"This is your new house," Eleanor said. "You have until the return of the caravan to make it a livable place and move here permanently."

"Beautiful place, very airy," I said teasingly. Not an unfair comment, considering I was standing in front of an empty stretch surrounded by a thin wooden rail. I needed to build a building from scratch. I deemed two of my new home's details to be the most important.

The first thing was the location. It was outside the walls. However, it was neither a slight nor a revenge attempt. At a distance, I could see a secondary wall building. Apparently, once the caravans arrived, they wanted to push anyone that wasn't directly employed by them to an outer town, which was a common practice.

Reasonable as well. While mana dead locations were not as valuable, a large dungeon was still enough to vitalize the place, especially since the loot could be sold directly for silver. There was less potential, but also less danger. I was sure there would be people who would appreciate the opportunity.

The second, even more shocking thing was the size of the compound that had been given to me. It was larger than I had expected. A large rectangle, almost ten thousand square-feet.

"You have my trust that you can make a nice place," she said. "I already asked workers to build a small wooden cottage with a stone cellar in addition to a wall around the compound. The rest is up to you."

Another benefit of impressing her with my sword skills, I guessed. "Sure, as long as you keep the fact that I'm a blacksmith a secret. I don't want to lose my head to another assassin," I said.

"Sure, we can say that you're a Fighter. You certainly fight well enough to be one," she said. "Since it's our town, no one would check it. Still, just in case, don't walk around too much until we have other blacksmiths with your quick repair trick."

"Yes. And, as long as I wear a helmet while teaching, everything will be fine," I said. Maybe it was excessive, but one assassination attempt had done wonders to make me a more paranoid man. Luckily, the conditions of the attempt had been rare enough that it shouldn't be replicated even if my fake death had been discovered.

They couldn't simply send another combatant as capable as Eleanor immediately, and anyone weaker would be relying on an invisibility trick, unaware that I could see them.

No one would expect me to have Essence stat.

With that done, we returned to the part of the town that wasn't under construction. "Are you going to go to the dungeon tomorrow as well?" she asked.

"I plan to," I replied.

"Make sure to rest well, then. Dungeon visits can be surprisingly exhausting."

"Fair point," I said, but once I arrived at my temporary residence, I headed straight to the forge.

Once I had returned from the dungeon, I immediately started working. I had three immediate objectives, sorted from the most exciting to least. Playing around with Nurture, practicing Meditation, and forging myself two new sets of tools.

I started with the least exciting option. Forging two sets of new tools. The bigger set was for my own forge, made of iron alloys. Not many blacksmiths could make them, but some could. Most blacksmiths had to make do with such equipment, unable to afford anything better.

Of course, I had plans of making something more impressive, made of mana alloys, but if I did that right now, Eleanor would rightfully assume that I had used her stock — which was better than the truth. I still needed to build a proper fire pit and some other stuff.

But, an anvil, and hammers of varying sizes, and metal tongs were critical.

Still, I had four days to forge them. I did not finish them as soon as possible, because they were here as a cover for the second, more portable set. One to be hidden in the dungeon.

Eleanor already suspected that I had made progress with anti-corrosion material, and she might actually decide to check my things, even after I moved to my new residence.

My solution was simple: Just build a forge on the second floor of the dungeon.

Her explanation was clear, no one would be there, and as long as I picked a nice concealed spot, no one would really discover it. It wouldn't be a complicated, fancy forge, but I don't need anything complicated. I could simply use mana to bypass some of the requirements.

Once that was done, I moved to the next topic: meditation.

During my dungeon trip, the thing that slowed me down the most was my Mana reserve. Draining Mana from monsters had been the slowest part of the process. It had been bad enough while fighting, and it would slow me even more once I started to forge mana alloys.

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It would be even more important once I got a skill for magic. But, I wanted to start practicing with a fire spell. That way, even if it turned useless in every other way, I could still use it for smithing.

"Now, let's start," I muttered even as I smashed the first shell, absorbing it greedily.

[+2 Mana]

Then, I reversed the flow, pushing it out.

[-2 Mana]

"Not bad. Let's try to increase the intensity," I muttered to myself, curious if I could trigger the growth by using more. However, I didn't dare to. I still remembered how much damage one mana could cause. I didn't want to lose control and end up dead.

Instead, I repeated the same trick again and again, going through all the shells. Luckily, it was not a waste, as the broken pieces could be eventually used for anti-corrosion alloy.

Twenty minutes and almost three hundred points of Mana later, another notification appeared.

