his leg was a mangled mess, and he didn’t need to look to know this would need a potion. Looking down at his leg Lloyd almost threw up at the sight, all that was left below the knee was half a shattered bone and a curtain of shredded flesh. Lloyd gingerly turned over and pulled his second last health potion out from his satchel, bringing it to his lips he braced himself for the pain to come.

  No amount of preparation was able to ready him for the torment that followed. The pain he felt was near indescribable; it was all he could manage not to burst into tears. On the physical side things weren’t much better, the shredded flesh was just falling off, and nothing was regrowing. Before he knew it, he saw the broken remnants of his shin fall out of their socket and onto the floor.

  Lloyd keeled over and started retching, he wasn’t normally a squeamish person but seeing your flesh rot off your body was enough to make anyone feel nauseous. All the while Lloyds mind was assaulted by the horrendous pain of the health potion, after a few seconds Lloyd was left a trembling mess.

  After the effects of the potion wore off, Lloyd sat up straight and looked down at his leg. Or what was left of it. At the base of his shin was now a stump, a rounded end of smooth skin on the end of his femur. The fact that even the potion couldn’t regrow his leg caused Lloyd to despair a bit. Would he be an amputee for the rest of his life? Could he ask the system to regrow it for him? Who knows, maybe it was impossible and he was stuck like this.

  A popup in front of him brought Lloyd back to his senses. Who was he kidding, magic was now real he would definitely be able to heal this eventually. But more importantly, what had he ran into?

  Dungeon – Miscus Guildhall

  Maximum party size – (5)

  Enter?

  For the first time since he woke up Lloyd properly took in his surroundings. He wasn’t sitting in a pile of splinter wood like he should be, but rather in a room with walls made of rough anthracite grey stone. Looking at the prompt, Lloyd considered his options. He had no idea what this guildhall was, but he was certain that if he declined, he would be sent back to the village. Since declining was asking to be turned into a fine red mist, he really saw no way forward except entering.

  Taking a deep breath, Lloyd accepted the prompt. His vision flashed and he was suddenly falling toward the floor, he landed on red terracotta bricks with his arms in front of his face. Pushing himself onto his remaining leg, Lloyd looked around the building he’d been transported to.

  He was in a massive room with a floor covered in wooden workbenches, a huge assortment of tools, and a forge at the opposite end to him. The walls were red brick stretching up into the dark wooden rafters, cluttered with chains and glowing yellow crystals. Off to the sides were two more rooms whose interiors he couldn’t make out from his current position.

  Lloyd started hopping over, using the benches for balance while he took in the atmosphere of the room. It was like a mix between a school room for a tech subject and a wizard’s room from a story book. Having hobbled his way across the room Lloyd leaned into the first of the two rooms and was pleasantly surprised.

  In the doorway to the right, was a small bedroom with its brick walls painted an olive green. In the centre of the room was a large bed, while the walls were covered with shelves full of dusty tomes and odd artifacts. On the floor were an assortment of rugs, some made of red lambskins, while others were just beast pelts. Overall, it was a very cosy aesthetic, especially considering he’d slept on the ground or in caves the last few days.

  Seeing no reason to rest just yet, Lloyd pushed off the doorway and started hopping toward the left wing of the building. Reaching the other side of the room, the hallway actually had two doors instead of one. One of these rooms seemed to emanate a hostile cold, this room he decided to visit last.

  Inside the first room was a large training room, complete with practice dummies and an archery range. Unlike the other two rooms he’d visited so far, this room even had natural light from above the roof of leaves though he suspected it to be artificial. Nevertheless, it was nice to have even imitation sunlight if it meant he would have a more comfortable stay while in the guildhall.

  Going over to the last room Lloyd grabbed onto the door, but found the cold was too oppressive in his current state so decided to leave it for later. Going back over to the central hall Lloyd sat down next to the forge and shot an electrify into the coals to start the fire. The flames roared to life burning red as they flicked across the brickwork.

  Based on the feeling he’d gotten from the cold room Lloyd felt that while he was all good on the outside, he still had some internal damage from the giant miscus. Since he only had one health potion left, Lloyd decided it would be best if he just circulated mana to heal instead.

  The feeling of his body healing itself, while painful, was comforting as he knew it was the only reason he’d lived this long. At the same time, it gave him something to think about. While he could easily heal small flesh wounds, how would he heal more serious injuries in the future? The giant miscus was certainly extremely powerful, but there was no way he wouldn’t encounter stronger foes during his remaining decade on this island.

  With his internal injuries healed, Lloyd hopped over to a nearby stool so he could test his new idea. He had previously discovered that if he infused his will or hope into his mana, he could affect some of its properties. The point at which he’d realised this was when he used a sharp plasma bolt to cut out of the giant spider’s net, but it was likely also the way he could heal himself.

