t rely on the mana blow to deal with them, as it would have made dodging the insects far more difficult.

Instead, I let expertise from the skill handle the challenge, limiting my involvement only to a strategic level, dealing with the ranged attackers first. Ordinarily, it would have been a bad idea to jump into the middle of a horde of monsters even if they were weaker.

But a combat skill at its limit was truly wondrous.

“After dealing with that attack, I understand why exploring new dungeons is such a perilous journey,” I muttered even as I took a deep breath. Just trying to get into a new floor was difficult, and that was after it was cleaned by Eleanor just yesterday.

I couldn’t even imagine the difficulty of facing a completely new dungeon, with no idea of what it might hold. It also explained why they had spent all that money to defend the other side of the entrance.

“Still, not all is bad,” I said. With traversing between floors even more difficult than I had expected, people shouldn’t walk around carelessly, meaning my forge was even less likely to be discovered.

Only once I dealt with the monsters, did I decide to examine my immediate surroundings. Just as Eleanor had stated, the mysterious mist was blocking more of my sight. I walked, however, halfway in, I pressed my hand on a herb and used Nurture.

[-9 Health]

This time, it worked. I moved deeper. The same attempt didn’t work when the plant was outside the dungeon.

However, while that was another interesting experiment to run, it didn’t have any priority. I needed to discover the entrance to the third floor first.

I pulled a piece of paper, carefully mapping my surroundings, not wanting to get lost. It was a slow, laborious process, the limited visual range making it far more difficult. I didn’t want to get lost.

However, as I walked away, I noticed that it wasn’t too much of a problem. Even as the mist had covered the dungeon gate, I could still see its glow. I considered it to be of interest, as it hadn’t worked that way from the other side.

I wondered if it worked the same way for the main entrance. If it did, the walls had been thick enough to block the sight.

I walked directly to test its limit, only stopping to kill the monsters — and spending some time piling them to get better skills. One ranged attack, I deliberately let it deliver a glancing blow. It hurt somewhat, but nowhere strong enough to actually qualify as damage.

[-5 Health]

However, it damaged the armor and weapons even more than the feedback corrosion effect.

“Huh,” I exclaimed, but before making a move, I started searching for the gate to the third floor. Amusingly, it had been easier than expected. I just needed to follow the path with the least amount of monsters, making a careful note of every milestone on my way to make sure I wouldn’t get lost, only slowing down to replenish my mana completely.

Going through the third floor would be even more difficult.

While walking, I found a lot of crystals and herbs, far more than I could use in a short period. After all, it clearly took a while for them to grow, and the first floor was too crowded for them to be found regularly.

Maybe I could make a stockpile near the forge. Once I revealed the anti-corrosion metal, they would be far more valuable. Which was true even if there were other blacksmiths with the same recipe.

It was better to be prepared.

Following Eleanor’s path, finding the third gate hadn’t been that difficult in terms of practical matters, but I was confronted by a swarm twice. Three hundred monsters had managed to slow me down somewhat, but I was at the next gate almost an hour later, and that was with stopping enough times to create a map.

I was not exactly a cartographer, but creating a guide for myself wasn’t that difficult.

“Now, the real challenge,” I muttered as I twirled my hammer. At the next gate, there would be a giant bug, which would have been a troubling encounter even without mixing it with the other beasts. I was tempted to return, and try to convince Eleanor about having a second location to experiment. It would be much safer.

But, that was my pre-Calamity perspective talking. I tried to stay safe for three years, and where did that get me?

Nowhere.

I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on my hammer, and prepared myself for a fight, already making plans on how to handle a giant monster depending on its size and position. Eleanor had mentioned them to be rare, but I wanted to be prepared for the worst case.

As I stepped to the third floor, I found myself facing another swarm that had gathered around the gate. There were about fifty of them, a mixture of ranged and melee variants, but there was no giant variant. “Excellent,” I muttered even as I dealt with them rapidly, slowing down just to kick them into a pile.

That way, I received Common skills rather than Basic ones. Unfortunately, I had two more Common Nurture skills, one common spear skill, and another that didn’t react to me.

How annoying.

“I wonder how rare the giant insects are,” I questioned as I tightened my grip further, and started walking forward, once again careful not to lose my way. The second floor was larger than the first, and the third was larger than the second.

About a mile away from the gate, I faced the first giant insect. “Hey there, buddy,” I said while circling the monstrosity, testing its speed. In a straight line, it was faster than its smaller counterparts, but it was slower to turn.

I approached it from the side and smashed one of its legs. It shattered temporarily, but I could already see it was recovering from the damage. Meanwhile, I could feel my hammer degrade far compared to when I dealt with its smaller counterparts.

