As I work on my next staff, I pull mana from the network underground and send it to a spot in front of me, trying to use the creative skill to make a sliver of mithril. We have no access to most metals, including the valuable Mithril, not even in very low amounts and I have a feeling that if I succeed it would prompt a large jump in the quality of my work.

The skill levels a dozen times as I work, but even after tens of thousands of mana points all I have in front of me, are small tendrils of mithril, thinner than a hair and a finger wide.

If that was all I would be ecstatic. Taking it in my hand, I inspect the latest creation hoping for something different.

Mithril strand

Time remaining: 3min 12sec.

A few extra seconds from the increased skill level, but it will vanish into thin air like the others soon enough. But expecting to create something out of nothing was too much, especially this early on. Maybe making raw materials is not the main use of the skill, but it is all I know how to do at the moment.

I try making something more humble, a sliver of copper for a couple of mana points and I’m glad to see the timer is much longer.

Time Remaining: 1h 35min 12sec.

Will it properly meld in an alloy? That was probably what Blackwood meant, but what if it disappeared the entire piece.

I start making a dozen other test batches and melting the silver slivers into copper or iron to see what happens.

A few strands of silver in a copper, just like what I used in my first forged staff.

The timer goes from around 30 minutes to 30 hours, but it’s still far too short especially given that I already had access to a lot of silver. Perhaps I needed to be practicing the skill a lot more before I try to make something with it.

Just as a test, I try to put a single sliver of mithril into silver, and though I would guess that the result would have been the best alloy I ever worked with for engraving, I don’t find out. The temperature doesn’t even soften the mithril, but even if it increased to an hour or two it wouldn't be enough for practical use, that would require a day at the minimun.

I put everything back into my inner world before starting work on the staff again. I could dream all I wanted about what it would feel to engrave on Mithril, and an hour was a world better than a few minutes, but it is not worth the trouble.

As my hammer falls to hit the deep steel rod, which will eventually be rolled into a cylinder for the staff, I try to look at it like my roots, just something to mold into shape and at every hammer strike I try to imbue each of my actions with the active component of my skill.

It slowly conforms to my will ever so slightly more than usual though I can’t be certain if it’s this skill, my natural progression in smithing, or something else.

As the rod slowly becomes a band and then a hollow cylinder for my staff, I engrave runes with pure silver on the surface. I could have splurged on gold, but there is a chance I will no longer have the income from the smithy if I can't reliably help make a +6 or 7 weapon and a single gold coin would probably not change the alloy that much.

I finish a good two hours after I restarted, a lot longer than most weapons take, though the extra time pays off.

Well-made Staff

+5 Attack

+5 Wisdom

+1% Increase in magical attack power

Mana Charge: 0/21

Yes, finally a percentual increase for magical attacks. Burges improved on the current designs after reverse-engineering the staves from the shamans, but they use an entirely different runic system, maybe even purposefully made incompatible with us. Nobody had yet successfully made it work, but my success gave him a little more direction to continue his research and I guess this is just the tip of the iceberg. After I cracked open the gate, we learned a little and would broaden our depth of knowledge in yet another direction.

I say goodbye to everyone in the shop and head off to handle all the other things I wanted to work on. That just took me over four hours, far longer than I usually spend at the forge, but today was special and I don't regret a single moment.

I go looking for Stuart again but he still isn’t back, so I come back to work with Burges. They have made a lot of progress in the last week or so, and I wanted to see if there was anything that I could take from it beyond the design for the staff.

As I approach the MRI I listen to him speaking: “No, the small distortions destroy any the runes in moments. Even trying to shield them is useless. They need to be further away from the engraving.”

“But that allows much more interference and warping, we have to figure out how to effectively protect the runes.” Replies one of the researchers.

I enter and see him hard at work with four other researchers at the table.

“What are you guys working on?” I interrupt.

“The runes you brought back that are supposed to be teleportation or something brought life to the spatial research. It’s been too long and we haven’t made any progress on it.” Says the same researcher.

“Show me, maybe I may have some idea.”

“Ok.”

They start going over their problems. It has been over a month we made any progress with the teleportation runes to reach the place the wolves spend the day and the rabbits spend the night. Though there is a good chance it would not be that useful even if we eventually manage to reach that place, just understanding how to do so is a nice addition to our magic studies.

As they run through all the runes they know that affect space, and I start to map out their effects and how they interact when combined something slowly starts to bother me. Something about their nature is off and I start growing a few variations in my inner world.

As each iteration of their design goes even faster than what Merlin could do with the roots, progress on it is rushing along at unprecedented speeds. The table and my inner world start seeing more and more designs. I shift the roots atop the table in the shape of the runic designs they come up with and inside the inner world, I let my mad scientist ideas run wild following all the tangents that hold some promise.

I rarely had such strong intuition and I fully trust it this time. My main class, One with the world, seemed to make me even more aware of whatever my intuition tried to tell me and I am fully enjoying the benefits.

Hours later, one of the designs starts showing strange signs in the inner world. I move it away from the other runic formations to see if it’s about any kind of interference, but the change that grabs my attention happens on the edge of the inner world.

I look at the widening gap between the hemisphere of dirt and the edge of the space. Just a few inches, but as I continue to drag the meter-wide formation closer that gap grows expanding to almost a full yard when the runes are touching the outer barrier.

