The next morning, I got up early and headed into the basement. I dumped most of the metal I had picked up from Freddy's metal shop onto the floor under the workbench. I also put the bars of mitrium on the work bench.

The mitrium was supposed to be useful for runes and enchanting but I didn't know why and I didn't know any of its properties. if it was tough, soft, brittle, flexible could it blend well with metals like steel and could it retain a charge like a battery or did it lose its charge immediately like it did with steel.

All those questions were important if I were to use this metal to make weapons for the Dungeon.

I heated one end of one of the bars and removed a slice of the metal which I flattened out to approximate a small dagger like shape, or more like a letter opener.

Before applying any runes, I ran a series of tests on the metal. I tried bending it to see if it was soft or where was the breakpoint was, but even with mana infused in my arms and hands, I couldn't bend nor break it.

I then took a piece of steel from my scrap pile and tried merging the metals using my earth element. I coerced the metals together and they now formed one solid piece of metal, with one side mitrium and the other steel.

I placed the newly fused piece of metal on the anvil and took my hammer and beat on each side of the metal.

The mitrium side was undamaged but the steel side showed dents from where the hammer had struck it.

I decided to charge the mitrium with mana to see how long it retained the charge. I added a simple light rune on the metal and after charging the rune with mana, it remained glowing much longer than it would have with steeI alone.

I now understood what was so special about this metal and even though I still had quite a bit, I wanted to get more.

It was about this time when Seb came down into the basement.

"What? You started without me bro?"

"I am just getting familiar with a new metal I received from my last dungeon run. I know that it is a good metal to use for runes and enchantments, but I had no other information about it so I had to run some tests. It's really a pretty amazing metal. Harder than steel and holds a mana charge much longer and can be fused with steel, so I won't waste too much making heavy weapons."

"I am impressed, you really are becoming a pro at all of this magic and weapon making. I hope that you'll teach me when I improve a bit."

"One of the first things that you have to figure out is which elemental affinities you have; you need to figure out what elements you can manipulate.

"I recommend you start with a ball of mana like you did yesterday and then try to convert it to water, fire air, earth and see if you can do any of the hybrid forms like lightning or ice or metal, lava. You should have received information on these forms with the mana gem."

"Yeah, I know the drill but I have been a little afraid to try it. I guess I am afraid to find out that I don't have any affinities."

"Listen Seb, I understand how you feel, but it isn't a competition. I know how it felt for me always comparing myself to you. Just be the best you can be for yourself, believe me when I say that comparing yourself with others will only ruin the joy of all the advantages magic can give you."

"I know, it's just you know, I have always been a competitor, I have always had to be the best or I had the feeling that I failed. It isn't about you, it's me."

"I am able to use all of the attributes, I said "but most people can only handle a couple at most, so don't feel bad if you only have one or two. But seeing as your mana core is an exact copy of mine, I am curious to see what your affinities will be. Who knows, you may be pleasantly surprised."

"I am sorry Matt; I feel like I am being a greedy whiner. I will practice and become the best I can be without comparing; but in the meantime, why don't you tell me what you are working on now?"

"I created a Thor's hammer yesterday for Mitch, one of the national guardsmen that fought with us in the Dungeon. The thing was pretty amazing so I thought I would make one for myself today, but hopefully I can improve on it and I also want to use some of the mitrium I received."

"The first thing I need to do is fix up this old steel workers hammer, then I want to create an outer layer of mitrium add some gems which will act like mana batteries, and finally add some runes."

"Wow, sounds pretty cool, I'll just here and watch if you don't mind."

"No, that's fine with me, and nothing prevents you from practicing on your elements as well."

I grabbed the old metal smithy's hammer and applied heat to the head until it was malleable enough to manipulate the metal with my earth attribute. I evened out the surface and removed any irregularities.

I then heated one of the mitrium bars and created a one-centimeter layer of mitrium over the complete surface of the hammer head and the full length of the handle.

The next step was to merge the metals together over the complete hammer leaving an outer layer of mitrium but the bulk of the hammer remained steel.

The process took me about 45 minutes, but it was the most time-consuming part.

I looked over at Seb and saw that he was playing with a ball of fire in the palm of his hand. With a smile on his face. As I watched he switched from fire, to wind, water and then ice.

"Wow Seb, you are already more advanced than 90% of mana users. I think you will be able to do most things that I am able to do.

Grad a piece of metal and see if you can bend it to your will, but you will need to heat it first, otherwise it is painfully slow to transform. If you can work metal, I can teach you runology and you can help me with enchanting the weapons.

He grabbed a piece of sheet metal from the pile and started heating it and I returned to my hammer.

I liked the design I had created for Mitches hammer yesterday, but I was trying to think if there was a way to improve on it. Lightning and increased mass was a powerful effect, but I wondered if it was possible to add some sort of explosive effect as well.

In my mind, I ran through the list of runes that were available but there was no rune for explosion. There was a rune for shock which could do the trick, but what I really wanted was an explosive effect like the mana bomb produced.

A mana bomb was a compressed mix of mana and air and it was triggered by a spark. But how could I create this combination on impact, make it repeatable and without damaging the hammer.

