Opening the door. Dren was stopped by another menu pop-up.

Earth is still terraforming. Access will be available in eleven hours and forty-two minutes.

Dren wanted to scream in annoyance. He wanted to get his story started! Not stay stuck in this room for nearly twelve more hours.

Shutting the door he huffed before looking down. He was now dressed differently. A padded sleeveless gambeson of heavy dark cloth covered his chest. Thick cloth pants encased his functional legs. While soft-soled leather boots covered his feet. At his hip, he found a pouch and a dagger. While touching his neck he felt the tie of a cloak. Reaching back he found what he hoped for and flipped the hood up. Moving around he felt his new outfit restricted none of his movement. Better yet he thought he would look like a proper assassin.

“I need a mirror!” He exclaimed and to his surprise, a menu popped up. It was his character sheet complete with a 3D image of himself with his new gear on. Sure enough, he looked pretty awesome. The dark cloth of his pants and gambeson wasn’t as cool as a full set of leather might have been. But it wasn’t a bad start. Flipping back his cloak's hood the image did the same revealing his features. His face wasn’t nearly as sunken as it had been. Nor was his skin that sickly sallow color. Though he was still pale. But it was definitely him. His dark hair was still buzzed short making his ears look just a little too big for his liking. It made him look younger than his eighteen years as well. Though the less sickly features helped some. His only outstanding feature was his eyes. Such dark brown they were almost black. Flipping his hood back up he dismissed the image.

Checking his pouch he found a large number of small vials. Each holding only a mouthful of colorful liquid. Five each of a red, yellow, and blue liquid. Grinning he focused on them just as he had the menus before. And unsurprisingly small displays popped up identifying them as mana, health, and stamina potions. Of the lesser category sadly. There were also fifteen small hard biscuits. When he focused on them they too provided a pop-up.

“Survival Biscuit. Can sustain a person for a full day.” Dren just nodded.

“Identify skill confirmed.” Thinking about that he opened his character menu on reflex again and looked through it. His best guess was he had started with ten in all stats and got a single level-up worth added on. Dren was glad it hadn’t started him with stats based on his old crippled body. It seemed this system was going for a fair start. Well, fairish. Just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything he read over his stats from top to bottom.

Name: Dren

Race: Human (I)

Class: Assassin (1)

Profession: Enchanter (1)

Health: 350/350

Stamina: 350/350

Mana: 325/325

Agility 13

Dexterity 13

Endurance 14

Intelligence 13

Spirit 13

Strength 14

Toughness 14

Vitality 14

It appeared the attributes from his affinity and dragon perk were applied for both class and profession level-ups. While the class and profession stats only increased on their own level-ups. Dren found it odd that the attributes from his class and profession would actually lag behind those getting bonuses from both his affinity and perk. But shrugged. What could he do now?

In his skills menu, he found his previously mentioned class skills as well as an obscene number of “general” skills. Identify was in there as was stealth. But there were skills for things like swimming, running, jumping, and climbing. As well as odd ones like ear wiggling and breathing.

“Ok. So not that odd.” He said. Mostly trying to convince himself. Focusing on a filter. One popped up and he was able to filter it down to things he thought would be important. Moving on he drew his dagger inspecting it. It wasn’t what he expected. The blade was as wide as his palm at the base and narrowed down to a point. Like an obscenely wide stiletto, but it was sharp on both sides. Most pictures of daggers he had seen, had much narrower blades but he shrugged. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Opening his enchanter menu he figured he might as well get a head start on that. Within it, he found two listed runes.

Lesser Empower

Lesser Drain

There was no description but when he focused on them he got not only a mental understanding of them. But also how enchanting worked.

Lesser Empower did just what it said. It empowered enchanted items. As in it would make any item more durable. A weapon sharper or a piece of armor reduce more damage. It could also be linked to other runes to improve their effects.

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Lesser Drain’s most straightforward use was on a weapon. It would give them a weak drain ability. Stealing one life, mana, or stamina from the target at random and giving it to the attacker. On other items, it got a bit more… unique. On most armor, it would give it the ability to absorb damage for the trade-off of taking more durability damage. While on boots it would allow them to absorb kinetic energy, reducing fall damage or making his steps quieter for better sneaking. Yet, the longer he focused on it the more he felt there were other uses. Like words on the tip of your tongue, he couldn’t name them. But he was certain there were more. The same with the empower rune when he returned to it. Did he need more skill or was the system just hinting that he could maybe find new uses?

Each rune cost a hundred mana to imprint on an item and all the mana for a rune had to be put in at one time. After that items would have mana veins based on their quality. Filling these veins would spread the rune’s effects through the item. It seemed pretty straight forward but he was sure there was more to it. Examining everything on him he found that his items had variable limits on how much mana they could hold for enchantments. Ranging from one hundred to three hundred.

Looking up to check the timer on the door. He sighed as very little time had actually passed and started selecting one of the one hundred mana items. He felt it was best to start with the weakest possible items first. A sock in this case. Focusing on the sock he selected the empower rune. A display similar to his character model appeared. With the sock hovering in it this time. On that display, he saw the mana veins in the sock. They were a wild tangled mess, not even of uniform thickness. Shrugging he mentally moved the empower run to the heel of the sock and instinctually started flooding it with mana.

One hundred mana later the rune was empowered. When he tried to put more mana in to fill the veins. Nothing happened. Looking all around the display he finally found it.

