I rose from the ground, feeling the joints in my knees and ankles popping and straining. With a groan, I brought both of my arms above my head and stretched my whole body, my wings extended behind, and my tail curling as the tendons contracted.

I had finally managed to do it.

Yin-Yang Soul Scripture – lvl 10/10 (MAX)

While it honestly wasn’t the most painful thing I had experienced, it was the first time I had willingly accepted such a painful process in exchange for improvement. While the first level took only one cycle, each following level took even more, though the pain that each iteration of the skill caused was never lessened.

I pulled up my status to examine my overall achievement over the past month since I’d conquered the dungeon.

Name: Victoria (Vic) Gale

Age: 2 Months

Gender: Female

Race: Storm Paraelemental Warrior (Rank 2)

Class: Runewright

Job: Fighter

Level: 40/40, 4900/4900 (MAX)

Affinity: Heart of the Warrior, Enhanced Physicality, Wind, Water, Ice, Electricity, Electronics, Crafting, Graceful Presence

Character Archetype: Lone Wanderer

Current:

Regen:

Health:

720/720

91/day (182/day)

Stamina:

815/815

560/hour

Mana:

490/490

440/hour

Strength

56 > 65

Agility

63 > 72

Dexterity

43 > 55

Constitution

47 > 56

Intelligence

41 > 50

Wisdom

36 > 45

Charisma

39 > 48

Luck

21 > 30

I had to stop and pause, looking at the sheer ridiculous increase to all of my stats. My Chaos Body Strengthening technique wasn’t bad, and I managed to get around forty extra points from it, but I learned early on just how impressive the Yin-Yang Soul Scripture was. I got a flat seventy status points from it, and it wasn’t all that difficult to accomplish. Painful, granted, but relatively simple none the less. There was a good reason this was a legendary drop. Using the skill also allowed me to increase One Body from level five to nine, and increased my mastery of both order and chaos, bringing them up to thirty out of one hundred.

To break up the incessant monotony of constant meditation, I spent every other day either working on my new crafting class or practicing new weapon skills. During a conversation with a trader in the bazaar, I heard about a powerful title that could be gained when you reached intermediate proficiency with five different weapons. I already had unarmed combat and swordsmanship to that level, so I decided to try and get spear techniques, dagger techniques, and archery past their first general skill, and had made reasonable progress. It wasn’t nearly as impressive as swordsmanship, but I wasn’t constantly killing monsters either.

The title, though, was only one part of my end goal. I wanted to see if I could get a general weapons skill from a skill combination. If my experience up to this point was to be believed, combining skills always netted a more powerful ability, and I wanted to see what that combination would bring. I practiced diligently when I had the time but usually kept my focus on crafting.

Beginner Spear Techniques

12/20

Teaches beginner spear techniques

Beginner Dagger Techniques

15/20

Teaches beginner dagger techniques

Beginner Archery

9/20

Teaches beginner archery techniques

Next, I pulled up my new class skills as well to check on how they were doing.

Crafter

70 > 85/100

User is skilled in crafting and has an esthetic eye. Increases dexterity maximum (+2), and growth of all design-related jobs.

Engraving

43/100

Teaches beginners to engrave patterns and words on objects using various tools.

Beginner Primordial Runic Magic

13/20

Teaches knowledge of basic primordial runic magic. More runes will become available with each level unlocked. Cannot be leveled through combat experience.

I sighed again as I looked over my progress.

Turns out, engraving runes was more difficult than it seemed. The language was simple enough to learn; it was phonetic, and only had an alphabet of thirty runes. I had basic proficiency in only a couple of days, probably thanks to my intelligence.

The magic though was far more complex. The runic spells were engraved in horizontal lines, similar to Chinese, and by using different runic words in conjunction with each other, you could form different spells. The benefits were countless. Runic magic was permanent given the correct materials and could be placed on basically everything. There were runes for fortification, various types of damage, meta magic… if you could imagine it, it was probably possible. Obviously, though, the system wouldn’t make such a powerful form of magic simple to do.

If you wanted to take a rock and imbibe it with a spell to make it fly at your enemy, you needed to engrave into it with the words ‘mana’, ‘direction’, and ‘force’ all in a single line. As it was a neutral magic spell, no mana transformation was needed, and you could just pump mana into the runes to make something happen. The issue was that this spell would only be able to throw the rock a couple of feet before expiring unless you pushed several hundred mana into. This was wildly inefficient and would practically always cause the rock to explode into bits before anything happened. Not particularly useful.

