As much as I wanted to spend the next month reading every book Eleanor had brought and carefully learn everything I could, I knew that it wasn't the best method to go forward. Improving my skills as far as possible by creating mana alloys was the far superior option.

The amount of information skills contained was incredible, and the perks were even more fascinating.

So, I restricted myself to reading material science articles that were relevant to my objectives, and merely skimmed the rest before I started to work on the forge.

This time, I had a large pile of broken shells to keep me going for several days. The best thing was that, it wasn't really wasteful. I already needed to break them into small pieces to use for forging, so they wouldn't be useless.

I stopped only when my reserves had been filled.

[Mana (160/160)]

Reserves weren't enough to forge one ingot, which meant I didn't have the luxury of following the recipe directly. I could have easily compensated for it with my Mana Manipulation perk, but the lack of environmental mana erased that possibility.

Meaning, I had to try more than a dozen times before I successfully forged a piece as small as my thumb. Even then, I would have failed if it wasn't for Intuitive Forging giving me some last minute burst.

"Regardless, a success," I muttered as I flipped the small piece. It was a sign of progress. The first mana alloy I had ever forged. "Too bad the System didn't reward me." Still, it didn't surprise me too much. What I had done was much harder than just using one of the bronze alloys to forge a dagger, but the System didn't measure difficulty the same way I did. Sometimes, it helped.

But, not always.

For Repair, that had been about both the general value of the weapon, and the extent of the damage to an equal measure. But, the sequence of the recipes that had been revealed made me suspect the materials had played even more of a role than I had first estimated.

Copper clearly didn't move the needle once the skill passed level twenties, while the bronze alloy's effectiveness had been dropped. "Maybe I should try working with iron," I said as I walked toward the cart.

Even a partial success could push my skill higher. There was no harm in trying, afterall.

However, even as I reached for an iron alloy, I caught a more distinctive glint behind it. An ingot of silver.

"Surely not," I said, about to ignore the idea the moment it occurred. Silver and gold were not exactly useful material when it came to practical applications, and they weren't exactly common in the first place. Some people had collected a lot, trying to fake the System Currency, only to fail. Trying to make anything usable out of silver had failed the same way.

But then, none of those attempts had been done by a blacksmith that could use mana directly. I could have tried to mix the silver with the granules of shell and the other crystals, but I did not. Not when I had an easier option.

I cut my hand and bled on the molten metal, pushing some of my Health into my blood.

[-129 Health]

It was rather ghoulish.

I started to use mana blow trick, trying to taint the metal with my mana as I shaped it into a rough, thumb-sized cylinder. It was tricky without System directions, but my earlier successes had already taught me enough. Merely fifteen seconds later, I quenched it in water.

[Mana Forge (Rare) 25 - 29]

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I was shocked by the ease with which I had managed to improve my skills. A changed attitude and a generous experimentation budget was working wonders. I sighed, realizing just how big of a mistake my earlier desire to seek stability had been. Luckily, it was not too late.

However, while the skill confirmation had been interesting, the ease with which I was able to embed mana into silver was even more interesting. It was able to crystallize around mana even better than bronze, taking almost ten times the amount of mana without any problems.

Fascinating.

"Let's see if we can turn you into something useful," I said to the silver as I started tapping it gently. It was a spectacular failure, shattering under my blows, but I didn't care. I just melted it to cleanse it of my mana and blood, and repeated the process, stopping only to replenish my Health.

Of course, the experiment I was using was not cheap. The food I was consuming to replenish my Health was not cheaper than using dungeon materials for forging, and the resulting metal was barely increased. But, the System counted it as a success, which was all I needed.

Two hours was all I needed to reach fortyies, and then, the gains slowed down. I could have slowed down there, but I did not. Instead, I went in a simpler direction and changed the material.

Gold.

There was no gold in the material Eleanor had brought, but it didn't matter. I already had gold coins. I immediately melted five gold, forever ruining their ability to be used in System stores. Five gold coins barely gave me ten grams to work with, which, considering the density of the gold, was a tiny amount.

There wasn't even any mana that burst out, which was a pity.

Five experiments, all ending in failure. Probably, it wasn't enough to trigger the System. I still noted the results as well as I could have managed.

It was frustrating, but not frustrating enough to slow me down. I was tempted to melt the rest of my coins, but a hundred grams was still not a lot of gold. And, it represented my current fortune, which I might end up having to rely on in case of an emergency.

I decided to delay that experiment, and try something else.

"Time to try changing up the experiment," I said as I mixed that tiny amount of Gold into the silver, and repeated the experiment. It absorbed the mana even better, though similarly, it took more mana to count as a partial success.

I was glad that I didn't try to experiment with silver or gold at first, or the System might not have upgraded my skill.

[Mana Forge (Rare) 42 - 46]

"Let's see if I can turn you into a weapon," I said. This time, the material had actually been malleable enough not to shatter while forging, though it was not exactly usable. But, it was hard to care when I was rewarded with another notification.

[Mana Forge (Rare) 46 - 52]

[Perk Options — Modify / Masterwork / Creative Forging (Intuitive Forging) / Mana Control (Mana Manipulation) ]

A tougher choice, this time between Mana Control and Creative Forging. A better mana control was tempting, but considering Meditation was already helping me on that aspect, and that I needed to invent more materials for alloy variants, I chose Creative Forging.

They might not have been as useful for me, but it was critical for more funding.

Then, I paused as I put my hand on the silver. "Just like I suspected," I muttered. Once I had reached fifty, some new methods had been unlocked. Some better bronze alloys, but also some simple silver alloys. None of them used pure silver like I tried to, and instead used a much more minuscule amount.

Checking those processes, I could easily deduce its function. Silver was excellent to hold more mana, allowing the weapons to be more dense. But, even a small dagger forged that way would require thousands of points of Mana to actually forge successfully, which was not something I could do without environmental mana.

And, that meant that failing to trigger the improvement with gold as my material might not have been about the amount, but the mana density of the alloy. An interesting problem, but one I decided not to solve immediately. The next perk was at proficiency level one hundred, and even with all my tricks, it was inevitable that it would require more mana than I could extract from the broken shells.

Which meant that improving Repair was the far more efficient option. "Let's cheat the System again." There was no suggestion from the System on how to repair the damaged dagger, but applying the information I had gathered from forging on repairing was even easier. All I needed to do was to keep the Inspect skill active, so that the System registered the activities as a part of the repair effort.

"Recycling is fun," I muttered even as I repeated the same process again and again. The only thing I wasted was my Health-enhanced blood, which was certainly renewable.

Damaging and repairing the same dagger repeatedly was not a fun process, especially when I had to stab myself again and again, but it was easy to endure as I watched my Repair increase.

And, when I had reached the next threshold, I immediately picked Advanced Inspect as my Perk. The other options looked good, but with the way I used it, getting an even more detailed view of the internal structure of the metals was too critical to sacrifice.

"Now, to understand mana better," I pondered, wondering whether I could push my Meditation to the next threshold before Eleanor's next visit.

Not taking advantage of all that source of mana would have been a waste.