Blacksmith vs. the System

While Harold sent in the next candidate, I turned my attention to the tainted energy, split between four boxes. Even with the several layers of protection, they were still letting out some, which was dispersed by the dungeon gate with great speed, confirming that leaving the boxes alone to slowly evaporate was a valid strategy in small numbers.

Not exactly the greatest method, but a method nonetheless, which was better than doing nothing.

I cracked open one of the boxes, watching the tainted energy disperse, only to notice that the tainted energy leaving the box as a thin line, but still being pushed away. I closed the gap, and instead repeated it to leave in the form of smaller pieces, and watch them disperse.

Analyzing it like that gave me a good way to disperse the energy, but I wasn't sure if that was true. Yes, it didn't immediately summon a horde of monsters, but that might have been more about the fact that they had been throwing down boxes filled with tainted energy all day, keeping the mountain clean of lizards for the moment.

One match wouldn't have melted an igloo, but the same wouldn't be true for a full bonfire.

As for opening the boxes, I decided to leave it at least until the number of upgraded farmers had reached a certain point, maybe even after they had improved their competency somewhat. Handled well, they should be able to use Uncommon skills after the upgrade, and I had experienced just how effective a maxed-out uncommon skill could be.

I just needed to maximize their skills without doing the same for the guards, at least not until Harold managed to identify some trustworthy ones.

But, as I watched Harold handle the raffle to pick the next lucky five, I decided to do one more experiment. One skill that might give me a way to handle the tainted energy.

[Meditation of Decay (Mythic) - 100 [Controlled Flow, Superior Sensing, Purification]]

I distinctly remembered it pulling both the mana and the tainted energy when I activated it, unlike the ordinary meditation that had separated both.

Admittedly, I wasn't looking forward to that experiment, but I was in a bit of a pickle. With the night not too far away, keeping hundreds of boxes out to slowly evaporate was too risky. Unfortunately, delaying the class upgrades until morning was no less risky.

Initially, I had been using the mana from the dungeon to handle the class upgrades, but that was before realizing how dangerously low the mana reserves of the dungeon had gotten.

I sighed even as I let another glob of tainted energy from the box, but this time, I activated my meditation to draw it to me, ready to stop at any time.

My new meditation skill was certainly unique. Instead of a rotating sphere relying on the movement to somewhat separate and draw in the mana, it pulled the tainted energy to itself directly. There was a brief clash before the tainted energy had disappeared, devoured by the aura of decay conjured by the skill.

The process was too fast to truly understand what was going on, but one thing was clear. A tiny amount of mana, probably merely a point's worth, had just gone into the dungeon through our connection.

"Fascinating," I muttered, but then, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. Mythic-level skill was something even Maria lacked, and it clearly came with its own advantages. Too bad I couldn't even begin to understand how it worked.

However, as much as it rankled my curiosity, I had to admit that the fact it worked was enough. The mythic grade skill not only gave me a direction to handle the fire-natured tainted energy from the lizards, but turned that into mana to refresh the reserves of the dungeon.

However, the latter would only matter if I could apply that in scale, which was not a given.

I let one of the boxes open to let increasingly larger pieces of tainted energy out, and activated the skill once again. The larger spheres of tainted energy had been immediately pulled toward me, covered by the aura of decay provided by my skill.

Soon, I started to see the limits. First, the skill was only able to catch the tainted energy from about three claws at once, and properly breaking down the energy from a solo claw took about a second. Measuring the mana result was harder, but it felt like an ordinary claw gave about fifty points of energy when absorbed.

The results were middling. It meant I could facilitate the class upgrade of nine farmers every hour, and gain about just a hundred thousand points of mana in the process. The first part sounded good, but the second part was not as impressive as it first appeared.

That much mana was barely enough to forge two or three epic spears.

Once I realized the limits of the skill, I quickly set up a larger leveling room, with several containers that were buried underground to hold the tainted energy and channel back as necessary, intersected by helping the farmers level up.

It went smoothly. To my surprise, constantly running the meditation skill didn't exhaust me as I had anticipated, but that might have been about the fact that I followed the suggestion of the skills strictly, without making the slightest change.

That was an easy temptation to ignore. Blindly modifying Common Meditation had almost killed me. I wasn't ready to repeat the same adventure with a Mythic skill yet. Not when I doubted that I could survive the process.

Instead, I focused on helping the farmers class up until darkness fell. As a reward for our efforts, we had twenty Advanced Farmers, currently practicing their newly acquired common spear skill under Harold's guidance.

With some little extra assistance from the special weapons I had designed, giving a small edge for the improvement.

A small edge wasn't the limit of what I could provide them. I could have easily distributed composite weaponry designed to improve their skills, but I preferred that to stay a secret for some more time. A slight edge could easily be assumed as Harold's extraordinary competency as a teacher.

"Be ready, the night is upon us," I shouted as I watched the sun finally disappear at the horizon, ready to stay outside for a while to both test the monsters, and continue helping the farmers level up.

However, the moment the dungeon stopped working, I caught a strong dip in the dungeon's mana via my connection, which made me fearful before I realized it was being drained to bind the primal form of energy that would eventually turn into mana.

As I focused, I could feel the energy moving through the dungeon floors, each step modifying the energy somewhat, but the real transformation occurred on the fifth floor, where it had been reduced into its components.

The absorption speed soon hit a limit, which was likely either due to the capacity of the dungeon entrance, or the dungeon's ability to handle that much energy at once, but once again, discerning was difficult.

"How's the training going, Harold?" I asked.

"Going well, sir. Soon, we'll hit the limit of the Common skill, which should allow them to take the Uncommon variant."

"Good news, indeed," I said while focusing on the connection to check the amount of tainted energy in the containers, which was still enough to keep me occupied for an hour. "Make sure they reach at least twenty proficiency before joining the battle."

"Will be done, sir," he said.

Once that was done, I turned my attention to the outskirts of the mountain, where the lizards had suddenly started to gather in much greater numbers, the remaining foliage that they burned adding an intense brightness to the night.

The light allowed me to watch them. This time, they were not only the ordinary variants.

From a distance, I could see that they didn't have too much variance when compared to the insects. There were some ranged variants that just spewed fireballs from some range away, with an unknown upper range. Then, there were the flying variants, not to mention a few giant ones, large enough to be seen from afar.

Luckily, there were no burrowers at the moment, but that didn't prevent me from adding a metal floor for the plans of the encampment.

I decided to act when Harold gave me the signal that the training of the first batch had reached a satisfactory level.

"Be ready for the first wave," I said as I let one of the containers open, which triggered a small stampede as the monsters that were gathering at the edge of the mountain rushed up. It was dangerous, but ultimately nowhere near as dangerous as letting them gather into one big ball of death.

And, the extra material would be useful for building the encampments.

I raised my spear, ready to fight…

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