Blacksmith vs. the System 56-60

— Chapter 56

Once I had returned to the fourth floor, the first thing I did was add another layer of trees and kill every beast surrounding the forge. The existence of lure potions scared me. All it would take was for someone to throw one into the center, and my forge would be ruined.

The monsters didn’t even have to attack directly. Just the existence of giant insects, stampeding wildly, would be enough to ruin my work.

While I doubted that another layer of trees would help, there was no real harm in expanding my safe zone.

However, once that was done, I started my experiments. My aim was to understand how mana moved at a macro scale. For that, I finally raised the silver and iron pole with an empty center, which I previously used to search for iron deposits, and started my incredible experiment.

Which was to push mana from one side, and try to observe its movements before it dissipated.

It was a simple experiment, but it would help me better understand mana in its natural state. Merely observing didn’t help. Only a limited amount of information could be derived from looking at a glass of water. Worse, in my case, that glass was opaque, and I could only look at it from fifty feet away.

It was impossible to overstate just how bad my understanding of mana was. For example, whenever I broke a shell, the mana cloud disappeared soon after. However, I didn’t actually know what happened. Was it some kind of energy that disappeared completely like light? Maybe it was like heat, and it searched for some kind of equilibrium with its environment, and I just lost the ability to perceive it once it dropped below a certain level...

There were limits to what indirect observation would bring. I couldn’t even assume that it didn’t disperse just because of the existence of mana-dead locations. After all, heat dispersed, but there were still places that were freezing and boiling hot on Earth.

Trying to deduce fundamental working principles from macro systems was an extremely difficult task. Admittedly, even direct observation wasn’t easy. Or, the ancient philosophers wouldn’t have had such misguided assumptions about the way the world worked.

“Let’s start simple,” I grumbled even as I pushed some mana to the center of the pipe, using Mana Control to deliver that as a ball, hoping that the mana would follow the pipe's direction.

The aim of the experiment was simple. I wanted to understand how mana moved in its natural state. My observations weren’t exactly conclusive. In its free state, it reacted similarly to something in between liquid and gas, however, it was not consistent It changed freely for no reason … well, no apparent reason, at least.

However, whenever I used the perk Mana Control, it turned into some kind of extremely malleable tactile material, not unlike some kind of soft plastic. It had been similar to when I used Mana Manipulation, but, for the lack of a better term, it felt more … liquidy.

“I wish I studied material sciences more,” I muttered. When I had been studying, I had readily dismissed anything mechanical or material-based as an area of study, feeling that they had long reached the bottleneck of development, instead choosing to dabble with computer engineering before I finally picked mathematical sociology as my final direction. After that, I abandoned anything on the physical side, though I still worked on the software part.

Coding my own models, at least the core components, was always easier than trying to explain them to someone else.

However, my lack of grounding on the more experimental side of things was coming to bite me in the ass. I probably could have come up with a lot of interesting experiments if I had been more familiar with the more esoteric side of the material sciences.

Instead, I needed to start from scratch.

“Let’s begin,” I muttered.

[-5 Mana]

The setup for the experiment was simple: Maintain a hold on the mana using Mana Control, bring it to the center of the pipe, and shift to Repair the moment I let go of the mana, hoping that it would give me enough time to observe it.

It failed.

Spectacularly.

The mana just dispersed before I could get a sense of its movement. I repeated the experiment, this time with more mana. The result had been the same, but I didn’t let that stop me. I repeated the experiment a hundred times.

The only thing I gained, was the dispersion shape of the mana being slightly affected by the pipe. Unfortunately, even that was a bit doubtful, as the silver and iron mixture had let the mana pass through. Whether there was no resistance, or there was only a slight resistance, I didn’t know.

“Back to the drawing board. I need a material that resists mana better,” I said. Unfortunately, due to the way Observe worked, I needed to rely exclusively on metals.

Worse, while the Mana Forge offered many materials, it didn’t exactly come with an analysis report. I instinctively knew which metal would hold a better edge, and which one would be more durable, but it didn’t index them based on their mana resistance.

I was curious whether it was not available, or it was something that would be unlocked once the conditions were fulfilled — whether it was finding the raw materials, or reaching a certain skill proficiency.

However, that question, at least in the short term, was just one of idle curiosity. I needed far more gold than I currently had in my possession to improve them further … and, that was assuming I could infuse enough mana to trigger a System response, which was not exactly a given.

“One step at a time,” I said to myself and started on my experiment.

The first step was easy. I just needed to make a box, put mana in, close the box, and watch its dispersal. It was a simpler setup than the pipe, which, I had to admit, was a bit too ambitious of me.

The first rule of experimentation was to start from the most basic alternative. And, for that, I had to go back to the third floor, as the ordinary materials would have been just destroyed on the fourth floor.

