Making the second greave went the same as making the first. Much like the pauldrons he tried his best to make them look identical, a matching pair. After finishing the preparations the last step was to enchant the item. It took the remainder of the purified Alchemist's Oil. He decided that after the greaves were done he'd spend the rest of the day just making more of the purified oil so he wouldn't have to worry about running out anytime soon. He did have another forty-nine portions of the materials to make it sitting inside of his inventory after all. He didn't allow such thoughts to distract him from the work at hand. With a clear mind, he dove into the enchanting process and slowly carved lines onto the greave to replicate the same intent and pattern as the first one.

System Notice: You have created Epic rarity Sky Walker Greaves. Quality: Excellent. You have gained 2,923 (x2) Magitech Engineering experience. You have gained 5,846 (x2) experience. Armor Type: Sky Walker Greaves Rarity: Epic Quality: Excellent Description: These greaves are an excellent example of form and function. When worn as a pair they not only protect the wearer's shins and knees but allow the wearer to step on temporary platforms of air when mana is channeled into them. The more mana channeled into these greaves the more durable the air platforms become allowing the wearer to walk on air, for a price.

+125 Endurance Each (Lower Legs only)

+Create invisible platforms of air to step on when enough mana is channeled into the greaves. Soulbound: Thomas Darkrose

After reading the description of his new greaves, Thomas smiled happily. He wasn't sure his intent would be translated properly but it had! He wanted to improve his mobility using the greaves. Now he could move while in the air without using flight. Flight was one of the best abilities to have in combat, air superiority was a great asset to have even in the real world, let alone in games. He did have wings and could fly under his own power, the problem was their appearance. Anyone seeing his black and white wings would know something was up with him instantly. The greaves would give him another option for three-dimensional movement and would be even better than flight in enclosed places like a dungeon.

Once he was done examining his work, he tossed the greaves into his inventory. Like all the other things he'd made so far, he would test the greaves out in the weaker floors of the dungeon. For the first ten to fifteen floors, he should be damned near invincible against the monsters, even if he was naked. Monsters such as goblins and kobolds had long since ceased being threats to him so he could afford to use them as test subjects for his new toys. Weak monsters would let him make simple mistakes without being heavily punished for them.

With his gauntlets, pauldrons, boots, and greaves finished he only had his cuisses (thigh armor), cuirass (chest armor), and helmet left to go to finish his defenses. They would have to wait until tomorrow though. For the time being, he retrieved piles of alchemy ingredients as well as plenty of empty containers. He needed to take the time to mass-produce his purified Alchemist's Oil. He needed a minimum of two to three bottles to finish the enchantments on his equipment but if he was going to do it now then he was going to do it all now. Mass producing the oil shouldn't be an issue since all the materials had already been pre-measured. He just needed a big enough container and he could mix it all at once!

The last few hours of the day were spent extracting, purifying, and mixing the ingredients for the Alchemist's Oil inside of a large vat conjured of metal magic. Once everything was mixed it was a simple matter to reshape a spout into the side of the vat to slowly drain out the oil into separate containers. When every last drop was drained and stored inside of his inventory, Thomas had gained over five hundred Magitech Engineering experience per bottle. Thomas decided to call it a day. As he left the guild building, he reserved the workshop for the next day once more before making his way back to the inn.

When he arrived at the inn, he spotted Selena and Lexiana sitting at a table meant for eight along with two other women he didn't know. Even though he'd never seen them before, it seemed pretty obvious that they were Selena's guards. Among the four women, Lexiana looked to be the most uncomfortable in the group. She kept sending glances at the two women sitting near her. As for the two women, Thomas activated his 'All Seeing Eyes' for a brief moment to get a quick read on them.

Minerva Reyes

Human

Class: Lord (High)

Aria Resh

Human

Class: Lord (Mid)

After seeing their information he deactivated his eyes and walked over to the table with Snowlily at his side. As he approached, Minerva and Aria quickly looked to be on guard until Selena waved her hand in a calming gesture. When Thomas arrived at the table, Selena smiled at him, "Thomas, these are my two guards." She gestured to the taller one first, "This is Minerva." Then her hand moved to the somewhat shorter one, "And this is Aria. They're my personal guards."

Thomas smiled politely at the two women, "Pleasure to meet you Minerva and Aria."

The two guards nodded with small smiles. Thomas could see their probing looks and suspected that Selena had told them at least a little bit about himself. He doubted it was very much though. Probably just the basics. After all, his race and full capabilities would likely not have them just looking at him curiously, they'd either be very afraid or even more on guard. After exchanging greetings with the two new members of their little group, Thomas sat down and ordered dinner for himself and Snowlily, with extra vegetables for her.

The two new additions to the group had silly smiles on their faces when they saw the adorably downtrodden look Snowlily gave Thomas when he placed the order. Aria couldn't avoid whispering, "So cute!"

Selena and Minerva just chuckled at Aria's statement while Lexiana gave her a small glare. To Lexiana the 'suffering' of the Garou was not 'cute'... no matter how cute it really was, even in her opinion. Thomas just chuckled at the antics of the women. Even if he only really found one of them to be attractive, it was still a pleasant experience to sit at a dining table with four women that could all be considered beautiful. Minerva looked like a stoic warrior woman while Aria looked like someone's cute and rambunctious younger sister. He hoped they would all get along. To that end he decided to strike up a conversation, "So, has Selena informed you two on my plans?"

