The Forgotten Legacy

Shaun didn’t stay outside of the dungeon, instead he moved back into the forest from the baron area around him, he didn’t find anything useful in the area that may help him with his craft so didn’t delay in finding somewhere safe to stay for the final day, somewhere he wouldn’t be interrupted.

He found a quiet clearing not far from where he had entered the forest, and getting comfortable, took out all of the items that he knew he wanted to use in the next item he crafted, as well as some of the items he wasn’t yet sure on. When he was done lying in front of him were the five orbs he had received from completing the dungeons, the carbon steel and bronze he had received from looting the golems as well as the trident and the upgrade orb that he had received as a reward from stage 1.

He had never ended up using the orb, he never really had a need to as all of his main equipment was already at advanced grade and he didn’t want to use it on anything just for the sake of it. He had a rough idea of what he was going to create, he had been planning it for a while. He had in his mind a gauntlet, one that he would wear on his left hand that he would combine with each of the orbs so that he could have all of them on his body at all times, making it easier to take advantage of all of the benefits that they provided him. But if he just moulded some metal and melded the orbs into it, the end result would be rather ordinary. He wanted to take advantage of every kill he had in his profession and make something truly incredible.

The one thing he hadn’t accounted for in his plans was getting the trident, the metal it was made out of was better than the carbon steel from the dungeon and the gem that it had, although only attuned to water, was powerful, not to mention useful in that it could store mana. The issue was that he needed the gauntlet to be completely balanced with the five orbs, and in turn, the five elements, meaning that adding a gem attuned to water would completely throw off what he had planned, but not using it was also a waste of a good item.

He was also very close to upgrading his profession, one level and he should be able to evolve it into something new, something better than what it currently was, which he hoped might aid him in his crafting of the gauntlet. The only thing he needed to do was get that last bit of experience and he would be done.

He picked up the trident, investigating the gem and the gold metal it was made of, and at the same time looking over his skills and what he should do first. He liked the trident as a weapon, it had been useful in the earth dungeon, but he also didn’t see himself wielding it as his primary weapon very often, it was just too big and didn’t fit his style.

He didn’t want to dismantle the trident unless he was confident in being able to craft the gauntlet in the first place though. Instead of rushing into anything he moved all of the items in front of him out of the way except for the bronze, he decided that if he was going to practice making the item he wanted he should use the material that he would be less upset to ruin.

He had already planned out a general design in his head, the gauntlet was going to cover from his fingers to his elbow, not in one piece though, he planned on making interlocking sections that he could easily take apart if he so needed, he also planned on one more aspect of the gauntlet that would aid him in a melee fight, he wanted retractable claws made of metal that he could move in and out of the fingers using his earth affinity. He didn’t care about others being able to use the gauntlet, it was for him only, so having a few quirks that only he could use wasn’t an issue. What was an issue was making his dream come to life.

Deciding he would start with the part that would cover his hand and then work down to his fingers then up his arm, he got started. He picked up one of the pieces of bronze and started heating it up, once it was easy to manipulate the shape with his skill he started forming it around his hand, only from his wrist to where his fingers. It didn’t take long to cover the area he wanted with the metal, and he continuously tested out his movement each step of the way. At first the metal was too thick and reduced his ability to move properly so ended up having to remove almost half of the bronze he had initially used. He also found that the area around his thumb would need to be a separate piece as when it was all formed as one piece it restricted his ability to move his thumb easily.

When he was happy with the shape, size and weight of the first piece he then started forming the areas where he would have embedded each of the orbs, and as it was just a trial, also where he would put in the gem from the trident. In the end he had one slot for each orb just underneath where each of his fingers were with a larger slot in the middle where he could put them gem. With this done he hardened the metal and took it off. It slid of his had with a bit of effort, he had made sure that there was enough room to be able to move it on and off, but not enough room that it would be uncomfortable to wear.

He tested it a few more times, putting it on and taking it off and found he was happy with the shape, with the easiest piece done he moved on to the fingers. This was going to be a lot more involved, especially getting the retracting claws down right, but he was determined. Starting with his little finger he had a general idea on how he wanted the claw to work. He wanted to make three interlocking pieces for each finger that would slide inside one another with the last piece, the claw, having two parts, a top and bottom, allowing him to retract each price inside of each other until it reached his knuckle. He wanted to do this by carving grooves that would allow each part to slide in and out where it would lock into place once fully extended and retracted, where he would need to actively use his mana or affinity to unlock them to move.

Making the three separate pieces for the finger was the easy part, creating the grooves took a little more effort, but when adding them all together and placing it on his finger he found that there was not enough movability at the joints for him to fully bend his finger, greatly reducing he efficiency of the overall design. He didn’t give up though and continued to manipulate the metal as a whole. He ended up changing how each of the joins ended, rather than a rigid slot in the end he ended it with more of an open spherical space that was only just big enough for each joint to move around without completely falling out of each other. It took a lot of trial and error, and if he wasn’t able to reinforce the metal with his affinity and attunement skill it probably would have broken. Bronze wasn’t the most sturdy metal in the first place but he knew that both the carbons steel and the golden trident were made of stronger stuff.

