Level 1 Fallen

Once the Cromoran books had been gathered, we returned to the reading area, where the scholar from before had arrived with a blank book and a pen. Marron smiled upon seeing this, and immediately got to work. “I don’t think I’ll be able to organize everything alphabetically, since I don’t have the entire language at the front of my mind,” she said in an apologetic tone. “However, since you all can save the information after reading it, that shouldn’t matter as much.”

As she spoke, she began drawing the familiar glyphs of the Cromoran language, and then what the word translated to. She was able to easily fill five full pages just from her memory, before she had to start opening the books to look up words that she had overlooked.

Marron spent the rest of the day like this, and looked like she could easily spend at least another full day absorbed in her work. When she logged out for a brief break, Diane and the rest of us read through what had been written of her primer, committing the information to memory.

Afterwards, we looked at the nearby books, finding some of the words now plainly legible. There were still many that appeared as strange glyphs, but we were beginning to be able to make out some of the more commonly used words.

The next day, as Marron resumed her work, I was preparing to go look for other books to read in the meantime. Maybe something more about blacksmithing that would help me reinforce my proficiency with Shadow Forge. However, as I was browsing through the books, a message appeared in the corner of my vision from Hammerhead.

Made some progress on that thing you asked for. Stop by when you get a moment. Seeing this, my eyes lit up. Had Hammerhead managed to discover a way to properly use the shadow ki material for crafting?

I returned to the others, letting them know that I was going back to the city for a little while, and to call me if Marron finished her work. After that, I teleported back to Hammerhead’s shop, where I found the dwarven man waiting for me with tired eyes. I had the distinct feeling that neither the Player nor the Chosen slept much when they had a new project to work on.

“You said that you had something to show me?” I asked, and Hammerhead looked up at me for a moment before nodding his head.

“Yeah, yeah, this way. I managed to find a few ways to process this lump of shadow matter you gave me, but it’s not cheap.” As he said that, he led me through to the back of his workshop, where I could see scorch marks from what I presumed were several failed attempts.

Sitting on the table near the door was a pitch black sword, a pair of gloves, and to my surprise, a pistol. “These are the products that I’ve been able to make so far. They’re only rough prototypes for now, but they should serve as a proof of concept.”

I identified the three items on display, finding that each of them had an inherent ability and at least one enchantment slot. For the sword, the inherent ability was to repair itself by burning mana. For the gloves, it could project threads from mana. And finally, the pistol was able to generate bullets from mana injected into it.

“How did you manage to process them?” I asked curiously, and Hammerhead let out a long sigh.

“Might as well tell you, since you’re probably the sole provider for materials like this,” he said, leading me towards a specialized workstation. There were numerous runes painted on an anvil, as well as a faintly glowing carving knife, a few white stones, and a sealed crate.

Hammerhead produced one of the balls of shadow ki that I had given him, holding it in a pair of large tongs. Then, he threw one of the white stones into the furnace, which made the flames within turn blindingly white. Hammerhead pulled his goggles over his eyes, holding the material in the flames.

As the material was held in place, I could only watch it through my True Sight, noting how the outer layer began to ripple and smoke. Once the ball had softened slightly, and Hammerhead felt the tongs tighten further, he pulled the ball out and set it on the anvil. “I realized early on that you needed a flame with a light attribute to properly forge this material,” he said, pulling his hammer out and striking at the sphere while his other hand held it in place with the tongs.

With every strike, the runes on the anvil lit up briefly, the material slowly being shaped under his precise blows. After about three minutes, the material was no longer deforming under the strikes, so he had to heat it again, repeating this process several times until he had the shape of a short sword.

After that, he heated the blade in the furnace one last time, and opened a small slit on top of the sealed crate. “For the quenching process, I needed a source of both darkness and condensed vitality,” he said with a grunt, shoving the heated blade into the opening. I could hear a heavy sizzling sound, and the scent of copper invaded my senses.

Focusing, I found that the crate was full to the brim with… blood? “Is that…”

“Dragon blood,” Hammerhead responded. “We had plenty of it in the warehouse after the recent war, so I was able to use some for my experiments. Dragons are among the creatures with the richest vitality, so their blood seemed like the perfect ingredient for quenching. But when I did it normally, the material just melted into the blood. I had to make this sealed crate so that I could quench the weapon in total darkness.”

Once he pulled the blade out, he checked its alignment, and then walked over to a white grindstone, runes carved along its side. Sparks flew out as he ground down the blade, and then used the glowing carving knife to fashion a hilt. “For the most part, the process is the same regardless of which type of material you use. You’ll need a light-attribute method for processing the material, like the White Phosphor Flames or this Radiant Knife. As you work the material, you need to put it in a rune array that will prevent the energy from escaping. Then, once you have your final product, you need to let it sit in total darkness for at least an hour to settle into its new form.”

