All of that gave me pause. Given what little information I had, it was impossible to say which was better than the rest. And that didn’t even take scaling into consideration.

I considered waiting for Ezzie to return before I made my decision, but how much faith could I really put in a guide who hadn’t even made it to Grade E?

And who was to say that she was coming back at all, or at the very least, that she’d be back before I had to reenter the grounds in the morning? And besides: it was nice to have a hand in my own development, to decide what exactly it was that I wanted to do.

My survivability was paramount, so I decided I’d aim for whatever modifiers would help me take less damage. Reckless Assault was easy enough to cross off the list; even though the ten percent damage boost would shorten each fight by a considerable amount, taking fifteen percent additional damage within that shorter window would still add up to me getting messed up slightly worse.

Quick Feet seemed pretty decent, if a little stressful; it was pretty obvious that I’d be running around praying that I wouldn’t get caught, and that I’d more than likely die if I did. If I knew more about this world—for example, if I could identify which mobs were easily kitable without letting them shank me first—I’d be pretty tempted. In my experience, not getting hit in the first place was the best way to not die.

But in the end, that modifier was just too high risk/high reward. What if I didn’t find a ranged weapon early enough? What if I did, but I uh, sucked with it?

What if I ran into a mob with a root, or a gap closer or a stun? For now, the additional twenty-five percent multiplier to damage taken was just too much for me to stomach.

Which left Immovable Object and Bladed Armor. Immovable Object was what I’d had my eye on in the first place, but the more I thought about it, the more questionable the decision seemed. I’d take fifteen percent less damage, sure, but I’d also deal twenty-five percent less.

That seemed like a great trade off in a group setting, or with a healer backing me up, but on a per fight basis, I’d take so long to kill things that I’d still end up taking more damage in the long run.

Bladed Armor, then. My physical mitigation was pretty low at the moment, but I had plenty of copper to work with thanks to the mystery box, and Bladed Armor was the only modifier that would increase both my offensive output and my defensive capabilities.

And thirty percent mitigation seemed pretty obtainable in the long run, at which point the modifier would more than pull its weight.

In the end, I went with Bladed Armor, thinking that I’d craft up a set of plate armor via Armorsmithing to maximize the modifier’s potential. Swapping to heavy armor would probably require me to dump some points in strength so that I could keep some level of mobility—plus I’d have to give up my leather armor passive—but I figured I’d wait until my set was finished so I could test everything out before I assigned any points.

And that I’d probably be earning a heavy armor passive somewhere along the way, too. Granted Ezzie had hit those notification passives, so figuring out what the heavy one did was probably easier said than done.

By now the sky was beginning to darken as a storm rolled in, lightning crackling overhead. I ducked inside the workshop and decided to see what I could do with the materials I’d been gifted. I pulled up the Armorsmithing tab and found that I only had a single recipe: {Smelt Copper Bar}. I mentally acknowledged the recipe, then confirmed my choice.

A large spherical container in the back of the workshop—one that was shaped like a massive urn—began to glow, and the belt beneath it spun into motion. A copper bar dropped out of the urn and ran across the room until it was fed it into a large bin.

You created {Copper Bar}!

Your Armorsmithing skill has increased by 1!

Current level: Apprentice

Progress to Intermediate Armorsmithing: 2/100

That wasn’t so bad. I went to forge a second and discovered that I could queue up as many bars as I wanted to. I browsed over my list of options first—just to make sure that there weren’t any recipes that required raw copper—but didn’t find any reason to keep the ore that the mystery box had gifted me with in its unrefined form.

So I queued up all of my remaining bars, leaned up against the nearest wall, and watched the forge go to work.

The urn lit up again, and a steady stream of copper bars emerged from the black apron beneath it, each of them spaced about five feet apart. My skill in Armorsmithing rose with each smelted bar until I hit twenty, at which point the gains slowed down, offering a point every other bar.

