I tried to hand Valda a stamina potion, but she shook her head. Then she rushed at her opponent.

  "Ah!" Valda said.

  She swung the wooden sword and Glint stepped backwards. She swung it again and missed. She kept this up for a while. She tried a few impact strikes, but only succeeded in blasting woodchips into the air.

  The ground we were standing on was covered in woodchips. I guess that was supposed to be easier on our feet or create a more difficult terrain. I didn't know which.

  When the three impact strikes tired her out, she looked at me and put out her hand. I pretended not to notice.

  "Gwen!" she said.

  I pretended to snap out of a reverie.

  "Did you say something, Valda?" I asked.

  "Gwen! Give me one," she said.

  "Give you what?" I said.

  "You know what," she said.

  She set her jaw.

  "You said no," I said.

  "I'm sorry, ok! I was wrong! Now give me one!" she said.

  "Ok," I said.

  I tossed her a stamina potion, and she drank it down. She tossed the tube and cork to me and I put it back in my pack. She wiped her mouth looking at Glint.

  "Round two," she said.

  I engaged my analysis ability to check her stats. She was now level 4 and she had two abilities listed above her head. One was "Impact Strike" and the other was "Rush." I wondered what that did.

  I didn't have to wonder long. She closed the distance between them in an instant and tried to stab him with the sword, but he barely jumped out of the way. There went her advantage.

  After a concerted effort, she stopped out of exhaustion. He began to walk up to her, and then she appeared in front of him and stomped on his foot. She pressed the sword under his chin.

  "It seems you have hit me," he said.

  Valda removed her foot from his and the sword. She handed it back to him. He wiped sweat off his brow.

  "It seems I underestimated you," he said. "With your fighting stance, I didn't expect you to have the impact strike and rush abilities already."

  "You must be about level 4 or 5. You know you didn't actually have to hit me to pass. No one ever hits me. You're the first. I just needed to see that you had basic fighting skills."

  "Oh," she said. She blushed. "I'm sorry I tricked you then."

  "No, it's fine," he said. "I should've been more on guard. If you ever want to work on your form and develop some decent maneuvers, feel free to come back."

  "Thanks," she said. "I might just do that."

  "Harold, tell your mother she passed," he said.

  "Ok," Harold said. He walked back into the building.

  "So, is he like your helper or something?" Glint asked.

  "No, she's my helper," I said.

  "Oh, huh," he said. "So, are you two in a relationship?"

  "No," I said.

  "Yes," she said.

  "What?" I said.

  "A business relationship," she said.

  "Oh, right, then yes," I said.

  "That's not what I meant, but ok," he said.

  "Oh, by the way," I said. "I will be coming back for my own test. I just need to level up some before I'll be ready."

  "That's fine," he said. "Come anytime you want."

  "Clarifying question," I said. "Can I use crossbows?"

  "Yes," he said, "but I won't let you shoot at me. I'll just watch you shoot at a dummy, and grade you from that."

  "Oh ok," I said. I really wanted to shoot at him. Oh well. That did give me some new crafting ideas, though. I would need more materials. "Let's go back inside."

  "Ok," Valda said.

  When we went back inside, the lady at the counter gave Valda a card with her name on it and the words "Adventurer's License" on top.

  "Congrats! You're now an adventurer!" she said.

  "Thanks," Valda said.

  After a few seconds, I said, "Can I buy some more stuff off you? I realized there's actually a lot I need."

  "Sure, what can I get you?" she asked.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  "I need tools for every crafting discipline," I said, "a bunch of crafting materials, especially for tinkering and artifice. And I'd like to buy a couple of those adventuring bundles off you."

  "Big spender!" she said. "You heard the man!"

  The same girl from before came out of the back with a huge bundle of stuff and handed it to me.

  "That'll be one gold," she said.

  I handed her the money and put the bundle in my bag. The volume immediately disappeared, but the weight was considerable. I made sure we stopped back at the shop so I could unload the stuff before heading back to the dungeon.

  Then back to the dungeon we went. This time a lot more prepared. We both drank uncommon quality dark sight potions, so we didn't need a torch, and I could carry a weapon. I equipped a war hammer from the shop.

  At uncommon quality, the dark sight potions would only last thirty minutes, but we'd be able to tell when it was wearing off, and I put a couple of the potions in my pants pockets, so we had them at hand in case we suddenly went blind in the dark.

  To get me some experience, since I was only level 2, and she was level 4, Valda would take out the skeletons' legs and let me deliver the killing blow. I leveled up to 3 fairly quickly and got another stat point, another proficiency, and another ability.

  I put the stat point in intelligence, bringing me up to 8. I had to think about the proficiency. I wanted to reach master level proficiency in all disciplines really quickly, but that would take a while, so I had to be deliberate about what I leveled up first.

  I wanted tinkering, so I could make a self reloading crossbow, but enchantment would get me the most mileage with allowing me to improve my bag. What I really wanted was guns, but I would need so many high proficiencies in various disciplines to achieve that it wasn't worth attempting right now.

  It would require at least an expert or master level proficiency in blacksmithing, tinkering, and alchemy. And then I'd have to figure out how to get gunpowder.

  Crossbows with a semi-automatic fire rate were an extremely high goal as it was, but it seemed achievable in a few levels of progression. All I think I would need is a journeyman or expert level in tinkering.

