Kent had of course consider waiting longer, maybe until he unlocked the Core tier of Daggers. Yet, ever since unlocking the other Core skills he couldn’t help himself. For now, he was simply more interested in his Metallic Insight and Metallumancy trees.

Daggers weren’t what he wanted to do going forward. Metal on the other hand was intriguing and felt right.

He found it ironic in a way. Kent stood here, in front of the place where he had spent most of his current wealth on items he found useful. Items that were primarily associated to a tree he wasn’t really much interested in besides for a single skill.

He scratched his head, considering.

No, it is the right decision. No need to dwell on it longer. He locked his choice in and breathed out relieved a moment later.

He didn’t regret learning Effect: Temporal Fitting at all, without even using it and that said a lot. It was the most interesting skill of the ones available, there was little doubt in that. It just felt weird in contrast to the literal fortune he had spent on daggers. Even if those daggers boosted his combat potential by a large margin and worked with his metal skills.

Effect: Temporal Fitting (1/20) (1/200)

Numerical effects happen to a large part during a short interval of the channel duration.

Duration: 0.7s (rank)

Effect: 0.5x (rank)

Maybe it was a bit odd that he hadn’t taken a skill that offered an immediate powerup, not offering anything for the first level, but he trusted in the system that far. All the skills he’d seen were superb, making it a decent bet that one that started out weak would eventually grow twice as strong. Especially since this one could be a skill that makes Accelerate Metal into the skill he had thought it to be from the beginning.

While Kent wasn’t quite sure how the skill worked in the end, which of the intervals would experience faster acceleration it didn’t matter too much in most situations. It would be hard to tell with a singular, or even just a few data points.

Alleviating that was easy. Spending the night on powerleveling the skill.

Trying to get it to a point where it did something could be really useful. But there was no need in tire himself to level the skill. He was going to hide possessing it anyway. As things stood right now, he wasn’t even topped of, and he couldn’t really experiment with the skill if he wanted to. Or so he told himself.

He breathed in once.

Nope, can’t resist, he grinned. Kent took a nail he had pocketed from the carpenters shop this morning and accelerated it straight upward.

It took a few moments for it to come back down but once it was halfway, he used the same skill, this time with the Meta Magic.

Nothing unexpected happened. In fact, nothing special happened at all. The nail slowed it’s fall until the inherent speed was drastically reduced and drifted softly to the side. Kent hadn’t expected…

The nail shot of a little faster to the side.

Kent squeeked softly, hoping against all odds that the nail would not hit anyone or anything significant.

Not even a breath later it burrowed into the sodden ground dozens of meters away.

Well, here is to hoping this will get better with subsequent ranks. Too be fair, this isn’t really a good test scenario anyway.

At least he had some idea of how to spent his time tonight should he not manage to fall asleep.

***

“Aren’t you excited as well,” Alexus basically squirmed next to the forge.

“Not really,” Kent responded dryly. Going out with Estes the last days had been rather mundane and relaxed compared to his two weeks alone in the wilderness. A lot safer too. Though he couldn’t fault his friend too much. Just weeks ago, he had had similar thoughts. And while he might have not said it out loud, he would have liked to try his hands on imitating his uncle’s former profession just once.

“But you get to go out with someone fun for once. Not your gramps.” He insisted. “I’m so jealous. It has to be so exciting hunting monsters and seeing your levels rise like flames. Maybe I’ll come with you more often.”

Kent doubted that. At least as long as Estes had a say in the matter.

“We’ll see. I think a lot will depend on how you conduct yourself and how much Estes and I will need to look out for you.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine. You’ll see. I’m not in much danger against most monsters. It’s just that I don’t really have the means to finish them off. But that’s what you are for, right. Rogue abilities seem so fun. I never asked, but do you have a movement ability yet? Or something to conceal yourself? We had a customer a year or so ago who was able to literally move through rock and dirt. That was soo cool. Not so much the improvements we had to make to the buildings security measures after my master found out.”

Kent wondered whether Alexus really wanted to know. But he probably did, it was just that the boy liked talking almost as much as Estes. Though in his position it made more sense. From what Alexus had mentioned he had little exposure to other kids ever since he began his apprenticeship at the Hymdal’s. Even his free day was occupied by helping his family’s forge.

