James was quite irritated at Dom, and the idiocy he seemed to represent. At the same time, however, he was wildly excited to have the workshop to himself, with the objective of weapon crafting.

With the batteries he had, there was no problem with energy, as he could run the entire workshop for the next few hours without issue. But not wanting to needlessly waste valuable and potentially finite resources, he limited himself to using only what he needed.

And what he needed was the machines; the table saw to cut the metal, a welding torch to put it back together, and various others to work with the leather properly. To make the spears he wanted, he could simply cut an angled piece off the end of each pole, but this would create an imbalanced weapon that would bend after sustained use.

So, he used what the college had called the forge to do his best impression of a blacksmith. First attempts were failures. He had attempted to heat up the end of the pole sufficiently that he could hammer it into a flat spearhead on the anvil, but as the pole was made of relatively thin rolled metal, the metal began to warp further back and ended up twisting it.

Backing up, James copied Annie, and cut off another few inches of the pole at a much steeper angle, and repeated it on the other end so that the pole now had two triangular points on it. He then heated the end a little, so the pole barely glowed, the hammered the points together. He was met with a much more satisfying and steady point.

After hammering out all the seams and air bubbles, he cooled it in the bucket of coolant that was conveniently left out and then used an angle grinder to neaten up the edges and make the point more pronounced. It would stab, and that was all that mattered.

Curious at whether the system would recognise it, James used analyze to see why his spear could do.

Weapon: Crude Pike (E)

Quality: Low

Condition: Good

Damage: + (18-21)

Type: Piercing damage

James grinned at his handiwork and was pleased this only took him 15 minutes. He could make more, faster, as he now knew how. But as he had reached a milestone in his weapon making, he took a moment to relax and look around. Annie wasn’t moving and still had a while before her status would wear off, despite the fact that her health would have regenerated long before. Dana was sitting cross-legged, facing slightly away from him, with her left arm outstretched as if she were trying to pick something out of thin air. The way she sat almost gave him a nice view up her skirt. Almost.

James stepped around his workbench and thought he had glimpsed a flash of black before Dana opened her eyes and laid herself back on the floor. Once again frustrated, though, to a lesser extent, James turned back to his work and was about to begin on the second spear before he heard a great impact, and the sound of wood and stone shattering.

Turning back, raising his new spear, James was more than a little amused to see one of Dana's legs stuck up to the knee in the floor. Though he had no idea how, the idea that she had done this, and was now stuck was enough to make him chuckle a few times.

But his newfound humour was short-lived as Dana easily removed her leg, and then got onto her hands and knees, looking straight through the hole she had just made.

"Whose idea was it to bring goddamn slime to life?" Dana muttered loud enough for James to hear.

"What? There's slime?" James was dubious. Though he could deal with the idea of giant lizards and magic, a living slime was something literally out of a horror film.

But, after walking over to the hole and looking through, he had to admit that there was a giant pink slime in the room. But it wasn't only the slime that was weird. James noticed something unusual with the room that housed it.

"No doors. Why are there no doors?"

There were no doors in the room. Thinking about it, there shouldn't even be a room for this particular workshop. According to the map in James' mind, the stairs to get from the first floor to the second should have been directly beneath them.

"A secret room maybe?" Asked Dana. James had to agree. This room was definitely a secret, and could probably only be found by accident.

"What is it though?" Dana asked another question. She was vocalising everything James should have been thinking about instead of the chance of finding this room, and how anyone ever would.

Analyze

Giant Pink Slime (Rare):

Level: 5

Using analyze again had dropped his stamina to 1, and James instantly felt sleepy. He would have to take it easy for a while. Telling Dana what it was, she looked surprised.

"Something that big is only level 5?"

James thought it over. It was indeed big and might have been taller than him if he were standing next to it, but it was made of slime, so probably wasn't that good at defending.

"Slime can't be that strong. Slime is pretty much just a liquid."

"Does that mean stabbing it won't do anything?"

Shit. James hadn't thought of that. It made sense actually. But how would they kill it?

"I can use some magic on it if I need to," Dana said it like it was no big deal.

"Seriously? What can you do?"

"Ummm, it's called mana body infusing - no. Infusion! It lets me make parts of myself really strong for a bit."

James was shocked. His gentle girlfriend had learnt a strong offensive spell that could deal a lot of damage, and James had no idea how.

"You should try to meditate and focus on Mana. It's really easy to study." Dana continued.

And James became more confused.

"Wait a second." He started, cutting off her rant about mana.

"You can break through the floor?"

Dana looks a little uncomfortable, and half nodded.

"Can you make a big enough hole for a person?"

Again, Dana gave a nod and even averted her eyes.

"With enough mana", she whispered.

“Amazing! Can you start doing that while I make more spears?"

Dana relaxed at this. While James had no idea what she was tensing for, he was glad she relaxed.

"Well, let's get back to work then huh?" James said with a grin and kissed her lightly on the lips. Her face brightened at the contact and instantly broke away, returning her legs to their crossed position, her eyes closed.

James took a moment to appreciate the full display now faced towards him and walked back to his workbench with fresh motivation.