The real world felt wrong and too loud after the magically muffled, constantly dripping setting of the dungeon.

1 Essence used to charge Automatic Gold Collecting Purse

She saw and felt several beams of light or magic shoot from the corners and under the counter. Apparently she’d missed a coin or two when gathering. If the purse was going to notify her every time it took an Essence, that was going to get annoying.

“System, can I charge the purse 10 at a time to cut down on the notifications?”

Of course. Or rather you can allocate the Essence to be used without notification. Would you like to do that now?

“Yes. Fine. Thank you.”

Ginny looked around. As tempting as it was to raid the medicinal gummies, she had things to do. She picked up one last skein of warg yarn she’d missed before.

Warg yarn was apparently a common drop. She’d filled her pockets in the dungeon. She stuffed the drops into her bag which was getting rather full. It had already been heavy. Chains are heavy, extremely heavy.

Speaking of drops… she dug in the bag for the belt knife which she slid onto the waist loop of the knife bandoleer. She acknowledged that the harness wasn’t a traditional sash bandoleer, more a Sam Browne belt, but the system had named it. The belt around the waist allowed it to fit snugly without shifting when she moved. It was more comfortable than she’d expected.

Satisfied with her gear, Ginny left the shop, headed to her studio and a modified chain weapon.

The people across the street were still fighting giant squirrels. A heavy dry breeze was flowing, bringing the scent of blood and offal with it.

The club was closed. Not that it should be open. It didn’t open until noon, and the spawns had started at about nine am. Ginny thought about checking the time, but her phone and the bank sign were both still dead.

She started toward her studio, roughly two miles down the road, and found that her effortless walking pace was suddenly a whole lot faster.

She passed a few fights, but didn’t attract any monster attention.

She slowed down as she passed the second unlit traffic light. There were human bodies everywhere. Something with rending claws was killing civilians wantonly and apparently for sport, because it wasn’t eating them.

She scanned her surroundings moment by moment, checking her rear. Mostly because she’d read Robin Hood tales as a child, she even remembered to look up.

She exited the high body count area without any sign of the monster except bloody footprints, which was troubling. She briefly considered trying to find the thing. However, she moved on, increasing her speed but keeping even more alert. She arrived at the studio in record time, about ten minutes. That was better than her old running pace.

The huge shared space was fairly empty. She entered her work space cautiously. She had a locked chain link gate that separated her area from the main studio, but something could have spawned inside. She cleared the room and locked herself in.

Ginny’s studio was relatively tidy and well organized, except for the workspace currently cluttered with components of a sculpture she never expected to finish now.

She had three welding torches, only one of which had no electric components. Before she got started she went into the changing room she’d manufactured out of three sheets of corrugated aluminum and a door - frame and all- she’d found by the side of the road.

She picked up a roll of freshly laundered clothes. She liked to bundle her outfits together for simplicity. The jeans and shirts were all thrifted. The socks and underwear were new when she got them. After she got dressed Ginny slipped into the work boots and welding coveralls she kept handy here.

Finally she went out to her welding torch, put on her protective gear and fired it up. She grinned. As long as she had the right gasses she could work.

She had spent a few years as a struggling artist, living out of a van and counting every penny. As an orphan she had no family and Mrs Miller definitely wasn’t inclined to help her at all. She knew how to conserve resources.

Ginny turned off the torch and got to work. Her supplies of metals were a mix of new stock she’d splurged on the first time she made over a grand in tips at the club; items she’d found trash picking and dumpster diving; items she’d scrounged for cheap- just over metal price- at the recycling center and items she’d thrifted or swapped for.

Since she was organized, she knew where what she was looking for ought to be. She had to dig through her pile of cast iron to find one, but she bought up old sad irons every time she saw them.

The shape was great for a sculpture base, they were heavy and the cavity on the top was perfect for attaching something. In this case she was planning to use the heaviest iron she’d ever found - about seven pounds of cast iron with a thick cast in loop - as the weighted end of her weapon.

She had a few ideas for weapons, but she had a skill for her chain and she liked using it.