“That’s annoying,” I muttered even as I rotated around it, and used Inspect to check the damage. It was a good thing I did, as not only was it damaged more, but there was also a persistent effect that stuck around. A burst of mana stopped it.

[-1 Mana]

I deliberately circled it twice, testing its limits. However, I avoided its back, afraid of a nasty surprise. My concern only got stronger once I noticed it trying to reverse direction. Carefully, I rotated around it, testing it a while longer, making sure I wouldn't be met with a nasty surprise while switching skills.

[-12 Mana]

I might not push more than a couple points of mana outside with meditation without killing myself, but things doing that was much easier under the command of the Forge skill. It settled around the hammer, ready to smash the nonexistent metal into pieces.

One that turned my strike devastating as it landed. The hammer was protected, while the leg stopped recovering. I struck it again and it stopped moving. Another blow and its mandible had been broken. Three more blows, and it stopped moving.

I pulled back, waiting for it to disappear, not even trying to pull its shell. There was no need to take the risk in case it was playing dead or had another nasty surprise.

There was none. It faded, leaving behind another skill.

 [Skill Stone: Nurture (Common)]

“Nice,” I muttered even as I twirled it in my hand. Not because I needed another Nurture skill, but because it was the first time a higher rank skill dropped from the monsters without piling them together. Confirming that the giant monsters weren’t too hard to deal with was another benefit.

After testing my attacks on a few of them, it would probably be much easier. I was immediately struck with a desire to hunt another, this time to rip mana-dense sections of its shell to see if it had other uses.

But, that was for later. First, I continued moving deeper and deeper, searching for a nice hidden spot for my forge.

In the end, I found a sharp cliff with almost nothing. One that I could dig a deep hole to set up my forge, and bury whenever my work gets finished. However, I didn’t have anything to dig with.

Luckily, I was a blacksmith who could forge with mana, and one thing I didn’t lack was mana. I quickly forged a huge pick and an equally large shovel, both designed to put my strength advantage to use. They weren’t as good as it could have been without a proper fire, but mana was a good way to compensate.

As I dug a pit, I learned the reason for not damaging the dungeon. The more I dug, the more monsters swarmed toward me. Which was excellent news.

After all, I needed a lot of mana.

*****

— Chapter 37

“Wow, they are burning better than I had expected,” I said as I settled a crude crucible on top of the hearth that held the fire, the iron it held had already turned into a white hot liquid, ready to be purified. Nearby, there was an anvil that was cooling down.

I was so happy that I could cheat with mana, as otherwise, I would have had to work hard to set up a proper blast furnace. I still might if I wanted to increase my production rate, but for the moment, this was sufficient.

“Now, let’s gear up,” I said and used the available metal to make myself a full set of gear, including full body armor, a large tower shield with sharp edges and a spike that I could drive into the beasts, a war hammer made of pure metal, and a thick, stout sword that was designed to work perfectly with Stalwart Guard technique.

According to the information my skill had provided, all of them were perfectly immune to corrosion.

A small part of me couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Letting everything be handled by a skill was very underwhelming, but considering the potential benefits, I was more than ready to ignore that detail.

It had been merely three hours, which was an incredibly short amount of time; but then, having my Mana Forge skill that high had provided me with many benefits. It would have been even faster, but …

I lacked water to quench the metal, which meant I needed to use mana to compensate for it, slowing the process. Luckily, with my increased Meditation, I was able to refill my mana far faster, allowing me to bypass my biggest problem.

At least, for the moment. For the future, I needed to find a reason to bring some more water inside. Maybe I could set up a small garden on the first floor, arguably to test whether I could create a sustainable setup for myself to get some extra Health.

It wasn’t a novel idea. The current dungeon was hardly the biggest one imaginable. There were other, bigger dungeons, and for some of them, it was more efficient to set up gardens to provide food rather than transport them from outside.

I doubted that it was the case for our dungeon, considering the desert environment surrounding it, but I just needed an excuse. Between that, and going to the fourth floor just to bring some water, a fake garden was clearly the better option … once I had others in my guild that could handle that.

My new, nameless guild.

“Actually, it might be easier to test the fourth floor first,” I said even as I put my finishing touches to the set. After all, the whole point was to stay hidden. It would probably avoid attention for a while, but sooner or later, people would start poking around.

Still, I didn’t need to hurry up. Actually, it wasn’t even certain that I would be able to find the way to the fourth floor. Not with the way my sight was blocked.

“I’m trying to handle too many projects,” I said even as I started moving. I collected my tools, and left my equipment buried, but left the forge uncovered. I wanted to see if the monsters would attack and destroy it.

