The next day, I woke up not wanting to let go of Angelica at all… Though since my stats were lowered by 50%, I had a pretty good excuse to do nothing anyways… That said, I did not forget to fill up one of my [Coal Ores] with holy power for later use...

I even skipped out on breakfast and instead ate the [Dire Fox Meat Skewers] I saved up. Interestingly enough, it seems that heat was somewhat retained when it was stored in the [Item Box]. Though I am not sure if this is a time freeze kind of thing or time is just slowed down. I'll have to experiment with it later.

Since I had nothing to do during these 2 days, I decided to put together some plans moving forward. Frankly put, as much as I love blacksmithing things, I am kind of at a dead end. There is very little room for improvement anymore outside of level ups. And I can’t level up my Creationist class because no one is buying my stuff. Which means to go forward in the most efficient way possible, I need to create gear for myself and go out there and fight myself. In this way I can raise both Creationist and my racial level at the same time.

The safest way to accomplish that is making myself a full Holy-steel set… The question is… how do I go about it? For a steel item to count as holy-steel, it needs to retain at least 100 Holy Power. Any less than that, and the holy power will not be balanced and disappear. If that happens, at best, you will get a steel item with only a one time use ability.

That said, I currently lack the mana and materials to make a full Holy-steel set...

I will get them both over time… but if I think about it overall, it would take me at least half a month to put together a full protective set, if not more. The other option is to hurry things along by the use of money.

Effectively, I would buy the ores I am missing, and get mana potions to make up for the lack of mana. The downside with this approach is that I have no reoccurring income, if I decide to spend my money now, I would be taking a pretty large risk. Of course food and shelter is provided for me, but I do want some luxuries from time to time…

Hmmm… lets just calculate exactly how much money I would need. Since I am making equipment sized for a child, I need less ingots than making full sized adult gear. Which is a good thing I guess...

Helmet – 2 ingots

Chest piece – 4 ingots

Pants – 3 ingots

Boots – 2 ingots

Bracers – 2 ingots

That should probably provide me with with full protection... From what I heard, one can wear and get stats from up to 25 items. But there is a catch, without some exceptions like naming that breaks the limit. You can not exceed 3X your base stats with gear. Hence a low level person can’t just equip super powerful gear and one shot everything. Though one could argue becoming 3X stronger in itself will get you quite an advantage.

There is also a limitations on how powerful a single item can be, hence my mithril katar had to be specifically level limited to be usable. Though those limitations are somewhat lifted when talking about items that assist in production such as Angelica.

This item advantage though is a relative one, as monsters have superior bodies to us humanoids, thus evening each other out.

My plan right now is not to get all 25 items though, but to maximize my safety, so the pieces I need to make should offer full body protection. Those alone should be enough to increase my stats close to 3X fold. Though I want to be sure to stay under that amount or the equipment would put a huge [Mental] strain on me.

Now then, back on track. I need a total of 13 ingots. I already have most of the iron portion and have 3 [Coal Ores]. Now that I think about it… Today is a new quota day isn’t it? Unfortunately I’ll have to wait till my weakened state from [Overload] wears off, so I can’t try out Angelica until then… no fair...

* sigh *

So anyways, I can safely say I will have all the [Iron Ores] and 6 [Coal Ores]. That means I am 7 [Coal Ores] short. Since it will take me some time to make the stuff anyways, I can say it is more like 4 [Coal Ores]. If I am fine with quality score of 5, the cost would be about 2 gold and 40 silver coins for the ores. I am not too worried about exceeding the quality score at this point because it makes little sense in terms of cost to performance ratio. I’d rather make an extra piece if need be then to spend double or quadruple to attempt a higher quality score.

As for the MP portion, each item needs a minimum of 100 MP per ingot. Which turns out to a minimum of 1300 MP. I can use the special option on Angelica to fill up 2 ingots with 200 holy power each. So the actual total I need is 1100 MP. Assuming my 30 MP and my regeneration rate, if I continue my trend of filling up 2-3 times, I should be able to manage at least 60 MP per day. So it would take 18 days to get that much MP. Of course during that time Angelica will refill 1 more times so the actual amount is 17 days. That said, these numbers are the bare minimum, and I would actually need more to account for loss.

