“Another dungeon?” Colt’s voice is somewhat fearful at the prospect.

“Unfortunately, yes.” Taking the time to explain the dungeon zone to everyone based on what I could glean from the hawk’s description, they nod along.

“That would explain the increase in attacks we’ve had on the walls. We’ve had to double the guard at all times.” Gabe rubs his chin in consideration of the new revelations.

“Well, I think we’re going to need to take it on. Colt, Adreanell, Becky, Cassandra, Mary, you guys up to take on a dungeon? I hate to ask but… I think we’re the strongest Portland has.

“We need Adreanell’s AoE, Becky’s single target assassination, Cassandra your support through your candies is invaluable, and Mary your spear skills are second to none. Need I even explain Colt’s value?”

All of them aside from Colt stand in consideration. Despite his fear of entering another dungeon, he walks next to me and takes my hand, smiling at me. “Of course I’ll come.”

“...Will there be food?” Becky lays a hand on her hip, looking at Colt.

“...Yes, Becky, I’ll make sure we bring plenty of food.” Colt sighs.

“I’m in.” She twirls a pair of scissors around on her finger.

“Me too. It’s to save Portland, right?” Adreanell steps forward.

“...If Adreanell is going, I guess I need to as well. I have more than just candies you know. I have a few support spells too.” Cassandra adjusts her witch’s hat.

“I can’t leave Portland. I’m sorry. I have my girls at the dojo to worry about. We’ve been critical in defending Portland so far. I think I need to stay here and keep us safe.” Mary looks down, slightly sad. Her eyes focus on Colt especially.

“Mom, I’m glad you’re not going. I’d be so worried.” He steps forward and hugs her quickly.

“Just the five of you might not be enough. You lack ranged combatants and could use another warrior. I have some people in mind I can introduce you to. Also, these monsters are reaching the point where the Construct Shop weapons aren’t doing so hot anymore. Think you could step up production before you go? Maybe get your shop running?” Gabe gestures towards our house.

“I think we can do that. As long as the monsters coming from the dungeon don’t get too aggressive it can probably wait. We’ll need someone to man the shop while we’re gone though. Gabe, think you could pool some resources from people to buy us weapon materials? I can give you a good price that way.”

“Of course. Let me get this crowd cleared up and we’ll drop some stuff off later. What do you need?”

“Uhh… I’ll need to write a list.” Colt hands me his notepad and pencil. “Thanks.” Smiling at him, I scribble down a supply list of the metal types I think I’ll need.

Handing the list to Gabe, he scans down it. “I think this should be doable. Alright, everyone, we’re getting you some good prices on weapons. We just need to pool supplies and you can put in some requests, okay?” Gabe clears out the crowd, leaving just Colt, Adreanell, Becky, Cassandra, Mary, and me left.

Mary announces that she needs to get back and prep her students on the situation. She leaves a request with me for some spears. She already has a list with the size and type specifications from her students.

Before we head into the house, I turn to everyone. “Hey, you think we can make something out of monster corpses? I’ve never tried before.” I gesture to the icy hawk corpse behind me.

“We could certainly try. Becky might be able to make some more stuff out of its feathers. As many feathers as are left…” Cassandra regards the fact that the hawk is missing a considerable amount as well as one of its legs. My cloak is the likely culprit of the feathers’ absence and Colt’s new rapier for the leg.

“I haven’t done much with feathers, but I can try.” Becky walks over and touches the hawk corpse. “Can I store this?”

“Uh. Sure.” The giant avian body disappears into her Personal Boutique.

“Wow, I’m nearly full. I’ll uh, pluck the feathers off later. Colt, how do you feel about a giant roast?” Becky smiles evilly at him and brings him off to the back yard, mentioning building a giant fire pit.

She turns around before fully leaving. “Oh, and Lucas? What the fuck did I name that shirt you’re wearing?” She gives me the “I’m watching you” hand signal and walks off. Looking down, my shirt has lightning singe marks covering it and the two holes in my shoulders from the icicle spears.

Equipping a different shirt quickly I feel presentable again.

“...Oh, Becky. I can get to work making some more jewelry. Do you know of any other metals I could use, Lucas?”

“Actually, Adreanell, I think I have just the thing.” Taking out the manite and pranite ingots, I hand them to her. “They’re yours to experiment with. They’re pretty easy to make too if you want more.”

