Stripped down to his silk boxers and finally free of biting insects, Dren sat down to open his menu. Pulling up his enchanting menu he crossed his arms and scowled at the list of runes. He had Five non profane runes. His Lesser Empower, Lesser Explosive, Lesser Drain, Basic Bleed, and Lesser Frost runes. But he could only upgrade two to Profane Runes. His initial gut feeling was to pick the bleed and explosive runes as he felt like he relied on them the most. But Empower enhanced not only the base attributes of an item but any enchants linked to it. It also wasn’t limited to offense only as it helped with armor. Actually, they all did, didn’t they? He would need to consider the effect on armor as well.

Then there was drain, with his abilities taking a mix of resources a more powerful drain could be useful. His class drain ability wasn’t bad, it scaled with his class level. But could only trigger once every ten seconds. Whereas the enchantment could trigger every strike.

He mostly discounted the frost rune but thinking about the insects he was forced to consider the potential usefulness of having variable elemental damage types. What if the insects had been resistant to his aura and fire damage? Would he have had to kill them through more mundane attacks?

It forced him to really consider both the explosive and bleed runes even. The explosive rune was his main way of dealing with large numbers of enemies. While his bleed rune had been most helpful at wearing down bigger enemies he couldn’t kill quickly. “Bleed and Explosive. No, Empower and Explosive. No, Empower and Bleed. No Drain and Explosive. No…” He muttered to himself unsure.

More than an hour later he finally made his choice. Explosive and Empower. His evolved class was giving him more ways to increase his damage. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to rely on bleed damage as much. He could at the very least supplement his Profane Decay rune to fill that role. While he was banking on his growing spirit to give him the boost to regeneration to make up for the drain rune. Finally, frost was just too situational as far as he could tell, more a wild card than the other two being so reliable.

That finally said he checked his stock of supplies. He had already imbued half the basic ingots he had. Ren was mostly done turning them into a staggering number of throwing knives as her primary grinding method for weaponsmithing. Even now she was hammering away, silently as always.

While he was curious what new effects his enchants could have on a higher quality weapon. For now, he wanted Ren to rank up her smithing first. So pulling out bars of the basic metal he started imbueing them with both explosive and fire, both runes now of the profane class. To his shock, the resources rushed out of him in a flood to fill the runes before super saturating the metal in record time. The previously dull grey metal now looked like a bar of highly polished copper. All in record time. He had finished so quickly that even Ren noticed. Stopping her hammering to eye the completed ingot curiously.

“Use up the others first. Then start on these. Ok?” Ren just nodded and returned to tirelessly hammering away. Dren doubled checked and found he had a total of fifty three basic bars left unenchanted.

For a bit, he considered what he wanted. Each bar made four throwing knives. Since he most of the time he only needed to toss a single knife while multiplying them with his skill. It wasn’t like he went through them too fast. But he did use the ability a lot. Plus, he wanted to have Ren start using them as well. Maybe she could unlock a similar skill.

“Nine Fire and Explosive. Then Ten empower and explosive. Five binding and decay. Five explosive and darkness. Five decay and fire. Five binding and darkness. Five binding and explosive. Five darkness and decay. That will leave us five more bars to work with if something else comes up. After this, both of our skills should be up there.” All planned out he started summoning ingots out of his storage one after another. Then stacking up the imbued bars so quickly that Ren kept glancing at them while hammering away faster and faster. Chuckling he doubled his own efforts while teasing his companion. “Better hurry up. Or you will never keep up!” She gave him a look he thought was of annoyance. Before lowering her head and hammering away rapidly.

*****

Despite his earlier teasing. Ren pulled ahead whenever he had to stop to regenerate more resources. But he eventually imbued all forty nine ingots while earning level two in his enchanting profession. After restoring his pools again he moved to the still unenchanted throwing knives Ren had finished. This was when things got a bit… odd. Most of them had been imbued with the explosive property. But with the lesser rune, not the profane version. When he added the profane rune of explosion, it took one hundred and fifty capacity. Testing one imbued with a profane rune he found that the cost to imbue it was reduced from three hundred down to just seventy five. That was such a massive reduction it made them cheaper than even lesser runes had been at first. Even if it did still cost the full amount of resources to power up. It would allow him to do terrifying levels of enchanting on a single item.

When he was done testing he determined that by default all profane runes costs were now halved. Then if the item was made of matching imbued materials that cost could be halved again. Dren’s mind was boggled. He could almost fit all his runes on a single dagger once Ren was able to get her skill to match that of the smith back in Little Garden. Then he thought of what kind of armor he could make now. Enchanting had been powerful before when he could only fit a few enchants on an item. But now that he could pile them on… It would be a huge increase in power.

“Evolved classes and professions are ridiculous. No wonder they are such a big deal. Basic classes might as well be classless in comparison. Between the stats gain and the more powerful abilities the power gap is just too high.” Dren’s swelling sense of unmatchable might was slowly brought down by remembering the natives were also getting evolved classes now. Even if only a small percentage of them did, they vastly outnumbered just him. “I need to get even stronger and faster.” Shaking his head he started enchanting the first generation of throwing knives. Even if they weren’t properly imbued his speed at enchanting had increased by leagues with the evolution and he started piling up completed knives in record time.

