Now free of his driving purpose with the spear complete, Caleb felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him and resisted the urge to look at his status screen.
He knew if he allowed it, heâd be up for hours more. So Caleb forced himself over to the water barrel, cleaned himself off after removing his sweat-soaked clothing, and fell asleep as soon as he hit the bedânot even needing to cover, as the forge had brought the small cavern to a sweltering heat.
***
Caleb woke to the sound of a hacking, wheezing cough.
âWhatâs wrââ A semiliquid glob of metal came out of Bogâs mouth, landing on a chair leg.
The leg charred on contact, began to smoke, and then burst into flames.
Bog sat up, cheerfully glad to be free of the glob, and equally happy to see Caleb awake.
âGood morning,â Caleb said.
He got up, picked up the chairâcareful lest the molten metal around the leg drip on himâand dipped it in the water barrel heâd set up.
âYou look different,â Caleb said to Bog as we went about heating up some cloaker meat for breakfastâor dinner, he had no idea what time it was anymore.
Bog preened at the attention and turned his flank for Caleb to inspect. A large section of his lumpy brown coat had been replaced with coin-sized scales. Caleb also noticed that cracks were starting to form around his rough metal body, and tracing them to the scale patch, he deduced the small dragon was growing larger, and that his old crude hide couldnât expand with him.
The scales were a mix of finishes. Some had the sheen of polished steel, while others the black of steel fresh from the forge. Caleb took a wire brush to thoseâsomething Bog loved, whining when Caleb was finished. These scales, once clean, had the brownish hue of the pickaxe steel, but those that were already polished had the look of the blade heâd fed Bog.
âYouâre copying the finishes youâve eaten?â Caleb asked him.
While Bog didnât understand his words, the idea got across to him and he sent affirmation to Caleb through the bond.
âIâll have to give you something better to copy, then, for that earth steel.â
Once Caleb had eaten, he went back to his spear and marvelled at the work with a clear mind. He was still impressed.
Picking it up, and waiting until he felt it tug on the essence within himself, he said, âStatus.â
Caleb Kavilson
Class: Dragon Rider
Level: 3
Human
Abilities (+3)
Strength: 11 (8 + 3)
Agility: 8
Constitution: 8
Perception: 12
Willpower: 18
Acuity: 18
Resources
Stamina: 95/95
Stamina Regen: 0.75 per min
Mana: 218.4/218.4
Mana Regen: 2.42 per min
Ambient Mana: Average
Active Skills
Mana Manipulation: 13 - Bloodline
Power Attack: 1 - Class
Dragon Bond: 6 - Class
Imperium Metallorum: 9 - Affinity (Metal)
Imperium Ventorum: 6 - Affinity (Wind)
Passive Skills
Magical Perception: 3 - Bloodline
Dragon Bond: 6 - Class
Traits
Caeli Soul: Bloodline
Wind Affinity: Major - Bloodline
Metal Affinity: Major - Class
Equipment
Dissonant Steel Spear
Caleb picked up his hammer next, and felt the same tug, only weaker. A quick check of his status screen showed the boosts stacked, and he now had 12 strength.
He held the two items out, in awe of what heâd done.
With the ability to craft gear with stat-boosting effects, his concerns about his own durability were gone. He always knew heâd be able to craft some armor, but armor was a flimsy shield when it came to combat amongst the initiated and monsters.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
When exactly heâd gotten it in his mind that heâd need to be durable enough to face monsters, Caleb was uncertain. His plan had always been to get a class for the stats to improve his smithingâbarring becoming a Blacksmith and getting the skills. Now⦠he wasnât sure anything would stop him from advancing further in this new class. The application to his smithing had already put him beyond his master and he was only level 3.
He had no doubt heâd figure out how to create more than just strength-enhancing gear. Now that he could see what gave items their magic, he could replicate it with time. The village had a small stock of stat-enhancing equipment acquired through the decades, and heâd be able to get a look at itâeven if that required âborrowingâ it.
