"Now we're cooking," Gormán said as my head started to clear from the level up headache. He rubbed his hands together as he disassociated into his menus.
"What're we cooking?" I asked. I thought about the giant pile of Blánaids's plants back in the grotto, and what I might be able to make for dinner with those.
"We're cooking with (...)" He mouthed something the system censored. "Oh come on." He grumbled. "We're cooking with mana?" he smiled as he adjusted the real world expression for our new situation. "I got blacksmithing, and mining to tier three. So bronze is on the table once we can get tin, and iron is in sight."
"Really? That's what you care about?" Eimear said with disgust. "Did you not hear the same speech I did from that prick Cyril?"
"Yeah?" Gormán raised an eyebrow at her. "What of it?"
"Monsterification? Only the top ten? The constant censoring? The fact that we're going to be fucking repurposed to gods know what?"
"Can you do anything about it?"
"I could probably get us to the top ten." Eimear clenched her fist.
"How?" I asked. "We have no idea what the guidelines are."
Eimear shrugged. "It doesn't matter. We just have to do more and be more. We know we have to bring everyone together and build a settlement. We have to do that and whatever else we can think of. Keep going forward, and risk it for the biscuit."
"But the rest of it? Can you change the System? Can you change Cyril's mind? Change the monsterification?" Gormán crossed his arms.
"Not yet, you better believe that I'll--"
"You can't, and it's not worth wasting energy on." Gormán sliced his hand through the air. "Do what you can. I can craft, so I'm going to focus on that. You can fight, so be ready to fight when you need to."
"We're not doing anything with that Boar-hemoth around," I said as a tree shook in the distance. "No one's going out until morning, and even then, only if we can confirm that thing is gone. Without the adventuring team, there's no way we can fight it."
"Well, then let's get them," he said it like it was easy.
"I agree. But we can't wander out, and pray for the best. We need to make preparations. What can you do with what we have?"
"Do you have any idea how long it takes to make stuff with blacksmithing?" He looked flabbergasted at my request.
"No... That's why I'm asking."
"Bah. No respect for the craft. Well, a sword should take days, especially with the jury rigged tools I'm stuck with." He grinned. "But... and I know you won't truly appreciate how impressive this is, but I think I could make a full weapon, shield, or tool per hour. I can't do copper plate, but with some hide, I could probably make a brigandine armor in two." His eyes looked hungrily over to our makeshift tanning rack.
"Do it." I nodded to the rack to give him permission. "That would make Eimear's life much easier, and if we could get a second set of it for Seanán, that would help. I'm going to get started on making those wooden vials for Blánaid so she can make whatever potions she can with what she has."
"What about weapons?" the blacksmith asked.
"If you have enough time and materials, then maybe a few spears so you, Blánaid, and myself can have something."
"What? We ain't fighters."
"I know, but we should all go as a group to help out. We might not be able to do much, but even if we're just a distraction for the monsters, it could give Eimear or Sé the angle they need to get a kill. I was able to do that up on the mesa. We'll still play it safe, we know we aren't fighters. But... With how few of us there are, we're going to need to push every advantage we can."
He growled at me, nodded, then set to work as he mumbled something under his breath that I couldn't parse.
"Speaking of which... I should probably get started on dinner."
"Nope," Eimear said, "Gormán was right about one thing, you've got things that only you can do. Vial making, and enchanting. That means those are your jobs. Sé and I don't have any crafting ability, so we're on cooking and lookout duty. You keep on shaping that wood girl." She gave me a wink.
"F-fine."
"I foraged some vegetables and mushrooms that might go well for dinner," Blánaid said.
"And they won't poison us?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes. "No. I'm an herbalist, got it to three today too. They're fine. Let's see. I got a Tastaith onion, some parsnips, and taters. Plus a vitashroom, and some lavigrass." The vegetable I recognized, but the others looked straight out of a fantasy novel. The mushroom was varying shades of bright blue, while the grass had motes of white dew seeping from it.
"What do we do with these?" Eimear looked worried as she took the vegetables.
"Oh, don't worry, Sé will show you." She looked over her shoulder. "Hey babe! You're on kitchen duty."
"Again?" He groaned, then brought up supplies from the dust filled grotto and got to work making a fire topside.
I cast Shape Wood to turn lumber into vials, then I carved some wooden chopsticks and plates so we wouldn't be eating with our hands. I tried making a wooden fork and knife, but the tines broke too easily, and the knife couldn't cut anything. If only I could shape metal, but Shape Earth only worked on rocks and dirt.
