The next day went as planned, he circled his way up the mountain, he hadn’t encountered any dungeons but he did find a new monster that caused him some trouble. It was a giant snake, a Python the system called it, and it was terrifying. It was about the length of a bus and blended into the surroundings so easily that Shaun would never have seen it if it wasn’t for his echo, he got close enough to identify it before it saw him but he didn’t have the element of surprise on his side during the fight.

It was fast when it tried to attack him but he was easily able to use the trees as cover and ended up weaving in and out of the surroundings while it tried to give chase. He wasn’t able to get in a good finishing move so ended up having to wear it down over the course of about 10 minutes before it was injured enough that he was comfortable moving in closer to kill it.

The reason behind it taking so long was that it was quite difficult to stay far enough away from its giant fangs and also ensure that it didn’t end up constricting around him with its body, which it nearly managed to do several times. In the end through his ability to send his daggers at it from a distance and then get close enough to retrieve them and repeat the process was what won him the battle. That and he had managed to upgrade two more of his daggers before he came across the python and with his increased Mana he was able to use the Empowered Strike skill multiple times during the fight.

He got the fangs, skin and meat from the python which was going to be helpful with his crafting as he had gotten a lot of skin and it was much more durable than anything he had gotten in Stage 1 due to the fact that this python was a lot stronger than the salamander’s. He had managed to level up his Class and Profession once during the day which led to another Race level where he put all of his AP in Vitality.

At the end of the day, once he had finished upgrading the final dagger he settled in, ate more boar meat and started to formulate a plan for his crafting. During the day he decided that he would need to dedicate time to his craft if he was going to make sure he had enough mana to continue to fight using his affinity, as if he ran out of mana mid fight he wasn’t confident in being able to continue to fight monsters of a higher level one on one.

Once he got comfortable he started working on a new top made out of salamander skin, knowing that he was going to end up ruining quite a lot of it in the process of making something decent. He had never made something like this before and didn’t know the first place to start in making clothing so he went with making separate pieces that he hoped he would be able to meld together at the end. He started with making sleeves, to do this he took a piece of skin and cut it into a rectangle that would vit around his arm from shoulder to wrist, he would then wrap it around his arm and use his dagger to mark out where he would need to cut it to ensure it fight tightly on his arm, by the time he was done and he melded the piece together so that it resembled a sleeve of a shirt, he realised that it would never work, he couldn’t even get his hand through the other side of the sleeve. Chalking this up as a failure he moved on to attempt number two, and then three, and when he got to his fifth go he decided that he wasn’t going to get this right any time soon.

Instead he moved to making a brace that would cover his forearm, and instead of having it all as one piece he would use a piece of skin and have it form a lace that he could tighten. This worked much better than expected, once had completed the first one he put it on and tied it up, it fit well, mostly. He found that even if he tightened it as much as he could it would slide down his arm when he moved around to much, realising he needed to have a support running through it he took out some of the claws he had that would meet the length of the arm brace and started forming long, thin and flexible rods out of it. Once that was done he embedded these into the brace using more skin to require them in place, when he put the new and improved brace back on it was perfect.

He moved on, completing the other brace with the same design and then went with creating a vest, which it turned out was much easier than trying to create a full sleeves shirt. With the vest he had it so that it was all one piece that he would pull over his head and tighten on the sides in the same method as his braces.

When he tightened it completely it sat against him like a second skin, when he tested moving around he found that it didn’t restrict his movements at all and instead moved with him rather than against him. His pants were still in decent shape so he didn’t bother trying to make any at that point but added it to his list of things to do. The final thing he wanted to do with his new pieces was to try the Mana Attunement skill with his affinity to try and reinforce them a little, he tried this on a scrap of skin first and didn’t have any success straight away, he didn’t give up though and after 30 minutes of continuous trying he had managed to imbue the skin with the earth affinity, although to a much lesser degree than his daggers.

Testing the skin he still found it to be flexible, although a little less than what it was originally, but when he tried to cut it with his dagger he found that it had a much greater resistance than the untreated skin. Figuring that this was a success he moved on to attuning all of his new clothes, this took several hours, the braces being much quicker than the vest due to their smaller size, but knowing that having the skins attuned to earth could mean the difference between a death blow or a scratch he didn’t give up.

Once completed he had gained quite a few level ups in his crafter skills and had received notifications for the bracers and the vest.

*Successful New Crafting – Bonus Experience provided*

*[Basic] Earth Strengthened Bracer – Made from the skin and claws of various monsters and reinforced with the Earth Affinity, the Earth Strengthened Bracer offers increased resistance to stabbing and slicing and a small resistance to elemental attacks.*

*[Basic] Earth Strengthened Vest – Made from the skin and claws of various monsters and reinforced with the Earth Affinity, the Earth Strengthened Vest offers increased resistance to stabbing and slicing and a small resistance to elemental attacks.*

The items were very similar to each other which was fine with Shaun, he had already noticed that the skin was resistant to damage by his dagger but the fact it was also resistant, even if just a little, to elemental attacks was nice to know.

With his crafting done for the night he settled in to have a power nap before he set off back up the mountain. He had only given himself two days to explore but he was considering extending this another day considering he was also spending time crafting as well. He would make the call at the end of the next day depending on what he found.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The next day he continued hiking up the mountain, he had missed doing this since he had entered the tutorial and the fact he finally got to be back out in nature was like coming home after a long day at work. He found a few more monsters to fight, another snake and two boar, but the further he moved up the less monsters he was able to find, it seemed as if they had completely abandoned the area. That was the first clue that something was different about the mountain compared to the forest that he had first arrived in, the second thing was that now that he was high enough to the top he found that it didn’t end in a peak, rather seemed to have more of a circular top, like a volcano. It would also explain the change in terrain as he got higher, it had become more rocky rather than dirt and leaves.