[Meditation (Common) 42 - 43]

"Excellent," I said, and continued practicing, ignoring the temptation to pull and release more mana. As long as I could bring Meditation to the next threshold before morning, it was enough. I wanted to have Efficient Absorption at a minimum.

It was already dawn when I finally reached my target.

[Meditation (Common) 49 - 50]

[Perk Options — Efficient Absorption / Augmented Flow / Purification]

"Thank god that Perk Reset stones exist," I said even as I looked at the unexpected third entry. After spending all night trying to absorb mana from monsters, I was almost entirely sure that Purification referred to the act of isolating that excess energy from monster mana.

I picked that.

"Jackpot," I muttered after I broke another shell. Previously, draining the mana from a destroyed alloy was almost four times faster than draining it from the broken shell. Draining from monsters was still slower, but this time, it was a far more reasonable difference. About twenty percent, I guessed. A more accurate assessment required several experiments.

"Too bad I have very little time left to test my new skill," I muttered. I only had half an hour before the first group left the town for the dungeon, and I wanted to join them. While understanding how Nurture worked was important, it wasn't as important as trying to set up a second forge in the depths of the dungeon.

An idea that had only appeared in my mind because monsters didn't attack abandoned objects as long as they didn't block their path, as proven by the cart I brought not getting damaged.

"Later," I decided even as I looked at three objects that were in front of me. A seed, a broken branch, and a small herb from the dungeon I brought along, each in a separate pot.

First, I put my hand on the broken branch, and started feeding it with Nurture. As my Health started to slowly disappear, the leaves of the broken branch began regaining their green, but that had been the full extent of the change.

[-16 Health]

I continued to feed it, feeling that I could still push, curious of the change. I pushed more and more. And the branch stirred while a small root grew into the vase. The skill was controlling the movement of the Health, which moved in an incredible, impossible to understand pattern.

I couldn't even begin to comprehend the movement, and I couldn't use Inspect to compensate for it either. After all, it was not made of metal, and the System didn't trigger, no matter how much I tried.

[-184 Health]

[Nurture (Uncommon) 1 - 2 ]

"Not bad." While I hadn't thought about using Nurture before, I had collected a lot of information about it. While bringing a plant to optimal condition was easy, forcing growth took too much Health, making it economically unfeasible.

And, most farmers couldn't casually throw hundreds of Health to a single plant. I moved to the dungeon plant, trying to push it to an optimal state.

It didn't even react. Something was missing.

"Interesting," I said as I moved on to the seed, flooding it with my Health aggressively until a tiny sapling appeared. Incredible, but not when factoring in all the mana I had forced into it.

[-462 Health]

[Nurture (Uncommon) 2 - 3]

Forcefully improving a skill by just spending a lot of Health rather than finding a clever workaround was not as fun, but I still managed to grow it faster than most farmers were able to do in a week. The difference in Health was simply that important. I ate a quick meal before I sat down, picking another seed, this time feeding it slowly.

The pattern of feeding a seed had been far simpler. Maybe I could get a better idea if I practiced enough.

However, even as I focused on it, my mind wandered. Mostly to the unfortunate plight of the Farmers.

While all production classes were unlucky to some degree, none was as unlucky as the Farmers. They were by far the most common production class, which was never a good thing. The more common a skill was, the less valuable it became.

To make the situation even worse, they received only one Vitality with each level up and nothing more. Their only skill was Nurture, and without Strength, the only combat skills they could learn were the basic ones.

They should have still been able to make money, especially with the amount of food the world consumed.

However, the biggest problem was that monsters were drawn to the vitality of the plants. The bigger the farm, the more monsters it drove. It prevented them from just picking a nice mana dead location with weak monsters and working independently.

In the end, they ended up gathering together near the big cities, working in the huge greenhouses that supplied the consumption while being protected by others that took all the profit. With the food critical to replenish Health, the amount a city consumed was truly incredible.

Still, there were always more Farmers than was needed, driving the money they could earn even lower, most of them below level five as they labored hopelessly, working hard to keep with their individual quotas.

Of course, theoretically, the solution to that problem was simple. All it would take for the stronger people was to just decide to support the weak properly. Just let them access a friendly dungeon, and bring them up to a higher level.

But, similarly, all the problems with Capitalism would have been solved if billionaires were nicer, Communism would have worked if the officials were not corrupt, and Monarchy would have worked too if the kings cared about peasants more than they cared about their glory.

As a sociologist that had spent my whole life trying to understand how human behavior had worked in aggregate, I knew that it was hopeless. Solitary humans might be merciful and fair, but humanity was not. Or, we wouldn't have waited to ban slavery until it was financially unsustainable.

Humanity was selfish, and the individual power given by the System made it only worse.