If, for example, you wanted to send the rock flying at the speed of sound like a bullet, you needed supplementary lines around the basic one that would help make this possible. You needed things like a line of runes to fortify the stone, another to make it spin with just the right speed, and another couple of lines to make it be able to hold enough mana to power the previous three runic lines without exploding. What’s more, you needed to place the lines in a specific order so that the mana flowed between them correctly, or else you could have the stone start spinning in your hand before exploding, as it tried to fly in every direction at once.

It was a practice in patience and took lots of trial and error trying to get anything done. The information the class skill presented was cursory, and just gave the barest indication of how everything worked. It was like receiving a LEGO set and only having the picture on the front of the box to figure out how it was put together; you would inevitably make mistakes. The devil was in the details, and with runic magic, details were everything.

If you carved even one rune slightly incorrectly you could either end up with a complete dud or with catastrophic failure. Usually, this involved shrapnel. Lots of shrapnel. If you didn’t have the sturdy body of, say, a peak rank 2 storm paraelemental warrior, just as a random non-specific example, you might find yourself very dead.

With that being said, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. I had been fighting constantly for a month leading up to my break. I received regular updates from Cindy or Steph about the goings-on in town, and from what I understood, everything was going well enough that I didn’t need to be involved, and the guild was on the up and up. Every couple of days when I would start to feel antsy, I would go hunt some monsters, but I was rather relaxed.

I found that working with my hands on the fine engraving work was extremely rewarding. It helped to calm me down and cleared my mind from all the madness that the system brought. I could just work on one thing, and zone out, letting my thoughts wander where they needed to go as my hands moved. It took me back to when I worked at the coffee shop down the street from my apartment, just relishing in getting things done.

Feeling slightly hungry, I walked into the house and moved to the kitchen. Out of habit, I reached over to flick on the light switch, though no light came on. Last week, one of the magic zones to the east had crept past the house. It was a rather mild change, thank goodness, simply introducing the occasional magic rabbit or deer to the landscape, but with it came the growth of yet more trees. As the houses and electrical lines continue to fall and be cut apart, we lost power yet again. In the city proper they supposedly managed to keep the power running for now, but this far out of town we were out of luck.

It was annoying, but thanks to Ellie who managed to constantly impress me with her magical acumen, we were able to put up some basic temperature regulation runes as well as some light runes into the house. Next to the light switch was the relevant magic circle, and after I pushed in a couple of points of mana, the kitchen ceiling began to glow, filling the room with ambient light. I spent a few minutes making an egg sandwich for lunch, before walking into the garage.

This was where I had assembled my rune crafting things. My mom’s old tools were now mixed in with my own, and the previously unkept and unused space was full of active projects once more. I couldn’t help thinking of how happy she would be that her workshop was in use again.

I bent over the workbench and picked up my project from last night. I was in the process of engraving a rune of fire protection into a long piece of Kangor to be potentially used in a piece of armor. I was a long way off from a working product but making something useful always helped to keep my attention better.

BAM!

Raising my hand so that I wouldn’t scratch the runes on reflex, I turned towards the loud noise, finding a door swinging wide, and an out-of-breath Ellie.

“You okay? What’s going on?”

Gesturing me to wait for a second, she caught her breath. Between gulps of air, she finally belted out a semblance of words.

“It’s done! It’s finally done! You wanna see?!?!?”

I jumped to my feet, and followed her out of the house, back to the mage tower. There was only one thing this could be; my long-awaited gear.

I had been sitting on my hands all week waiting for it to be finished, and while rune crafting distracted me, I was still bubbling over in anticipation. Zald had said that it would only take a week, but something had happened while he was working that made it take longer still. Even worse, Ellie refused to answer my questions about what was taking so long, making my anticipation even more intense.

Ellie held the door as I passed, and we entered the bottom floor of the tower. On the coffee table was a small box, only large enough to hold a cell phone. With a smile on her face, Ellie lifted it and held the box out to me with a beaming face.

“Here it is!”

My excitement was squashed. What kind of armor was that small? Was it an energy shield of some type?

With confusion, I opened the little container. Sitting in the center on a velvet pad was a gold marble, around the size of a quarter. I used identify and then had to pause for a second while my mind caught up to the description.

Nature’s Defense: This armor was created in a joint effort between Zald, the god of Magic, and Norr, the goddess of Nature, to serve as a gift for her first champion candidate in preparation for struggles to come, and in payment for a future request. To bind the armor, consume the core.

Variable: Armor has a light form (hardness 3), and a heavy form (hardness 4)

Growing: This armor can grow in strength by consuming more powerful materials.

Form-Fitting: This armor is molded to fit the wearer, regardless of form.

Hidden: This armor can be brought out and hidden at will.

Self-Repairing (Greater): This armor will repair itself from any damage given enough time and mana.

