For the second trip, I didn't destroy the cart completely. While it was a good way to get some extra iron, it would be suspicious if I brought back every single one with significant damage.

Instead, I spent some time reforging the parts. There were several thick metal bands, which I melted and reforged with a stone core. It was too much effort for something that could be purchased for three copper coins, but the opportunity cost was too critical.

Only after I was finished with the cart and arrived at the second floor, I actually absorbed my newest skill. My first real magical one.

[Fire Bolt (Basic) - 1]

Did I expect it to be useful in any kind of combat situation? Not particularly. Basic skills were basic for a reason. But, I was sure that it would be situationally useful during my smithing. The ability to reheat the metal locally, for example, could be really useful.

But, the real objective was to give me an idea of how to use mana.

I was tempted to start playing with it immediately, but I managed to hold myself back until I arrived at the third floor, afraid that someone would stumble upon me. Throwing fire bolts around was not exactly a good way of progressing.

Still, before trying it for the first time, I made sure to clean my surroundings. I didn't want to be interrupted. With that, I looked at a rock thirty feet away, opened my hand, and triggered the skill.

The first time using a new skill was always weird, and it had been even more true for the fire bolt. The mana burst out of my hand, with an intensity I could have never imagined.

[-100 Mana]

I tensed even as I felt the mana take shape in my hand, rotating and transforming in a complicated pattern that I couldn't begin to understand. I had already assumed that the mana blow was complicated. Watching my mana reshape under the control of the skill was nothing less than a true miracle.

A fire appeared from nothingness and collided against the rock with an eerie precision.

Well, at least, it was the perspective of my scientist side.

From a tactical perspective, it was just garbage. It took almost ten seconds for me to channel the spell. It consumed a truly ridiculous amount of mana, and for all of it, I had nothing to show but a projectile attack that moved slower than an ordinary arrow, which could easily be dodged.

I was glad that I hadn't wasted a skill slot for Ice Blast the day before.

Of course, its tactical uselessness meant nothing. I could already imagine a dozen different ways I could use it for my experiments. But first, I needed to push it to the limit and see if I could glean any insights that I could apply to my sword attack.

My first instinct was to stop and see if I could modify the skill somewhat. With the perks from multiple skills allowing me to interact with mana, it felt like a worthwhile experiment to run. However, I still remembered how trying to do that with Meditation blew on my face.

"Maybe not now," I muttered even as I searched for another monster. After a few quick takedowns followed by absorption, I was ready to cast again. A few more times, I targeted my skill at the rocks, but there had been no improvement.

Just like any other skill, it required a lot of repetition. Unfortunately, unlike other skills, every repeat required a lengthy pause as I refilled my mana. Luckily, it took less than five minutes to hunt the necessary monsters and absorb them.

Before the perks, filling my Mana reserves took closer to half an hour.

The next step was to target the monsters, but I wasn't in a hurry to do that. I wasn't able to even walk while trying to cast the spell, and ten seconds was too long to deal with the monsters. Instead, I stopped by my temporary forge, dropped the new batch of iron I had brought with me, and changed into the anti-corrosive set.

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Even then, I didn't attack a monster immediately, but searched for a specific opponent.

What I was looking for was one of the creatures with the ranged attack. I cleaned their immediate surroundings and used the shield to block their attack, which gave me the leisurely ten seconds I had required.

[-100 Mana]

[Fire Bolt (Basic) - 1 - 6]

"Wow, that's a nice jump," I muttered. Targeting stronger monsters always helped, not to mention improving basic skills was easier than their better variants. "Now, let's see what changed."

Another attempt, once again targeting a ranged monster. This time, the spell gathered faster, something like eight seconds, not to mention flew faster and burned brighter. A nice range of benefits, though mostly incremental.

A few more repeats and I soon reached the improvement limit.

[Fire Bolt (Basic) - 23 - 25]

The casting time had dropped to just below five seconds, which was barely enough to attack the giant beasts. I tried that just to be on the safe side, but it didn't go up.

It turned out that people were right about the limits of the Basic skills. Worse, there was no Perk.

A pity. An extra perk would have been useful.

Once it reached the limit, I decided to test a few other things. I wasn't able to move while casting, because it was somewhat anchored in the air. However, my experience with the camouflage ring showed that such requirements were rather arbitrary.

But, breaking it was a mission for another time. At first, I attempted interrupting spells. It was not as hard as I feared. Nothing like the disaster reversing the meditation technique had triggered. It was easiest when I interrupted once I let out all the mana, but interrupting halfway was also safe.

It just gave me more resistance, but at this point, I was used to interrupting skills exactly when I wanted to. Three years of practice was truly useful.

Unfortunately, I couldn't learn much from the way the mana moved. Despite what I had hoped, it wasn't the exact same pattern every single time. While it had roughly the same shape, even getting a rough sense was next to impossible.

Suddenly, I understood what Maria meant by it being impossible to sketch properly. Truly, what she was able to draw was leagues more complicated than what I had been able to even comprehend.

"Alright, now I understand why they need Intelligence," I groaned. It probably required Intelligence to direct and control the mana, which was a level of multitasking even a skill couldn't handle alone.

Well, at least, that was my current working theory, one that I couldn't examine one way or another. One that I wanted to push more, but could not.

The trick with the sword was far more important. Unfortunately, I didn't have a sword technique that was anywhere close to anything I had in my forging techniques. Though, there was a chance it existed, but I wasn't able to access it.

Another arbitrary restriction.

A spear, on the other hand, could be classified as a chisel if one squinted enough. There was no reason for it not to work. I still needed a skill, but that could be mixed with the search for the dungeon door for the next floor. All I needed was for me to slow down slightly to make sure the monsters I killed connected. It didn't take too many small monsters to make sure every giant bug dropped a skill of Uncommon variety — which now I could distinguish thanks to a quick talk with the skill vendor.

Previously, I wasn't able to get much information on it, with most people hiding the information. Understandable, as when I had the money to buy skills, they were still rare enough that even common ones had required connections to acquire.

And, once they started to get more common, I was poor enough to be treated as a nuisance. In that regard, my current stage showed a significant difference, in which I looked like an adventurer with a lot of money to throw around.

Of course, it was still nothing more than a reasonable hypothesis. I fired up the forge once more and started creating a multitude of different chisels, ignoring the limits set by the System. And, if at one point, those chisels had started suspiciously like short spears, it was surely an accident.

"Not bad," I said as I waved around my ugly chisel made entirely of metal, with a thick wedge at the front.

"Now, all I need is to set a search pattern," I said as I moved a while. It didn't take long for me to realize that the density of giant monsters varied greatly based on the direction I picked. Eleanor had already mentioned that the giant ones were mostly spilling from the next floor.

"Probably the right path," I muttered even as I shifted to my hammer, angling myself to avoid the charge of a giant monster while making sure the second one had been blocked by the first. It was challenging enough even without factoring in the ordinary monsters making things more complicated.

Luckily, the new armor was allowing me to block the corrosion attacks, or dealing with the combination of monsters would have been a messy challenge.

But, while it had been difficult, I made sure to slowly immobilize the giant ones first before it disappeared.

The reward had been equally impressive.

[Skill Stone: Swift Spear (Uncommon)]

A short but painful absorption period later, I concentrated, targeting the nearest stone, treating it as a target I needed to shape as a grindstone. The mana pattern appeared in front of it. At this point, switching between attacks was a common trick.

[Swift Spear (Uncommon) 1 - 7 ]

"Marvelous."