[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 123: Prep Work

The next morning, after breakfast, Sam looked over Raiko’s armor. He whistled at what he saw. It was impressive. Very impressive.

[Sage’s Domaru Gearset]

(Medium Armor) (F-Class)

(★☆Uncommon III)

Enhancements

Physical Defense V | Magical Defense VII

Elemental Defense II | Lightning Resistance I

Rift Enfeebling Up III | Rift Critical Chance II

+35 Arcane | +12 Agility

+12 Resonance | +12 Mind

Imbuements

Blood Mana

Lightning Mana

Reforged from Chaos mana’s eruption and bathed in the blood of a hundred slain oni has linked this armor into a magic enhancing set that reduces an enemy’s resistance to rifts. Made brittle by Void mana, a single blow risks shattering this equipment in its current low durability state.

Requires: >39 Arcane, [Medium Armor Foundation], [Rift Magic Foundation] (★Common)

The Arcane stat on the gearset was insane, and the rarity tier was one to two higher than his Thanas armor.

The other stats weren’t so high, but Sam supposed that might be from combining the enhancements of multiple pieces of gear into one collective gearset. Likely some of the pieces didn’t have Agility, Mind, or Resonance, so they weren’t as high as Arcane.

Technically, the [Sage’s Domaru Gearset] was slightly better than his [Thanas Armor] in many ways, but of course it wasn’t remotely suited for a Swordsman.

It was interesting to find out gearsets were a form of equipment anyway, and the enhancements granted him a little bit more understanding about Raiko’s style of magic.

Sam wondered how the Blood mana imbuement could be used, and the Lightning mana imbuement too.

If Raiko had a lightning affinity, would she be able to weave her armor’s mana into an attack? She did seem to be a bit more proficient with that element than others, what few times the element was available to her.

He felt partially responsible for the damage, considering the final straw seemed to be his Void mana from their battle.

Not much I can do about that now though. Best to try and fix it. There was metal there, just not nearly as much as the dullahans’ armor or his own.

But that didn’t matter, [Basic Maintenance] took care of all types of gear. He knew how to darn and patch cloth as well as how to hammer out dents and stitch up leather before a split becomes worse.

It wasn’t crafting, but there was a similarity to it that Sam found oddly peaceful. He unrolled his tool case. The brown leather made the rather dull implements look more impressive than they actually were.

With a hand on Raiko’s armor to get a sense for the worst of the damage, he picked up a heavy curved needle and a small spool of thick black thread.

No matter how many times he used them to stitch items together, the spool never shrank, and the needle only required the most modest of sharpening.

He’d tried to use the spool for other things, but if it wasn’t used to repair a piece of equipment, whatever length of the black thread he pulled out would eventually vanish in a few minutes.

It seems the Shard had already thought of quite a few ways to cheat its systems and had safeguards in place.

Just none for Chaos or Void mana, Sam mused as he stitched up some of the damaged leather straps on Raiko’s armor.

It was the worst set of armor he’d ever seen, durability-wise. There were no numbers, not that he could see at least, that signified where the item was at, but as his [Basic Maintenance] skill increased—and to an extent his Insight—he could feel the brittleness of the leather, the minute fractures in the metal.

Without that sense, he probably would have taken out a simple doming hammer to pop out some of the dents, and inadvertently destroyed the whole damn thing.

Thankfully, he had learned not just to control his supernatural Strength, but also to use a tender touch while repairing anything. That’s where his Dexterity came into play.

Sam was immensely grateful that his Swordsman gave some Dexterity and Agility, or else he’d be like a brick. Big and strong, but slow and clumsy.

He would never be as nimble or fast as Raiko, but he didn’t need nor want to be. As long as he wasn’t stumbling over his own two feet, Sam was happy with his current build. He couldn’t help but look forward to what was to come.

That is the best part of the Lesser Shardrune, he thought as he tied off the stitching. I don’t just pick one Job and then I’m that thing for the rest of my life. It evolves, Advances, and changes along with me, so that what the future holds is never quite certain.

It was hard not to love it. And if there was something he didn’t like about what was offered… well, he always had a choice, didn’t he?

And with the Voidknight Legend, it sounded like he would get options of higher rarity and Void variants as well. He had no idea when the Third Order Jobs would be, but he was excited.

There didn’t seem to be a Second Order for Paths, but that was because his Path was set in stone the moment he was infected with Void mana.

He couldn’t complain too much. The Talents from his Void Path were a large part of the reason for his current battle prowess. At 100 base Strength he’d get an extra 23 points. At 200, that’d leap to 46, and on and on, growing even more because he gained a Talent every Void level.

It hardly seemed fair, but then again there were probably Paths out there that gave buckets of stats. Something that, in the short-term, would make somebody insanely strong, but in the long run would lose to something like the Talents Sam received.

