Soul damage was an insidious thing, capable of both subtle and extremely violent consequences.
In the case of the survivors, it was the former. All of them had hair-thin cracks in their souls, and contrary to what Lev would’ve expected, the Masters fared way worse. Beatrice was deemed to be the most affected by the Stormfury’s aura, and Diana hadn’t wasted a moment in healing all of them.
That was over a month ago. When the storm passed, the scouts understandably requested to be sent to the Haven, where they could take on jobs that didn’t require dealing with third-threshold monsters, let alone fourth-threshold ones. Diana had also only visited shortly upon Hakim’s request during the storm and left not long after the healing.
That left Lev and Beatrice in the fort. His friends were usually not present, busy with one job or another, and as such, they both just stayed on the fort’s roof, inside a barrier dome with potent concealment enchantments.
Neither felt like leaving the safety of the manmade structure again. The last disastrous adventure was enough for a while.
Lev did another scan of his bubble, ensuring that the six third-threshold cores slotted in were functional. All concealment enchantments were running at near-maximum potency, and the strong cores were enough to keep them active for months or even years without any input.
Seeing everything in order, he returned to the boots on the barrier table in front of him. Formed of his element, the boots had all the softness and padding needed for comfort, while also being way more durable than normal materials, courtesy of his barriers. With the ability to change the weight and properties of his element, creating something like that was rather easy.
Difficulty spiked during the enchantments, though with his deepened connection to mana, that wasn’t too big an issue. Enchantments were carved in tiny layers, each only working because of his insane Perception.
Regardless, they worked flawlessly. Kinetic energy absorption, combined with runes used in sound wards, gave birth to a pair of boots perfectly suited for any scout. They even came with invisibility to blend with camouflage or stealth suits.
Once the final rune was in place, Lev leaned back with a short sigh. The boots looked… rather average, if he was being honest. Making them stylish was currently not very practical with his barriers, and looks weren’t a big deal anyway.
What he was more interested in was the harmony between the enchantments. The Hunter had once told him that runes possessed their own tiny auras, and the more they complemented each other, the more effective their effects were, sometimes even producing completely new enchantments.
Previously, that wasn’t possible to observe. Now, however, he had Augmented Carving in his arsenal, and that opened up a whole new world.
Willpower streamed into the boots, a small amount enough to fully empower the enchantments. Two things stood out to his nascent expertise on reading rune auras. First, the layers worked without disrupting each other, marking the enchantment design a success.
Secondly, the enchantments also complemented each other by a tiny amount, boosting the overall potency of the items slightly. The harmony was far, far from enough to produce an extra enchantment, though it still helped.
Satisfied, Lev marked the boots as complete and Identified them.
[
Recon Boots - Rare
Enchantments: Silent Steps, Faint Footfalls, Sturdy Footing, Exceptionally Durable, Thorough Shroud
]
Not bad, he mused, observing the boots from different angles once again. Their durability isn’t really exceptional, though, compared to normal boots, it might as well be.
The enchantments were straightforward. Silent Steps reduced the sound of footsteps to almost nothing, whereas Faint Footfalls absorbed all vibrations from movement, masking the wearer’s presence to a great degree. Sturdy Footing simply improved one’s grip on any surface when activated, amplifying the potential for steep evasions and lunges.
Overall, the item was as good as it got without any treatments to enhance the barriers.
“Here,” Lev tossed the boots to Beatrice, who was lounging on a chair nearby, reading a book. He had tried asking about it and was thwacked on the head with a barrier. Something about not asking about a girl’s tastes in fiction.
Barrier ropes caught the boots midair, holding them there. Beatrice frowned at them. “This is the fourth rare item you’ve just thrown at me carelessly.”
“They won’t break.”
“That’s not the point. What am I gonna do with boots of all things?”
“Sell them?” Lev shrugged. “Free money. I can easily make ten of them in an hour.”
With a snort, she stored them in a storage ring. “As you wish, then. How much would these even sell for?”
