First, the Smith slted and reforged his Green Iron Bucket Helt into a Green Iron Visor Helt, putting as much care into it as he could while he waited for his mana to recover. After two days, he was ready to enchant. He had decided to use slightly larger "tiles" for the enchantnt, reducing the number of patterns that needed to be etched.
To his frustration, even with less patterns, enchanting the helt still wiped out his mana reserves. Jas still didn't know about the increased difficulty of enchanting elental iron with differing elents. Even so, water and wind don't have the worst affinity.
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Visor Helt, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 18/18, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (15)
Bit by bit, Jas enchanted his armor with Water Resistance. Occasionally a mole monster would wander into the cavern and prowl around the edges of his ward until Jas would take a break from enchanting to slay it, and several tis he had to return to the tree monster passage for more Water Magic Crystals. But eventually, he finished.
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Cuirass, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (14)
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Armored Skirt, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 8/8, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (16)
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Codpiece, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (15)
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Greaves, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (15)
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Cuisses, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (17)
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Left Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (16)
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Right Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 9/9, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (18)
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Bracers, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (17)
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Cleat Boots, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 12/12, Enchantnt: Water Resistance (14)
The Enchanter was starting to recognize the factors that affected the enchantnt's "score". How well the tiled pattern wrapped around the three dinsional item mattered, how small and densely packed the patterns were, and how much "stretching" the pattern required to fit on the object all affected the overall strength of the enchantnt.
Jas ard and armored himself and set out to resu exploring. Using [Product Testing] and [Enchantnt Analysis], Jas noticed a passive magical energy field within each piece of armor just like with the Ward enchantnts. Interestingly, the field extended slightly beyond each piece of armor, filling in the gaps between them as well, ensuring all the joints were covered. It seed wearing the armor as a set provided more protection than just the sum of its parts.
The small room was empty. A mole monster was shuffling around the second cavern, and Jas slayed it efficiently. The bat monster carcasses had suddenly all vanished one day, Jas knew not where, but he was unconcerned. He had already collected the materials he wanted from them.
He made his way through the propped open door, skirted around the giant pangolin carcass, and made his way down the staircase. Closer and closer the end of the tunnel grew, until Jas noticed a rattling sound growing louder and louder. He stopped, but the rattling continued until, surprised, Jas realized it was himself making the noise.
He was trembling. And once he recognized that, he realized.
He was afraid.
Would his armor be enough? What if there was more than one of those monsters in the lake this ti? What if there was so other monster that was even stronger than that?
It was with a sense of relief that Jas realized that although he had repaired his shield's [Reflect] enchantnt, he hadn't improved it at all. It could be tiled, after all.
With that sense of relief, Jas turned away and climbed back up the stairs and returned to his camp.
Unsure how to disenchant items, Jas tried to pull the magic from his shield like he did when disempowering the warding stakes. Of course it didn't work, so in the end he slted the shield down entirely and reforged it, making minor improvents to the shield itself and using the last of his Green Iron stocks. Etching the enchantnt pattern, tiled as closely and as small as Jas could manage, took several days, as did the process of grinding extrely fine Light Magic Crystal dust and applying it.
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[Smith] Class Skill: [Filigree] has reached level 3.
After applying the Aqua Magia, Jas realized he might not have enough mana to actually complete the enchantnt. And in fact he passed out at the mont the enchantnt completely set, completely drained of mana.
The first thing he did upon waking, even before eating though he was ravenously hungry, was [Appraise] his shield.
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Tower Shield, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 19/19, Enchantnt: Reflect (30)
It was the hardest enchantnt yet, but Jas was most pleased with the results. Surely reflecting a water spear attack like before wouldn't overload the enchantnt now. He cycled his barely recovered magic through it and felt it warm up faster than before, although he almost imdiately grew dizzy and had to stop.
After two days of recovery, Jas ard and armored himself and set out again, to explore the second floor of the Dungeon.
And again, near the end of the staircase, he stopped. The trembling was so bad he almost lost his footing and fell down the stairs.
He checked and rechecked his armor, trying to make sure he had everything he needed, when he rembered.
He was out of Green Iron. Sure, there was more on the second floor, but what if it turned out he needed so of the other types of colored iron? He never had gone and mined out any significant amount of the ore, and never bothered to slt any beyond Green and Brown. What if he needed Blue or Red Iron for sothing?
