Blacksmith vs. the System
Chapter 98

"So, what do we do?" Maria asked a while later, playing with my backup sword, examining the sword I created based on the epic skill. Once we calmed down, Eleanor started meditating once more, while I helped Maria to catch up with the secrets I had been hiding.

"I still want to keep my abilities a secret as much as possible," I said. "We don't know how the world will react, and I don't want to test it before gaining enough power. I don't want to get experimented on or captured."

"I would have disagreed, but…" she said, letting her voice linger. She didn't say it, but what she was saying was clear. The fact that Thomas could pull such obvious attacks meant one of two things. Either he was relying on some kind of external support that meant he wasn't afraid of her family's response, or her family was implicitly supporting his actions. "Things will change once I break through the barrier."

"And, I'll do my best to help that," I responded, and she smiled gratefully. "Whatever you need."

"I need you to supply your guild members with actual weapons, and not just arrows. Can you do that?" she asked.

"Easily, but we need to be careful about it," I said.

"Why?"

"With the guilds retreating, your enemies believe that they have succeeded, at least partially. It's to our benefit to let them maintain that belief. Instead, they will focus on blocking our acquisition of crossbows and intercept the delivery of the arrowheads."

"And, since we can finally kill the bosses, we can catch any spy trying to infiltrate easily. Eleanor could defend the dungeon, while I stay in the town" she added, then looked at my crusher. "Especially if it's not that hard to replicate your machines. If we can generate enough mana to let me show a fraction of my true capability.."

"And, how much mana do you require to fight near peak efficiency, thousands of points?" I asked.

She chuckled. "Oh, not even in that ballpark. But, it's more complicated than just having mana. The distribution, the density, the nature of mana, the placement of other mages, all of them play a role," she said.

I bit the question that I wanted to ask down. But, this time, it wasn't about keeping it a secret, but more practical concerns. That question would release a thousand more, and the situation was still too complicated to indulge that way. "Yes, I can replicate them. It's not that hard," I said. "That way, storing the shells would have two functions."

"We need to be careful. Releasing too much of the Dungeon Pollution outside can have dangerous effects on the wildlife. It's a method that's only fit for emergencies before it gets too much."

"And, there's no such risk in the dungeon, right?" I asked.

"Not unless one got truly excessive. Dungeons can absorb it back."

Once again, I did my best to suppress the questions I wanted to ask. "Good. Then, as long as you think it's alright, we can move a large group of Farmers to the second and third floors permanently and start hunting on a truly large scale."

"But, what about keeping it a secret?"

"We can forbid them from going out," I said, and immediately, she looked angry.

"I don't condone imprisoning them," she said.

I shook my head, but I smiled. It was good to see her caring about their status. Admittedly, not imprisoning hundreds of people in a forced labor camp was the bare minimum, but sometimes, one had to grade on a curve. From what I had seen, there were not many in the ranks of power who wouldn't make that decision.

And, to be fair, I couldn't even blame that on the System. We had been the same even before the System, with countless examples both ancient and modern.

"Don't worry. We're not going to imprison them. We're going to recruit from a team of volunteers only, and explain to them that they will be on a six-month dangerous mission that they are forbidden to contact with anyone else, but with equally high rewards. Levels, Rare skills, and helping them to access better classes. Throw in a nice bonus of fifty gold at the end of the enlistment, and they will accept. It'll be like a Navy mission. And, we can claim that we sent them to set another outpost in the wilderness."

"Fine, it's a good idea. But, what about supplying them with food."

"That's even easier. It's an army of Farmers. Setting up a garden inside the dungeon is the easiest thing to do."

She nodded, and we spent the next ten minutes discussing the details, focusing on information security over anything else, including how to store collected shells safely in the dungeon. Eleanor listened to the discussion, but she let me take the lead.

At first, it surprised me … only when I noticed her smirk, I realized what she was doing. She was simply unloading the job she hated the most to me, leaving me responsible for the logistic details, more than happy to have more time to focus on her skills.

Especially with the prospect of gaining the ability to use mana.

"Too bad that there's no way to close doors for the dungeon," I said.

"Actually there is," Maria said. I looked at her expectantly. "Unfortunately, I don't know how," she admitted. "It's too big of a secret even for our family. It took a fortune for us to hire someone capable of doing that for the family dungeon, and even then, we had to close the dungeon for a week for them to do whatever they needed to accomplish to close the excess gates."

