After a little experimentation around the workshop… I knew that I loved this skill. It might even have supplanted Haste now that the skill was in the little more unwieldy form of Infusion. The room was filled with little projects and pieces of artwork that I had delighted in making, consistently surprised at the end results after trusting the process ingrained in me by the Crafting Savant skill. It really did it all.

  Except the thing I had initially attempted, frustratingly.

  “Tag,” I demanded, appearing within the Mind Palace, “status report.”

  Completely in keeping with my own energy, Tag saluted and started breaking down what we had learned. “It seems that Crafting Savant works only on what we would consider mundane crafting tasks. There are probably skills for enchanting, potion making, Formation craft and more which are more complex in the System’s eyes and so, require their own skills. We can be fairly sure at attempting anything outside of mana usage, so forging our own equipment is fine, but enchanting it isn’t.”

  Frustrating, but not necessarily an insurmountable issue. Now that my mana channels were well and truly cleared of detritus, I felt like a new man. However, Naea’s warning about pushing yourself too far started to ring in my ears. While I had been able to stitch together some comfortable shirts, thick trousers and a large jacket in less than an hour thanks to Crafting Savant, Tag and I had been slaving over learning a skill regarding formation creation for half a day.

  Sheaves of paper, sourced from Naru herself, were strewn about the room at this point and I had decided to give up. “We’re stopping,” I told Tag, deactivating Mind Palace and feeling my body loosen up slightly. A bit like crossing my eyes to see two images, it was possible for me to shove Tag to the front of my brain and let him take over. It didn’t help, and I was beginning to think that it was the System being stingy. While the process was more involved now, Mana Manipulation still made learning skills easier at a base. “It shouldn’t be taking this long.”

  The System had just dropped a mountain of Spirit on me. I had forgotten to remember that it was a cost based decision and not something automatic. It was no surprise it was holding back. I also knew that skills took up some kind of metaphysical room in my soul, which grew larger as I gained achievements and levels. While I could likely spend some Spirit to push the process along, I was drained from trying and I wanted to get out of the workshop for now.

  It was late into the sun’s setting when I awoke from my sleep, and my work since waking had taken me into the night. With my Perception where it was, along with the passive senses I received from Mana Manipulation, the darkness of the night was no hindrance. The same was true for much of the populace of… Ascentown. “Oh yeah,” I cringed, “that’s what I called it.”

  A goblin ran straight into my leg as my eyes were scrunched shut. I had seen him coming, but assumed he would weave around me. Instead, I caught him on the swing of my leg and sent him flying. The wind huffed out of the distracted thing and he wheezed through the air like a deflating balloon. I was fast enough to catch him before he landed, but his eyes were rolling and tongue lolled out of his mouth with uncontrolled groans from within.

  Whatever the goblin had been doing, it was in a hurry. So much so it hadn’t seen me in the darkness and now it was… maybe dying? I wasn’t sure. I trusted the System’s healing to help the poor thing, but the damn thing hadn’t been alone. A group of dinner plate sized eyes were blinking at me in the darkness, the small troupe of goblins my hit-and-catch victim had been rushing somewhere with. They were carrying food in containers, one of which had been scattered on the floor.

  While I did trust that he wasn’t going to deteriorate, my guilt in the face of the accident and potentially a nudge from Tag reminded me I did have a solution to what was increasingly looking like manslaughter. Goblinslaughter? Tapping the Xaverweave Pouch, I tried to ignore the shocked stares of what could only be described as a gathering crowd. More and more goblins were showing up, pointing. Gnolls were also tricking in to look. Just how quick does news spread in this damn place?

  A small bottle of the strangest liquid I had ever seen jumped into my hand from the pouch with a thought. I had inspected it in the past, but I hadn’t really found the right moment to use it. Most of my fights were over too quickly for the healing to matter, or it hadn’t been possible to reach the potion in the moment… or I forgot. Reading the description again, there were definitely times when I would have taken a sip or offered one to Merownis, at least.

  Item - Greater Potion of Healing (Uncommon)

  Crafted with care and love by an alchemist with talent, this potion makes use of simple materials used intelligently to enhance the source ingredients to a higher potency.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Contains four doses.

  The liquid within was a mixture of red and gold, though it was mostly clear. Right now, it was just a dull bronze in the darkness but I knew in the light it would catch the luminescence in a wondrous way. It was beautiful. Now that I could sense the mana within more closely than ever, that beauty was only increased. The healing magic within this bottle was stunning, and I nearly forgot to actually use it. A cough from the limp thing in my arms snapped me back, and I flicked the stopper. “Bottoms up, buddy,” I warned the goblin.