As he became more aware of the changes he decided to identify one of the rocks he found, it had come up with a different vibration compared to the others when it came into range of his echo and he was curious as to why.

*Volcanic Rock – Formed in the depths of a volcano and shot out during eruption these rocks have a chance to contain both metals and precious gems.*

That confirmed his theory of a volcano but it also gave him an indication of why this rock stood out to him amongst all of the others. He guessed that there was something inside of it, either the metal or gems that the description of the rock indicated. Excited he spread his affinity out towards to with his full focus and inside he did find small deposits of what he thought was metal, no gems though, as the feeling was similar to his sword and daggers.

Excited by the find he started to break the stone down by using both his mana and earth affinity to crumble away the rock and force the pieces of metals out of the greater whole. It took a while and a lot of work to concentrate his mind in this way but in the end he ended up with three small lumps of metal.

*[Basic] Fire Infused Aluminium – Aluminium found in volcanic stone that has been exposed by high concentrations of fire mana which have left its mark on the metal.*

This was a great find for Shaun as he had been needing metal and the fact it was infused with fire mana was just a bonus. He put them straight into his inventory and started searching for more volcanic rocks. Over the course of the next few hours he had only found another six rocks that felt different in his echo indicating that they held something worth going for. He found more aluminium, as well as some copper but no gems.

It still meant he had enough metal now to start forming his makeshift Claw Arrow Heads into proper projectiles, but that would take time as he hadn’t ever bent or shaped metal before, only ever moved it around.

As the hours went by and the sun started to set he started to focus on finding somewhere he could rest for the night, as he focused on the mountain he noticed that it was packed in much harder than further down the mountain and that trying to carve through it would take hours as he would be needing to shift what felt like solid stone. He was about to turn around and head back down when he felt a shift on the outer reaches of his echo, it was an existing hole in the volcano, like a tunnel that had formed in its side. As he got closer and was able to push his skill further into the cave he felt something off, like an unnatural disturbance further in.

He had never encountered anything like it, there were no people, monsters or trees around it, nothing living at all. He had hopes of what it may be but until he got closer he wouldn’t get his hopes up, because if he was right, after days travelling up this mountain volcano, he had finally found a dungeon.

When he had reached the entrance of the cave he hesitated for a second, he didn’t know how dungeons worked or even if it was one, but if he went inside and it was a dungeon that would automatically send him in and not let him back out until the boss was dead he knew he had to be at his peak and ready for anything that he might encounter.

He reviewed all of the information he knew about dungeons in the tutorial, only five people could enter as a group, indicating that there were going to be some strong monsters to fight, it should be a challenge that many won't be able to do but shouldn’t be completely impossible. Shaun was on his own though, so if the boss was designed to have 5 people fight it he wasn’t sure if he was ready enough to take it on solo. He also knew they were themed, and guessing on the fact that it was in a volcano it was pretty safe to assume that fire and heat were going to be involved. And the most concerning was that if he went in there that was no getting out unless he died or killed the boss.

Rather than blindly going in at that moment, he decided to rest for the night, make whatever preparations he could and then he would decide in the morning if he should go in now or get a few more levels first before returning.

Walking a few minutes away from the entrance of the cave Shaun sat down and turned his mind to what he could prepare, if there was going to be fire he didn’t want to get too close so he needed more ranged options. He took out one of his Claw Arrow Heads and a piece of the aluminium, there were two steps he would need to follow to finish off his idea, first shape the metal and second attach it to the arrow head.

He wanted to use as little metal as he could in each as he didn’t want to weigh them down but he still needed to be able to control them. Looking closer at the arrow head it was just thick enough that if he really focused he might be able to make a small hole run through the middle where he should be able to put in just enough of the aluminium to control it.

Using his Mana Manipulation skill he concentrated on taking just a tiny amount out, he imagined it working as if he was digging a hole but on a much smaller level. As he worked slowly, making his incision just a bit deeper every time he could see tiny bits of claw dust fall out of the centre and once he was deep enough through he blew into the hole and what he was a tiny cylinder of space only a few millimetres thick and went about three quarters of the way through.

Calling that a success he moved to the aluminium chunk he had and started trying to work a piece off of it and into the shape he wanted, just big enough to slide into the hole he had made. It took over an hour before he had successfully made a piece that would work, changing the shape of the metal was harder than anything he had done and took most of his mana to make it work. It was a battle of will between him and the metal but he eventually won.

When he slid the metal rod into the arrow head it fit just as he had wanted and when he was happy he sealed it all together with his Mana Meld skill. He didn’t receive any new notification for a new crafting but he didn’t care as he had achieved what he wanted to. Repeating the process until he couldn’t concentrate on his task any longer, he had made only 6 but with each one they had become easier.

*Profession: Mana Crafter has levelled up by +2 levels. [Basic] Mana Crafter has reached Level 8. +4 Int, +4 Wil, +8 Soul*

*Race: Human has levelled up by +1 levels. Human (F) has reached Level 15. +4 Ap gained*

*Multiple Skill Level ups: Mana Meld – Level 8*

*Multiple Skill Level ups: Mana Manipulation – Level 10*

He was making good strides in his new skills, and also with levelling up his profession, in just 3 days he had levelled up 8 times, which had to be some kind of record. If he didn’t have his affinity though or all the monster material it would have been a very slow process. He knew the levels would start to come much slower as he got to a higher level but for now he was just happy with the leaps he was making in his craft. The only thing left to do was rest and then make his decision on whether to enter the cave in the morning.