Workshop work [Monday 6/7]

“Can I just say,” Sylph exclaimed as the boss they were dealing with finally evaporated, “that the fifth floors have become suuupeeer boring?” “You can say that, but that does not make it true,” John sighed at his wind elemental and looked around. They were in the heart of a great labyrinth of sandstone, and the sun was burning down on them mercilessly. John had repressed the urge to sit down in the shadow up until now but now he could.

The reason for this was quite simple: This was the fifth floor of the Wall Shadow I.D. or in other words: sitting down in the shadows was pretty much guaranteed to give you the last hug of your lifetime. He had struggled with the decision to go here but as levels became harder to get the first kill bonus of anything was really too good to pass up on.

Unlike what Sylph was saying the Floor/Wave 5 bosses still were challenging, just not life-threatening like before. However, the problem was not just them but also getting to them. John had needed two whole days to push through the remaining four basic dungeons because, easy as the first four floors were, he still had to relearn all the bosses and mobs on his way down to each fifth-floor boss. That is what took the most time, once they got to the boss it was hard, yes, but not as time-consuming.

As he exited the Dungeon, he noticed a window popping up.

“Sweet,” he said and with a smile. He was just looking for another one of those. Gnome was about to hit level 100, and he would not be able to fulfill that quest anytime soon, so he needed a Skill Evolution Point. Or, well, there was just the tiniest problem: Gnome’s skill had stopped leveling. At first, John had thought that it just leveled very slowly, it only had reached 99 about an hour ago, but as he inspected the skill more closely, he realized that the experience bar was not moving in the slightest. It was at a standstill, and unlike how Undine’s would eventually end up he had no idea why. He went through the book in his head and found something along the lines of a ‘shared experience’ they needed to have, but the hell was that even supposed to mean?

Out of frustration, he looked into evolving the skill anyway. He promptly got a more detailed warning than last time.

Was there a 3% chance of failure or a 2% chance of failure followed by a 1% chance of it getting worse or how did this piece of math work? John got no answer to that quest but either way there as little need to hurry. He had a SEP, and he would be able to spend it later on just as well, although it was a bit saddening to get no extra mileage out of his mana by also leveling the skill up. He was cautious by nature and RNGesus tended to have something against him, or at least he felt so.

Therefore, to not give the god of chance bullets to shoot John with, he called it quits for the moment and went back to the base where Magoi was once again reading his newspaper. “Yo,” John greeted the Fateweaver, who was weirdly absent-minded, only when John stepped right next to him the dinosaur-masked fellow reacted. “Oh, yes, hello,” he said in a strained tone, “not feeling well today, why don’t you just look at the stuff you got, I will need to go…do things.”

John looked after the Fateweaver who, after tipping his top hat, quickly walked off. “What’s up with him?” Salamander asked, supported by the curious feeling of Undine and Gnome looking at the now closed door in confusion. “No idea,” John answered truthfully but as advised turned to his loot. Most of it, like usual, was useless to him, so it went to feed Aclysia, who was lagging half a level behind. It was really hard to sell stuff these days as her Consumption requirements just went higher and higher. John wouldn’t say that the easy times in leveling were over, but the work put into getting stronger these days was just higher. However, that held true for pretty much everything he did and would be true all the time, this was, after all, the power of a Gamer, the entrance levels were always easier to get.

“It is about time I did something else!” he decided after Aclysia was done munching through everything he did not need (and after spending the points she had earnt doing that).

He walked to the table Magoi had set up and declared it his ‘will-have-to-do’ workbench. “I will finally make some equipment, first things first,” he inspected his Bee. The thing had taken some damage during the Vermintide encounter as it swam in stomach acid for a bit. However, that was quickly repaired for the low cost of 50 Mana.

He also repaired Aclysia's equipment. Her three blades were in different states ranging from ‘barely used’ in the case of Rock and Wind to ‘barely usable’ as the Sword of Glory was little more than a blunt piece of chinked metal. This took a bit more of his mana but nothing he would not regenerate soon.

And now he inspected all the crafting materials he had gathered in the past six days. He had the two Spirit of the Radio and that one Warpstone Jewel that he wanted to use and on top of that he also had five floor bosses (the drops of “normal” bosses were scarcely worth tosh these days) drop the following two items that he could use

Not a really impressive display but he was in need of some equipment so he would do his best. Now, what piece of equipment did he want to make? Weapons were out, he did not have the kind and material and to be honest, he did not see himself holding a staff or anything. On top of that his equipment window did not have a slot for weapons so it probably wouldn’t matter whether he wore an enchanted staff or gloves. ‘Gloves, yeah, that sounds good,’ John thought with an eye on his materials.

With the leather, he could create the basic things and then use the other materials he had to reinforce and enchant the end result. Speaking of other materials, he turned to Aclysia. “Can you give me a bit of Entherium, please?” he asked. “Of course, master.” Aclysia obeyed and about a minute later placed an orb of a silvery white metal on the table, which she had formed out of her own body.

It turned out that, with all the magic stuff Aclysia had been eating recently, Refined Body II had created something new from Titanium and Mana. At least he thought that it was new, John had no idea about all the magical alloys that might float around in the Abyss, chances were the metal already existed there, but he hadn’t been aware of it until recently.

As one could, see, it was not all that great, but it also was not all that bad. He piled the Rage Wolf Leather, Entherium and Warpstone Jewel together and used Craft. He only got the option to combine, so that is exactly what he did. While having the mental image of a pair of gloves he clicked the option. 500 Mana instantly vanished, and the items on the table melded together, there was a flash of light, and then the gloves laid there exactly like John imagined them.

They were made of the dark grey leather, soft to the touch yet very durable, Entherium protecting the backside of his hand and fingers with small, segmented plates. In the middle of the biggest plate at the back of the gloves, half of the Warpstone Jewel was inlaid. He got a pop-up asking him for which of the two Warpstone Jewel bonuses he wanted, the Mana +100 or the Mana Regeneration per minute +6, he chose the former. John was much less concerned over his Mana Regeneration than his Mana Pool at the moment.

Now he still had the Refined Ectoplasm and Spirit of the Radio’s to use. Therefore, he took hold of these and used Enchant.

Well, he only had one slot free, which was a bummer, to say the least. Well, he could always use the Spirit of the Radio on other clothes, and Mana was more of his primary concern. He clicked on use items, chose the Refined Ectoplasm and added the Mana +50 to the list. That cost him another 200 Mana, but he had it so no worries. He named the result “Power Gloves Version 1.”

Next, he used a Spirit of the Radio on his shirt and pants. As he found out, or rather as Gaia told him, there was a slight problem here though.

Okay, so he only got Agility +10. Good enough in his book. He put on the gloves and turned to his companions. “So, I say we try our hand at a sixth floor today,” he announced. Sylph immediately rose her hand in favor, “Yay, something new, something new!” she chirped and bounced up and down in the air. “I mean, I can burn whatever, so I don’t care that much…Although I prefer a real challenge, so I guess I agree with the dunce over there,” Salamander said and also raised her hand. “If master deems it necessary,” Aclysia said and timidly raised her hand. Undine had no opinion on the matter and just wobbled about while Gnome only reluctantly agreed, “We ought to be careful and patient,” she reminded everyone even while raising her own arm.

The decision was made. They would venture to the sixth floor of whatever dungeon they were to choose.