“Hmm,” Lev leaned back on his chair, giving it some proper thought. “I’ve never really looked at market prices, but if I had to guess, like ten golds? Maybe more?”
“… Huh?” Beatrice looked at him, then summoned the boots and reread all their enchantments. “Ten gold coins for these?”
“There’s a decent second-threshold core inside, you know,” Lev rolled his eyes. “And the enchantments are also rare. Kinetic energy is not easy to work with, and finding materials for it is also difficult. I don’t have to worry about either.”
“Because of the rune compendium?”
“Yep.”
To date, the collection of runes Drakys had given him proved to be extraordinary. Lev knew from the start that the runes would go a long way, though, now that he had gone over every formation present inside the notebook, he could see just how immense the knowledge packed inside it was.
Kinetic energy was only a minor part of the compendium, and yet, he could already do so much with it. Sound, vibrations, speed, absorption, and several other niche areas were covered by it.
The combat applications interested him more, but he wasn’t blind to the sheer crafting potential. If he wasn’t mistaken, the boots could be improved by quite a bit if he had something to treat his barriers with.
If the runes were more densely packed, they would remove vibrations from footfalls entirely and also negate all sounds from footsteps. The rest would remain the same, but against monsters with keen senses, that alone would be a great boon.
Before he could get started on the next pair, a distant pulse of mana pinged his senses. It was incredibly difficult to perceive, and if he wasn’t actively looking for it, he would’ve missed it.
Summoning his armor, Lev flew to the orb that had ejected the pulse. It was a few hundred meters away from the fort’s walls, two dozen meters below the surface.
The orb was a useful little thing. Enchanted with kinetic absorption, a straightforward but extensive formation measured the absorption to determine if it was caused by a nearby monster.
It had taken a lot of fine-tuning until he was satisfied with the trigger, and further adjustments had ironed out the margins of error during the past three weeks. He had deployed them immediately after the storm had passed.
Letting loose a sliver of his aura, Lev waited for the monster to reveal itself. An Earthen Burrower showed itself, followed by another three. They all lunged at him without a second thought, dying shortly after as an incredibly sharp yet invisible blade easily cleaved off a large portion of their body. He hadn’t even needed to move the blade.
[
You have slain [Earthen Burrower - Level 402]
…
Trapping has reached 2nd Level 9
]
It’s close to evolving already, Lev mused, though it wasn’t that surprising. The base skill did little for a Master, and the next evolution probably wasn’t going to be a game-changer.
It did present a lot of promising options, however. From preparing a battlefield to deceiving monsters on the fly, the range of applications was staggering. He looked forward to the doors that the evolution would open.
Dragging the corpses closer to the fort with barrier chains, the best ones he had, Lev made the blades used to kill them visible.
Immediately, his vision was dominated by giant constructs. Each “sword” was as wide as he was tall, and many times longer. Enchanted to the brim with everything related to sharpness, only the outer layers helped them turn unnoticeable, boasting formations that utilized shadow mana moments before the blades were put to use.
On both ends of the constructs were large handles, designed for Lev to grab and hold them in places. Monsters rarely reacted in time, and by the time they did, he had other measures to put them down.
[
Monster Cutter - Rare
Enchantments: Advanced Sharpness, Kinetic Absorption, Steadfast Blade, Shadow Veil.
]
His eyes lingered on the first enchantment again. Do I need to make the bladed ends bigger? Why is it still only categorized as advanced?
The only things he could deduce as the lacking aspects were the size and weight of the blade. Against monsters as big as the burrowers, that was all that made sense. Otherwise, the swords were more than sharp enough to cut them to pieces, just not in a reasonable timeframe.
Steadfast blade was another new application of kinetic energy he was trying out. It absorbed the first impact and augmented the blade with that energy, holding it in place. So far, it had worked quite well, though with one glaring side effect.
Cracks ran along the length of each blade. The sheer force displayed by burrowers combined with the extra damage caused by absorption almost overwhelmed the durability supported by five slotted cores. Only the inherent resilience of the barriers saved them from shattering.
