Chương 522: B8—Chapter 27: The Monthly Grind

In our second month in the dungeon, the slow improvements began piling up into something significant. We still stuck to the first ring after the barrier and didn't consider moving deeper yet, despite the fights becoming too easy, and not only because of my help with the vines. Compared to the first days, the difference was incredible. We moved and reacted faster, and fought like a well-oiled machine.

Al's freezing spell progressed so much that now every time he cast it, he could freeze even level 60 snakes almost solid. The vines and branches they were made of frosted over in seconds, ice crept across the ground around them, and their movements slowed to a crawl before they shattered apart under Mahya's axes. He also became much faster with the casting itself. In the beginning, he needed a second or two between casts, and with the help of Fortify, the speed improved by about 30%.

Now the spell flowed out of him like a machine gun. Most of the times, snakes froze almost the moment they appeared in my field of view. Mahya developed a strange fighting style with two axes that she used like scissors. At first, it looked ridiculous. Even she admitted it felt weird and made her wobble occasionally. But after some practice, it turned terrifyingly effective. She jumped inside the snake's reach and swung both axes in crossing strikes that snapped shut around the neck.

If she got in the right position, she could chop a snake's head off in one double swing. A few times, she cut through a snake so fast that the body still wriggled for several seconds before collapsing. Al also used some of the plants we found in this specific dungeon to upgrade his anti-root monster spray. This version didn't affect only the lashing vines, but the whole monster, making it break down into an extra smelly rot. Calling it "smelly" didn't do it justice.

The first time he used it, the stench hit so hard that Mahya gagged, I almost threw up, and Rue rolled on the ground whining dramatically while covering his nose with both paws. The spray worked beautifully though. The root monsters collapsed into black mush that looked like compost left under the sun for months. The only downside was that once they rotted, there was no way to turn them into crystals. And of course, the stink. But Rue was in heaven despite it.

He was still in charge of the spray bottle and finally felt like he was contributing. Every fight against the root monsters turned into him charging around proudly with the sprayer hovering over his head and growling at us if we even looked at one. Apparently, the system agreed that his input was sufficient, since he also finally gained a level. When that happened, he did such a long "dog chasing his tail" dance that he got dizzy and dropped on his side panting.

His tail still twitched while he lay there staring at the sky with a goofy doggy grin, his tongue lolling out. With this level up, he changed. His fur got a light glow, almost like a heat shimmer on a water's surface, and became tougher. It was almost like armor. The effect was subtle at first. Under normal light, it mostly looked like the air around his fur distorted slightly whenever he moved. But once sunlight filtered through the trees, the shimmer became obvious.

He let a few root monsters try and stab him before he sprayed them, and they couldn't pierce him. The thorn-like roots struck his side, chest, and shoulder, but instead of sinking in, they slid away or bounced off completely. One thorn even snapped. That got another "dog chasing his tail" dance, but this time without falling down. His speech also improved. He still talked about himself in third person and sounded childish at times, but his sentence structure improved, and he sounded a bit more mature.

"Rue now dangerous, tough, and smart," he proudly informed us at least six times that day alone. I was a little disappointed since I knew that level 20 for a familiar was a sort of milestone, and expected more, but did my best to hide this feeling from him and not let it travel down the bond connection between us. He didn't share my feelings and was ecstatic. The biggest change was his mana level. His orbs had a serious growth spurt and almost doubled in size.

As a result, he spoke more and more in mana speech instead of telepathy. At first, it happened only occasionally, but then, slowly, it became natural for him. Once I paid attention to the change and checked his mana system, the last traces of disappointment I had vanished without a trace. Of course, I knew the orb growth didn't come from the level-up itself, but from all the mana-rich meat he'd been eating. Still, the level-up somehow solidified the change and stabilized it, and that was good.

During this time, I focused on improving my Nature affinity and studying the methods used to enhance metal. The book didn't mention anything about aspecting mana crystals to match the metal like Payan asked me to do with my swords, but I suspected that part was in the second or third book in the series. What I did discover, a few chapters in, was that the mana weaving I did was a bona fide method somebody had discovered before me. For a minute, I felt less impressive, but the feeling passed fast.

After all, I learned it by experimenting, not by reading about it. It wasn't called mana weaving, or essence weaving like the cultivators called it, but had a long elaborate name like everything else in this book—Adaptive Mana Lattice Infusion Sequencing and Aspect Stabilization Methodology—but besides that, it was basically the same thing, with a small addition, or more precisely, a clarification.

Mana pulses were used to infuse the metal with mana and make it stronger and more effective against high-level monsters. This method, however, was used to embed natural aspects into the metal itself. The "natural" part confused me for a while, since there was no explanation beyond that, but once I started experimenting, it became clear that I couldn't just create an aspected crystal and weave it into the metal. The aspect had to come from a mana beast, like it did with the bird beast cores.

