intricate details were carved into the leather, runes and inscriptions so minute a hawk would struggle to see them. All of this coalesced around a pair of simple yet complex runes giving them meaning and empowering the durable leather they were set upon.

  Lloyd spun his bracers around on the table, inspecting his craftsmanship. His newest skill had indeed been a good choice, the detail he’d been able to go into with his inscriptions was far superior to when he used the chisel. His cuts could be over twice as fine and he could more easily control where the cuts were going too.

  The skill worked by having him hold his hand above the area where he wanted to carve the patterns, then he would begin channelling the skill. Once the skill was activated, an extremely thin and precise blade would appear beneath his palm, this blade could be controlled to move wherever he desired –so long as his hand remained close by to supply it with mana–, and could cut into the leather unimpeded despite its durability.

  Energetic inscriptions debut came in the form of the bracers he had just finished inscribing, the runes of strength, lightning, and deflection had never had such a palpable power to them. The finer inscriptions of his bracers were definitely stronger than those of the chestplate, but the difference wasn’t enough for him to bother remaking it.

  The bracers had turned out very well, sturdy yet flexible and perfect for blocking powerful strikes. A slash of a knife gave his hand a coating of blood, dripping onto the floor as he pressed his palm against the leather to claim the bracers. As he enacted the soul binding process, Lloyd watched as the inscription paths were illuminated with a blue glow.

  As with every soul binding he had done so far, the luminous inscriptions exuded a lingering trace of the lightning affinity. Despite reading through every book relating to runes, inscriptions, and the soul, Lloyd was still unable to explain why his runes emanated this kind of energy.

  He had once thought that it was strange that the armour only released the aura of one of the runes incorporated into it and not all of them, and it was weird. He had discovered that if you managed to inscribe good enough runes, then sometimes the armour would release the different runes energy signatures. But never one.

  For all he had tried, this questions answer had eluded him no matter how hard he searched. Perhaps the system had purposefully removed that information from this library, forcing him to discover it himself. Hopefully it was a good thing, as it would suck major ass if his armour electrocuted him mid battle or some shit, especially since the feeling was getting stronger.

  He had considered that perhaps it was because his chestplate had ‘stormy’ in the name, but that was quickly proven wrong since his other armour pieces had no such thing in their names yet they still emitted this aura. As such the reason remained a mystery.

  He would just have to hope that he would find some patterns while he finished off his armour set. This came faster than he had expected, with the next thing on his chopping block being some greaves.

  While last time he had done this he had only made one –on account of him only having one leg– but Lloyd felt it was best to make two. He had a feeling that if he only made the one then the system might deem it incomplete and not give him any experience.

  With this in mind Lloyd got to work, cutting the leather to shape and putting it together. Within a few hour Lloyd had another piece of his armour, the greaves were sturdy and stiff not needing to bend freely like the chestplate. Even untouched, they seemed very strong, able to block nearly any hit thrown at his shins.

  The mana blade floating in front of his palm glowed with destructive energy as it effortlessly destroyed the leather, seemingly disintegrating anything it touched. the tiny inscriptions formed a circuitous tapestry around the runes of speed, durability, and lightning.

  As much as he knew it was coming, Lloyd couldn’t help but question the inexplicable lightning filled glow brought on by the soul binding process. All of this did bring on one question that Lloyd planned to find the answer to. Was it even the runes?

  For all he knew the runes had nothing to do with the lightning, and it was something else entirely, maybe it was just his class, and he would have seen flames if he were a fire mage, or perhaps not. Whatever the case, Lloyd was going to enact this experiment.

  Putting together all the materials for his boots, Lloyd couldn’t take his mind off of this question, he had no idea if it meant anything or if it mattered in any way, but he couldn’t get it off his mind.

  Even when he finished creating his boots, Lloyd felt his mind wandering to this question. He laced the intricate inscriptions across the soles of his boots, incorporating the runes of strength and agility. For the first time, Lloyd had excluded the rune of lightning, a purposeful bid to test if it was the rune causing the weird glow whenever he Soulbound something.

  He slammed his bloody palm onto the boots, staining them with dense and deliberate red handprints. Lloyd wasn’t sure how to feel when he saw the glow appear, at this point it was kind of expected, but at the same time it felt wrong.

  The appearance of the glow on this piece of armour confirmed that it was not in fact the lightning rune. The fact that even without a rune of lightning the chaotic energy had still appeared had only left him with more questions than answers. If not the rune, then what was causing it?