“Huh. I might be able to make some pretty useful stuff out of these. We’ll see what happens when I turn them into rings and stuff. Oh, by the way, Lucas. I gained a new Talent! I’m a Fledgling Lapidarian now! Basically a fancy word for someone who cuts gemstones I guess.” Adreanell puffs her chest with pride.

“Oooh, nice! Well, I’m gonna head inside and get to work. What do you think you’ll do, Cassandra?”

“After I go make sure Becky doesn’t burn down your house, I think I’ll go work on some more candies. Mind if I look through your gardens for more ingredients?”

“No problem, just ask Lil P what’s in high enough supply that you can take some.”

“Your cute little gardening golem? Sure thing.” She smiles and walks off.

Adreanell and I walk into my house and head into the forge room. She gets to work on seeing what manite and pranite jewelry can do while I consider the lists Cassandra and Mary gave me.

The moment we get inside, it begins to rain, likely due to my lightning use, and I hear complaints from Colt and Becky outside. I see the edges of a large bubble of repelled water appear around them from the forge window as I hear earth shifting, likely Colt clearing a pit in the ground for the giant hawk.

I can hear Becky complaining about how plucking all the feathers off is gross as she’s yelling about it at full volume.

Adreanell and I share a laugh before turning to our respective works. There’s a ton on my lists for what I have to make, so I decide on a slightly different project first that should help in the long run.

Unclipping Argo, as I had clipped him after the fight was over, I set him in front of me. “Hey, buddy. How do you feel about finally getting a body and helping me out with some blacksmithing? I can show you what to do so you can help me out.”

“Lucas! You are the best! I would love to help!”

“Sounds like a plan then. Here, you can pick out your body pieces.” Taking the two sets of golem parts Colt made as options for Karie, I stop. “Oh shit, Karie! I forgot her outside!” She gets so quiet sometimes I forget she’s there.

Sprinting outside, I bring the slightly wet golem out of the rain, apologizing to her profusely. She elects to take a rest in the main room so she can dry off and boots into a programmed rest mode that’s standard in most golem core enchantments. She still has a little regenerating left to do after all, so this rest mode helps devote all resources to that.

Returning to the forge, Argo has picked out his body pieces with the help of Adreanell so I set to work enchanting all the pieces. Grinding up another set of strengthening crystals, I compliment them with heavyweight crystals.

This combination should, I hope, give Argo the ability to use his clay arm as a hammer. Enchanting the arm after making several tool and hammer shapes similar to how I programmed Lil P’s hand-tools, I add mostly mana efficiency runes.

The same goes for the rest of the body, simply a focus on strength and control enchantments with heavy mana efficiency emphasis. I have no clue how well Argo performs as an actual golem core for a body, so I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry.

With the body complete, it’s a rather bulky form but the arms are slim towards the end, I pick up Argo. “You ready to finally have a body?”

“Yes!” He trills excitedly.

Fitting him into a hole I shaped specifically for him in the torso, his golem eye on the anchor itself fades away and the same blue lights appear in the eyes of the head.

“Lucas! I have a body! Time for a hug!” Argo tackles me to the floor in a bear hug that makes my ribs creak.

“Argo… I… can’t…. Breathe…”

Adreanell claps happily for Argo before convincing him to let me go. The concept of needing oxygen is foreign to him.

Once we get past the whole breathing thing, which Argo is very upset he can’t do, I show him how I make spears. He picks up on the process fairly quickly as he’s been watching me do most of my blacksmithing from my ear anyway.

The only issue is getting used to having a moving body rather than just being an anchor. The aspects I added to his clay prove useful. They add a lot of weight behind his hits, so I have him do a lot of the flattening work for the spears I decide to work on and I just do the fine detail work.

In the end, I need seven spears complete for Mary’s students. Some of them have looted spears from monsters, so not all of them need a spear made.

Two are requests for elemental spears with no specifications past that, so Argo and I make two spears out of galvanite, the yellow, electrical metal, and coldsnap steel, the metal I combined ice and electricity aspects to make.

On each spear, I add a small band of sendite to increase accuracy. It also lets me bind the spearhead to the weapon as I use the sendite as binding.

Argo becomes quite proficient at getting the basic shape of the spears down by the time we’re done with the second spear. I don’t name them them in case Mary’s students want to name them.