The item was easily the most impressive magic object I had ever seen. It was, without a doubt, protagonist-level equipment. It was above and beyond anything I had expected.

At least now I understood why it had taken so long to build. It wasn’t one god that made it, but two. I bet Norr heard what Zald was doing and decided to help, but the reason for her intervention filled me with fear and anxiousness.

While I had offered every single magic item I possibly could into its creation, this armor was clearly above what those items could produce. The comment in the text about struggles to come tipped did not bode well. The message this armor offered was simple enough; Norr believed that I needed something of this level to not die.

I took the core from the small box and held it in front of my mouth. Should I take this risk? It was power at a price, and I had to ask, was I willing to pay when the time came? Norr seemed like a decent person, even if she was just a construct of the system. While I had no desire to become some hero, a single task from a goddess was likely something I could accomplish. The last one for Luna hadn’t been so bad, after all.

The item was powerful beyond belief, and it would be a great boon. Taking another glance at the golden sphere, I clenched my teeth in determination. The orb was slightly warm to the touch, and unlike its metallic appearance would make one believe, soft as well. I brought it to mouth and swallowed it in one big gulp, expecting to feel something change, but instead felt no noticeable differences.

Armor ‘Nature’s Defense’ Successfully Bound

As soon as the alert popped up, I noticed a difference in the thin fur around my right wrist. A circle of branches slowly faded into existence, giving me a tattooed bracelet. Once the bracelet was finished forming, I felt a small pulse in the back of my mind. It was similar to how it felt gaining wings and a tail; there was a new appendage in my body, and all I needed to do was flex.

With a mental command, I ordered my armor to materialize. With a shift in the air, I felt the heavy armor appear, and I heard Ellie gasp in awe. The armor replaced the clothes I was wearing before, hiding them in a different space while it was on me. I walked to a large mirror hanging on the wall, marveling at the weight of the metal as I moved and the perfectly snug sensation. I had to stifle a gasp myself.

It was beautiful.

The armor was a metallic pearl with black trim, reminiscent of my markings. In the back were holes for my wings and tail. It was a set of full plate, complete with a helmet, and looked like something out of a fantasy novel. It hugged my body tightly, probably taking advantage of my rather high charisma, but had multiple joints in impossible places to make it easy to move in. It was a single piece, and the only way to don the armor was to have it appear around you. The helmet was closed-face, and encompassed both of my horns using metal constructs, protecting them from attack. On either side were two wings, going out and back, like a Valkyrie from the stories. All along the armor were engraved feather-like patterns, bringing the set to life, and making it look even more majestic.

I shifted to the light armor version and observed it as well. It was also white but felt more like hard leather rather than metal. There were bracers, thick gloves, boots, greaves, and pauldrons, but I had no guards for my thighs. The chest plate had openings on the sides but was flexible enough to allow for silent acrobatic movement. It looked a bit like a gymnastic leotard but had armored additions. It, too, was engraved with feather patterns. I was delighted to see that the light set was a bit more low-key than the heavy set. As fun as it would be to startle people constantly with my dazzling appearance, I didn’t generally like being the center of attention, though I could imagine my charisma might make that difficult.

Immediately I moved outside, with Ellie on my heels. She hadn’t said a word since I brought out the armor and was just busy watching me have fun with my new toy.

I decided to try and practice all of my combat arts and weapon techniques, first in the heavy, and then in the light so that I could quickly get a feel for the new weight.

The heavy armor was deceptively burdensome. It looked light and loose on the outside, but I could feel the weight on every part of my body as I moved. I already had a 42% reduction in armor weight because of my heavy armor mastery skill, not to mention my 65 strength, so I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like without that.

The light armor strangely felt like nothing; it was comfortable to the point where it felt like I wasn’t even wearing clothes. While practicing, I found myself frequently looking down to make sure I was still dressed. Compared to the Agile Chitin armor, this was even more maneuverable and comfortable. The armor noise was somehow even less than when I wore my normal clothing.

I practiced in the yard until the sun started to set when I reluctantly decided to call it a night. I had a decision to make.

Originally, I had intended to finish my class skills before ranking up, but now that I had started, I could easily understand that I wouldn’t be able to max out this class for several weeks still. On top of everything else, the message on the armor was rather concerning. I knew something was going on, that there were some shady movements in the Austin area, but I had just wanted to get to them when I could.

Now, though, I thought it better safe than sorry. I shot a text to Cindy, Steph, Kaitlyn, and Taylor letting them know. I had no idea how long it would take but considering the materials I was going to get to use, there was no telling. My current guess was anywhere from a week to another month, but it was something I needed to do.

I found a seat on the carpet in my bedroom and tried to still my excited heart. I took a deep breath and triggered the rank up.