I tried to ignore my stinging nose as we crossed the portal to Dawnhold. With my regeneration bonuses, it had stopped bleeding quickly enough, but I was still concerned it was broken. I needed to stop by the hospital for a quick [Heal].

"Oh, Peter," called the receptionist as we were leaving the building. "Grover wanted to see you."

"Thanks," I responded, wondering if he managed to convince mum to lend him Darren. Lord Reid would want a debrief too... Despite wanting to get back, I had some errands to deal with before I could return home.

Cluma gave me a suspiciously quick goodbye hug before running home to see her mum, doubtless to regale her with tales of her adventure. I almost thought she was avoiding me, but she'd made me promise to give her more English lessons, since she couldn't teleport back to the Sapphire Peaks with me. Had I accidentally given her the impression I didn't want hugs? Maybe she had misinterpreted my habit of dodging?

I headed to the hospital, where a quick [Heal] once again left me with an intact face, followed by Lord Reid's mansion. There was little to report to him beyond the fact that I'd found them, they were safe, but I hadn't been able to communicate freely yet and would be returning later.

That left the biggest task of the day; finding out what Grover had been up to in my absence. I meandered my way through the fields that lay between the town and the institute, happy to see that the building was still standing, but not in any particular hurry to experience the full force of Grover's enthusiasm.

I found him in his workroom, which was, for the first time ever, tidy. That may have had something to do with the presence of my mum, who was seated in a corner, sewing. Grover was working the forge, along with Hassok Rockdweller, the [Master Smith] from the Emerald Caverns. The sight of my mum caused me to look around with [Mana Sight], and sure enough, there was Darren. I'd expected to find him with Kari, but he was actually with Vargalas, and as far as I could tell, was engaged in some sort of competition with one of Vargalas' magical tesla coils. Probably best to ignore that, and just be thankful that I wasn't the only one who made for a poor childminder.

ding

Skill [Mana Sight] advanced to level 4

With Grover deep in concentration, I stayed out of their way and went to talk to mum instead, trying to converse over the loud hammering.

"Oh, Peter! Welcome back," she said, as she saw me. "How did it go?"

"It went well. We found a very freaked out pair of two-week-old harpy twins and managed to explain the situation to them. The mother, too. She was in the same state as you used to be. So, how are things here? Can't say I expected to find you in Grover's workroom."

"He made me an offer I couldn't refuse," she said, holding up her needle. She lent out Darren for the price of a new needle? It wasn't the golden-pink hue of orichalcum.

Mythril Needle (Quality: 50)

- Enchantment: Durability (Rank 4)

- Enchantment: Sharpness (Rank 4)

- Enchantment: Tailoring enhancement (Rank 4)

Okay, that's a damn good needle, and probably worth the trip. But then I noticed that while the needle wasn't the colour of orichalcum, the thread she was using was.

Orichalcum Thread (Rank 4)

The stuff can be made into threads fine enough to sew with?! Doesn't that mean it could be threaded into leather armour, for permanent, boosted enchantments? Or have they jumped straight to adamantite plate? They better not be overworking Darren... Anyway, how the hell are they going to engrave runes into threads. Even Grover couldn't possibly work with that level of detail.

Looking at what she was making, it seemed to be a regular, plain tunic, like anyone in the town might wear. The juxtaposition of this new super-material thread being threaded through cheap, regular cloth was strange, but I assumed there was a point to it.

"Cluma can finally get her silence enchanted clothing, if I get the hang of this," she answered without me even asking the question.

I took a moment's pause to pray that no-one in the delvers guild had weak hearts. Surely the delvers themselves wouldn't, but there were the receptionists, porters, waiters, cooks, dismantlers. They must be used to her by now. Surprise hugs must be a well-recognised workplace hazard.

The pair of dwarfs eventually finished their hammering, quenching a knife in a barrel of freezing water; I could see an ice crystal enclosed at the bottom with [Mana Sight]. I could also see the blade itself, which was hard to look at. It cast the same shadow as the adamantite ingot, so obviously there was adamantite in there, but the blade itself glowed. If I had to guess, they were using a combination of the two new materials to combine the structural properties of adamantite with the enchantment compatibility of orichalcum.

"Peter!" exclaimed Grover the moment he turned around. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Half an hour. You looked busy, so I didn't want to interrupt."