Lev fixed it all in a blink, marveling at the speed once again. A smidgen of willpower infused the swords, pointing out any flaws that may have formed in the enchantments. “Hearing” the aura of the runes, he adjusted the fixes accordingly, bringing the constructs back to their prime.
Lovely, he thought to himself after checking them over. Then, summoning a communication tablet, he connected to the harvesters dedicated to him.
“Four Earthen Burrowers towards the Northeast. I’ve pulled them closer to the walls.”
“Noted, sir.”
Lev liked how little they talked to him. It was probably due to the rumors surrounding him. Little things like how he had faced an ant champion and almost killed it, or how he had escaped a fourth-threshold monster while dealing with baggage.
The wording of the latter irked him more than a little, though he wasn’t about to correct anyone. If word got out that the other humans were literally unconscious throughout, it would only fan the flames.
Back inside the bubble, he pushed down his amusement at seeing Beatrice walk around in new boots.
“Why is the activation for the friction runes so fast?” she voiced, putting her leg against the bubble’s wall. As if glued, the boot took considerable effort to pull away.
“Because I enchanted them while empowering them with willpower. They are affected by my class, skills, titles, and Perception, even if the benefits are lessened when in someone else’s possession.”
Nodding, she walked around a bit more. Lev strained his ears, unable to hear any sounds from her steps, only feeling tiny vibrations through the bubble’s surface. The orbs arrayed outside wouldn’t ever pick up on them.
“Can you jump a bit?” he asked. Might as well get some valuable data in the meantime.
Beatrice didn’t question it, jumping a few meters into the air. The landing was… still silent. Lev tilted his head, surprised.
“Again?”
“Yeah.”
Over the next minute, he tested the potency of the silence enchantment. As it turned out, they were way stronger than he expected them to be, reliably doubling the monetary value of the boots or more.
“I knew they wouldn’t be just ten golds,” Beatrice huffed, very much ignoring how she thought the opposite at first. “Thought you were pranking me before.”
“How was I supposed to know they’re that good?”
“You literally created them?”
“With formations I am testing for the first time. It was a learning experience,” Lev replied, smiling all the while. He was infinitely glad to still see her around. Alive. “Think you are ready to do some rounds again? The strategist has been accommodating to our recent… experience, but both of us can see the number of scouts isn’t enough.”
The mood plummeted. Hiding in the bubble had been a break they both sorely needed. Hell, it was surprising that Beatrice was still sticking around, even if he sometimes caught the wistful look on her face. No one could blame her for wanting to be inside the safety of the walls again.
“Around the fort?” she sighed.
“Yeah, within two dozen kilometers,” Lev replied.
“That’s a lot.”
“We will have support.”
“Would that matter?”
“Yes.”
Her shoulders sagged. “I… alright.”
Before Lev could say anything else, she left the bubble, going downstairs to start preparing.
Did I push too early? He sighed to himself, sitting down on his usual seat. We’ve been holed up here for too long.
Three weeks was little in the grand scheme of things, but to their Perception, it was a long, long time. Neither of them was holding back that attribute, electing to remain prepared in case something unexpected happened.
That may or may not have been an excuse to further extend their unofficial break. No one had called them out for it, and given Lev’s contributions despite merely existing inside the fort, no one was going to for another month or two.
It was his own stupid itch that wouldn’t let him sit still for too long. And without Beatrice, he wasn’t that confident being out there by himself. Not anymore. And probably not for a long while.
Before he could follow her, an attendant walked up the stairs. She, as usual, didn’t bow or treat him overtly respectfully and got straight to the point.
“Your cores, sir.”
Lev took the two Earthen Burrower cores with a nod, and that was that. She left within ten seconds of entering, not saying another word.
Asking for more of the harvested materials would’ve been easy. If anything, he had the right to. Though once he had been informed about the primary method to earn contribution points by giving the resources to the guild, he had ignored everything except half the cores.
If nothing went to shit again, getting another useful rune or two soon wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities.