Thomas looked over the air powered gun a bit more. It reminded Thomas of old fashioned flintlock pistols, though not nearly as complex or nice looking. Thomas picked up the gun to examine it a bit more.

Weapon Type: Magitech Tube Rarity: Normal Quality: Excellent Description: An extremely simple air-powered ranged weapon that fires round iron balls at a moderate velocity. A shot fired from this weapon is equivalent to 50 Power within 15 meters.

Thomas had no point of reference for how powerful the weapon might be, but if Hekrin's words were anything to go by it wasn't that powerful at all. Still, it was definitely more powerful than he was at the moment. He placed the gun back into its box and closed it before storing it inside of his storage ring. He smiled at Hekrin, "I'll do my best to bring honor to your legacy."

Hekrin smiled warmly, which really creeped Thomas out, and nodded in appreciation, "Good man. I know you haven't been able to get out much to earn experience with all the running around and working you had to do. I suggest you take a day or two to make yourself some weapons and gear, then spend another couple of days diving into the city's dungeon to rack up some experience. You should take a ship to the capital within the next four to five days though. You'll want to get there early for the registration at the academy. For the gold fee, I'm sorry to say that you're on your own."

Thomas smiled and nodded, "I'll make some gear, but I've already got more than enough money thanks to a deal I struck with Rock."

Hekrin nodded, "Good, you can use some of that to pay me back for any of the materials you use to make your gear."

Thomas chuckled and nodded, "Got it, Master."

Hekrin made his way to the door, but stopped, "Oh yeah. After you learn magic at the academy, don't forget to come back here so we can finish your training."

Thomas acknowledged Hekrin's comment and Hekrin left the workroom. Thomas looked over the room and contemplated what he should make first. He had himself covered on basic gear. He had his kukri for melee, his wrist crossbow for ranged, and various pieces of armor for his protection. He supposed he could enchant his leather armor, shinguards and wrist guards to start with. He could also make some supplementary items like grenades. He was tempted to make a better version of the gun but didn't feel like he had enough time. Besides, he wanted to stick with Hekrin's philosophy and heavily use magic when creating it. It wouldn't be any fun at all to make replicas of real-world guns, though he might use them for inspiration later.

Thomas decided to start with making a few grenades, but not using the same method that Hekrin had made him use previously. He intended to make something more lethal. Thomas lit the forge and placed an iron ingot to bring it up to temperature. Once it was hot he quickly cut it into quarters and used each quarter to create flat plates of iron. He then used the dishing tool and hammer to turn them into hemispheres. With that done he grabbed another ingot and brought it up to temperature before cutting it into quarters as well. He selected one quarter and started to hammer it out into a long thin square bar.

After some searching, Thomas found a small square die that would help him get the bar down to just a few millimeters on each side. Once the bar was formed, Thomas used a large cutting tool to clip the bar into small squares no larger than a few millimeters on every side. They weren't completely uniform, but they were similar enough. With a large number of the squares ready, he coated the interiors of the hemispheres with some glue and started to stick the squares inside of them. He left small sections on each hemisphere clear of the metal squares. Instead, he used a file to grind half circles into the clear areas, those spots would be the tops of the grenades.

While the glue dried, he used one of the spare pieces of the ingot to hammer out two of the pin-shaped triggers he would need for the two grenades. Once those were hammered out he set them to the side to cool and returned to working on the four grenade halves. He took them over to where the welding torch was sitting. It might be a piece of crap, but it would still work for now. Before using the torch this time he picked out a pair of thick leather gloves to keep his hands protected from flying sparks.

He took a breath and focused on activating his 'All Seeing Eyes'. Yesterday he'd activated a new function for them and he wanted to use it to protect his vision from the bright sparks generated by the welding torch. As soon as he tried, his vision turned extremely dark. He could feel a moderate amount of his mana draining while his vision was darkened. He immediately picked up the welding torch and placed a piece of iron wire into it. He aligned two halves of a grenade and held them together with a leather thong while he channeled mana into his right hand.

He touched the iron wire to the seam of the grenade and immediately caused a bright discharge of electricity and sparks as he began welding. He felt his mana rapidly draining as he used the welding torch, it was clearly too energy intensive for him at the moment, but it was still better than using leather straps and glue to hold the grenade together. Once the wire was expended he stopped and stepped back to relax. His mana was severely drained and he really disliked the feeling.

Thomas downed a mana potion and used 'Serenity' to recover his mana over the course of a few minutes. Once his mana was recovered he went back to welding the grenades together. It took five more cycles of welding and recovering his mana to completely weld both grenades together. Thomas didn't bother grinding the welds until they were smooth, the grenades were just going to explode and throw shrapnel everywhere anyway.

Thomas set the grenades to the side and chipped off a few chunks of Firestone to grind into powder. Thomas carefully fed the Firestone powder into the grenade shells and carefully compacted it with a wooden dowel. Once both grenades were filled with a fair amount of the Firestone powder, only about halfway to leave room for the flames to expand and cause pressure, he set them to the side and retrieved the two pin-like pieces that would be the triggers.

It didn't take much time at all for him to enchant the two triggers, insert them into the grenades and glue them in place. Once he finished them he got a new system notice.

System Notice: You have created a heavily modified 'Basic Grenade'. You may choose to give it a new name or leave the name as is.