"I appreciate it. Still trying to get the hang of working this stuff. Doubt I'll ever be able to manage it on my own; it takes a rank four smith to do it any real justice."

"So, what did I miss? How much of the stuff do you have now?"

"Not that much, actually. After some discussion, we decided that the first focus should be rebuilding our mana concentration setup. We estimate that the incorporation of orichalcum into the design will give it a fifty percent boost, and hopefully that will be enough for regular mages to start producing the stuff. We can't rely on Darren for mass production."

I considered that, but I doubted that level of ambient mana and my level ten [Expert Mana Control] would be enough for me to produce orichalcum on my own. It certainly wouldn't be enough for adamantite. My increased cap of level fifteen should be enough for orichalcum, but adamantite would need either a large team of mages or a rank four control skill.

"Orichalcum isn't so important, given the sparsity of the gold supply, but we really want mass adamantite production," added Hassok. "Steel is in plentiful supply, and while silver is harder to get, it's not exactly rare. If we can produce adamantite armour and weapons, with mythril to hold the enchantments, even regular civilians would be able to deal with high-level monsters."

"Wait, regular civilians? Why would they need to fight?"

Hassok looked at me in confusion. "Given what happened to my home, isn't it obvious that we want to take precautions? It may have ended without casualties last time, thanks to the intervention of the earth mother, but from what you've said, she's in no position to help us next time. And even without casualties, the property damage was immense. Preparing weaponry that can hold an enchantment forever, stored until needed without worrying about decay, would be perfect."

They wanted to create a big stockpile of weapons and armour, so that if a dungeon break of that scale ever occurred again, the civilians would have a chance of protecting themselves? An interesting plan... It was certainly true that if anything like that did happen again, Erryn wouldn't be able to intervene. I'd noted the Dawnhold dungeon walls had got a bit higher, with some reinforcements added, but our dungeon was only ten floors. Even if it did completely empty itself, damage would be limited. Those living next to deeper dungeons must be terrified of a recurrence.

Erryn had never explained what had caused it, so no-one had any idea how likely a recurrence was. In the best case, the root cause was the same as regular dungeon breaks, and without Erryn, a recurrence wasn't possible. Given the extreme differences to a normal break, though, no-one wanted to take that bet. The guild was suddenly very nervous about rank fours dying in dungeons, which thankfully was something that was vanishingly rare to start with.

If a similar event occurred again, defending wouldn't be sufficient to fix it. What would they plan to do next? The guild had been able to spread the knowledge of destroying the dungeon core, Erryn never having re-established the perception filter that blocked knowledge of it, but the purification trick she pulled at the end wasn't something we could replicate. A group of light and life mages with mana control skills could do something, but the sheer scale of what Erryn did would require a team of thousands.

I did know I could destroy the corrupted fragments with my own soul affinity. Would that be enough?

"So does that mean you don't have my orichalcum ready to return?" I asked, at which Grover looked sheepish. Obviously not.

"If you need it desperately, but right now we'd prefer to keep what we can for experimentation. How about I make a few more enchanted orichalcum items for you, and a promise to do your new weapon once we have enough of the stuff?"

"I was intending to use it for a new weapon, anyway. In fact, you can have my adamantite too for it. It's not as if I have any hope of doing anything with it myself, apart possibly from bashing monsters over the head with an ingot."

Grover looked relieved. Yup, I'd seen this coming from a mile away. Not that I thought it was a bad trade; I was happy coming up with the ideas and helping to produce it, but I was under no delusions about my ability to actually make full use of it. Best to give it to those who could.

Alas, the small amounts of orichalcum he was willing to spare meant that we were limited on what we could get. Mum ended up with a full set of sewing and knitting needles. I had a new knife and a couple more specialised tools for dismantling, and Darren got a set of stat boosting rings, along with resistances to his various attuned affinities. With rank four enchantments, coupled with the effects of his [Pyromaniac] trait, he could now literally stick his arm into a fire. I wasn't entirely sure that was a good thing, but it made him happy, so meh.

We also got the silence enchanted clothing for Cluma. With her coming of age celebration coming up, mum wanted it for a present, and I could imagine she was going to leapfrog everyone to become Cluma's official Bestest Friend Ever as a result. Dad had nothing but a small trowel, any larger farming tools requiring far too much orichalcum to be practical.