  A mouthful of potion fell into the vegetative creature and the magic began to do its work instantly. I felt Tag’s attention lock in on the goblin intensely, even as I tried my best to avoid looking. There was a snapping of bones back into place and I realised the damage had been worse than I thought. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his level, but it was low enough for this to have been lethal…

  Good job I listened to peer pressure, huh? I joked because I was scared, and I aimed it internally to Tag who followed the connection and basically headbutted me, mind to mind. It was profoundly uncomfortable. I dropped the goblin, who landed on his feet and scuttled away a short distance.

  Drink, he demanded, now! Forcing his way out of the skill by sheer willpower alone, Tag ordered me to drink some of the potion right now. I wanted to refuse because I didn’t need the recovery but I would only have been denying my own curiosity in the end. With a shrug and a wink to my new goblin friend, I used the second dose of this potion and focused on the feeling it created.

  There was nothing for a moment, as I gulped the potion down. I almost thought we had wasted it, and was about to tell Tag it was his fault when I got an idea. With a thought, I conjured a Magic Missile and shot it right into my arm. It was like being punched by my older brother as a kid, the arm going dead. A supernova of power blinked in and out of existence within myself, deleting the pain and removing any trace of damage in a second.

  Did you get all that? I asked Tag, knowing that I myself had barely been able to follow the complexities of the healing magic. My internal version didn’t reply to me, already hard at work trying to analyse the chunk of information we had received from the effect. When no answer was forthcoming, I just shrugged. It was Tag’s idea, and he could figure out what we did with it next. The whole point of him was so that I didn’t get distracted by the shiny magic all around me, after all.

  I barely wanted to be distracted by The Ascent and the town I had mistakenly named, but it had been my fault, so I stopped to apologise. “I’m sorry about that, sir,” I said as politely as I could. While I had expected the goblin to swerve me, the fact he hadn’t wasn’t his responsibility entirely. “I wasn’t watching where I was going and my strength is new to me. Are you okay now?”

  “Y-y-yes,” my would-be victim nodded frantically, “all fine, all good. Please don’t kick us again, though.”

  “Yeah, no worries. I promise no more kicking. Maybe watch where you’re going in the dark next time,” I replied. Before I let the scene get any more out of hand than it already was, I jumped onto a nearby roof and shot away into the night. Keeping myself moving in a straight line, I smiled as I quickly made my way out of Ascentown and into the forest. Even at night, the place was lively. Somehow, alcohol had already started being sold and there was laughter and nice smells coming from inside the few taverns which had sprung up. I joined the laughter as I realised that the goblins had been delivering food, the strangeness of the action catching me off-guard.

  Goblins delivering takeaway? I shook my head with a smile. There were whole lives being lived within the dungeon, and I had to remind myself that all of this was because of me and my choices. My decision not to scour the dungeon but to instead offer an olive branch to the monsters around me. It had been a risk, but now something similar to my old life had returned quickly. It almost made the place feel like the real world.

  Yet thoughts of the past made me move quicker. Once I was away from the buildings and roads of the city, I activated Infusion and threw myself forward faster and faster. I had prepared all I could bear to. The Xaverweave Pouch was full of supplies and clothing for the cold weather ahead. There was one claimant left and the more like home I felt the dungeon becoming, the more another part of me rebelled against the idea.

  This place wasn’t my home, even if I could decorate it and find areas where I tricked myself into feeling safe. There was no safety here, and this wasn’t a home. It was a prison. A dungeon. Made specifically to trap and kill me. The forest vanished and I began sailing across the sands. No more procrastination, I told myself, no more preparations or training.

  I didn’t have high hopes of actually finding the final claimant, as I expected the tundra to be much larger than the desert, just like the sands were larger than the forest. Still, I ran forward without stopping. Within the Mind Palace, Tag was still trying to pull apart the intricacies of healing magic. Even as my feet hammered the sands below them, I could still hear the ungodly motoring sound of Naea’s eating. Merownis could feel my intentions through Battle Bond and knew I wanted to go alone. He would only slow me down with how I wanted to move right now.

  No, right now, I needed to be alone. The sounds of the village were long disappeared, Naea’s gorging noises vanished along with them. All that remained was me, the mana moving within and the dungeon around me. Before long, I felt the temperature drop and put on my newest gear. None of it had actual attributes, but Crafting Cavant had not left me high and dry. I was ready.

  Time to explore the frozen world.