[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 108: Sam’s Repair Shop

Sam took the dullahan a little ways away from the new center of the settlement until they were in a nice little grassy clearing at the edge of the hills and past the moat that encircled the Tree’s area.

Not far away, just on the other side of said moat, was Sam’s Sourcestone. He judged the distance to be roughly halfway between the two Settlement Cores and stopped when he found a grouping of boulders that he could sit on.

“Over there, please,” Sam said, pointing.

The dullahan, dutiful as ever, rested its massive sword—about as large as Sam’s, though it looked appropriate when the dullahan wielded it—on the grass and knelt where Sam pointed.

Using [Basic Maintenance] combined with his Metal affinity, Sam could immediately spot the fractures and cracks as green glowing lines that spidered out from the more obvious cuts and scrapes that peppered the dark metal.

He took out his tools, banged out the dents, polished away the superficial cuts and scrapes, and patched up where he could with the tools he had at his disposal. It wasn’t much, but by his own estimation he had restored roughly 20% of the dullahan’s durability.

It wasn’t enough to get the thing back to fighting form, but it was far better than it had been before. And if he could access the Metal mana that he felt within the dullahan, he could do even more.

Sam told it so and was fully expecting that it would deny his request.

He had no idea if it was taboo or not, and it wasn’t like you could normally request access to a living person’s mana to muck about. This was, for all intents and purposes, a living creature in much the same way as him.

It couldn’t talk, true, and its body was made of some sort of dark iron instead of flesh and blood, but Sam sensed a true will behind all of it. A consciousness or at least an understanding of the world outside its shell.

To his shock, the dullahan did something with its gauntleted hands. He had seen them make that motion with Raiko before too.

Just as he was about to ask what that meant, the dullahan’s body shivered slightly and Sam watched as a shimmering green core of light emerged from its breastplate. It passed through the armor as if it didn’t even exist and hung in the air a few inches above its chest.

Sam reached out to it, instantly feeling the connection between his Metal affinity and its overwhelming Metal mana. The core itself was unlike anything Sam had ever seen before.

The golem cores he’d seen were very different, almost mechanical compared to the organic flow of the mana in this dullahan’s. One was crafted, the other was… born. That was the only way he could think of describing it.

You could give birth to a dullahan through extraordinary means of craftsmanship, but you could not force it to being like you could a golem.

All this information passed through Sam’s head in a matter of moments. He was shocked, but thrilled all the same.

It was hard getting used to having information just flood your brain from time to time. He wasn’t sure where it had come from. Whether from some Skill Sphere he had, the dullahan, some Incarnate nonsense, or even something more mystical.

Not that it mattered, information gained was valuable no matter its source, as long as it was trustworthy.

Sam felt he had a knack for this sort of work. His Metal affinity allowed him to distribute flows of Metal mana to the areas of the dullahan’s body that required the most rebuilding.

It was a slow and arduous process. He had to keep one hand on the core, and another on the dullahan’s armor to form a conduit that the mana could flow through.

Each crack needed to be filled with new Metal, then smoothed and joined with the surrounding Metal. It wasn’t quite welding, but it was close enough.

Manawelding might be a Skill Sphere, but it was one he didn’t have yet. For now, he worked by feel and intuition. The dullahan never protested or complained, and Sam looked at its fingers often to make sure it wasn’t trying to “talk” to him.

“I need to ask Raiko about this language of yours,” he told the dullahan as he worked out a particularly rough patch of Metal. It was all spiky and resisted the flow of mana until he ground it down and smoothed it out. “That way, I can actually ask you how you’re doing instead of this. I imagine it’s pretty invasive.”

The dullahan’s fingers twitched, one hooking into what seemed like a question to Sam.

“Sorry,” he said. “I can’t understand. But you can understand me, right? Good. If I’m hurting you in any way that you don’t approve of, tap the ground twice. Otherwise, if I ask a question, give me a thumbs up for yes, a thumbs down for no.”

The dullahan made another gesture.

For a moment, Sam swore he understood it. “Ah, yes, we are missing one important answer, aren’t we? Just do this if you’re unsure or neutral.” Sam made one hand a flat plane and rocked it back and forth. “Got it?”

The dullahan gave him a thumbs up.

“Good man.” Sam bent down and got back to work.

With rudimentary communication between himself and the dullahan, Sam was able to find more imperfections and flaws in the armor as well as damage that he had a harder time making out.

By the time he was done, his brow was prickled with sweat, and he had an audience of dullahans. Apparently, story time was over and word had gotten out—how, Sam would have very much liked to know—that he was repairing one of the dullahans.

They formed an orderly queue as Sam looked up at them. He patted the first dullahan on the shoulder. “You’re all set, big guy.”

As notifications popped up in Sam’s vision, he saw the first dullahan gesture swiftly to the other three. As one, the remaining three gave a thumbs up as if to show their understanding.

What was more, he felt the rush of a level. Sam frowned. He hadn’t fought anything, so how could he get a level?

Your [Basic Maintenance] Skill has reached (★ Common I).

Level Up!