“Once you’ve done all of that, you’ll have a proper ‘shadow-forged’ item.” Saying that, he took the newly completed sword and walked over to a long chest, opening it and placing the sword inside before sealing the chest.

I nodded my head quickly upon hearing the process. Admittedly, I didn’t have any abilities from the light attribute, so I wouldn’t really be able to use this method myself. “How long do you think it would take you to make some good gear for Bella and Diane with this?”

“Better than what they’ve already got?” he asked with a gruff grunt. “Give me a week. And I’ll need you to restock my supply of the raw materials. Like I said, you’re the only provider for these currently. Even if I wanted to make a rune pattern that could condense the material myself, the mana burden would knock me flat on my ass before I got anything of a usable grade.”

I smiled, happily accepting this condition. Even if this material could be considered ‘rare’ due to requiring someone to have a grandmaster-level skill to produce it, it was a simple matter for anyone that did have the skill.

After filling several more crates of the shadow material, I returned to the sanctum to find Marron still hard at work copying down every new word that she came across in the various books. Bella was helping at the side, flipping through one of the books that Marron had picked out earlier and pointing out any words that she couldn’t recognize.

With the two of them working together, their speed seemed to have increased considerably, so I walked over and sat down next to Diane, who glanced towards me. “So, what did you have to run off for?” she asked, but I shook my head.

“Just had some stuff to deal with back in Fallcry, since it looked like we had a few free minutes. How is everything going on this side?”

Diane looked back over at the duo flipping through the books. “So far, it looks like we can read about ten percent of the language. I am not sure how exactly the system will determine our fluency, whether there is a certain list of words that we need to learn, or if it is a percentage of the language. If it is the former, then we might get through several of these books before finding the last few words that we need to learn to be counted as fluent.”

I simply blinked at that, unable to refute her words. As far as I knew, there was only a single language in this world, so I had no real experience with multiple languages, aside from seeing some people intentionally using foreign languages from the Player’s world in order to serve as a focus for channeling skills.

I sat with Diane, watching the duo work for what must have been another hour before Bella’s eyes suddenly widened. “The rest of the book cleared up!” she announced, causing Marron to look over in surprise.

“Really? Already?” she asked, looking like she was sure that it would take at least a few more days of preparing the primer.

“Yeah! I’m not seeing any more strange symbols anymore,” she said, flipping through the pages as if to look for anything unusual.

When Diane heard this, she moved over. “Let’s see if it works for us, then,” she said, and Marron handed her the primer to read through. Once she had finished, she picked up one of the Cromoran books, flipping it open and reading. “It looks like the requirement was for us to learn a certain number of words. Thankfully, the system doesn’t require as deep of an understanding as a real language learning program.”

Following her lead, I read through the primer as well, watching as the words began to translate themselves as they were memorized within my system. “Now, we should all be able to read through these books and return to the trial without needing to harm the villagers.”

Diane agreed, adding, “We should all make sure to read each of the books, just to make sure there isn’t a gap in any of our knowledge. If we can all read and answer the questions as they come, we shouldn’t need to worry much about taking the wrong paths.”

“That said,” Marron muttered as she began to slowly read one of the books. Unlike us, she had to mentally decode each word as it appeared, greatly slowing her progress. “I doubt that just this will be enough to perfectly clear the trial. There are bound to be some questions that aren’t answered in these books.”

“Isn’t that just unfair?” Bella asked, looking up from her own book. “Normally, we would have had to fight off an entire village to just get these books, have one of us teach the others the language, and then get a whole group to read a pile of old books just to do the trial. What more could it want from us?”

“No, she’s right,” Diane said, never lifting her gaze from the pages. “There are probably other clues in the cave aside from books. For instance, carvings on the walls, paintings, or even stories passed down orally. We should assume that all of these are possible options for questions.”

“How are we supposed to answer all of those?” Bella asked with a faint pout. “Should we send Drake in to scan the area for any suspicious signs?”

“No,” Diane refuted. “It probably wouldn’t be too obvious unless the residents themselves told us. Think of it as a reward for managing to convince the group peacefully to aid us. The difficulty increases by several tiers, but the progress in the trial would also speed up.”

“Instead, we should just look at it this way. The number of questions that we have to brute force has considerably decreased. Instead of taking a few hundred attempts in the trial, and potentially dropping something valuable that we will have no way to recover, we may only need a few attempts.”

Bella’s eyes widened at the mention of losing our valuables, and I knew immediately what she was worried about. If she managed to drop her Offline Leveling trait to this dungeon, there would truly be no way to recover it.

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