So Kent responded enthusiastically, spending a good chunk of the later afternoon talking with the other boy about fascinating skills he’d seen and heard about.

***

Irritated Kent sat outside the city walls. Dusk had fallen and the gates would close soon. For any non-citizen of Farburg that meant waiting outside until dawn – but Kent was determined to find out what changed with the rank up of Effect: Temporal Fitting.

He was still mad at the watch for their initial treatment of him. And small things kept adding up that annoyed him to no end. Like why they wouldn’t let him or anyone else in after sundown. It made no sense.

The upside of the entire situation was that the skill gained one experience each time it was used. Accelerate Metal had changed to two mana per second after reaching rank 11 and thus Kent had needed 600 mana to get where he was now. Which to his surprise was what he had been able to do within two settings. He had just needed about 20 minutes of sleep to get there. Regeneration was really showing it’s worth here. Falling asleep too had never been easier.

With practiced gestures he pointed a dagger slightly next to a tree and accelerated it. The goal was to experiment with the new capabilities Accelerate Metal had gained on rank up. Specifically to maneuver along a predetermined curved line. Now that he was able to affect the direction of acceleration to be more than just straight away or towards him – through a perpendicular acceleration vector – he had begun working on better judging and using the ability. He was still a far way off from hitting targets that weren’t directly moving at him or in a non-predictable manner.

But another clang of metal on wood told him that he was getting somewhere. Kent smiled. He had hit his target eight times in a row each time with slightly different angles, even under the slightly changed Effect: Temporal Fitting.

With that out of the way he checked the skill description.

Effect: Temporal Fitting (2/20) (1/400 Exp.)

Numerical effects happen to a large part during a short interval of the channel duration.

Duration: 0.5s(rank)

Effect: 0.58x (rank)

The skills information had thankfully changed in the way he had hoped it would change. Instead of slightly boosting the acceleration in the last point three seconds of a single second of channel it now accelerated the first half by a slightly lower degree. Kent struggled understanding why the skill was seemingly worse at rank two but chalked that up to some issues in the spell matrix. Not that he actually knew, he just guessed.

He was ecstatic though. He had expected that only duration would change. Given the name his guess had been duration though. Yet that both changed was certainly helpful.

There wasn’t much else to do besides try it out. He grabbed another throwing dagger and cast Effect: Temporal Fitting together with Accelerate Metal.

To say the difference was earthshattering would be generous and over the top. But Kent could tell that the skills effect had changed by just comparing the flight pattern dagger of the two daggers that were simultaneously accelerated – with and without Temporal Fitting. An auspicious sign.

Given that his mana was low now he only fooled around a bit before heading in. The usual sensation of feeling lightly drained that came from having low mana values was barely perceptible next to the joy he was feeling over having a skill that was – as far as he could tell – exactly what he needed. Not that the tiring effect had ever been tough for him in the first place. Stamina exhaustion was a lot worse for Kent.

He skipped through the large city gates, a smile on his face, trying to figure out how the other channeled skills from Metallumancy would work with this. Rotate Metal was easy to determine in that regard and Kent would look forward to trying it out. But if he understood Oscillate Metal correctly, it might not work at all or change the skill into something that it wasn’t.

He looked forward to what it would be, as it skill was definitely one he would pick up. But as many things with the system, it was best to speculate not too much.

Kent couldn’t help himself.

Thinking about the skill in terms of acceleration was confusing in the first place. Would it change its acceleration based on position? Or how would that work? There were a lot of questions and thankfully a lot of time to figure them out. Or at least another 14 days.

He would have to put the next thirteen days to good use. Because as he was right now, he had little confidence that breaking into the royal institute would help him much with accomplishing his task. If he wanted to retrieve the turrl cores – if that even was what it took to fulfill the quest in the first place – he needed more levels. With the mana consumption of his cloak doubling after its upgrade, he had around three to four minutes under its the effect without being obviously detectable. It would be almost impossible to find and retrieve the cores in that time.

Though, with the royal institute it was best to not bet on his cloak doing that much for him.