There were limits to how many stat points gear could contribute to a person, but those grew as one leveled. Uninitiated could only gain a total of +2 to any given stat. At level 1, this went up to 3. Beyond that, they werenât sure. It was inconsistent from person to person, and they didnât know what that limit was in his village, as they didnât have enough equipment to test it.
That would change, Caleb vowed to himself.
He was eager to get back to smithing, but had to review his gains and allocate his new points. He no longer had any hesitation over applying the points to mental stats. Now he just had to decide where to put them between those three.
His people didnât know much about magic, but they knew what each stat did in a general sense. Strength and agility were self-explanatory, one controlling your physical power, and the other how nimble and dexterous you were. Willpower and acuity were the mental counterparts to those skills, with some different nuances. Similarly, stamina and mana were the physical and mental equivalents.
Constitution and perception werenât paired as nicely as the other four stats, but none of the other four were truly in pairs. While both strength and agility went into determining stamina regeneration rates, acuity alone determined mana recovery speedsâdiscounting skills that could further boost it.
And while stamina capacity was driven by constitution, mana capacity was a factor of oneâs willpower. The differences lay in the power sources, as Caleb was beginning to understand by watching how his mana pool formed. His stamina was something his body produced and used to enhance itself. His mana pool, however, was the amount of mana he could hold from his environment. The size of the pool was determined by his mental strengthâwillpowerâand the rate of recovery was driven by how much he could pull to himselfâacuity.
If stamina functioned the same way, it would be like the resource were rocks falling from the sky. Heâd have to rely on his agility to catch them and his strength to hold onto the ones he had.
Perception was a mix of both mental and physical, but Caleb would have sworn it was all physical if his bloodline hadnât told him otherwise in listing it with willpower and acuity. Higher perception allowed one to see farther and with less light, enhancing the other senses similarly. The stat was one heâd planned on putting his points into upon receiving the Frost Dragon Hunter class.
Long-term, high acuity was the move valuable stat for smithing using his new skills. It increased the rate at which he could recover mana, allowing him to work longer, while making his magically enhanced swings more accurate and his mana strands more precise.
Willpower, he expected, would be more valuable the more stands he had to force into a piece, as he sensed it getting harder as he worked on his spear. He also had suspicions heâd need magically enhanced strength if he wanted to forge anything with the rare ores he found. Rare ores were primarily valuable to smiths for their inherent strength, as no smith Caleb had ever heard of knew what he now knew about the mana within.
Perception wouldnât help him with his smithing as much as it once would have. The ability to distinguish between shades of red and yellow was useless when you could sense the material on a microscopic level. Life, howeverâas much as Caleb hated to admit itâwas not all about smithing. He was at that moment trapped in a dark cave filled with hostile creatures, and being able to see different shades of black in the darkness would be very, very useful.
So Caleb decided to put all his points for this level in perception to be done with it. That would bring his total perception to 18. According to his brother Grisim, at 15 perception one gained night vision sufficient for navigating outside by starlight with ease. With the light coming from the ice veins in the cave, 18 should be more than enough for Caleb to traverse the halls without need of a lamp or torch.
Upon his initialization and becoming a Frost Dragon Hunter, his brother had taken the class to heart. Heâd invested more of his points into perception and agility than most to make himself a better overall hunter and tracker.
He was already level 6 from his dedication to the hunting aspect of the class. Heâd not hunted more dragons since gaining it, but he spent most days out roaming the mountainside for game and killing any monster he thought he could take safely. Eventually such methods would plateau him around level 10, but heâd reached 6 far faster than any in their village and Caleb expected heâd not be content with such tame game for long.
So, in one swoop, Caleb put his perception far past his older brother, and looked smugly out into the darkness, fascinated by his improved sight. The sensation of the essence leaving its pool within him and travelling to his head was different from the last time. Before, it had all gone to his mind. This time, he felt a pressure within his head, further out from the center of his brain than the willpower and acuity, and that power radiated out into his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose as well as along a network of lines all throughout his body.