To meld the finger piece to the larger hand piece he ended up having to open up small sections in the metal and slot it in before melding it shut, again leaving a ball joint so that it could freely move around, yet not loose enough that it would be annoying in battle. He tested out the start of his gauntlet again, now with one finger attached and was happy with the outcome, he ended up making a few minor adjustments but overall it had been a success. He quickly moved on to finishing the remainder of the four finger pieces, and when all of them were firmly attached, he put the gauntlet back on and did some testing. The first thing he tried was retracting and extending the finger pieces, each forming a sharp claw on the end. The result was nearly perfect, he had movability when the claws were both in and out and also had little issue manipulating the metal with his earth affinity. He picked up his sword and tried to use it but found that with the gauntlet on he had less control and grip. That was an easy fix though, he took out some of his rougher monster skin and wrapped it around the blade and tried again. This time he could keep a firm grip and decided that he could just meld the skin to his sword handle when the time came.

Moving up to the arm pieces, these went a lot quicker, the only hard join to form was the one at his wrist, the rest of the pieces, another three in total locked up his arm with no issues. He did encounter one problem at first, taking them off. When the arm bands were formed as one piece on his arm he struggled to get them over his wrist, the problem was easy to fix though and he ended up making each of the bands into two pieces, one on top and another on the bottom that would all slot into each other and form one tight protective barrier on his arm.

If this was all he had planned to do, the result would have been impressive but not incredible. He still had one more layer to add to the gauntlet before he would be happy with the overall design. It was missing runes. This was also the part he was less confident in, he wanted to carve in several spells into the different sections of the gauntlet, ones that eh would be able to use in conjunction with the orbs. The gem though threw his plans out the window. If he could integrate the gem into the gauntlet it would have its own source of mana and he would need to account for that in his inscriptions.

He decided that he would risk creating the runes as if the gem was in the gauntlet, if he didn’t succeed than he would be delayed hours, if not more, as he would have to go back and start from the beginning, but if he could manage to incorporate the gem the item would be so much more powerful than without it. The first runes he inscribed were connection and channel runes between where each of the orbs and gem would be. Next he started to inscribe the first spell, it would be a defensive spell, a replica of the nature barrier used by the monsters in the dungeon. This took a bit more work as he also wanted to connect it from where the gem was up through the gauntlet to his arm, so in battle he could form a protective shield directly from his gauntlet. He had done something similar when he had crafted the shield for Eric a while ago, but this time he needed it to fully form from the gauntlet instead of a shield.

He again inscribed connection and channel runes from the gem, leading into nature and barrier runes and finally ending in a projection rune. He hoped this would mean that he could project a nature barrier from the gem through the gauntlet and out in front of his arm, he would need to test that though.

Moving on he went to carving spells into each of the fingers, something that was a lot harder to do as he didn’t want to use one finger per element, rather create a system between each orb and finger so that any spell could be used on all fingers. What he ended up creating was similar to what was done within his mana channels, a circuit between each of his affinity, replicated on the gauntlet. It took time to form the connecting lines and runes, and after a few mistakes that he had to clear and redo he could see a similarity between his own mana channel and the runes on the gauntlet. He then moved those fines into each finger, inscribing runes for element, power and strike. The first time he did this was difficult, but he had levelled up his rune skill a few times now and with it came new runes that he understood, making it easier to create the network of interlocking power lines through the gauntlet. He had decided on using the rune for element rather than any of the specific runes for each of the fingers, in the hope that it would allow for easier channelling, relying on the orbs to attune the mana rather than his own affinity.

The last thing he added to the gauntlet was a circle from the gem, and circuit of orbs through to his palm, where he inscribed the runes for channel and heal. It was a long shot, but he hoped he would be able to heal both himself and others if ever needed using the gem rather than his own mana.

He gave the gauntlet one final inspection before he concluded that with the skills he had, this was the best he would be able to do. The only thing left to do was test it. During the process of crafting the test gauntlet and had come up with a plan on how he would see if it worked. He took out some of the marble he had from the dungeon and formed it into balls the size of the orbs, attuning every single one to each of the elements before melding them into the gauntlet. The attuned marble was underwhelmingly weak, none of the elements were able to really stick to the marble outside of earth, but for the purpose of testing they would do.

He didn’t have anything that he could use as a replacement for them gem so instead he would need to fully rely on his own mana, continuously feeding his own supply into where the gem would sit, acting as its replacement. With nothing further holding him back he started channelling his mana into the gauntlet where the gem would sit and through each of the runes. He knew it was going to be a long process considering how many of the runes he was going to need to power up to finish the final step of activating them but he was persistent. One hour turned to two which quickly became three, mediating the entire time so that he could recover as much mana as he could during the process. Just when he started thinking that it was a lost cause the runes hit a limit to the amount of mana they could take and the glow disappeared and was fully absorbed into the gauntlet.

*Successful New Crafting – Bonus Experience provided*

*[Advanced] Unstable Elemental Gauntlet – A bronze gauntlet inlaid with marble attuned to the five base elements of the multiverse. Highly unstable due to the conflicting elements. Spells for Nature’s Barrier, Healing, and elemental strikes located on gauntlet.*

*Profession: Mana Crafter has levelled up by +1 levels. [Basic] Mana Crafter has reached Level 25. +2 Int, +2 Wil, +4 Soul*

The description of the gauntlet was, to say the least, troubling, the fact it was unstable made him doubt the plan he had, but at the same time he had also committed to making the gauntlet, hopefully the orbs instead of the marble will help, that and the gem.

*Profession upgrade available on [Basic] Mana Crafter class*