Your [Swordsman] Job has reached Level 21.

+6 Strength | +6 Vigor | +3 Agility | +3 Dexterity

+2 Bonus Points

You have [Swordsman] abilities to select from.

More Swordsman abilities? Awesome!

Sam immediately split the two bonus points between Vigor and Strength. He liked having his MP at around a third of his HP, and it would be a while before he needed to reconfigure that.

As for the rest of his stats, he was reasonably happy with them. It had taken working on the dullahan with his relatively crappy tools to realize just how much his Strength mattered in doing simple things.

The tools never should have been as effective as they were. The dullahan’s armor was far too strong, and yet with Sam’s Strength, he was able to pop out dents, smooth imperfections, and the rest he could do with his mana.

He even felt an odd sensation that his Strength somehow imparted to his mana, giving it greater… well, strength. How that worked, he didn’t know, but he felt it happening and knew that with his rather small Arcane he shouldn’t be able to do what he was doing.

Sam motioned for the next dullahan in line to come over. The extra tier of [Basic Maintenance] gave him greater confidence in what he was doing, and it let the process of repairing and restoring the dullahans to be largely done without taking too much of his attention.

It was like driving. Once you got the hang of it, most of the tiny corrections you made all the time were second nature and you didn’t even think about them.

That, in turn, freed him up to look over his new Swordsman abilities. He shook his head with a smile on his face. Who knew that increasing one of your Job’s Skill Spheres also added to the Job’s Experience?

The notification hadn’t come out and told him that he gained Swordsman EXP, but it might as well have. And it made Sam appreciate not only the Shard’s system, but also the Skill Spheres he had access to as well.

Even if he couldn’t fight, he could work on improving his Skill Spheres and that in turn would lead to level ups. He honestly felt a little dumb for never doing it before.

He started with the oldest abilities first, since it’d been a while and he could use a refresher.

[Sturdy Stance]

(Sword Stance) (F-Class)

(★Common)

A Stance boasting high, defense-oriented Arts that provide a temporary [Rooted] buff, allowing you to shrug off incoming damage at the cost of [Bulwark] stacks.

Maximum [Bulwark] Stacks: 3

Sturdy Arts:

[Rooted Tree], [Tumbling Boulder], [Northern Wind]

Sam’s brows shot up at the change there. Not only were the Arts no longer generating [Bulwark] stacks, but the stance itself wasn’t rooted exactly as it had once said it was.

Instead, it provided a [Rooted] buff that seemed to enhance his defense—and probably temporarily anchoring him in place—with its potency dependent upon his stacks of [Bulwark]. Stacks he could generate with normal attacks instead of being beholden to only using certain Arts forever.

[Guard]

(Fighter Skill) (F-Class)

(☆Primitive)

For a short period of time, redirect damage to yourself that would otherwise harm an ally. All damage is modified by your defensive attributes instead of the selected ally’s. Grants a minuscule bonus to the effect of Vigor and Agility when using [Guard].

Not much different here. Even worse, it was still Primitive which didn’t bode well for waiting around and selecting older abilities.

It would mean that the strength of an ability was static. At least, that’s the way it seemed so far.

Sam hammered out a dent and ran his fingers over the smooth surface of the dullahan’s breastplate as he thought about his future strategy for picking abilities.

The lower rarity abilities would be worse the stronger he was, but it also meant that he might be able to level up their rarity faster. If he was already at around Uncommon rarity, then it stood to reason he could master and improve a Primitive ability much faster than one that was already at his level.

Still, he could just take the damage for somebody by shielding them with his body and his new massive sword that was about as wide as he was.

It basically doubles as a shield, he thought to himself as he guided Metal through the dullahan’s fractured breastplate and spread it out gently, so it filled the void and melded with the neighboring Metal.

[Onslaught]

(Fighter Skill) (F-Class)

(☆Primitive)

Fighters are known the Shardrune Realms over for their ferocity and grit. When backed into a corner, they fight even harder. There can be no surrender, no mercy for the enemies of a Fighter. For a brief period of time you are able to amplify the power of chained physical strikes. Effect lasts until the chain is broken, or enough time passes between attacks. Grants a minuscule bonus to the effect of Strength and Dexterity when using [Onslaught].

Sounds like a type of berserking attack, Sam thought.

More useful than it had once seemed, especially now that both his weapon and Strength were much higher. He wondered what it would be like to have high stacks of [Rolling Strikes] and pair that with [Onslaught].

Would the damage be multiplicative? It wasn’t like he saw any actual numbers, but he could imagine the devastating effect just those two abilities paired together would have.

Then again, while he wasn’t likely to choose [Sturdy Stance], he still had his sights set on [Iron Mountain] from Swordsman. It seemed, in all ways, an upgraded version of the Fighter stance after all.

Sam patted the dullahan dutifully on the shoulder. “Roll over, please.”

The dullahan shot a thumbs up at him and turned onto its side. Sam could only imagine how a car mechanic would feel if they could tell the car to move itself around so they could get to the more delicate components.

He bent over the dullahan, and his hands went back to work while his mind sorted through the new abilities.