[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 27: Book Work

Komachi was a lot of things, but attentive was not one of them. As she slowly came awake to the sounds of Sam swinging his big soot-stained sword through the air, Komachi realized she still had a notification pending.

She twisted about, all four paws pushing against the air as she arched her back in a deep stretch. Her dark gold fur shimmered in the light of the crackling fire, their only source of light down here.

Title Gained: Pocket Healer

[Pocket Healer]

You’ve taken a liking to the cheesiest of tactics. What’s the use in casting healing magic from afar, when you can enjoy the easy life of a pocket healer. You gain the following:

Mind (+5%)

When you are affected by the [Pocket Healing] buff:

Additional Experience credit from monsters your frontliner defeats.

Slightly increases the effectiveness of [Stealth].

Aw yiss, she thought to herself greedily. This was more like it. Now she could more easily use [Stealth] to keep herself tucked away into Sam’s armor, while also benefiting from it.

Aside from the typical benefits of not having a monster want to eat her.

Maybe she wouldn’t keep falling behind in levels too. Even she could tell that Sam had done most of the work when fighting monsters, but there was only so much a cat could do as a Cleric other than perform some kind of healing. Those bolts of that tingly mana didn’t do crap.

Getting all four paws beneath her, Komachi got up and padded over to the where the water slowed in a shallow whirlpool off to the side of the raging white waters.

She tentatively dabbled a paw into the water, testing its temperature. Finding it suitable, she lowered her head and began to lap at the sweet and cool water.

Out of the corner of her eye, she kept her attention on Sam as he went through training exercises she had seen him do many times before. She had no idea what they were for, but he enjoyed doing them and his happiness is what mattered.

Besides, after long enough, he would take her out on a trip and fight other people for fun.

To Komachi, Sam had always been a fighter. It was his day job that was his hobby, not the other way around.

With her new title and the benefits received, Sam could carry her even harder. Both literally and figuratively. She was determined to become an even stronger healer, so Sam could fight anything and everything he wanted to.

As Sam wiped the sweat from his brow, Komachi padded over to him, tail raised in greeting.

***

Wiping away the sweat with his balled-up shirt, Sam set his [Charred Claymore] to the side and knelt by water’s edge to rinse himself off in the chilly waters and to get a drink. Though not precisely in that order.

As soon as Sam had woken up, somewhere in the middle of the night by his estimation, he had set out to learn about the new abilities he received.

It helped that doing so was part of what his [Breaker Questbook] asked of him.

And while he confirmed that using Arts did indeed use a small amount of MP, it wasn’t draining, even when he chained them together.

Without any spells to his name, he didn’t really need his mana either, so this was a perfect use for it.

Through his practice, however, he found that while the Arts did consume some MP, they didn’t grant stacks of [Fury]. The only reason he could think of was that they only did when he actually fought something.

Perhaps he had to hit an opponent to generate them. That seemed plausible, and it also meant that a missed Art would still cost him MP.

Not the most earth-shattering of discoveries, but useful all the same.

[Breaker Questbook]

Challenge Quest: Breaking in the Breaker

Awakening your bloodline is only the beginning of your journey. Every road to greatness starts with but a single step. This is yours.

Perform the following:

Practice with your greatsword for 4 hours.

Visualize a critical weak point 4 times.

Create a critical weak point 4 times on an inanimate object.

Create a critical weak point 4 times on a living creature.

Mundane in a way, but guidance all the same.

It didn’t tell him what the rewards would be or even if there were any, but Sam was okay with that. He was used to training, and he took to it like a fish to water.

Unfortunately, the book either didn’t track his progress, or wasn’t telling him what it was. By his own count, and judging by the sweat slicking his naked torso, he must have been at it an hour or two.

It better let me know when I reach the four-hour mark,he thought. And what’s up with the repeated fours? Each portion of the quest required four uses, and there were four parts to the quest.

Shrugging his clothing back on, Sam looked over at the silent form of Komachi trotting up to him. She meowed her typical morning greeting, which was usually accompanied by a loud and rather obnoxious smacking of her food bowl against the floor.

This time, however, she merely weaved in and out between his legs in a display of affection.

“Good morning to you too, Komachi,” Sam said. “Or should I say good evening? It’s dark, whatever the case. How about we split some rations and we go about seeing how we can get the hell out of here?”

Komachi said nothing, and for a moment Sam wondered if somehow, he had hallucinated her talking to him.

Nah, he thought, that’s crazy.

Soon after they sat down and ate the crumbly, mostly tasteless food, Komachi looked over at him. “I miss tuna.”

“Me too,” Sam said with a sigh. “And spam. I could go with a good musubi right now.”

The little British shorthair tilted her head back and yowled with frustration. Clearly, she missed getting some of his musubi too.

With his bronze plate to the side of their little campfire and the last of the wooden golem merrily blazing away, Sam set the dull-coppery armor into his lap.

“Whatcha doin’?” Komachi asked, curling up so close to the warmth of the fire that Sam was surprised her whiskers didn’t burn.

