Blacksmith vs. the System 306

The ocean was magnificent.

I had always enjoyed the trips to the shore, the calming tone of the waves, the constant tides, full of life and wonder. But, it had been three years since I had last visited the ocean for … well, obvious reasons. For a moment, I stood there, enjoying her majesty.

A deep breath filled my lungs with the wind from the ocean, the salty aftertaste clear. Before the Cataclysm, night at the shore would have been calm, almost mechanical, a metronome of swell, a thin hiss of foam shingling pebbles, maybe, very occasionally, interrupted by the warning from a distant freighter.

It was different now. The waves were harsher, and not always predictable. Occasional errant waves interrupted it. Maybe a natural event, or maybe the movement of a predator animal, large enough to leave its mark even underwater.

More importantly, it wasn’t just the salt I could taste in the air. I could also feel mana, one that I had felt surprisingly different from I had expected. Not like the mana from the leyline we owned, soft yet featureless. Certainly not like the mana stored in us.

No, the mana of the sea felt chaotic, a mix of water and fire and lightning … I would have called it similar to a dungeon, but even that would be a mistake. A dungeon’s mana was focused, intense, yet singular. It was like comparing a can of coke to a complicated meal, filled with mystery.

Another reason to be careful at the shore … though not as important as the other threats, I corrected myself when I saw the sudden swell of the ocean, almost five miles away, one that could be mistaken for a mountain if it was not moving.

A giant shark, far bigger than a blue whale, poked its head out for a second, its open mouth revealing its teeth, measured in yards. My eyes were dragged downward by the motion, tracking its movement as it cut through the water, adding its own wave to the ocean.

Then, it disappeared underwater. No fanfare, only the implacable certainty of mass.

“That’s one way to solve overfishing,” I muttered. One thing was clear. After the Cataclysm, life had returned to the ocean with a vengeance, but along with it, came a danger humanity had never felt since antiquity, filled with monsters that would treat whales as a midday snack.

Beautiful, yet even more dangerous. Even now, I was only able to enjoy its majesty because of my power, not only at the level limit but also with my overpowered stats. Yet, even from the distance, I could feel that the giant shark was not the only danger in its depths … nor the biggest one. The moment I pushed to the shore, I would be beset with a beast wave.

One that I couldn’t retreat against, not without possibly losing our opportunity for expansion for a while; or maybe forever.

“At least it’ll be a good chance to test my Charisma against the beasts and monsters,” I muttered, preparing myself for the endless wave, hoping that I could scare them. It was not entirely necessary, but it would make my life much easier. Ironically, we weren’t able to experiment, as outside, we weren’t entirely confident it would avoid the attention of the spies. My possession of Charisma was still too big of a secret to take the risk, especially to test a relatively niche application.

Our cannons were a much better tool to deal with the monster waves.

Too bad I couldn’t test it on dungeon monsters either. With my connection with the dungeons, the results would be skewed at best, completely opposite of its reality at worst.

With a shrug, I dismissed the potential applications of my newest stat, and moved forward. My blade was on one hand, while a floating mana-powered floating platform followed me behind, filled with thick metal plates, each covered with runic enchantments.

Tonight’s excursion was a sudden decision, but it was only a shift in schedule. The materials had been long prepared.

Similar care had been put into the target location, though we were unable to optimize for perfection. The ideal case would have been to take over one of the pre-Cataclysm trade ports, or even better, a military one, but the positioning of the other towns and the influence zones limited us. We had to stay within the previous influence zone of Drakka, yet pick a point that they couldn’t attack easily.

Add in the necessity of staying within the range of our dungeon-reinforced logistic chain, and the potential locations had been further limited.

Luckily, we were able to find a nice spot. A nice solid rock hill, overlooking a cove that was deep enough to house the metal monstrosities we planned to build, deep enough. The only issue was the relatively limited protection from the storms, meaning we would have to put some extra time into wave breakers.

