ã€ŠThe Maker&#x27;s Journey - [Litrpg crafting progression]ã€‹


 Ch 1: Reincarnation Sucks

    I didn''t know who invented reincarnation, but it kind of sucked. There were the two main kinds of reincarnation. The one where you remembered your past life and the one where you didn''t.

    As you can probably guess, I got reincarnated and now I was sucking on some random lady''s breast for nourishment. With the context of a full life, sucking on a breast for nourishment felt weird. I did it anyway, because I had already died once. I didn''t want to do it again anytime soon.

    Growing up was strangely harder this time around. Knowing what life had to offer, it was harder to stay motivated to keep on going.

    As you probably already suspected, I reincarnated into a fantasy world. I liked fantasy growing up, but I never considered that I would live it one day. Blasting things apart with fireballs or slashing them with a sword were fun for make believe, but in real life? Just think about how much back splash you''d probably get from both those activities.

    I didn''t need to be covered in animal or monster guts all day. Reincarnate me in the realistic world. The one I came from. Things sucked, but at least I didn''t have to worry about being killed by the flu. They never covered that sad reality in fantasy books.

    My "mom" died of consumption¡ªwhich is just an old-fashioned name for tuberculosis¡ªwhen I was twelve in this new life. With modern medicine, also known as antibiotics, she could have been cured and stayed alive and kept this shitty family from falling apart.

    But no, none of the so-called healers in town could cure her, because of course they couldn''t. These healers who could heal stab wounds but not a simple bacterial infection of the lungs. Bunch of useless assholes.

    No, I didn''t cry. Only losers cry over the death of their second mother. Someone who still gave them life, despite not being the first to do it. Regardless of how much care and kindness she put into everything she did. Despite how much her family loved her. None of that mattered, because she was dead. And she wasn''t coming back.

    Sure, maybe she''d reincarnate into a modern world and live a whole new life there. Whoop Dee Doo. What good did that do for her loved ones? For the people she left behind. Her name was Alimay, by the way. If you cared.

    With my mother dead, our family limped on. We never fully recovered from that loss, but we survived. It''s not much of a consolation prize, but at least my father didn''t die shortly after, as is often the case with loving marriages in a medieval setting.

    "Oh, he fell off a bridge" or "he got trampled by horses" people would say, as if that was something people could accidentally do. Anyone with a brain knew what really happened, but medieval societies weren''t socially sophisticated enough to face the awful truth. So they just swept it under the rug, like a bunch of cowards.

    And then there was the system. That awful, stupid system. It plagued my view all day and night, just begging me to click on it. It wasn''t until my 18th birthday, when my father coincidentally died by falling off a bridge, leaving the family business to me, that I finally decided to click on the system screen.

    The screen prompt just said "Start New Game." Nothing fancy or elaborate. I mentally clicked on the button. A title screen showed. The title was "The Glorious System." How humble. Then backstory text scrolled slowly down the screen. I didn''t read any of it.

    It made me choose a character name, to which I put my real name in, "Gwen." You may be wondering, Gwen? Isn''t the protagonist of this story male? He is. I mean, I am. My mother just really wanted a girl so badly that she never even considered coming up with a male name, and when I was born, she named me Gwen anyway.

    I used to hate the name, but ever since my mom died, I''ve worn it proudly, punching anyone in the face who dare laugh at the name my magnificent mother gave me. The assholes. Served them right. What''s a few broken noses in a medieval fantasy setting, anyway? Half the people here broke their noses at least once before their eighteenth birthday.

    It gave me starting stats with no ability to spread additional stats among my starting ones. I didn''t know what that was about. Most games gave you some starting points to spread out, but not this one.

    My starting stats were Strength 5, Dexterity 4, Constitution 3, Wisdom 4, Intelligence 6, and Charisma 2. Damn. What a low charisma stat. I''d have to work on that if I could. With everything I wanted to achieve in such a short time, I would need a good charisma stat. Besides, a good charisma stat often let you skip crappy encounters.

    I hoped this was one of those hard work systems rather than max level systems. Max level systems, you had to choose a deliberate character build and allocate your available points wisely, because there was a maximum number of points you could gain.

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    The problem with max level systems is they operated on efficiency of economy. You had to make choices that provided the most utility per point possible.

    There were many combinations of ways to do that, but almost all of them relied on the ability for the player to start the game over and use gained knowledge to refine their build.

    Since there was no indication whether I''d be able to start over when I died, I was going to assume I couldn''t. It was better to assume that and be wrong than the other way around.

    On the contrary, hard work systems allowed you to just gain stats and skills as you learned them in real life. Which meant there were no real limits, other than the time limit of your eventual death to natural causes or a dragon stepping on your ass.

    What I would have preferred more than anything was to have a family and live out my boring life helping my still alive father run an adventuring gear shop, while my still alive mother tended to the house, as unfortunately was tradition in this alternate historical era.

    I would have liked to have a family that wasn''t ripped out of my grasp like the last one so recently was. Although that had been due to old age and dementia, it still stung. That wasn''t the case, though. My mother and father were dead, and I was all alone in the world.

    Well, I wasn''t all alone. I had a brother and sister to worry about, too, which was worse than being alone. If I didn''t have the lives of others to worry about, I could''ve just accidentally fallen off a bridge too, and tried my luck in the reincarnation pool again, if that is what fate had decided for me.

    But saddled with this responsibility, I wouldn''t shirk it. I wasn''t that much of a coward. And so that left me with one option. Play the game. I was barely eighteen. While I could legally run the shop, I was going to need all the help I could get.

    My father had me and my brother to help him, and he was a big, strong man. I was a scrawny eighteen-year-old boy. And I''d lost the biggest help we had, my father. Now it was just me and my little brother who could barely sweep the dust off the floors.

    I''m going to pause because I feel like we''re getting off on the wrong foot. I''m not a heartless bastard, even if I come off that way in my head. I cried my eyes out over my second mother''s death, and I silently cried in the bathroom after I heard my second father had died.

    All I''m trying to say is life was hard out here. Harder than they make it out to be in books and shows. But for your sake, I''ll try to complain a little less, and just shoulder the burden like a real tough guy would. I was going to do my best for my brother and sister, and I''ll do the same for you.

    I hoped to get something good with this system, but so far it was just gamifying skills I already had. Was this just going to be life, the game, or was I going to get some cool abilities to help me not die and not make my brother and sister starve to death in the house?

    Next was character background and race. It said I couldn''t choose those though. They had already been chosen for me when I was born. It did, however, tell me what they were, and it showed grayed out images of the choices to the left and right of my background and race.

    Despite being grayed out, they were still mostly visible. The names weren''t displayed, but I could guess by context what they were based on the images. The background on the left of mine had an image of someone working a field. Must have been a farmer''s background.

    The one on the right had an image of a man wielding a sword. That must have been a soldier or a knight''s background. I assumed soldier since it was less prestigious. Knight seemed more like something you would work toward rather than move on from.

    The background I was given based on my upbringing was called "Merchant''s Son." It gave me proficiency with a few different skills. The specific proficiencies I was given were bartering, appraisal, and repair.

    These were the most basic level of proficiency, known as apprentice proficiency. I could only assume there were many proficiencies above that, and anything you didn''t have a proficiency in, you were shit at. Or at least only as good as any other random person without experience in the skill.

    Next were the race options. The race options weren''t anything cool, or I didn''t expect. The one on the left was a short stout man, who was clearly a dwarf, and the one on the right was a beautiful tall thin man with pointy ears, who was clearly an elf.

    I was hoping for something cool, like demons or orcs or goblins, but supposed it was for the best that those weren''t options next to mine. I would want them too much.

    I had played more than my fair share of fantasy role-playing games in my adult years. I''d even played some table top rpg''s. They were fun, sure, but I never wanted to live them. They were fun because there were no real consequences.

    You could pretend to be a badass hero, but when push came to shove, you didn''t have to put anything on the line. You had nothing to lose, especially not your life. Not your real life, at least.

    Maybe it was karmic justice that I be thrust into this position, since I had no interest in being in a real life fantasy scenario. I didn''t know what I had done to deserve this, but who knew what made the gods do what they did? It could have been as simple as the fact that I didn''t want it that made them do it.

    Either way, I was here. Looking at my selected race, I wasn''t surprised. It was human. It gave me the racial benefits of starting with proficiency in five skills rather than the standard three. It also gave me a 20% experience boost, but what good was an experience boost when everyone in your town had the same boost?

    I knew no one else had this system, but that didn''t mean other people didn''t level up and gain skills like I would. They just didn''t have a way to directly interface with the mechanics.

    Since I started with five skill proficiencies, but only three had been assigned by my background, I had two left to allocate. I chose blacksmithing and alchemy.

    They seemed like the most relevant skills to running the shop since we sold adventuring gear and supplies. That included weapons, armor, potions, and elixirs. So if I could make a few extra on the side or learn how to improve what I already had, I could make some extra profit and feed my family for another day or two.

    I was hoping I''d at least be able to choose my class. As soon as I clicked past the background and race options¡ªeven though they were chosen for me¡ªa "Choose your Class" option appeared. Nice. This is where the real fun would begin.

 Ch 2: Choose Your Class

    The "Choose Your Class" option seemed cool at first. There were a number of different options to choose from and you could see the mechanics for the starting abilities, bonuses, and skills they gave you.

    That got old really quick when I realized that the list of classes didn''t end. I read the first dozen class mechanics and then I just started reading the class names and assuming I knew the gist of what they did.

    I sure as hell couldn''t be bothered to read them all. I had to open the shop. I understood now why the system called itself glorious, but holy cow was this a lot of options. There was literally any possible class you could think of in a fantasy setting and even some you couldn''t.

    I wasn''t seeing anything that spoke to me, so I just started scrolling rapidly through the options without reading them. I figured I would scroll to the bottom and then work my way up instead.

    Rather than that happening, I just ended up spending entire minutes scrolling through hundreds of classes. This was getting ridiculous. Just when I thought the list would be infinite, I hit the bottom. I scrolled through the classes at the bottom until I finally found something that took my breath away.

    "Krinkler, Tinkler, Maker," I mumbled to myself. Maker. Boy, was that a class name if I ever heard one. I clicked on it immediately. I couldn''t wait to see what it did.

    "Jack of all crafts, master of none. Can make anything you put your mind to, with enough levels, materials, and time."

    Interesting. This was exactly the vague kind of everything crafter class that I was looking for. I ran a retail store for adventurers. The more I could make, the more I could sell.

    This was perfect for my circumstances. My favorite part is that it gave me proficiency in all crafts. All of them. Sure, it was only apprentice level proficiency to start, but I was sure those could be improved.

    The hardest part of learning a craft was going from someone who knows nothing to apprentice level. So the hardest part was out of the way for me.

    One of the downsides of the class was that it didn''t give me any starting abilities or bonuses. All I started with was proficiency in all crafting skills. Oh, and I had no weapons or armor proficiencies.

    Nothing combat related. So I was basically useless in a fight. Who needed combat skills, though, when you could make and sell everything?

    I could turn my shop into a booming business and then just hire adventurers to fight for me. Or better yet, I could hire them to teach me how to fight.