  Knowing this Lloyd decided to try and manufacture his own makeshift health potions by infusing his will into mana he would condense into one of the glass jars. Putting this idea to the test, Lloyd grabbed out the empty jar and stated directing his mana into it. As he did this, he did his best to infuse his belief that it would heal him into the mana, and as he did so he saw the first signs of success.

  The bottle of mana while not vibrant like the ones the system gave him, had still gained a slight reddish tint. By the time he had infused all his mana into the bottle it was almost full and had a distinct colouration. Once more, low on mana, Lloyd looked at the potion more carefully, on the inside he could see small patches of crystalised or viscus mana floating around like clotted milk.

  The liquid was extremely unappetising, and instead of smelling of fruit like his gift from the system, this stuff smelled like a mix of blood and vomit. Foregoing a chance to complete his experiment, Lloyd tipped the liquid into the fire based on the simple fact that he wasn’t the type to walk into a lab and sip from the glowing green beaker in hopes it would cure his ailments.

  Now all out of mana, and too weak to explore the final wing of the building Lloyd felt pretty miserable. He had failed to infuse his will into the liquid mana properly, and he was now an amputee for the foreseeable future. Trying to take his mind off of the sudden left turn things had taken, Lloyd decided to make himself at home. Taking out a slab of ‘fresh’ lizard meat the size of a brisket, from his bag Lloyd began to question how it had fit inside.

  The bag tied to his waste was the size of a backpack yet seemed to hold as much as a small wheelbarrow and he hadn’t bothered to question it. Perhaps this strange tech could be incorporated in specialist tasks at some point, he had no idea what they could be used for beyond storage, but someone would think of something.

  Disregarding the system’s ignorance of the laws of physics, Lloyd dropped the slab of meat onto the bench. Pushing back the red hot coals with a metal rod from the side of the forge, Lloyd lay down the meat to cook, while he attended to another matter.

  Hopping back from the bedroom, Lloyd dropped an armful of dusty leather tomes onto the work bench. While he was out of commission it seemed best to take advantage of all the guildhalls utilities. The books were labelled with titles all relating to one of two subjects. Common multiversal knowledge, or the crafting methods of the miscus.

  The first book he began reading was called ‘An Introduction to F-grade Combat’ this book seemed to be a basic guide on how he could fight better. It also mentioned the ‘F-grade’, the thing mentioned next to his class and level, previously he’d never really gave it much thought. But perhaps this book could give him some insights into what it was.

  Lloyd gripped his forehead in annoyance, he had spent three hours taking in almost a thousand pages -this speed thanks to his increased intelligence- going into deep detail about f-grade combat. The book was great at what it did, it was exactly what it said on the cover. A highly detailed explanation of how one should go about fights while at a low level, there was just one problem.

  It was almost exclusively geared towards party combat.

  The book detailed things like what kind of attacks were useful against certain types of enemies, and what kind of stat allocation was best for certain classes. For example it said that a warrior should remember to invest heavily in toughness if they are a heavy variant, or endurance if they were light or medium variants.

  Or more useful for him, how a mage generally shouldn’t invest too heavily in strength but rather stick to intelligence, wisdom and willpower. It also mentioned how a mage should stick to the middle of a group, hiding behind the warriors with the healer, while the archer could hide at the back. The problem was he didn’t have the luxury of a party. Lloyd had to work entirely alone, and that generally meant that besides an opening salvo he wouldn’t get the chance to fight at a distance, especially when his opponent was faster than him.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Because of his unfortunate situation, Lloyd really had no option but to invest in his physical stats, otherwise he would get turned into mince meat if any enemy entered melee range of him. For example, the condition his leg was in could have been completely different if he had a different stat allocation. His toughness was exponentially lower than his intelligence, being almost four times worse.

  If the roles had been reversed and he had an incredibly high toughness, then chances were he would probably still have his leg. Ultimately having incredible toughness wasn’t something suitable for him, he had chosen to be a mage, not a warrior and that choice was set in stone. He hadn’t chosen to be a hulking tank like a heavy warrior, but that didn’t mean he should have to be a marshmallow defensively. It just meant he had to diverge from the typical path of the mage archetype.

  Luckily the book had shared more knowledge in those thousand or so pages than just how a party should be organised. It contained hundreds of pages detailing different fighting styles and how to correctly utilise them, unfortunately many of these stances were also designed for party combat but there were still many different manoeuvres that would be useful.

  The stances went over how each different weapon could be used, different grips, where to target, and many other useful tidbits. Lloyd could have just started practicing the different spear methods, but his current weapon wasn’t what he wanted to keep fighting with. While his ironwood spear was still hard enough to block out most attacks, it was struggling to pierce the hide of his enemies as his opponents rose in power.