Reserving her current weapon in case of need, Ginny attached the weight to the end of the other loose ten chain foot length she’d been carrying around all day. Those things were not light. Her bag was showing signs of fatigued seams.

Ginny used a carabiner temporarily to help her adjust the length of the chain. She knew what she had been using was a little longer than she needed. Constant use and her skill had told her that.

For the anchor end she chose a six inch long round bar of steel which was manufactured with a ring welded to the center. She had no idea what its original purpose had been, but it would stop the chain from flying out of her hands and it would make a decent dent in anything it hit.

She played around with length for a while and settled on what felt right.

She cut the chain, welded links into each weight she was using and tried it again.

You have constructed a Kusarigama. Would you like to accept the Profession [Weapon Artificer]? You would have access to diagrams, patterns and System crafting assistance.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Ginny perked up. The chatty system voice had mentioned crafting essence could be better than fighting essence. “Can I have more than one profession?”

No. Not until you level your profession to twenty and evolve or split it. Then a secondary profession may be accepted.

“Good to know.” Ginny considered the plans she had for the day and nodded. “Yeah. I’ll take weapon artificer as a profession.” She preemptively sat down on the floor with her back against the leg of her table.

It was a sensible precaution considering how often the changes she’d had so far had knocked her out cold. She passed out and when she woke, her neck hurt quite a lot, right where it joined her skull. She touched the tender spot. There was a raised lump under her hair.

“What is this?”

That is the repository of knowledge and skills that comes with being a [Weapon Artificer]. Congratulations on a successful implantation. You should see a new line of pictographs in your visual display.

“Uh… yeah.” She toggled the first one in the line. Her view of the world distorted and changed. Every scrap of materials in the studio lit up with descriptions of its properties and possibilities.

She knew immediately that she could alter and improve anything the System recognized as a weapon. Turning materials into objects recognized as weapons was where she could make her mark on the profession.

The chain weapon across her lap was highlighted in green light.

This Kusarigama is ready for Essence Imbuement.

Basic imbuement 100 Essence

Self Repair imbuement 500 Essence

…

Soul bond imbuement 100,000 Essence

The list of things she could do to the weapon was extensive. She could, for example, add an elemental component or a sharpness, piercing or impact component.

She started simple with [Basic] and [Self Repair].

She drew the Essence out of her storage bottle instinctively. The process took about twenty minutes of meditation and a careful energy manipulation of the metal. When she was finished the weapon was the same length and weight but very little else about it was the same.

The chain was denser with more links and smoother welds. The sad iron, which had already been pointy on both ends, resembled an axe head with it’s sharpened pointy edges. She’d altered her plan when she saw those sharp edges emerge naturally during the process and spent more Essence on a [Sharpness] imbuement.

The various materials had blended together into a single stronger alloy which was naturally dark. In fact there was no glint of metal, as if the whole weapon had been painted flat black, which wasn’t the case.

Chain Weapon complete.

Chain Weapon- Made of durable Night Steel, Chain Weapons are popular among certain highly skilled assassin clans. This one is enchanted for Self Repair and Sharpness.

Professional Achievements:

First Imbuement - 1000 Essence

First simultaneous Multiple Imbuement - 10,000 Essence

First Imbuement in your region - Major Perk

First Renamed Weapon - 1000 Essence

Instead of flooding her core, the Essence appeared in her lap as a pile of Essence Crystals.

Query: Why did you rename the weapon?

Ginny looked up from admiring her remade weapon. That was the System voice that had personality. The voice that had been so chatty. “The word Kusarigama is from another language and could hold cultural and social meanings that I’m unfamiliar with. Rather than use it, and risk not knowing the implications, I named the weapon in my own language.”

Interesting. What will you do with your wealth of Essence?

“What I was planning to do before. I am going to make as many weapons as I can produce before the sun goes down and I’m going to push them home to arm my community.”

