The best way I found to deal with bad memories has always been to work. If I dove into the things which I was working on, then I would be able to forget what was bothering me. Of course, it wasn’t the same as fixing the problem, but it was a way to deal with and move on, at least for a while.

I knew that sooner or later, I was going to have to do a full deep dive into the memories and the emotions and get those extra lives handled, but until then, I needed to deal with the problem at hand.

It had been three days since the battle, and I figured that at least right now, the goblins were not marching toward me. It was a belief based on my dreams and the few interactions with them.

Overall they were not bright, and so I figured that if they knew where I was, then there would be an overwhelming attack that would take me out. However, since they hadn’t come for me yet, my thought was that they didn’t know where I was, and so I had been safe so far.

That would change the minute that they found me, and I was sure they were looking. They would want to know where their party went so that they could stop whatever was beating them. That was based on the reaction that I saw from the fights with the ogres.

They didn’t retreat, but instead, they had a second battle and perhaps more before the ogres either were beaten or moved on. I guessed that it was the latter as I couldn’t fathom the goblins defeating the ogres when a forty-foot fall onto rocks wasn’t fatal.

While I might have been wallowing in my suffering from the lives I had crammed into my brain for the past few days, I hadn’t been entirely out of it. I managed to make a few cores which I was going to use on gear for the battles to come. I had 6 cores to work with, and I knew that I was going to need more gear than that to be fully equipped.

I had seen the Great Shaman make and use rune stones, and I knew that I could as well. What I didn’t know was how much they would help. Because of my class and other skills like my Ki focus and my ability to straight cast not needing to dance, I wasn’t sure that using the rune stones would do anything for me.

I wanted to make them, at least because it seems like I might be able to learn something more from working with them. Also, I wanted to do something that tied me to the good side of power imbuing.

It took me several tries on each one before I had the right, but I ended up with a set of nineteen runes. With them, I was able to more quickly discharge a spell. In addition, it seemed like I was able to use the rune as the trigger and so bypass part of what I was doing.

This was a faster way than just the straight casting that I was doing. That being said, it only worked for the rune I had in my hand. If I needed to change over to something else, then it took time.

I played around with them and realized that I could now do things that my starting Ritualistic Spells hadn’t shown me. For example, I wasn’t only able to turn stone into dirt but also dirt into stone using the right combination of spells.

Where before I had been trying to work things out with the dance movements, the runes let me almost write the spell. I was quickly able to make an end-fire combination and then a stop growth for a plant.

Seeing how the runes worked let me use runes to create; ice, water, stone, sick, rot, and fear fist. While they were all cool, I couldn’t go fumbling through the rune as I went, so I needed to do something better for them if I would use them for a quick cast.

The other great thing about the runes was that they seemed to take less mana at the time of cast. From what I could see, the new spell took 50% of the usual cast.

It is likely because of needing to imbue the runes to start with; however, that didn’t entirely add up. Like much in the way of magic, it seems like the numbers are not always constant. I could either do a 10-point fire fist for 10 mana using the rune stones or a 20-point using 20 mana using the runestone, but the creation of the rune stone still cost the same 5 mana. So there was missing mana somewhere; something was going on that didn’t add up to me.

Other than the downside of the need to have the correct runes out, there was a significant issue with using the runes. Each cost 5 mana to make, and they were one-time-use items. At least as they were on the small stones like what I saw the Great Shaman use.

So if I would be using them in combat to extend magical attacks to increase the damage I did, then I would need to have a number of the runes.

To do something like my fire fist, I just needed to have the fire rune touching skin when I attacked; it didn’t have to be in my hand doing the magic, nor did it even have to be held.

It became very complicated; however, if I had, say, three fire runestones in my hand to be able to select just one to power. I also could find no positive adjustment to using more than one of the same runes at a time.

Now using fire and rain at the same time was nice in that I was able to create an area effect fire attack. It was kind of an odd attack in that, just like call rain, it needed to have clouds in the sky, and then when the attack happened, it was like each raindrop was fire and not water. Still fell and pooled as water would, but it was just fire. So while it did some damage, it was also all low level, from what I could tell.

I could, however, choose to use the fire rune in my left hand when I had one in my right as well. Also, I could select if I wanted to use the fire or the water in the same hand with relative ease. This meant that with some planning, I could go into battle with some magic on the ready.

For now, it seemed like I could hold about three runes in each hand with the size of the stones, which would let me have several attacks if I could use them. My best magical attack right now was the fire strike attack, but that was something that I needed to touch the enemy with.

So it would leave me starting the fight without my hands if I was holding runes in each. Unfortunately, this meant that I could only kick my enemies, and so I would have to figure out what to do with my ax or staff.

I did work out that I could get some of my two rune spells onto a single stone, letting me free up some space. So I could put my stop, wound runes on one stone, and it would be a healing spell after a sort. Minor cuts would heal on the target. I hadn’t tried anything more extensive because I was worried that it wouldn’t work, and since it was me as the test subject, I just didn’t want to go there. I made quite a few paired-up runes in this way. I did also find that the mana consumption was 75% of normal by having the two runes on one stone. So I could do things faster, but it would cost more.