  Just a few hours ago when he was rushing across the branches towards the plaza, Lloyd had had to fight off massive groups of miscus. The main cause of death, however, was not slicing, but rather his opponents being flung into the forest below, or simply blunt force trauma. At first, he had been able to easily cut through his enemies, but just a few days later he was having his weapon outclassed.

  Long story short, Lloyd’s weapon was going to need a bladed weapon if he wanted to keep fighting high level opponents. While he could keep going with his spear, it wasn’t what he wanted to keep fighting with. His style of fighting only really worked if his weapon could be swung, now he certainly could use his spear for slashing, that just wasn’t what they were designed for.

  Looking through the book and analysing all the different weapons he began to eliminate them one by one. Swords had so many different stances and styles that he would never be able to learn them properly. Daggers, short swords, hatchets, and any other short weapons were out of the question as being a mage, close combat was the last thing he wanted. Axes, hammers, great swords, and other large weapons wouldn’t work as he wouldn’t have the strength to swing such hefty things properly.

  The last category was strange to think about, they were too heavy? But how? He was basically superhuman with his new stats. Despite what Lloyd would’ve thought the book had said that these weapons wouldn’t work well for non-warrior classes. The reason for this was that the stronger a weapon became, the more energy it would hold, this would then make the weapons weight scale faster than his strength. This meant these large weapons were only viable for heavy, -and possibly medium- warriors on account of strength requirements.

  While this wasn’t the worst news, since Lloyd didn’t want to swing around giant brutish weapons like a Viking, it did eliminate one of his first choices. The axe wasn’t necessarily something he knew how to use properly, but it was the one he had the most experience with. Lloyd had never had proper training in axe fighting, but he had a good idea of how to swing them on account of all the time he had spent fucking around while cutting wood.

  The fact that any of the axes he used would have to be either unsuitable for combat or too weak for his level was annoying, but Lloyd could see a compromise. An axe variant that was both, relatively light weight, and large enough to avoid getting bullied by opponents with better physical stats. The halberd.

  The halberd was everything he wanted, it was a bladed weapon, it could still be used for thrusting attacks, and it was a long weapon, so his low toughness didn’t matter as much. Now, all Lloyd had to do was find something to make his halberd with. Looking around the workshop Lloyd saw all kinds of things, tools for any craft he could possibly want to do, mounds of parchment and pencils to sketch prototypes, and all the space he would ever need. Yet no materials.

  This was very strange as the guild hall had provided everything else so far, information on how to do the crafting, tools to execute these crafts, and an area to test his creations. And he had looked everywhere and found nothing. Well, almost everywhere.

  Feeling that he had recovered enough that he wouldn’t be harmed by the environment anymore, Lloyd started hopping over to the room -almost falling when he forgot he couldn’t walk normally anymore-. Arriving in the hallway Lloyd stood solemnly in front of the black steel door. This was his only chance at taking advantage of this place, and he wasn’t sure if it was the systems imparted knowledge, or some other factor. But he felt that leaving would lock him out for good, leaving him to the mercy of the miscus. Something that wouldn’t fare well for him.

  Pulling the door open, Lloyd’s heart throbbed with anticipation. Based on the rest of the facility, Lloyd had been expecting a room full of shelves packed with different crafting materials. What he saw instead was an icy blue room with scarcely anything besides some hammers and knives leant against the wall, surrounded by a forest of copper gears and pullies.

  What was this? Where were the materials? The system had given him not a storage facility, but a fancy boiler room, and for what? There wasn’t even any technology in the building. This room was useless! He was going to die now. Die because the system couldn’t be bothered to give him a few sheets of steel to give him a fighting chance.

  Lloyd was furious, yet he could only let out his anger through despair, he smashed his hands against the wall, his fists clattering uselessly against the pipes. Lloyd blocked out all outside information as he released his pent up rage against the wall, not even noticing when a click echoed out from the metallic jungle on the wall. What did get his attention was the grinding of gears and the valves screaming as they released steam into the air.

  Lloyd’s mind was ablaze, had he done something wrong? Was something broken in his careless rage? Was the system punishing him? He bolted for the door, utilizing all the strength in his arsenal to pull the door open, only to see a dead bolt had been slid across the latch, and it appeared to be welded shut. How had that happened? Surely the room wasn’t designed specifically to trap and kill him.

  Desperately trying to break through the bars to his prison Lloyd ran across the room and began channelling his hopes at escape. A plasma bolt stronger than any he had summoned before appeared in his hand and rocketed toward the deadbolt. Lloyd ran over eagerly, ready to escape. Only to see the door with not so much as a mark on it.