"Good to know," I said. Hiring such a service was out of the question both in terms of price, and in terms of trying to keep secrets, but knowing that such a thing was possible was already a benefit.

In science, sometimes, knowing if something is possible is the biggest part of the discovery. Not that dungeon landscaping was anywhere near the list of priorities, but knowing more was always welcome.

"I think that's enough about logistics," Maria finally cut it off. "You clearly know what you're doing. Let's talk about the important things," she said, her gaze turning to Eleanor.

I would have called it selfishness, but my most recent experience in combat refreshed my understanding of how important high-ranking combatants were. With her new sword alone, Eleanor could have dealt with everything but the weird transformed monsters. And, adding mana to her repertoire would increase her capabilities significantly.

Combined, she alone represented a bigger threat than all seven thousand Farmers even with their upgraded classes, so I couldn't claim her sense of priorities was inaccurate.

"Yes, how to improve her skill to the mana variant," I completed.

"Yes, let's discuss," she said, letting me take the point. I nodded in appreciation. Things would have been far more difficult if she insisted on leading the discussion. "We can say that there are three critical variables for my case. An act that triggered the skill, Health acting as a medium to let the skill register the action as my achievement, and a way for me to control the process."

"The first two parts are obvious," she said. "But the third…"

"Yeah, it was Analyze, a perk of my Repair Skill back then, that allowed me to trigger it. I don't know if there's a similar perk available for her skills."

"Is that why she has to act like a vase —" Maria commented.

"Hey, I'm not deaf," Eleanor interjected.

"Yes, but you're supposed to ignore the external factors. That includes the juvenile, poorly thought-out insults."

"Hey!" This time, it was Maria who exclaimed while Eleanor chuckled.

"To continue. Yes, that is indeed the reason. I don't know if it'll actually work, but it's a pretty harmless experiment."

"Of course. Only an idiot experiments on herself if there's a risk," Maria commented. I couldn't help but blush when she said that, which made her eyes tighten. "Is there anything you want to tell me?" she asked, her tone sharp.

"Well, no," I said. Her eyes tightened. "I don't want to say it," I added. Maria said nothing while I avoided her gaze. I felt less like a capable genius, and more like a naughty child. Admittedly, it was less about the sense of authority she radiated, and more about the enormity of my own mistake.

There was no good way to admit that I almost killed myself during a poorly designed experiment — if it even deserved to be called that. "I might have … rotated my Meditation skill in reverse." Her eyes widened. "When it was still below twenty-five."

She gasped. "How the hell are you still alive," she gasped.

"I have to admit, double vitality did most of the work of keeping me alive," I said, which didn't help Maria's sharp gaze. "But, I learned my lesson. I promise," I added.

"We will see," she said, her tone suggesting that she had just appointed herself as the safety officer for my experiments. I had to admit, it was not a bad existence. To be honest, it was a required position.

"Let me show what I gathered until this moment," I said even as I pulled the clay tablets that I used to take notes.

"What is this?" she asked, confused.

"They are the notes I took on the interaction between her vitality attacks and mana," I said. "I'm trying to create a sword that will overlap the mana component with her vitality attack, combining it into one devastating hit that would hopefully trigger her skill to —"

"No, I don't mean what's the function. I mean, what is it?"

"Oh, that," I said. "It's a mathematical model of the interaction between the Health and mana components, but it's an ongoing process. Unfortunately, without any literature, I was able to access, I had to invent some new symbols, and most of the models are pretty esoteric."

"And, this actually works?" she asked.

"Depends," I said.

"Depends on what?" she asked. "It either works, or it doesn't, right?"

"Not exactly. There are many functions for mathematical models. Accurately recording the available observation is one of them, predicting future behavior is another," I explained. It was quite a bit of simplification, ignoring several use cases, but I had to stay practical. "It works well enough to record what I can see, but actually predicting the behavior of alternate cases requires some work."

"What's the benefit of it?" she asked.

"How about sharing exactly what I can detect with my Advanced Observe Perk whenever Eleanor uses an attack, be it Health or mana?"

She paused for a moment, her eyes widening. "Teach me," she said, her tone conveying her enthusiasm.

"With pleasure," I said and started explaining to her every symbol I had used, regardless of whether I had invented it or not, as it was not fair to expect her to know esoteric symbols I dug out from areas like functional analysis and information theory.

A detailed primer class was in order…