Luckily, I had kept my third-floor forge intact, just buried. I made a dozen boxes made of available materials. Copper, bronze, iron, silver, and, with the tiny amount of it I had, gold. All except gold, I had created both pure versions, vitality-only alloys, and mana alloys of.

Then, I infused several bursts of mana into each material, trying to get a general sense. Of the pure materials, iron functioned the best for my purposes, while gold performed the worst. Of course, another way of saying that was that gold might be an excellent conducting material for mana, but that was currently not the experiment.

Also, technically, I couldn’t call that effect conduction without a lot more experiments. After all, I still didn’t know whether the mana was disappearing, or just reaching a point below my detection capabilities.

Then, there was the performance. Across the board, mana alloys performed the worst, letting the mana pass through easily. “Interesting,” I grumbled, my mind already wondering whether that fact had anything to do with better mana alloys allowing for stronger enchantments. Maybe it was creating a medium to collect the environmental mana.

“One step at a time,” I said again while still taking notes. One benefit of working on the third floor, it allowed me to use paper.

Meanwhile, alloys made out of Vitality were more of a mixed bag. Some of them performed better than their pure variant, some of them worse. None of them were good enough to work for my purposes, but it was still valuable. It meant that, possibly, there was a solution.

“Next, the shape,” I said, and forged a hundred different shapes from pure iron, from simple cubes of various sizes and thicknesses to exotic curvy shapes that would have challenged even the most complex 3D printer.

I didn’t expect much, which was why I was surprised to notice a hexagonal prism performing excellently, somehow forcing mana to linger inside for a significantly longer time. Yet, the moment it started slipping through the surface of the metal, it started dispersing.

There was no reason I could think of that would cause a hexagon to somehow work better … but then, that was the point of experimentation, wasn’t it? To understand how things had been working.

“Let’s find an answer,” I said even as I forged a dozen hexagons, of varying sizes and shapes. Then, I started pushing mana inside and observing the results. Soon, I had a sheet of paper in front of me, and I started trying to find a formula that explained the phenomena.

Unfortunately, it was a very tedious calculation by hand. The simple arithmetic operations didn’t give me any results, but that wasn’t too much of a surprise.

However, after going through some common formulas, I actually managed to find a good formula. One of the classics.

Newton’s law of cooling. I first played with the transfer coefficient and transfer surface area, confirming that those two rules held true. Then, I started increasing mana density, and calculated the rate of the mana transfer.

I found out that, similar to heat energy, the higher the mana difference, the faster the transfer.

Interestingly, the formula only worked when I assumed that there was a certain gap between environmental mana and what I could detect from the environment, which was very strong evidence for my theory that the disappearance of the mana meant that it was below my detection threshold.

It had many interesting conclusions, but none of those conclusions were really relevant. Especially since I still wasn’t certain whether the core conclusion I had driven was accurate, or if I was misrepresenting the principles.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of repeating the experiment a hundred times in different forms to conclusively confirm it.

I still had other experiments to run.

*****

— Chapter 57

I decided to hold the first iteration of the next experiment on the fourth floor. While I was afraid that the corrosive effect might ruin the experiment, considering the trial and error process I had to go through, I felt that it was an acceptable compromise.

I could always use the anti-corrosive material on different floors to confirm my conclusion, but the reverse wouldn’t have worked.

Before starting, I mined another huge pile of iron ores, and refilled the blast furnace. I didn’t need more iron under the circumstances, but it was not an excuse to waste the capacity. I could always store the excess. Also, watching the rhythmic movement of the steam engine was calming, reminding me that my work was not for naught.

I forged a hundred different variants of anti-corrosive alloys, each shaped into the same hexagonal cylinder with thick walls and a hollow core, and half a foot tall. A boring process, so the reminder was certainly welcome. I only stopped to refill the blast furnace, and occasionally to mine more iron ore — which was rapid thanks to Quake Hammer.

Then, I filled each of those containers with five different intensities of mana, noting down the rate of dispersal for each set — this time writing them on clay tablets as paper disintegrated on the fourth floor — while leaving the containers on the shelves I had created.

Once the results were compiled, I picked the ten most promising results and created ten variants for each result. And, I repeated that cycle until I was looking at five hundred different cylinders. Luckily, with my Forge skill above a hundred, forging all those different materials barely took four hours.

“A good halfway result,” I said. Without the skill to help me, even with a modern materials lab, the same experimental cycle would have taken months, and a dedicated team of tab technicians, manufacturers, and assistants.

I could have continued to experiment, but I decided to visit the first three floors, and maybe even leave the dungeon momentarily to see how it worked outside. For the trip, I only took five cylinders with me, making sure there was a great performance variance between them. I wanted to bring more, but it would be too suspicious.