It might be a good tool, even excellent, but he hadn’t much probed into how it acted around other people and magic. He had to use mana for using it, so there had to be a trace detectable. Someone with high enough senses and magic might have a good enough mana sense to detect such small applications.

But he still had plenty of time to figure something out. Not the full fourteen days, but thirteen, until the night before the quest was due. His best chance would another real dungeon – one with a quest – but that was a distant chance.

He had considered fleeing multiple times too, but whatever protection the title-system offered him seemed to be doing a decent job, given that he was still alive and there weren’t large scale searches for him.

And in all honesty, he would prefer to stay with humans for the time being.

The best course of action was probably to spend some time around Farburg to get strong, try to complete the quest, and once done, flee into the depth of the mountains until he reached level one hundred. That would give him some protection and means of defending himself.

***

The first sounds of the city woke Kent. It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up, but this time he would actually had to get up. Judging the time he’d left, he almost considered going back to bed.

He could already tell that today would be a tiring day. Estes had informed him the previous evening, that Agatha would expect him at the conquerors today for another training session, and with all the fighting he would do today in the woods that was bound to be exhausting. Stamina exhaustion hit him a lot harder, and his regeneration was a lot weaker, so he would doubtlessly be tired by then.

As stressful as all this was, he did appreciate her gesture. Then there was Alexus’ promise off using a spell core on his dagger – should he get his skill high enough with spell cores they found during the escort. That thought alone almost gave him the energy he needed to get up.

Regardless of it. His entire situation stressed him.

He never had to juggle as much before. It was always just help in the fields and spend time with his friends and family. Now there were several ambiguous threats looming in the distance, and minor ones just hours away. Things to do, people to talk to and appease.

Kent’s desire to not think about it any longer was what finally made him get up.

He dressed himself and left the room.

Alexus was waiting in the common room – which he could see from the gallery right outside his room. That he was here that early was a bit of a surprise, but Kent assumed that was because the boy’s nerves were acting up a bit. He had confided in Kent that he had only ever fought a single monster, to get the additional skill point before his class evolution. It had been chained up and yet he had not fared well.

Not that he’d struggled much with the actual act, but motivating himself to go through with it.

Kent hadn’t informed Marcus about the additional escort he would have today. The man was most likely not going to care, as long as they did their job, but he would have to do so as soon as the other man arrived. With a bit of luck, they could convince him to go a bit further into the woods to have a higher chance of finding stronger monsters.

Given how Alexus was dressed Kent doubted Marcus would say no. Especially not since Alexus looked geared for war.

The other boy was wearing heavy plate mail over his chest, arms, and legs. He held a helmet in his hand, had a spear and a hammer on the table next to him, and most likely a bunch of other equipment that was hidden by the table he was sitting at.

Alexus was probably equipped with better stuff than what he had ever seen Estes in the day before. Admittedly one of them had a lot less combat experience and was a lot more likely to get torn limb from limb if he was acting careless. So, it felt warranted.

Seeing what Alexus wore Kent realized what he was missing, a good defense. But he dreaded asking the cost.

As he walked down the stairs, he exchanged greetings with a few of the carpenters he had become acquainted with over the last few days. Their work was surprisingly interesting, and he had spent each of the last few mornings talking to several. He had also met the other work crew of the ‘Sturdy Oak’s’ craft workshop, but not talked much with any of them.

The most notable thing he had learned that in the whole town there were only three other work crews fulfilling similar tasks.

Coincidentally all of them had members that were related to Marcus. That much was required by law. Not the relation to Marcus that is, but the function of their trait. Being nature aligned himself Baron Owlbark had created several ‘odd’ requirements for most material gathering operations in the city. According to the officials that was due to him wanting to preserve the surroundings of Farburg as much as possible. If you were able to farm materials without impacting the future ecology of the region, you had basically free reign to do whatever you wanted. If you didn’t, there were a lot of restrictions placed on you.

Marcus’ crew and all the others focused on gathering semi-magical trees. Those were usually rare, only found far away from zones of civilization due to harvesting operations, but here that was different. Due to the recentness of the town’s founding and the early implementation and enforcement of such laws most of the ecologic had been preserved. And so called semi-magical trees – ones that were inherently magical and didn’t develop their magic through age or exposure to certain energies – were not uncommon here.

