by Ryan Rimmel
My bow was getting pretty ratty from the earlier battles, but they were simple to make. I’d have to make a new one before I next left the village.
My Novice Dagger skill was also nice. The extra damage from a surprise attack might have been what finished off the last goblin. Or not. Rogues and Casters never had the best relationship in any game and he’d walked right into knife range, all fat and happy. It had been like a lamb to the slaughter.
My secondary Dagger skills had both improved. I noticed that they both applied to all of my dagger attacks, despite only one being magical. As I examined them, I realized both had a level requirement, which I couldn’t see; it was zeroed out. So those were both higher level skills that I had picked up for basically nothing. I idly wondered what other Weapon skills I could learn like that.
Dagger of Wounding: item class common, Durability 7/35, Damage 8-15, bonus effects bleeding: Requires Puncture Skill and Savage Wound: Requires Wounding skill.
Bleeding: Your target will suffer damage equal to 50% of weapon damage over 12 seconds (active)
Savage Wound: All wounds caused by this weapon’s effect are increased by 50%.
Goblin Dagger: Durability 3/15, Damage 7-11.
The second effect wasn’t active before, because I’d just gotten the Wounding skill. That was nice. It meant that I could do up to 30 points of Damage in a sneak attack, and up to a 45 point Stamina drain.
Impressive, until you counted on Defense. which was generated from your armor and Endurance stat. I was running around all butt naked with a defense of 9, and I could mitigate 4 points of Damage on top of that. Even ignoring 6 points of my defense, I’d only take 5-12 from a strike as powerful as my own. I could mitigate that down to 1-8 before the sneak attack effect was applied. That turned a hypothetically lethal wound into something that was downright survivable.
Which is what I was running into now. The smaller goblins were not even attacking for 12 points of damage and, with my Defense and Mitigate, I’d been able to all but ignore some of their attacks. However, there was quite a bit of room for someone to be able to do much more damage than I could resist. I’d have to be on the lookout for better equipment.
In my current circumstances, my dagger was a great weapon. That use was going to dwindle quickly. Further, the durability was dropping dangerously low. Even now, the blade looked badly dull. I didn’t even pretend to know how to repair it. The metal it was made of, I could instinctively tell, wasn’t steel, which is all I had for repairs.
My other dagger was mostly junk. I actually had a third dagger in my pouch that I’d looted off of a goblin; it was in better shape, but I just hadn't’ bothered to switch over. I ideally wanted to see if I could repair or reforge either of my original daggers.
I also had found some short swords. They did a base of 2-5 damage, which was improved by one due to my Strength, so 3-6. However, if I grabbed two of them, their damage improved by 4 points because of my Dual Wielding and Twin Weapon skills. So, with all of my skills and abilities applied, the short swords ended up doing between 7 to 10 points. The Shadow Goblin’s short swords had not been magical, just finely made. That granted them +1 damage and +10 durability. They were going to be my backup weapons, if I ever got around to needing them.
Next was Hiking, which had improved to Novice. It increased what I could carry before becoming overburdened. The supplies I had lugged around all day yesterday had been pretty well deconstructed while I slept. This prevented me from using them for a comparison, until I remembered there was a menu option for that. I could carry 200 lbs. in my pack before, 140 base plus 60 for the Strength boosts I’d taken. After the skill increase, I could carry 400 lbs. Lifting it was still a chore but, when it got onto my back, I could essentially go for miles without issue. I could go over 400 lbs. and be overburdened, which I had. I’d even gone beyond overburdened while carrying all 3 members of AvaSophia’s family. Carrying half your capacity didn’t really have any negative Stamina effects, except for slightly slower Stamina recovery.
That encumbrance system was much more natural than a video game, I thought. In most games, if you went a feather over your Encumbered stat, there were nothing but penalties. Here, I could go over, but the penalties got progressively worse the more weight you added. A little hardly mattered, but the flip side was also true. If I was playing a game and there wasn’t a hard cap, I could basically lift the world and just suck up the penalty.
