Regis thought about the experienced wizards’ advice before he turned his attention towards the arcane words he had to chant. His whispers were almost completely silent, but his arcana still reverberated as it flowed out from his fingers. The light blue fog formed into a half see-through disk that was similar in size to a dinner plate. It began to float in a slow circle around the young dark elf as golden words flickered into his vision.

{You have successfully casted the ‘Arcana shield’ spell. This spell is now carved up into your Shardwaker’s mark.}

{Your arcana reserves are temporarily decreased by ten points.}

“I guess that does it,” Regis said as he cancelled the spell. “Thank you both for your help. This spell will definitely come in handy.”

“There’s no need to thank us,” Galen waved with his hand. “Us wizards tend to be practical. You’ve had a crystal to trade and we gave you a spell for it. That’s all there is to it. If you get your hands on anything of arcane origins you think’s worth trading, you can come here again.”

“What exactly do you trade in? Do you trade with enchanted items, or spells?”

“You might get your hands on skill crystals from the fallen sometimes, but elemental stones are the most sought out item right now.” Salvador answered.

“With Hunor filled to the brim by refugees, the fallen are drawn to here like moth to the flame. Our stocks of elemental stones are almost completely empty. If you find any ‘chipped’ elemental stone, you could trade four of those in for another spell.”

“I’ll see what I can get my hands on,” he said as he remembered the transmutation circle he learned before. “I should go now. There’s still a lot to do and I need some sleep as well.”

“Yes,” Salvador nodded. “We have to return to our duties as well. I’m glad to have met you, lad.”

“It’s Regis,” the dark elf said. “I forgot to introduce myself before, but my name is Regis.”

“A fine name,” The greying haired wizard patted him on the shoulder. “Take care of yourself Regis.”

“Likewise.” He said as he picked up his loot bundle and left towards the door with Galen.

As he stepped through the door, Regis looked up to the sky that was already bright with the sun slowly climbing upwards. After a deep breath he headed out, but he stopped as he noticed a large carved stone plate on the ground of the small front garden.

“What’s that?” The youth asked and Galen turned to look towards the carved stone floor.

“That’s the local portal stone of the guild,” the man answered. “Every spell weavers’ guild supposed to have one. It can be used by activating it with one’s amulet.”

“What amulet?” Regis looked at the man with his eyebrows raised, but the man just pulled a rune carved talisman free from his neck to show it to him for a moment.

“They’re a type of enchanted arcanite that can be soulbound. The only difference between these and other soulbound items is that they don’t break after their owner’s death. They simply lose their memories?”

“Those amulets have memories? That sounds quite farfetched.”

“They don’t have memories like other living beings. If you have one and you get close to one of these portals, it can memorize its arcana print. Later on, you can use it as an anchor to move between two portals.”

‘It’s a heart stone.’ Regis recognized the item’s video game equivalent from its description.

“Sadly, both Salvador and I came here on a boat from Harmarond along the coast, so we didn’t get to synchronize our amulets with any other city’s portal in Ecragurne. If we did, we would have already gone forward to see what’s happening further inland.”

The man sighed as he looked at the crowd of refugees that stumbled up and down on the streets.

“Can’t you use it to go back to Harmarond?” Regis asked, but he only earned a spit on the ground from the wizard.

“Not without having a few stops along the path through Ecragurne,” Galen shook his head. “These things don’t have that kind of range and even if they did; Harmarond fared even worse than this place. You should go now. I’m sure you have elsewhere to be and I have to return to my duties.”

“Yes.” The young dark elf nodded as he knew that he overstayed his welcome for the time being.

On his way to Bray’s hideout, Regis noticed that more and more refugees filled the empty spaces between buildings with their tents made from driftwood and other junk they could find. Families huddled together to share what little they were given by the guards that held the daily public food dispersion on the central marketplace. Regis could see parents barely taking a bite from a Landwaker fruit, giving almost all of it to their starving children. It felt strange to see such devotion, but he shook off the weird feeling as he dragged his loot bundle towards the alley.

Even if there were desperate refugees and troublemakers around, no one wanted to cause trouble for a dark elf that walked with a bladestaff in his hand. The alleyway was still surprisingly empty, although he did have to watch his footing to not step into the stinking piles of shit and fish guts that some people left there. A few steps away from the secret entrance to the sewers, a slight shift in the air, coupled with Regis’ paranoia made him drop his loot. At the same time, he swept backwards with his bladestaff while feeling a stinging sensation at his lower back.

“Fuck!” He growled as the edge of his weapon slashed something and as he spun around, he saw a retreating figure with a bloodied blade in hand.