Hiding the cylinders wasn’t the only preparation I had made for the trip. I stopped by the third floor and reforged the armor I wore whenever I went outside. Its surface stayed the same, but I added two layers of protection underneath.

I still remember how easily I was able to kill my assassins due to their poor armor. Just because I was in disguise didn’t mean I had to wear substandard armor.

With that done, I tested the experimental hexagonal cylinders and observed the dispersal rate of mana change between the third and the fourth floors. Mana dispersed faster on the fourth floor. The difference was significant, but the relative dispersal rate stayed the same between the cylinders.

That much could have been accounted for by environmental differences, but the mechanics were in doubt. A glass of water cools down at different paces in a room and in a freezer. But, the cooling rate would be different if the glass was in front of a ventilator as well.

My current setup wasn’t designed to detect the difference.

“One step at a time,” I muttered even as I traveled between the floors, and confirmed that it was true for the first two floors as well. The higher the dungeon was, the slower the mana dispersed.

And, since I was returning to the camp, I spent some time hunting insects on the third floor, bringing another thousand shells to the guards. Just because I was experimenting didn’t mean I had to stop making money. It was also a good chance to check in with the guards and confirm there was no problem.

Finding out mana dispersed at different speeds in different dungeon floors had been curious. But, ultimately, the difference had been minor. However, the real interesting phenomena occurred when I walked out of the dungeon to ‘get some fresh air’.

The mana dispersal rate outside was far weaker. Even on the first floor, the mana I pushed in had merely stayed in for two seconds before disappearing completely, while outside, it stayed in the container for almost thirty seconds. The difference was resounding.

What was even more interesting was the direction Mana flowed. Inside the dungeon, the mana had dispersed in every direction at the same time. Meanwhile, outside, the dispersal seemed to be moving toward the ground. It was hard to be certain, particularly since I needed to keep the cylinders concealed from the guards.

My new status didn’t mean I could act with impunity.

I wished that I could stay out to observe the differences between the dungeon and the outside world more, but I didn’t want the guards to notice anything extraordinary. I could go into the wilderness, but I didn’t want to do so without Eleanor around.

It would be a pity if I died in another assassination attempt.

This meant that, the difference between the dungeon and the outside world was added to the list of interesting phenomena I couldn’t explore any further because of more immediate concerns. “Frustrating,” I grumbled as I started walking through the empty wasteland of the dungeon once more.

On my way back, I chose to practice an enhanced version of the Fleeting Step, this time dragging the cart behind me. It was an interesting experience. I fell many times, and broke the cart more times than I wanted to admit, but the improvement had been interesting.

Once I returned to the fourth floor, I brought my attention back to my material research. However, in the third cycle, the returns started to not be so worth it.

Still, I had my material. First, I created another thin tube, this time in a hexagonal shape, and kept one end blunt.

[-20 Mana]

“Success,” I muttered as I used Observe on the tube again to examine the movement of the mana. This time, rather than just slipping out of the tube, it stuck around, dispersing in a directional manner, giving me the chance to get a feel for the mana movement.

It didn’t teach me anything practical, but that was the nature of scientific experiments. The aim was to reach a better understanding, not to develop anything useful. Once the working principles were in place, the technology would inevitably follow.

Speaking of technology, I wondered if I could scale up the tubes enough to function as mana storage. I forged two more tubes. From the outside, they looked the same, but one of them was solid, while the other was made of thin layers, kept apart by the thinnest connectors I could forge.

The layered one kept the mana inside far longer. The difference was between three seconds and eight seconds. At first glance, it felt like an unimportant practical difference, but it was not so.

At this point, forging required more and more of my mana, which meant I had to take a lot of breaks to destroy the shells. However, maybe I could create a device, and link it to the steam engine. Add in a simple gravity feeder, and it would output mana far more regularly.

Creating a crank system that would power that device, and making sure it ran constantly wasn’t easy … but then again, I didn’t need to do so for an experiment. A manual variant was much easier to create.

Soon, I was looking at another layered tube, with a thick crusher attached to the end. I used it to shatter the shell piece into smaller pieces, and a burst of mana followed.

With an unexpected result. While the pure mana passed through the layers easily, the same wasn’t true for the tainted energy. It stuck around, unable to penetrate the layer.

“That’s interesting,” I muttered. Up until now, I had been running the experiment using my own mana, as it was far easier to control and measure. And, excited by the progress, I didn’t even consider how the tainted part of it would have reacted.

From an absorption speed perspective, it wasn’t really important. I already had Purification, which made the absorption much faster.

However, it didn’t mean it was useless. On the contrary.

Excited by the process, I immediately forged another hexagonal tube, large enough for me to fit in, and with a hexagonal door that could be sealed from inside. Then, I sealed myself in with my hammer, and with a lot of shells, and started shattering the shells.

The pure mana escaped easily, but the same wasn’t true for the taint part. Its density started to get more and more intense. Once I destroyed half of the shells, I crouched down, and started channeling my Meditation skill.

It took fifteen seconds for the first notification to appear.

[+1 Mana]

However, rather than stopping, I kept going. I could feel the strain as I ran the skill, which signaled excellent progress. I stopped only after a minute had passed, ignoring the rare notifications of mana alert.

What was really valuable was the one that appeared once I stopped.

[Meditation (Common) 53 -> 61]

“Beautiful,” I muttered, happy that my research was already paying dividends. I wondered why the jump was so sudden. But, at this point, I was used to seemingly nonsensical ways skills could jump. Luckily, one thing I wasn’t lacking was shells. I repeated the same thing again and again, running the skill longer every time.

[Meditation (Common) 61 -> 78]

[Meditation (Common) 78 -> 92]

[Meditation (Common) 92 -> 99]

“One more to receive my perk,” I said as I repeated the experiment once more. I received my reward.

Just not the one I had expected.

[Meditation (Common) 99 -> Cleansing Meditation (Uncommon) 1]

“That’s interesting, but it’s a waste of Perks,” I examined. I could have always repeated the same thing with Skill Stones … or could I, I suddenly added. After all, I still didn’t know if I had the prerequisite stats for the Uncommon version of the skill.

Then, once I checked the skill, I was met with another surprise.

[Cleansing Meditation (Uncommon) - 1 [Controlled Flow, Enhanced Sensing, Purification]

My perks were still in place.

*****

— Chapter 58

“Let’s see what’s the difference between the two methods,” I muttered even as I focused, and attempted to activate my newly obtained skill. An imaginary orb once again started rotating, though both the speed of the rotation and the pull were far less than I had expected. I actually had to open the hatch and disperse most of the tainted energy that had been collected to succeed.

[Cleansing Meditation (Uncommon) - 1 -> 7]

“At least it improves faster,” I said, and I shattered a few more shells. Another minute of meditation gave me two more mana points.

[Cleansing Meditation (Uncommon) - 7 -> 19]

“Well, no perks,” I growled. While I didn’t expect more perks, I had still been hoping for that to be the case. I pushed again, which brought my skill’s proficiency to its thirties. The sphere started rotating even faster, already surpassing the performance of the Common variant had on its level fifties.

However, the more interesting part was that, once I passed level twenty-five, I could feel that it wasn’t a singular method anymore. Instead, I could feel a second option, a sphere with a deep gap around its equator line.

It was not a straight line, but a wavy gap, almost like a trench, or a water canal.

Switching between the two had been instinctual, but the actual application of the skill was not. As I rotated, the sphere moved sluggishly, with the foreign energy clogging its flow. It was an interesting experience. The skill was giving me direction, but I failed to actually push it.

The reason soon became clear. The tainted energy, for lack of a better word, was clogging the structure. I had a good idea of what the function of that line was, so I opened the hatch once again to cleanse the room of the tainted energy, slowly increasing intensity once more.

The gap at the center almost worked like a centrifuge, the mana was gathered there, while the tainted energy was pushed to the surface, essentially separating the two factors.

“Interesting,” I said even as I focused on the shape of the channel. It felt immutable. But then, as I repeated the process a few more times and pushed it above fifty, it changed. I could feel that I could transform both the surface of the sphere, and the shape of the ditch.

However, when I tried to do that, I was met with something I hadn’t faced ever before. The Skill refused to engage, like I was trying to lift a weight I wasn’t capable of lifting.

“I wonder if it’s due to my lack of stats,” I muttered. I vaguely remembered the sensation when I had first acquired Mana Forge, but back then, I didn’t have too much time to process it. I couldn’t help but feel excited, wondering whether it would mean I could unlock another Stat while leveling up.

But, I wasn’t in a hurry for that. I still had a lot of experiments to run. Level fifty was the biggest opportunity I had to upgrade my class once more, and I wanted to maximize the opportunity there.

Still, while it didn’t rotate automatically, that didn’t mean I couldn’t reshape it. Curious, I transformed it to a simple hexagon and rotated … it pushed both mana and tainted energy away. “Interesting.” I maintained the hexagonal shape and used it to run the process in reverse and discharge my mana.

It worked far better.

I ignored it temporarily. I had a lot of time to experiment. Instead, I started gathering and releasing mana again and again, increasing the density of the tainted energy whenever the skill development stalled.

Soon, another bonus arrived.

[Cleansing Meditation (Uncommon) - 98 -> 102]

 [Perk Options — Advanced Purification (Purification) / Superior Sensing (Enhanced Sensing) / Efficient Absorption / Channeled Flow (Controlled Flow)]

I chose Superior Sensing, as it was the one that would help me most when discovering the secrets of mana. I was glad to do so. I could actually see some more details. Unfortunately, they were hard to describe, and that enhanced visibility only worked while I was meditating.

