The anger eventually gave way to exhaustion. Jas hadn't noticed the intense heat of the fourth floor, partly because of his own [Heat Resistance] skill, and partly because of his cooling system. But he should have known, should have realized it was hotter than any forge he had been in thus far, and he could have just put his shield and hamr in his magic bag, at least while the ward was up.
The thought gave him a mont of panic, and he checked the items in his magic bag. It turned out they were fine, and the magic bag itself was fine as well, perhaps because it had been worn close to the cooling system.
But Jas didn't know, and that put fear in his heart.
Even in this Dungeon without traps, he might blindly stumble into a situation where death was inevitable.
But… he wasn't ready to quit just yet. The lower floor had dealt him a heavy blow, just from the heat, but he knew he could overco it. And he was confident he could take on the monsters, too, so long as he was properly equipped.
Ahh, that's what everything hinged on: so long as he was properly equipped.
Jas had sat himself down cross-legged on the ground in a ward so distance away from the staircase, facing out over the edge of the plains into the hazy distance. He didn't even want to look at the next floor or his broken equipnt.
Eventually he passed out where he sat, and soti later he jerked awake.
He felt the slightest bit better for having slept.
But he was still imnsely frustrated.
He got up and put the last batch of serpent at into the smoker, putting the smoked at in his magic bag, and turned to face his equipnt again.
[Appraisal]: Wind Visored Helt, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 19/19, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (25)
[Appraisal]: Wind Cuirass, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 20/20, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (25)
[Appraisal]: Wind Armored Skirt, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 12/12, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (30)
[Appraisal]: Wind Codpiece, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (23)
[Appraisal]: Wind Greaves, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 14/14, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (25)
[Appraisal]: Wind Cuisses, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (30)
[Appraisal]: Wind Left Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 16/16, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (27)
[Appraisal]: Wind Right Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 14/14, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (27)
[Appraisal]: Wind Bracers, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 13/13, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (30)
[Appraisal]: Wind Cleat Boots, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 16/16, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (22)
[Appraisal]: Earth War Hamr, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantnt: Heavy Blow (4)
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Round Shield, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantnt: Reflect (6)
The durability of his armor, left scattered where it had fallen when he took it off in his anger, had returned as they cooled. The sa for his hamr and shield.
But the enchantnts were still weakened.
In the worst case scenario, he could simply reforge and re-enchant a new set of Wind Armor. The materials were plentiful on this floor, and he still had his forge and slter near the staircase back up to the second floor, if nothing had happened to them.
No, the problem was his Earth War Hamr.
The hamr that had crushed the mole monsters.
The hamr that had defeated all three boss monsters so far.
The hamr that had been made with essence that only existed on the first floor.
Using his skills, the Enchanter examined the hamr and noted that the essence had diffused throughout the hamr head, no longer mainly concentrated in the center. And of course, the enchantnt had weakened. Still present, but almost fuzzy, almost like ink bleeding across a page and sared.
If you're an Enchanter, this makes sense.
Although the hamr was the greatest loss to Jas personally, it was the shield that had taken objectively the most damage. Large portions of the patterned enchantnt had failed entirely, leaving only scattered fragnts still active, with their effect spread thinly over the entire shield.
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Jas took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. He still had so ti before the smoking finished, so he sat down cross-legged again, this ti holding his right pauldron in his lap. The enchantnt score was twenty-seven now, and it had been thirty-two previously. It wasn't that big of a drop.
He might be able to fix it.
He had, after all, repaired an enchantnt before. Weeks ago, when his Green Iron Tower Shield's [Reflect] enchantnt had been overloaded, he had repaired it by repeating the enchantnt process. Not the preparation for enchantnt, with the etching and magic crystals and Aqua Magia, but the actual magical enchantnt.
That repair had been at the limits of his ability back then. But he had co a long way as an Enchanter since then.
He felt it was worth a shot.
First, he stirred up the mana inside himself. Then, he held his hands over the pauldron in his lap and keeping the morized pattern for [Wind Resistance] in mind, and rembering how he had etched the pattern onto the curved three dinsional shape of the armor piece, he started forcing his mana into the damaged enchantnt.
More and more his mana flowed in, reaching and then surpassing the amount he had used to enchant the piece originally. As he crossed the threshold, still keeping his magical grip on the enchantnt, he started to re-align the sared bits, drawing the magical energy back into clean, crisp lines. Jas continued pressing, and felt a small relief when he finished.
Until he realized that he had only repaired one part of the pattern of enchantnts.
Stubbornly, he pressed on, moving to the next sared part of the pattern. His entire world shrank down to the enchantnt in his lap and he doggedly continued on.