  After that, I would work on making the crossbows self aiming, but that was artifice and therefore would need higher proficiencies in that as well.

  It was interesting and frustrating how many crafting disciplines complemented and bled into each other. The more I thought about it, the more it validated my class choice, but also made me realize I had a lot of leveling up to do.

  So in the end I took another proficiency in enchantment so I could improve my bag and carry more equipment into and loot out of the dungeon. I wanted to improve my bag right there, and I could if we weren't constantly being attacked by more enemies.

  Instead, we finished off the latest barrage of skeletons, giant rats, and now wraiths. Wraiths joined the list of enemies recently as we got further in. They were tougher and scarier and stronger than skeletons, but they still went down when Valda hit them.

  Don't ask me how a semi-corporeal being gets taken down by a mace, but they did. And I was thankful for it. Otherwise we'd be screwed. I didn't have special ghost hunting equipment, if that was even a thing.

  Maybe full ghosts would need special equipment, maybe they wouldn't. Maybe special equipment like—I don't know, silver?—would just do more damage rather than being the only thing that could hurt them.

  I might have wanted to invest in silver weapons if we were going to keep venturing down here. I'd ask at the adventurer's guild. Surely they would know what hurt ghosts the most.

  The wraiths would drop wraith essence, which was neat. It was a really light semi-solid ectoplasm-like substance. I put it in vials that I placed in their own separate bag, like I did with everything else.

  Now that the barrage was over, I could fix my bag some. I drew a new smaller circle in pencil on another part of the bag. This one would reduce the weight of the objects in the bag by half.

  I would probably need to get to master proficiency to make a true infinity bag, but for now, this would help a ton. Now I could carry twice the materials in my bag.

  I made sure to grab nearly every crafting material I could find as we went by this time, since space wasn't a problem. I stayed away from weapons and armor, though. It would over encumber me too quickly.

  The new ability I got was called "Test." It allowed me to test my designs. With my 'design' ability, I could create schematics or plans for inventions or potions or whatever, and then with 'test', I could test to see if they would function as expected.

  The enemies had levels above their heads too, and health bars. We were at an area where every enemy was level 3. So Valda could consistently trounce them and leave them in piles on the floor. Especially with me supplying her with stamina potions when she needed them.

  We hadn't had to use a single health potion yet, but the night was still young. Or so I thought. A fog rolled in and out of the mist came glowing blue eyes. Draugr. Undead warriors with preserved corpses.

  Generally considered skilled and strong fighters. These seemed to be weaker ones, since they didn't have any armor, just weapons, and they were level 4. I would expect them to range from levels 5 to 8, so level 4 draugr were a bit of a surprise.

  That said, they probably were no slouches. Valda started having trouble with them after two, then three of them tried to fight her at once. Seeing she was in trouble, I jumped into the fray and took out their legs.

  "Run!" I said.

  "I won't argue with that!" she said.

  We ran down the long hallway, stopped to take another dark sight potion and a stamina potion, and then ran some more. Luckily, this time, we didn't run into anything on the way back.

  Once we were out of the dungeon, we made our way back to town. When we got into the shop, we were exhausted, which is why I immediately started brewing a potent poison, with the key ingredient being all the poisonous mushrooms I came across in the dungeon.

  It wasn't lethal. It just made you really sick and hallucinate. And it didn't take much. Coat a dart in it and poke someone, and they would be throwing up and talking to their ancestors for hours.

  After that, I made a bunch of the infinity bags that cut the weight of their contents in half, using a variety of different bag sizes. I realized if I nested bags inside bags, I could decrease the overall carry weight into a quarter or even an eighth of the original weight of the contents.

  I didn't want to get too carried away with it though. A lot of the bags I made were small and intended for quick access. Each one I made used up variable amounts of mana points depending on the size of the bag.

  My theory was while the size of the inside of the bag was infinite, the size of the opening of the bag was not. The larger the opening, the bigger the items that could fit inside. So the larger the opening, the more mana it took to enchant them.

  The small bags only took 20 mp, while the larger ones took 80. I drank a lot of the mana potions I had made for the dungeon trip to make all those bags. Magic cost mana. It wasn't complicated. Just tedious.

  I stopped making bags when I had enough for what I wanted to do. I got out my tinkering tools, tinkering material, a set of light leather armor, some copper wire, and a needle and thread. And then I started sewing.

  Stats:

  Strength: 5

  Dexterity: 4

  Constitution: 3

  Wisdom: 4

  Intelligence: 8

  Charisma: 2

  Resources:

  HP: 75 hit points

  MP: 160 mana points

  Stamina: 75 stamina points

  Proficiencies:

  Bartering: Apprentice (3)

  Appraisal: Apprentice (3)

  Repair: Apprentice (3)

  Alchemy: Expert (5)

  Blacksmithing: Journeyman (4)

  Enchanting: Apprentice (3)

  Tinkering: Apprentice (3)

  Artifice: Apprentice (3)

  (And More)(Far too many to fully list)(Will come up in the story as they become relevant)

  Abilities/Spells:

  Analyze: Ability to analyse people, objects, and creatures, and learn information about them, such as identification, classification, level, abilities, health, etc.

  Design: Create 3 and 2 dimensional designs, plans, and schematics in your mind and holographically in front of your eyes. Can only be seen by the user.

  Test: Ability to test designs, schematics, and plans to see if they function.