Skill: Poison resistance acquired.

Dren watched the next few ticks of damage come in. It wasn’t a drastic change, but it was enough that he thought he could avoid using a potion. With a little help from his Calm Respite skill that is. Sitting down to rest he watched his health bar while getting out his dagger. It was time to start enchanting it properly. For now, he placed the bleed rune near the point and fueled it up with the full one hundred mana. Stopping there he examined it and was surprised to see the glow showing the metal affected spread out some from the rune itself now. Not a great deal but enough that the point of the dagger would now work for the enchant.

With a grin, Dren figured if he placed all the runes correctly he could now fit four runes and link them together. He added the lesser empower rune a bit lower on the blade. Once it was filled and finished spreading. He mapped out a few veins needed to link them up while spreading the enchant to the edges of the top half of the weapon. He would need to fill more veins to finish off the rest of the blade after placing two more runes. But he figured he could even fill the core of the handle if all went well. It wouldn’t give it any of the offensive perks. But the empower enchant would increase the durability further.

Both poisons had run their course and he even had enough of a buffer health left to not feel the need to use a health potion. Now he just needed to regenerate back to full. Continuing to sit still would increase his regeneration. But with his mana again low he couldn’t start enchanting the newly acquired spear. So, once again dagger in hand he started working on skinning the lizard.

This time he almost got two useable pieces. But while cutting through a particularly tough bit of sinew. He had lost control of the blade when it finally sliced thru. The slip caused him to leave a deep gash in the leather section he was working on. Effectively ruining it. But he did get a second patch of lizard rawhide to add to his backpack. He figured he could fit one or two more and that was it.

Checking his stamina he noticed it was doing that thing where it wasn’t regenerating very quickly anymore. Since he had arrived, he had felt exhausted at times after lots of exertion. This coincided with his stamina being low. But he never actually felt sleepy. That said, if he didn’t sleep about once every day and a half his stamina would start regenerating slower. After a bit of debate, he retreated down the hall to one of the few rooms with a still intact door. Once inside he pulled it shut and used the spear wedged it into the crude handle like a door bar. It wasn’t great but he figured anything getting it would have to make enough noise to wake him up.

Moving to the furthest corner he sat down to sleep. It would only be for a few hours as the need for sleep really was reduced. Even better, once he settled down going to sleep was an easy thing. Almost like flipping a switch. Eyes closed he drifted off to sleep.

*****

“Mom. Will I ever be healthy?” He asked form his bed as his mother entered to sit on the edge. A bowl of food in her hand ready to feed him. His arms had still worked back then but they were clumsy. If he fed himself too much food would be wasted.

His mother smiled as she gathered a scoop of soup. “Of course. Your father is out there working hard! He got to go on another dungeon run today even.” Her lithe tone was full of hope and happiness that didn’t quite make it to her eyes.

“But Dad is just a porter. He doesn’t even get any experience in the dungeons.” Dren remembered complaining, his tone bitter.

“Son. Your father is doing his very best. It isn’t like in your stories. There are no wild monsters, system-issued quests, or events. This is our reality. We are no longer in the era where heroes are born.” She smiled but her tone was firm. She was trying her best to ground her son’s expectations of the world. Without crushing his ability to dream.

Dren just smiled and nodded up at his loving mother as she fed him. But in his mind, he made the same promise as every time. “One day I will…”

He jumped up to his feet. His eyes snapped to the door just as another thud hit it. Glancing at his status he saw everything was almost completely full. “Good enough.” With a growl, he moved towards the door.

*****

Congratulations. Your Assassin class has reached level nine.

Dren dismissed the message and muttered. “A level a day. Not great.” Although it had actually only been a day and a half. This second level had come faster than the last. Of course, the last fight had been different than picking off the lone riders. During the first day, he had swept the many halls and empty rooms finding nothing useful. While only ambushing the lone riders. With his ability to identify where their nucleus was hidden on their body. The fights were actually rather easy. The exploding spears helped a lot as they often allowed him to open up a clear path to ripping them out. His poison resistance helped a bit but it hadn’t yet ranked up. Still, it took a while of downtime after every single fight. He had gotten a level in enchanter and finally gotten the skinning skill. He was now regularly getting two “pieces” of rawhide from each lizard. Once even three. He couldn’t carry them all so had stashed them in the room he used for sleeping before.