We enjoyed a nice stir fry, complete with vegetables and some basic seasonings as we sat around a campfire under the stars on top of the mesa. Blánaid might hate me for my real life relationship with Sé, but I could kiss her for improving our diet.
Our work continued after dinner. No rest for the weary.
During one of my mana breaks for non-stop shaping wood, I tried to dig deeper into my Respecialist trait. If we were going into the dungeon tomorrow, I wanted to be able to fight and help out as best I could.
Unfortunately, I couldn't swap out any of my traits. I was stuck with Non-Combatant and Utilimancer which meant Destruction and Purification magic were still forbidden. I briefly debated having Eimear teach me the basics, but I feared that would just be time wasted. I had a full queue of crafting to do, and I was just getting started on figuring out Enchanting.
There was no real world comparison for it, so I could only use the Neural Annex as a guide for how to enchant my first item.
The first step was to take a monster core and prepare it for dissolution into the enchantment. For that, I needed an alchemical solution based on the tier and element of the enchantment. Blánaid had enough of her setup that she was able to make me a few vials of the various combinations I needed. With the core in the solution, I had to subjugate the core with my mana. The cores had wills of their own, fighting me as I tried to wrest control from the souls of the dead Chim-fang-ze's.
It fought as fiercely as they had in life, so I accidentally pushed too hard, and shattered it -- wasting the core. I knew what to expect for the second one, and only had a little difficulty bringing it under my control.
Once I had the core, I had to etch in the enchanting formula directly on the core --like laser engraving across three dimensions. Even at tier one enchanting, the formulas were complicated. It was layers upon layers of interlocking magical writing, and channels for mana. Without the Neural Annex, there would be no way to manage it. It guided me as I felt my mana tracing out the paths the core would need to hold an enchantment.
Next, I filled the pathways with a conduit of an appropriate material. For a tier one weight reduction, I needed ashed bird feathers -- Eimear was more than happy to provide them by wandering around the top of the mesa and shooting fire orbs until she dropped one. I mixed the ash with the remnants of the solution used to subjugate the core, and used my mana to flood the channels with the conduit.
Once I had a prepped core, I filled it up with mana to power the enchantment.
Finally, I needed to take the powered core and transfer it onto the gear. It would be a different process for different pieces of gear, and different enchantments would take better to different processes. For enchanting the brigandine armor, I had to do a process called fracturing. This involved breaking the core along a few key lines, if I didn't break it across the right lines, I would waste the core.
I gulped as I stared at the core, I'd already spent an hour to get to this point and I didn't want to repeat my work. I rotated the core in my hand, thinking about the cuts I needed to make. I paused before I made the first incision when I realized the fracture blueprint in my Neural Annex was different from the pattern on the core.
Rather than let myself rush through cracking the core, I hugged myself as my mana slowly ticked back up. I'd rest, and approach it with a fresh perspective and crack the problem and not the core.
What was what I was missing? I had a baseline diagram of the enchantment in my NA, but the structure of each of the cores was slightly different. Which put the structures of the enchantment in different parts, the anchor was in the center in my NA, but it was clearly at the bottom of the core I held in my hand. The same was true for the mana conduits, the weight reduction mandala, and the elemental attributes.
I separated out the sections based on the actual core in front of me, and held my breath as I shattered the core.
The glow in the pieces faded slightly, but didn't go away. I couldn't tell if I'd failed or not. I would know once I melded the fragments into the brigandine. I needed Gormán's help to heat up the right pieces of the armor, then we embedded the fractured core into key plates to hold the enchantment in place.
I prayed as I lifted the final product. It was as light as holding a t-shirt. "It works!" I jumped for joy.
"What?" Eimear jumped up from her bed. I'd forgotten the rest of the team had gone to bed before Gormán and I, since we were still knee deep in crafting queues.
I pursed my lips, then mouthed a "Sorry," to her.
She narrowed her eyes at me, then flopped back into bed.
I repeated the process, but used copper slag to make a general defensive enchantment for Seanán's brigandine. It wouldn't help them move about, but it strengthened the armor to be able to block more before it broke.
They weren't much, just tier one enchantments that didn't take advantage of a tier two core. But it was still an improvement.
Eimear and Sé took the two middle watches respectively, and Blánaid took the morning watch to finish out some projects she had left resting overnight before bottling them up.
Then, the five of us set out with our new gear to meet our adventuring party, and see if we couldn't find our party.