As it turned out, the slavers had been storing their stock of food for the winter in the magic bag. Jas withdrew countless bags of oats and flour, a bag of yeast, a large bag of salt, several dozen bags of dried at, and several ceramic pots full of sauerkraut. Missing were any herbs for flavor or fresh at, but Jas already knew that the slavers were hunting and gathering in the vicinity of camp for their own als. Still, what would be enough for five grown adults and a ager amount for the group of slaves was a treasure trove for Jas.
Lacking any cooking utensils, he put most of it back in the magic bag and for the first ti in months, ate his fill of at. Dried, hard, overly salted, delicious at. By the ti he was full his stomach ached, but it was an almost pleasant sensation compared to the ache of a stomach always on the edge of ravenous hunger.
Once more Jas stuck his hand in the bag, saying "Anything el-" when his hand wrapped around a familiar tal stake. It wasn't familiar to his sense of touch so much as his intuition as an Enchanter. Quickly he pulled it out, set it down, and thrust his hand back into the bag saying "All the warding stakes."
Sadly, while there might have been two dozen stakes originally surrounding the mining camp, in the bag there were only eight intact stakes.
With a sudden sense of urgency born from the potential for actual security from wandering monsters, he quickly thrust a stake into the ground near the wall, walked a few paces forward, and placed another stake. Eventually he created an arc encompassing the exit back to the old iron mine and a decent sized portion of the cavern he found himself in. However, nothing happened. There was no sense of anything magical happening, nor was his Enchanter class providing any clues.
After so trial and error the budding Enchanter figured it out. The stakes had to be sowhat equidistant from each other and form a bounded shape. Keeping two stakes in reserve, Jas pinched in the ends of his arc until the stakes ford a hexagon shape, at which point, while placing the final stake, the stake drew magic from Jas' hand and with a flash of light, the ward was ford.
Jas took a mont to analyze the structure of the ward; its shape, the strength of the warding effect, the way the magical energy flowed between the space between the stakes and seed to radiate outward from each stake, and as he did so-
[Enchanter] Class Skill [Enchantnt Analysis] acquired.
[Synergy] Skill [Efficient Crafting (Smithing and Enchanting)] acquired.
This book's true ho is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Again, Jas acquired one of those strange [Synergy] skills. This one was even more explicit than usual, directly stating that it had to do with Smithing and Enchanting, unlike his other [Synergy] skills [Material Identification], [Design], [Design morization], and [Design Copying].
For the mont, Jas put the matter of his skills aside and returned to the ward. As long as he lacked enchanting materials and tools, he would not be able to repair any of the stakes that broke. The stake he had slted down before had been physically broken, but he didn't know if the enchantnts on the stakes would eventually wear down on their own. Clearly so amount of wear and tear was expected if the slavers had a stockpile of spares prepared.
He pulled up one of the stakes, intending to reconfigure the ward, and felt a tension in the ward as it tried and failed to configure around the remaining stakes before ultimately collapsing with a flash of light. Wincing, he realized that he might have just caused exactly the kind of wear and tear he was worried about. Upon investigation, the enchantnts on the stakes appeared fine, but he couldn't be sure. What he was sure about, however, was that his new skill [Enchantnt Analysis] was already helping out. Within the design of the imbued enchantnt he discerned that the ward could be disabled without strain by simply withdrawing the magical energy empowering it back into himself. Of course, this only worked for the person who set the ward up, but that was no concern of his at the mont. For now, he had a way to more safely adjust the wards.
Considering his eight stakes, he decided to keep the two previously unused stakes in reserve, ntally marking them as "the good stakes", and classifying the rest as "used". With the six "used" stakes, he warded one triangular area around the exit back to the old mine, then created another triangular warded area a short way along the wall near a particularly rich set of iron ores and several of the glowing mushrooms, close enough that he felt he could dash between the two in an ergency.
Now, feeling more secure with the wards placed and operating, Jas returned to the matter of the glowing mushroom. Using a piece of broken shovel, he carefully severed the mushroom at the base where it was attached to the wall. With a small puff of glowing dust, almost like glitter, the mushroom fell to the ground and instantly grew brighter, almost to the level of brightness of a small candle, before quickly dimming and fading and ceasing to glow at all. A glowing liquid had also oozed from the mushroom's stem but that faded even faster than the mushroom had.
Jas poked the fallen mushroom, trying to see if there was any more of the glowing liquid inside, when he felt the iron scrape against a small, hard object inside the mushroom. He dug it out and realized it was a tiny white stone, less than half the size of his smallest fingernail.
A light magic stone.
Jas initially thrilled at the thought of having found a magic stone. Enchanting! And now all the glowing mushrooms were more than just a diocre source of light in the gloomy cavern, they were resources! His thoughts raced ahead as he fantasized about getting to use both his classes in peace-
Ah, yes. Jas finally rembered the monster.
Looking back at the exit to the old iron mine once again, Jas knew he had to make a decision. Would Jas, the Smith, the Enchanter, the recently-escaped Slave, the boy with no combat class, would he return to the iron mine, dig his way out, and try to escape through the wilderness to go back to civilization and risk an even greater danger than monsters: other people? Or would he remain in this mysterious cavern with potentially more monsters?
Jas felt like he was in the middle of the saying about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, but he wasn't sure which was the pan and which was the fire.
Reviews
All reviews (0)