Working with metal was an utterly fascinating experience. Looting both the hunting store and the jeweller gave me a plethora of objects to experiment with, though I initially focused on the simple knives and plain silver hoops, not even trying to work with the gems. To make matters worse, the change had left its mark on the different objects, their physical features were altered in some minute ways, especially when it came to their durability.

During my experiments, I came across one particular blade, outwardly it looked perfectly fine but when I used my slowly developing Crystal Magic on it. there was a distinct change in one section of the knife. Even just gently knocking against it with my hand caused that section to lightly crack and when I tried to cut something with the knife, it simply broke.

That realisation forced me to examine the loot more closely, to figure out which items had been weakened by the change, which remained useable and which had been improved, though that greatly depended on the metric used.

For example, was it an improvement when a knife had a greatly increased hardness but was incredibly brittle as well, making it highly likely that it would break the moment it was used to strike something? Even just dropping it could have broken it, I didn’t dare test that, but at the same time, it was hard enough to etch glass without issue, while a careful treatment with my Crystal Magic turned it razor sharp.

Was that a better knife or a worse one? For hunting, it was worse, or for any sort of violent use, but I most certainly kept the blade, though I reworked the hilt, to use for careful carving and possibly engraving.

The right tool for the right job and all that, and in this case, I wasn’t overly interested in cutting. Lia had the cleaver we had taken from the dungeon, the sheer, brute force it could apply far outstripping anything possible with pre-change weapons while I had two well-made blades myself, blades with which I had trained, which I had bled on and with which I had killed. There was no way that any of the blades from the hunting store could match them, not unless I managed to somehow enchanted or altered them so they were recognised as weapons by the system.

And that was what I was trying to accomplish during the next few rest periods, enchanting by day, going back to hunt Withered by night. Not only was I trying to alter the weapons, so they would be recognised by the system and actually work for us, but I also wanted to enchant the rings. Enchanting gear to improve attributes, for example, could be incredibly valuable even if I only had rather vague ideas about where to start with that.

My initial idea was to try engraving Blood Runes, mostly those focused on Vitality, maybe with some enriched blood worked into the engraving in some way. That might work to increase Vitality, thanks to the direct connection but it was only an idea that I had yet to accomplish.

And even if I did, while additional Vitality was a nice thing to have, it was one of the less important attributes to me. If I ever got into a situation where my Vitality was the difference between living or dying, I had majorly mucked up at some point. I wasn’t some sort of tank or bruiser, I didn’t want to battle in the front-lines, I was primarily a spellcaster, maybe with a bit of assassin or scout mixed in. Getting hit was not for me, I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the action.

Though, given that things didn’t always go to plan, I would happily wear some Vitality-enchanted jewellery if it was the only option I had.

But really, I wanted more options.

Intelligence, Intuition, those were interesting, though only because they were my primary attributes. On the other hand, Agility, Courage or Dexterity would be incredible, simply because they were useful secondary attributes but not useful enough to make me spend my hard-earned points on them. Not if I could use those points to increase my primary attributes, allowing me to gain traits and abilities associated with them.

But points gained from items wouldn’t give me any abilities or traits, they just gave me the attribute points.

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Which left me with the obvious question, how could I imbue an item with those attributes? How could a simple ring, necklace or whatever improve the innate characteristics of my body, just by wearing it?

The obvious answer was magic.

The less-obvious answer turned into a slight obsession during the next few days.

Each day, I was pouring over the different items, trying to make them into something more. The knives were, amusingly, the easiest but maybe I should have expected that.

Runes were the answer, as expected, but the devil was, as always, in the details. Namely, the detail of how I could get the runes to be connected, not only to each other but to the body holding the blade, there needed to be a constant cycle of Astral Power, allowing the body to empower the enchantment without actually drawing power out of the body.

Because that was the crux of the matter. People had Astral Power flowing through them at all times, especially a powerful spellcaster like me. My entire body was infused with it, so why couldn’t I let some of the power that was flowing through my body at all times flow through a blade to infuse an enchantment, just like my body was infused?

What I needed was a cycle, a highly efficient cycle that drew power from the body holding a blade on one side and infused the power back into the body on the other side, using that power to activate a runic sequence on the way.

Once I had that thought, the rest was completely trivial… Not.

Even with the idea, it took a massive amount of effort, thanks to the corrosive effects of raw Astral Power. Within the body that wasn’t a problem, my Astral Power was obviously attuned to my body, but outside of it? There, things became a lot more difficult.

Connecting patterns were the answer, those tiny structures that fit between the runes of a formation, allowing the Astral Power to flow through it more smoothly. Normally, that merely increased a spell’s efficiency, but higher efficiency meant that less power was wasted. Wasted on effects like the corrosion of the material, or other unwanted complications.

This meant I had to figure out connecting patterns while inventing a whole new set of effects that I wanted to permanently imbue into my items.

Without the magical Sight I had inherited from Lenore, it might be utterly impossible. But with it, I could slowly but surely detect the places where Astral Power was impacting, for a lack of a better word, the material and experiment with patterns and symbols to connect different runes. Somewhat similar to watching water flow through a structure, following the path of least resistance while splashing against the walls at other points. I needed to reduce the splash, reduce the friction and make sure that the water was moving smoothly.

Only, each combination of runes required different connections, the Astral Power flowing through them in a different way. It wasn’t just one symbol that could be used for each rune, like some sort of cursive script, they all needed their own.

Meaning I first had to figure out what Runes I wanted to connect, though luckily, that was relatively easy for the blades. Blood, Curse, Spout, for a relatively simple effect that would hopefully make the wounds made by the blade continuously bleed. Nothing sophisticated but nicely deadly, if I could get it to work.

And that was before taking into account differences in the physical material, that I wasn’t just working with a single, uniform medium but with more or less randomly mixed metals, thanks to the change altering the properties of the material in a mostly random way, leaving me with a mix I could barely tell apart, let alone form some comprehensive theories about. At times, I was tempted to simply throw the weapons that had gone through the change away and try starting anew, only that I didn’t have a blacksmith or something to pound out weapons for me to experiment on. Not yet, at least, I had noticed Lia looking into books she had looted from the library one night, one of which had an anvil with glowing metal on the cover.

It was a serious headache and a half, though slowly but surely, I was making progress. Slow, tedious progress, but that was something I was used to anyway. It was the same with the Withered, though I had a feeling that the runes were more flexible than the Withered.

It turned out, those had, after our days of staying away after the initial breaking of the Withered Skulker, returned to their ways and reacted in the same, predictable ways. The only upside was that their growth seemed to slow down a little, going from utterly impossible to merely ridiculous, especially considering their numbers.

But the steady supply of magical exploration, combat and training was having a profound effect on my level and magic. Each day, more advances were made, each night, more enemies fell to our weapons, traps and magic, allowing us to continuously advance.

Maybe the Withered had their own plan to deal with us, maybe they simply reacted to stimulus, like some sort of magical sunflower that simply followed the sun’s light, regardless of circumstances.

Whatever the case, their plan, if there was one, didn’t come into effect before we reached a major milestone. Namely, level fifty and the first Divide.