A quick excursion to the forest outside, which involved climbing on trees and breaking branches off, was followed by waddling through water in the hopes of finding algae with enough internal cohesion to facilitate usage as cordage. In the end Kent stood back to where he had started several days ago, with a bunch of chipped stones, a pile of wet algae, a small dome of branches – probably a few too many – and a couple of sheets of metal each only a bit larger than his hand.

Before he went out he had tried several shiv and knife designs that might work on damaged sheets and found two designs that would work the best. One which was admittedly the simplest, was a long, very pointy triangle shape with a small stip of metal extending from the bottom. A very efficient shape, that allowed to fashion one of the larger two sheets into around twenty blades.

The other design wasn’t much more complicated, but Kent had bigger hopes for it. In fact, he had already tried it out, and if seemed to work decently for the most part. All he needed to do before he would go into production was a test run with the damaged shapes that were laying to the side.

The design most similar to his kitchen knife was fixed between two cut in half branches to form a crude handle. He fished a longer collection of algae from the pile, bound it around the handle, and finished his construction off with a neat little knot.

There was no chime from the system telling him he had successfully created something, but he didn’t expect as much in the first place. He had no corresponding skills and had been told that he couldn’t properly craft.

He tried his makeshift knife on the corpse of a turrl outside his place anyway. He pushed for the construct of Penetrate, in his mind, and got ready to impale his target. Three stamina vanished along and he felt the spell grip, but it felt different, as though he had the option to add something to it.

Wooah, what was that. The same moment he had struck out he had felt another small increase in strike power as he activated the dormant construct in his mind.

Is that… Is that another boost to skills? Hold up. There is no way that I just used the skill twice, once through my arm and once through my skill?

It required more testing. Especially if the impact really was boosted by Metallic Extension. It would be utterly insane and unfair. That meant that skills which he could use through his hands would be twice as powerful eventually. He doubted that the skill would increase in efficiency after the first specialization so it would most likely offer other benefits.

There was not much left to do besides finish the better versions of his shivs and knives, followed by going out hunting again. Well, he would have to practice aiming with his spells properly first.

***

Several more hours later Kent stood armed with a count of eighteen low-quality shivs and seven even lower-quality knives, outside the cave ready to take on the world again. His mana had almost completely regenerated. Leaving him only a single point from his max. Stamina was another story. Due to his build, it might be a good idea to spend some free stat points on both Agility and Endurance. He would have to figure out whether the milestone increases would be enough or whether proper investment was warranted. He did ignore his continued lack of investment in Vitality.

Soon.

This time around Kent tried to keep the ruckus he was making to an all-time low. It was vital to discover turrls as long as they were unaware for his plans. Using his shivs as ranged projectiles would only work as long as the monsters didn’t move.

It was worth checking out stealth-related skills at a later time, the appeal grew the more time he spent surrounded by monsters.

He left his shoes behind, they would only squeak after wading through the pond and he would be quieter barefooted regardless.

He considered doing a few practice runs with the shiv aiming, but wasting the mana for something like that was unnecessary, as he could kill the turrls without it anyway. He could combine training with leveling up and be efficient about it.

For the next several hours he slowly approached the opposite side of the pond. He had long suspected the dungeon boss, warden, or final encounter to be there based on the equality of level on both sides.

Individual turrls and groups thereof, were frequently dispatched as Kent snuck through the woods. At first his aim had proven horrendous, making him miss all his shoots. Lining up the knife with the connecting line between his naval region and a monster was hard if the monsters were somewhat close, but It became almost impossible if they were more than fifty paces away.

The only good part about the whole experiment was that the shivs seemed to right themselves automatically into the flight direction.

The first breakthrough he had made had been when he’d found a turrl sitting on the ground.

He hadn’t known where the idea had come from, but he mimicked the monster, laying flat on the ground and placing the handmade weapon between the monster and his sternum. It took three seconds for the shiv the reach it’s destined target after which it impacted a squeaking turrl. The first time he had been successful after over five tries and subsequent kills.

The rest of the fight went by quickly which was no doubt heavily influenced by the turrl having a finger long piece of metal stuck within its body. The handle of the weapon hadn’t survived but that didn’t matter currently. He had been conserving stamina for a while now, deeming it more important to be physically fit over causing a little extra damage to monsters.

He threw a cursory glance at his notifications and was confused by a pleasant surprise.

New Notification Log Entries:

You have slain “Somniferous Agitator” Level 12! Experience has been awarded.

You have reached level 6. Three free stat points are available!

…

You have slain “Somniferous Agitator” Level 13! Experience has been awarded.

You have gained the title Adept Mage!

Adept Mage – You have slain twenty-five creatures of a greater evolution milestone before reaching level fifty ten with the help of your own magic. You have drawn various sigils on your own body before reaching level ten. Increases Magic, Willpower and Regeneration by 25% 30%. Gain access to the Mage’s Augmentation skill tree. Other class titles can no longer be gained.

Note – Experience disparity has not been paid. Each time there is experience disparity maximum experience gain will be reduced to 5% per kill until the difference is paid. Passive Experience gain is halted.

The note was informative and basically confirmed what he had suspected. Because he was gaining more per level than others of the same level he had to pay more to increase in power. He was fine with it. Leveling faster and climbing to level ten quickly would sure have advantages, but there had to be a reason why most people in his village below level ten only ever fought once to get the extra skill point.

The new title was odd. Not only because some of the values in there were scratched out and replaced by others. It seemed like his title had received an upgrade. He checked his stats to see the actual influence the title held.

Uhm… Wait, it isn’t an upgrade to Apprentice Mage? A shame that it doesn’t unlock another skill tree. On second thought, he realized that another skill tree would be pointless. Though that alone was a silly thought. He had trees for ages, his issue was skill points not lacking skill trees.

Kent wasn’t quite sure whether it was worth it to spend the required time to retreat to safety and upgrade his stats, and since he was feeling quite good, he decided against it.

With continued practice and after having been successful once, Kent’s confidence grew and so did his success. To a point where on his last attempts he impaled the monsters about half the time. With his new tactic also came new understanding. Shifting his understanding of the acceleration and reference frames made for a lot of minor personal but interesting revelations. His grasp on working with Accelerate Metal was boosted and so was his interest in acquiring other skills in the Metallumancy skill tree.

The best part though, was growth in Kent’s ability to gauge the chance of a successful hit. A few times he became daring and channeled Penetrate through the flying daggers to even greater success and damage. He was certain that with a few more skill levels he would be able to one-shot turrls for the cost of a few mana and stamina.

When time came for Kent to return to recuperate his pools, he brought as many turrl carcasses with him as he could. He would try in his downtime at finding and extracting monster essences.

Up until now he had never bothered with core harvesting, for the simple fact that it was said that monsters below the level of twenty only rarely possessed cores. Spells cores, as they were most commonly called, were not immediately useful for Kent, but they would offer a way for him to finance his future to a lesser degree.

As far as he knew, only crafters, certain types of traited, and some mages had a use for the cores. As unfortunate as it was that he knew of no direct way to profit off the magical nature of the monster’s residual energy, he would make sure to spend some of his suddenly free time to acquire a bit of wealth.