If I could generate a mana shield all around the hammer head or on each face of the hammer, and create a compressed mix of mana and air underneath the shield, the impact lightning effect could be used to trigger it and it should create the desired explosive effect. The problem would be getting the proportion of air to mana just right, and compressing it without breaking the shielding. And to do this without any intervention, it should recharge the structure purely using the runes and the auto re-charging gem batteries.

I decided to test it on a piece of scrap metal.

I created a rune for creating a shield over the metal, I then created a mana generating rune underneath the shield together with an air rune. I finally added an impact activated lightning rune as well. I added a decent sized gem to serve as the power source.

As the shield needed to be stronger than the compressed mana and air, I created three connectors from the gem to the shield rune. I then created single connections between the gem and the air and mana runes and finally a double connection to the impact rune which also had a double connection to the lightning rune.

I created a mana shield around the whole thing to not blow up the house, and created a barrier around myself as well and finally fed mana into the gem which activated all of the runes except the lightning rune.

I looked over at Seb who seemed very interested in what I was doing. I noticed that he had created a half decent dagger from the sheet metal, so it looked like he could pretty much do everything that I could do.

"What is that thing you created?"

"It's a test for an explosive effect for my new and improved Hammer. It should explode on impact but I am not sure if it will work. You might want to cover your ears."

I had taken all the precautions that I could and grabbed a steel bar from the scrap pile and struck the mana shield with enough force to activate the impact rune and trigger the lightning effect.

There was an explosion that cracked the shield I had setup to protect the basement, and I was propelled against the shelving on the opposite side of the room. Seb had fallen off his chair and was now sitting on the floor but he was otherwise undamaged.

Fortunately, the house wasn't damaged, but a few seconds later everyone was down in the basement, apparently expecting to find it destroyed and us splattered on the walls.

"Holy cow," Seb said "that was awesome! You have to teach me how to make one of those!"

"You first have to be able to do magic Seb", Ellie said looking down at her brother who was still sitting on the floor.

"Don't worry, I am a quick learner sis." Seb said while rotating 3 fireballs in the palm of his hand.

"What the freak? When did you learn that?" Ellie asked.

"Matt taught me last night and this morning. He still promised to teach me runes as well."

"Matt, don't think for a second that you can teach Seb without teaching me and Cara. Remember who spent the afternoon picking your clothes for you!"

"I can teach you and Cara as well Ellie, don't worry, but I have some weapons to finish today so I promise I will spend time with you and Cara tomorrow, or maybe this evening if I finish early.

"Now, please everyone, go back upstairs because I really need to concentrate if you don't want me blowing up the house."

"Seb, since you can work metal, I will give you rune knowledge as well." with that I re-charged the rune memory stone and let Seb absorb the information.

"Now, if you're interested, you can help me create a few weapons today."

"Sounds like fun," Seb replied eagerly, "and now that I can do magic, I should probably make a weapon for myself as well."

"By the way, do you have any other memory stones?"

"Yeah, I have a few others. I guess I could let you use them as well, all but one. One of them is too dangerous. I am saving that one as a last resort only option."

I pulled out the box and recharged the combat stone, the magic stone and the ascenders stone and let him absorb them.

"Wow, this is amazing! These things can get Addictive.

"What's that last one? Is that the "last resort" stone?"

"Yeah, that is a demonology stone, and from what I gathered from the Dungeon, you don't want to make any deals with demons, it rarely ends well. They have even lead to demon wars in the past, so forget you ever saw it.

"The only reason I have it, is because there are some dark mages using demons to basically enslave people and suck out their souls to become more powerful. I met some of their henchmen in the tower in Carla's village and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

"If we one day have to face them, knowledge of demonology may be the only solution. But enough about that, ready to work on the hammer?"

We re-created the hammer I had created for Mitch the day before, but we added the runes for explosion on impact to all sides of the hammer head, and I increased the impact threshold to avoid the chance of an explosion from just dropping it by accident. This was truly a deadly weapon."

My next project was to create a solution for Cara's village if the black-mist creatures returned.

My idea was to create self-powered boxes containing the same runes as those on my sword on the inside of the boxes. If the villagers could entrap the mist creatures in Mana barriers, they would just need to lock them in the boxes and they would be banished, cleansing the life force in the box.

The boxes were easy to make, and in a little over an hour we had created 4 of them.

I had other items to make but I asked Seb if there was any weapon that he was interested in.

Without any hesitation, he said, he wanted an axe and with similar properties to the hammer I created. We had to adjust a few things as the axe had a different form and we added an auto sharpening and auto repair runes to the blade, but most of the rest remained the same.

All in all, it seemed like a great choice for a weapon and Seb was dying to try it out.

One of the last items on my list was creating medallions that would drain mana from anyone who wasn't bonded to them, and transfer the mana back to the bonded owner. I also wanted to build in a return function to not lose the medallion as I would need gems to store the mana.

I made 3 which were more or less the same, but I knew that I would need to make variants or the trick would quickly become known. I created these largely in preparation for my confrontation with Antonius and eventually in case I ran into the black mages.

Finally, the last item was a chain, entirely made from mitrium. It was bonded and strengthened and was made to sap health from whatever it wrapped around, transferring the health back to the bonded owner. I was also able to add a lightning and a shock effect.

After we had finished with the weapons, we went upstairs to spend some time with the family.