They shouldn’t, but it was better safe than sorry. It wouldn’t bother me if my current setup had been destroyed, but it wouldn’t be the same if they attacked equipment I had worked harder to put together.

“But first, let’s see if I can get a renewable source of wood,” I said. The plants I used didn’t have any seeds, but trying to grow plants using saplings should have been sustainable.

It worked … after a fashion.

[-280 Health]

[Nurture (Uncommon) 3 -> 5]

“Nice jump in skill level,” I muttered. It was a nice surprise, but maybe the damage to the plant had affected the skill development, just as the quality of the weapon affected Repair. However, I didn’t start experimenting immediately.

I was not exactly happy with the amount of Health it took, and the resulting limited impact. But then, I was trying to force growth in a dead land, lacking any kind of water. Hardly an efficient method. While some interesting ideas popped into my mind, I ignored them.

“Nurturing Nurture is not a priority,” I said, then groaned, glad that I was alone. It was not a pun I was proud of.

 I moved away from the forge, letting the monsters gather around it again, to see if they would attack it. Luckily, it stayed untouched even when I deliberately drew a small-sized swarm near it. It was excellent news, as this meant that my plans to create a new forge on the fourth floor were viable.

As long as I confirmed the anti-corrosive Mana alloy worked as well as my skill suggested. I spent an hour cleaning the immediate surroundings of the forge, collecting skills, other dungeon materials, and various samples, but the real aim was to test the anti-corrosive Mana alloy under repeated stress.

It passed perfectly, even when I deliberately hacked at a giant bug multiple times to push it to its limits. It not only resisted the effects of the smaller insects but also the giant ones’, which had been far easier to deal with without worrying about the destruction of the weapons. It meant that I could slowly hack them to death using my sword and shield combo, the stronger enemy once again speeding up the growth of Stalwart Guard, finally passing the fifty proficiency mark.

My attempts to figure out the mana attack, on the other hand, didn’t work as well.

A talk with Eleanor seemed to be necessary to push it to the limit as I had done with the hammer skill. But, that required an opportunity. Maybe after Maria had returned, during another dinner... Assuming, of course, they would continue to invite me.

 However, even as I tested those advantages and made plans, I couldn’t help but wonder about why the dungeons existed. More importantly, why were they so convenient? The biggest challenge the current dungeon provided was the corrosion effect, and it had all the materials needed to solve that.

And, the recipe it required was conveniently included in a Rare skill, a classification that was supposed to be easy to attain for other classes according to Maria’s ramblings, mentioning categories such as Legendary casually.

“Maybe I should keep a lid on this anti-corrosive material a bit,” I decided. My success was making me a little nervous. It wasn’t always good to be too successful.

Ironically, that immediately changed my plans in an interesting way. While I hadn’t promised Eleanor that I could invent anti-corrosive material and openly warned her that it might fail, I was very much aware that she took that as a certainty.

Meaning, I needed to preemptively counter any loss of goodwill she might get from it. The most obvious way … improving my abilities with the sword.

“A little trip upstairs is in order,” I said even as I cut the trip a little short, even suppressing the temptation to test the shells I took from the giant monsters. It was frustrating because I was looking forward to discovering the differences between the two, curious whether there were any differences other than their mana density.

I wanted to change the carts and get more metal, and not just because I wanted to prepare for the future. No, I wanted to forge swords of different shapes and sizes and see if they would work. At the same time, as I climbed up, I was examining the Sharpness enchantment on the sword, wondering if it would give me a clue.

The mana blow from the forging was more like a thick, confusing web that reminded me of a complicated knitting pattern, but the details were a mystery.

Mana was essentially still a black box for me.

As I climbed up, I tried to channel the Mana discharge in multiple thin lines, trying to replicate sharpness enchantment in some way.

I refilled my mana almost ten times during the long trip between the third floor and the first floor, only to fail at every single attempt. It didn’t even give me a new skill point in anything. Not even in Meditation.

It was the flip side of forcing skills to grow unnaturally. There was no easy benefit to be gained from the routine activities.

“I’m so lucky that I don’t have to ration my Mana,” I muttered even as I arrived at my broken cart, and filled it with mostly random garbage. I dragged it out of its hiding spot, dragging it back to the main area.

“Hey,” I said as I waved at a familiar guard.

”It looks like your trip has been a little unlucky,” he said.

“Unfortunately,” I replied even as a couple of workers arrived to pack them to be delivered to the town. Another service I could use for a limited time. “Why don’t I get a new cart for the second trip.”

“Sure, but I can’t waive the penalty,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that you brought the cart back. You still need to pay five silver.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said as I looked around, only to notice a stall nearby. “What’s that?” I asked.