  Now Lloyd was left clueless, he had been more or less certain that it was the rune causing this but with that proved wrong he felt hopeless. He really would have to escape this piece of shit tutorial if he wanted to find out.

  Pushing down his indignation, Lloyd inspected his armour to see what he had managed to make so far.

  Stormy leather chestplate (Common)

  A sturdy leather chestplate created by a burgeoning craftsman, due to the runic infusions this armour piece has received the wearer will receive extra protection against lightning and piercing attacks.

  (Enchantments, self repair, Soulbound)

  Bracers of the brute (Common)

  A pair of durable leather bracers infused with the power of increased strength; this combined with the rune of lighting serves to deliver a lightning fast array of punches. These bracers are the perfect fit for any pugilist, empowering their punches and blocking any retaliation. The path of a brute may be a simple one, but not a bad one, go above and beyond, cutting down any who stand in your way.

  (Enchantments, Thunderstrike, self repair, Soulbound)

  Greaves of the traveller (Common)

  Strong leather greaves imbued with the power of speed, gifting the user with light steps and increased mobility. Despite the apparent lightness, the strength of these greaves is not to be underestimated, created from a powerful beast by a burgeoning craftsman these greaves are incredibly durable.

  (Enchantments, self repair, Soulbound)

  Agile adventurer’s boots (Common)

  The dexterity and swiftness of an adventurer have been magically embodied within these boots, increasing your maximum speed when worn. The power imbued by the craftsman who made these boots lingers in the form of speed, and durability, able to block near any F-Grade strike to a certain extent.

  (Enchantments, swift step, self repair, Soulbound)

  Lloyd was impressed that his armour had turned out this well, everything had took on the power of the inscriptions just how he’d planned. Except one.

  The bracers of the brute, were not what Lloyd had wanted, he had chosen strength to help with swinging his weapon, and lightning to complement his class. It appeared that the item had emphasised the strength part and reduced the lightning to its speed qualities. This resulted in an item more fit for pugilists, shit it even said so in the item description.

  While it might seem best to dispose of these and try again, but there was one factor stopping him from doing this. The unique enchantment, this was the first armour piece he’d created with enchantments other than self repair, and Soulbound. It was also interesting to see that despite the armour being best suited for pugilism, the enchantment still related to lightning, and his mage class.

  Thunderstrike was an interesting name, as it would often be associated with a lightning bolt falling, but Lloyd was certain that wasn’t the effect the enchantment would have. Lloyd felt it pertinent to find out, as if it was useless to him then he would need to make new bracers. He needed to find out what the skill did, and he only knew one way to do it.

  Lloyd opened the door to the training room with excitement written all over his face. The enchantment seemed to be an active one, as just wearing the bracers had no immediate effect. Before using the ability, Lloyd prepared himself so that he wouldn’t hurt himself like with plasma bolt in the cave.

  While he already had an idea of what the enchantment, he was still excited to see it in action. Upon activation, Lloyd suddenly felt a huge influx of mana enter his arm, the amount quickly grew to massive quantities, and if he didn’t do something soon then he was going to lose an arm.

  Not wanting to need his pegleg, and a hook hand, Lloyd did the only thing he could think of and swung his fist full force toward one of the target dummies. When fist collided with target, the mountains of mana in his arm were transferred in the form of kinetic energy.

  A violent explosion of energy and lightning rocked the building, reducing the dummy to smouldering ash on the ground. Lloyd fist burned with the remaining energy, not able to fully contain the power within the strike.

  This was beyond expectations, he had assumed it would speed up his punches for a second or something, but allowing him to unleash a strike like that was insane. There was just one downside, he felt a trickle of information being injected into his head, telling him it would be 24 hours before he could use it again.

  The long cooldown the skill had decreased its usefulness by a large margin, but it was still a great option for a last stand hail Mary situation. What was even better, was that it didn’t have to be used only for punching, it did flood his forearm with energy, but it could still be expelled in other ways.

  Lloyd felt that with a few more skill uses he might actually be able to incorporate it into a strike with his weapon. Once he figured out how, he could deliver some truly devastating blows, flooding his enemies with powerful energies that would almost instantly cripple most opponents.

  It still would still carry the long ass cooldown period, but it would be better, and chances were he wouldn’t need to unleash a strike like that more than once a day anyway. If he could manage to figure out how to do this, then Lloyds offensive capabilities would skyrocket.

  This offensive possibility was brought Lloyd to the next step of his process. Right after he reaped the benefits of his second profession skill.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  [Advanced carving (Common) – the act of carving is more complicated than it seems, learn the art of harvesting raw materials from beast carcasses. Practice makes perfect, but practice is all for naught if you don’t know what you’re doing.