    I didn''t know if Makers could learn how to fight, but there was nothing in the starting mechanics that said you couldn''t. I still had an attack and defense skill, which was a good sign. They were only unarmed skills, but if I could learn new proficiencies from experts, I''d be set.

    Oh, and I didn''t specify this, but skills also had numbers associated with them. Everything I had apprentice level proficiency in was set at 3 and everything else was set at 2. So 2 must have been the baseline for stats.

    Everything related to crafting that I already had apprentice proficiency in got bumped up to journeyman proficiency. So my repair, blacksmithing, and alchemy skills were all statted at 4 now.

    Well, then my charisma stat wasn''t so bad. It was just at the baseline. That made my other stats overly impressive. A 5 in strength and a 6 in intelligence? I was skinny-strong, sure, but a 5? Huh. I guess I wouldn''t complain.

    And a 6 in intelligence. I was smart, but I wasn''t that smart. I mean, I could take apart and put nearly anything back together, and I could repair almost anything even if I''d never seen it before, but that wasn''t too unusual, was it?

    I spent the remaining time before opening time making sure my shelves and racks were full, my floors were cleaned, and my money in the drawer was stocked.

    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

    I opened the doors to the shop. Then I placed the stand up signs on the left and right sides of the doors to prop them open and advertise the shop. They read "Quality gear at affordable prices!" and "Beginner gear for the true beginner!"

    We didn''t stock anything fancy. Just beginner to intermediate weapons, armor, and supplies that we bought from suppliers. We didn''t make anything in house. We could do minor repairs with a furnace we had in the back, but it wasn''t anything fancy.

    I had a feeling with my maker class, I''d have to use these meager pieces of equipment to make my first items and gear. Oh well. I can''t blame anyone but myself in this instance.

    I chose the class. I could''ve been a fighter class and just slashed my way through anything that came my way, but no, I had to choose the fancy class that had actual utility in my day-to-day life. I say that like it''s a bad thing, but it''s really not.

    It just meant I''d have to rely on others to gather materials for me. Speaking of, a customer walked into the shop. They looked like a regular person. They didn''t have any armor or weapons on them.

    They just looked like a regular peasant. Certainly not someone who could afford to buy gear. I walked up to them.

    "Is there anything I can help you with?" I asked.

    "Yeah, uh," she said, "I''m looking for fighter gear and supplies, but it seems like I can''t afford anything here except maybe a healing potion. I heard you guys had the lowest prices, but I still can''t buy anything here."

    Gears began turning in my head. How could I make this work in my favor?

    "We do rentals," I said. "You can either pay up front for the rental, or you can pay with a portion of the loot you bring back."

    We didn''t do rentals. Too many people died in the dungeons or just never came back for that to be profitable. But this woman seemed like the honest type, and I needed someone to gather materials in the dungeons for me if I wanted to make anything worthwhile.

    Sure, I could buy supplies in bulk to make basic things like common health, mana, and stamina potions, but anything above common required materials that people weren''t selling.

    Anything they risked their lives for, they were likely to keep, even if they couldn''t do anything with them. Which was dumb, but people were dumb. I couldn''t necessarily fault them for that.

    "You rent gear?" she asked. "No one does that anymore! I hear too many people run off with the merchandise or lie about their findings."

    "You''re a smart one," I said. I was trying to flatter her, so she liked and trusted me more. "You''re right. No one rents anymore, and neither did we up until today. Officially, we still don''t, but the ownership of this shop just fell to me, and you seem like the honest sort, so I''ll make a deal with you."

    "I''m listening," she said.

    "If I rent gear and lend supplies to you," I said, "I''ll let you pay me back at cost for the supplies and gear when you finish your first dungeon incursion or hunting expedition or whatever it is you plan to use the gear and supplies for. Obviously, you''d want to keep the gear for future trips.

    "The only thing I ask for in return is you give me all the crafting materials that you come across. The more you bring back, the better things I can make and the better gear and supplies I can give you for future trips, so it''s in your favor to gather as much as you can. That includes weapons and armor if you can carry it."

    She put her hand on her chin and thought about it, or at least pretended to. That would''ve been manipulative though, and again, she didn''t seem the type. So I figured she really was thinking.

    What about, I don''t know. The deal I was offering her was a once in a lifetime opportunity for a peasant who couldn''t afford gear. What was she going to do? Punch the goblins and giant rats to death?

    "I''ll agree to it," she said, "under one condition. You come with me. We can gather more materials with two people and I want you to bring extra supplies in case I need to borrow more during the trip."

    "You want me as your portable merchant shop companion, huh?" I asked. "I can do that, but I get to keep all the loot from anything I kill or find, assuming I do either of those things. You can keep the enormous chest of gold at the end, assuming there is one."

    "I can agree to that," she said.

    We shook on it, and a bond was instantly forged between us, is what I want to say, but what really happened was two people grabbed each other''s hands and lifted them up and down.

    I had no idea if she was going to go back on our deal or what. For all I knew, she was going to kill me in the dungeon and loot my corpse. But there was no reward without risk, and I needed this, so I would be taking that risk.

    Our business was on the decline in this town. The problem with only selling beginner to intermediate gear without traveling around is that everyone who bought the gear either died or graduated to needing higher level gear. So over time clientele eventually dried up.

    And we were getting near the end of our savings, just keeping the shop open. So I had to do this, or I''d have to close the shop and eventually starve to death or get a job, and a single job wouldn''t make enough to feed me and my siblings.

    The harsh reality was that I needed this shop to start making money again, and in order to do that, I needed to sell higher level gear. Since I couldn''t afford to buy higher level gear, I''d have to make it, and in order to do that, I''d have to go into the dungeons or hunt for materials.

    So like it or not, I was going into danger with a random woman who I knew nothing about. At least she was tall, broad shouldered, and a fighter class. That would give me the best chance of survival.

 Ch 3: The Catacombs

    Don''t get me wrong. I was upset about my father''s death. He wasn''t a bad father. I wish he''d talked to us about how he was feeling before acting, though. And now I had to use the last bit of money left in our savings to pay for a funeral and burial.

    My siblings needed closure, and it would be nice to have a place to sit and talk to myself and think while pretending I was talking to my father''s spirit. I mean, I know I seem gruff and shitty, but I would still talk to him.

    I just wouldn''t expect a response. Not unless I performed necromancy on him or something. While that would be fun, I couldn''t afford the schooling or the fines for desecrating a grave and disobeying the natural laws of life and death and all that.

    As far as my siblings were concerned, it had finally sunk in that our father wasn''t coming back. They were beginning to mourn, just like they had with our mother, but that had been a long process, so I expected this one to take a while, too.

    That meant I was on my own for running the shop for a while. Brent wouldn''t be coming around to sweep anytime soon. Delia was taking it the hardest. She had been young when our mother died, so she didn''t have the previous experience to lean back on.

    I assured them everything was going to be alright, and that I was going to fix everything, because that''s what you do with younger siblings when everything is about to fall down around your ears. You lie, and you hope that it''s true.

    "Really? Are you going to bring mom and dad back to life?" Delia asked.

    "No, I''m not quite that amazing," I said. "I''ll make sure we survive and I''ll feed you hungry little munchkins."

    I tickled her, and she giggled.

    "Stop, that tickles!" she said.

    "That''s the point," I said, "but I will stop if you wish."

    "Gwen," my brother Brent said, "can I come sweep tomorrow?"

    "No," I said, "you rest and just deal with our recent loss. When you''re ready to come back, I''ll tell you."

    "Are you sure you can do it by yourself?" he asked.

    "I''ll be fine," I said.

    I wasn''t going to be fine. Well, I would be if tonight''s journey went well. The woman who was going to take me through the dungeon and I waited until after I closed the shop to head to the nearest dungeon. It was only an hour''s walk south of the town.

    It was called the Necromancer''s Catacombs of the Undead. Spooky right? Originally, it had served as the catacombs for a kingdom long since lost to time. Then, as the story goes, a powerful necromancer bent on the destruction of the kingdom entered the catacombs and brought them to life.

    He led an army of the undead to destroy the kingdom and everyone in it. The only thing left of the kingdom now were the catacombs buried deep underground. The necromancer apparently still lives at the bottom of the catacombs as a lich, but no one has ever made it far enough down to even fight him, let alone defeat him.

    Every so often, a horde of skeletons will exit the dungeon and attack the town. Which is why people tried to adventure into them as frequently as they could to quell the hordes of skeletons that continued to come out of the place.

    We were two such adventurers. Well, Valda, my companion, was an adventurer. I was just there to supply her with gear and pick up loot. Or so I thought.

    My father had ventured into the catacombs in his own younger years, gathering gold and resources. He had done quite well for himself in there, and that is the money he used to marry my mother and open the shop. Those resources were dwindling in recent years and he wasn''t the same man he was twenty years ago. He didn''t have the ability to go back in.

    I figured it was one of my best chances of gathering crafting materials. We could always hunt and forage out in the wild for materials as well, but there was no place nearby more dense with resources than the catacombs.

    There were rare bugs that wandered the catacombs, mushrooms, lichen, enchanted jewelry that elite skeletons wore, among other things. There were even rumors of enchanted artifacts at the bottom of the dungeon.

    When we were about to enter the catacombs, I saw a hand-painted sign outside that said, "Don''t go in there. There''s skeletons." Ignoring the helpful sign, Valda and I walked down the steps to enter the wide open doorway to the catacombs.

    Our footsteps echoed on the stone floor as we walked. We came to a junction with multiple tunnels.

    "Which way should we go?" Valda asked.

    "I don''t know," I said, "but wherever we decide, I''m going to keep a log on how to get back."

    "Good," she said. She pointed at the far right tunnel. "Let''s go there."

    "Ok," I said.

    I made a note in the notebook I brought along. Before following her down the tunnel, I lit one of the torches I brought along. Warm orange light spread through the tunnel as we walked.

    It started with sarcophagi lining the tunnel on the left and right. Most of them had been opened and were empty. I grabbed a few mushrooms and scraped some bioluminescent lichen off the wall, put them in a cloth bag and placed it in my pack.

    The floor was littered with bones. We crunched on them as we walked. The first enemies we came across were unarmed skeletons. They just kind of reached at us as they walked like zombies.

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Valda gasped for a moment and froze.

    "What are you doing?" I said.

    "I don''t know," she said. "I can''t move."

    "Yes," I said, "you can."

    I grabbed her weapon arm and swung it in front of her. It hit a skeleton''s skull and smashed it to pieces. That seemed to break her out of her trance.

    Valda smashed the remaining skeletons to bits with the mace I gave her from the shop. Skeletons were vulnerable to blunt force damage more than slashing or stabbing. And you couldn''t hit them with arrows. They''d go right through.

    I hadn''t brought a weapon for myself, but I supposed I could use one of the ones I brought for Valda. I didn''t know how I would swing a war hammer while holding a torch in one hand and a notebook in the other though.

    I clicked through the system interface as we walked. I wanted to see if I could find an analyze ability that would allow me to see enemy names, descriptions, and health bars. I found it under the options menu.

    There were instructions on how to do different things and even a tutorial mode. I didn''t know how distracting the tutorial mode might be, so I kept it off. I just skimmed through the instructions to find an analyze mode.

