"Hello," said the addition to Grover's workshop, a middle-aged human man who I'd swear I'd seen before, but whose name I couldn't place.

"Hi?" I tried, invoking [Eye of Judgement] and getting the name of Jason back. That didn't ring any bells, but the class of [Life Archmage] along with a lot of life affinity healing spells sure did. "Oh, Synklisi hospital! That's why I recognised you!"

"Wow, small world," replied the healer. "You were the patient with the inexplicable coma and weakness after an altercation with our dungeon's infamous slime."

"You two know each other?" said Grover. "That makes this easier. After consulting with Kari and Raymond, we concluded that the only way to produce substantial amounts of hihi'irokane would be via the [Full Heal] spell."

"It doesn't have the same efficiency loss as lower rank healing spells?"

"Yes, it does," answered Jason. "But as the spell name suggests, it will heal you completely with a single cast, regardless of damage. The removal of all four limbs, for example."

"Whu?" exclaimed Cluma, whose recent mellowing out hadn't gone that far. "Hey, what are you planning to do to him?!"

"Exactly the same as yesterday, but on a larger scale. If it makes you feel better, we have nowhere near enough hihi'irokane to fashion a single limb, let alone four," answered Grover reassuringly, before spoiling it by finishing off rather ominously with, "yet."

"So, you used yesterday's produce to make half a foot, which you'll duplicate a few times, then make a full foot, then half a leg, and so on?" I asked.

"Yup, that's the plan."

I almost wanted to side with Cluma on this; that was a serious escalation compared to yesterday, and they hadn't consulted me at all! If not for the fact I could see [Pain Nullification] among Jason's skills, I would have protested.

"Normally, if it was regenerating a foot, the limit would be five times before [Full Heal] started to fail," added Jason. "Surprisingly, that's a well-established fact; there's a dungeon out west that has lots of floor-level traps. People tend to lose a lot of feet there. Apparently you have [Regeneration], though, so you should be able to take a few more. Plus, there's your rank five enchanted ring of regeneration, and I wouldn't even want to guess what effect that will have. Conversely, we have the added complication of the linked metal. Perhaps that will have a negative effect."

Hey... Was that why Grover picked that particular enchantment to add to his first ring?

"So you'll keep chopping his feet off until [Full Heal] fails, and he has to spend the rest of the day without a foot?!" complained Cluma.

"It doesn't go from full effectiveness to nothing in one go," I pointed out. "Once it takes more than one cast to heal me, we know it's time to stop."

Cluma crossed her arms and hovered in a corner with a grumpy expression, but refrained from trying to convince us to stop, or threatening me with lace.

"So you haven't got around to starting your tail adaptation yet?" asked Grover, as he prepared a poorly shaped front-part of a foot.

"I have, but to save having to alter all my clothes, I used [Detach] on it before coming out."

"Sensible enough, since you have that option," nodded Grover.

"Something else I should mention; [Full Heal] takes almost two-thirds of my mana pool," interjected Jason. "Apparently you can boost my mana regeneration?"

"I can," I answered, taking a look at him. Despite being rank four, he didn't seem to have any more than I did, but he wasn't far enough under that I expected any Cluma-style problems. "I should be able to boost your regeneration rate by an order of magnitude."

"Great. That'll make this go a lot faster."

"How did Grover coax you over from Synklisi, anyway?"

"I finished the animalite staves for our local hospital," replied Grover, answering for him. "They worked so well that every healer on the continent wants one. And that was before I ranked up. I've suddenly found myself with plenty of healers who owe me favours."

And hihi'irokane might make them even better. Maybe. Grover hadn't said anything about it helping improve my lightning glove, so perhaps hihi'irokane was worse than the affinity metals for affinity enchantments.

ding

Skill [Regeneration] advanced to level 5

"A much better haul than yesterday," declared Grover, after [Full Heal] started to lose effectiveness after eleven casts. "And tomorrow will be even better."

"Tomorrow? How much longer are you going to do this?!" complained Cluma, who had a hand clamped over her face, but the fingers slightly separated around her eyes, so she could watch while pretending she didn't want to watch.

"Given the limited platinum supply, producing hihi'irokane with [Full Heal] will be faster than conversion, however far we're able to boost the mana concentration chamber. We not only need to improve it to the point at which mages can easily produce the stuff, but then we need to raise up delving parties able to collect platinum with the same speed at which gold is produced today. Equipment improvements may make that possible, but it requires dungeons deeper than fifty floors, and there aren't many of them around."

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"I'm not going to consent to acting as your personal metal factory forever," I pointed out.

"Hah. As much as I'd like to employ you to sit there and have limbs chopped off forever, I agree that's not fair on you. Jason can stay for three more days. Can you handle that, lad?"

"I suppose."

Someone must have paid Jason's portal fee to get here, unless Grover had mastered contulite based portals already, so it would be a shame to waste it. And until we got as far as full limbs, our rate of production would increase exponentially, so it would be worthwhile taking things that far.

Actually, aside from contulite, could Darren make non-System portals? It wasn't as if we needed to feed monster cores to the holes he'd poked to Earth.