  [Bestial weaponry (Common)] – when fighting a beast with a weapon made from a creature of the same species all of your attacks will do more damage. Your weapons will hit harder, cut deeper, and penetrate further into the hide of your enemies, taking them down with the result of their kins folly.

  [String saw (Common)] – when working sturdy materials cutting through them is nearly always part of the process, summon a deceptively sharp blade to cut through myriad materials with ease.

  Lloyd was somewhat disappointed with his second skill selection, he had put in so much work and come so far, yet after all he’d done he still only had three skills to pick from. It felt insulting that even after crafting armour this good the system still considered him a novice, not worthy of the full five, or even just four skill choices.

  Still, he could see why this was the case. As much as he had improved the quality of his craft, Lloyd still hadn’t done anything new, sticking to the basics and improving how he crafted his armour. If he wanted to improve the quantity of his skill options, he would need to experiment with new things, and not just the way he was doing old things.

  Putting his dissatisfaction aside, Lloyd looked at his options trying to find the best option for him. Bestial weaponry was instantly disqualified as it just sounded awful, he would either have to stick to killing the same type of enemy over and over again, or swap between weapon heads like they were drill bits.

  Needless to say, Lloyd was not doing that shit, it sounded like a great way to get killed while not paying attention to his foe. Every time he saw an enemy, he would have to try and find the right weapon, going through his bag looking for it like and idiot. So yeah… hard pass on that one. His first option, advanced carving was vague and uninformative, but he had a good idea of what it did.

  He believed it was a type of skill called a ‘path guide’ it was effectively a mental tutor on how to perform certain tasks, so this one would evidently teach him how to better carve beast carcasses for materials.

  These skills supposedly became more useful the higher the rarity you upgraded them to, and they could lay great foundations for you to build your path upon. Even then Lloyd still felt apprehensive toward this skill, as of all the things he needed to improve, beast carving was not one he was worried about.

  None of the materials he had collected had any major defects, and he was relatively confident in carving beast carcasses anyway, so he didn’t feel like this skill aligned with him. With this skill put to the side for now, Lloyd turned his gaze toward the final skill option. String saw.

  The name was weirdly straightforward, and its skill description was very basic and unassuming, lacking the flavour text his other skills included. Ignoring the somewhat bland appearance of the skill, Lloyd found the prospect of an extremely sharp blade he could summon at will a very interesting one.

  While he did have energetic inscriptions for carving patterns into different materials, it wasn’t something he could use for actually cutting through materials. As much as he may have tried, Lloyd had been unable to use the blade to cut through anything on account of its smaller size and some illogical system enforced magic.

  Whenever he had tried to push the blade through a piece of leather it would randomly destabilise and disperse into the air. This was annoying as if he wanted to make a weapon without forging it –as he hadn’t gotten any more metal monsters– he would inevitably have to cut the material at some point.

  Hopefully this skill would allow him to actually make some leeway when it came to weapon making. Overall, the ability to summon a saw at will, whenever he wanted, was just more appealing to him than improving how he collected materials from the beasts he hunted.

  Lloyd gave a mental nudge and a stream of knowledge relating to the skill entered his mind. He immediately activated the skill and stumbled in surprise when a thin, blue mana blade appeared between his hands. As his hands moved around, the blade remained unbent and taut, shrinking and growing to fit the distance.

  It was extremely weird, like an optical illusion, but he knew it was real and proved it when he nearly cut of his elbow while trying to bend it. After healing his forearm, Lloyd grabbed a random bone sitting on a bench and put it in a vice, summoning the blade he began carving through the sturdy femur like it was made of clay.

  Withing a few minutes, Lloyd had carved the bone into a razor sharp spear head. This skill was simply phenomenal for this purpose, easily transforming the clump of bone into a deadly weapon so fast and with such ease. Of course, the blade wasn’t perfect –far from it– and there were still several steps before the blade would be ready to fight with.

  After a few hours of trial and error –with the help of some books– Lloyd had managed to make a far better spear head. It was sleek and light, yet still durable and sharp, even though he had just made a spear head, it was not going to be attached to his current weapon. Even after having time to think about it for almost a month, Lloyd hadn’t changed his mind about his weapon choice. He was making a halberd; this spearhead was just part of the process.