He was suddenly far more aware of the clothes on his back. Where before theyâd felt dirty, it was a griminess heâd been able to ignore. Now it chafed at him, and the need for a bath increased significantly.
His sense of smell, unfortunately, also improved greatly, and he knew he needed to find a solution to the bathing situation of the cavern.
Caleb tried to ignore the sensation, but couldnât get past it. Before he was even able to start a flame in the forge, he turned to Bog.
âWe need more water. I need to bathe.â
Bog cocked his head at the unfamiliar word.
Caleb mimed smelling himself, sending the disgust through to Bog, but the dragon proved once and for all his sense of smell was only for metals when he came up and sniffed Caleb all over, not finding anything offensive.
âJust trust me,â Caleb said, and set out into the tunnels.
***
The area directly around their chamber had enough ice flows for Caleb to fill a barrel of ice without risking combat. He gazed at the cave as he navigated it without a torch, seeing the world in a thousand shades he hadnât known existed. Much like how his metal perception allowed him to peer deeper into the steel than he thought possible, so too did his enhanced perception stat let him see nuances where once there had just been gray.
Once the barrel was full, they moved it next to the forge to accelerate the melting as he worked. Just knowing bathing was on the horizon allowed him to push away his disgust with himself.
To Calebâs disappointment, despite the glow of the fragments within the ice, and the seeming abundance of them, there was far less ore in the ice than heâd initially believed. He planned to collect it from the bottom of the barrel as he melted ice, but unless they found another hidden vein, the amount they found so far was likely to remain the bulk of what heâd get.
Caleb had forgotten to turn the pot into a helmet in his recent manic crafting session. When he looked at it now, he saw the steel had been ruined. Left in the forge all night, the pot had slowly collapsed on itself, removing the prime benefit of using the pot to begin with. On top of that, the metal had burned, losing the properties of good steel and moving closer to pig iron.
âYou can eat that,â Caleb said to Bog, pointing to the pot.
The dragon sniffed at it, turning up his nose, but then pulled it out of the coals and began eating it anyway.
While he waited for the fire to take, Caleb inspected the pile of metal Bog had vomited out. To his eyes, it looked like a black ice flow. The metal had been molten when heâd spit it out, and it had cooled as it spread across the floor.
He touched the metal with tongs, using the metal as a conduit for his senses, and was shocked what he saw.
âPure iron?â Caleb said, awestruck.
His sense showed the innermost details of the metal before him. While smiths referred to many things as âiron,â there was always something more in it. No iron was totally without carbon, and all metal had an aspect. The process of smelting always left other materials within, some beneficial and other not, but never could one remove everything. Nor would they want to.
While the block of pure metal before him was amazing, both because it existed and because his dragon had essentially vomited it up from his own gluttony, it was also completely useless to Caleb. The properties of pure iron were not⦠well, good.
âHow did you make this?â Caleb asked Bog.
In response, Bog hacked up a cough and spit out another, much smaller, glob of metal nearby.
Caleb sighed, rubbing his face with his filthy hand.
âThatâs not what I meant.â
He poked the molten metal with his tongs, lifting it before it could get adhered to the floor. Through the tongs, he sensed this metal was much closer to what the pot had been. It still had traces of the cold aspect and mostly the same material properties as the ruined pot.
âCan you control this?â Caleb asked.
Bog sent confusion, cocking his head.
Caleb went up to Bog and pointed to the tooth heâd formed after eating his half-finished knife.
âCan you turn the metal into this kind and then spit it out?â
Bog squinted his eyes as he concentrated on something within him. With focus typically foreign to him, the dragon moved around the room determinedly sniffing. He found several cold-aspected items Caleb had set aside, swallowing some of the smaller items, and then moved over to the coal pile. He sniffed it, paused, and then took a large mouthful.
Once that was done, he jumped up onto the forge, moved to the back, and coiled up in the coals to take a nap.
âSo is that a yes?â