This last fight had been a three-on-one. But not three Muskin Riders. Instead, it had been against three Muskin Cutthroats. They were smaller, standing only a meter and a half. Their limbs were slender compared to the riders. Their arms were so thin they looked like tentacle whips. All six of them. Each one wielding a crude stone dagger made of the same flint-looking stone as the tips of the rider’s spears. They lacked the raw brute force the riders had but made up for it with speed. Their strikes also seemed to aim exclusively at critical points. With six arms each dodging them had been difficult. Luckily they were also fragile. Enough so that the first one he hit with an exploding spear was blown completely in half. It didn’t die, as they still had the same strange health pool system. Whereas only destroying or removing the nucleus seemed able to kill them. They also erupted in bright red spores. The poison from them didn’t drain health but mana. Dren found this far more acceptable at first. Until he ran out of mana to keep Battle Focus active. The loss of extreme focus made dodging attacks much harder.

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This pack was the second of their kind he had killed. Yet, he still finished with almost no mana and was covered in small wounds. Gathering up all the stone daggers as well as the three pulsing red nuclei he shoved them into his backpack. Deciding it best to take a break and recover he headed back towards the room he was working out of. His head was pounding as a side effect of being drained of mana. He almost wished they just drained health like normal. The spasms of pain from the blue poison were becoming tolerable at this point. Whereas the mana headache just throbbed constantly. He almost resorted to using a mana potion but resisted the urge.

It didn’t take long to get back to the room. The riders were all cleared out by now. It was also the only room he had seen where the doors weren’t completely falling apart. In fact, the one rider that had attacked the door hadn’t managed to do much more than leave a few scratches on it. Once inside he used the only spear he hadn’t turned into an explosive projectile to bar the door just in case. Before plopping down on the stack of lizard hides. His original plan had been to try and make a crude bandolier for the stone daggers out of some of the hide. He needed a way to easily carry them as he planned to enchant them all into explosive projectiles. Better even was the fact they counted for his weapon skill.

But the pounding headache he felt made him want to do nothing. Leaning back against the wall he stared at the ceiling up above. Just letting his eyes wander as he did his best to endure the headache. He would soon regenerate enough mana for it to go away. It was bad enough he couldn’t even use his Calm Respite skill. As he sat there his eyes finally settled on something odd. One of the bricks in the ceiling had something scratched into it. As he looked at it there was a nagging sensation in the back of his mind. As if he knew what this was but couldn’t seem to pin the thought down.

Shrugging and planning on just ignoring it. His eyes eventually drifted back to it. That nagging sensation growing more annoying but still staying elusive. With a grumble, he pushed himself to his feet and moved to stand just under it for a better look. Squinting he looked at the shallow scratches angrily. It was like having a word right on the tip of your tongue but he just couldn’t spit it out. Driven almost mad by the annoyance of it all he dragged the small stack of hard spider shells over and used the stack as a step up. Stretching from there he was just able to brush his fingers against the mark. Trying to clear away a bit of dust to get a better view. The moment he touched it he felt something. A sensation very similar to when he filled a rune during enchanting but in reverse happened. In his vision the shallow scratches seemed to suddenly glow brightly making it clear he was looking at a rune. That brightness faded slowly. All the light in it seemed to rush towards his fingertip until the last bit vanished. A system message appeared.

Profane Rune of Durability acquired.

“Well fuck me. I forgot about those.” Dren hopped down and moved to sit back on his pile of hides. His headache was finally forgotten.

Profane Rune of Durability.

Greatly increases the durability of an item. Profane runes require health, mana, and stamina in equal amounts to fuel.

Costs three hundred health, mana, and stamina. Only takes up three hundred of an item's capacity.

“Okay.” Dren said while frowning. He couldn’t even use the rune on anything he had now that he had added two runes to his dagger already. Plus the cost was kinda insane. Without stats and multipliers in all three resource attributes the profane runes would be… well a pain for an enchanter to use. That wasn’t an issue for him. But he could see it being a problem for others who were less balanced.

Profane Runes Acquired 1/5

Shrugging at the inability to make use of his current rune he wiggled one of the hides out from under him before drawing his dagger. How hard could it be to make a bandolier to hold his daggers?

*****

Character Sheet

Name: Dren

Race: Human (I)

Class: Assassin (9)

Profession: Enchanter (6)

Health: 1050/1050

Stamina: 1050/1050

Mana: 825/825

Agility 34

Dexterity 34

Endurance 40

Intelligence 31

Spirit 31

Strength 40

Toughness 40

Vitality 40