That is what I’m talking about. Finally some progress on my inner world. I feared that I would be stuck at the limited sizes the level increases allow.

“I’m going to stop for a while, I need to work on something I just discovered,” I say as they are unaware of everything happening in my inner world.

I move off to the side and concentrate fully on growing the same patterns repeatedly around the inner world. Along the bottom between the soil and the limits, and growing in the air to form a giant dome covering everything.

I spend the entire night consumed by it. Everyone else leaves me there sitting cross-legged on the ground as they go to sleep or work on their own projects.

Mana, my connection to Aspen, and the new skill, Creation, all come together to help me in forming a spheric runic formation all around the inner world. I work hard on making it smooth and balanced braces and bands to distribute the weight all around, and I’m not disappointed as the whole structure stays in place. Though if that had failed I could always stop generating gravity on the edges of the inner world.

By sunrise, the inner world has grown to be in all directions a few inches more than the initial attempt. About 96 centimeters.

I tried plenty of other designs in small places, but nothing was much better than the first one. I fail to grasp the intricacies of how and why this rune configuration worked. There is something in the logic that is escaping me, but instead of continuing to bang my head against the wall fruitlessly, I get up, smiling. I had made some progress on it, and that's all that matters. With an inch of ground, I will fight and improve on the design, so it is not hopeless.

With a pep in my step after the lucky find, I go to find Stuart. He has to be back by now, if he was leaving the village for longer he would have warned someone instead of just taking off. And two minutes later, I hear him complaining good naturedly:

“I heard you have been bugging people while looking for me.”

“Hum, kinda, I need your help with something,” I reply to Stuart as I find him working in the newest smelter. A monstrosity that only runs part-time and can handle more material alone than all the other 4 combined. Though in the coming days that will change with the thousands of tons of ore I am going to bring back.

“Does it have something to do with the silver mine you found? I’m very interested in that, you know?”

“Yes and now that I found you, we can gather with Burges and Charlie to discuss exactly that. I already put a couple of things in motion, but with everyone together I have a feeling that things will go much faster and more smoothly.”

“Sure, though I got to say, the ore you brought back is high-quality stuff. A little over one percent of silver. We were lucky to get a tenth of that back on Earth.”

“Yeah, if we had to process so much material, it would require a lot more manpower than we are dedicating currently to the task. This is one way the system seems to be ‘helping us’.”

“I would not call it ‘help’ even in jest. Considering the situation the system has thrown us all into, it’s the least it can do.”

I shake my head, and we head out and get Burges so everyone can meet at Charlie’s office. After getting there we both look at a familiar voice:

“So you found Stuart. I don’t know why you were so insistent on having everyone together, but fine.” Says Burges as we all sit waiting for Charlie to finish writing a letter and talking with two messengers.

“If you knew the number of headaches that are caused because projects are not coordinated properly you wouldn’t be making a glib comment like that. You run the MRI, you shouldn’t be oblivious to the realities at play.”

“Let’s get on with it,” says Stuart.

“What I have in mind is a lot more ambitious than my initial plans. I mean, one silver mine is all well and good, but the logistics of making it work and expanding my network so I can find all the other resources in the high-level zone are complicated. With the sudden increase in the mob’s levels….” I trail off.

“Yeah,” says Charlie. “They have been increasing by over a level every day for the last 2 weeks.”

“Damn, shouldn’t we get the commander here on it?”

“He already knows, and this is not a meeting about how to handle the mobs, just something to keep in mind. I don’t think Nash wants to enter the high-level zone just yet.” Says Charlie.

“No, that is not my goal. What I want is an effective remote mining strategy. I have a couple of sketches, but you are bound to have good ideas making some type of remote mining tool.” I say to Stuart.

He bites his lip before saying: “Why can’t we just tunnel underground? Didn’t you say it was located some 600 meters in? That is not a very long tunnel for access to a silver mine.”

I look at him not having thought of the idea, maybe… but Charlie interrupts my thoughts as shakes his head and speaks: “Wouldn’t work. We tried exploring the high-level zone this way, any tunnel large enough for someone to move through is immediately attacked. So even with an autonomous vehicle, you will have to make it small or not rely on tunnels at all.”

“I didn’t run into that particular problem. Though I did find out that not even the sky is safe. They have some strange powers, they instantly popped my mana shield and I almost crashed full speed on the ground.” I interject.

“I had forgotten to ask you how that went. So, air raids are a bad idea?” Charlie asks.

“Monumentally so,” I say. “How large can the tunnel be?”

“Up to a foot is safe, maybe a foot and half. Two foot wide is instantly attacked and anyone moving underground is also attacked no matter the width of the tunnel.” Charlie answers.

I look at Stuart, and he grins at me.

“Ohh, I can work with that, now we just have to see if you two will be able to deliver on the idea I have in mind,” I say looking at Sturt and Burges.

The conversation keeps going for over an hour, though after a while Charlie leaves no longer having much to contribute even as we hog his office and outline a general direction for the project.

Yes, I’m liking the direction this is going. And after setting it up, it will provide a lot more silver without being a drain on my precious time.

We keep going until we all have a good plan before going our separate ways to start our work.