Mum also had a few spools of the orichalcum thread to make more clothing with, although we'd have to come back later to get them enchanted. The clothing enchantment wasn't at all what I'd imagined. Mum wasn't using the thread for sewing cloth together, but was meticulously embroidering detailed patterns, following diagrams of runes given to her by Grover. Grover then performed the actual enchantment. He was interested in how far the method could be taken, so the extra spools and increasingly intricate rune designs he'd given mum were for the sake of research more than payment. Some of the high end ones looked insane, and I had no idea of what they would do, or how the heck anyone would be able to produce the required patterns.

Normally, I focused on skills and personal growth, but I had to admit to getting excited over the possibilities here. My staff relied on my own skills to use. The lightning glove was amazing and gave me far more offensive potential than I should have from my class alone, but it still required my skills to operate, and was limited by my own abilities, especially when I did things like active mana scanning. It wasn't a complete cheat.

Now they were talking about producing items that would let people who had never taken a single combat class fight on equal terms with the sort of monsters that had invaded the Emerald Caverns. Some of them had been level forty! Yes, high rank people would have high stats regardless of what classes they had taken, but it was still a weird thing to think about. They were, in a strange way I'd never even considered, trying to do things outside of the confines of the System, encouraging people to act outside of their classes.

And now they could also imbue permanent enchantments into regular clothing. What would an orichalcum reinforced rank four durability enchantment to do a regular tunic? I'd bet it would block a blade from a low level goblin. It's not as if mana fields are dangerous places anyway, but that sort of thing would be perfect for people hunting them for resources. Not to mention it would prevent clothes from wearing out. Whether it would be worth it would depend on the orichalcum supply, but it was certainly awesome to think about.

Discussing weapon designs with Grover and Hassok, we decided on a simple sword-staff, little more than a spear with a longer tip, sharpened on the edges. I'd been thinking of a halberd, or something else with an axe blade, but the tight confines of a dungeon meant that I'd often be unable to make wide swings. Even without extra protrusions, the length of the staff needed to be limited, and I'd still need a short-sword as backup for really tight spaces. I did want an equipment set suitable for more than Dawnhold, after all. At least I could get a full metal shaft again, given my superhuman strength. I didn't even need the weight enchantment these days, but it was still worthwhile for my weapon style and the ability to boost the weight.

The main issue was that it would count as a polearm instead of a staff, so wouldn't permit the spatial affinity enhancement enchantment my old staff had. The trade off of being able to make piercing and slashing attacks would be worth it, given that my weapon style skill already let me use [Far Reach] with impunity, but it would cause [Distortion] to take a hit. On the bright side, it would free up an enchantment slot for something else. I decided on a threat reduction enchantment that would make the weapon register as a smaller threat to [Threat Perception] type skills. That should synergise brilliantly with [Far Reach], letting me catch monsters from behind even if they had threat detection abilities.

We did discuss upgrades for my lightning glove, but with my mana recharge trick, it wouldn't be a huge upgrade over what I had. Maybe once I was below floor twenty somewhere, it would be worth getting a new one, but by then they might have come up with even better designs incorporating orichalcum. For now, I kept the one I had, and instead ordered a couple of new daggers for Cluma. She needed kit as good as mine if we were going to stick together.

I left the workshop with mum and picked up Darren on the way out, eliciting an aww when we told him it was time to stop playing with lightning. And then, much to my surprise, mum stopped in on another room on the way out, where a human I'd not met before handed her a couple of gold coins.

"What was that for?" I asked.

"Well, I can't let my own son pay for everything, now, can I?" she responded cryptically.

"Yes, but what was it for?"

"Remember when you were telling me about clothing from Earth, and you mentioned zips?"

...She didn't.

"Turns out that even a rank two smith could knock them out, once we got the design down. We had to improvise and adjust things a bit to get them sewn into the clothes, but it wasn't too bad."

Yup, she did. Mum has invented zips. I knew the principle behind them, but there's no way I could have made one. I had no idea how... Wait... I did. I knew exactly how to create a zip. I recalled the odd twist to [Basic Crafting] while I was at the Sapphire Peaks, and suddenly it made sense. While glasswork and engineering had created new skills, this had been added to an existing skill. Knowledge on how to make and insert zips had been downloaded into my head, and I'd barely even noticed. But inventing them in the first place was impressive. Not just my little brother, but I was proud of my mum, too. We're a whole overachieving family!

Apart from dad... Dad had some catching up to do.