Next, my Perception was something I had been using quite a bit. However, a quick examination of the skill revealed that it required over 5000 SP to go to the next level; I was only at 800. That meant that after another week, I’d jump to Novice, because I effectively always used that skill. I’d have to see if there was some way to level that faster. I had learned that while it was handy in menu mode, it didn’t actually gain any skill points here.
The only way to increase a skill in menu mode is if you had a skill boost saved up.
My general Crafting skill was still there, and it wasn’t going anywhere soon. It effectively granted me one additional level of skill in all of the sub-skills for crafting. These had been made into their own skills sometime after the rules of the world were written, and then adjusted. It made sense, from a certain point of view, but was hard to reconcile with my earthly sensibilities. In any case, I had the old Crafting skill and it was in some ways better than the new one, but also horribly expensive to level.
Leatherworking I had earned from my abortive attempts at bad pants, which I was currently wearing. Woodworking I think I earned while I was making some of my contraptions for Bowyer. And Bowyer had been at unskilled when I left, so I had to go through the skill log to figure out what happened there.
It didn’t take long to find.
You earned SP in crafting for both making the item, and then if the item was used, I thought. I’d gotten leatherwork SP for my armor, but the stuff was so poor it hadn’t really done much. My simple bow, on the other hand, had earned me enough additional SP that, when combined with my arrow making, I’d leveled.
Apparently, I needed to get blueprints to learn how to make any new bows. I could still make another simple bow, but nothing more complex. Hurray. The extra damage I could craft into the weapons might be interesting through. I resolved to make that another priority.
Lastly, I checked on my magical skills. I still hadn’t gained any levels in any of the Wizard classes; I had no idea what was going on there. I had a feeling if I could see their tabs, I would have seen some earned experience. Unfortunately, I couldn’t, so I didn’t know how far I’d progressed.
Infuse allowed me to keep granting Shart more mana, slowly. I only had a pool of 20, but I’d finally figured out the trick of stopping at the 3/4ths mark. I could just give him 15, which dropped to 7, and then recharge over the next 3 minutes before I repeated the cycle. It hadn’t changed since last time I reviewed it, so I moved on.
The Empowerment skill was the item version of that. It let me put magic into staffs, wands, and the like. I’d used it to recharge the staff but, apparently, I was bad at it. There was a chance to damage the item permanently, which I didn’t know how to overcome yet.
Mana Control was interesting. Before I’d started using Infuse, I couldn’t really tell you very much about my Mana Pool. Now, I could distinctly feel it when I thought about it. I could tell you how full it was without checking my menu. Also, I could apparently resist if someone tried to over drain it, which I didn’t understand. I was tired of dealing with Shart by this time, so I hadn’t asked.
My final new skill was Magical Blast, which let me use magical staffs and wands to blast people. I had an unskilled rank there because I had to be shooting at people; I had been shooting at trees. It presently sat at 1 SP, which was the system “give me” rank for that skill, apparently. No matter how many trees I blasted, the SP didn’t go up.
Unless the trees were planning an uprising, I’d leaf them alone. Even though they were all bark and no bite.
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br /> I smiled a little melancholy smile at that. My son had loved bad puns. This was too much at times. I could still feel the heat on my body as the car burned around me. My last thoughts had been of my wife. Now, I was here. Suck it up, Buttercup. You got shit to do.
The amulet was Scanned by Shart after I’d given him 121 mana. I knew I’d given him too much and he knew I knew. I’d been practicing my skill, though, which was still nowhere near Novice rank.
You have found Amulet of Non-Detection, item class uncommon, charge 19/20, passive, grants the effect Non-Detection, you are considered 4 levels higher for a Lore user and any Lore check can only learn basic information, also defeats basic scrying, for 1 charge, you can expand this ability to cover a 10 yard radius. Also grants +20 maximum mana.