    I found out that it was actually a clickable option in the display menu. I clicked to turn on the ''display stats'' option and suddenly a bunch of neon blue words and outlines cluttered my vision.

    Then I realized it was just because I was standing too close to Valda. When I stepped back, I could see the stats without it making me blind. Above Valda''s head was her name (Valda Steelheart), level (1), her health bar (100/100), mana bar (10/10), and her stamina bar (100/100).

    It also said she was a fighter class, which I already knew. Nothing else was displayed. I looked through the display menu more and found a ''highlight collectibles'' option and clicked on it.

    A yellowish-orange glow highlighted a ton of materials that I was missing in the dark. I started collecting everything I could see until I saw my pack was half full. I stopped after that. I figured it might be better to wait until we were further in to collect more valuable items.

    As we ventured further into the depths of the catacombs, we encountered other enemies, such as giant rats and skeletons with weapons and armor. There were also these huge dark blue beetles that I made Valda kill for me.

    They didn''t attack us, but the display showed them as collectible items, so I figured their carapace could be used in potions.

    "Why are we killing these things?" Valda asked.

    She crushed another beetle with her mace.

    "Because I can use them as crafting materials," I said.

    "Uh," she said, "ok, I guess."

    I picked up another vanquished beetle, placed it in a bag with all the others and put it in my pack. I eventually figured out, looking through the instructions some more, that there was an analyze ability.

    You needed to have the ''display stats'' option on and then you just had to stare closely at a material or item and a name and description would pop up next to it.

    I checked one of each of the materials I had picked up and they all said they were used in various potions and elixirs. Most of them were just for making higher-quality health, mana, and stamina potions, but the midnight beetle carapaces could be used to make dark sight potions. Dark sight allowed you to see even in pitch darkness.

    Some races had it automatically¡ªlike elves¡ªfrom what I learned in school. I analyzed the weapons and armor that the skeletons were using and they were useless or poor quality.

    The worst were labeled as ''rusted''. I supposed that the weapons and armor would get better the further in we went. Valda''s arms shook occasionally, but I couldn''t tell if it was from fear or exhaustion.

    "Do you need to rest?" I asked.

    "No," she said, "I can keep going."

    Her heavy breathing told a different story. I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to the ground as I sat myself.

    "Sit," I said. I popped the cork on a bottle of green liquid and gave it to her. "It''s a stamina potion. It''s only common quality, but it should help you regain your strength."

    "Uh, thanks," she said.

    She drank the potion and I could tell she instantly felt better. She began to stand up, but I pulled her back down. I pulled out some jerky, bread, and water.

    "Eat," I said. "Unfortunately, there''s no such thing as a food and water potion, yet. You have to eat and stay hydrated."

    "Why are you being so nice to me?" she said.

    "Many reasons," I said. "You''re my lifeline. If you fall, I fall. Also, you seem like a decent person, and I don''t want to see you keel over to something preventable, like hunger or exhaustion."

    "Uh, thanks," she said.

    She bit into the bread and a look of relief and pleasure spread across her face. After that, she devoured the food and drank heavily from my canteen. Don''t worry, I had several hanging off the sides of my pack and there was more food where that came from.

    I would have eaten myself, but I wasn''t hungry yet. I hadn''t been doing much work. I just drank some water, and I was good. I came prepared, and while I have no training with weapons, yet, I''m no slouch. I can carry a lot of weight.

    The first thing I''d probably make when I got back, though, was a bigger pack with more straps so I could haul more loot. I hated that I was having to leave loot behind.

    "So, where are you from?" I asked.

    "Skimbal, just like you," she said.

    "Well, I know that," I said. "I mean, what''s your background?"

    "Building houses," she said. "Family business."

    "Oh, nice," I said. "Same here. My father passed the shop onto me when he died."

    "I''m sorry," she said. "You seem so young for that."

    "I am," I said. "But you move on."

    "Yeah," she said, "I guess so."

    After we ate and rested, we got back to it. We ventured further into the catacombs. We came across stairs down every so often, as well as forks in the road, so to speak. I made sure to catalog every turn. We were going deeper and lower in the labyrinth of tunnels.

    As such, we began to encounter tougher enemies. The skeletons were faster and more skilled with their weapons and the rats were bigger and more ugly. Valda had leveled up a couple times since we started (3), but she didn''t seem to notice. I supposed that the stat boosts were automatically allocated for her, since she had no system interface.

    She seemed to get better at swinging the mace too. I analyzed her more closely and stats popped up around her. Her strength was a 6, her dexterity a 5, her constitution a 5, her intelligence a 2, and her charisma a 3. Under skills, next to ''bludgeoning weapons'' was a 3 and (apprentice).

    Nice. She must have improved her skill since being in here. With her not having any weapons or armor coming into my shop, I expected her to have zero experience as a fighter, and she did.

    Since there were no system interfaces, choosing classes in this society was like choosing a profession. You just said you wanted to be a certain class and then you did it. Some classes you had to have an aptitude for, like a sorcerer, but that didn''t mean you had to choose that class. You''d just be an idiot not to.

    She must have just chosen one day she was going to be a fighter and then came to my shop and did it. I wondered why she quit the family business. Maybe I''d ask her that later.

    I drilled down further into her stats and found an experience progress bar. It didn''t say how many experience points she was gaining, but it told the percentage of progress towards the next level. Her progress towards level 4 was (28.4%) and her progress towards journeyman skill in ''bludgeoning weapons'' was (11.2%).

    I must have had my own experience bar, so I checked my levels. I was still level 1 but my progress towards level 2 was a whopping (5%). I guess I shouldn''t be surprised since I wasn''t fighting and I wasn''t making anything. The things I assumed would level me up. The (5%) must have come from gathering materials.

    We finally hit skeletons with actual useable weapons and armor. They were all labeled as ''Delphian steel''. I wasn''t sure what that was, but it must have been good. Otherwise, it wouldn''t have a name.

    I started strapping the weapons, especially the swords, to my pack. I was going to take them back with me and see what I could do with them. They had tons of nicks and scratches in them, so I figured I''d have to hammer and sharpen them, but they should sell with a good makeover.

 Ch 4: Hope for Something New

    As we delved deeper into the catacombs, I began to find new rarer materials. A soul crystal here, web silk there, and a big pile of poop. Wait, that wasn''t poop. It was a slime. A tarry black slime.

    The system identified it as an oil slime. I assumed it meant crude oil. What an incredible find! Crude oil in a dungeon? How lucky could one be? And then Valda''s mace splattered it on the ground. The rest of the tiny slime stuck to her mace.

    "Hey," I said. "Let me have that."

    "Why?" she said. "It''s gross, and it smells terrible!"

    "Please?" I said. "I can make stuff out of it."

    "Fine," she said, "here you go."

    She peeled the squashed slime off her mace and placed it in the bag I was holding open. Nice. With that secured, we carried on. There were more of the little shits.

    Valda squashed them left and right and I put them in bags, but my pack became full very quickly. I had stopped saving room and just kept putting more and more oil slimes in, recognizing the value of crude oil in a fantasy world.

    With the right equipment, I could do all kinds of things with it! I could make gasoline, rubber, plastic, diesel fuel, jet fuel, heating oil, propane and butane, asphalt, lubricants! The list continues, but I''m not going to exhaust it.

    What I really needed, though, was one of those endless bags that could contain infinite items and you could somehow pull out the right item every time you searched inside the bag.

    That was probably far off into the future, though, considering it was some form of magical engineering. Enchantment? Probably enchantment. If I was being honest with myself, what I needed was something new and exciting in my life.

    I didn''t want to just make the same modern conveniences in this world as there were in the last one. Some of them would be fantastic to have, like the crude oil, but I needed magic in my life, for lack of a better term to describe it.

    You know what? That''s what I was going to do. I wasn''t just going to make old stuff in my new world, I was going to make something magical! I''d be a tinkerer, or an artificer, or an enchanter!

    Create wonderful items that bring joy back into my life. Being a civil engineer in my past life, I was tired of building infrastructure. Modern conveniences in a modern world.

    Magic was my answer! Magic itself would bring magic into my life! I just needed to reach out and grab it. And with this maker class, I''m pretty sure I could do it. I''d have to check my proficiencies, but if the class gave me proficiency in all crafting disciplines, then tinkering, artifice, and enchantment should already be available to me.

    My bag was full, though, so we needed to head back. A bag of holding is what I needed, and that was the first thing I was going to make!

    "Valda," I said, "I can''t carry anymore stuff. Let''s get out of here."

    The tiny slimes swarmed us and attached themselves to our feet. It became very hard to move. Thinking quickly, I took out a canteen and poured water on them. They dissolved in the water. I could see them still sort of moving around, but they were floating on top of the water, rather harmlessly.

    I poured more water at Valda''s feet and we escaped. As we were leaving and taking the path back that I had kept track of in my notebook, we began to hear rattling bones coming from in front of us.

    Lifting my torch, which I luckily didn''t drop on the highly flammable slimes, we saw a horde of skeletons ahead. They must have come from one of the other tunnels we didn''t go through.

    I handed Valda a stamina potion, and she drank it down. She looked ready to pummel some skeletons. These skeletons were wearing armor and carrying Delphian steel blades. They wouldn''t be as easy as the first ones.

    Valda, however, was not to be outdone. She charged and raised the mace above her head. It glowed yellow and when she brought it down, there was a small explosion when it hit the ground. The swing itself took out three skeletons at once, and then the explosion took out the legs of several others.

    She did it several more times, and then called out to me.

    "Potion!" she said.

    I tossed her a stamina potion as carefully as I could and she caught it easily. She stepped back from the recovering skeletons and drank it, renewing her energy. Then she did the glowing yellow move three more times, and the skeletons were toast.

    I must have had my mouth open because she cheekily put her finger under my chin and closed my mouth for me.

    "What?" she asked. "You''ve never seen an impact strike before?"

    "Uh, no," I said, "actually. I haven''t. That was cool."

    I checked her level and stats. Her level was 4 already and Impact Strike was listed as one of her abilities now. She must have gained it when she leveled up. It must use up a lot of stamina to do, since she asked for another potion after just three blows.

    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    "Well," she said, "you better get used to it."

    She brushed imaginary dirt off her shoulder, like she was all that and a bag of chips.

    "Hey," I said, "I can do cool stuff too, you know. Just not on the battlefield."

    "I''d pay to see this," she said.

    "Ugh," I said. "Let''s get back to the shop and we can talk about it over some coffee."

    "What''s coffee?" she asked.

    "Oh, nevermind," I said. "Old habit. It''s just a saying where my mother came from."

    "Oh," she said, "okay."

    <hr>

    "So what now?" she asked.

    She was eating a sandwich I made for her out of cured meat, because refrigerators hadn''t been invented yet.

    "What do you mean?" I asked.

    I took a bite of my sandwich. It was dry. Mayonnaise hadn''t been invented yet. Honestly, if I didn''t just turn this place into the modern world except with magic by the end of this journey, I''d be disappointed in myself.

    Cheese had been invented, though. At least that was one luxury I had to look forward to. I couldn''t afford it on a budget of zero coins, but I was hoping this trip and future trips would fix that.

    "I mean," she said, "are we gonna do this again or do we go our separate ways?"

    "I''d like to do this again," I said.

    "Me too," she said.

    I finished my sandwich.

    "So are you just going home now?" I asked.

    "Yeah," she said, "about that. I don''t have a home anymore. My parents disowned me."

    "Why?" I asked.

    "Let''s just say we don''t agree on a lot of things," she said.

    "Alright," I said. "I suppose you''ll be wanting to stay with me then."

    "Would that be alright?" she asked.

    "Yeah," I said, "but I have a condition. You better be planning to stay, because you''ll become my siblings second mother, and if you leave, they''ll be crushed."

    "I have nowhere else to go," she said. "Where would I leave to?"

    "If this works out the way I think it will," I said, "you''ll have more than enough money fairly soon. Oh, and one more thing. You have to help me in the shop."

    "Deal," she said.

    "Good," I said. "Now, let''s go to sleep."

    "Where?" she said.

    "At my house," I said.

    "Oh, right," she said.

    <hr>

    When we got to my house, my siblings were already asleep.

    "You''re staying in my parents'' room," I said. "I''ll be staying in mine. I''ll see you in the morning."

    "We''re not sleeping together?" she asked.

    "Why would we do that?" I asked.

    "So you can have sex with me?" she said.

    "Uh, what?" I said.

    I think she broke my brain in that moment. I didn''t know how to respond. Where was that 6 in intelligence now?

    "Isn''t this where you take advantage of my vulnerability to sleep with me?" she asked.

    "First off, that''s wrong," I said. "And second, do I really seem like that kind of person?"

    "I don''t know," she said. "It''s in all the books I read."

    "Maybe you should read different books then," I said. "Now go to sleep."

    "Okay," she said.

    She saluted me and walked off to my parents'' bedroom.

    "Weird," I said.

    I went to bed and nothing happened in the night to wake me up.

    <hr>

    I was shaken awake by my brother Brent. And then Delia jumped on me.

    "Oh, Jesus!" I said. "What is it?"

    "Who''s the lady in mother and father''s bed?" Brent said. "Is she your girlfriend? Do you have a girlfriend? Why do you get a girlfriend?"

    "Who''s Jesus?" Delia asked.

    "I can only answer one question at a time," I said. "She''s a friend who''s helping me with the shop. She has nowhere to go, so I figured since we have an extra room, she could stay here. Is that alright? Also, I don''t know who Jesus is. It''s just something I say."

    "Ok," Delia said, "I don''t believe you."

    She grabbed her teddy bear from off my head and walked out of the room.

    "Yeah, that''s fine," Brent said. "If she''s not your girlfriend, can she be my girlfriend?"

    "I''m pretty sure that''s not how girlfriends work," I said. "The other person has to want to be your girlfriend."

    "Oh," he said. "Well, how am I supposed to do that?"

    "I don''t know," I said. "That''s why relationships are hard to get. Now can we stop pondering life together? I have to make breakfast for three people now."

    "Oh, right," he said.

    He got off me and left the room.

    "Geez," I said.

    Delia poked her head back into my room.

    "Who''s Geez?" she asked.

    "No one," I said. "It''s just an exclamation."

    "Geez!" she said.

    She left again, but I could hear her walking away.

    "Geez! Geez! Geez!"

    "I guess it''s a Monday," I said.

    They always had the most energy on Mondays, like their bodies knew it was the beginning of the week.

    I cooked breakfast and Brent and Delia sat around the table patiently waiting, but when I served out the plates, Valda wasn''t sitting at the table.

    I opened the door to my parents'' bedroom. Valda was still sound asleep. I flicked her forehead. She immediately opened her eyes and put a knife to my throat.

    "What are you doing?" I asked.

    That knife felt sharp. Where did she even get a knife? I didn''t give her one.

    "Defending myself," she said.

    "First, you expect me to take advantage of you," I said, "and then you defend yourself with a knife like I''m about to take advantage of you. Make up your mind, woman!"

    "Oh," she said. She put the knife away. "The knife isn''t to defend against sex. I thought you were going to try to kill me. Well, not you specifically, but someone."

    "Huh," I said. "That says a lot about the life you''ve lived up to this point, but I''m not going to pry into that right now. I just want you to come eat breakfast with us."

    "Ok," she said.

    She didn''t make any moves to get out of bed.

    "Are you coming?" I said.

    "Unless you want to see me naked," she said, "I''d suggest you wait outside."

    "Oh," I said.

    I waited outside until she opened the door.

    "Hey, you haven''t been sexually assaulted or anything, have you?" I asked.

    "No," she said. "Why?"

    "Oh, good," I said. "The way you talk suggests that."

    "Oh," she said. "I''ll try to talk different then?"

    "Thanks," I said.

    I walked down the hall and into the kitchen. That was probably an unreasonable thing for me to ask, but my nerves were fried at that point. I barely slept, got assaulted by my siblings, and then had a knife held to my throat by someone I let stay in my house. Give me a break.

    "Hi!" Delia said.

    She waved at Valda, who was sitting right next to her.

    "Hi," Valda said. "Nice to meet you both. I''m Valda."

    "Hi, Valda!" Brent said. "Are you Gwen''s girlfriend?"

    "Who?" Valda said.

    And then I realized I messed up. In all that time, I hadn''t told her my name. She told me her name, and I just didn''t say mine. Maybe I was being self conscious.

    "Uh, me," I said, sheepishly.

    "Your name is Gwen?" she said.

    I could tell she was about to laugh, and then she shut it down and her face went placid.

    "No comment. Also, no, Gwen is not my girlfriend."

    "That''s not what he," I said. "You know what? Nevermind."

    We all sat around the table and ate breakfast in perfect silence, except for when Brent or Delia blathered about something random. So, not silent at all, basically. I would dictate what they said, but it''s genuinely not relevant to the story, so I will refrain.

    Nothing interesting happened. I would have called it a boring morning if someone didn''t kick my door in.

 Ch 5: The Crafting Begins

    My front door busted in, the wood around the lock exploding into splinters.

    "What the fuck?" I said.

    Whoever it was just ruined my door! It''s called knocking asshole!

    A small group of three what were clearly thugs came in through the busted door. They were all carrying swords.

    "Give us all your loot in the name of Barton Traxby!" the middle one said.

    He had a bald head, a goatee, and a silver earring in his left ear.

    "Who is Barton Traxby," I said, "and why are you knocking down my door?"

    "Barton Traxby," he said, "runs these streets. Your father hasn''t paid his protection money in the last couple days, and we''re looking to collect, with interest."

    "My father''s dead," I said. "Can''t you leave a grieving family in peace?"

    I tried to look as pitiful as possible, but he wasn''t buying it. I still had no weapons or fighting skills and wasn''t wearing any armor. I couldn''t try to fight them. At least, not yet.

    "You can go back to grieving when we get paid," he said.

    "Valda," I said, "pay the man. Get the money from the bedroom."

    I turned and winked at her. She nodded. She left her mace in the bedroom. She grabbed it and came back, wielding it.

    "What do you think you''re gonna do with that, Missy?" the man said.

    "Bust your damn head open!" she said.

    Valda rushed the leader and ducked just as he swung his sword over her head. She smashed her mace into one of his knees, breaking his leg and bending it backwards.

    "Bitch!" he said.

    She got under him and pushed his body into one of the other thugs, knocking the sword out of his hand and sending them both to the ground. The third thug swung at her, but she blocked it with the shaft of her mace. Then she kicked him in the stomach, sending him to the ground as well.

    Valda brandished her mace at them, just daring them to try to come back at her. The two thugs with functioning legs grabbed their leader and pulled him through the door.

    "You''ll pay for this!" the leader yelled as they dragged him away.

    I hoped I''d be better prepared for when they came back. Hopefully, they came back later rather than sooner.

    I tried to close the door, but it swung open. I wished I had something to fix it with. Hmm. Maybe I did. Woodworking was a skill in this place, so it must be apprentice level. This was something I should be able to fix.

    "Thanks, Valda," I said.

    "No problem," she said. "You saved my life. So I figured I''d return the favor."

    "Still, thanks," I said.

    "Wow! How did you do that?" Brent said.

    "Yeah, you were all like pow! Bang! Splat!" Delia said. She made punching motions in the air.

    "I''ll teach you when you''re older," she said. After a beat, she asked Delia, "So how old are you?"

    "Eight!" she said. She held up her fingers to count to eight.

    "I''m twelve!" Brent said. He tried to mimic Delia''s finger counting, but then he realized he didn''t have twelve fingers.

    Valda laughed. I didn''t hear anything else after that because I went into my father''s workshop to grab his tool box.

    I grabbed some pieces of different sizes of wood and brought the whole toolbox out. I also made sure to grab the glue. We didn''t have the modern glues of my old world, but animal glue would work just fine.

    I could feel my class skill expertise leaking into my mind. While I had been handy with a hammer and nail, and screw and screwdriver, I didn''t know anything about the difference between glue types until the system installed it into my brain.

    Unfortunately, I didn''t have screws available to me. They apparently hadn''t been invented yet. That, or they just weren''t widely available yet.

    I examined the lock and the busted part of the door frame. The lock was still in workable shape. It was just the frame that was broken.

    After another brief examination, I used a chisel to cut away the rough splintered wood. Then I cut pieces of wood to fill the hole and recreate the missing part of the door frame.

    Using a combination of glue and carpenter''s nails, I fastened the pieces of wood into the hole, layering pieces on top of each other until it was flush with the rest of the door frame.

    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    Then I got to work with a few different sizes of wood files and smoothed out any imperfections. Then I painted over the spot and from a few feet away, you couldn''t even see the damage anymore.

    Nice. My first fix job since choosing the Maker class. Exactly the thing I needed to validate my choice. Now, with all the things I gathered in the dungeon, I was going to spend the day making things and validating myself even more.

    Valda looked at it.

    "Are you a carpenter?" she asked. "How did you do that? And so quickly, too."

    "It''s part of my class," I said.

    "Oh," she said. "That''s cool. What''s your class?"

    "Maker," I said.

    "Never heard of it," she said.

    "I''d say most people probably haven''t," I said.

    "What does it do?" she asked.

    "So far," I said, "it just gives me proficiency in all crafting skills."

    "Isn''t that a lot?" she asked.

    "Yeah," I said, "but it gives me no other bonuses to start."

    "Oh, that blows," she said.

    I shrugged.

    "It''s a tradeoff," I said.

    "So how are you going to be able to fight?" she asked.

    "The hard way," I said. "By learning. Or I could make bombs.

    "What are bombs?" she asked.

    "Uh," I said. I hadn''t realized they might not have bomb technology yet. "You know how the fireball spell explodes?"

    "Uh, yeah," she said.

    "It''s like that, but without magic," I said. "It''s alchemy."

    "Alchemy can do that?" she asked.

    "Alchemy can do lots of things," I said, "but let''s get on the road. I have to grab something and then we''ll be off."

    "Ok," she said.

    I went into my room and packed the alchemy set that my father got me over a series of multiple birthdays. I think he really wanted me to do something other than just run the shop with him. I put it in another pack.

    I put clothes in between the pieces so they were less likely to shatter, but I still had to be careful. Luckily, it was still early in the morning, before my shop opened and before there were many people on the street. Which made the interruption even more rude and unnecessary.

