Knowing about how dungeons worked made a huge difference. Hatchet agreed with me that at the rate I was going, chances are dungeons would be the only reasonably safe spot for me to level in once I spent all of my points. There were of course going to be plenty of other areas where I could find the level of opponents I would need to advance, the only problem is, in the open world once you got past level fifteen you would only see monsters as part of a pack.

Now this in and of itself didn’t make them all that dangerous, the problem was that the leader of the pack was always quite a bit stronger than the rest. In some species there were small examples of there two or maybe three pack leaders but that was hard to find. Levelling would mean either to go hunting packs for the one monster in it that would actually present a challenge, or start hunting packs where if the leader found you, you were dead.

All of the practice I was getting in my skills had started to make me question the system. Was there some sort of unmentioned buff to the child trait? My stats as they are now dwarfed what any child could get yet they were not enough to move any of my skills past the level cap. Was there no requirement cap for skill as a child? It made sense, otherwise nobody would get anything past twenty.

It was as I was going through my usual practice that I felt a presence appear behind me. It was an uncomfortable feeling, I always checked to make sure nobody from the village followed me when I went to practice. Somebody creeping up on me like this made me feel very vulnerable. Turning around I finally saw why I could sense them. Standing not ten feet behind me is the dragon.

“It’s good to see that you made some progress. Your skills have improved quite a bit and so did your level, why your stats have increased so little is a tad bit surprising.” she said as a form of greeting.

The idea that there were skills out there that let you not only see someone else's level but also their skills and stats was definitely inching me towards the paranoid self I had been for most of my life.

“Hello, you’re back.” The statement felt lackluster and awkward but didn’t seem to bother the dragon.

“I very much look forward to having my debt removed before anything happens to you. What good would a piece of magic gear you have no idea how to use be to you if something should attack your village. That would then make my debt force me to get you out alive and have me punished for meddling in human affairs, much better to have everything squared away.” she explained.

“Nice to see you care so much” sarcasm probably wasn’t the best idea but it was how I dealt with awkwardness in my past life. So far there hadn’t been all that many awkward encounters here to find a better way of dealing with them. “I take it, my gear is ready then?”

She produced two fingerless gloves that the back of the hands were covered by a metal plate with a small dent in the center.

“Here you go, these will definitely help you.” she said, tossing them to me.

I caught them, looked them over then returned my gaze to her. Was this a joke, a pair of gloves with what seemed like an enchantment on the defensive plate all my favor got me.

“Don’t look so disappointed. The enchantment there requires any sort of manacore to function. The better ones will take less to expire. It is there to hide you away from others. Your secrecy was important to you in the time you spent around my son.”

“If that is only there for cover, then what do these do?” Clearly there was something I was missing.

“Beneath that enchanted metal are studded refined and enchanted mana stones. Mana stones are quite a bother to get, though ones that size are a bit easier, anything bigger than a pebble and you have some real scouring to do.”

“Yes , but what does that do? I am self taught, how do these help me?”

“Oh, that’s what you meant.” She at least had the decency to be a bit embarrassed.” They will fix the problem you mentioned when you asked me for magic gear. The enchanting and refining were done with this item in mind. The reason there are so many stones that it took both gloves to fit them all is because I tried to get as many different aspects of mana as I could.”

“From now on when you look to infuse your mana into your items, first pass it through the gloves. They should give you a small increase in output but the important part is that the mana stone will take the burden, since the mana you will be using will match the stone it won’t cause any degradation to your items.”

Well that changed everything, I would no longer have to practice with wooden weapons in order to preserve my actual ones. Not to mention that from the way she mentioned multiple aspects I might be able to find some more aspects to gleam just by messing with the gauntlet.

“Thank you, this will definitely be very useful.” I said. While I was very appreciative of my gift, it seemed lackluster compared to the dragon in front of me. All of the magic I could feel from her items came from big jewelry.

“Don’t look at me like that, with the way you are using mana these will give you the versatility you need as well as make sure that you can keep them. I thought about getting you something else but you use too many weapons. If I were to get you a few enchanted weapons, the moment you leave this backwater village someone would take them from you. The gloves can be passed off as some family heirloom with little importance.” she scoffed at me, clearly being able to tell what I was thinking.

Her point was also a good one. Anything really good that the dragon would have gotten me would force me to hide it or have it appropriated by some noble for one offense or another. This at least until I could get myself to be strong enough so that wouldn’t happen.

“Thank y-” I looked back up to find that I was alone again. The dragon had given me the gift and left.

Since I was anyway out here to practice, I might as well try these out. The gloves were surprisingly comfortable. I almost couldn’t feel their presence. To start things off I infused some raw mana into them to get a feel of what was there. With mana infused my sense mana was able to pick up a lot more than six aspects of mana I could use. The gloves covered every aspect I had felt back in the guard courtyard and more.

I stopped the diffusion and decided to start with some small application of earth mana. It had been what started me on my journey on the path of magic so I might as well continue with it. The first thing I found out was that it was easier said than done to first feed my mana through the gloves.

I had never had an intermediary like this before so it was definitely something that was going to take a while to get used to. It took ten attempts for me to finally be able to get the damn things to work. The result was a lot stronger than the small hole I was hoping to make in the ground. The result was more than twice as big as the biggest hole I could make. At least the biggest hole I could make at a moment's notice, if I had time to gather my mana before pumping it all it would be a different picture altogether.

These gloves clearly did a lot more amplification than I gave them credit for, so I decided to see just what I could do with a full power attack. I drew the wooden sword I had for practice and infused the wind augmentation through the gloves. It only took three tries to get this one to work, but the result was much stronger than my usual enhancement. It managed to cut clean through the barok of a tree. The resistance I felt didn’t match up to my expectations though.

The amplification I felt with the earth was a lot stronger than the one I felt with the wind. Was it that these gloves had different rates for each element? I gave each of my mana aspects a try, getting shadow to work through the gloves took more attempts than even earth despite the experience I had. Fire went through on the first try, the wooden sword was hot enough to light a tree on fire with a glancing touch.

After going through all the different aspects I figured out that it wasn’t a matter of different amplification values. The gloves didn’t amplify my magic, it increased it. The difference may be subtle between the two in wording but made a world of difference in practice. The change to my spells was additive, not multiplicative , meaning that the increase wouldn’t grow the more power I had.

“What the hell happened here?” the angry voice of Hatchet came from behind me. “I thought I told you to be discreet when practicing your magic, what about this is discreet to you? I could almost hear you from the village.”

The grouping of trees I was practicing in became a clearing, the few felled trees was probably what he managed to hear. I looked sheepishly at him. How do I explain this to him now?