Over the course of the next six hours, Thomas made his way through the third floor of the dungeon and slaughtered trolls left and right. During this time he did a little experimenting with the trolls and came to the conclusion that they had somewhere between 250 to 300 Endurance. He reached this conclusion by attempting to use his new greatsword without the flames activated. When he did his hits with the sword barely bruised the trolls and their regeneration immediately reversed any minimal damage he did manage to do. He even took out his Peace Maker and shot a troll with it. The results could be classified as a 'boo-boo' to the troll. The bullet had managed to barely pierce the troll's skin before it was pushed out by the regenerating wound. The bullet had completely flattened on impact with the troll's skin. Suffice to say, trolls were tough as nails and even tougher with their regeneration to heal their wounds. Without a specialized weapon or spells to kill them the trolls were extremely tough opponents.

The difference in fighting a troll with and without his greatsword was night and day. So he stuck to using the greatsword for the majority of his time hunting trolls. This just reaffirmed to Thomas that his decision earlier to have balanced stats and rely on his equipment was the right choice. Even if he wasn't strictly following that decision right this moment. He needed more mana to do his work and make stronger gear so he would focus on that for now and once the gear was made he would bring his other attributes up to par with his Magic. He also took this opportunity to work on his swordsmanship with a greatsword. Not that they were particularly elegant weapons but he still used rooms with single trolls on them to take some time to practice it and increase his skill with the sword.

During his time in the dungeon, he slaughtered nearly fifty trolls. It doesn't seem like much but with only between one to three trolls in each room, it was a lot of walking around and time resting after using the flaming greatsword for a bit. Even though the number of trolls slaughtered was relatively small compared to goblins or orcs, the amount of experience he gained was phenomenal. He currently had yet another 125,000 experience to spend on raising his attributes. Honestly, it was just insane. However, it did present his with a rather large issue. If he could gain so much experience all by himself then what about the pirates? Clearly they had been here for some time and had this dungeon all to themselves. How many times had they run it? Just how much experience did they have? He had to admit that he was worried.

Thomas stepped into the last room before the safe room with the teleportation circle and looked at the single troll within it. As usual, the troll let out a deafening roar but before ti could even finish, Thomas's flaming greatsword bisected it at the waist. As the troll fell to the ground, he had a nonchalant look on his face until...

System Notice: Quick Learner ( C ) has reached rank 100! Revealing hidden conditions for evolution.

Quick Learner Rank 100 - 100/100 - Passed

Two Skills/Abilities/Magic Rank 100 - 3/2 - Passed

Twenty Skills/Abilities/Magic Rank 25 - 23/20 - Passed

Quick Learner ( C ) had evolved into Savant ( B )! Savant ( B ) // Rank 100 // 4/1010 Exp Savant ( B ): Some people learn slowly, others learn quickly. You put them all to shame as you learn anything in an instant and grow stronger from it.

At first, Thomas was surprised that Quick Learner had actually evolved into a new skill. He'd been hoping for it but figured the odds were pretty low. Now that it had happened he was ecstatic at the change. However, the newly evolved Savant didn't really seem all that different from Quick Learner and it had only increased by a single rank from C to B. He really wished the descriptions for innate abilities were more detailed and exact so he could understand what they did more easily. It was also pretty strange that the skill had retained its rank and experience from before its evolution. When Mana Control had evolved into Mana Mastery it had reset to rank one. Granted it had grown past rank sixty in such a short time but that could be attributed to Quick Learner and his use of higher power magic.

He looked over the ability for a bit before spending the last bit of experience he'd just earned. Throughout his time in the dungeon every time he'd stopped to regain his mana he'd spent his accumulated experience to increase his Magic so it was already at three hundred, now he was increasing his other attributes to catch up to it. That would be a long road though. Once his experience was spent his Power, Endurance, and Agility had all reached 133. Not a big increase but it was something. As long as he didn't need to increase his Magic any further to do his work for the pirates he could focus on raising his other three attributes to match his Magic attribute.

With his trip within the dungeon complete, he stored away his greatsword and stepped into the teleportation circle. With a flash of light, he appeared outside of the dungeon and immediately spotted his guards. Thomas walked over to them with an amiable smile on his face. He wanted to pump them for some information. Given how much experience he was able to earn within the dungeon he expected that they were able to gain more, but how much more? As he got closer he continued to smile as he said, "Man, those trolls are some tough s.o.b.'s."

The guards laughed and nodded, "Yeah, it takes at least six people to move safely through the third floor. Gotta have your vanguards to tank the trolls while some others cut them open for mages to burn them. Those bastards are so tough! They're damn near impossible to kill without a mage to burn their wounds and stop the regeneration." The guard speaking, smirked at Thomas, "Even with that big ass flaming sword of yours you had trouble with trolls eh?"

Thomas hid his surprise at realizing that it took them six people to clear the third floor while he could do it solo, easily. He just nodded his head, "Those things really are tough."

He did his best not to lie blatantly. The trolls really were tough... if he didn't use the flame enchantment on his sword that is. Thomas scratched his head awkwardly as he asked, "If you don't mind me asking, how much experience have you all earned? I spend a lot of time crafting so I'm just curious how far behind I've fallen."

The guards looked a little awkward but one spoke up, "Around one to one and a half million."