“A few people trying to sell the skills they got from the dungeon. A total ripoff,” he said.

“Well, it’s better than going back to town,” I replied. “Is there anything useful?”

“Maybe if you want to change your sword style for more efficient hunting, but I don’t think a Common skill is worth it,” he said as he pointed at my bulky shield. It wasn’t as big as the tower shield I forged, but it was still big.

“No. It’s not like I’m going to spend my days killing monsters. I’m here to laze around and watch others make money for me.”

“That’s the dream,” the guard replied. However, even as we chatted, I went to the skill rack. Everything they were trying to sell was common and basic. Understandable. While I was able to get uncommon skills, I had to kill a lot of monsters at the same time for it.

However, it did give me a sad confirmation. I wasn’t able to learn anything above basic when it came to magic skills. The lack of Intelligence stumped me once more. I still spent ten silver there, purchasing one of every skill.

Including one that I had been trying to get all day.

[Skill Stone: Fire Bolt (Basic)]

*****

— Chapter 38

For the second trip, I didn’t destroy the cart completely. While it was a good way to get some extra iron, it would be suspicious if I brought back every single one with significant damage.

Instead, I spent some time reforging the parts. There were several thick metal bands, which I melted and reforged with a stone core. It was too much effort for something that could be purchased for three copper coins, but the opportunity cost was too critical.

Only after I was finished with the cart and arrived at the second floor, I actually absorbed my newest skill. My first real magical one.

[Fire Bolt (Basic) - 1]

Did I expect it to be useful in any kind of combat situation? Not particularly. Basic skills were basic for a reason. But, I was sure that it would be situationally useful during my smithing. The ability to reheat the metal locally, for example, could be really useful.

But, the real objective was to give me an idea of how to use mana.

I was tempted to start playing with it immediately, but I managed to hold myself back until I arrived at the third floor, afraid that someone would stumble upon me. Throwing fire bolts around was not exactly a good way of progressing.

Still, before trying it for the first time, I made sure to clean my surroundings. I didn’t want to be interrupted. With that, I looked at a rock thirty feet away, opened my hand, and triggered the skill.

The first time using a new skill was always weird, and it had been even more true for the fire bolt. The mana burst out of my hand, with an intensity I could have never imagined.

[-100 Mana]

I tensed even as I felt the mana take shape in my hand, rotating and transforming in a complicated pattern that I couldn’t begin to understand. I had already assumed that the mana blow was complicated. Watching my mana reshape under the control of the skill was nothing less than a true miracle.

A fire appeared from nothingness and collided against the rock with an eerie precision.

Well, at least, it was the perspective of my scientist side.

From a tactical perspective, it was just garbage. It took almost ten seconds for me to channel the spell. It consumed a truly ridiculous amount of mana, and for all of it, I had nothing to show but a projectile attack that moved slower than an ordinary arrow, which could easily be dodged.

I was glad that I hadn’t wasted a skill slot for Ice Blast the day before.

Of course, its tactical uselessness meant nothing. I could already imagine a dozen different ways I could use it for my experiments. But first, I needed to push it to the limit and see if I could glean any insights that I could apply to my sword attack.

My first instinct was to stop and see if I could modify the skill somewhat. With the perks from multiple skills allowing me to interact with mana, it felt like a worthwhile experiment to run. However, I still remembered how trying to do that with Meditation blew on my face.

“Maybe not now,” I muttered even as I searched for another monster. After a few quick takedowns followed by absorption, I was ready to cast again. A few more times, I targeted my skill at the rocks, but there had been no improvement.

Just like any other skill, it required a lot of repetition. Unfortunately, unlike other skills, every repeat required a lengthy pause as I refilled my mana. Luckily, it took less than five minutes to hunt the necessary monsters and absorb them.

Before the perks, filling my Mana reserves took closer to half an hour.

The next step was to target the monsters, but I wasn’t in a hurry to do that. I wasn’t able to even walk while trying to cast the spell, and ten seconds was too long to deal with the monsters. Instead, I stopped by my temporary forge, dropped the new batch of iron I had brought with me, and changed into the anti-corrosive set.

Even then, I didn’t attack a monster immediately, but searched for a specific opponent.

What I was looking for was one of the creatures with the ranged attack. I cleaned their immediate surroundings and used the shield to block their attack, which gave me the leisurely ten seconds I had required.

[-100 Mana]

[Fire Bolt (Basic) - 1 -> 6]

“Wow, that’s a nice jump,” I muttered. Targeting stronger monsters always helped, not to mention improving basic skills was easier than their better variants. “Now, let’s see what changed.”