I slipped the amulet on and immediately felt the funny sensation of having my mana go from full to not full. It took a few more minutes for the newly expanded Mana Pool to top back off, so I didn’t recover as a percentage but rather as a whole. Forty points of mana took twice as long to recover as 20. After my pool filled almost fully, I threw another 30 mana Shart’s way, giving him 15 more mana to play with.
Dismissing Shart, I began walking back to the bowyer. The closer I got, the more aware I was of a truly horrendous stench. There seemed to be an abundant amount of flies around the door and in the workshop. I quickly discovered the reason; the goblin I had used as part of my bow making tools had begun to rot. Removing the goblin, which was actually a little moist and squishy by now, I “disposed” of the body. That problem solved, I found some other contraptions that allowed me to work on my bow making skill and slapped together a simple bow: mark 2.
Improved Simple Bow Damage 12-16, Durability 30/30 (durability -10 due to Improvised Tools)
Extra damage was always nice. I also made 2 quivers full of arrows and those also did additional damage. In total, it increased my Damage up to 13-17. My minimum Damage was now almost as good as my previous maximum Damage had been.
It was only early afternoon, by my reckoning, and I chewed a piece of hard tack while I considered what to do next. The leather working shop was in shambles and missing about every single necessity. It had taken everything I had with my improved tools just to get the two simple pieces I was wearing. I was painfully short on additional leather due to my inept skinning earlier.
Then again, those goblin wolves were pretty big and I bet they could be skinned fairly easily. Of course, they seemed kind of smart, so I glossed over that idea. I’d kill them if I had to and skin them if I could, but I wasn’t going to go out intentionally hunting and skinning intelligent beings. Plus, there were dumb wolves out in the forest.
However, even if I did skin them, doing anything with that skin was going to be tricky without tools. I headed over to the blacksmithing shop. It, like everything, had seen better days. Behind the counter, there was what you’d expect from any tv show you’d ever seen. There was a large furnace for heating the metal. Several anvils were still there and, after attempting to lift one, I could see why. However, most of the tools were gone and what was there were ruined. There was a vice on one of the counters, but it had rusted solid. Technically, the anvils were rusted solid too, but I figured if I beat on them enough times, the rust would clear off.
As I didn’t think you could blacksmith without a hammer or any charcoal, I got ready to leave. That’s when I noticed a thin line of light coming in from a vent in the ceiling. It crossed the floor but, in one spot, the light had a slight ridge that looked unusual in the dust.
I walked over and cleaned the dust away to reveal the floorboards underneath. The smell was wrong; it was an out of place kind of smell for a workshop in the square of an abandoned town. This was a far more earthy smell. I grabbed at the floor with my hand and pulled. Not much happened, so I wisely moved to the other side of the crack and tried again. This time, the floor shook slightly. It was some sort of trap door.
Cleaning the rest of the door off took several minutes, but in the end, I managed it. Finding the handle was a bit more difficult as it had been ingeniously hidden. It was also rusted solid. I took the haft of some old piece of equipment and managed to lever the handle to a position where I could get my hand into it and lifted. The door was heavy, but not terribly so. Underneath was a staircase into the unknown.
Of course, there were no torches, and the light was abysmal. Then I remembered the staff. When I powered it up to cast spells, it glowed blue pretty brightly. That would either be sufficient, or it wouldn’t and I’d have to find something better. I walked next door and grabbed it, ready to explore the dungeon.
Focusing on the staff, I made it glow blue and walked down the stairs. It was a small room with several trunks that all looked to be exceedingly well made. Also, they were locked with large, sturdy looking locks. They were also all bolted to the floor, because why wouldn’t they be.
Being a rogue, I figured I could just pick the locks. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any lock picks. Luckily, a quick search upstairs with my Improvised Tools skill netted me several bent pins that I was sure would work.