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******

Blinking rapidly he tried to clear his vision. The enchanting menu seemed to be burned into his retina, which was of course impossible as the menu was within his mind. Did that mean he had burned it into his mind? Dren shook his head to clear his muddy thoughts, the long grinding session had left him feeling foggy. Originally he wanted to just do a small enchanting session before pushing to at least get to the boss room of the dungeon. But Ren had seemed to take his earlier joking a bit more seriously. Throwing herself full force into producing throwing knives. By the time he finished all the ones made with the first generation of imbued ingots. She already had a pile of new ones ready for enchanting and showed no signs of slowing down. In fact, she had leveled up and was thus producing them even faster.

Yet, he was finally done. There were no more left to enchant. So focused had he been, that he only realized he was done when he reached for a new one and found nothing. Standing up his joints popped loudly and he groaned. “Ow.” He ignored Ren who looked rather smug as she worked on weaving more silk products, something she had done since she finished smithing long before he finished enchanting. Opening his system message he reviewed not only the skill rank ups but multiple level ups. Three more, in fact, bringing him to level six of his Profane Acolyte already. The more than a day of none stop grinding and producing hundreds of enchanted daggers, each of them pumped full of all three resources until their mana veins were bulging with power had resulted in staggering amounts of experience. “Huh. Leveling this profession isn’t so hard.” He said out loud, his voice slightly slurred and his eyes glazed.

A poke in his side brought him out of staring blankly at his menu and glanced at Ren who handed him what looked like a sugar cookie. “What is this? Where did you get this?” He took the cookie and turned his attention to her. She quirked her mouth at him while giving him an exasperated look. “Well someone is getting a bit sassy.” He said and giggled sounding only slightly deranged before taking a bite out of the cookie.

A warm soothing energy flooded his body as he swallowed and swept away the haze fogging up his mind. Blinking his eyes lost the glazed expression and he looked curiously at the cookie.

“Ambrosia Ginger Snap: Made with Ambrosia, Geest Ginger, and an assortment of medicinal herbs this delicious treat can restore both mind and body.”

Unlike her buff food, this one didn’t give complex numbers to what it did. But the results were definitely there. Perhaps because it took so long before, he hadn’t realized just how mentally draining enchanting could be. Not until he was rapidly doing it without end for more than a day straight. Or perhaps it was his new method. As he worked on enchanting the nagging sensation in the back of his mind kept pestering him. Enchanting was identical to activating a skill. Just like with his passive skills he basically let the resources flow from him into the runes, then the mana veins beyond. But, was that the best he could do? When he started on the knives forged with the newly imbued metals he tried something different. Just like his earlier test, he clamped his will down on the flowing energies leaving his body. Then instead of just letting them flow passively into the runes, he forced them forward with a surge of his will. This worked and worked well.

Enchanting had already sped up after his evolution of the profession by a great deal. But that was nothing to what actively working at it. In less than half the time it would normally take, he was done. But even that huge boost wasn’t enough. When the weapons capacity hit full and the flow of energies hit resistance, he didn’t stop. Like when he tried to fuel a skill with the wrong energies, it tried to back up and dissipate. But he refused to allow it. Bearing down on the energy, his energy, he willed it to keep going forward. Slowly as if he was compressing the already full energy within the knife he felt more push in. Then it happened, the capacity meter that showed full ticked up by one point.

Capacity: 301/300

Gasping for breath he had sat back, sweat dripping from his face and his brain felt like it was boiling from the strain. But he had done it. Sucking in a deep breath he dived back in. Eventually, it hit a point where he just couldn’t keep the energies together. But he had overcharged the item's capacity by five whole mana. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Examining the item he found that tiny barely visible cracks had spread from some of the mana veins into the metal itself. These cracks were filled with more energy. It wasn’t five resources worth stored in there and the rest of the power packed in those veins was simply more condensed. But it showed he had taken the item to the very limits. In fact, holding the enchanted dagger it seemed to tingle and almost faintly vibrate in his hand.

Curious at the effect he stepped down the tunnel slightly deeper into the dungeon before flinging the knife far down the way. It had been a fire and explosive enchanted dagger so Dren was expecting something impressive. What he got was a detonation that filled the tunnel and rushed back down toward them. Having thrown the dagger a good thirty meters the blast made it almost halfway back to them.

Remembering that explosion he forced himself to the present and the small Aranea girl still standing there watching him. “Thanks Ren.” He reached out and mussed her hair in genuine gratitude. “I don’t know what I would do without you.” She gave him a tight lipped smile before returning to her work. She never stopped working. He hadn’t even noticed her cooking, but obviously, she had baked these cookies at some point while he was focused on enchanting.

Stretching a bit more he finished the cookie, each bite giving him another soothing wave that washed away his fatigue. Where he had been on the verge of collapsing before, he now felt fine. Not at one hundred percent, not even the delicious confection could fully restore him. But enough so he didn’t feel like he needed to collapse right away.

Instead, he sat down and opened up his menu to see what he got for level five.