  Any good halberd was made of three different parts, the hook, the spike, and the blade, all of these culminated in an extremely versatile melee weapon good for all different kinds of combat. The spike could be used like a spear, the blade to cut them like a sword or axe, and the hook to pierce armour or pull enemies from their mounts, add to this the fact that it was a polearm and you had one hard weapon to counter.

  So far Lloyd had completed one piece of the puzzle, and it didn’t get easier from here. He gathered bones from all across the room, taking anything big enough to form a decent blade. He started with an initial prototype, a large, curved blade with a jagged hook as a counterweight. The first try didn’t end well, with the proportions all slightly off, and the structure rather weak from lack of insight into the craft.

  The subsequent tries were better, but still nothing to write home about, only after days of work was Lloyd able to reliably create decent halberd heads. His penultimate creation was good, and likely stronger than any pre integration blade ever created, but there was still room to improve.

  He had perfected the process of shaping the blade and dabbled in the following steps giving him a good idea of what came after, but he could still push himself further. He had one more piece of bone perfect for this exact scenario, one perfect for making a blade, but if he messed it up, he wouldn’t get a second chance.

  Calming his mind, Lloyd lay the material on the table, a piece of bone from the first beast the building had given him. When he first cut the tail club off of the beast, he had thought it would be perfect for making a blade, but he had started smithing before he gave it anymore thought.

  Now, he was ready to take on this challenge and create his first proper weapon. Summoning string saw, Lloyd began shaving the keratinous shell off the club and started cutting the bone into shape.

  The floor around Lloyd became covered in wafer thin sheets of bone, creating small mounds at his feet. As the shaping of the blade neared completion Lloyd dissipated string saw, and took the bone over to the grinding wheel for sharpening, and smoothing. The bone was pressed against the stone as he slowly ground it down, forming sharp bevelled edges, and flattening the sides of the head.

  Lloyd ran his eyes across the blade, trying to find any mistakes knowing he couldn’t fix them once he initiated the next step. He quickly found and removed a few raised patches and jagged edges, giving it a final onceover, Lloyd was happy with the blade and got ready for the next step.

  A thin blade shot from his hand and began carving intricate spiral patterns across the surface of a large bone. This process was much faster than the last time he had done this as his inscription skills had gotten better. The bone crumbled into a fine powder as he infused it with mana, leaving a small pile of dust on the table.

  Having prepped the materials, Lloyd initiated step two. With great deftness, and much struggle, Lloyd began digging the blade of energetic inscriptions into the bone –having a much harder time than when he used it on leather– careful to avoid any mistakes. It was a difficult process, and Lloyd found his mana was quickly drained by the power the skill required to break down the bone.

  Only thanks to Lloyds excellent mana pool was he able to keep going, though even he was running very low after inscribing only the first side. He knew that this would drain his mana quickly as it had done the same the last few times as well, but he didn’t expect it to be this much. It seemed that the metal affinity from within the monster had transferred into its bones, making it absorb mana easier and dampening the effect of his skill.

  Since the bone he was carving was like a sponge for mana, Lloyd had to do something he had really hoped to avoid until later. He opened his satchel and took out a mana potion, it was dark blue, almost purple and smelled like berries –similar to the health potions. The similarity to the health potions was a bit unnerving, but since he wasn’t regrowing anything physical it shouldn’t hurt him. Right?

  Well, it couldn’t hurt him physically per say. But that shit definitely hurt. His head was throbbing in way it never had before, like his brain was in a pool of icy water, except a hundred times worse. Even that wasn’t enough because on top of that, well… to put it lightly, he was tripping the fuck out.

  Everything he saw was a shifting mosaic of vibrant colours, and in between the different shapes were malignant shady figures, starring at him menacingly from cracks in the walls in floor. Now personally Lloyd had never taken LSD or anything like that, but he had a few friend who were a bit more adventurous to say the least, and what they had described didn’t have shit on what he was seeing right now.

  What’s worse was that these apparitions weren’t stationary, they were moving, and they did not look friendly. As the first one reached him, it shot forward and slashed at him with a grotesquely oversized claw before dissipating. The claw didn’t leave a mark, at least not visibly, but it was still excruciating none the less, with the amount of these malevolent creatures around the room, Lloyd was in deep shit.

  The others stepped forward, hot on the first one’s trail, but were instantly cut down by Lloyd flinging a few mana bolts at them. Unfortunately, only a couple of them were hit, as believe it or not, it was hard as fuck to aim when you were smelling colours. As he saw the wraiths approaching him from all around, Lloyd decided to try something he’d been unable to do before.