Soon, the maximum density of tainted energy I could achieve stopped giving me benefits, which meant that the immediate benefits had stopped. Not that I was complaining. I had already pushed my meditation to an incredible level.

[Cleansing Meditation (Uncommon) - 134 [Controlled Flow, Superior Sensing, Purification]

“That’s enough meditation for today,” I said to myself, even as I stood up, and left the hatch. With two of my tasks complete, I was about to focus on creating the steam-powered crusher.

Now that I could refill my mana completely in seconds, breaking the shells actually turned into my biggest problem. However, once I stepped out of the steel coffin I had created for myself, I had to delay that. The reason?

The density of the insects around my base had increased significantly as if someone had broken a weak lure potion. But, I didn’t start looking for a spy because of it, since the aired-out concentrated tainted energy was a much better explanation for their presence.

“Interesting discovery,” I muttered even as I rushed forward. I chose to use a sword, as it was a good opportunity to work on the mana attack. I was prepared to work hard to create something even halfway usable.

So, when I bisected the first giant insect effortlessly, I was actually surprised. Unlike my previous attempts, the mana edge solidified around the blade effortlessly, enhancing the cutting edge perfectly. It almost looked like I was using a skill … but then, it was not. Whenever I used a skill, there was always a slight sense of separation.

The difference was subtle, like the difference between riding a bike and swimming. Both gave a sense of control, but the former was reliant on the shape of the tool more than the latter.

In my case, the skill still handled my movements, but the mana around the blade was under my direct influence, changing shape through my control, weakening, and strengthening as I focused on the mana field.

It didn’t take long for me to understand the source of the sudden improvements. My experiments.

After all, I had spent several hours working with mana. And, more importantly, it was not mere repetition work, but experimental work that had forced me to interact with mana, both directly, and based on different materials.

The more I practiced, the more I realized that change came from many different directions. One was simple. By repeatedly using Mana Control to shape and release mana again and again, I had gotten more familiar with the way mana moved, and the uncommon variant of the Meditation had further improved my understanding.

Of course, what I was doing with the mana blade was nowhere as tight as using Mana Control. Still, using it repeatedly gave me a better instinct for mana’s liquid form — or, at least, what I temporarily named, as it was not exactly an accurate descriptor — which translated somewhat into the more solidified form a mana attack used.

Then, there were my insights on the movement and dispersal of mana, particularly understanding how it roughly followed a similar path to Newton’s Law of Cooling. That alone gave me a better idea of how much mana to push into the structure. More importantly, knowing that there was still a mana cloud around me even if I couldn’t detect it allowed me to compensate for it.

However, the biggest benefit came from an unexpected source: How the mana interacted with the metal itself.

During the experiment, I had created hundreds of different alloy variants, focusing on nothing but the way they interacted with mana. Of course, I had just focused on observing the way they kept the mana contained, but since that was done with Observe, I had caught far more minute details than just the speed of dispersal.

And, after thousands of observations, I had managed to get a better sense of how to maintain that mana field. “Suddenly, I’m glad that I haven’t destroyed the containers,” I chuckled even as I continued to cut down the giant insects, trying to angle my attacks so that I could kill the beasts and remove their shells at the same time.

Of course, that way, I was only able to get a broken shell, and it dropped the skill quality considerably, but I didn’t care for either the sales potential or the skills. The most important thing was to have even more material for my experiments.

Once the density of the monsters had been dropped to a certain degree, I went back to the shelves, and forged another set of containers, this time going the opposite direction, and focusing on creating a metal that allowed the mana to flow freely.

What followed was another cycle of experimentation. I alternated between using a hammer, sword, and spear, sometimes using the mana blows through the Mana Forge skill, and sometimes experimenting with it directly. It was another session of experimentation someone else would have classified as boring, but not me.

No, I was too busy inventing a new mana attack for my Quake Hammer.

[Quake Hammer (Rare) 83 -> 85]

“Success,” I said even as I looked at the horde of monsters surrounding my base.

But, as I looked at them, I only saw walking proficiency points.

*****

— Chapter 59

“Too bad I have to stop,” I complained even as I smashed another giant insect, and started walking back. I had drifted away from it to hunt even more giant monsters, which had been even easier with my new hammer technique … especially since, once I got far away from the base, I stopped bothering to collect the shells.

I hadn’t brought the cart with me, and bringing them back would be an unnecessary chore. However, just because I didn’t bring back the shells didn’t mean that the adventure wasn’t useful.

[Quake Hammer (Rare) - 142]

The new variant of the mana attack once again pushed the skill to develop smoothly, until it stalled after one hundred and forty. Reaching a hundred points gave me an even better vitality attack, with its effects spreading to everything in a two-foot cone.

Unfortunately, it also consumed more than a hundred Health, meaning it couldn’t be used casually. At least, not before I confirmed whether the root plants I was raising on the fourth floor were edible.

I wanted nothing more than to return to my lab and continue experimenting on mana attacks. Unfortunately, I needed to show my face upstairs occasionally. Which meant, I had to waste another hour hunting the ordinary monsters.

“I can’t believe how quickly the money loses its allure,” I muttered. Now that I was getting richer, I immediately lost interest in working for more money. I wanted nothing more than to stop hunting, and focus on my experiments.

However, I learned my lesson from the last time when I assumed that money would be coming indefinitely. Even with all the tricks I had discovered, making money wasn’t that simple. I was able to monopolize the dungeon only because nobody else had discovered how to handle the corrosion effect, allowing me to make a ridiculous amount of money every day.

But, that income could disappear just as easily. All it would take was one of the ploys of Thomas to succeed, or someone else to find an anti-corrosion enchantment or come up with another solution.

“Maybe I should start delving deeper,” I examined. While the idea of finding the entrance to the fifth floor was a very time-consuming adventure, it might prove to be necessary. Unfortunately, it needed to stay an idea, at least for the moment.

Instead, I once again went to the third floor, about to start the tedious process of hunting, when I remembered how the monsters of the fourth floor had reacted to the concentrated tainted energy. “Why not multitask,” I muttered even as I went to the fourth floor and brought the chamber here.

It weighed more than a ton, especially when it was filled with broken large shells, but my metal cart easily handled that weight, while my strength handled the carrying. Once on the third floor, I closed myself in once more, and started to break the shells. The mana easily escaped the room, while tainted energy stayed in.

However, I didn’t waste too much time. The moment the mana density had dropped below a certain point, I opened the hatch, and the tainted energy rushed out.

Which immediately triggered a swarm that wasn’t any less impressive than the one triggered by the lure potion. Luckily, without the need to fight off a team of assassins at the same time, it was far easier to deal with.

I continued cutting them down, the sword in one hand, the extraction device in another, multitasking to play around with the shape of the sword attack even more. With the number of monsters attacking, extracting all of their shells was nearly impossible.

I was just about to see if I could modify the mana field around the sword in a way that would allow me to kill the monster and get the shell at the same time, something more interesting caught my gaze.

Some of the monsters were moving away.

It was the first time I had seen the monsters actually behave like that, which I felt like an incredible discovery. One that I wanted to observe. However, instead, I just followed and killed them, not even taking away their shells.

It felt like letting them go away would have been irresponsible.

Only after I dealt with every monster that was trying to get away did I start playing with the mana field around the blade, trying to extract the shell and kill the monster in one blow. When the swarm finally calmed down, I was yet to succeed in that, but I made some nice progress.

Still, I was more excited about the experiment rather than adding another sixty gold coins to my account.

“So, what’s going on?” I asked as I arrived at the base, and noticed the guards were looking stressed.

“The news is not good, sir,” one of the guards whispered. “I heard that two of the guilds had already pulled back from the operation. And, it looks like others are considering pulling back as well.”

“Oh?” I asked.

The guard nodded. “Yes, the news of the dungeon disaster has spread, and some of the guilds are already packing up.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes. Everyone fears that we’ll end up getting fired.”

“Don’t worry, the other guilds pulling out is excellent news,” I answered, loud enough for the guards to look surprised. “Well, the less guild there is, the more money I would make,” I said. Then, I smiled excessively widely. “And, I doubt any other guild masters would be generous enough to tip you guys with gold coins, right?”

I was speaking loudly to maintain their morale.

“Right, sir,” the guard replied, relieved.

The world might have changed to an unrecognizable mess, but money still solved all problems.

“Now, count all of it and record it on my account,” I said as I took a new cart, once again going down. Only after I had left the fort behind, I frowned.

The news of guilds pulling back was certainly not good. If Maria changed her mind about operating the dungeon alone, a lot of plans I had would have been ruined. The biggest reason I was able to achieve everything in such a short order was their lax management.

I wasn’t sure if I could do the same if they changed their mind and sold the dungeon operations to someone else.

Technically, my bragging about hiring a lot of people and earning even more money from the dungeon was not a lie. I could do so, but doing so would be troubling. Having only five more fighters, each armed with one of the modified looted swords would make me a lot of money.

However, expanding that operation further didn’t have the same advantage. Trying to build a guild that could single-handedly operate the dungeon meant that I needed to reveal some secrets, which, in turn, made me an even bigger target for assassination.

“No need to borrow trouble from the future,” I muttered even as I passed through the gate. Ultimately, it was just gossip, and I didn’t know the real scale of the problem

However, there was nothing I could do about that before Eleanor and Maria returned with the caravan, so I didn’t want to waste my time.

Instead, I returned to the fourth floor. I had another experiment to make.

For that experiment, I decided to keep things simple. I went back to my hidden base and created another tree ring just a hundred yards away from the outer ring. Then, I made a cage out of the strongest anti-corrosive material I had.

Capturing one of the ordinary monsters had been slightly more troubling, but then I dragged it to the center of the woods.

Then, I made a copy of the container I used to practice meditation. I could have brought the other one back from the third floor, but that would mean that I had to carry that back and forth whenever I wanted to use it to trigger another swarm.

Assuming, of course, there wasn’t a disastrous consequence.

Once the container was complete, I positioned it against the cage, and once again broke multiple shells into pieces, periodically leaving the beast under its effects.

After three bursts, the beast started to struggle, trying to run away. However, the cage was strong enough to hold it back, so after several attempts of breaking out, it started to turn listless. Then, it fell into a coma.

It was the first time I saw a monster sleeping, or doing anything that could be defined as living. So, I stayed there to watch it, curious about what was going on.

I didn’t waste my time. At the same time, I started practicing with my sword, once again focusing on the mana field around the blade. Soon, I had already succeeded in spreading it two inches away from the edge blade, which gave it an incredible cutting ability.

However, it was unnecessarily mana-consuming and unstable. The moment I stopped providing extra mana, it flickered slightly, and it destabilized immediately.

“But, what if I modify the sword to better channel the mana?” I muttered, already deciding on what to work on next. Maybe I could copy the general shape of a sharpening enchantment, adding some hexagonal tubes into the metal to channel the mana better.

Such a modification would have made the sword weaker, but still, it was a worthy experiment.

However, those thoughts had been interrupted when the monster woke up, only to attack me with a ranged spit.

I didn’t expect monsters to be able to evolve.

This had implications… but exploring this revelation would take some preparation, as triggering that evolution had been very wasteful. It used the material from almost ten giant insects. Hardly cost-efficient for practical purposes.

The mystery behind this occurrence, on the other hand…

*****

— Chapter 60

“I need to find a way to contain mana for longer,” I muttered as I returned to the forge, and started working. Which meant that I needed more materials, which in turn required more time spent on mining and operating the blast furnace.

With my Quake Hammer, the actual mining didn’t take too much time. Carrying the ore to the blast furnace and loading it, on the other hand, took much longer. “No, I need to automate things. I continued working on another steam engine.

This time, it was the improved version, with a separate condenser chamber, meaning the steam cooled down in a separate chamber. That way, the cylinder didn’t have to heat up and cool down repeatedly. Therefore, not only did the power strokes move more regularly, but it was also more power efficient.

The trickier part was to connect the power arm to a set of gears and power shafts to convey the power into other materials. Originally, it was not that difficult. Just a thick fabric line would be enough. Unfortunately, here, the fabric didn’t survive long under the constant corrosive effect.

“It looks like I have to forge a lot of gear,” I said and began working. An hour later, I was looking at a brand-new steam engine, with multiple moving wheels, and gears to transfer power. Then, I started forging a conveyor belt. Unfortunately, I needed to make the moving parts out of thin metal plates rather than another simple fabric.

It was wasteful, but I didn’t have any other options. Inventing new materials wasn't as easy without the skills helping me to skip some critical stages midway. A few tricky mechanical parts were difficult to work out without any rubber or plastic, but I managed to do it.

Barely. However, it was more or less the limits of what I could achieve mechanically without additional effort.

The ultimate setup was simple. I had connected the new steam engine to multiple gears, allowing it to take over three critical roles at the same time. Working the conveyor belt, which was connected to a large reservoir into which I piled the raw iron ore I mined. Pumping out the water from the mining pit to keep it easy. And, feeding the blast furnace with materials and bringing away the excess. Well, blast furnaces, as I had built two more to benefit from the automation, which allowed me to stockpile refined iron, just in case.

As for the old atmospheric steam engine, I moved it next to the forge and fashioned it into a simple crusher that would destroy insect shells. It had a main output line, which would channel most of the mana toward the forge so I could use it to reshape metal.

I tried to come up with a way to channel the excess tainted energy toward the secondary experimentation area, but I failed. While the metal contained the tainted energy much better than mana, it was still not enough for it to reach the target almost two hundred yards away.

I might have tried to figure out a method of somehow forcing the monsters to evolve into something more profitable, but I did not. It was just an experiment to understand the dungeon’s secrets better, not to mention it was a good way to prepare for the fifth floor.

So, instead of creating a pipe System, I just created an inner cage to hold the foreign energy from the broken shells, which I could carry manually.