An unknown amount of ti later, he was finished.
Almost all his mana was depleted.
He was famished.
Smith Class Skill [Stubbornness] has reached level 2.
Enchanter Class Skill [Persistence] has been acquired.
And the pauldron's enchantnt was repaired.
[Appraisal]: Wind Right Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 14/14, Enchantnt: Wind Resistance (32)
Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantnt Repair] has been acquired.
The Enchanter flopped back onto the grass-cushioned ground, exhausted.
He had a path forward, now.
First, he ate and slept.
Then he spent a day baking bread and checking his stores of food. There was no water source in the boss room, and the steam of the fourth floor was useless, not that he wanted to go there yet. Still, he had enough for a week or so, in two jugs. Good enough to finish repairing his armor's enchantnts.
Then he spent several days repairing his armor's enchantnts. It turned out that the more three-dinsional the item was, the harder it was to repair. His Armored Skirt was quite easy to repair, while the Codpiece and Helt proved difficult.
Smith Class Skill [Stubbornness] has reached level 3.
Enchanter Class Skill [Persistence] has reached level 2.
Enchanter Class Skill [Persistence] has reached level 3.
Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantnt Repair] has reached level 2.
The Cuirass, the largest piece of his armor, had taken two full days of work to repair. The shield had also taken two days, but that was due to the density of the patterns he had etched into it. It definitely would have been faster and easier to simply reforge and re-enchant the shield, given that there was no essence in it and he had the materials to do so, even with a forge made without clay.
[Appraisal]: Green Iron Round Shield, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantnt: Reflect (28)
But the Enchanter wanted the practice. Because when he turned his sights to his Earth War Hamr, he knew it would be the most difficult repair.
He set aside an entire day for the Hamr, and after a hearty breakfast, he laid the heavy hamr in his lap and raised his hands and began.
The essence resisted him. Not only did he have to unsar the enchantnt pattern, he simultaneously had to force the essence back into the center. But he continued to push, forcing the magical energies back into alignnt and impressing them into the physical material…
And then it was done.
[Appraisal]: Earth War Hamr, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantnt: Heavy Blow (10)
[Enchanter] Class Skill [Essence Manipulation] has reached level 5.
Relieved, the rest of the Smith's plans were straightforward to execute.
He put on his Wind Armor and took up his large iron shield and Earth War Hamr and made the trek back across the third floor. The ridge with Wind Tortoises posed no serious threat, nor did the gusting wind. He avoided the bush type tree monsters, moving from stone outcropping to stone outcropping, and passed through the rainstorm. He endured the flying fish monsters' tackles, and when the opportunity arose he slayed a few, dragging them out of the storm to the closest stone outcropping, where he set up a ward and his smoker and set the at to smoking. After just long enough for the at to be smoked enough to be considered cooked, and therefore go into his magic bag, he packed his things back up.
He pressed on, mindful of the hawk monster that had attacked him before, but with the large iron shield on his back no attacks ca. And then, Jas arrived back to his forge and slter at the nearest stone outcropping to the second floor.
There he stayed for several hours, forging buckets and tubs and water jugs. After so experintation, he determined the largest size tub that his magical bag would accept, for there was indeed a limit, and then he made a full two dozen of those tubs.
He did not want to have to make this trek again if he didn't have to.
That done, he filled the new jugs with fresh water and stored them away, more water than he could imagine needing for drinking, but perhaps enough for quenching hot tal.
Next he returned to the crab boss room on the second floor. Digging down below the pebbles, he collected tub after tub of sand and clay. His magic bag accepted it all.
At this point, he switched to his Water Armor with his heating and cooling strip system, and entered the sauna-like room of the second floor. Carefully and systematically he mined out all the ore he found, and using a basket and chain he saturated all his slted Blue Iron with undine essence from one of the pools that didn't have a water serpent in it.
The crab monsters were plentiful, and he slayed any that ca his way. While waiting for the iron to beco saturated with essence, he collected what at he could and filled so dozen buckets. Though he couldn't put them in his magic bag, he ferried them down the stairs two at a ti to the crab boss room.
And so in this way, the smith collected the materials he anticipated needing going forward.
There was so back and forth going up and down the stairs. He set up his smoker in the nicer environnt of the crab boss room and resud smoking the flying fish monster at, as well as the freshly collected crab monster at.
At the end of this process, the Smith had collected more food and materials than he could imagine needing. He packed up his smoker and everything else, having already collected the essence-saturated Blue Iron, swapped to his Wind Armor, and returned to the his base on the third floor.
Now he pulled out the salamander essence infused Red Iron Ore he had collected on his ill-fated first exploration of the fourth floor.
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