“I need to repair this,” Sam said, holding up the heavily gouged and dented armor. “It’s barely holding itself together.”

It was easier than with the claymore, probably because he had already done it once and knew what he needed to do.

His [Basic Maintenance] was useful on its own, but it was the Metal and Fire affinities that were the real stars of the show. With his skill and those two, he could repair his equipment far more completely than with the skill alone.

He still pulled out the kit he had to help him with minor things like dings and scratches. Partly because he liked working with his hands, and partly because he found it helped him to channel the mana into the right places.

Maybe it was useless to do, but Sam didn’t have anybody to teach him a better way, and what worked in the field was what mattered.

I can unlearn bad habits later, when I survive long enough to reach a town or city… if such a thing even exists here.

Sam immediately felt the connection between himself and the metal of the armor. He could even feel how damaged it was, which was a first. He hadn’t felt that with his claymore.

Shutting his eyes and focusing, Sam traced the fingers of his free hand to a rather severe dent. Using his small hammer, he tapped gently from the underside of the armor while guiding Metal mana where it needed to go.

Being such a novice, Sam took great care to focus on what he was doing and try to memorize what it was his skills were telling him to do.

It was a bit like instinct guiding his hand. He had a hunch of where he needed to put the hammer and guide the mana with each gentle tap, but he was almost clueless as to the why.

Slowly, over the course of the next hour or so, Sam grew more confident. His understanding blossomed as he began to fit the pieces together that bridged his understanding from instinct to actual knowledge.

The result was less flamboyant than with the claymore, but no less interesting.

Bronze, being a softer metal alloy, was much easier to manipulate than the blackiron of the greatsword. However, as a weaker metal, it also lacked a deep supply of Metal mana.

Hammering a dent here, using pliers to pinch shut a gash there, Sam renewed the [Bronze Half-plate] to near-perfect condition. Earning himself not only more knowledge as to how mana worked, but also a well-earned skill up.

Your [Basic Maintenance] Skill has reached (☆ Primitive III).

It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things.

Certainly not compared to the slew of enhancements yesterday, but it felt good all the same to get some progress just by doing some necessary work.

Normally, on Earth, you’d have to go through countless hours, or even years of imposter syndrome, and even then never be entirely sure you got any better.

At least on Il’dran, he could look at his skills and see how far he had come.

The added tier also brought with it some interesting knowledge that seemed to combine with his Fire affinity to produce something between repair and maintenance.

Pressing both hands to the [Bronze Half-plate], Sam could get a read on its current Metal supply.

Equipment, at least the kind that Sam had access to, did not possess the ability to generate its own mana. It had whatever its raw materials and the process used to create it had, and that’s it.

Perhaps if some skilled craftsman was able to impart more, that would change things, but that was only a guess on Sam’s part.

What he knew, however, was that repairing his armor had exhausted roughly a quarter of its Metal. Looking at it, you could never tell it had been damaged in the first place.

Oh sure, there were a few nicks and scrapes still visible, but that was all superficial. Nothing that would actually harm the integrity of the piece.

However, it wasn’t something he could do forever.

Eventually he would run out of Metal mana. As a weaker metal, bronze seemed to have significantly less Metal than his blackiron greatsword.

He wasn’t good enough to put a number to it, precisely, but he felt fairly confident that his greatsword had at least triple the amount of Metal to draw from.

With his Metal affinity, he could draw out that source of mana to repair deeper issues with the item as a whole.

The rest he could use his tools on, but for the holes that would otherwise need significant welding and patching—neither of which he could do—he could use Metal mana to repair it like new.

But since the armor wasn’t living, or bestowed with some enchantment that would allow it to create mana, it acted a lot like a disposable battery.

Under normal conditions, a very small amount of Metal would be used when the item took damage. Not necessarily to restore its durability, but to keep it in one piece.

When all of its Metal was exhausted, it would turn weak and brittle. Not too dissimilar to any ancient relic that had to be handled carefully by a museum.

But what truly fascinated Sam was that, with his ability to manipulate Metal mana, he could alter the properties of any metal item for a short period of time.

He had no idea how it would work during battle, but he felt that at least before fighting, he could give himself an edge by burning extra Metal to temporarily improve his armaments.

It would inevitably shorten the lifespan of any item he attempted it on, but it could be the difference between life and death. After all, if he could sacrifice half of his armor’s Metal to brace against an attack that would hurt him, it would be worthwhile.

He could always get another piece of armor—at least he hoped so—but he only had one life. Even if he could count on [Endure], the less damage he took overall meant that he could take down more monsters in a shorter period of time.

And that, Sam thought as he donned the armor once more and sheathed his [Charred Claymore] into the leather baldric, means I can grind out more Experience to level up.

Snuffing out the fire and scooping up the [Archflame Coal], Sam checked its Heat was mostly full and began walking against the flow of the river. It was time to find a way out of there.

Or better yet, something to kill.