When I reached the hill overlooking the cove, the beasts were already reacting to my presence. A flock of birds, looking like an unholy mixture of seagulls and growth hormones, dove, treating me as easy food.

A mana slash taught them the error of their ways, destroying half of their flock in the process. Unfortunately, the rest of the beasts hadn’t treated it as a source of intimidation, but a source of invitation.

The sea exploded in chaos, the blood of the seagulls awakening the hunger in them. Thousands and thousands upon them, the reason I decided to take the first stage of the mission alone.

I thought about using Charisma to push them away, but for the moment, but the beast wave, despite their incredible numbers, didn’t look overwhelming. No gargantuan beasts, and no boss monsters. At least, not yet.

[-3000 Mana]

With a wave of my blade, and I depleted about a third of my mana. In return, the majority of the attacking beasts met with their end, emptying my immediate surroundings. I cast another spell, bringing my empty hand down, the ghost of a hammer appearing halfway, runes floating.

Not just the thick metal plates, but also the rivets, connectors, and other support material. Plate by plate, they connected. A haphazard work at best. Not a cheap one, leaving only two thousand points back.

[-5000 Mana]

At that moment, I had a choice. I could focus on opening a dungeon gate, which, with the distance to the nearest gate, would take about a minute. Long, but enough for the defenses to hold … unless, of course, a fearsome monster joined, demolishing the half-completed defenses, yet to merge together.

It was a valid risk, as the wild beasts did not react well to the dungeons, and I doubted that huge shark I observed, or any other boss monster that might be hidden in the depths, would be happy about the sudden enrichment.

“Let’s play it safe,” I muttered to myself and rushed forward, despite knowing it would once again earn Rosie’s ire, and a lecture about royalty risking themselves. Safety of the fortress or the first wave of arrivals didn’t necessarily mean safety for me.

At this point, with my class, skills, and stats, it would be unfair to treat it any other way.

I moved closer to the ocean, enough that the waves were lapping against my armored feet; which was, luckily, waterproof. A common feature after spending months in a dungeon whose defining feature was a swamp.

The closer to the water, the denser the free mana was. The density wasn’t high enough to satisfy a mage of my caliber, but luckily, I was not limited to spells. I let mana cover my blade and started dancing, cutting down the beasts that managed to gather after the previous massacre. They were fast yet weak, allowing me to refill my mana in relative ease.

The meditation variant I came up with, using not only decay but the other concepts, made it even faster, wind in particular helping to enhance the collection range.

Once filled, I returned to the metal keep in construction, focusing on the connection between the runic plates. Reformation of Quintessence proved particularly effective, treating the gaps between the plates as cracks under my control, merging perfectly. Though, constructing the process required almost a hundred trips, each bringing me farther and farther away from the fortress, each meeting with another nascent beast wave that I needed to kill.

The more I moved, the more I was glad for coming alone. If I had had a team with me, the beasts would have reacted even harder to our presence, making it a challenge to protect them alongside the challenge.

Luckily, I was able to handle the production alone. Having two overlapping class skills was proving to be surprisingly useful. Under the Reformation, the edges of the plates melted like wax, merging into a singular, solid structure. A true keep, purely metal.

Admittedly, it was nothing too fascinating, at least in terms of size. It was not a medieval castle, strong and imposing. A house of the same size would have blended perfectly in a suburb. Might have even ended up on the smaller end depending on the neighborhood.

However, its value wasn’t in its size, but in the opportunity. It created a strong, impenetrable core, one that would allow the deployment of my elite forces from the dungeon gate with ease. More importantly, several metal pillars went deep underground, solidifying the foundation to prevent its being knocked around by an oversized monster or two.

Inside, I closed my eyes for a moment, focusing on the dungeon connection with the wind dungeon, stretching the connection closer. I received two responses. One was gentle, subtle, and internal, the dungeon reacting to my order by warping the reality with a casual ease.

The other response, not so much.

The ocean roared. Or at least, that was what it felt like, the sound alone shaking the hill we were on.