Blacksmith vs. the System

"Well, this is intense," I muttered as I stepped onto the fifth floor, only to be hit by the presence of ten boss monsters rushing toward me, fully intent on destruction. Based on the dungeon's speed of production, their numbers should have been lower, but it seemed that there was a benefit to all that extra mana I had been pumping inside.

A good thing to know.

Their combined presence might have been scary before, but, right now, I was more inclined to treat them as an opportunity to create Epic and Legendary skills. Not the boss monsters themselves, as they had turned into the crystals that allowed me to strengthen my connection with the dungeon, but the giant horde they conveniently brought along.

Now that I had the mana to spare, I could easily deal with them. Ironically, piling them together before they disappeared was the bigger challenge.

Luckily, there was enough metal from my old hydroponic gardens to repurpose for a simple angled platform, where the monster corpses would just slip to the center to make sure they stayed touching each other.

With preparations done, all that remained was to wait for the boss monsters to attack. I continued to twirl my sword in hand, occasionally slashing the insect groups that arrived first, for once completely unafraid of their numbers even when ten gargantuan insects, along with their protective horde, approached me.

My lack of fear had two reasons. The first was the near-infinite mana that was under my command. Previously, I had to struggle for a long time against the gargantuan insects for a simple reason. I had to absorb mana between attacks, which allowed the boss monster to recover significantly, making it a battle of endurance, which they had in excess. With the infinite mana reserves allowing me to cast several full-strength attacks in a second, I was already confident that I could take that many enemies down at once.

Then, there was my improved Essence stat, which increased the upper range of my attack significantly. A full-powered attack, carrying the full might of two thousand and five hundred mana points at once could take down the boss.

"I just need to prevent it from destabilizing," I muttered as I slashed my blade again, only to realize that, when the mana I put into the attack surpassed five hundred, it destabilized no matter how much I tried. Moreover, even before stabilizing, it was actually weaker, with its peak performance at around four hundred mana.

Why, I had no idea. "That's what happens when one takes shortcuts," I muttered even as I tried to improve the attack, only to fail again and again.

Not a big surprise when my approach to the mana attacks was to essentially pump mana to the attack in the correct shape, and let the weapon and the skill do the heavy lifting. It was a practical approach, useful as well considering my performance against various enemies, but it also meant that I lacked the necessary understanding to modify it when I faced a problem, like the one I had been facing.

Some options, like getting an epic skill, or a better quality epic or composite weapons were obvious, but how effective they would be was a question that would be answered once I dealt with the enemies and got a nice selection of skills that I could use.

When the first boss monster appeared, I aimed at its legs with repeated slashes, and once it lost the ability to move despite its regeneration ability, I focused on its body, the damage I was able to deal easily surpassed its limits.

Once the boss monster was down, I absorbed the crystal, and then dealt with the horde, piling them at the center, with their bodies fading away to turn into skill stones. I had done it happily, as killing monsters inside the dungeon, especially without separating the shell, was a good way to convert tainted energy to mana.

And, the dungeon even absorbed some of the mana slash, which didn't disappear completely, so the act of farming skill stones was pretty sustainable.

I went down to the bottom of the artificial pit I had created, excited to see which skills I would find…

Four skills. Repair, Forge, Meditation, and for some reason, Nurture. Of the four, Repair and Forge were exclusively Common, and Meditation had two Epic ones mixed in, but most of them had been Rare or Uncommon. Only Nurture had gone high enough to reach Epic.

It surprised me. I quickly dealt with the other nine dungeon bosses, their crystals reinforcing the connection further, but the hordes that accompanied them gave nothing else. "Maybe the fifth floor had changed somewhat," I muttered as I moved back to the fourth floor, then the third, then the second … until I was looking at a simple explanation.

Any creature killed by me was giving those four. Was that about the strength of my connection?

I went to Harold, who had a worried expression on his face when I found him, on the first floor. "Is something wrong?" I asked.

"Well, yes, sir," he said. "The dungeon mist is getting thicker, and I'm afraid that—"

"Don't worry about that part. It's a part of my arrangements," I replied. As dungeon mist was a part of the way the dungeon operated, the additional mana was put to use, enhancing the mist as well. "I want to know about the skills."

"What about them, sir?" he said, looking honest.

"Was there any change on them, including their drop rate?" I asked.

Harold paused. "I don't think so, sir. I have some teams hunting for skills. While we have enough reserves, having excess is never a bad idea, and they haven't reported any changes."

"But, you haven't checked?" I pushed.

He looked reluctant. "No, sir … but, it's an open secret that even when sent to such a mission, the teams would pocket some of the best skills. I can put a tighter control mechanism if you need, but I advise against it."

I sighed in frustration. I could understand the reason for his hesitation. "No, the last thing I want is more Meditation skills," I said. "Come with me for a moment," I said as I opened a gate to the fourth floor, in the middle of the monsters. I stepped in first, growing a tree quickly to keep the monsters away. Harold followed a second later. "Do me a favor and kill a few hundred insects for me," I said as I passed him my spear, as it was also a good time to raise his skills.

He nodded and followed my direction, killing the monsters under my gaze. I asked him to stop once he reached fifty. He brought me the skills, frowning. "They are…" he started, looking confused.

"Forge, Repair, Meditation, and Nurture," I said. "Any idea why the dungeon suddenly stopped producing different skills?" I asked, just in case it was another common knowledge I missed.

He shook his head, stumped. "I have no idea, sir," he admitted. "It's my fault that I didn't even realize it's happening —"

"No, don't worry about that," I said. "I have piled enough tasks on you already. I know that it wasn't like that before I took my trip," I said. "Let's have a talk with the guards to see why it's the case."

Harold nodded, and we went back to the third floor to talk with the guards responsible. They tried to deflect the situation, but they soon realized that, somewhere near dawn, the dungeon stopped dropping any of those skills but four.

They hid it because Meditation and Forge was potentially worth far more than the combat skills. To explain the discrepancy, they decided to put some from their personal stocks to replenish it.

"Should we punish them, sir?" Harold asked.

"Yes, but something mild," I said. "It's not worth creating chaos. Instead, I want you to use the four skills that the dungeon drops to put in exchange for the combat skills they have in their possession. One to one is okay."

Harold paused. "You would make a great loss, sir," he said.

I couldn't help but chuckle. "Believe me. Money is the last thing we should care about currently. Those skills just turned into a strategic resource, and we need to ration them. You have the full responsibility there," I said.

With that, Harold departed, ready to handle his most urgent tasks, while I went back to the fourth floor, wondering whether it was a side effect from my Class Upgrade, or whether it was a strategic meddling from our mysterious enemies.

The timing was in favor of the first case. "Let's assume it's the second," I decided. The ease they had manipulated and weaponized the other dungeon had already suggested an advanced level of knowledge, and the fact that only Nurture remained was suspicious.

It was too convenient as a move to weaken our dungeon, especially by an enemy that wasn't perfectly aware of the details.

"Ultimately, it doesn't matter," I said as I flipped open the storage I had been keeping the skills I had collected during my earlier adventures, the ones I couldn't read earlier on a different location.

It was time to upgrade my capabilities.