I reached forty in Armorsmithing in short order, then it became clear that I wouldn’t progress any further just by smelting ore. I had, however, unlocked several new recipes:

Recipe: {Copper Helm}

Requirements: 9 Copper Bars, 1 Weak Flux, 6 Leather Scrap

{Copper Helm}

Grade: F

Item level: 2

Slot: Head

Type: Plate

Quality: Common

Armor: 5

Durability: 40/40

Recipe: {Copper Breastplate}

Requirements: 15 Copper Bars, 3 Weak Flux, 6 Leather Scrap

{Copper Breastplate}

Grade: F

Item level: 2

Slot: Chest

Type: Plate

Quality: Common

Armor: 10

Durability: 50/50

Recipe: {Copper Greaves}

Requirements: 14 Copper Bars, 3 Weak Flux, 5 Leather Scrap

{Copper Greaves}

Grade: F

Item level: 2

Slot: Legs

Type: Plate

Quality: Common

Armor: 6

Durability 45/45

I selected the helm first, watching as the many robotic arms of the forge went to work. Each of them was tipped with a red crystal that was not unlike the eye of my Constructor. The lasers started with the base of the helmet, each sweep adding a thin layer of material.

The helmet passed beneath one pair of arms to the next, forming from the base up, until a steaming copper helm rolled to the end of the line, the air above it wavy with heat.

The smell was strange—acidic and tart, not at all what you’d expect from a forge—and for the first time, I realized that none of these items were actually what they claimed to be.

The helm looked like it was made of copper, and upon closer inspection, the weight seemed right too, at least as far I could tell, but the material must have been some kind of synthetic, as it was too thin for a piece of old school metal.

In any case, the helm provided me with two points in Armorsmithing, bringing me up to forty-two, so I queued up the other two items as well. When everything was said and done, I still had a decent amount of copper to work with, as well as four more recipes to make us of.

Recipe: {Copper Epaulets}

Requirements: 12 Copper Bars, 2 Weak Flux, 1 Leather Scrap

{Copper Epaulets}

Grade: F

Item level: 2

Slot: Shoulders

Type: Plate

Quality: Common

Armor: 6

Durability 35/35

Recipe: {Copper Handguards}

Requirements: 9 Copper Bars, 1 Weak Flux, 3 Leather Scrap

{Copper Handguards}

Grade: F

Item level: 2

Slot: Hands

Type: Plate

Quality: Common

Armor: 5

Durability 35/35

Recipe: {Copper Boots}

Requirements: 8 Copper Bars, 2 Weak Flux, 3 Leather Scrap

{Copper Boots}

Grade: F

Item level: 2

Slot: Feet

Type: Plate

Quality: Common

Armor: 5

Durability 35/35

Recipe: {Copper Belt}

Requirements: 5 Copper Bars, 2 Weak Flux, 2 Leather Scrap

{Copper Belt}

Grade: F

Item level: 2

Slot: Waist

Type: Plate

Quality: Common

Armor: 3

Durability 30/30

I checked my reserves; I had exactly the right amount of copper remaining to complete the set, which seemed to indicate that I was on the right track.

I went ahead and had the rest of the gear created, which took the better part of twenty minutes, bringing my Armorsmithing up to fifty-five and unlocking what seemed to be an entirely separate skill tree:

You unlocked an Armorsmithing Subskill: Modify!

Description: You may now use special ingredients to improve your armor. Items may only be Modified during item creation.

Modifying an item has three possible results:

Success: Created item’s potency is increased (50% chance). Failure: Raw materials are destroyed, player retains the Modifier (40% chance). Catastrophic Failure: Both the raw materials and the Modifier are destroyed (10% chance).

Note: High quality Modifiers (rare and above) have a small chance of upgrading an item by multiple Quality Tiers, and/or imparting special abilities.