Another attempt, once again targeting a ranged monster. This time, the spell gathered faster, something like eight seconds, not to mention flew faster and burned brighter. A nice range of benefits, though mostly incremental.

A few more repeats and I soon reached the improvement limit.

[Fire Bolt (Basic) - 23 -> 25]

The casting time had dropped to just below five seconds, which was barely enough to attack the giant beasts. I tried that just to be on the safe side, but it didn’t go up.

It turned out that people were right about the limits of the Basic skills. Worse, there was no Perk.

A pity. An extra perk would have been useful.

Once it reached the limit, I decided to test a few other things. I wasn’t able to move while casting, because it was somewhat anchored in the air. However, my experience with the camouflage ring showed that such requirements were rather arbitrary.

But, breaking it was a mission for another time. At first, I attempted interrupting spells. It was not as hard as I feared. Nothing like the disaster reversing the meditation technique had triggered. It was easiest when I interrupted once I let out all the mana, but interrupting halfway was also safe.

It just gave me more resistance, but at this point, I was used to interrupting skills exactly when I wanted to. Three years of practice was truly useful.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t learn much from the way the mana moved. Despite what I had hoped, it wasn’t the exact same pattern every single time. While it had roughly the same shape, even getting a rough sense was next to impossible.

Suddenly, I understood what Maria meant by it being impossible to sketch properly. Truly, what she was able to draw was leagues more complicated than what I had been able to even comprehend.

“Alright, now I understand why they need Intelligence,” I groaned. It probably required Intelligence to direct and control the mana, which was a level of multitasking even a skill couldn’t handle alone.

Well, at least, that was my current working theory, one that I couldn’t examine one way or another. One that I wanted to push more, but could not.

The trick with the sword was far more important. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a sword technique that was anywhere close to anything I had in my forging techniques. Though, there was a chance it existed, but I wasn’t able to access it.

Another arbitrary restriction.

A spear, on the other hand, could be classified as a chisel if one squinted enough. There was no reason for it not to work. I still needed a skill, but that could be mixed with the search for the dungeon door for the next floor. All I needed was for me to slow down slightly to make sure the monsters I killed connected. It didn’t take too many small monsters to make sure every giant bug dropped a skill of Uncommon variety — which now I could distinguish thanks to a quick talk with the skill vendor.

Previously, I wasn’t able to get much information on it, with most people hiding the information. Understandable, as when I had the money to buy skills, they were still rare enough that even common ones had required connections to acquire.

And, once they started to get more common, I was poor enough to be treated as a nuisance. In that regard, my current stage showed a significant difference, in which I looked like an adventurer with a lot of money to throw around.

Of course, it was still nothing more than a reasonable hypothesis. I fired up the forge once more and started creating a multitude of different chisels, ignoring the limits set by the System. And, if at one point, those chisels had started suspiciously like short spears, it was surely an accident.

“Not bad,” I said as I waved around my ugly chisel made entirely of metal, with a thick wedge at the front.

“Now, all I need is to set a search pattern,” I said as I moved a while. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the density of giant monsters varied greatly based on the direction I picked. Eleanor had already mentioned that the giant ones were mostly spilling from the next floor.

“Probably the right path,” I muttered even as I shifted to my hammer, angling myself to avoid the charge of a giant monster while making sure the second one had been blocked by the first. It was challenging enough even without factoring in the ordinary monsters making things more complicated.

Luckily, the new armor was allowing me to block the corrosion attacks, or dealing with the combination of monsters would have been a messy challenge.

But, while it had been difficult, I made sure to slowly immobilize the giant ones first before it disappeared.

The reward had been equally impressive.

[Skill Stone: Swift Spear (Uncommon)]

A short but painful absorption period later, I concentrated, targeting the nearest stone, treating it as a target I needed to shape as a grindstone. The mana pattern appeared in front of it. At this point, switching between attacks was a common trick.

[Swift Spear (Uncommon) 1 -> 7 ]

“Marvelous.”

*****

— Chapter 39

“And, stay down, ugly bastard,” I said even as I pushed my abomination of a spear through the skin of an even uglier giant insect monster, feeling excited and satisfied at the same time.

After all, I had just brought a skill from nothing to its limit in less than half an hour.

[Swift Spear (Uncommon) 98 -> 100]

[Perk Options — Fleeting Step / Charge]

“I wonder if that’s a record,” I said even as I ripped the shell of the giant monster I had taken down, and started my trek back to the forge. Now that the skill had reached its limit, I could create a more fitting weapon than the ugly monstrosity I had created to abuse the mismatch.

Just like Hammer of Might required a proper heavy-headed hammer to show its benefits, Swift Spear required something tall and with a decent elasticity to properly show its power.