  He let mana seep out of his skin and into the air around him, with a forceful mental command the mana began to move, coalescing into solid mana bolts. He had tried to do this previously when he fought his first megalania, but his mana control had been lacking, and he couldn’t summon them outside of his hands.

  Now, thanks to all his practice controlling the mana blade while inscribing, and his better understanding of how mana worked thanks to the book on inscriptions he could summon them remotely. The monsters were now extremely close, nearly withing the range they could attack him from, and Lloyd could only hope he could properly execute this.

  His mind was strained from the brutal headache combined with the mental energy he had just expended. The bolts all around him shot randomly through the air, though nearly all of them took out a wraith. This was thanks to them relying on will, so it didn’t matter if he couldn’t properly aim as long as he could see them to a good enough extent.

  This method wouldn’t work if he couldn’t see his foe, like in a cave system or similar, but it worked wonders here, as the wraiths conjured by the mana potion didn’t bother hiding, relying on the user not being able to target them properly.

  Having found the key to neutralising the wraiths, Lloyd quickly dealt with the ones remaining, allowing the mind-bending mosaics to dissipate. Once he was back in a good state of mind, Lloyd picked himself up from the floor and checked out what had happened.

  Despite the amount of mana, he had expended to kill the wraiths, Lloyd still had a full tank in that regard. This was definitely strange, but he wasn’t in much of a position to complain here as he got what he asked for –although with a few more steps than he’d hoped.

  Anyway, now that he had his mana replenished, he could finish the engravings on the halberd. A good hour or two later, and Lloyd finished the inscriptions, leaving the halberd with one elegant rune on each side, one of lightning, and one of strength.

  Not wanting to waste any time, Lloyd brought the blade over to the pile of bone dust and a bowl of the bonding agent. He didn’t have the agent here to give the blade a coating just yet, but for a more normal reason.

  He grabbed his stone bowl of bonding agent and put in as much bone powder as it could hold. Unlike usual, Lloyd didn’t infuse the bowl to combine them, but just began stirring them with his hands until they formed a mixture with the consistency of cake batter.

  The bonding agent was simply needed to give the bone powder structure. Now that it could hold itself together, Lloyd began smearing it into the inscriptions on the axe, filling them in until it didn’t even look like they were there anymore.

  To make sure it was hard enough, Lloyd quickly held it over the forge, making the bone mixture hard as steel. Now that the bone powder was in place, he took it over to his barrel of bonding agent, and this time he was giving it a good coating. Lloyd removed the lid to the barrel and placed the blade into the bottom of the liquid.

  While it wasn’t ideal to use a bonding agent with the blood from a different creature, Lloyd didn’t have anything else left from the original beast, so he had to make do. Normally you were meant to make a bonding agent for each beast –or at least each species– that you crafted with, but with his lacking knowledge, he hadn’t known to do this.

  After a few hours of waiting and mulling over what else he could do, Lloyd went over to the barrel and removed the blade from the mixture. Lloyd had thought about what he had to do next for a long time and there was really only one thing left to do.

  Put the weapon together.

  Many factors had gone into consideration for putting the weapon together, mainly. What would he use for a shaft? He could make one from another bone, but that was a bad idea for multiple reasons, for one he didn’t have any that were big enough to make a decent halberd haft, but also how much of a pain it would be if he did.

  While cutting the bone didn’t take much mana to do, it still took some, and if he had to cut enough for a two-metre-long handle, he would look like a junkie from how many mana potions he would have to consume. His other options for making one weren’t much better, as they all involved making the handle from furniture. Luckily, he had come up with a solution that didn’t involve any crafting.

  He was going to make his spear into a handle.

  Seeing as a spear was already 90% handle, it wasn’t that hard to repurpose it. Not to mention it was also super durable. In its original form, it would be weak as fuck, Lloyd could snap the original like a toothpick, but as he used it more, it held onto some residual energy.

  This energy was then reinvested in its trait of being metal attuned, thanks to it being an ironwood tree. Because of this, it was less like a stick, and more like a steel beam, making it a perfect handle.

  With his design in mind, Lloyd began laying out the pieces on the table, preparing to stick them together. He slathered all the joints in some more bone paste, seamlessly connecting the different elements of the weapon. With all the pieces in place, Lloyd hardened the bone paste over the fire and admired his work.

  Now that it was complete, Lloyd sliced open his palm and pressed it against the elaborate inscriptions on the head to soulbind it.

  The inscriptions lit up with the lightning filled blue glow he had come to expect, and as he activated identify he couldn’t stop a shit eating grin from spreading across his face.