Subeffect: Any item that can be used to reinforce your armor will now be highlighted in blue. This aura can be toggled at will. In addition, all items of use in your inventory will be tagged (Modifier) in addition to their other types.

I scanned my inventory for Modifiers, as well as the pile of items that the mystery box had left me with just to be safe, but didn’t find anything of note. I had the Constructor scan each of the pieces of armor I’d made then print them onto me, because I had no idea how to put the stuff on myself, what with all the straps and cinches and so on.

The armor was a perfect fit, though heavy as hell. I spent a few the points I’d saved immediately, dumping five of them into strength.

Then my skin began to crawl, my muscles spasming and jerking as the nanobots went to work. It wasn’t painful, just strange, really, watching so much tissue seethe beneath the surface. I felt warm from head to toe, and my lungs were burning as if I’d just ran myself ragged.

When all was said and done, I held my forearm up so that I could inspect it. My arm wasn’t any larger—at least not perceptibly so—but the muscles were definitely a little bit more defined.

The copper armor felt substantially lighter too, but its weight was still pretty suffocating, so I took a deep breath and dropped all of my remaining points into strength, then pulled up my stat sheet:

{Silas}

Level: 5

Base Class: Brawler

Gear level: 5 > 14

Grade: F

Strength: 11 > 20

Dexterity: 12

Constitution: 10 > 11

Intelligence: 7

Wisdom: 7

Charisma: 8

Physical Attack: 11

Magical Attack: 5

Health: 200 > 210

Stamina: 100 > 110

Mana: 70

Armor: 7 > 40 (32% physical mitigation)

Magical Resistance: 0 (0% magical mitigation)

I was pretty thrilled with that, particularly the fourfold jump in physical resistance. And with my new Bladed Armor modifier I now had a three percent damage reflect tacked on top of it all. And with my nearly doubled strength rating, I could move almost as well in plate as I had in leather.

I stifled a yawn and had my Constructor strip the armor away and dump it back into my inventory. Once that was done, I left the forge just as the rain began to fall. I slipped beneath the low roof of the lean-to, marveling over just how dry everything was as I laid down on my bedroll. The sound of the rain hitting the roof was hypnotic, a steady rhythm that already had my eyelids drooping. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so dry, so comfortable.

My stomach rumbled, and then it hit me; I hadn’t eaten since being locked up at the pet shop. The thought made an icon brighten in the bottom left of my vision:

{Hungry}

Well, that seemed a little unnecessary. Then I read the subtext:

Experience gains reduced by 20%.

Renown gains reduced by 20%.

Damn. I pulled up the builder menus again and was unsurprised to find an entire category for food-related buildings: a cookpot, a campfire, a grill, and much further down, whole buildings: A bakery, a butcher shop, an inn, and many others.

I checked my coin balance: zero. I’d spent everything I had. I laid back down, cursing myself for my mistake. I couldn’t help but wonder what else I’d done wrong, which got me thinking about the armor I’d made, a sense of generalized paranoia creeping in.

At which point I remembered there had been a shield tab when the first Armorsmithing menu had appeared and instantly overwhelmed me with its scope.

I brought the submenu up and sure enough, I could’ve made a shield that would have represented an absolutely enormous upgrade.

Recipe: {Copper Shield}

Requirements: 20 Copper Bars, 6 Weak Flux, 8 Leather Scrap.

{Copper Shield}

Grade: F

Item level: 2

Slot: Offhand

Quality: Common

Armor: 20

Durability 30/30

I spat out a string of curses. A second major screw up within an hour of Ezzie leaving. It was a little unsettling, just how quickly I’d managed to mess everything up in her absence, and though it wasn’t a total loss—the armor set I’d made seemed good enough, and I was happy with the Class Modifier I’d chosen—it still felt terrible to know that I could’ve done better. That I would have done better, had I just taken a bit more time to survey the situation.

I laid back down, fluffing up the thicker end of my bedroll into a pillow.

I was out the moment I closed my eyes.