There’s plenty of hydrabeans, so I make enough hydralite for three more spears, letting Argo get the basic shapes done for each rather quickly while I get more ingots ready.

Hydralite isn’t the most visually appealing metal, but strengthening and recovery aspect together makes for quite the strong weapon.

Curious, I combine the aspects of lightning reactions with a strengthening aspect. The resultant metal is a deep, earthy brown metal called counterite. The two aspects are highly synergistic, apparently, as the trait of the complete ingot is counterstrike.

My guess is that the metal becomes enhanced upon reacting to and countering a blow, increasing the strength of the next strike after a counter.

Making one more ingot, as I need two for a spear, Argo helps me shape everything and we make a complete spear out of the metal.

It’s getting late in the day, but I feel I can complete the final spear before Colt and Becky are done roasting the giant hawk.

Feeling experimental, I make a combination of tethering and stamina restoration aspects with two neutrite ingots. The resultant metal comes out grassy green and is called enduralite.

The trait is still tethering and stamina restoration, but from the name, I can make a guess that this operates similar to my manasteel and pranasteel, except it should create a tether instead of stealing all at once.

We make the final spear out of this metal and I finally allow any waiting notifications to come through. Colt and Becky are calling to Adreanell and I about dinner being ready, so I’ll have to enchant them all later.

Level up! For working with a partner on a large set of weapons using multiple new metal types, your Talent: Adept Blacksmith has reached (8/50)!

Level up! For creating a large set of weapons pertaining to a combat Talent you have and gleaning a further understanding of this weapon, your Talent: Fledgling Spearman has reached (3/50)!

‘Oooh, the spearman boost is an unexpected bonus.’

Argo elects to rejoin me on my ear while I eat, although somewhat sad to leave his body, he’s happy to be with me again.

While we walk to the backyard, Adreanell tells me that she’ll show me her progress with the two new metals after dinner.

Colt sets up a table for everyone outside and we dig into the admittedly delicious hawk meat. It’s fairly lean but Colt’s seasoning techniques are to die for.

Glancing around the yard, I note a lot of signs of a spar between gashes in the grass and roots sticking out of the ground. “You two spar while you waited for the meat to cook?”

“Mhm. Colt’s vines are annoying as shit.” Becky’s plate of food it stacked up beyond what I even think should fit inside her.

“And you’re disgustingly fast.” Colt rubs his arm where he probably got cut earlier.

Becky just happily stuffs her face in response.

By the time dinner is over, there’s an excess of the hawk meat leftover, so Becky elects to take most of it home with her. She leaves somewhat slowly as she’s probably on the edge of a food coma.

Colt, Adreanell, and I head back inside. It turns out, manite and pranite can store mana and prana inside of them, so they can be used as a form of health or mana pool extension, though it has to flow into the body at a similar rate to my Spellbound Physique’s HP and MP conversions.

Adreanell made ten sets of rings from each bar today and plans on making more tomorrow. Their capacity isn’t huge, only around 500 HP or MP per ring towards the end of what she made with them starting out at about 200 HP or MP on her first experiments.

Testing them out, they stack if they’re all worn at once. The functions still only work one at a time but wearing multiple doesn’t cause any kind of conflict except that a manite and pranite ring can’t be worn on the same finger.

It’s beginning to get dark out, so Adreanell elects to go home and show Cassandra her work for the day. Still needing to get the enchanting done, Colt walks Adreanell home while I do so.

Each spear receives a sharpness enchantment for the blade, grip enchantments for the handles, and durability enchantments across the whole spear.

After some experimentation, I find that with enough focus, the elemental effects of the galvanite and coldsnap steel spears can be focused into just the speartip.

This both solves the problem of making the weapon difficult to handle and increases the power output because all the magic of the metal is being focused on a single location.

Seeing as I didn’t do anything experimental with the enchantments, I don’t end up with any more levels out of it, despite enchanting seven spears.

Strangely, I don’t feel tired despite spending the whole day blacksmithing, and I finally remember that I never Inspected the clay cutting wire.

Taking it out, I can’t bring myself to Inspect it as I notice several areas I can improve on the piece.

Using Hydromancy, I grind notches into the handholds of the wire on each ring, making the palm-sized rings capable of wrapping up the wire to shorten it for functional use as well.

This allows the approximately ten-foot long wire to be brought down to an appropriate size for use in actually cutting clay, or to shorten it enough to use in settings where the length would be hindered by walls or ceilings.