Ah. A worthy goal. Quest Assigned:

Arm the Community- Craft 20 weapons with Basic or better Imbuements in the next 20 hours. Deliver the weapons free of charge to your community. Rewards: Major Perk- Dimensional Storage; 10 E-grade Essence Crystals; E-grade Essence Bottle

“Huh. I guess I’d better get to work.”

And, because I expect great things from you… Quest Assigned:

Mystery Beast- Something has been wantonly slaying innocents in your area. Investigate and slay the beast. Rewards: Dependent on performance.

“I think I was planning to do that.” She murmured, but she could sense that the attention of the System voice had left her. The last icon on her initial row of icons was softly lit. She opened it on a quest list with the two new quests highlighted softly. She nodded and got to work.

The information she intuited by imbuing her chain weapon had given her many ideas, including how to merge metals through imbuement. She grabbed a bar of the best steel she had and a cheap knockoff katana from her stash of ratty blades. It was amazing how many people tried to use a display only knockoff to cut things only to break it on the second blow.

She set the materials on the workbench and found the proper imbuement pattern in her arsenal of information. She went for Basic, Sharpness and Self Repair again, integrating the good quality metal into the weapon’s Essence Lattice as she went along.

Professional Achievements:

First Repair - 10,000 Essence

First Sword Imbuement- 1000 Essence

She grinned at the achievements. She’d spent 800 Essence and twenty minutes and she’d made back just over 10,000 Essence. Crafting was good Essence. Although these firsts were going to dry up soon.

Her second sword repair went even faster.

“System, what stats assist Essence Imbuement?”

Wisdom primarily, Intelligence secondarily.

“Yeah. I thought so.” Ginny used a long break, where she also ate a handful of jerky from her snack stash and a bottle of water from the case she kept, to raise all three of her remaining stats to 25, point by point without passing out. She counted that 6000 Essence well spent.

Over the next six hours, Ginny ate every scrap of snack food she kept in the weathertight steel truck toolbox she’d bought at the thrift store for ten bucks out of the back room.

The local thrift store owner sometimes did that with donations she didn’t want to move to the sales floor because they were too big for her to handle alone. Ginny also sometimes loaned her a dolly for moving donated furniture out of the donation area.

Imbuement took a lot of concentration and personal energy in addition to the stated Essence costs. She was burning calories.

After the last of the blades she had on hand was repaired Ginny turned to an idea which had been perking. She welded short lengths of chain to handles and random weighty objects. She welded them all at once, lining up a lot of barely suitable objects, counting on the imbuement process to make them into reasonable weapons.

Every time the System acknowledged the conglomerate as a weapon she stopped welding and set it aside for imbuement.

At the end of six hours she had seven swords- four of which barely resembled the knives they had originally been; ten flails made with sections of swingset chain; two war-hammers and a battle axe made from a round saw blade and a hatchet. Not that it now looked anything like either component.

Her created weapons looked elegant, not just serviceable. She was proud of her work and proud of her many accomplishments. In fact she’d made the axe specifically to tag another first, which she got: First Battleaxe.

Even after using 800 or more per weapon, she still had roughly 7,000 Essence remaining in crystals which she put in a tin before she loaded it into her gym bag.

Instead of loading the weapons into the old shopping cart branded for a shop no longer in operation, she made a bundle of all 20 weapons.

She made sure to wrap them tightly to keep them from shifting and arranged all blades to be pointing out not at her. She strapped the whole thing to her back with lengths of belt webbing. She kept whole rolls of the webbing around because she found it thrifting and it looked useful.

The bundle was the strangest looking backpack that she’d ever seen, but it would work for now. She made sure she could still wield her chain while wearing the bundle. It wasn’t ideal but she could definitely defend herself.

Ginny changed her clothes. Like she always did, she wished futilely that her changing room had a shower. Even when she didn’t actively sweat while working she still felt grimy after a long metalworking session.

She left the studio without seeing anyone else inside and headed home. She didn’t quite run. The area of carnage had expanded. Ginny slowed down, a little guiltily. Could she kill this thing solo? Should she have tried before more people died? Even with a substandard weapon?

Impulsively she followed the trail of barely dead people down an alley.