Though there was the issue that truly magical trees could not be regrown by any of their traits, so they were off-limits. Forcing them to make do with their less impressive counterparts.

Kent fetched two bowls of morning stew before approaching Alexus with a smile.

The armored smith’s apprentice returned it weakly as Kent placed down one bowl of stew in front of him.

“Morning Alexus, you feeling alright?” Kent greeted him.

“Mornin’,” he said before digging into his stew. “As much as possible, I guess. Totally forgot to have breakfast, so thanks for that. I knew I forgot something.” He kept talking in between bites.

“You are pretty early though,” Kent responded.

“Tell me about it. I even turned back halfway through the city though, when I realized I’d forgotten your Thaumic Dagger,” he continued after a few more bites. After a few more bites, he picked up a pouch from the floor next to him, opened it and removed a sheathed dagger from the inside.

“Master thought you could use a sheath as well,” Alexus continued as he handed over the dagger. “We also replaced the handle, to fit your hands better. Well, she did. You should try it out. I hope you don’t mind the changes.”

As Kent gripped the dagger, barely noticed a difference. The changes were at first weird, in an unfamiliar way. After handling it for at bit he didn’t mind whatsoever. The handle was a bit thicker now, allowing him to grasp the dagger firmer without his thumb and index finger overlapping at all. The blade looked much the same, though maybe the color had changed a bit. The most important factor though was the no longer missing tip. The dagger looked a bit thicker and felt a bit heavier initially, but he adjusted to the new weight quickly.

It made sense. The smith had said that she would add material. And almost all non-mundane materials that had greater durability also came with increased weight.

To satisfy his curiosity Kent cast an identify on the dagger and got a pleasing result.

Thaumic Bullock Dagger (Uncommon) – A dagger made from an uncommon thaumium allow in the bullock style. Attention was focused to increase sharpness and hardness during its creation. Due to the intrinsic material properties skills cast on the dagger will put less strain on the dagger.

A smile came over his face as he finished reading the description. Alexus had explained to him days ago why the tip of the dagger had broken off in such a relative short time. His old dagger had the additional line of “at the complete disregard for mana conductivity”. It basically said that each time mana or stamina was used in conjunction with the dagger its internal crystal structure would be slightly disturbed which created a buildup of weakness. His initial test of forcing mana into the dagger to activate a non-existent enchantment was basically just a mana build up that coursed through the dagger undirected causing the condition called mana corrosion.

While it was still a possibility that his new dagger could be affected by something of the same manner again, he would need at least an order of magnitude more mana to cause that. Furthermore, skills that used less than ten stamina or mana shouldn’t affect the dagger’s structure at all. Everything greater would still cause a slow buildup of stress within, but Alexus insured Kent that he could always come by, and he would fix that in a few skill applications.

***

Marcus had accepted Alexus accompanying them for the day without issue. He was doubtful whether moving further from the zone would make sense at all, but said they could still do that after the work crew had left for the day.

Estes had – as usual – meet them at the gate and upon prodding by Kent agreed to create some distance between the workforce and them. With Marcus pointing out where they would go today the group of three headed off with a quick pace.

Kent quickly noticed that even Alexus – someone without the insane boosters to his stats was able to physically outpace Kent. He was curious to find out how that was and finally dared asking the boy after remembering how he had described his trait to Estes.

“Oh, that’s simple,” Alexus grinned while jogging, “I’ve got an Agility, Strength, and Willpower allocation form my trait. So, each point into Trait gets me one of each of the aforementioned. I was also lucky to start out with quite high values in the first two. I’m at about a hundred in each of the three which is quite decent.”

“That’s really good,” Estes said. “Though I can’t really see a smith using much Willpower. Especially not as much as Strength and Agility. What’s the rest of your allocation? Have you considered becoming a fighter. With your sort of equipment, I’m sure a lot of conqueror teams would take you on gladly, especially if you can repair equipment on the go.”

They talked about Alexus’ abilities until they had gone a few hundred strides into the forest. Estes went a bit further in before triggering his Uproar ability.

The next few minutes were a hectic encounter.

First, they learned that it would be best for Alexus to stand away even further when Estes triggered the ability. As Alexus had been compelled to contest with Estes for a brief moment. Though Kent quickly got a handle on him.