  Despair once more returned to him, there was nothing he could do. The rumbling sounds of machinery around him invaded his mind, emanating an aura of helplessness. Then they stopped, replaced by the rattling of chains. Lloyd looked up seeing what he hadn’t noticed before. The room had no roof or at least looked like it. The walls coated in copper machinery stretching endlessly into the sky, all surrounding a set of chains hanging limply in the centre of the room.

  These chains ran into small holes in the floor, while much like the pipes they stretched into the misty depths above. They ran unimpeded for hundreds of metres, with only a small irregularity barely visibly from so far away. But it was moving. Slowly the mysterious object the chains lowered down grew closer.

  The anticipation was eating at Lloyds mind, this along with the cold dark room he was in made Lloyd paranoid something bad was about to happen. But nothing did, he just sat in the gloom as the object slowly descended. When it was only a few metres from the ground, Lloyd looked up in confusion, it just looked like a perfect square five meters across.

  It was only when the object finally touched down on the ground did Lloyd finally understand what was happening. The system was willing to give him free resources, but it wouldn’t prepare them for him. He had to do that himself.

  Lying on the wooden tray was a dead beast unlike anything alive on earth, the beast was the size of a truck with giant forearms connected to fists the size of a grown man. Its back was segmented into large plates like a giant armadillo, and it had a long tail with a massive bony end like an ankylosaurus. All of this accompanied the fact that the creature’s whole body was covered in metallic black, rocklike growths.

  Analysing the situation, Lloyd calmed down finally seeing things clearly. The noise coming from all the pipes and cogs was all just a complicated system to start the pully holding the beast. Another detail that fell into place was the cold that emanated from the room, it was likely in place to preserve the carcasses until they could be harvested for valuables.

  The deadbolt on the door he had no explanation for, he could only assume it was to insulate the machine or something similar, but he couldn’t be sure. The knives, hammers and various other tools he’d seen when he first walked in were simply for skinning and removing the useful parts of the beasts he was given.

  Going closer to the carcass, Lloyd confirmed it was dead with a few prods of his spear before examining his new batch of resources more closely. The metallic growths he had seen noticed initially seemed to be natural armour, like that of the deep sea snails that grew pyrite on their bodies. This would’ve made the creature a fearsome opponent, especially seeing it had several offensive options in its giant forearms and massive tail club.

  The beast had a plethora of elements useful for crafting, from its durable backplates to its bony tail club, or even the small metal rocks that could be melted down for forging. Lloyd almost had to many options to choose from, but he ended up deciding to only grab the most immediately useful parts for now.

  Lloyd grabbed a large cleaver like knife from the wall and approached the fallen beast. To start with, he walked over to the beast’s tail and started hacking off the bony club on the end. He dug in the knife cutting haphazardly through the muscle dense fibres of the beast’s tail, after a solid minute of struggle Lloyd finally detached the club from the main body. This would be a prime crafting material for making a blade as it was almost solid bone that seemed to have metallic properties.

  Next Lloyd dug into the creatures back, tearing off the fist sized clumps of onyx black metal. After digging of a small pile of the metallic osteoderms, Lloyd started breaking off some sharp metal spines running along the ridge of its back. Happy with his haul, Lloyd started carrying his new materials back to the workshop Lloyd was surprised to find the door was still bolted shut.

  He had assumed that the door would have opened again when the machinery paused, but clearly there was more to it than that. This time Lloyd didn’t panic, the building hadn’t actively done anything to hurt him so far, he’d just been acting like the system was a hammer and he was a nail. This was probably because he’d gotten used to everything being out to get him over the past few days, however this was just because he was in a forest full of aggressive wild animals, they were now an accurate depiction of the system.

  Retracing his steps to where he was when the machine had turned on, Lloyd saw some details he hadn’t seen before. On the wall where he’d been slamming his hands earlier were a series of symbols, each corresponding to something that he’d seen the machine do, and a few extras. Now more understanding of what was going on, Lloyd simply pressed against the brick holding the symbol of a door and he heard a scraping noise as the dead bolt slid across.

  Lloyd breathed out in relief seeing that this wasn’t some elaborate trap and pushed the door open breathing in the warmth from the rest of building. Lloyd dropped all the materials he’d gotten from the metallic beast onto the table as he assessed what the different parts would be best used as.

  While Lloyd had many different things that he needed to make or upgrade, there was one thing in particular that was important above all else. He needed to make a prosthetic leg. While Lloyd could easily move around the building by hopping on one leg, doing anything more complicated than that was incredibly awkward. If he tried to fight something like this, he wouldn’t stand a chance no matter how strong he was.

  The best option Lloyd could think of for a prosthetic leg would be a simple pirates peg leg as anything more would be too complicated for him. With this in mind Lloyd got out another book called ‘the spiritual smith’, this book was supposedly a beginners guide to post system blacksmithing, hopefully this book could provide more useful insights than the previous.