A single stat point out of 200 wasn’t a big increase, but 1% was always 1% no matter if you had 5 or 5,000. And Sam was happy with the way things were.

If only I could get more abilities and skills, he thought to himself as he picked up Raiko’s banded breastplate and looked at the work he’d done so far. At first, I figured maybe it was every 5 levels, but there doesn’t really seem to be a rhyme or reason to it.

Setting that piece aside, Sam got to work on her bracers. He liked to work in segments, getting each piece up to the same level of durability before moving to the next. It helped to keep his tools organized—something he always said he would do if he ever could afford any.

Normally Sam could finish repairing something in well under an hour, especially with his higher [Basic Maintenance] skill, but Raiko’s armor was seriously fucked. He had to go slowly and nearly rebuild it and reinforce what he could, all just to start patching up the more serious damage.

If he had gone in like he had with other pieces of equipment, he would have shattered the thing like glass. It didn’t even have the durability left to withstand typical repair procedures, so Sam had to provide it enough of a foundation to survive the maintenance process.

It wasn’t easy, nor simple, but Sam couldn’t let Raiko go out without armor again. They had no idea what they were going to find at the Aker Academy, and quite frankly Sam hoped that he would look back on this and wonder why he bothered to spend so much time on something that would be unnecessary.

After all, they were just teachers and faculty, right? Magical faculty, sure, but still… teachers.

They wouldn’t be that hard to handle if things went south, right? This wasn’t Hogwarts.

Memories of Miss Thurgood in 4th grade ran counter to those assumptions, but then again, she was a grade school teacher in the public school system.

Of course, she was a tough old battle axe.

It took Sam nearly three hours to finish Raiko’s equipment. Due to the magical nature inherent in a lot of the pieces, he struggled to bring it up to 50% durability.

A far cry better than the 1% or less it had been, but still not nearly good enough in his own eyes. He tried every trick he learned, but he didn’t have Leather mana—if such a thing existed—and so he had to make do with Metal mana and the tools at his disposal.

The skill up, however, was more than worth it.

Your [Basic Maintenance] Skill has reached (★ Common IV).

From just a single set of armor, too. He had worked on dullahans for a lot longer to get a similar, lower-level skill up.

Just like the last time he got another tier of [Basic Maintenance], Sam felt a bit like an idiot. There was always more to learn, and sometimes the bump in knowledge was a bit harsher than others.

He could already see how sloppy his stitchwork was. The way he hammered out the dents was far too restrained, and they weren’t entirely gone.

They looked mostly gone, but a careful inspection revealed a slight dimpling to the metal.

Sam had to resist the urge to redo it all. And he would have if Lenal didn’t run back into camp that moment and declare that she could see the Academy just on the horizon.

It had seemed they were near their destination once and for all.

Sam got up, taking the bundle of Raiko’s armor, and went to go find her so she could be suited up before their arrival. He also belatedly remembered that he had taken a sword from one of the oni.

He passed Matt looking… rather furtive. Something was going on there, but Sam didn’t have the time to find out what. It was probably nothing.

Matt was an adult, he could take care of himself.

***

Matt walked by Sam, going the opposite way. He kept his back straight and walked as calmly and normal as possible. There was no way Sam suspected anything.

Complete success, Matt thought to himself. I could totally be a spy or master thief.

As soon as he reached his little room inside the communal… dome thing, Matt spilled out the contents of his Inventory onto the floor.

About one of the only things that didn’t get turned to ash, Matt discovered, were the oni’s teeth. Not every tooth, just the canines.

They were long and thin, about the length of a finger, and they were not only filled with a neat little poison that caused profuse bleeding, but also quite sharp. Like little needles.

Matt didn’t think the others would enjoy his extracurriculars of scouring for the oni’s strange needle teeth, so he kept it to himself.

Besides, with everybody having a role to play in building the wall—except Matt, it seemed—he had plenty of free time to fill.

His poorly made, modified leather bracer had tons of little loops to hold the teeth. At a glance, it looked like some badass bone armor, but the intent was a bit more sinister than that.

He had long since wondered what his weapon of choice should be now that he was a Poisonmind. They were a hybrid Job, using both magic and physical attacks, so he needed something that combined the two.

Nothing manatuned would work for his purposes, since as far as Matt understood, that dealt dedicated magic damage. Not to mention, he didn’t have any skills for manatuned items, if such a thing existed.

Magic and spellcasting were nice because it meant he didn’t need to be within biting, clawing, or cutting distance most of the time, but that left his physical attacks lacking.

Until now.

Or so he hoped.

Matt popped one of the teeth into his mouth and chewed it like a chiclet. The poison flooded his mouth with a pleasant tanginess, and he not only gained more insight into the way the poison worked, but also gained a bit of a buff from ingesting it.

Your Vigor has temporarily increased by (3).

Your Strength has temporarily increased by (2).

I could get used to this.