When Blink woke up, I took a break from working to ask her a few questions, “How much longer on your form cool down?”

“16 hours till I cans hunts better! I gots new skills of dagger and healing!”

“Nice! Getting new skills is a good thing, are they both at level 0?”

“Yes, they hard to gets.”

“Yeah, the higher you level the harder it will be to get new skills. I do have a couple of questions for you though.”

“Okays Daddy, what are theys?”

I chucked a little. I wasn’t sure if I should just keep rolling with being her dad or not. I guess I kind of was because of watching her hatch. Better than being her owner, which I had kind of thought myself as before she started to talk.

“Well first where did you get your dresses that you get when you change to your little girl forms?”

Blink gave me her big lizard smile, which was a very disconcerting expression. “I got them from the dungeon. They will always fit since they are dungeon clothing!”

“So they are just clothing and can get damaged or dirty?”

“Yup! See, its alreadys fraying heres.”

“Okay I am going to try to get your dress better like I did for Lannah. No need having your clothing falling apart. Also where do they go when you change?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know. They are just gone.”

“Do you know if it is only your dress or can you take other things with you as well?”

“Daddy, I don’ts knowsss.” She said with a bit of a pout, and then her tongue did the little lizard test the air thing.

“Okay well I have a bracelet that I can’t wear that if you can keep it on when you transform we will have you take. But there is no reason if it is just going to fall off. Okay?”

Blink nodded.

“I need to finish up all my new armor and then see about putting cores into things then once we are ready we can finish heading back.”

Blink nodded once more and then picked up my knife and started to swing it back and forth like she was using it. My guess was that she was trying to practice as she was doing a few basic steps and swings over and over again.

It took me most of the day to get my runes in place for the four new pieces of equipment that I was going to be using. While mana was something that I always needed, I kept finding myself coming up against the almost running out of health problem, so I made my Tasset and Sabatons like I had my Breastplate. They each added two to my armor rating, or perhaps it was two to the location, but they also each added an additional 10 to my vitality. I added links to them and the Cuirass parts and was able to loop them into the set. Which doubled the vitality.

With my armor equipped, my vitality jumped from 15 to 95. This meant that while my HP on my stats showed 30 when I was fully suited up, I would be at 190. While I had been encountering monsters with a much higher HP, I was no longer running around with the hit-points of a gremlin.

For my sabatons, I took a different route with my runes. These would slip over my moccasins, and I put silence on them so that they would lessen my overall noise while moving by 25%. I figured that being quiet was in many ways related to stepping more than health was with feet. So I thought that with the whole intent matching item part of magic, I would make them their own thing and not part of the set.

Lastly was the war hammer. I needed something that would help with the undead while I was fighting through this area and perhaps in the future, depending on how big of a problem they would be. So I took the time to build something that I thought would be more aligned with breaking them.

Weapon core created

Weapon core!

Max level 5

As your Weapon levels its helpfulness increases.

General

Showing up in all Light blue.

Arn’s War Hammer of the Paladin

Level 0

Type Weapon core

Class Enchanted uncommon

Durability 100/100

Weight 3 lbs

Weapon type: Blunt

Damage: 4 Dmg Blunt +1 magical,

>Growth

To level your weapon you must provide for it proper care and material.

Metal 0% Mana 0%

>Traits

These are the abilities or traits that your Weapon has.

Durable- Your weapon is durable, it will not wear out from normal wear. Durability will only decrease with targeted attacks. Paladin’s Might- Your war hammer was seized from the bones of defeated undead and powered with the a core for the mission of driving the hordes of undead to rest. With impact Lay-to-Rest small is cast on the target along with drain mana. Paladin’s rage- Your war hammer charges itself as it strikes out at the undead. Once it has drained 60 mana it will cast a Lay-To-Rest large on itself and a start fire. This war hammer has been imbueded with power and can hold up to 30 mana. It can recover 1 mana every day on its own.

While I didn’t have a war hammer skill, I had used other blunt weapons in the past and was hoping the skills would pass on. If not, with the speed that I learned, it wouldn’t be too long before I was as skilled with it as I was with my sword or staff.

It took most of the day to get the cores made for all the equipment and the rings I got. Gave each of the rings a core which, oddly enough, none of them were worlds first. They were just ring cores that maxed out at level 12. When the Ring of Stone got a core, it changed as well as far as what it could do. Or perhaps it just showed me what it could do.

Item core created

Ring of Stones

Max Level 12

General

Showing up in all gold.

Arn’s Ring of Stones

Level 0

Type item core

Class Ultra Rare

Durability 100/100

Arn’s ring of stones is able to use the spell Stone sphere at level ten. As this ring levels so does the level of the spell.

>Growth

To level your Ring you must provide for it proper care and material.

Gold 0% Mana 0%

>Traits

These are the abilities or traits that your Weapon has.

Durable- Your ring is durable, it will not wear out from normal wear. Durability will only decrease with targeted attacks. Stone Sphere- Your ring can shoot use the spell stone sphere at level 10 causing a 16 pound ball of stone to shoot from the ring at a speed of 25 miles per hour. Reduced mana cost 5 mana per use. Imbued- Your ring has been imbued with mana and can hold up to 25 mana. It can recover 1 mana per day on its own.

It was time that we left. Everything that I could make except for Blink’s dresses were done, and I would rather move out and get to the next room before I did any more work. It seemed to me the longer we stayed, the more undead showed up, and so I was worried that we would get trapped.

I wasn’t too worried about coming up the main hatch as it came up right under the protection of a tree growth stake. The stakes weren’t quick kills, but they had been doing an excellent job of protecting me. So when I came up, I was happy to see that nothing else was around.

Blink put on the bracelet and turned back into her usual big lizard self. I was happy to see that the bracelet went with her and it wasn’t just her dress. I wanted to know what type of changes happened, but my view of her stats didn’t ever show the equipped items, so I didn’t have a way to see if it was helping her or not.

We pushed on quickly. We had already used up half our daylight waiting on Blink to be able to turn back to a lizard. Once she could, we started beating feet toward the ford. Neither one of us wanted another fight like the last one. So we would move until I was almost out of the power for the standard, and then we would build a room but only if we didn’t get to where we were going first.

One of the things that I noticed about this forest was that even though there were all the undead everywhere, the animals were doing great. It was like the undead were focused on people and those who attacked them. The herds of deer were moving, and the rabbits were jumping. It was part of what could hide the undead so well. All the normal noise was there.

This advantage didn’t help the first group we came to. I wasn’t sure how but Blink managed to let us get the drop on them. There was a group of 7 skeletons. All of them seemed to be decked out as warriors. Their equipment was rusted, and their wooden shields looked more like rot, but they reacted with skill when we were spotted.

When I was about on them, Blink sent me the image of the skeletons just standing there, so when I came into range, I dropped a stone sphere across the bodies of three of them, sending them apart like bowling pins on a lane.

The other small groups had tried different tactics with us. They had been mixed groups for the most part and tried to engage us as such with warriors up front and range in the back. This group was all warriors, and so when we advanced on them, they formed up into a shield wall. It was a short wall in that it was only four of them, but to see them advance as a team was different.

I didn’t give them a chance, however, and fired off the ring a second time. The sphere hit the rotten shields of the middle two, sending bits of wood everywhere along with the shield arms of them. Then because there were only 4 of them left and two of them were gimps, I dropped my pack and standard and advanced with the war hammer. It was time to learn a new skill.

* * *