I decided to head back the the first floor to kill time before the tournament began. I agreed to meet the others in at the arena within the inner ring 2 hours prior to the start of the event, so I had until then to do whatever I wanted.

The outpost has changed a lot since I last really explored it. There were actual buildings all over the place now, and each one seemed to be serving some specific purpose. After asking for some directions, I ended up at my destination.

The building I was at could more or less be described as a shed with a forge attached to it. It was basically just a place for weapons and armor to be made. I could see crafters all around it, with some focusing on leatherworking and others on forming metal into weapons, but the person I was looking for specifically stood directly in the center of the organized chaos.

Blair notices me walking towards her and speed walks to meet me in the middle. “Hey! Have you found any more rare materials?”

“Hi, nice to talk see you too.” I say, though I wasn’t really upset that she was skipping straight to the point. “No, I haven’t. There hasn’t been much opportunity for that on these past few floors. There probably won’t be until I reach floor 11.”

“Well then what are you here for?”

“I believe you owe me a piece of equipment.” I say. “Preferably one made from the bones of a particular skeleton.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’ve had it ready for about a day now. You just never came to pick it up.” She walks into the storage room by the forge, coming out a moment later holding a long dagger. It was pretty clearly made of bone, and I identified it before she even handed it to me.

Enchanted Bone Dagger (Rare)

A dagger crafted from the bones of a fallen skeleton sentinel. It has been enchanted to become sharper and more durable when infused with mana.

“Not bad.” I say, inspecting the dagger. I infuse some mana into it to sharpen it, and rake it across my arm. Blair looks like she’s about to say something, but stops when my mana shield flickers and negates any damage the dagger would have done. It’s not a perfect test, but the amount of mana drained by the slash let me know that this would be a fairly useful weapon.

“Thanks. It was pretty easy to make after I practiced the enchantments a few times. Just don’t go infusing too much mana into it, because while they are good, they aren’t perfect.”

I raise an eyebrow questioningly. “How much mana is too much?”

“Well, if it starts shaking then you’ve probably put to much in it. Best to throw it before it turns into bone shrapnel.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I say, storing the dagger away in my ring. At least, I tried to. I mentally slap myself when I remember that it could only store common and uncommon rarity items. It did still light up briefly in an attempt to work, but it was a lost cause.

Blairs eyes immediately lock onto the ring, and I see what looks like a ring of mana appear in her iris. An improved inspection skill perhaps? Either way, something about the item got her excited.

“I need one.” She says, pointing to the ring.

“What?”

“I need one. Bring me one of those and I’ll make something else for you.”

“Why do you need one so badly?”

“That looks like a very useful enchantment on it. I would love to use that on some of my creations.”

I am starting to get a little uncomfortable at how she's looking at the ring, and I cover it with my other hand. She frowns, but I speak before she can start complaining.

“Tell you what, lets make a deal. If you teach me the enchantment within this ring, I will give it to you.”

“Deal!” She says, not hesitating for even a moment.

I take the ring off and hand it to her, and I watch as she spends the next several minutes inspecting the enchantment within it. After seeming to have a basic grasp of it, she begins tracing her finger through the air. A trail of mana is left in its path, and soon she has the enchantment drawn out in the air. She keeps her finger on the edge of it to keep it from destabilizing and dispersing.

“So how much about this do you want to know?” She asks, before shaking her head. “Actually scratch that, just tell me what you want to use it for. We can go from there.”

“I want to learn how to send stuff to wherever it is that the ring sends stuff.”

She nods along, thinking to herself. “Well first of all, the ring appears to send stuff to some extradimensional space attached to whoever wears it.” She points to a part of the enchantment, with that part now glowing slightly brighter. “That right there is what does that.” Another part of it begins glowing brightly. “That is to retrieve whatever you send.”

“I’m not going to need that part.” I say, shaking my head. I could already retrieve things from my aura without needing the ring thanks to my dimension sight. Sending things there was the only problem I really had.

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“Whatever. Anyways, if all you want to do is send things there, you should only need this portion of the enchantment.”

She redraws the enchantment mid air, the original copy of it disappearing. It is now a fair bit simpler, with the pattern much easier to understand. I still couldn’t tell you why it worked, or even how this sent things into a higher dimension, but apparently that is what it did.

“Try tracing that out.” She says. I do as I am told, glancing back at the original pattern she drew to copy each line as best I could. My mana control was fairly decent, so it wasn’t too much trouble to get done. She continues once she sees that it is done. “Now infuse more mana into it, with the intent to store away something.”

“Is intent alone enough for it to know what I want to store?”

She nods. “Mana works off of your will and intent. For small things like picking a target for a spell or enchantment, your intent is enough.”

I focus on the dagger she had given me, infusing mana into the enchantment and trying to store it away. The enchantment glows for a moment, but fizzles away a moment later.

“Hmmm.” Blair hums. “Maybe I messed it up a bit. Modifying enchantments can be a real pain sometimes.”

