Chapter 981 (2/2)

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Although the three-day agreement with the mollusks had expired yesterday, Randidly hadn’t yet resumed his forging of metals. In fact, underneath the star-filled sky, those other concerns seemed to slip away. Inside the Dungeon, it was easy to feel distant from the other concerns and live in the moment.

Randidly currently held a rather hastily created metal forearm bracer in his hands. With incredible delicacy, Randidly flicked the piece of armor and listened to the sound of its resonance.

Randidly stared at it for a long time, measuring the shape of it, carefully calculating the curve of its structure. In his head, a meticulous 3D image of the bracer was slowly being constructed. With his new capabilities after he reached Control of 1000, it didn’t take very long for the model that Randidly made in his mind to reach a satisfactory level.

Sighing, Randidly raised his right hand. The pointer finger began to glow blue as Mana concentrated into a razor sharp point. When his hand moved, a blue trail lingered in the air for several seconds before slowly dispersing into glittering motes of ambient Mana.

Randidly pressed his finger against the bracer and began to Engrave.

The great trick of creating an engraving that possessed the ability to Level was to create a symbol that made sense at both the micro and macro levels. The micro levels would slowly be filled with energy while the Skill contained within the equipment would Level. The Macro Level was the ‘world’ constructed within the equipment where the Skill would actually exist.

This relationship would continue, in theory to the point where the micro image became the entire world. However, none of Randidly’s previous experiments had made it to that as of yet.

A powerful Skill was very possible to make with Engraving. Already, Randidly had thought about several variations of his metallic left arm that he could make that would improve his combat ability. The current Skill in his left arm was slowly being left behind by the capability of his Descent of the Grim Chimera Skillset and image. At this point, there wasn’t much of a benefit to mixing it into his fighting style.

Better to forget it and wait for the opportunity to improve his metallic arm.

But again, Randidly was still fascinated by the possibility of creating a Skill in a piece of equipment that could grow with him. Ideally, a Skill that would fill in some of the gaps in his own abilities so it wouldn’t just serve as a redundant alternative.

...Although as time passes, it feels like I have less and less glaring deficiencies in the way I fight. Randidly reflected. Then he imagined Shal’s amusement and the subsequent brutal training session if he would realize that Randidly had that thought. But who knows if that's just from fighting rather weak enemies for too long…

The Level of the monsters in the Dungeon was slowly ticking up as Randidly released Aether, but it had become clear that the Level increase didn’t do much to actually increase the monster’s strength. They were inflating like a balloon, but the substance of what the monsters were didn’t change much.

Randidly suspected that there might be some more qualitative evolutions eventually, but at this point it was just increased Level and weird extra limbs.

Grimacing, Randidly felt a pang of worry for Shal. What did Lyra know-

With another sigh, Randidly gritted his teeth and forced those thoughts to fall away. He was in the Dungeon, far from those concerns. He had time to prepare and think through his actions. His finger, still glowing with Mana, was poised over the bracer. Once his mind was clear once more, Randidly continued with the process of engraving.

One thing at a time, Randidly thought to himself.

The image he chose this time was a twisted claw, somewhat based on the Descent of the Grim Chimera. It was a swirling series of twisted lines that was relatively simple to draw and that mixed well in high numbers to make a mesmerizing whirlpool of lines that drew in the eye.

Humming to himself, Randidly casually went through the process of engraving. With his new skill with Control, Randidly was having a much easier time maintaining a uniform level of depth to each of his strokes of the Engraving. Because he didn’t attempt to push the depth very far, the ultimate limit of the Skill’s growth wouldn’t be too impressive, but this was an exercise in consistency.

Randidly believed that what he needed right now was more experience successfully understanding the process of creating a Levelable Engraving. He had time, nine and a half more months of remaining within this Dungeon, in which he could further work on creating the product he would be able to use for quite some time.

Now was the process of building his foundations.

After about an hour of engraving, Randidly grunted in satisfaction and tossed the bracer to the side. It clattered into a meter tall pile of similar bracers laying scattered next to them. Each glittered with the tell-tale glow of a powerful engraving. Each was covered with a different rune that skittered, spider-like, across the whole of the bracer.

Next to that pile was a smaller pile filled with cracked and partially melted bracers: Randidly’s failures.

Not all of Randidly’s attempts so far had been successful, but his current success rate was about 75% at this point. And considering that each of these attempts was made with a rune that Randidly had never worked with before, Randidly was quite satisfied.

Randidly produced another bracer and studied it for a long time. When he had finished constructing the mental model, Randidly looked upward and chewed his lip as he considered what sort of Skill to try and create this time.

After a few minutes passed in stillness, Randidly’s emerald eyes began to glow. A thin kernel of Mana condensed on his finger and he began to smoothly draw.