Regardless, any reservations I may have had over the rather bloody production line we'd established melted away when Grover handed over my payment for the day.

Hihi'irokane Ring (Quality: 52)

- Enchantment: Comfort (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Feather fall (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: High jump (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Ice resistance (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Soul resistance (Quality: 83)

Weight: 3 grams

Hihi'irokane Ring (Quality: 52)

- Enchantment: Comfort (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Fire resistance (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Odour suppression (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Mana efficiency (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Stamina regeneration (Quality: 83)

Weight: 3 grams

There were monsters on the lower levels of the Obsidian Spires dungeon that weaponised soul affinity, so for Cluma, obtaining a defence was a must. Personally, I had [Unbound Soul] to protect me, but given how badly Erryn had mucked around with it, I was loath to rely on it completely. Besides, I hoped the ring would also protect me if I was ever forced to attack with soul affinity again, because [Unbound Soul] certainly didn't. Or worse, it did, and the blowback would have been even harsher had I not had it.

For the final slot, I added stamina regeneration to round off the selection of regeneration bonuses. As well as her pair of rings with the same enchantments as my own, Cluma took a new earring.

Hihi'irokane Earring (Quality: 52)

- Enchantment: Appraisal block (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Stealth enhancement (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Perception enhancement (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Tracking enhancement (Quality: 83)

- Enchantment: Mana regeneration (Quality: 83)

As a general rule, clothing could take enchantments that enhanced crafting skills, while weapons were needed for combat skills, staves for magic skills and accessories for covert skills, leaving general and enhancement skills unable to be enhanced. It wasn't a hard rule; tools could take related crafting skills, for example, and nothing stopped a staff from being utilised as a weapon. My fake limbs seemed to be in a category of their own, too, given that Grover had successfully applied a body affinity enhancement to them. Admittedly, it behaved differently, only enhancing spells cast on them, rather than enhancing any spell I cast.

On top of that, the relationship between the enhancement and the boosted skills was fuzzy. A cooking enhancement boosted [Basic Cooking] and [Advanced Cooking] alike, which wasn't much of a surprise. Likewise, Cluma's stealth enhancement boosted [Concealment], [Stealth] and [Non-detection]. A fire affinity enhancement would boost all fire affinity spells, and there were weapon enchantments available to boost categories of arte. Cluma's new perception enhancement, though, did not improve her [Mana Perception], or my [Mana Sight]. Neither did it improve my [Soul Perception]. It only improved the skills she'd gained from her scout class. Had it improved her general senses, I'd have been tempted to get a copy too.

Presumably, it only affected perception skills that were considered part of the covert umbrella, but why the difference? It seemed somewhat arbitrary. I could understand [Mana Perception] being considered a magic skill, but what the heck was [Soul Perception] included under?

She'd gone for tracking enhancement in her final spot, despite having no tracking skills, just because there was nothing else of interest to occupy it with. I was surprised Grover hadn't learnt any new and interesting enchanting recipes at rank five, but that turned out to have a simple explanation; he had. They just required a bunch of ingredients he'd never heard of.

In particular, he'd learnt the category skill bonus enchantments. What sort of level boost would a rank five version of that enchantment give? He'd given a list of required items to the guild, so hopefully they'd track down what it needed and we'd find out. Otherwise, he'd need to wait until he had the soul points for [Componentless Mediocrity].

"We're all finished here, so let's go home," declared Cluma, who had stopped protesting after getting her new jewellery, but who still didn't want to hang around Grover and his instruments of amputation.

"Okay. Home, swap out my tail for the next one, then more training in the dungeon to get used to the sensory distortions."

"Mmm. I'm hoping the perception enhancement will help."

It did, but not by much. Whatever the ribbons were doing, they could hide from her [Monster Perception]. All it helped with was picking up their attacks with [Threat Perception], but since they never targeted her while she was invisible, that wasn't any great help.

Meanwhile, I'd got sufficiently used to my modified active mana scan that I could pinpoint them easily, using a burst of spatial affinity to disrupt their hidey-holes with them still inside, with universally fatal consequences.

"We're not learning anything new by sticking around here," pointed out a mysterious voice that seemed to be following me around everywhere but had no discernable source. "Should we move to the next floor?"

"Yeah. The boss is just a scaled-up version of the mobs again, so I should be able to kill it the same way. The next floor isn't much different from this one, though."

"Then we'll go down two or three."

As usual, to avoid the risk of dropping into the boss room and starting an actual fight, I struck at range from above. The boss didn't survive its spatial pocket being collapsed with it still inside any more than its smaller brethren, letting us grab the chest and move to floor seventeen.

"Yup, this is exactly the same," I declared once we got there. The sensory distortion was no worse, but neither was it any better, and I could still pick up monsters hiding at long range. There was one in the very first room, in fact, so I lashed out at it as we stepped in before it had the chance to strike first.

And that was the point at which proceedings diverged sharply from the previous floor.

There was a noise. A wet slapping sound, like someone had struck a steak against a worktop, with odd reverberations and echoes.

"Wha..." started Cluma before a rain of blood painted our world a bright red.

Well, that was one way to detect invisible Clumas.