While I probably couldn’t create something that would show the full potential of the technique without high-grade wood — as there was a limit to the elasticity that could be shown by a pure metal handle — I should still be able to replicate it somewhat.

However, while I was on the way, I made sure to choose a perk option, one that didn’t require even the slightest thought. Fleeting Step.

After all, I had my Hammer of Might for situations that required power, and Stalwart Guard was excellent when I needed to defend myself. Meanwhile, Swift Spear, true to its name, focused more on mobility. It wasn’t exactly my strongest suit, but considering the effort it required, I was still more than happy to take it.

Fleeting Step transformed the skill somewhat, giving me an even better ability to dance between the attacks. But, even as I tested it, I could feel that, somewhat, it was my stats that weren't supporting it properly.

My guess was that my Dexterity had been barely enough to allow me to learn it.

“Not that I’m complaining,” I groaned as I charged among a small swarm, intentionally letting them surround me, yet dodging them with ease. Not even a splatter of a ranged attack landed on me. I could have dealt with them easily, but instead, I let them attack me, while I limited myself to deflecting their mandibles.

Just because I had a skill at its limit didn’t mean that I could use it well.

The skill was fascinating, especially with Fleeting Step mixed in. It allowed me to dance among the attacks from the monsters with the elegance of a dancer. It didn’t make me run faster at longer distances, but it actually helped me to climb the cliffs and other surfaces.

I couldn’t simply climb a ninety-degree surface, but anything with a rough surface was a fair deal. If a mountain goat could climb it, I had a fair chance. “Fascinating.” Of course, in a world where people could actually fly, it wasn’t as fascinating, but that was just the reality.

It meant I could actually ditch the swarms by using the natural impediments, which was a good thing. That way, I didn’t have to kill the monsters in the first two floors, which should keep the others from getting suspicious about the lack of monsters in a certain direction.

“And, that’s not the only benefit,” I muttered as I switched weapons, and started engaging with monsters using Stalwart Guard. I had already used my lessons from the hammer technique to improve it, and when it came to it, sword and spear had much more in common regarding the fundamentals.

Which was why, the progress I had made when I had arrived back at to forge was only to be expected. More than enough to impress Eleanor.

[Stalwart Guard (Uncommon) - 57]

The best part was that I hadn’t even pushed it to the limit. But, for once, I decided to slow down. I wanted it to look impressive, not unbelievable.

Once I forged myself a new, seven-foot-long spear, I decided to leave everything but my hammer in my forge. Searching the gate for the next floor while running as fast as I could manage seemed like a fitting task.

One particularly great advantage I had was my Strength, allowing me to break the shell just as easily without waiting for the beast to attack. It was even a better fit for hunting on the first floor without damaging the shell as long as corrosion wasn’t a concern.

But then, without the corrosion effect, a lot of things were easier.

As I faced my next challenge — four giant monsters in one horde — I was suddenly glad that I decided to add the spear to the mix. Hammer had the necessary power to take down the beast in one hit as long as I could hit a weak spot thanks to Shattering Blow, but reaching that weak spot had been the problem.

With Fleeting Step, I could simply climb on top of them, the corrosion effect uselessly crashing against my metal greaves.

Suddenly, the fights were less like a deadly struggle, and more like an action movie. Cheating was truly fun. Once I climbed to their back, all I needed was to switch to the hammer. One blow and the giant insects died.

Too bad piling four of them together still granted me with an Uncommon skill, one that I couldn’t even use.

I had been hoping for a Rare one.

“Maybe next time,” I muttered even as I continued my dedicated dash, not even slowing down to pick up the shells or the crystals. The only thing I slowed down for was to take note of the various geographical features to prevent myself from getting lost.

No, I just wanted to find the gate, and while the density of the giant monsters had given me a direction to search, it was not exactly a compass. And, the twenty-yard vision range wasn’t exactly making it easier.

The dungeon fog — which was not a real fog but a weird energy — was a mixed blessing. Its existence was an inconvenience to be sure, but only because it was there, I had dared to set up a hidden forge.

“Finally,” I shouted in celebration when I arrived at the gate I had been searching for. Around it, there were eight giant monsters, which had been not exactly inconvenient to deal with with the trick of combining two skills at their limits.

I was able to kill all of them in under one minute. Throwing them together had been the bigger challenge.

They were not exactly small. Even with my strength, I couldn’t casually pile them.

“It’s worth it,” I said when I found a skill that had been glowing in an unfamiliar pattern.