Mana Capacity: 100/100

Well hell. Adding the rune alone maxed out the mana potential of the item for enchantment. Dismissing the screen he examined the sock. It looked just like before. Drawing his dagger he poked the heel of the sock. There was a slight bit of resistance. But the dagger cut a small slit in the heel easily. Frowning he moved to the toe end of the sock and poked it. This time his dagger sliced into the cloth with absolutely no resistance.

“Ok. So the rune worked but since I didn’t fill any of the mana veins. None of its effects moved from where the rune was placed? That kinda sucks.” Dren spoke out his own theory but was pretty sure that was how it worked. And while he got no system messages to confirm it, he felt a bit of inherent knowledge confirm it. Blowing out a deep breath he put the sock back on and started debating which of his two hundred capacity items to try on next. His only three-hundred-capacity item was the dagger.

Sitting crosslegged he looked down and shrugged before focusing on his pants. A moment later they appeared in his enchanting menu. “Nice, no need to strip.” He chuckled. Once again selecting the empower rune he moved it towards the pants and then with a childish snicker placed it right on the crotch before starting to fill it with mana. It didn’t take very long to fill as all one hundred mana drained into the rune. Unlike with the sock. Once it was full, mana started to flow into the veins spreading from the rune. They were rough and varied in thickness wildly but seemed less tangled than the sock had been. Every connected vein began to light up as mana filled them. The glow spreading out of the veins to permeate the space between them as well. Before he knew it the flow of mana just stopped. Frowning he noticed the pants now glowed, but only around the crotch and slightly down the inner thighs of the pants. He had maxed out its capacity as well.

Closing out the enchanting menu he identified his pants.

“Crotch Reinforced Pants. A basic set of light cloth armor pants enchanted to reinforce the crotch region.”

Dren sucked in a deep breath through his nose in annoyance. He didn’t bother poking holes in his pants, he was certain like with the sock the enchantment only affected the part he had infused with mana.

“Well. I guess if I was going to only be able to enchant only part of it. That is the part I would do.” Dren tried to look on the bright side but sighed. That said there was one good thing from his experiment. A nagging sensation in his mind told him he had a notification. With a thought, he brought it up.

“Profession: Enchanter level up. Attributes awarded. One Agility Gained. One Dexterity Gained. Three Endurance Gained. Three Intelligence Gained. Three Spirit Gained. Three Strength Gained. Three Toughness Gained. Three Vitality Gained.”

Dren had to look over the message several times before he nodded. He had gotten a ton of attributes just from that one level up. More importantly, he only got one Agility and one Dexterity which he assumed came from his equilibrium title. Thinking on it he was glad he had diversified his attribute selections as he had. If he had stacked them up before he would have gotten fewer attributes by a long shot. Although he frowned. This would make his agility, dexterity, intelligence, and spirit grow a little slower than the others. Who heard of an assassin with their highest attributes being the defensive ones? Well, there was still strength. Thinking about that he pulled out his dagger to examine it closer.

Basic Dagger

Iron

Damage: 6

Critical damage multiplier: 700%

Enchanting Mana Capacity: 0/300

Dren blinked. Examining the details he understood a bit of the math behind them. The damage was actually really simple. His dagger did twenty percent of his strength as flat damage but was doubled by his multiplier making it really forty percent. The critical damage was ten percent per dexterity after modifiers. Then multiplied by his bonus of five hundred percent from being an assassin.

“So, my normal attacks will just do six damage and a critical will do a whopping… forty-two damage. That is a huge difference. I really did luck out in that modifier for strength too. It basically doubled my damage right away. I almost think strength might be better with the assassin’s passive than dexterity. Hmm.” Dren wasn’t too sure about that but he definitely was glad to have gotten that final perk.

Putting away his dagger he turned his attention back to his equipment. After a moment of debate, he focused on his cloak. Placing the empower rune on the head of the cloak he started to fill it with mana but was stopped before it filled up fully. Cursing he remembered he had drained most of his mana in his last two tests. While his mana pool had increased when he leveled it hadn’t instantly gained any extra mana. Worse as he watched the partially filled rune started bleeding out mana rapidly. With a moment of debate, he pulled out one of the lesser mana potions. Before he could change his mind he drank it down. The lesser potion gave him a decent five hundred mana. Sadly even after leveling up his mana pool was only three hundred and seventy-five. Meaning he wasted a fair amount. But Dren felt it would be worth it to level up a bit more and increase the power of his equipment from the start.

Once again he channeled mana into the rune, filling it this time. With that done he took a deep breath and tried to will the mana to only flow down a single vein. Dren smiled brightly as it worked. Carefully watching he put in a single point of mana. The vein’s thickness varied and it seemed like that impacted how far it went but he felt like a single point got him roughly a centimeter. Which wasn’t great at all. But as he watched the glow spread out much further than he expected. Filling in at least twice that distance from the vein in each direction. Grinning even bigger he realized what he needed to do and started mapping out which veins he would fill to get the most coverage.

*****

Glancing up at the door he found a full hour had passed. But he was now finished with the cloak and it wasn’t like he was going anywhere. His neck was stiff as he rolled his shoulders. Sitting hunched over the enchanting menu while he worked on filling only the right veins had taken more concentration than he expected. Even doing so he barely got the hood and a bit of the shoulders of the cloak enchanted.

He leaned back to rest a moment while checking his mana. Thanks to topping up and managing to save a bit of the mana he had already put in he had enough left to do one more of his two hundred capacity items. Sadly, it didn’t look like his mana regenerated while channeling it to enchant. A few points recovered while he sat there resting, something that hadn’t happened the entire time he enchanted. Cracking his neck he resolved to get all his equipment enchanted. With one last glance at the door, he got back to work.