A [Lesser Mana Potion] goes for 20 silver coins and recovers 10 MP instantly plus 10 extra MP every minute for 5 minutes. Aka, enough to refill me 2X over. If I take 3 [Lesser Mana Potions] per day, I should be able to use 240 MP per day. Thus lowering the time I need to fill them up with MP to only 5 days. So I think about 12 [Lesser Mana Potions] should be enough…

That brings the total I would need to spend for both ores and potions at 4 gold and 80 silver coins.

Now that I think about it… that is far less than I originally expected.

As far as the time it would take to make the stuff, with the help of Angelica and the experience I gained working with Holy-steel, I should be able to make all 7 items in about a week I would say...

The faster I make my gear, the faster I can level up and the faster I can kill stronger monsters and do higher level quests. If I save myself 10 days, I could probably make back at least half the money during those days with ease.

Yup, lets go with that strategy then!

Since I still had time in the day and nothing to do, I went to the counter and bought 4 [Coal Ores], then I headed out towards the Alchemists Guild.

On the way to the Alchemists Guild I also stopped by to buy some more of the best food which gives INT and WIS. The 7 servings cost me an additional 7 gold coins. Now normally you would think that I would be better off buying higher quality ore for that money, but that is not the case. Since even if I bought ores with quality score of 6, I would still end up with a quality score of 5 Holy-steel item. And since anything at quality score of 5 is subject to the law of averages, the benefits are non-existent.

The food is more than enough to help insure I don’t drop to a quality score of 4, and since it raises stats that support PER, I actually gain far more insight into smithing. So it offers both short term and long term benefits. This is all a matter of optimizing efficiency, not because I am being biased towards the more delicious option... It just so happens that the better option is more delicious, that’s all… yup! No bias at all~

After buying the food and the 12 [Lesser Mana Potions] at the Alchemists Guild, my savings dropped to a pitiful 1 gold, 26 silver and 15 iron coins. It was just a few days ago that I was so rich… where did it all go?

Once my shopping was done, I went back to the Blacksmithing Guild and had some dinner, filled some [Coal Ore] with Holy Power, and went straight to bed.

...

The 2 days passed, and my weakened state was now gone, thus I could finally take Angelica for a spin! So like that I went to smelt some ores!

The bliss I got when using Angelica was even stronger than when I used Johnny, Tommy or Carol! It was out of this world!

It did not take me long to smelt the 50 [Iron Ingots], thus I claimed the 10 [Iron Ingots] and 3 [Coal Ores] as my reward. And like always, I managed to get my +3 PER for completing my [Creationist: Ingot Creation II] quest.

After finishing smelting, I had dinner and went to bed. Next week is going to be hectic! Either way I am pretty positive about the future as things are going now! Thinking about that, in due time sleep overtook me.

…

…

…

…

...

* GASP *

I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night as a strange feeling overtook me. I was panting like crazy and had a cold sweat...

WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS THAT?!?!

I took a quick glance around me but nothing seemed strange… then I noticed a blue box

Level up!

Creationist: +2 to all unlocked attributes +5 MP +5 Mental +2 PER

Level up!

Creationist: +2 to all unlocked attributes +5 MP +5 Mental +2 PER

What exactly happened just now… that was no nightmare… what is this... feeling… I understand the feeling of a level up… and this is similar… yet different…

If I were to try to somehow describe this “feeling” that I am going through to the best of my ability… it’s like finding out you won the lottery, and coming home and finding your pet is dead…

This mixed feeling of happiness… and dread…

* shiver *

Why is this happening?… Is it because I got 2 levels ups at once or something? No, I don’t think so… There is no way that level ups would give you the feeling of loss… it’s not possible… something happened but I just don’t know what…

Is it maybe my high PER stat warning me about something? Kind of like predicting the future or something like that… but it somehow doesn’t feel like that… It feels like the loss already happened...

I used my hand to wipe away my sweat only to notice for some reason... tears are dripping down my face… why…

I shrivel up in bed confused and frightened by this strange sensation that I have never felt before… Slowly but steadily the bliss from the large amount of XP faded and only dread remained… then eventually all that was left was a hollow emptiness...

I could not pinpoint the source of this emptiness in my heart, so I huddled Angelica with all my strength and in due time fell asleep.