    We made it to the shop safely, and I set up my alchemy set in the back. I also planned to do some enchantment later, so I cleared a space for that on one of the counters and then I threw a bag on it. I was planning to make an infinity bag, so I needed a bag.

    I spent the next hour showing Valda how to run the shop. How much everything cost including repairs and other services. I also showed her where the money was.

    She was very wide eyed about the whole thing, which seemed weird, but maybe she just had never worked in a shop before. I had her fully set up before we opened. I also showed her how to open the shop.

    Once we were open, I handled the first several customers so she could watch, but then after an hour, I had her take over so I could fiddle with my experiments in the back.

    Since I had the knowledge installed into my brain, all I had to do was think of either the ingredients I had, or what I wanted to make and the pieces would fall together in my mind, as long as I had enough proficiency in the skill of course.

    I had what I needed to make a batch of uncommon health, mana, and stamina potions, as well as dark sight potions, and a mild poison from one of the mushroom types. When I examined it, it said "poisonous mushroom." How original.

    I started on making stamina potions since those were very useful in the dungeon. I crushed, mashed, and powderized ingredients in a mortar and pestle. I put them in a small cauldron that I placed on top of the furnace to heat up.

    While I let that brew, I moved on to refurbishing the Delphian steel swords I got from skeletons in the dungeon. I ended up with about twenty of them, between what I strapped to my pack and what I carried in my arms. They weren''t very sharp anymore, so I didn''t have to worry about that.

    I started by removing the hilts from the swords. They were grimy, the leather was worn and rotting, and they were loose. After removing that, I washed all the swords. Then I placed them in the furnace. I would have to reheat them a couple times to get the whole blades, but in the end, I could probably sell them for a pretty penny.

    I removed the scale that accumulated on the outside of the metal from oxidation. Then I pounded away the chips by filling in the spaces with surrounding material. Luckily there wasn''t anything that needed welding, because that was a pain in the ass, and I''d need to use one of the swords for material.

    The way I was doing it, I''d be able to sell the whole bunch. It was tedious, but I got it done pretty quickly considering how many there were. I didn''t have to reinforce any of the tangs after checking.

    I didn''t have any quenching oil, and I didn''t want to quench with water for fear they''d crack, so I settle for just letting them cool down on their own time. The carbon content seemed high enough where I couldn''t quench with water anymore. The higher the carbon content, the more careful you had to be and you couldn''t quench with water after a certain content percentage, because it made them too brittle and likely to break.

    With journeyman level skill in blacksmithing, I could tell by how the metal behaved under heat and under the hammer. After they were adequately shaped and cool, I ground them down to sharp edges and the scratches out of them.

    I polished them, put a finish on them, and fitted them with new handles. Then I displayed them for purchase. Using my appraisal skill, I made a judgement on where to price them and carved that into the wood above the rack I hung them on.

    My most expensive sword on the racks before had been twenty gold. I set the Delphian steel swords at fifty gold coins. It would put a dent in most men''s or women''s coin purses, but based on what I saw, they were worth it.

    My pricing probably wasn''t pinpoint accurate because I was still an apprentice in appraisal, but it would serve for now. I hadn''t grabbed any armor from the skeletons yet because it would have been too hard to carry without an infinity bag.

    I got a notification in the upper right corner of my vision. When I clicked on it, it said I had leveled up to level 2. It gave me choices on how to level up. It gave me a stat point to distribute, an additional proficiency level in anything crafting related, and a new ability.

    I put the stat point in intelligence, obviously. The additional proficiency level I had to think about. I would get the most mileage out of boosting my blacksmithing or alchemy up to 5 right now. I just didn''t know which to do.

    I would probably get another proficiency next level, but what could I use right now? Since I was still making potions, it made the most sense to level up my alchemy proficiency first, despite how badly I wanted to level up my blacksmithing skill, just for the fun of being able to create high-quality weapons and armor. I could do that later.

    When I leveled up the proficiency in alchemy to 5 it said (Expert) next to it. Then I immediately realized I had the cauldron on the furnace for too long. It wasn''t getting a ton of heat from the furnace, but after nearly two hours, it accumulated. The concoction was overcooked. I poured it out and started fresh.

    I still had a lot of ingredients left. I mashed and ground the ingredients again and put them in the cauldron with water and placed it on the furnace again.

    I wasn''t sure how I was going to tell how much time had passed since watches and clocks didn''t exist, but I could periodically check the cauldron and tell how close it was by the conditions of the brew.

    As I was getting ready to try enchanting a bag to hold infinite items, I heard a familiar cackling. It was unfortunate for me that any cackling would sound familiar to me, but better to know who it was rather than not, I suppose.

 Ch 6: Davian Malbus

    I forgot to check out my new ability! Oh well, I had to go see what this jerk wanted first. The owner of the cackle was Davian Malbus. He was the son of the owner of a competing adventurer''s gear store. It felt like the guy always had it out for us and our business, despite the fact that my father had been friends with his father.

    Sure, they competed from time to time in drinking games and other kinds of games that didn''t involve drinking, but they were companions. Friendly rivals at worst. But this Davian guy. He was something else.

    He cackled again in much the same manner as before, like he was intentionally trying to draw me out from the back of the shop. That''s actually exactly what he was doing, and it worked.

    "What do you want, Davian?" I asked. "Can''t you see I''m busy?"

    "Where is your father?" he asked. "I wanted to laugh at his face when I criticized his handiwork."

    He held up one of the Delphian steel swords.

    "That''s actually my handiwork," I said. "And if you must know, my father''s dead. He passed two days ago."

    Davian''s grin got wider.

    "What did he do?" he asked. "Fall off a bridge?"

    "Yes, actually," I said.

    "Oh, how dreadful," he said. "I''m sorry for your loss."

    "I can feel how sorry you are just radiating off of you," I said.

    "Yes, well," he said, "to the matter at hand. This is Delphian steel, is it not?"

    "It is," I said. "What''s your point?"

    "My point, dear boy," he said, "is you just turned eighteen two days ago¡ªHappy Birthday by the way¡ªyou couldn''t possibly have had time with your father''s untimely demise, to have gotten an adventurer''s license."

    "Again," I said, "what''s your point?"

    "I thought I was spelling it out enough for a dullard like you," he said, "but apparently not. You can only find Delphian steel in the catacombs, and since you don''t have an adventurer''s license, you''re not allowed to be in the catacombs. So unless you want me to report you, I suggest you close up shop right now."

    "Hmm," I said. "You got me there, Davian. You know what? I will close up shop. Right now."

    "What?" Davian said. "Just like that? There''s no fight in you, Gwen, is there? I suppose your mother gave you a woman''s name for good reason."

    "Don''t you dare speak of my mother ever again!" I said. "Now, get out of my shop so I can close."

    "Very well," he said. He turned on his heel and began walking away. "I never knew you to be so sensitive. You must be taking your father''s death hard."

    "Hey!" I said.

    Davian turned around. I walked up to him.

    "What?" he asked.

    "That''s company property," I said. I pointed at the sword still in his hand. "Were you going to pay for that?"

    "Oh, heavens no," he said. "My apologies. It must have slipped my mind to put it back."

    He handed me the sword.

    "I''m sure a lot of things slip your mind," I said.

    "What does that mean?" he asked.

    "That you''re stupid," I said.

    "Well, that seems entirely uncalled for," he said, "but I will let it slide for the sake of your dearly departed father. Gods rest his soul."

    "Thank you," I said.

    I watched as he walked away. He had a very tight ass way of walking, like he was holding a stick between his butt cheeks. I grabbed the signs, brought them in, and closed the doors to the shop.

    I locked the doors and slid down to a sitting position against them. I checked my new ability that I got from leveling up. It was called, "Design." It gave me the ability to create three-dimensional designs in front of my eyes, just by imagining it.

    This would be helpful for any of my building and shaping crafts, especially blacksmithing. I could superimpose the image over the piece of metal I wanted to shape and keep shaping it until it fit perfectly with the image.

    "You ok?" Valda said. She extended her hand to me. I grabbed it and she lifted me up.

    "Yeah, I''m fine," I said. "That guy just irritates me."

    "Yeah," she said, "I didn''t like him too much either. Seems like he has a stick up his ass."

    "I wouldn''t be surprised," I said. "Since you didn''t speak up, I assume you don''t have an adventurer''s license either?"

    People with an adventurer''s license were allowed to bring a porter into the dungeon with them without breaking any laws.

    "Nope," she said.

    "I wish I had known that earlier," I said. "Before, I displayed evidence of my crimes in front of the whole world, but it is what it is. I''ll forgive you for keeping that a secret, since you were in such a desperate position, but a little heads up next time would be nice."

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    She saluted me again.

    "Yes, sir," she said.

    "You don''t have to salute me," I said. "I''m not your boss. Wait, I am your boss. Still, you don''t have to salute me."

    "I like it, sir," she said.

    "Please stop calling me sir," I said. "You''re clearly older than me. How old are you anyway?"

    "Twenty-one," she said.

    "Oh, ok," I said. "Not too much older than me."

    I went into what I began thinking of as my lab and grabbed the cauldron. I looked inside and saw the brew was just the right color green. I poured it through a filter to remove all the solids.

    Then I began filling test tubes with the green liquid. I was able to fill about thirty tubes. I placed them in a special sack that had little pockets specifically designed to hold potions. The test tubes fit perfectly into the holes.

    "Before we go, I''d like to finish brewing some potions for our next expedition," I said. "So sit tight."

    She pulled up a chair and watched me work. The health potions were much the same as the stamina potions. All I had to do was brew all the ingredients in a cauldron, filter out the solids, and pour them into test tubes. Luckily I had a glass container with a spigot, so that part wasn''t difficult.

    The mana potion would take some more finesse. And some enchantment. I would need to brew each ingredient into the brew successively. Each ingredient was a different kind of magical mushroom.

    So in each bottle was a different colored mushroom paste. I connected the bottles with tubes that would feed into each other when I decided it was time.

    The problem was I needed a delicate amount of heat under each bottle during each phase. For that, I took a pencil and paper and drew three magical circles filled with symbols that would create and regulate the flame.

    Placing the pieces of paper under each bottle, I fed some of the mana in my body into the first circle and added water. A blue flame sprang to life from the paper. The flame didn''t burn the paper. It just heated the bottle it was under.

    Through a series of processes, such as stirring and waiting, I transferred the brew to each next bottle and brought their flames to life. When I was done, I had a glowing blue mana potion.

    Well, it was a total of many potions. I filled another thirty test tubes and placed them in hole pockets in my pack.

    I made the dark sight potions from the carapaces of the midnight beetles and filled thirty more test tubes. I had a lot of leftover ingredients, but I was confident that thirty of each potion would be enough for one more trip.

    Looking at the bag of dead oil slimes, I realized I had the equipment and expertise to turn them into gasoline and other products, but I didn''t have much of a use for that right now, since skeletons weren''t easily harmed by fire. So I let them sit.

    I had one last task. Make an infinity bag. Unfortunately, only having an apprentice level of expertise in enchantment meant that I could make one, but one of the most important aspects of its function would be left out. The weightlessness.

    So my bag would be able to hold infinite items and it wouldn''t take up much space and it wouldn''t rip from the weight, but it would weigh as much as the items it carried. Which sounded like a huge pain in the ass, but there was nothing I could do about it now.

    I drew the circle and the symbols on the bag and poured mana into it, but it kept taking more and more of my mana, until I had none left. And my maximum mana capacity was 140 points now after raising my intelligence to 7.

    Damn. I didn''t expect it to completely drain my reserves. It would take at least an hour to get that back. Oh well. What better time to do something else?

    "Let''s get adventurer''s licenses," I said.

    "Finally!" Valda said.

    I brought everything I thought we needed so we could go to the dungeon right after.

    "So where is this adventurer''s guild?" I asked.

    I should''ve known where it was. I should''ve known a lot more about this town, if I was trying to game the crap out of my reincarnation, but I frankly hadn''t even considered it until my father passed. So I was playing catch up.

    "You don''t know?" she asked.

    "No. That''s why I asked," I said.

    "Right," she said. "Well, it''s a few streets down and across."

    We walked to the Adventurer''s Guild and entered. A man stood just inside the door. He put his hand out, gesturing for us to stop.

    "Who goes there?" he said.

    What? "Who goes there?" Who says that?

    "Harold! Stop bothering customers!" an older woman behind a counter said.

    The man stepped aside, hanging his head.

    "Yes, mother," he said.

    We walked up to the counter.

    "Sorry about him," she said. "He''s been so uppity since I made him a guard."

    "That''s ok," I said. "I wasn''t in a hurry or anything."

    I was being genuine, but I could see how that might seem sarcastic.

    "Oh, good," she said. "Well, what can I help you two with?"

    "Adventurers'' licenses ma''am," Valda said. "We need them."

    "I see," she said. She handed us a stack of papers each. "Fill these out and come back."

    We did as she said and brought them back. They asked basic questions like what are your approximate skill levels. Have your stats ever been evaluated? What are your classes and abilities?

    She looked through the papers and made a noise. She looked at me.

    "Son, do you have any combat skills at all?" she asked. "The class you listed is considered a non-combatant class and looking at your skill levels you indicated, you don''t have the ability to fight on even an apprentice level unarmed or armed."

    "No ma''am, I don''t," I said. "I chose the class, thinking it would be helpful to running my adventuring gear shop, but I didn''t realize I would need loot from the dungeon to do anything with it."

    "Well, that''s not entirely true," she said. "You could purchase loot from adventurers or even us. We buy loot adventurers can''t use from them in bulk."

    "How much does that cost, though?" I asked. "I don''t have much money left on hand. I have about twenty gold left in my savings."

    "I see," she said. "Well, common ingredients like giant rat pelts and herbs will run you between ten and thirty copper, but uncommon ingredients like midnight beetle carapaces can run you one to five silver each, depending on weight."

    "See," I said, "that would be great if I had much money to spare, but I really don''t have a lot. At most, I''ll buy a few batches of herbs off you for common potions."

    "Ok, that''ll be thirty copper," she said. "Three batches of herbs, all common varieties!"

    A girl hurried out of the back and handed me three bags of herbs. I placed them in my infinity bag and the bulk of the herbs disappeared. The weight was still pulling the bag down, but the size didn''t change.

    "Hold on!" she said. "Is that an endless bag?"

    I winced. "Sort of," I said. "It does everything except eliminate the weight of the objects inside. So twenty pounds is still twenty pounds."

    "Oh, darn," she said, "because a true endless bag would sell for five hundred gold easy, but your partial bag would probably only sell for twenty."

    "That''s nice, but it took all my mana to make this," I said. "I can''t part with it today. Maybe tomorrow."

    "Oh, well," she said. "Either way, you''re not going into a dungeon unless you''re a porter for a licensed adventurer. Which you may be in luck. Once we prove that your friend''s skills are what she says they are, she''ll be getting a license."

    "Oh, nice," I said.

    It was a consolation prize, but at least I''d be able to legally go back in the dungeons and be able to explain the Delphian steel in my stock.

    "Here''s a porter badge," she said. She handed me a small brown pin that looked like a bag. How condescending. I pinned it to my chest, regardless. Didn''t want to lose that.

    "Now, if you''ll follow Harold," she said, "he''ll show you to the testing grounds, which coincidentally are also the training grounds."

    We followed Harold out the back of the guild into a wide open area with a ton of different training equipment on display. A broad shouldered, muscular man came up to us.

    "I will be your testing official for today!" he said. "My name is Glint Tuckenstuff. Are you both being tested?"

    "No, just me," Valda stepped up.

    "Ok," he said. He handed her a wooden sword. "Let''s see if you can hit me."

 Ch 7: Adventurers License

    I tried to hand Valda a stamina potion, but she shook her head. Then she rushed at her opponent.

    "Ah!" Valda said.

    She swung the wooden sword and Glint stepped backwards. She swung it again and missed. She kept this up for a while. She tried a few impact strikes, but only succeeded in blasting woodchips into the air.

    The ground we were standing on was covered in woodchips. I guess that was supposed to be easier on our feet or create a more difficult terrain. I didn''t know which.

    When the three impact strikes tired her out, she looked at me and put out her hand. I pretended not to notice.

    "Gwen!" she said.

    I pretended to snap out of a reverie.

    "Did you say something, Valda?" I asked.

    "Gwen! Give me one," she said.

    "Give you what?" I said.

    "You know what," she said.

    She set her jaw.

    "You said no," I said.

    "I''m sorry, ok! I was wrong! Now give me one!" she said.

    "Ok," I said.

    I tossed her a stamina potion, and she drank it down. She tossed the tube and cork to me and I put it back in my pack. She wiped her mouth looking at Glint.

    "Round two," she said.

    I engaged my analysis ability to check her stats. She was now level 4 and she had two abilities listed above her head. One was "Impact Strike" and the other was "Rush." I wondered what that did.

    I didn''t have to wonder long. She closed the distance between them in an instant and tried to stab him with the sword, but he barely jumped out of the way. There went her advantage.

    After a concerted effort, she stopped out of exhaustion. He began to walk up to her, and then she appeared in front of him and stomped on his foot. She pressed the sword under his chin.

    "It seems you have hit me," he said.

    Valda removed her foot from his and the sword. She handed it back to him. He wiped sweat off his brow.

    "It seems I underestimated you," he said. "With your fighting stance, I didn''t expect you to have the impact strike and rush abilities already."

    "You must be about level 4 or 5. You know you didn''t actually have to hit me to pass. No one ever hits me. You''re the first. I just needed to see that you had basic fighting skills."

    "Oh," she said. She blushed. "I''m sorry I tricked you then."

    "No, it''s fine," he said. "I should''ve been more on guard. If you ever want to work on your form and develop some decent maneuvers, feel free to come back."

    "Thanks," she said. "I might just do that."

    "Harold, tell your mother she passed," he said.

    "Ok," Harold said. He walked back into the building.

    "So, is he like your helper or something?" Glint asked.

    "No, she''s my helper," I said.

    "Oh, huh," he said. "So, are you two in a relationship?"

    "No," I said.

    "Yes," she said.

    "What?" I said.

    "A business relationship," she said.

    "Oh, right, then yes," I said.

    "That''s not what I meant, but ok," he said.

    "Oh, by the way," I said. "I will be coming back for my own test. I just need to level up some before I''ll be ready."

    "That''s fine," he said. "Come anytime you want."

    "Clarifying question," I said. "Can I use crossbows?"

    "Yes," he said, "but I won''t let you shoot at me. I''ll just watch you shoot at a dummy, and grade you from that."

    "Oh ok," I said. I really wanted to shoot at him. Oh well. That did give me some new crafting ideas, though. I would need more materials. "Let''s go back inside."

    "Ok," Valda said.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    When we went back inside, the lady at the counter gave Valda a card with her name on it and the words "Adventurer''s License" on top.

    "Congrats! You''re now an adventurer!" she said.

    "Thanks," Valda said.

    After a few seconds, I said, "Can I buy some more stuff off you? I realized there''s actually a lot I need."

    "Sure, what can I get you?" she asked.

    "I need tools for every crafting discipline," I said, "a bunch of crafting materials, especially for tinkering and artifice. And I''d like to buy a couple of those adventuring bundles off you."

    "Big spender!" she said. "You heard the man!"

    The same girl from before came out of the back with a huge bundle of stuff and handed it to me.

    "That''ll be one gold," she said.

    I handed her the money and put the bundle in my bag. The volume immediately disappeared, but the weight was considerable. I made sure we stopped back at the shop so I could unload the stuff before heading back to the dungeon.

    Then back to the dungeon we went. This time a lot more prepared. We both drank uncommon quality dark sight potions, so we didn''t need a torch, and I could carry a weapon. I equipped a war hammer from the shop.

    At uncommon quality, the dark sight potions would only last thirty minutes, but we''d be able to tell when it was wearing off, and I put a couple of the potions in my pants pockets, so we had them at hand in case we suddenly went blind in the dark.

    To get me some experience, since I was only level 2, and she was level 4, Valda would take out the skeletons'' legs and let me deliver the killing blow. I leveled up to 3 fairly quickly and got another stat point, another proficiency, and another ability.

    I put the stat point in intelligence, bringing me up to 8. I had to think about the proficiency. I wanted to reach master level proficiency in all disciplines really quickly, but that would take a while, so I had to be deliberate about what I leveled up first.

    I wanted tinkering, so I could make a self reloading crossbow, but enchantment would get me the most mileage with allowing me to improve my bag. What I really wanted was guns, but I would need so many high proficiencies in various disciplines to achieve that it wasn''t worth attempting right now.

    It would require at least an expert or master level proficiency in blacksmithing, tinkering, and alchemy. And then I''d have to figure out how to get gunpowder.

    Crossbows with a semi-automatic fire rate were an extremely high goal as it was, but it seemed achievable in a few levels of progression. All I think I would need is a journeyman or expert level in tinkering.

    After that, I would work on making the crossbows self aiming, but that was artifice and therefore would need higher proficiencies in that as well.

    It was interesting and frustrating how many crafting disciplines complemented and bled into each other. The more I thought about it, the more it validated my class choice, but also made me realize I had a lot of leveling up to do.

    So in the end I took another proficiency in enchantment so I could improve my bag and carry more equipment into and loot out of the dungeon. I wanted to improve my bag right there, and I could if we weren''t constantly being attacked by more enemies.

    Instead, we finished off the latest barrage of skeletons, giant rats, and now wraiths. Wraiths joined the list of enemies recently as we got further in. They were tougher and scarier and stronger than skeletons, but they still went down when Valda hit them.

    Don''t ask me how a semi-corporeal being gets taken down by a mace, but they did. And I was thankful for it. Otherwise we''d be screwed. I didn''t have special ghost hunting equipment, if that was even a thing.

    Maybe full ghosts would need special equipment, maybe they wouldn''t. Maybe special equipment like¡ªI don''t know, silver?¡ªwould just do more damage rather than being the only thing that could hurt them.

    I might have wanted to invest in silver weapons if we were going to keep venturing down here. I''d ask at the adventurer''s guild. Surely they would know what hurt ghosts the most.

    The wraiths would drop wraith essence, which was neat. It was a really light semi-solid ectoplasm-like substance. I put it in vials that I placed in their own separate bag, like I did with everything else.

    Now that the barrage was over, I could fix my bag some. I drew a new smaller circle in pencil on another part of the bag. This one would reduce the weight of the objects in the bag by half.

    I would probably need to get to master proficiency to make a true infinity bag, but for now, this would help a ton. Now I could carry twice the materials in my bag.

    I made sure to grab nearly every crafting material I could find as we went by this time, since space wasn''t a problem. I stayed away from weapons and armor, though. It would over encumber me too quickly.

    The new ability I got was called "Test." It allowed me to test my designs. With my ''design'' ability, I could create schematics or plans for inventions or potions or whatever, and then with ''test'', I could test to see if they would function as expected.

    The enemies had levels above their heads too, and health bars. We were at an area where every enemy was level 3. So Valda could consistently trounce them and leave them in piles on the floor. Especially with me supplying her with stamina potions when she needed them.

    We hadn''t had to use a single health potion yet, but the night was still young. Or so I thought. A fog rolled in and out of the mist came glowing blue eyes. Draugr. Undead warriors with preserved corpses.

    Generally considered skilled and strong fighters. These seemed to be weaker ones, since they didn''t have any armor, just weapons, and they were level 4. I would expect them to range from levels 5 to 8, so level 4 draugr were a bit of a surprise.

    That said, they probably were no slouches. Valda started having trouble with them after two, then three of them tried to fight her at once. Seeing she was in trouble, I jumped into the fray and took out their legs.

    "Run!" I said.

    "I won''t argue with that!" she said.

    We ran down the long hallway, stopped to take another dark sight potion and a stamina potion, and then ran some more. Luckily, this time, we didn''t run into anything on the way back.

    Once we were out of the dungeon, we made our way back to town. When we got into the shop, we were exhausted, which is why I immediately started brewing a potent poison, with the key ingredient being all the poisonous mushrooms I came across in the dungeon.

    It wasn''t lethal. It just made you really sick and hallucinate. And it didn''t take much. Coat a dart in it and poke someone, and they would be throwing up and talking to their ancestors for hours.

    After that, I made a bunch of the infinity bags that cut the weight of their contents in half, using a variety of different bag sizes. I realized if I nested bags inside bags, I could decrease the overall carry weight into a quarter or even an eighth of the original weight of the contents.

    I didn''t want to get too carried away with it though. A lot of the bags I made were small and intended for quick access. Each one I made used up variable amounts of mana points depending on the size of the bag.

    My theory was while the size of the inside of the bag was infinite, the size of the opening of the bag was not. The larger the opening, the bigger the items that could fit inside. So the larger the opening, the more mana it took to enchant them.

    The small bags only took 20 mp, while the larger ones took 80. I drank a lot of the mana potions I had made for the dungeon trip to make all those bags. Magic cost mana. It wasn''t complicated. Just tedious.

    I stopped making bags when I had enough for what I wanted to do. I got out a set of light leather armor, some copper wire, and a needle and thread. And then I started sewing.

 Ch 8: Developments

    After threading copper wire through the opening of the bags, creating a rigid but malleable rim for the bags, I realized shaped iron rings would work better. They would be less likely to get bent or misshapen while moving around.

    This was just a prototype, though. I needed a proof of concept first, before I made more advanced steps on the project. What I was trying to do was create bags with the mouths always held open for easy access to reach inside.

    My first major accessories were two large bags, one on either side of my hips. Those I would use to pull weapons out of. Then I sewed very small bags to the outside of the arms and waist of my leather armor.

    These I would use to store items like ammo and potions that I would have immediate and easy access to. These were infinity bags, so volume was non existent. They were basically small portals strapped to my body that I could reach into and always grab what I needed.

    The enchantment on the bags was coded so that nothing could accidentally fall out of the bags. To get things out of the bag, you had to put your hand or fingers in and think of what you wanted. Or you could reach in and the bag would send an inventory list of its contents into your mind.

    Once I proved that worked, I set about smithing iron rings for the bag openings. Upon completing that task and integrating them with the bags, I started on the most important part. Making the weapons and ammo.

    Before I started on that, I finished brewing the poison from the mushrooms and poured that into different sized beakers and test tubes to see which size was most convenient for coating weapons and ammo. I figured the test tubes were better for melee weapons, and beakers were better for ammo.

    The test tubes you''d just pour the small amount of viscous liquid onto the weapons and, with a rag, wipe it over the weapon to create a nice even coat. Then for the ammo, I would pour a small amount into a beaker, drop the bolts point down into the beaker to coat the tips and then place them on a rag to dry.

    After clearing the poison out of the main alchemy set, I went about processing the oil slimes. The things I needed most were gasoline, propane, butane, rubber, and plastic polymers. With my expert proficiency in alchemy, I had just enough knowledge to process the oil slimes into various products.

    Each product required different processes and containment methods. Unfortunately, I didn''t have anything to contain and pressurize gas yet, so I''d have to skip that for now. What I focused on making was gasoline, and rubber, and plastic polymer solutions.

    While those were processing in a few different alchemical systems I had set up, I started on making my weapons and ammo. Using the tinkering tools and materials I got from the Adventurer''s Guild, I began constructing hand cross bows.

    I figured hand crossbows were the closest thing I would get to single shot flintlock pistols for a while and I had always been entranced by the concept of pirates who carried many loaded flintlock pistols on their person, so they could fire all of them in rapid succession during a fight.

    I wanted to do the same thing except with hand crossbows. I planned to get to flintlock pistols and eventually modern pistols and even bigger guns, but that was several level ups off. I assumed I would have to reach above a master level proficiency in blacksmithing to manufacture workable gun parts.

    I briefly wondered if I could multiclass with the system. Maybe I took take some levels in gunslinger once I had invented guns. I''m sure I could figure it out by going through the system instructions further.

    The instruction book was hundreds of pages long, though, and I really didn''t have the time to fiddle around with it when it wasn''t a pressing issue.

    While in the middle of putting together my dozenth crossbow, I leveled up to 4. I got the same rewards as the previous two times. A stat point, a crafting proficiency level, and a new ability.

    As per usual, I put the stat point into intelligence, bringing me up to 9 and my maximum mana points to 180. I noticed that the higher my intelligence got, not only did my max mana go up, but my mana recovery rate increased as well. I didn''t have to rely on mana potions as much as before for my enchanting.

    The crafting proficiency I chose to level up was tinkering. I figured it would allow me to improve on the design of the crossbows, turning them from single-fire to semi-automatic. That would be a massive help in terms of practicality.

    I also wanted more proficiency in artifice to create self-aiming crossbows, but that wouldn''t be too useful unless I could design drum magazines for the crossbows.

    What use would self aiming crossbows sitting on my shoulders like turrets be, if I had to take them off and reload them every one to five times they fired? Now if I could design double feed drum magazines so each shoulder turret had between 60 and 120 shots, then they''d be useful. But I would need tinkering expertise to make the drums.

    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

    Every crafting discipline seemed to complement, but also rely on, each other in a way that was both satisfying and frustrating, especially when trying to level up.

    When my tinkering proficiency went up, the idea on how to create crossbow magazines started formulating. I knew it was possible, since I had seen them in shows and movies. Not that those were necessarily the best ways to figure out if something existed or not.

    After another hour of messing around with my design and test abilities, I had worked out how the magazines would work, but I still needed to be able to blacksmith some of the parts. I tried to blacksmith the magazines, but they were janky and a little misshapen, so sometimes the crossbow would jam.

    All I had to do was slap the crossbow to get it to unjam, but it wasn''t perfect. It looked like I would need expert proficiency in blacksmithing to create good versions of the magazines, but functional was better than nothing.

    The new ability I got¡ªwhich I had started to think of as spells¡ªwas called "Assembly." As long as you had all the individual parts of an invention manufactured, you could use mana to skip the tedious process of putting them together by hand. The spell would do it for you.

    I used that to assemble several crossbows, and then I spent the rest of my time hammering out imperfect magazines for them. Each magazine only held 5 bolts, but it was a good start.

    On top of having several fully loaded crossbows in the bags on my hips, I also placed many loaded magazines in ringed bags on my waist. The extra crossbows were for when I didn''t have time to reload, and the magazines were for when I did.

    It really was too bad the poison wouldn''t work on the undead. That would make the dungeon far easier, but at least it would work on the rats. By the time I was done with the crossbows and the bolts, my solution for the undead was complete.

    The gasoline had finished processing. I poured all of it into test tubes, that I glued and wrapped enchanted pieces of paper around. The paper enchantments were designed to ignite when they physically came in contact with the gasoline.

    And thus I had designed my own tiny Molotov cocktails. I would throw the test tubes at my enemies, they would break against my enemy''s body or on the ground and catch on fire.

    What I wanted to do was enchant the crossbow bolts to catch fire after I fired them, but enchanting required the physical component of circles and symbols to be drawn on and carved into the objects you were enchanting.

    I had started to devise a design where I would clamp each bolt in a metal vice that would imprint an enchantment into the metal, but that was far too complicated for what I had the ability to do right now.

    With 150 Molotov cocktails and 200 crossbow bolts, only half of which were in magazines, being carried in various bags on my person, I was ready to disembark to the Adventurer''s Guild.

    Too bad it was two in the morning. Valda had long since fallen asleep on the floor, which couldn''t have been comfortable. I woke her up and walked her back home, where we were able to at least get six hours of sleep before waking, and feeding my siblings, and sending them off to the church school.

    It wasn''t a catholic church or a christian church. They didn''t have those here. Instead, they were the United Church of the Nine Gods. They were in charge of educating the youth in most areas since the government either wasn''t sophisticated enough to hire teachers or didn''t care.

    While the church didn''t run the government¡ªthat was King Todd''s job¡ªthey did have the support of the government and of the people. As such, they were well funded and ran a lot of essential services that would normally be run by a government agency in my old world. Like schools, libraries, and charities which functioned as welfare for the poor and needy.

    All other governmental services were provided and funded by King Todd, like healthcare, record keeping like birth certificates and citizenship, dispute resolution, and infrastructure maintenance for the big stuff. Local officials represented King Todd and handled local issues. Normal government hierarchy stuff.

    I didn''t know much about King Todd, but everyone seemed to like him, which was a change from my world. Everything I''d ever heard about monarchies in my world was bad, but then again, that could have just been historians'' own opinions coloring the text.

    Once Brent and Delia were off to school, Valda and I headed back to the Adventurer''s Guild for me to get my license.

    I brushed past the counter lady, and Valda stayed behind to explain why we were back. I walked out the back of the building and looked at Glint, who was practicing his swordsmanship against a poor defenseless test dummy.

    "Hey," I said. "I''m ready for my test."

    He looked at my leather armor, and the rings filled with empty blackness.

    "You look ready for something," he said.

    "Point me at my target," I said.

    He backed away from the test dummy and gestured at it.

    "Very well," I said.

    I pulled out a gasoline tube and chucked it at the dummy. It shattered and the dummy immediately caught on fire. Then I pulled a crossbow from one of the bags on my hips, aimed and fired five shots in rapid succession, all hitting the target.

    It wasn''t too hard. I was only standing about fifteen feet away. Just point and shoot.

    "How''s that?" I asked. "Do I pass?"

    "Whoa! How did you conjure fire like that?" he said. "And that crossbow is cool! How did you make it one handed?"

    "Crafting, my friend," I said. "My class is a master of crafting."

    "Nice," he said. "I''m frankly a little jealous now. What level are you?"

    "Four," I said.

    "Wow," he said. "That''s impressive for level 4. I wonder what you''ll be able to make at level 20."

    "Oh, you don''t even want to know," I said.

    Images of fire and screams briefly passed through my mind. I wouldn''t hurt anyone innocent of course, but murderers and bandits, I didn''t mind harming a little bit. Especially those guys who had broken into my home.

    "Harold, tell your mom he passed," Glint said.

    Harold, who had wandered out while Glint and I were talking, said, "Ok." He walked back inside.

    Valda came outside.

    "Did you?" she asked.

    "I passed," I said.

    She ran over and hugged me. I hugged her back, knowing my day was far from over.

 Ch 9: Back in the Black

    "Congratulations! Here is your Adventurer''s License," the lady at the counter said.

    "And you didn''t think I could do it," I said.

    "You''re right," she said. "I stand corrected."

    "I''m going to need a lot more crafting supplies," I said. "Let''s say double what I got last time. Including supplies for blacksmithing."

    "Ok," she said. "You heard him!"

    The girl came out from the back carrying two big bags. She could barely lift them. I helped her with them, as my strength was probably rated higher than hers.

    "Thank you," she said.

    "No problem," I said. "Oh, that reminds me, you don''t sell silver by the ingot, do you?"

    I put the bags and the silver in my biggest infinity bag and paid the lady.

    <hr>

    We dropped my load off at the shop. I opened the shop that day. With Valda running the shop, I began work on my new project. Making rare quality health, mana, and stamina potions. And selling them.

    I needed to start making money again. I considered the lady''s offer to pay me 500 gold to make infinity bags, but I realized in the end it wasn''t worth it. Not to be a jerk, but the one advantage of my class was that I could make things no one, or at least very few people, could make.

    If I started handing out my inventions, I''d lose all advantage and collecting materials and loot would become that much harder. With an infinity bag, a reasonably skilled and motivated adventurer could clear out most of the dungeon of materials before I got a chance to get any.

    It was selfish, but practical. How would I be of good use to anyone if I couldn''t gather materials? And so, with that in mind, I made adventuring gear to sell in the shop.

    I could sell higher-quality versions of things that already existed, but selling new inventions was probably a bad idea. I guess I could''ve made poor quality infinity bags that broke down over time, forcing people to keep buying more, but that would be incredibly messed up. Sure, I ran a business, but I didn''t have to be a bad person because of it.

    I started to brew the rare health potions. I used a combination of the herbs from the Adventurer''s Guild, and materials from the dungeon. After that started up, but before I moved on to blacksmithing our silver weapons to fight the undead, I twirled a vial of wraith essence in my hand.

    Even with an expert level proficiency in alchemy, I didn''t know any potions or elixirs that utilized wraith essence. Either it was hiding at master level proficiency or a recipe didn''t exist yet. I might have to invent one.

    This is where my design and test abilities would come in handy. I could design any combination of ingredients in any arrangement of brewing steps, and then I could test to see if it would work.

    "I''m going to make silver weapons for us to fight the undead," I said. "What do you want me to make you?"

    "Same thing as I currently have," she said. "A mace."

    "You don''t want anything fancy?" I asked. "Like a morning star?"

    "Nope," she said. She turned her head back to look at the shop floor.

    "Huh, ok," I said.

    For Valda, I made a silver mace with a silver shaft, that I wrapped in a leather cord for grip. For myself, I made silver crossbow bolts. Was it wasteful? Sure. Would I lose them and forget to pick them up? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

    I got called out of the back by a customer who wanted to know about the Delphian steel swords I''d refurbished.

    "Are these refurbished?" he asked.

    "Yes, they are," I said.

    "Don''t you think 50 gold is a little high?" he said. "Can you drop it down to 30?"

    I paused, like I was thinking. "I could do 40 for one, or 30 each if you buy the lot of them."

    "Hmm," he said.

    He was probably thinking about how much he could resell them for. Which could be anywhere from 35 to 60 depending on how good of a salesman he was, and how much he lied. I didn''t care, though. I wasn''t trying to sell my merchandise at the best possible price. I was trying to move product. The faster the better.

    As long as I made a profit from a transaction, it didn''t matter if it was a huge profit or a small one. Merchandising and retail stores operated at low margins generally. Not as low as grocery markets, but low.

    The object was to sell as much product as you could before it gets too old, too out of date, or too worn by the sun and the elements to sell. And that''s what I intended to do. And then when you knew a product was never going to sell at full price, you dropped the price and sold it at a discount.

    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

    "I''ll give you 25 for each," he said.

    "30 or no sale," I said. "You and I both know those are worth 50. If you sell them at 40, you''re making money and your customer is saving money. It''s a win-win."

    "Why are you selling them so cheap?" he asked. "Is there something wrong with them?"

    "No," I said. "It''s just, I got them in the dungeon and I refurbished them all in the span of a couple hours. My costs to get them were monetarily low. The risk to my life, though, is worth 30 a piece. I won''t go any lower."

    "29?" he said.

    "Sorry," I said.

    "You really don''t budge when you''re set on something, do you?" he asked. "That''s a good thing. Did your father teach you that?"

    I smiled. "My father taught me a lot of things," I said. "How about this? I won''t drop the price of the swords, but if you buy the whole lot, I''ll throw in 5 gold to pay for a night of drinking for you and your friends."

    "You''d do that?" he said.

    "Sure," I said. "Generosity is in my nature. You can use the social lubricant to increase your odds of selling the swords, too."

    "You have a deal, my friend," he said. "Let me get the gold. I don''t walk around with that kind of money, if you know what I mean."

    "Sure," I said.

    I went back to the smithing and I finished Valda''s mace. Time kind of just flew by. Then I realized the guy hadn''t come back yet. It was taking him a long time. I hadn''t given him the merchandise, so he wasn''t stealing from me.

    He was just taking a long time to pay. Just as I was thinking that, he arrived, breathing heavily. He was holding the gold, but he looked anxious.

    "What''s wrong?" I asked.

    "Nothing," he said. "Barton Traxby''s men have been patrolling the streets lately. I had to take the long way around. I didn''t want to get robbed."

    "No lie," I said. "Not with that kind of money."

    "You ain''t kidding," he said. He handed me the money. "Here you go."

    "Thanks," I said. "Hold on one second. I didn''t know if you were going to come back, so I didn''t finished prepping them."

    I put the large bag of money behind the counter and got out a bundle of sheathes and some leather cord. I sheathed all the swords in brand new sheathes, and I wrapped the big bundle of 20 swords in leather cord so they wouldn''t separate. Then I handed him the 5 gold coins I promised him.

    "Be careful," I said. "Make it home safe."

    "Thanks again," he said. "Maybe I''ll buy you a beer one day off my profits." He was about to leave when he put out his hand. "Name''s Sam."

    "Nice to meet you, Sam," I said. "I''m Gwen. And yes, I know it''s a girl''s name, but my mother gave it to me, and she was an amazing woman."

    "Nice to meet you, Gwen," he said. "Hope I see you around."

    "Me too," I said.

    He disappeared down an alleyway, probably to avoid Traxby''s men. Well, my business was no longer on the verge of failing. So that was nice. Maybe when I finally made a true infinity bag, I''d loot the entire dungeon of weapons. It would fill my stock, and then some.

    Speaking of stock, I was due for a shipment soon. The guy should have been here a couple days ago. At first I was happy to not have to deal with my father''s death and unloading a shipment, but I was starting to get worried something had happened. Especially with Sam''s mention of Traxby''s men patrolling the streets.

    "He seemed nice," Valda said.

    "Yeah, he did," I said. "Despite trying to lowball the crap out of me, but that''s the game we''re in."

    I went back to making my silver bolts. I finished the health potions while I was still smithing and started on mana potions. I was just about done with the bolts when the mana potions were done. So I started on stamina potions.

    I finished making 120 silver bolts for my crossbows. I smithed out some more magazines, waiting for the stamina potions to finish. I got a dozen finished by the time the stamina potions were ready.

    That may seem like a lot of bolts, but they weren''t that big. Each brick of silver made around 40 of them and I had got several bricks of silver. I actually spent all the money I had left on them, but with the recent influx of 600 gold, I was back in the black.

    I still had a couple of silver bricks left, but I set them aside for another time. It was better to have back up material than to use it all up. We still had 18 dark sight potions left, so I didn''t have to make more yet.

    I had still been grabbing midnight beetle carapaces though for when I did need to make more. I still had a couple hours before closing time, when I had to feed my siblings, and then could go to the dungeon with Valda.

    I spent one of the last two hours designing and testing potion and elixir concoctions utilizing wraith essence, but nothing I tried worked. The mixture would start to stabilize, and then it fell apart. I was missing something, but I didn''t know what.

    Until it hit me. The soul crystal I had picked up on our first trip to the dungeon. I added powdered soul crystal to the concoction, and after beginning to stabilize, the soul crystal bound it together.

    I ended up with an ethereal grey and white potion. Now that I knew how to make it, I spent the next hour pushing through it. I finished just in time and poured it into 30 test tubes.

    I had no idea what it would do. That must have been a different ability I would get at a higher level. I didn''t want to try it before knowing its effects. So I stored the test tubes in one my infinity bags.

    I had been considering nesting bags inside each other, but I didn''t know what would happen. Erring on the side of caution, I chose not to try it. For all I knew, the bags could interact with each other to create negative mass and turn into a black hole. I''d rather not have that happen, so I decided to wait until I had a higher enchantment proficiency to try to make better bags.

    Valda and I closed up shop. We made our way back to the house. When we got there, I started on dinner and Valda played with my brother and sister. She was really good with them.

    After dinner, I got them ready for bed, and Valda and I set off for the dungeon. We still went down the far right tunnel every time we got to the initial junction.

    As we made our way through again, I took out anything living with my normal crossbow bolts dipped in poison, and Valda handled the skeletons. After half an hour, we were back to the level 4 draugr.

    I wanted to see what the Molotov cocktails and the silver bolts would do, so I chucked a cocktail at one of them and shot another. The draugr panicked when it caught on fire. After some struggling, it fell to the floor, drained of its hp.

    That was something I had to get used to. Things didn''t necessarily die immediately from seemingly fatal wounds if they still had hp in their health bar. And conversely, if you had done enough incremental damage to an enemy that its hp drained to zero, it would die, even if the actual wounds were just flesh wounds.

    That was probably the most game like aspect of this world. For the most part, things were pretty realistic. At least as realistic as a world can be and still have necromancers and undead.

    The silver bolt hit the draugr I fired at and a huge hole burned in its chest. The silver seemed to cause a severe burning effect that immediately turned their flesh to embers and ashes.

    With her new silver mace, Valda was annihilating them. Her mace shredded through them like they were made of charcoal and ash. We made short work of that first wave, but I saw another one coming and these ones had "level 5" above their heads. We kept our weapons raised, ready for the fight to come.