The grinding away of the handle ruins the sharpness toggle enchantments on the piece, so I have to reapply those, accounting for the new notch in the piece. It’s a fairly simple fix as only a small portion of the inscriptions were ruined and I simply reapply the enchantment once more.

Still feeling like sleep is wasting time, I put Argo back into his golem body. “Hey, Argo. Wanna help me on a weird weapon request I got? It shouldn’t take too much metal and should be easy enough for you to help me with.”

“That sounds amazing, Lucas! I’d love to help!” He jumps up and down, enjoying his newfound freedom in a body.

“Alright, I’ll just need to make some more ingots quickly, I have some ideas, I should only need four total.”

“I am waiting patiently, Lucas! Oh wait, you can see that now because I have a body!” He happily sways back and forth, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Colt’s newest plots of Hermes’ sandals, fortunately, have a lot more in the patches already, so I create enough guidance and swiftness aspect crystals for my purposes.

Moving on to the buoyoberries, they’re quite plentiful so I just make enough for one teletite ingot. The rest of the three ingots I make are sendite.

Showing Argo how I intend to shape the metal, I cut the ingots of sendite into somewhat thin, rectangular slices. Argo pounds away at them, bringing them all to the precise shape I need. Specific uses of Hydromancy cuts away all the shapes I need within these rectangles.

The more difficult part comes in making the next part out of teletite. It’s too specific for Argo to help, so I cheat slightly by cutting thick versions of the shapes I need with Hydromancy and then cutting them into thin slices afterward.

Attaching all of these shapes into the rectangular pieces of metal, I revel in the final piece that would have taken far longer without Argo’s help. He’s very good at shaping massive amounts of metal quickly with his untiring golem pace.

Gazing at all 52 of my creations, I find myself holding a metal deck of cards. The suits aren’t the correct colors as I don’t have red or black dye, but the shapes are as they should be: hearts, diamonds, spades, and clovers.

According to Cassandra’s list, the person who requested this deck is an Adept Magician. Thinking about the Talent, I feel it probably has a lot of overpowered potential. ‘Too bad I’ve never been good at sleight of hand.’

The sendite that makes up most of the card should make it incredibly accurate to throw while the teletite suits allow for each piece to be levitated back to the thrower after use.

They’re somewhat flimsy, so I just coat the edges of each card in sharpness enchantments with a toggle once more and then use up the rest of the space for durability enchantments. This makes the resultant piece far more durable, even I have trouble bending these cards.

Heavy use of Rapid Inscription helps me get all the enchantments done quickly once I finish the first.

The one I do manage to bend I have to fix, so I decide against trying on any more. They’re quite durable now so I believe they should be perfectly serviceable.

‘Now, to Inspect both the cutting wire and this deck. I think I’ll let The Construct name both of these.’

Artisan’s Muse

Quality: Medium

Traits: Strengthening, Swiftness, Guidance, Sharpness, Highly Durable

Description: This clay cutting wire is made from accelerite for the wire and sendite for the handles. This allows for high power cutting force with the guidance aspects in the handles assisting in the aim of this rather unwieldy weapon. Notches in the handles allow for the wire to be wound around the piece and shortened as needed. Sharpness enchantments with toggles allow for even the handles of this piece to have high cutting force when needed. Durability enchantments are the major emphasis of the wire itself, keeping it from breaking easily.

Trueshot Suits

Quality: Medium

Traits: Swiftness, Guidance, Levitation, Sharpness, Highly Durable

Description: These metal cards are made predominantly from sendite to allow for high speed throwing with sharpness enchantments increasing the cutting power. The suits of these cards are made of teletite, allowing for these cards to be levitated with one’s will. Enchantments have been added to the entire card to significantly increase its durability.

Level up! For creating a large set of cards with specific shapes using highly functional metals for the weapon’s purpose, your Talent: Adept Blacksmith has reached (9/50)!

‘Nice, these both look really good now, I’m happy with both of them.’

Yawning, I realize how tired I finally am and head up to go to sleep. Too lazy to brush my teeth, I just use Clean on my mouth and body, refreshing myself.

Colt is already asleep so I cuddle up next to him and fall asleep quickly. Tomorrow will be another busy day preparing Portland to survive the overflow of monsters from the Mount Katahdin dungeon.