[Skill Stone: Nurture (Rare)]

I examined the skill. It was rare, yet it didn’t have any kind of qualifier. I wondered if it was something that could happen for all skills. Was there an inferior version of Mana Forge that I could get from dungeons, or was it only something that was relevant for the Nurture skill…

Frankly, it wouldn't be the first way the System discriminated against the Farmer class.

I was tempted to absorb it, but I decided not to. It was tempting, but it was far from the most urgent task I had in mind. I put it in my sack before I turned toward the next challenge I wanted to face.

The gate.

“Unto the breach once more,” I said as I took a step forward, finally ready to face the next batch. It was a risky step, one that I would have been far more reticent to take without Swift Spear and Fleeting Step. But then again, it wasn’t the first time the dungeon offered a nice solution to the problem it presented.

As I landed, the first thing that caught my attention was the mist. Not just the dungeon energy we referred to as such, but a real one, enough to make the vision even more difficult.

That meant I had no idea how many monsters I had to deal with. But, I could already count six giant monsters mixed with a true swarm.

They charged.

I jumped.

Frankly, I didn’t know what I could call the following encounter. It was a baffling mixture of boring and exciting. My conscious mind treated it as a disaster, wave after wave of insects popping out of the mist to overwhelm me, like I was in a desperate last stand.

But also, it was boring. The only thing I really paid attention to was keeping track of the death of the first monster of the pile while they routinely disappeared because I had been using them as a platform to fight rather than letting the bog close around me.

But, their disappearance was not a waste. As, without exception, they all faded into Rare skill stones. Two of them were Nurture, which I recognized without touching. The others were a mystery. However, the endless wave of attack continued, preventing me from checking it.

The monsters continued to appear endlessly, showing me the reason why Eleanor regularly cleansed the first two floors.

It was truly endless. I fought and fought, the battle slowly turning into something as routine as forging another weapon.

I would have complained if it wasn’t for a very welcome notification.

[Level 36 -> 37]

[+2 Vitality, +2 Strength,, +2 Dexterity]

*****

— Chapter 40

An hour after I had passed through the gate, after killing almost five hundred giant insect monsters, and even more smaller insects, I finally stopped pushing forward, and started to retreat. I might not be physically exhausted, but it was not true from a mental perspective.

But, being under constant siege by monsters had grown exhausting despite the relative tedium.

I wondered if it was an ordinary problem, or if it was what happened to a dungeon that had been left unattended for a long time — Eleanor explicitly mentioned that she wasn’t coming down to the fourth floor to cleanse.

However, the reason didn’t matter in the short term. Either way, it meant that I had to delay my plans to move my forge into the fourth floor. I might have to spend an even longer time than I had expected.

Still, even as I retreated back to the gate, I wasn’t feeling defeated. The incursion might have been exhausting, but it was also profitable. I was holding almost a dozen Rare skills, and even more Uncommon ones — unfortunately, all of them were either unusable for me or another copy of Nurture.

Then, there was the other, even more concrete benefit.

[Level 37 -> 38]

[+2 Vitality, +2 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Essence]

And, they were not the only discoveries. Some of the rocks I touched reacted to my Forge talent. They contained iron. It wasn’t dense enough to make it worth my while to collect it. Even the richest rock had an iron content of barely more than five percent, which meant that collecting and processing them would have taken a lot of time even if I wasn’t attacked by monsters every second.

The trick with the carts was far more efficient. Still, it was always pleasant to have an alternative path. Also, it was convenient enough that I didn’t need to go back to the forge or destroy a part of my weapon to forge a large bucket, bringing water and soil samples together.

The main objective was to test it for forging, to see whether it could be used for quenching the weapons I forged to cool down, freeing me from the need to use mana to compensate. But, that was not the only purpose I had in mind for it.

I wanted to test its effect on Nurture as well, which was why I didn’t scoop just water, but also the mulch from the bottom. Considering how the other materials worked, it was worth a try.

It was not a suggestion from my skill that led me to that decision, but my common sense. Well, that, and the memory of my considerable success, using silver and gold to push my Forge skill higher. There was no reason it wouldn’t work on Nurture.

It wasn’t the first experiment I did. I had already tried that with a half-dead cutting, but the constant corrosion effect had destroyed it before I could even start my experiment. Luckily, it didn’t affect flesh.

“Now, let’s try it,” I muttered even as I dug a small pit, and put a palm-full of mulch and water. Then, I followed up by putting another cutting, ready to fill it with Health through Nurture.

It failed.

“Alright. Even that’s too much,” I muttered. This time, I decided to reverse the direction slightly. I put another cutting into the ground and flooded it with Health until it started showing signs of growth.

