The Forgotten Legacy

As Shaun travelled to the mountain he further inspected the Earthen dagger and found that when he controlled it with his affinity, not only was it considerably easier but cost less than half of the mana that it usually did. With that decided he focused on upgrading each of his daggers with earth using his new Mana Attunement skill.

It was a lot harder to do compared to when he had just thrown everything he had into making the last one but we wanted to utilise the skill, not only to bring it up in level but also so he could get a better understanding on how it worked.

In the few hours it took him to get to the base of the mountain he had managed to level up the attunement skill five times but had only managed to upgrade one of his daggers, meaning he still had two more to go. He had already decided against using the skill on his sword as he wanted to wait and see what else he could do once his skills had been upgraded in the future.

One upside to upgrading his dagger though was that he managed to also level up his class twice to level 2 and that got him another level in his race. He had put all of his AP into Vitality as it was now the only stat that he wasn’t getting increases in from his class or profession and he didn’t want to end up having such low health that he would be easy to kill by higher level monsters. He was pretty happy with his now completed status sheet.

Status:

Name: Shaun Clermont

Race Human (F)

Level: 12

Class: [Basic] Rogue - Level 22

Profession: [Basic] Mana Crafter - Level 2

Health Points:236/390

Stamina:312/370

Mana:174/320

Stats: (Available Points: 0)

Strength: 37

Dexterity: 81

Endurance: 37

Vitality: 39

Intelligence: 20

Perception: 81

Willpower: 28

Soul: 32

Affinity: Earth

Titles: New Initiate, Apex Predator, Planetary Forerunner

Skills:

Class: [Basic] Short Blade (Level 25 - MAX), [Basic] Stealth (Level 25 - MAX), [Advanced] Earthen Echo (Level 8), [Basic] Dual Wielding (Level 25 - MAX), [Basic] Empowered Strike (Level 12)

Profession: [Basic] Mana Meld (Level 1), [Basic] Mana Manipulation (Level 1), [Basic] Mana Attunement (Level 5)

There was not one N/A in sight and he felt proud that he had gotten his profession so quickly into Stage 2, even if it was a fluke. His skills were coming along nicely for his class and with time his crafter skills would also start to increase.

Looking around at the base of the mountain, it was much bigger up close than it had looked when he started setting out in this direction, he figured that he would rest now and tomorrow start looping his way up in the hope that he would find something of interest along the way. He decided that he would spend a max of two days looking around and if he didn’t find anything he would set out in a different direction.

There was nowhere to hide that would provide him with enough protection to rest comfortably so instead he decided to try something a little different. Walking up to the base of the mountain, just where it started to slope up, he placed his hands onto the ground and reached out with his earth affinity. He could feel the rocks and direct all around him and just like he had tried in the tunnel attempted to move the earth.

At first the ground started to tremble until finally it started to move according to his will, the ground in front of him started to bubble up and move out of the way, forming a small tunnel into the ground, he continued doing this until it was a few metres deep and just big enough that he could easily hide inside without any of the larger monsters in the area being able to get in.

Putting himself back into a cave wasn’t ideal but it was better than getting hunted by another jaguar while he slept and ending up dead before he could even wake up. He wouldn’t need to sleep for long anyway, he could get by on a one hour power nap and last the entire day at this point but he still didn’t want to risk it.

Before going into his cave he walked a few minutes out of the way and set up to start cooking his boar meat. He had been looking forward to this all day and couldn’t wait to gorge himself on it. He took out some of the meat and the plants from his inventory, tasting each of them to see if any would taste good with the meat. In the end he settled on ruby the boar meat with one of the plants and then cooked it on his heating stone. When it was finally ready to eat it was better than anything he could have imagined. He would need to make sure he stocked up before finishing this stage in case the next one wasn’t so kind in terms of the monsters it had to eat.

Once he was done he moved back to his cave and got comfortable. Rather than sleeping straight away he wanted to test out all of the skills he hadn’t got a chance to use from his new profession. The first thing he did was take out two Salamander skins and lay them next to each other. He took out one of his daggers and cut the longest side of each of them and then lined up the edges. Focusing on his Mana Meld skill he directed his skill to meld both sides together forming one large piece of skin. It took some time to adjust to the feeling of the skill, rather than just willing the two pieces together he had to imagine that both pieces were just two parts of a greater whole that seamlessly fit together.

It took some time to get it right and if he was being honest with himself the part where he started looked terrible, it didn’t seem like it would hold together if any pressure was applied to pulling it apart, whereas towards the end it looked a lot more sturdy. He tested this out and took hold of the skins and tried tearing them apart down the join, he was right in that where he had first started tore apart easily but at about three quarters up it held strong. If he tried again putting as much strength as he could behind tearing it back into two pieces he probably would have succeeded.