And work they did, after about 30 minutes. Thirty minutes in the dark, smelly, annoyingly cramped space where I couldn’t get at the lock properly. The space was so small you couldn’t sit in front of the low lock to work on it; you had to crouch at a strange angle, which I ‘m sure was the intent.
You have learned about the skill: Lockpicking. You are unskilled. You can sometimes open locks.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the lock was tricky. I earned 40 SP of 80 SP just for getting through it. I opened up the chest and revealed tools. Not all the tools a smith would want, I could tell though my Crafting, but enough to do the job. Certainly, more than enough to make a dagger. A large Smiths’ hammer sat on top of the pile, lovingly wrapped in an oiled rag.
I sniffed the second box and could make out the smell of coal or charcoal, so that was fuel. The other chest must have had some ingots in it, I hoped, so I attempted to pick the second lock. After 30 minutes, I could tell this lock was even trickier than the first. After another 30 minutes, I brought up my skill tabs to see how much longer until I leveled.
Lockpicking: 40/80 SP.
“What,” I cried, “but, but… I just spent an hour.”
“Oh, locks broken,” stated Shart. I wasn’t certain when he had rejoined me; my full attention had been invested in my task. “You can’t earn any xp from a broken lock. Use that big hammer to knock it off. It will only take about three seconds.”
As much as it pained me to admit, Shart was both right and helpful. I was quickly able to knock the two remaining locks off. The second chest contained charcoal and the third contained ingots. Most appeared to be made of iron. I took what I needed upstairs.
● You are in a Blacksmith’s forge, Quality Terrible.
Actually, forging something was a bit of a letdown. When I got into the room and set the tools out, I got a prompt informing me that I was in a working blacksmith’s forge. I was also helpfully informed that the quality was terrible, due to the anvil.
I looked at the anvil. I could instinctually tell that it could be repaired with the proper chemicals and scrapers, which I had. I went to work, de-rusted them both, leaving them both looking like new. That was odd; I suspected that they would have had scuffs and marks on them, but instead they were both like new.
● Your Forge has leveled to 1, Quality Average.
A prompt appeared that looked like an anvil, which I clicked. It brought up another menu, showing the shop as it was now. That was a bit creepy, because it showed my tools and materials. There were also a few quests, such as Make a Dagger. Also included was a list of items I could forge.
Quickly doing the math, I didn’t have enough iron to make a suit of medium armor. The town menu did have a Mine listed, but it carried a population requirement to render it fully operational. As the town only had a miniscule population, I wondered if I could even personally go mine ore in a non-opera
tional mine. If I could mine a small amount of ore, I could then smelt it into ingots. That would provide me with enough iron for the armor, but I was willing to bet that an abandoned mine had monsters in it.
The tools required for leatherworking were also listed. It should not have been feasible for me to craft the tools that I needed, but with the general Crafting skill, I was listed as being able to try. I even had enough expendable materials to fail a few times.
This turned out to be fortunate, because fail I did. I actually ran out of metal, until I remembered tucking away some of the goblin’s weapons; I used those to make up the difference.
You have learned about Salvaging. You are unskilled but know how to convert existing equipment to base parts for use in other equipment.
What was weird was that it took 2 ingots of iron to make a dagger, which weighed considerably less than one ingot. When I then salvaged that dagger, I got a whole ingot back. I tried not to think about that stuff.
With all that effort, I managed to craft one set of basic leatherworking tools.
I also figured out how to repair an iron dagger. Thus, I was able to repair my preferred trusty weapon. Unfortunately, my special goblin dagger was not made of iron and I lacked the unrecognizable metal required to fix it. Just fixing my iron dagger gained my Blacksmithing enough skill points to level up to Amateur.
As I worked the new smithy, I noticed a prompt.
Your smithy has achieved level 1. Please choose an affinity.
There was another skill tree with several branches. One led to weapons, another to armor, and a third led to a horseshoe. That one was the Mundane affinity. I glanced at it just to see what it was and noticed a tool list next to it. Several items were in white, but most were greyed out.