[-182 Health]

[Nurture (Uncommon) 5 -> 6]

Once again, a wasteful burst, barely able to turn the cutting into a sapling. But that was the fate of experimenting. I reached into my pocket, ready to take a concentrated food pill … only to find they had been already destroyed by the corrosive attacks. “Alright, that was an oversight,” I muttered. I hadn’t expected it to work that way.

The leather pouch survived, but the signs of degradation were still obvious.

However, the map I created had been destroyed as well.

Luckily, my memory was still fresh, and I was confident I could go back without being touched, or I would have been in big, big trouble.

It looked like moving to the fourth floor wouldn’t have been as easy as I had expected.

However, without the ability to refresh my Health, I needed to stop my plans of pushing Nurture to its limit. “One last experiment,” I muttered even as I took a drop of water, and put it in the roots. The small sapling had immediately started wilting.

I put my hand to its surface. A flood of Health counteracted the corrosion. When it ended, the sapling was slightly taller. Not enough to be worth … in terms of growth.

[-133 Health]

[Nurture (Uncommon) 6 -> 9]

Increasing the skill was a far more valuable benefit. “A note, bring a lot of food to replenish health tomorrow,” I said, curious about how far I could push Nurture here, and whether it could grow a small woodland for me to actually benefit from it.

Also, it was finally nice to discover a trick to improve Nurture. Disseminating it alone would solve a lot of problems Farmers faced. I just needed to find a way to spread that without ending up being assassinated.

Or, one that would trigger a bloody labor dispute. Empowering workers and lower classes historically had been a bloody affair, and that was before the people with power had the ability to cut metal and summon lightning.

No, it required a lot of finesse.

“I know what I will be experimenting on tonight,” I said. I had turned the bucket into an anti-corrosion metal, but I made sure to cover it with a more ordinary alloy.

From outside, it looked like an ordinary water can, which meant, no one would pay attention to it. It was important. While bringing some water samples was not wrong, it would also reveal that I had gone deep enough to reach the fourth floor.

I still stopped by my forge and buried it with a layer of dirt to keep its presence a secret, and left my other set there, including my spear. However, while I did that, I still broke a thick stick of wood and roughly shaped it until the System started to treat it as a spear.

Fleeting Step would be useful for getting out of the dungeon.

Running full speed without slowing down, it didn’t take long for me to reach the gate to the first floor. Just to be on the safe side, I spent ten minutes hunting, collecting enough broken shells to fill the cart, enough not to be suspicious.

“It’s such a pity,” I muttered even as I examined the broken shells. I would have received more than twenty gold for them if they were not broken. However, I didn’t have the ability to remove them without causing damage. Even if I had, carefully removing it would have been too challenging.

“What if I create a small device for it,” I muttered, my mind already working on how to do it. The skill didn’t have any such plan, because it didn’t include any device with moving parts, but as long as I come up with a working design, it should be doable to make a hand-powered device, maybe one with a simple crank and multiple blades…

 On the way back, I chatted with the guards. When I arrived back at my temporary residence, however, I didn’t start playing with it. While I had a general idea, I didn’t know how long it would take to create a working copy.

Or, even if I could.

As much as I was tempted, pushing Nurture to the next stage was a better idea.

I once again picked three pots, one with an herb from the dungeon, and two others. While I made the preparations, I ate a quick meal, which replenished my Health, even faster than I had been used to. Still, it took time.

The first result from the experiment, using the water from the fourth floor made the dungeon herb react. That alone was an interesting output, showing that it was possible to grow those plants outside the dungeon.

Whether it was worth the effort was a completely different thing. The empirical result was … underwhelming. Meanwhile, even a small drop of it had been enough to kill the other two plants, and Nurture was not enough to save them.

“Progress,” I said still. In the next step, I used some of the materials I had prepared for forging, mixing them with a drop of swamp water. I didn’t have to work hard or think, because my experiment methodology was essentially a rough version of my anti-corrosion material experiment.

Some of them, I even flooded with my mana to see if it helped. That, it didn’t. I continued to experiment.

Was it absurd to try and make a fertilizer almost the same way I tried to prepare an alloy? It certainly should have been … but an hour into the experiment, I was looking at an empty water bottle and a dozen herbs with various states of growth, which disagreed with the absurdity of my methodology.

What I had managed to make was more of a poison than a fertilizer. It was certainly not worth the effort from any productivity angle.

But, from a System enhancement angle, it was a completely different story.

[Nurture (Uncommon) - 34]

Amusingly, I had a feeling that what really improved the skill was not the growth aspect, but the poison aspect, while curing it pushed the skill higher. Unfortunately, the water I had brought with me was gone, preventing me from experimenting further.

I needed to return to the fourth floor for more material first.

Luckily, I had a lot of other things to do … including my first prototype of a shell removal machine.