He repeated this process again and again until he had run out of mana three times. By the end though his Mana Meld skill was strong enough that he couldn’t tear the skins in half and he could barely see where the join was. Happy with what he had accomplished he checked to see his improvements.

*Multiple Skill Level ups: Mana Meld – Level 4*

*Profession: Mana Crafter has levelled up by +1 levels. [Basic] Mana Crafter has reached Level 3. +2 Int, +2 Wil, +4 Soul*

He forgot how easy it was to level up skills and his class in the early days, but seeing how he gained a level in his profession by a few hours of work training his skills was great motivation to keep going. So moving on from his Mana Meld skill he moved to his Mana Manipulation one, but this time instead of working with the skins he would work with the claws he had in abundance from the Mole Rats.

This was a little trickier as he didn’t have any real plans as to what to do with them, just that he had a lot and didn’t mind destroying a few. Taking out the claws they were about the length of his finger, outside of the Alpha’s claws which he planned to save for a proper project later on if he could. He figured that if he could sharpen them enough into little arrow heads and at some point attach them to some metal or stone he could use them as his own personal makeshift projectiles that he could use in a fight without needing to always use his daggers.

Shaun liked the idea and so with that in mind started trying to use his Mana Manipulation skill on the first claw. First, he needed to make them thinner, so that they would have less resistance when trying to work their way through a monster. The first claw he tried this on failed miserably, in the process of trying to flatten it, it simply just broke in half.

He wasn’t going to quit though, instead he picked up one of the halves and tried again with the same result. What am I doing wrong? He thought to himself. He tried this on three more claws before he stopped and re-evaluated what he was doing. If he couldn’t change the actual shape of the claw maybe he could instead take off parts of it like he was whittling down the branch of a tree.

Rather than take the brute force method he used his skill sparingly and tried to convince tiny slithers of the claw to drop off one side, it was a lot harder than melding material together but eventually he was able to slowly remove parts of the claw to give it a flat edge. Invigorated with his success he did the same to the other side until he had what looked more like an elongated arrow head melded with a dart. He then worked on forming the point, as the claw was originally curved he needed to fix this by making it slant from the base to the point removing the curvature so that it wouldn’t have any resistance when he launched it.

He got to this point with three claws and on each try he cracked the tip of each of them. But he kept trying and he found success once he realised that he needed to keep the entire claw thicker when he was whittling down the sides and then once the point was formed he could then go back and make it thinner. When he tested out how sharp it was on his finger he was able to easily pierce his skin and draw blood. Perfect.

*Successful New Crafting – Bonus Experience provided*

*[Basic] Claw Arrow Head – Made from the claw of a Giant Mole Rat a crafter has manipulated the material into the form of a crude arrow head.*

*Profession: Mana Crafter has levelled up by +1 levels. [Basic] Mana Crafter has reached Level 4. +2 Int, +2 Wil, +4 Soul*

*Race: Human has levelled up by +1 levels. Human (F) has reached Level 13. +4 Ap gained*

*Multiple Skill Level ups: Mana Manipulation – Level 5*

It actually worked! Even the system says so! He had gotten a notification that he had successfully crafted something new and because of it got bonus experience, the profession was purely crafting based but he didn’t expect that he would get notification like this, it was a welcome surprise.

He spent several more hours crafting the claws until they no longer proved to be any challenge at all. In this time he had made about two dozen of the arrow heads, only ever getting the bonus experience from the first one, but he was still happy about the progress, even getting another level in his profession and several more levels in his skill.

When he was done he put together a mental list of things that he wanted to achieve with his profession over the coming weeks. First was that he needed to find a source of metal, he had a long sword in his inventory and an armour plate that he had looted all those weeks back when he was attacked by the people from Ruin but he was hesitant to practise his skill on them in case they may be useful later on. Second he wanted to craft himself a better outfit, he imagined himself with leather braces that held his new and improved claw arrow heads that he could send out at his enemies with his Affinity. Second, he wanted a better top, one that would hold two daggers on his back as well as more space for weapons on his front. He also wanted to find a way to reinforce it so it would be harder for monsters to get through. The outfit in his mind was pretty primal, considering it would all be made from monster skin, but if it worked out how he wanted to it would end up not only looking cool but also very useful in combat.

What was supposed to be a quick test of his skills had turned into hours of crafting and by the end of it all Shaun was exhausted. Calling it quits to get some rest, he couldn’t help but smile when he thought of everything that had occurred in the last day. He had nearly been killed by a monster but it was worth it considering everything he now had because of it.

He would head out as soon as he woke up and work his way up the mountain, he would focus on the last of his daggers as he went and make sure to continue to hunt down any monsters he found as he didn’t want to head into his first dungeon unprepared for the fighting he would need to do while inside. He had a good feeling about this mountain and what he would find, he just hoped that it wouldn’t take too long before he could start meeting the objectives and get strong enough to stay in the top 1000.