With incredible precision born of a double dexterity boost from his classes, and the strength boost of his Smith class, James struck true. His green iron hammer struck the top of the monster’s head as it was twisting to investigate his scent. Following through on the strike, there came a soft cracking sound from the neck as the head of the creature was forced into an unnatural angle, and a squeal as its head was forced into the ground.

  But the monster was not dead.

  James had failed to kill the monster in a single strike. As his green iron anvil was the same hardness as a normal iron anvil but lighter and therefore easier and more convenient to carry, his green iron hammer was also lighter than a hammer made of regular iron would have been. In a forge making and repairing tools, not such a problem; but in a fight, mass matters. Because the hammer was lighter, so was the strike, and because the strike was lighter, the monster took less damage.

  Squealing repeatedly, like a stuck pig, the monster started to thrash on the ground. James felt a rush of air as the monster’s forelegs swung around, off to his left. He straightened up to strike again. As he drew back, focused on the monster’s head moving awkwardly along the floor, he felt a gust of air on his face as the monster’s claws whooshed right in front of him. Without time to think about it, he tensed his muscles and struck down on the head of the monster again.

  This time, the monster’s head was flush with the ground, and the force of the strike flowed from the hammer into its skull, compressed on the other side by the hard tunnel floor. With a crunch, the skull shattered, driving the green iron hammer and fragments of bone into the monster’s brain, finally killing it. The monster’s body collapsed, twitching on the floor, as its squealing abruptly stopped.

  Adrenaline rushed through James’s body and he breathed heavily. Almost panting harder than he had ever done since arriving at the slave camp, he backed away from the corpse, bumping into the tunnel wall. This startled him, and he jumped slightly. He looked around, but saw nothing moving in the dim light other than the twitching corpse.

  James remembered his mother’s lessons on [Brawler] fighting from what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  If, by some miracle, you’re in a fight to the death and you’re winning, don’t let up. Just because they’re on the ground, just because they’ve stopped moving, doesn’t mean they’re actually dead. Keep whaling on them until you’re absolutely sure they’re dead, and then go on a bit further than that. Don’t fall for possum tricks!

  He lurched forward, now worried that he might have missed his chance. The monster’s twitching had him worried that maybe he had only stunned the beast, rather than killing it. Lining up his [Hammer Strike] again, he struck at the monster’s head.

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  With a crunch of bone and splat of brain matter, his strike carried through almost entirely to the floor. But the Smith did not let up. As though he was pounding a large and stubborn piece of iron in his forge, he continued striking until the head was totally unrecognizable.

  By this point the adrenaline was fading from his body, leaving him feeling worn out. Still breathing heavily, he collapsed onto his bottom-

  [Smith] Class has reached level 2.

  [Technique: Hammer Strike] has reached level 2.

  The Smith was distracted for a moment, but then shook his head as though shaking off the intrusive thoughts. There might be more monsters about. He stood back up and moved back towards the tunnel wall again, putting it to his back so that another one of those monsters could not sneak up on him.

  If only I could enchant, he thought, I could use the Glow enchantment I learned from that packet Meridox gave me. As he often did when he wished he could [Enchant], his hand rubbed at the magic draining bracer on his wri-

  The bracer was gone.

  That’s right, James realized with a soft gasp. The bracers had fallen off at some point. His magic was no longer blocked, and now he could-

  Er, still not [Enchant]. He didn’t have any materials or equipment for it.

  Depressingly, the now normal sense of futility brought James’ thoughts back to the present, and what he needed to do in this situation. For starters, he was in a not quite totally dark collapsed mine, which was a good thing actually because outside the mine was dire wolves and a wyvern. While he didn’t think the dire wolves would bother to dig out the rock slide that had buried the mine entrance to get to him, there was no telling what the wyvern would do.

  He took stock. There, on the ground, was the magic bag, thankfully untouched during the fighting of a minute ago. And next to that was his anvil. Inside the bag he had his tools, and whatever else Coin had had in there. Though, he wasn’t sure how to get it all out. There had been a moment of panic trying to retrieve his hammer. The mine was the same old mine, but… actually, it wasn’t. Clearly something had changed. Where had the monster come from? The mine tunnel was a shallow dead end, little more than an expansion of a small natural cave. And where was that dim light coming from? It had been growing brighter for some time before slowly settling at a dim glow in the distance, in the direction of where James had spent countless hours digging into the solid stone, trying to expand the tunnel. He knew it like the back of his hand: there shouldn’t have been any source of light in there beyond the sunlight from the mine entrance. Finally, there was the monster, which he was now sure was dead. It had stopped twitching, but what really gave him confidence was the knowledge that he had leveled up in his class. Class level ups came in one of two ways: either by fulfilling the role of the class, or by killing monsters. For a [Mage], their class would level up from successfully performing magic or killing monsters, either would work. For [Smith]s, they would level up from successfully crafting items or from killing monsters. Again, either would work, but what kind of idiot brainless fool of a [Smith] would put their life at risk hunting monsters trying to level up when they could just safely practice their craft in peace?

  James smiled softly, remembering the long rant Jared had gone on in the past when he explained how the [Smith] class gained experience.

  He shook his head again, shaking off his woolgathering. Focus. He skirted around the monster corpse and picked up the magic bag and put it on. It had straps like a backpack, which blessedly left his arms free. He picked up his anvil with his left hand and kept his hammer in his right, ready to strike if needed. He walked as carefully as he could along the tunnel floor, slowly moving towards what should be the dead end of the tunnel.

  Time to find out what was going on back there.