Kent and Alexus dashed towards Estes once Alexus had been right in the mind again. Thankfully they had been further away in the first place as Kent complained about his head and ears hurting with each Uproar.

During their charge he readied a pair of throwing daggers and got to work. Kent only had a few with him, but that was as intended. He had practiced a bit but was far from actually being able to use them to cause damage to monsters consistently. That didn’t prevent him from using them regardless. They could develop into a nice disguise for his Accelerate Metal and Effect: Temporal Fitting combination.

But he would have to make it seem realistic, so he mostly used them for crowd control or confusing monsters. As his chances of even damaging a monster with them were miniscule. Once they engaged into melee he switched his new dagger and one of his previously bought ones.

Luckily, there weren’t any monsters above level twenty-five in this group. With an almost complete lack of growth in his physical attributes he was falling behind somewhat at that level of strength. Setting an steadily approaching end to Kent’s impersonation of a physical classer.

He jammed his thaumic dagger in the occasional monster, but mostly he focused on spotting turrls and keeping them off the other two combatants. Partially because they would be in a minor threat for the two fully in metal encased fighters, but because they used larger weaponry that made hitting the arm sized critters difficult.

Kent did wonder how the two would have fared against the turrl boss in the dungeon – but it seemed like he would never get a chance to see that.

Once they were done with the encounter of roughly thirty opponents – most dispatched by Estes and a few by Alexus – Kent checked his status but was a bit discouraged when he saw barely any change in experience. Estes saw his expression and grinned a painful smile.

“That’s what you get the more people you are,” the older man explained. “Groups larger than two loose a drastic amount of experience. According to the conquerors you get a little less than half each in a group of two. In a group of three you get a sixth, and then it gets horrendous. A group of four is roughly at about four in a hundred of the experience one lone fighter. Everything beyond that is basically nothing. That’s why groups are mostly four people or less – if they are trying to increase their power.”

Kent swallowed. He’d known that the shares dropped drastically, but this was terrible for his plans all things considered. Maybe he should leave Alexus and Estes to themselves. That would guarantee a level up for the younger man. Then again, Estes had claimed that he would get a third compared to being in a group of three. And that didn’t seem to be the case. If anything, it looked like his gains had roughly halved.

They repeated the tactic three more times, after which they had to take a break, because both Kent’s and Alexus’ resources had dropped considerably. Or at least Kent’s stamina. His mana was basically full if one ignored the small trickles he had used to make Metallic Presence give him the position of his throwing daggers. The good thing though, was that Alexus had reached level twenty.

“Such a bummer, I wish I had Magic and Senses at a higher point,” Alexus said to Kent as he was carving up one of the various monster carcasses around him. “I get what you meant earlier now. There is no way that I’ll find a spell core somewhere here. I don’t even know whether this scrambler has one.”

“Oh, I didn’t know Senses allowed for determining that,” Kent responded.

“Mhmm,” Alexus cleaned his hands and turned away from the monster. “Senses is probably one of the most useful skills for a combatant and crafters. It not only helps you spot monsters, but also helps you get information about monsters and materials. For example, I’ve heard that five hundred in both magic and senses enables you to see energy concentration and energy patterns in most monsters. So, it helps with spotting spell cores, without taking a corresponding skill. But it also shows you what a monster is spending energy on when fighting you. So, you can better prefer for specific attacks, abilities, and such.”

That made a lot of sense to Kent, and maybe he should have dedicated more to Senses in his allocation. That last one alone was a tremendous benefit he could use. Amplified by earning more money, it would be extremely valuable. Maybe he would consider that once he reached level one hundred.

Halfway through the day Alexus left Kent and Estes behind guarding the woodcutter crew. He had regenerated enough stamina to get home safely and wanted to see whether he could get his hands on a tool to inspect monster bodies to better determine the chance of them having a spell core.

Kent hit his head when he realized that that was an option. But Estes calmed him down again after he’d explained himself.

“As much as I encourage you hitting yourself to get the silliness out of you, you really shouldn’t worry too much about it. The tools used for that are massively expensive. Most I know of require an enchanter, and several other professions. Those factors combined make them cost in the range of hundreds of manci.”