With that done, I started another set of experiments. A whole new set of containers, this time all made from the same alloy, but integrating hexagon shapes in different ways. Some, I etched the metal with hexagon shapes. Some, I created overlapping layers of thin containers with nothing but air in between.

As I worked, I periodically visited the cage to feed the monster with the tainted energy, watching it get more and more agitated. Since I expected it to transform into a giant insect, I even forged a new, reinforced cage.

Of the two experiments, the container one was the first to give a positive result.

The best performer was the one that I had shaped as a modified beehive, with the hexagon structure spreading not only as a layer but as a three-dimensional structure. It had outperformed any other container significantly, holding mana inside for more than a minute before it dissipated completely.

It had potential.

“I wonder why hexagons contain mana so much better,” I thought to myself. Unfortunately, when it came to science, why was often far more difficult to discover than how. Repeated experiments could discover the latter, but the former required a much deeper theoretical approach.

And I lacked the information necessary for that.

In the end, I decided to take the beehive pattern as an interim success, and start working on a way to mass produce it. While experimenting, I basically etched every hexagonal pattern directly with mana, which allowed me to forge them perfectly.

Unfortunately, it was difficult to make anything truly large-scale using that method. I tried to simplify the design. In the end, I came up with the idea of casting two thin sheets of metal: one smooth and one with a beehive pattern. Then, I would layer them multiple times, and then cut the whole layered sheet into six pieces and weld it together as a hexagonal cylinder.

However, creating a setup for casting was a level of automation I wasn’t ready for. Instead, I had forged one by hand, enough to confirm that the principle worked well enough.

“Mass production is not urgent,” I muttered as I grabbed another container filled with tainted energy and rushed toward the captured insect. During the last blast, it started trying to get away, so I was hoping to trigger the next development.

It did, but to my surprise, it didn’t transform into a giant one, but a flying one.

“Well, that’s not good news,” I said even as I watched the monster fly with surprising effectiveness. The biggest weakness of the ordinary monsters had been their mobility. However, their flying variant clearly didn’t share the same flaw, which was not encouraging for the future.

Even I wasn’t sure whether I could handle them if they collapsed around me like some kind of three-dimensional swarm. Not unless I had a better attack.

“Alright, creating a ranged mana attack is back on track,” I said as I walked back to the forge.

Of course, this meant that I needed to start my containment experiments from the beginning, this time to find the best patterns to actually increase mana conductivity.

After all, I was still a Blacksmith, and making tools to enable ranged attacks first was much better than blindly practicing the same technique again and again.

***

Just like that, with the absence of Eleanor and Maria, I found myself locked in a routine for the next two days. I stayed in the dungeon and didn’t go back to the town. Most of my time, I spent in my hidden base, alternating between trying to discover new variants of monsters and new materials, and restructuring the base, utilizing the wide availability of materials.

Though, several times, I went upstairs to bring ever-growing piles of monster shells. I had managed to figure out how to cut the shell with a mana attack directly, which allowed me to make almost a hundred gold with each trip. Three trips a day, and two days later, my account had almost reached eight hundred coins, a level of money I couldn’t have imagined before.

However, making more money had been the least interesting part of my time.

Experimenting with monsters was far more interesting. I had discovered two new variants of the normal-sized creature, which included a faster melee variant, and an armored one; and three variants for the giant one, one with an even thicker shell, a ranged variant, and one that looked like a burrowing type.

And, while I was experimenting with that, I also discovered why the monsters had been gathered whenever parts of the dungeon had been destroyed. Whenever it was destroyed, the same tainted energy was free, though the amount was not enough to be noticed by my Meditation. The Observe caught it, but only barely.

While it was interesting, the emergence of the new monster types was dangerous and, therefore more important. The potential existence of a flying one was problematic enough, forcing me to make some significant modifications to my base. I had not only created a roof over the forge, but also turned it into a roof garden to dissuade any possible attackers.

The potential risk of the burrowers had been easier to handle. I had just added a thick metal floor to the base to make sure there wouldn’t be any nasty surprises if the dungeon started to have more monsters.

The trick with the lure potion had been dangerous enough, I didn’t believe that it was the only way people discovered to sabotage dungeons, not even for a second. While I didn’t like the general attitude of this new world when it came to research and discovery, not for a moment did I believe that the same negligence applied to dungeons.

Dungeons had military implications with an immediate return, and no research that offered short-term improvements to the military had funding troubles. I had no doubt that the new research institutes I had been applying to — unsuccessfully — were focusing more on that than anything else.

However, while redesigning the base and experimenting with the monsters had taken a lot of time, it wasn’t the end of my research. I had also experimented with metals, which gave me an iron-silver alloy that was particularly good at conducting mana.

After several more experiments, I was able to discover that while hexagons were good at capturing mana, triangles were good at directing.

All that remained was to weaponize it.