The guard chose to speak because even if Thomas knew how much experience someone had he wouldn't know how they spent it or anything about their skills. The guard also hoped it would act as a deterrent to any thoughts Thomas might have of escape. For his part, Thomas thought that actually sounded a bit low. It took him a moment to realize what factors might have had an impact on their experience gains. First, they were dividing the experience from killing trolls among six different people so the reverse of that meant that he was gaining six times the experience of the pirates. Second, they spent at least two to three weeks at a time on the sea and didn't earn much experience in that time. At least, that's what Thomas assumed.

Thomas and the guards had an amiable chat as they made their way back to his workshop. When they arrived, Thomas looked out through the hole in the ceiling to see the stars twinkling in the sky. He briefly wondered if there was a whole universe out there or if it was just visual. There was no way he was going to try to make a spaceship and find out for himself though. He waved goodnight to the guards and set up his sleeping arrangement. As he lay down relaxing he let out a sigh and rolled onto his side. He might not show it much to his captors but he missed his little ball of floof. He silently hoped that Snowlily was being treated well as he drifted off to sleep.

After he finished his breakfast the following morning he had a meeting with Mr. Pancake and was introduced to a pirate named Clad that would act as Thomas's assistant while he was working on items for the pirates. Mr. Pancake also dropped off a newly revised list of requests from the pirates for personal gear along with two medium-sized crates filled with Firestone and mana crystals. With everything said and done Mr. Pancake left and Thomas turned to Clad, "Nice to meet you Clad. I've only got one question. Do you have a high Magic attribute?"

Clad nodded, "Fairly high. I'm a mage."

Thomas didn't bother asking why he had an assistant all of a sudden. It was pretty obvious that Clad was here to spy on him and try to learn how to make the stuff Thomas makes so that even if Thomas escaped they could continue to make them. Thomas didn't bother pointing out how many skills and which skills were required to make the stuff he made. Clad was just going to be his personal mana battery running his blower and any other devices he came up with to make life easier. Maybe he should design a power hammer in the near future...

Thomas decided to make a few batches of grenades first. His first step was grabbing a few iron ingots and tossing them into the forge after he ignited it. He pointed at the blower on the floor while looking at Clad, "Power that with your mana."

Clad didn't say anything as he crouched down and started to put mana into the blower. The flames in the forge roared to life and started heating up the iron ingots. While the ingots were being heated, Thomas grabbed another ingot and used his Transmutation on it. A small section of the ingot started to deform and spread out almost like a liquid. It slowly took shape until it became a hollowed-out hemisphere attached to the rest of the ingot my a thin spur. He snapped it off and set it to the side to repeat the process again. Thomas did so until the entire ingot was used and he had twenty-one hemispheres sitting on a work table. He grabbed another ingot to repeat the process, only this time he left a small hole in the center where the enchanted firing pin would be placed later.

He looked over the collection of hemispheres and smiled. This would be a good-sized batch of grenades. He didn't intend to make them exactly like he had been shown, there was no need thanks to his Transmutation. With those pieces set he turned to the forge and pulled out one of the glowing ingots. He carried it over to the anvil and started to hammer it into a rectangular shape squaring up the sides the best he could by hand. He was prepping the ingot for being passed through the extruder sitting to the side of the forges. The simple hand-cranked machine would let him slowly work the ingot into bar stock. He intended to get it down to about five millimeters tall and wide which would have a lot of length. Once chopped into small cubes this would make up the shrapnel inside of the grenade.

He carried the squared ingot over to the extruder and used the screws on the machine to adjust the gap between the two cylindrical dies. There were other dies for the machine off to the side but these would work for now. The gap was set to be just a little smaller than the height of the ingot so that when the ingot was forced through it would be squished. As he pushed the ingot through with the tongs he also cranked the handle of the extruder to rotate the top die and help the ingot through. Once the ingot fully passed through he flipped it ninety degrees and repeated the process. He did this repeatedly until the ingot had become perfectly square. The process would shrink the height and width while increasing the length the more times he repeated it. He did so until the ingot was starting to become too cold to work with. Its length had more than doubled but it could still fit inside of the forge.

Clad silently watched Thomas but hadn't seen anything remotely special about what he was doing. He remained quiet to not disturb Thomas and continued to power the blower for the forge to keep the ingots nice and hot. Once Thomas deposited the slowly forming bar stock, he grabbed the second ingot in the forge and went through the same process of hammering it then using the extruder to true it up and lengthen it. Thomas rotated between the two pieces of iron. While one was being extruded the other would be reheated in the forge. When their lengths became too long for the forge he cut them in half and continued with one of the halves.

As the bar stock became smaller and smaller piles of mismatched sizes of square bar stock started to pile up. One ingot might not seem like a lot of metal but once you started to make it smaller it turned out to be a lot more than imagined. Thomas kept up the work for hours not even stopping when Clad ran out of mana and could no longer power the forge, he just did it himself. Without modern heavy-duty machines that could cold roll multiton blocks of steel or hydraulic powered extrusion machines the process of turning just two ingots into bar stock that was only a few millimeters thick took the majority of the day to accomplish. Even so, it gave Thomas a significant amount to work with so he wouldn't need to repeat the process for some time. Once every piece of iron was the same width and height he turned to his personal spy, Clad, and grinned, "Now the real fun begins!"