The stranger tried to gain distance from him, but the young dark elf’s other hand was already raised in the air with a horse bean sized quartz forming in front of it. His spell burst forward, striking his attacker in the chest, causing enough damage to make it stumble. The next moment his bladestaff reached an unprotected shoulder, piercing it through thanks to his new attack skill.

“Who sent you?” Regis growled as he pinned his opponent to the ground, but he only herd the sound of frothy choking as an answer from under the cloth hood as the assassin’s head fell to the side limply.

“Bastard!” He spat at the corpse as he stumbled backwards, pushing his left hand on the bleeding stab wound.

The blood was gushing out at an alarming rate and even as he spent the remains of his arcana to cast lesser healing on it, he was still left dizzy. The sound of stones sliding atop each other made him turn to his left with his back against a building, but he only saw an aged face appear from the secret passage.

“Regis,” Bray called out to him worried as he walked closer. “I’ve heard the commotion and your voice through the grates. What happened?”

“Assassin,” the young dark elf wheezed. “The bastard managed to shank me quite deep. I need to…”

“Easy there lad,” Bray caught him as he was falling forward. “It seems your attacker managed to get you quite good. Just focus on healing yourself and let me take care of the rest.”

Bray dragged the youth down the secret passage where he helped him sit down. Regis focused on regaining his arcana and spamming lesser healing on himself until the dizziness went away. With no pain or any sign of injury left, he set his back against the wall and let out a deep breath. The old man slowly dragged down the assassin’s corpse as well, tossing it on the ground.

“I was getting worried,” Bray said after catching his breath as he checked up on Regis. “I’ve heard how bad things were last night and after you didn’t show up, I thought that you might have gotten injured. Now you show up with an assassin at my doorstep.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Regis said, looking at the face of his attacker as Bray pulled off its hood and mask. “I know this fucker. He’s one of the guards from the lord’s manor.”

“Oh,” Bray sighed deeply. “That doesn’t bode well, lad.”

“We had a run-in with some dangerous undead, but we managed to get back in one piece,” he began to explain the events of his time away. “There was this noble brat we’ve had to save from getting torn apart. I kind of called him a coward in front of his father and the kid wasn’t too happy about it. This bastard was one of the guards that led him out of the room his old man was holding the meeting in.”

“And you believe that the lordling decided to pay you back for the insult? It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened.”

“I can imagine, but I’m way too busy and under equipped to deal with the arrogant little shit for now. Have you cleaned that cooking pot of yours yet? I’ve managed to get some carrots and a leek. It would make for some decent soup. Although it’s in the sack I’ve dropped in the alley.” He changed the subject after a loud growl escaped from his stomach.

“I should have put the pot back amongst all that junk somewhere. Did you manage to get some clean water as well?”

“I did. It’s in the bag with the rest.” The dark elf leaned to the wall as the old man head up to retrieve his earnings.

By the time Bray got back with the oversized loot bundle and the cloth sack, Regis was already well enough to strip the assassin from its valuables, of which there weren’t many. It had a long and thin bladed iron dagger with its sheath, a coin pouch with five silver and twelve bronze coins in it and of course, a pair of decent looking black leather boots that were a decent fit for Regis.

“I’ll get rid of this bastard so it won’t stink up the place.” He said as he began to drag the corpse into the depths of the sewer.

When he dragged it to a distance he believed would be safe, he tried to use the corpse sacrifice spell, but it didn’t react to the suicidal assassin. With the corpse staying as it was, the young dark elf found it better to take its head off with a swift strike of his bladestaff, just in case it wanted to get back up. He then returned to the old man’s camp and grabbed a rag with some water to wipe off the dried blood from his skin.

“You should get some rest,” Bray said as he peeled the carrots for the soup. “It will take a while for the food to be ready.”

“Not yet, Bray. I have a lot on my plate.” Regis jested as he sat down to collect his thoughts.

After absorbing the inheritance crystal of the runebound spell weaver, he had a large amount of fragmented memories and knowledge shoved into his head that nagged at him to be organised and assimilated. It took him several minutes of deep meditation to focus his thoughts and the jumbled memories, finally understanding what gnawed at his conscious whenever he looked at his pile of damaged equipment and the Landwaker’s seeds. As part of the inherited knowledge, Regis learned four magic circles.

The first one he was already familiar with as it was the same one he would use to create elemental stones. The other three were in a sense, variations of the one another. These transmutation circles had the respective purposes of salvaging, fusing and creating. It felt overly convoluted to him at first, but he managed to sift through the memory fragments to make some sense of it. The transmutation circle meant for salvaging would use magic to tear items into their components, although there would always be a loss of materials during the process.