What I needed to do was find a way to increase my personal mana stores enough that I could cast my way out of a fight. That, however, seemed to be something that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. That being said, if I could wear more mana stones, then I could, in theory, become more powerful. However, I could not draw from two external sources at once, so I would need to either have the power in large enough chunks to do the spells I wanted, or I would need to use them as just a supplemental source for my personal mana reservoir.

Knowing that I had almost died in both my encounters with the gremlins and goblins, I wanted to make sure that if I met them again, I was in the best possible set of gear I could get. So I took the time to make greaves out of some of the fallen wood and used leather for the straps around the back of it. I carved into the insides of the greaves the runes to strengthen and stop rot. I wanted the greaves to work better than green wood strapped onto my legs.

Next, I started making vambraces in the same way which I made the greaves. Again, I added in the same runes. The only thing that I did differently was that my forearm would have to twist to get into the wood as it was carved to wrap not just the outside but the top and bottom as well.

Armor core created

Armor core! (set)

Max level 5

As your armor levels, its helpfulness increases.

General

Showing up in all Orange.

Arn’s Wooden Greaves of Ironwood

Level 0

Type armor core

Class uncommon

Durability 200/200

Weight 2 lbs

Coverage: Shins

Armor rating 1

Arn’s wooden Greaves of Ironwood are a magically enchanted to be resistant to negative modifiers from all nature-aligned attacks (when worn as a set). They are also quite hard for a piece of fallen wood tied onto your leg.

While the Creator named these Wooden Greaves of Ironwood, there is no Ironwood used to make them. Also, if there were Ironwood, it would have been better to have named them Ironwood Greaves, as tacking Ironwood on at the end is redundant with Wooden at the front.

As the Creator of this set put a core in each Greave, they can level independently of each other. However, if the level is greater than 1 difference, then the set bonus will stop until they are brought back into alignment.

>Growth

To level your armor, you must provide for its proper care and material.

Leather 0%

Mana 0%

>Traits

These are the abilities or traits that your Wooden Greaves have.

Protection- Your armor has a +1 armor rating

Durable- Your armor is durable; it will not wear out from normal wear. Durability will only decrease with targeted attacks.

Anti rot- Your greaves, when worn as a set, will decrease all nature-aligned debuff targeted against you by 1 level. (Not limited to rot)

______________________________________________

Well, it was nice to see that I made another set which seems to be good. I should’ve tried to make a full set, but hey, that is what it is. I also wasn’t sure what was going on with the descriptions. They seem to have started off with less sass and more info and are now moving quite quickly to all sass.

I followed the same pattern I did with the greaves on the Vambraces and slotted both cores before pulling them up. Because I wasn’t too happy with the snark about the name, I figured that I would roll with it on this one too.

Armor core created

Armor core! (Set)

Max level 5

As your armor levels, its helpfulness increases.

General

Showing up in all Orange.

Arn’s Wooden Vambraces of Ironwood!

Level 0

Type armor core

Class uncommon

Durability 200/200

Weight 2 lbs

Coverage: Forearms

Armor rating 1

Arn’s wooden Vambraces of Ironwood are a magically enchanted to be resistant to negative modifiers from all nature-aligned attacks (when worn as a set). They are also quite hard for a piece of fallen wood tied onto your arm.

While the Creator named these Wooden Vambraces of Ironwood, there is no Ironwood used to make them. Also, if there were Ironwood, it would have been better to have named them Ironwood Vambraces, as tacking Ironwood on at the end is redundant with Wooden at the front.

This set was created after the Wooden Greaves of Ironwood, and even though the Creator was admonished for his poor naming, he continued with this poor name.

As the Creator of this set put a core in each Vambraces, they can level independently of each other. However, if the level is greater than 1 difference, then the set bonus will stop until they are brought back into alignment.

>Growth

To level your armor, you must provide for its proper care and material.

Leather 0%

Mana 0%

>Traits

These are the abilities or traits that your Wooden Vambraces have.

Protection- Your armor has a +1 armor rating

Durable- Your armor is durable; it will not wear out from normal wear. Durability will only decrease with targeted attacks.

Anti rot- Your Vambraces, when worn as a set, will decrease all nature-aligned debuff targeted against you by 1 level. (Not limited to rot)

____________________________________________________

I laughed out when I saw that I was admonished for my poor naming. So far, I had been trying to name things to sound kind of nice, which was fully not how I would have named them when playing a game on earth.

Back then, anytime I got to name something, I would go with a description of the weapon. For example, “sword 10 pts fr dmg” would be for a sword that did 10 points of fire damage.

I hated trying to guess what my stuff did when I needed to swap out. So for me, Wooden Vambraces of Ironwood was a huge step in the direction of not just giving numbers. Heck, depending on the game, if there was a picture beside the item, I would drop what type of weapon it was so that I could just get the damage.

There was only so much that I could do in a day of working. After that, my mind was mostly blank, and it was time to scout.