"New name."

System Notice: Please state the new name for the heavily modified 'Basic Grenade'.

"Frag Grenade."

System Notice: 'Frag Grenade' registered. System Notice: You have created a Normal grade Frag Grenade. Quality: Excellent. You have gained 144 Magitech Engineering experience. (x2) Item Type: Frag Grenade Rarity: Normal Quality: Excellent Description: A heavily modified version of the 'Basic Grenade' designed to incorporate small pieces of metal for fragmentation. The fragments launched by the detonation of the Frag Grenade are effective out to a range of 15 meters and are potentially deadly to any creatures with an Endurance below 60.

Thomas smiled as he read over the notifications and details of the frag grenade. He was a little disappointed that his 'Inventor' title hadn't kicked in, but it made sense since he hadn't invented something completely new and had just modified something that already existed. Though that brought up the question, would he get his 'Inventor' bonus for making any guns? Would something completely different be considered 'never seen before' or a modification of the original concept? Well, there was no point in asking, he would find out later when he started to make some.

Thomas stored the two frag grenades in his storage ring and looked around the shop. His next step was enchanting his gear. If he was going to go into the dungeon he might as well make it as easy on himself as possible. Unless something changed he would be inside of it solo so he needed to be as prepared as he could manage. Thomas pulled his leather armor off and set it on the workbench. He had several ideas for increasing the defensive abilities of his armor but wasn't sure what would be feasible and worried some of his ideas would simply be far too mana intensive.

Thinking of that, Thomas quickly spent all of his experience to increase his Magic attribute. He hadn't gained very much experience at all lately and was starting to feel the sting of it. Hekrin was right, he needed to farm some experience, badly. Still, he had just enough experience to increase his Magic attribute by four points at the moment, so he did so. This left him with a measly three experience points to his name while marginally increasing the amount of mana he had access too. Thomas was starting to suspect that Magic would quickly become his primary attribute as it pertained heavily to his chosen profession.

After contemplating for a moment, he decided to only enchant his chest armor to help protect his vital organs from damage. Enchanted armor would lower his available mana for as long as he wore the armor so having too many pieces enchanted would lower his mana pool significantly and make it harder to use any offensive enchantments he might place on his weapons. Having decided that, he began prepping the tools needed to enchant the armor then studied it while it rested on the worktable. For the time being, he decided to stick with a simple enchantment on the armor to make sure it wouldn't cost him too much mana to maintain.

It only took a few moments for him to picture the necessary enchantment since he'd done it so many times previously. It took him very little time to carve out the symbol and add a durability enchantment to the armor. He decided to go with durability to keep the armor durable while it protected him. After finishing the enchantment he gained 124 Magitech Engineering experience and increased its rank to 54.

Armor Type: Leather Armor Rarity: Normal (Enchanted) Quality: Above Average Description: A simple leather breastplate that provides minimal protection to the wearer's vital organs. Enchantment: Durability - While worn this armor reduces the wearer's Magic attribute by 5 and increases the wearers Endurance attribute by 10 in addition to the normal protection provided by the armor.

Thomas set the armor to the side now that he was done with it. He didn't want to lower his maximum mana for now so wearing it would be an issue. Thomas pulled his kukri out and looked at it while trying to think of a good enchantment for it. He contemplated trying to add some elemental damage to it, such as fire or electricity. Though he felt like they might be a bit mana intensive for his available mana so he pushed the thought to the side for now. Despite thinking about it he ended up carving a simple sharpness enchantment onto the kukri to enhance it's chopping prowess.

Thomas slipped the kukri into its sheath and thought about what he should do next. He'd only made two grenades but considering that this was still the starter city he felt they would only be worthwhile in an emergency situation. Or perhaps to deal with a large group of weaker monsters. He thought about enchanting the wrist crossbow but it was already enchanted to make it function and he didn't want to use too much mana when firing bolts from it.

Thomas couldn't help but sigh, there was so much he wanted to do and now that he was free to do it he didn't feel like he had the resources. Hekrin was definitely right, he needed to seriously hit the dungeon over the next few days to get as much experience as he can to increase his attributes. Especially his Magic attribute. Thomas crossed his arms over his chest and contemplated what he should do next. It didn't take him long to realize there was something he had nearly completely forgotten!

Thomas searched around Hekrin's shop for a bit and eventually found his stash of Alchemy supplies. He pulled out a few bundles of Blood Root and Mending Flowers. That's right, he was missing healing potions! He wasn't some expert fighter, though he was experienced he would likely end up taking damage at some point and some healing potions would come in handy when that happened. He placed the ingredients and a few mana crystals on the work table then fetched the formation plate that would help him purify the materials.

Thomas spent the rest of the day producing healing potions and using his own 'Transmutation' ability to extract the 'hearts' of the Blood Root and Mending Flowers to create half a dozen Pure Blood Health Potions. His work earned him 155 Magitech Engineering experience per potion. By the time the potions were bottled and inside of his storage ring, he had managed to rank up his Magitech Engineering once again and raise it to rank 55. He looked over his supplies and smiled, he had almost everything he needed. The last item on his list was to stop by the general store and buy some ammunition for his wrist crossbow. Thomas cleaned up the workroom and headed towards the storefront to pay Hekrin for the materials he used before heading to purchase his ammo.