42

Bottled Lightning

It took Rian a moment to realize what Kat was holding—the disassembled remains of her Pyceian Light-Dagger.

Oh, right. The temporal items. His gauntlet was supposed to turn into crafting materials once they exited the Rift. Even if it had been technically destroyed during the fight, he would still have access to it through his items page.

He opened his inventory. The moment he saw the Runeknight Gauntlet icon resting there, a little explosion animation played. Six other slots lit up as a few items appeared in the grid.

Your Temporal Runeknight Gauntlet has destabilized! (Item has become disassembled.)

Items received:

1x Diamond

1x Blue Tesseract

5x Colorless Tesseracts

5x Steel Scraps

12x Iron Ores

15x Leather Scraps

He was still wearing his wimpy level 20 Silk Hand-Wrap. It was definitely time for an upgrade. According to Kat, he had all the materials he needed to make a new weapon from scratch. And not only that, but the gems they received from disassembled Temporal items could be used to enchant them with special abilities or elemental damage.

Gemstones were rather rare, usually given out for more advanced quests, but the Temporal Rifts were an easy way of obtaining them. Each kind—rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds—correlated to an element: fire, ice, wind, and lightning respectively. It was always random which gemstone a Temporal item gave, but of course Kat had plenty on-hand to choose from. It was really up to their preferences.

She even tossed him the ruby she’d received from her Light-Dagger, as it wasn’t the one she was going to use.

You have obtained x1 Ruby!

Rian pocketed it for later.

When it came down to it, he couldn’t help but miss having that Runeknight Gauntlet for all of two minutes before it’d been destroyed, so he settled on making something similar. For the element, he was almost immediately sure he wanted to pursue lightning. It just sounded cooler than a “fire” or “ice” gauntlet, and he wasn’t quite sure how a “wind” gauntlet would work.

After finding the crafting menu in his HUD, Rian opened the window. A huge list of potential equipment sprawled before him. From here, he could see everything he needed to construct an item.

Using his spare tesseracts to convert unnecessary materials—his iron ores and leather scraps—he generated a hefty stack of steel plates in their place. The energy requirement was less depending on the similarity of the material to the intended material type, meaning it took fewer tesseracts to change something like iron to steel.

“Now,” Kat said, guiding him, “using the gemstone to impart an elemental attribute only works if you use it by itself—if it’s ‘empty.’ Their main purpose is to infuse items with Godly Fragments during the crafting process. When you combine a gemstone with a god-frag, it gives the item a keyword for a special effect.”

Sitting beside her, Rian glanced up at his open inventory and saw the Ezre’s Thought still resting there, the item he’d taken from the Runeknight in the present. Pointing to it, he said, “You mean one of those?”

“Yeah, but you don’t wanna waste that on a level 25 item. Even if that’s just a generic god-frag.” She looked up at him and smiled. “But. That’s how you get Mirage skills. Crafting items using Godly Fragments—either generic or unique ones—gives you permanent access to a certain Mirage skill depending on the materials.”

Rian was almost tempted to use the Ezre’s Thought just to see what the resultant skill would look like, but he held off for now. As Kat had told him, some Mirage skills were incredibly difficult to use or even learn compared to the amount of utility they provided, so there was little point in chasing after one right now. Hell, he didn’t even have his subclass skills yet, and wasting a rare material like that on a level 25 item was just a bad idea in general.

The system was a huge, interlinking web of crafting materials, keywords, and Mirage skills. Rian’s suspicions were correct: he soon found a dictionary menu for keywords, listing certain effects and the names of their related Mirage skills and what was needed to obtain them, effectively allowing players to customize not only their equipment but their class’s playstyle as well.

When a Mirage skill was obtained, it became permanently available for that player’s class—but only four Mirage skills could be “on-hand” at a time. Players would have to create load-outs and plan ahead rather than walk around with fifty super-powerful skills at their disposal.

There was still one other aspect of crafting that Rian was curious about. He knew there were two kinds of Godly Fragments: generic and unique. The Ezre’s Thought he held in his inventory was the generic type, but it seemed that using either to craft an item would reward the player with a new skill.

“So,” Rian asked, “what if you craft an item with a unique god-frag instead of a generic one? Do you get like a super-Mirage skill?”

“You still get a skill for it,” Kat said. “It’s the keyword on the item that gets supercharged. You get some really, really OP stuff, usually.”

“Obliteration,” Rian whispered, suddenly mortified. The keyword on Corvis’s needle-staff. That eye atop it was one of Ezre’s Eyes. A unique fragment.

“You say something?” Kat said.

Rian shook his head. “Nothing, sorry.”

“Anyway, unique god-frags are really fickle. Unlike generic ones, they expire after a set amount of time once you obtain them—and that applies even to the item you craft with it.”

“So…what happens to the item when the time’s up?”

“It explodes. Literally.” She laughed. “Well, not in a damaging way or anything, but the item breaks down into what it was before you crafted it. And then the unique god-frag gets recirculated into the game again. Somewhere hidden, usually. That’s something you could ask Yindra for—the location of some materials like that—if you manage to use that locator item you have.”

“But doesn’t that take a unique fragment to activate in the first place?”

“Oh, yeah. Well, you’ll get more out of it than what you put in, at least. Like I said, unique god-frags give some OP effects. But there’s only eighteen known unique fragments in circulation so far. A pretty sizable number of them are in the possession of top players at most times—at least temporarily. But it’s not like they can hoard them forever, since they eventually get cycled back into the game.”

In Kat’s palm was a blue sapphire, glinting in the sunlight.

“On the other end of things,” she said, “is the elemental system. Crafting with gemstones by themselves will give you an elemental keyword, but there’s also four tiers for each element. Whichever tier you’re aiming for simply matches the number of ‘unbound’ gemstones you use during the crafting process.”

As Rian had thought, everything in this world really did come in fours.

Closing her palm around the gem, Kat said, “I’d choose one element and stick with it when crafting item by item. Combining elements is extremely tricky, so it’s usually best to specialize.”

Studying the elements in his interface, Rian felt himself gravitating toward lightning. The stun and paralysis effects it offered seemed to mesh well with his class’s kit. Ice was trickier, as it made items more susceptible to breaking. Fire was overly simple, basically just a damage boost with its ability to inflict burn statuses. And wind was more about positioning, speed, and utility—something he was curious about, but not something he felt he needed right now.

Glancing up at the requirements for the item he wanted, Rian watched the window enlarge and hover closer as if to acknowledge his choice.

Combining three colorless tesseracts with a few stacks of steel, leather scraps, and the diamond, it was like a portal had appeared in his hands again. A moment later, the swirling vortex settled, and resting in his palms were a pair of metallic gauntlets.

Achievement unlocked: “The Power’s In My Hands” (Crafted an item by hand)

Electrified Steel Gauntlets (Level 25)

Grade: B (Rare)

Electrified (Every 60 seconds, the next hit inflicts Lightning Damage; on hit, 10% chance of paralyzing target for 1 second. Required Insulation: 0)

Lightning Damage +5

Weapon ATK +17

They were beautiful: shining, stainless plates of steel atop leather gloves. Every few seconds, sparks of electricity crackled up and down the metal.

Trying them on, Rian flexed his hands.

-3 STR (34→31)

Your Max HP has decreased! (667→652)

+9 Weapon ATK (8→17)

Since his Silk-Hand Wrap was upgraded to +3, there was a slight decrease in his stats from taking it off, but the weapon attack on the gauntlet was more valuable—more than a twofold increase.

They weren’t as heavy as the Runeknight Gauntlets, but they were much more comfortable. When he looked closer at the Electrified keyword, he hesitated.

“Insulation?” he said, noticing the term. Whatever it was, he didn’t need any for the item.

“Something for the higher elemental tiers,” Kat said. “The items usually become so powerful that they can damage you unless you have, well, insulation against the element itself. If that lightning keyword was level 2—Voltaic, I think—you’d need something like rubber gloves underneath to keep it from zapping you back.”

Kat took out a blue tesseract and combined it with the steel scraps she was holding. Out of the vortex within her palms landed a stack of black and silvery ore which she almost immediately combined with more colorless tesseracts and steel plates.

Landing in her palm was a dagger, the blade emitting a fog like dry ice.

Frosty Adamantite Dagger (Level 25)

Grade: B+ (Rare)

Frosty (+21% bonus ice damage; weapon loses durability 33% faster; required Insulation: 0)

Adamantite (+400% durability)

Ice Damage +6

Weapon ATK +20

She’d chosen ice over an element like wind, she explained, to avoid it clashing with skills like Smoke Bomb. On top of slowing the enemy at higher tiers, ice provided the highest increase in physical damage. But that was at the expense of making the weapon more fragile.

Not that it was a problem, given Kat’s funds. Ice was the most expensive element to specialize in, and she’d gone as far as using adamantite—one of the rarest materials—to massively offset the durability loss. It was just a mid-game weapon and she was pouring in resources like it was nothing.

Rian eyed it nervously. The air around the dagger was chilled, and the blade itself was solid black like Corvis’s obsidian staff.

Sheathing the dagger at her hip, Kat checked the time and closed her inventory. “You probably know what comes next, right?”

Rian smiled. “Advancement time?”

From a sitting position, Kat thrust her palms into the ground, swept out her legs and practically spun herself into standing. She was handling her higher DEX like a natural.

Landing with her hands on her hips, she said, “Advancement time!”