We spend the next several hours trying to get a working version of the enchantment. She tweaks little bits at a time, slowly bringing it closer and closer to functional. Once she actually gets it working and the knife can be stored away, she drills me on it until I have it fully memorized. She didn’t want to have to give me a refresher if I ever forgot it.

Once she was satisfied that I had it committed to memory, she sent me off so she could get back to trying to study and improve the original enchantment. I was fine with that, because now that I had the enchantment down I had something I wanted to try out.

I knew that the mana flowing within my body followed a set pattern. It was similar to my circulatory system, having branching paths that ensured mana could reach every part of my body. Given that the bounds of the pathways weren’t physical like with my veins and arteries, I didn’t see much of a reason why I wouldn’t be able to change it.

It took me almost three hours of focus and attention, but eventually I had accomplished my goal. Within my right forearm, I had altered the flow of mana to mimic the enchantment exactly. It had been both easier and more difficult than I’d expected, proving to be a fairly interesting challenge. I would have put it on my hand, but I still wanted to be able to cast spells out of it without accidentally storing away whatever I was holding.

After retrieving my new dagger from my aura, I infused some extra mana into my forearm to activate the enchantment. I smile creeps onto my face when it works, and the dagger once more disappears. I now had spacial storage, and didn’t need to rely on the ring. The materials the ring had been made of had actually been what held me back from storing anything of a higher rarity than uncommon, as according to Blair enchantments worked better when placed on more mana conductive materials. As it turns out own mana pathways were conductive enough to store at least a rare item.

I still had almost half a day to burn, so I decided to take a trip back to floor five. If I was going to be fighting in a tournament, I might as get in some combat practice. Really I just wanted to get in some practice using my spells and skills against something that wouldn’t be killed too quickly by them. Every time I beat the boss I stored away the sword it dropped and the bones it left behind. Accounting for recovery time between fights and the fact that it just took so damn long to wear away at its defenses, I was able to kill the boss once every hour or so.

I hadn’t been expecting to get any levels from all this, as I was only killing enemies of a lower level than myself, but I was pleasantly surprised with two levels, bringing me to level 32. My best guess as to why was that it was a combination of it being a boss monster, as well as me just generally getting better at using my skills.

With an hour left until I needed to meet up with the others, I dropped off all of the bones I had collected to Blair, who had looked she she was about to start drooling when she saw the sheer amount of materials I brought in. Personally I was just happy to get them out of my storage, as they had nearly filled it up. I might need to switch my Spirit stats focus to aura, as I was starting to think my trait would benefit more from that than focusing on perception.

I made my way back to the seventh floor, now the eighth once I entered the inner walls. The inner part of the city wasn’t very different from the outer ring. The buildings were a little nicer, the people a bit better dressed, and everyone’s level were generally higher. The average here seemed to hang around 17 or 18 as opposed to the 10 in the outer city.

Finding the arena in this part of the city, I came to realize it was far larger. It must have been made for higher level fights where people needed more room to fight. Throwing people out of the ring would probably be a much less viable option this time around.

“Glad to see you made it.” Ryker says once I meet up with the group. “I had to admit, I was a bit worried you wouldn’t show up.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know. Just thought maybe you’d found a way to upgrade your mark without having to come here.”

“Well if I do find an easier way I’ll let you know. There are probably a lot of easier ways than this, but personally I don’t mind fighting my way to the top for it.”

“You say that, but with the way things are looking we are probably going to be outmatched by the time we get to the ninth floor.”

“Have a little faith.” I say, nudging him. “Training can take you a long way. Speaking of which, I assume you all were doing just that while waiting for this?”

“Yep.” Flynn says. “Trained against one another in one on one fights, except for Van, he healed us between fights.” He points to the healer of the group.

“Sounds productive. I was just training against the boss on floor five, practicing all my spells.”

Ryker shakes his head when he hears that. “I still can’t understand how you take that thing down on your own.”

“First time was pure luck, and since then I have upgraded most of my spells far past what they were at.”

“That makes some sense, but you make upgrading spells sound so easy. I’ve been having a tough time with it, and only have two spells that are rare rarity.”

“Practice makes perfect. I have a bit of a knack for mana control, but I also practice it whenever I get the chance. Hell, that’s the whole reason I am able to do this.” I summon my staff into my hand, dismissing it back to my spacial storage quickly after.

Nobody seems particularly impressed by it, until Jade the archer notices why it what was different about it. “You figured out how to do it without the ring?” She says, having seen that I wasn’t wearing it.

“Yep. Got the help of someone back at my camp to figure it out.”

“You are just full of surprises.” Ryker says. “I may have to ask for some pointers sometime.”

“I’d be happy to help-” I say, stopping when I remember something. “Shit.”

“What’s up?”

“I have some people I was supposed to be training, and I completely forgot about them. I gave them a short lesson over a week ago, but aside from that I’ve done pretty much nothing.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t be a great teacher after all.” Ryker jokes. “I’m sure they’d appreciate guidance through this set of floors at least, assuming they’ve made it by the time you are done.”

“I’m sure at least some of them will have.” I sigh. “Whatever. I can deal with it once we finish up these next couple of floors. For now, lets discuss how we are going to handle this tournament.”