Minerva nodded but Aria spoke up in a chipper voice, "We were told that you were being boring and locking yourself away inside of a workshop all day long doing who-knows-what."

Selena glared at Aria for he somewhat flippant remark. If Aria wasn't so good at her job there was no way Selena would have brought her along. For his part, Thomas just found Aria a bit amusing. She instantly landed in the 'little-sister' zone in his mind. Smiling he replied, "It's always wise to prepare before a battle. Once I finish everything I'm working on we'll be diving into the dungeon quite a bit. I'd suggest making sure you have everything you need before we begin. We'll only be stopping at night to rest before resuming first thing in the morning."

Aria had a blank look for a moment before frowning as she asked, "Why?"

In a nonchalant manner, Thomas just shrugged his shoulders, "Because I'm too weak and it's the fastest way for me to grow stronger. Whether you all come or not, I'm not leaving until I reach King class. Only after that will I resume my travels. It's all up to you guys on if you want to stick around or not. The only one here I really have an agreement to stick with is Lexiana."

Listening to the conversation going on, Selena sent a death glare at Aria to get her to shut up and stop pestering Thomas. Realizing she might be annoying the man that her boss really didn't want to upset, Aria decided to shut up. To do so she stuck some food in her mouth with her fork and looked off to the side to pretend she wasn't there anymore. Minerva just shook her head and sighed, already long used to Aria's temperament. On her part, Selena wanted to slap the hell out of Aria. Thomas just didn't care and enjoyed his dinner with the nice, if slightly nosey, company.

Once everyone finished their dinner, Selena took out the contracts she had been tasked with getting for everyone. She set one out in front of everyone, including her two bodyguards. The clauses in the contract could be summarised as, 'if you try to spill someone's secrets in any way, all memory of those secrets will be immediately erased.' It covered the basics for transmitting information such as speech, writing, and even magical means. He was no expert lawyer or anything but it looked like all the bases had been covered. Due to her own personal risk from Thomas knowing so much about her, she went all out to make sure she was fully protected. In this case, her self preservation worked to his advantage.

Here was the catch though. Thomas was immune to the consequences of breaking the contract. It was impossible for the game to actually erase his memories. As if any government body in the world would allow for a game to directly interfere with a player's brain! As far as games were concerned a player's brain was a read-only file inside of the system. The modification of said file was strictly forbidden and carried massive penalties. Fines would be the least of the offender's concerns. That didn't mean the system didn't have a work-around. If Thomas attempted to spill any secrets, the game could simply turn whatever he tried to say into gibberish that no one could understand, inside of the game anyway.

After everyone signed their contracts, they received a notice letting them know it was currently active. Selena clearly relaxed once everything was done. Thomas didn't seem to care and simply enjoyed a nice mug of ale. The only individual not forced to sign a contract was Snowlily since she was physically incapable of doing so. Additionally, Selena hadn't even considered the young wolf as someone that could spread her secrets. If she knew that Snowlily would eventually take on human form, she wouldn't be nearly as relaxed.

Thomas finished his drink and looked at the bevy of beautiful women sitting at the table with him, "So, is there anything else?"

All the women shook their heads. Thomas nodded in response and smiled, "Goodnight then."

Together with Snowlily, they went to their room for the evening. Before getting some sleep, Thomas decided to go through a few cycles of using up his mana to expand his inventory followed by using Serenity to recover his spent mana. He randomly decided that he wanted to do his best to get his inventory up to rank one hundred before heading into the dungeon. It would give him a large amount of space to store things inside. With how many monsters he was going to end up killing, he would need space for all of their mana crystals.

Getting his inventory up to rank one hundred would give him a volume of one hundred cubic meters for storage. If it was a cube it would be around four and a half meters per side. That was a fair bit of space and he would be able to store a large number of materials inside of it. Luckily, the inventory ability wasn't just a simple square room, it was more like a blob. Each item stored inside of it only took up its exact volume in space. It was convenient and saved him from having to play inventory Tetris to get everything to fit.

After half a dozen revolutions of expanding his inventory and recovering his mana, he had ranked his inventory up to fifty-one. That amounted to nine ranks. His progress in expanding his inventory was clearly slowing down as the ranks grew higher and the required amount of experience grew. This was inevitable and applied to every skill or ability within the game. If he wanted to increase the speed at which he could rank up his inventory, he would need to increase his mana capacity. With his status page open, he could see that he had eighty-five thousand experience points he could spend right now if he wanted to.

After thinking about it a bit, he decided to dump all of his current experience into his Magic attribute. He planned to even out his attributes during his dive into the dungeon so he could afford to invest in his Magic attribute right now and just make up for it later. When almost every point of his experience was spent, his Magic attribute was raised from three hundred points to three hundred and twenty-seven points. It wasn't a very large increase, but it would let him invest more mana into increasing his inventory... starting tomorrow night.

With a productive day drawing to a close, Thomas slipped beneath the covers of his bed and got some well-deserved rest.