There were other methods too, like saturating metal beside a dungeon core, and as an experiment, I left two metal golems' worth of metal beside my core at all times to see what would happen, but so far, nothing did. Well, almost nothing. The metal definitely absorbed mana over time. I could feel that much with Mana Sense. The problem was that the mana just sort of... sat there. It didn't weave itself into the structure and didn't become part of the metal the way my woven method did.

At best, it felt like slightly mana-soaked metal instead of truly enhanced material. The weird part was that something definitely changed. The mana clung to the metal more readily after a week beside the core, and when I pushed mana through it, the flow felt smoother, with less resistance. But physically, the difference was impossible to pinpoint. The metal still melted at roughly the same temperature, cooled normally, and bent just as easily under force.

It wasn't suddenly tougher, lighter, or more durable like the book implied properly enhanced metals should become. If there was an improvement, it was too subtle for me to notice yet. That frustrated me more than outright failure would have. If nothing happened, I could dismiss the whole method and move on. But this sat right in that annoying middle ground where the metal clearly absorbed mana, yet refused to show me what that absorption actually did.

Maybe it simply needed more time, or maybe the process involved some additional effect the book refused to explain. I also created another three pieces of metal aspected with bird beast cores to practice the other method, but that part progressed much more slowly. It quickly became clear that one core, or even two, wasn't enough, since I didn't want to add only a single aspect to the metal. The swords didn't only fly, after all.

You could control them by pressing on them in the front or back or leaning sideways, and once you poured mana into it, it kind of glued to you. It wasn't a hundred percent glue, since you still could fall off the sword, but the falling off part was harder after channeling mana. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

That meant the original creator somehow combined movement, directional control, stabilization, and probably several other effects I still didn't understand into one object, and no matter how many times I examined the swords with my Mana Sense, I couldn't pinpoint them. I could feel layers inside the metal, traces of different aspects woven together, and that was the problem. They were woven together so tightly that they stopped feeling like separate aspects and became something new and unrecognizable.

The regular beast cores didn't add that, and nothing I had in my Storage could explain that part of the creation. One attempt produced a metal rod that aggressively launched itself forward every time mana touched it, even just my expanded Mana Sense, but it wasn't flight. It behaved more like an attack pattern. Another floated in place for about a glorious second before spinning wildly and embedding itself in a tree.

The third actually reacted differently depending on where I pushed mana into it, which almost made me squeal in excitement right until it abruptly shot into the ceiling hard enough to break two planks. It took the house half a day to regenerate the damage, and Mahya growled at me every time she glanced at the ceiling. But despite the failures, every experiment made me more obsessed with it.

I wasn't losing hope, and made peace with the fact that in the next mana 50 or above world, I was going portal diving to collect cores. A lot of them. Not that we needed another sword or anything, but I really, really wanted to create one. And, well, understand the process better. My Nature affinity progressed better than the work with the metal, at least in part. Now, we didn't need to use machetes or axes to make our way through the forest anymore.

I simply forced the ferns and bushes in our way to lean sideways, creating a path between them. They didn't uproot themselves or anything, just bent aside as much as they were able to and let us pass. At first, the effect only worked on smaller plants, but over time, even thick bushes and low-hanging branches moved away from us with barely any effort. Even though I was the one doing it, the whole thing looked eerie as hell.

Walking through a forest while the vegetation silently bent away from you wasn't something my brain considered normal. Bushes leaned aside as if to avoid touching us, branches parted to let us through, and the moment we passed, everything returned to its original position behind us. From the side, it probably looked less like people walking through a forest and more like the forest was afraid of us.

More than once, Mahya stared at the moving plants with narrowed eyes before muttering something about "Weird wizard nonsense." My control over the vines improved so much that sometimes they felt like extensions of me. Not in a metaphorical sense either. After enough practice, I stopped consciously thinking about every movement. The vines reacted almost instinctively.

They wrapped around snakes before I fully processed the danger, tightened when something struggled, and shifted position automatically to block attacks. A few times during fights, I caught myself trying to move vines that weren't there yet, only for nearby plants to immediately respond and grow into position. On top of that, I discovered smaller uses for the affinity outside of combat. I could encourage roots to move away from where we wanted to sit, smoothing the ground, for example.

Once, after heavy rain, I forced waterlogged moss and grass to knit together into a dry surface. The moss twisted and compressed itself together under the pull of the affinity until it formed something halfway between a mattress and a sponge. Mahya cautiously pressed a boot onto it.

"Huh," she muttered. Rue flopped onto it belly first and refused to move for the next hour. Another time, I accidentally made flowers bloom around the house while trying to connect to the affinity. Rue absolutely loved that one and spent half an hour rolling around in the flowers. I also got so used to upgrading Al's plants that every time he stopped beside one, I automatically collected the nature mana around it and forced it up the stem to improve the plant, whether he asked for it or not.