The magic circle responsible for fusing had two functions of its own. One of them would simply fuse the smaller pieces of the same material into a larger whole while the other one worked like the match three games of Earth. Regis would need three identical pieces of materials which he could fuse into one of the same size but of higher quality. It felt like an obvious scam as he would lose two-third of the materials placed into the circle.

As for the last transmutation circle; it felt like an OP hack of economics and reality. It would allow him to mimic craftsmen to a certain extent by creating items from the same materials he scavenged, within reasons of course. He couldn’t create something as elaborate as a forged iron sword as it had too many steps in its creation process with too many changes happening to the materials. He could however create simple items such as vials from glass or quartz, or fabric from threads and very simple clothes from said fabric and thread.

The only problem with this God like cheat was that he needed to have an in-depth knowledge of the makings of the items he wanted to create himself. Regis figured that he could re-shape shattered glass into potion vials if needed, or help create threads and bronze fittings for the girls if they required for their crafts. Anything more difficult however would need him to study crafts himself, which would take away even more time from his already crowded schedule. Not wanting to waste time, he headed to the clearer side of the underground camp, drawing all three transmutation circles into the ground.

After lining up his earnings beside the magic circles, he picked out the weapons and armour pieces that were the most damaged. The first item he placed into the transmutation circle was a bronze dagger that would have taken too much effort to repair. After he placed the weapon into the middle of the circle, he sat down in a lotus position beside the circle and placed his hands on a pre-determined empty space. Regis began to channel his arcana into the formation, making it glow with deep magma red light.

An invisible force raised the damaged bronze dagger upwards as it was surrounded by a white light. As the blade vanished into the ball of light, only a single thought ran through his mind. ‘Salvage!’ Following his will, the swirling light ball of the transmutation circle began to spin and the young dark elf felt more of his arcana leave his body to the point where he became nauseous. As the light of the magic circle finally vanished, two small glowing bubbles were left floating in the formation. Regis reached out for them and as they popped, a torn strap of leather and a handful of bronze scraps fell into his opened palms. He used the last of his arcana reserves to cast his identifying spell on them to see the results.

{Bronze scrap}

{Item rarity: common}

{Item quality: waste}

{Crafting material}

{Coarse leather scrap}

{Item rarity: common}

{Item quality: waste}

{Crafting material}

Seeing the results, Regis let out a low whistle before closing his eyes for a quick meditation session. Five minutes later he was back to full reserves and pulled out another damaged bronze dagger from the pile before repeating the salvaging process. The results were the same the 2nd time as well, so he repeated the cycle a few more times. He separated each result to see the difference, but the amount he gained from the daggers was almost the same.

It was obvious that salvaging items of the same size, type and quality would have the same results with only their durability altering the re-gained amount slightly. After he noted down the results mentally, he put two handfuls of bronze scraps into the transmutation circle responsible for fusing items before giving out the new command. ‘Fuse!’ He thought and the circle did as ordered. Its lines and symbols glowed with a deep golden light as the scrap pile floated up, only to be devoured into another basketball of light.

After draining the young dark elf to the edge of dizziness once more, the light of the circle died down and a new shimmering bubble awaited him instead. Once it burst apart above his opened hands, it revealed a small bronze ingot. Regis repeated the process with the leather scraps as well and then he identified both, but the results were both obvious and somewhat lacklustre.

{Bronze ingot}

{Item rarity: common}

{Item quality: waste}

{Crafting material}

{Coarse leather sheet}

{Item rarity: common}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Crafting material}

Sometime after regaining his arcana reserves, he immediately fused the three bronze bars and after some meditation, three palm sized leather sheets as well. The results were quite different from his expectation as a single bar of bronze that was barely half a size larger than his very first bar appeared at the end, along with a small piece of square leather. Their stats were quite ordinary. His only true success was the glowing note he received from the Hearth after checking his handiwork.

{Bronze ingot}

{Item rarity: common}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Crafting material}

{Leather sheet}

{Item rarity: common}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Crafting material}

{You have successfully created two ‘waste’ and two ‘ordinary’ quality crafting materials through transmutation alchemy.}

{You have unlocked the ‘Transmutation Alchemy’ skill-line.}

{You have unlocked the ‘transmutation Alchemist’ craft.}

{Your spirit got permanently increased by 1.}

‘Transmutation Alchemist?’ Regis stared at the fading golden words with his eyebrows raised.