And so, once again, Jas turned back.
He returned to the passage abundant with Brown Iron Ore and Coal, and spent half the day mining it out, and the rest of the day slting down the Brown Iron into ingots.
The next day he went to the passage that had large amounts of all the colored iron ores, although he had already stripped it of Green Iron ore, and mined out all the Red and Blue Iron. That took the entire day, and so it was on the next day when Jas discovered a problem.
He couldn't actually slt the Blue or Red Iron Ore.
Until now, his slter had been hot enough to lt the tal out of the ore for regular, Brown, and Green iron, although Green Iron did lt the soonest out of any of them. And although Jared had taught Jas about slting, he hadn't said anything about ore that wouldn't lt. In fact, Jared had only ever had him slt regular iron ore, and then only enough to get the Slting skill.
Jas removed the Red Iron Ore from the slter and set it aside to cool next to the Blue Iron Ore from earlier. Although he had the [Heat Resistance] skill, he was still careful and tested the temperature of the Blue Iron Ore by dripping so Pure Water on it.
It sizzled and popped, despite having sat out for almost an hour already.
Jas put it out of his mind and busied himself with baking bread for several hours. During this ti, he rembered the Bat Wing Fan he had created long ago. He hadn't needed it, but it should help his slter run hotter. Maybe that was the problem?
Jas once again dripped water on the ore to test it, this ti on the Red Iron ore first.
No reaction. It was now cool to the touch.
Out of habit he dripped water on the Blue Iron Ore, expecting it to be cool as well, and was halfway to touching it when he realized the water was sizzling.
The Blue Iron Ore was still hot.
Jas was puzzled for about an hour before he supposed that, perhaps, the Blue Iron was heat resistant? Although that wouldn't explain why it was cooling so slowly…
He decided to wait and see how long it took the Blue Iron Ore to cool, but it was still hot enough to sizzle by the ti he went to sleep.
In the morning, the water no longer sizzled when dripped on the ore, but it was still warm to the touch.
Since it was already warm, he decided to try slting it again. After a few minutes of no reaction, he pulled it out again and dripped water on it.
No sizzling. In fact, it was still just warm to the touch. Normal tal would be too hot to touch after even a few minutes in the slter.
Jas tentatively decided that Blue Iron Ore was resistant to changes in temperature. If that was true, maybe the ore just hadn't ever gotten hot enough to slt the previous day. He put the ore back in the slter.
To speed up the process, Jas kept the fire as large and hot as possible, feeding it plenty of coal and fanning it with the Bat Wing Fan, which markedly increased the temperature of the slter.
[Smith] Class Skill: [Heat Resistance] has reached level 2.
Eventually, after far longer than seed reasonable, the iron started to lt out of the ore and pour into the ingot mold.
[Smith] Class Skill: [Slting] has reached level 4.
Jas continued slting all the Blue Iron Ore he had mined, the monotony of fanning the flas and waiting for the tal to lt causing his mind to wander.
When his thoughts turned to the next floor of the Dungeon, his hands started to tremble.
He paused, staring at his hands until they stopped trembling.
Then he rembered the suddenness of that attack from the lake and his hands started trembling again.
He let the fear pass, taking deep breaths until the smoke from the slter sent him into a coughing fit. He resud fanning the flas and spoke aloud to put his thoughts in order.
"Okay," he started, "so it looks like I'm scared of the next floor of this Dungeon. What are my options? Can I just stay here? Maybe, I have plenty of materials and I can handle the monsters here, but… I don't have enough food to stay here forever. Even if I ate nothing but monster at, I'll probably run out. There was never that many of the mole monsters. So I probably can't stay here forever. I could leave the Dungeon, but-" Jas shuddered before continuing. "By now the slavers might be back, and I don't want to be a slave again. I want to keep enchanting and smithing…"
He paused to scoop out so slag and add more ore to the slter.
"So I have to keep going, at least until I find another exit from this Dungeon that the slavers don't know about. Okay, so once I finish with this ore, I'm moving. I can't just stay here where it's comfortable. I'm moving my camp to the second floor as soon as this ore is done."
With a vague sense of unease and anxiety Jas continued slting the Blue Iron Ore.
The soft breeze continued to blow through the cavern as it always had.
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