At one point, Al crouched beside a small vine with silver spots on the leaves. Before he even opened his mouth, mana already flowed through my channels and into the ground to "help" the plant. The vine shivered, more silver spots spread across the leaves, the stem thickened, and tiny white flowers bloomed all over it. Al slowly looked up at me.

"You acted prior to my requesting it." I shrugged.

"You had the look." He glanced at the plant again and nodded at me.

"Thank you." That interaction repeated itself so many times that eventually Al stopped thanking me, despite his impeccable manners. By then, it had become part of our routine. He found a plant. I upgraded the plant. He looked almost happy. Everybody moved on. But there was a snag here too. I still needed to exert control over the affinity. It refused to work with me like the others and only obeyed when I pushed and forced it to do my bidding. I knew it was the wrong way to do it, and I felt it too.

The other affinities felt like part of me, same as my limbs or my thoughts. The Nature affinity didn't. It felt like an uncomfortable addition I couldn't get used to, like a third hand or a second nose. Technically attached to me... but somehow also not. I tried to fix it in various ways. Everything from meditating for hours while feeling the forest around me, to trying to inhale the nature aspect while regenerating mana, to sinking into it and becoming one with it like I'd done in the past with the others.

I tried sitting barefoot on the ground while channeling mana into the soil, or tried surrounding myself completely with plants and slowly circulating only nature mana through my channels. Once, I even attempted to mimic the "natural flow" of the forest itself by letting my awareness drift through roots, leaves, insects, and moisture all at once. That one ended with a splitting headache and a nosebleed. Another time, I tried to stop forcing the affinity completely and simply... ask.

That lasted all of three seconds before a vine slapped me in the face hard enough to make me stagger. Mahya laughed so hard she bent in two. No matter what I did, I failed. There was always something separating us, like a thin invisible film I couldn't break through. I could touch the affinity, manipulate it, even overpower it, but never truly merge with it. The connection always remained external. Not that I was sorry I absorbed the stone or anything. I absolutely wasn't. The affinity was absurdly useful.

I was just annoyed that I couldn't cross this final barrier and make it truly mine. And worse, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the moment I did, I'd level up as a wizard. That annoyed me the most. So far, Al had already gotten three levels, and Mahya and Rue each got one. Meanwhile, I was stuck right at the edge of something I could practically feel, but couldn't reach. I wanted to stomp my foot and shout, "What about me?!"

Frustrated, I dropped the fight with Nature and metal for the time being and moved on to the rest of the book. The next chapters dealt with cloth and leather, which at this point didn't interest me much. I skimmed through them to see if anything could cross over to metal or wood, but nothing really could. Most of it focused on thread saturation, flexible mana pathways, layered stitching patterns, and ways to prevent mana erosion in enchanted fabrics. Useful if somebody wanted magical robes or armor.

Personally, after spending weeks trying to make metal fly instead of exploding into walls, reading three pages about "harmonic fiber tension alignment" nearly put me to sleep. The leather section wasn't much better. Apparently, an entire school of enchanting was dedicated solely to preserving the "living memory" within monster hide so the material remained more receptive to mana.

The author spent almost twenty pages explaining why boiled leather treated with aligned beast marrow and mana-rich herbal resins was superior to leather preserved through mundane tanning methods. The problem was that the explanation and reasoning became obvious almost immediately. By the second page, it already felt like beating a dead horse. Why he felt the need to stretch it into twenty pages, I had no idea. I skipped most of that too.

The last four chapters dealt with glass, and it was the first time I saw mention of the method I used way back in Shimoor of embedding spells into molten substances. It turned out glass was the best receptacle for this type of creation, since the leakage was much smaller. Sadly, the book didn't explain why there was less mana leakage.

The entire chapter on the subject was incredibly dismissive and condescending, constantly acting as if anybody using the method was one step away from hitting rocks together to light a fire.

The author referred to it as:"Primitive Reactive Structural-Mana Imprinting Methodologies, occasionally and regrettably still encountered among isolated regional practitioners, self-taught artificers, undereducated frontier crafters, and certain stagnant enchanting traditions whose continued existence persists more through inherited habit than through any demonstrated theoretical or practical superiority.

While the process does possess limited instructional value for the novice seeking a broader historical perspective regarding pre-modern material infusion techniques, it must be clearly understood that such crude imprinting procedures cannot, under any rigorous scholarly framework, be considered true enchanting, nor properly categorized within the disciplined sciences of mana stabilization, aspect harmonization, or advanced preparatory substrate refinement required for legitimate enchantment work."

In other words, according to the book, it was trash, and I was apparently on the level of cave dwellers for still using it to create my aluminum blobs. I blew a loud raspberry at the author for being so condescending and took a break from studying materials. My faculties needed a break.