major upgrades

Alex looked at the now-empty runestone. Without magic, the glowing runes had dimmed, leaving apparent the internal structure. After crafting it, the four centimetres high, two centimetres wide and half centimetre thick gem changed to one of the three-centimetre diameters on half a centimetre thick.

Due to its small size, Alex craft smaller runes, but even then, he could still catch some of their details. Unwilling to leave other any chance to copies them, he and CS mentally planed further change on them.

For the first nest, Alex obtained 55 Monster gems. He retrieved another 48 on the second nest, and 65 on the Dungeon. All in all, this nested Alex 160 Monster gems form goblin, as he used eight for his storage. Other than those, Alex also collected 11 Monster gems of variant, not encountering other since the firsts two nests.

For crafting the first runestone, Alex used ten grams of magic steel. With his actual resource, he could craft around sixty of them with the available metal.

Rather than rush to craft the news ones, Alex turned his attention on crafting his armour, while his and CS mind worked on the best configuration for the runestone, along with the appliable securities.

As working with leather was taking very little out of him, it allowed him to recover while thinking. The armour didn't turn to anything extraordinary, just what he had in mind. Following his first idea, he soon found himself with a slightly bulkier pant and thicker shirt.

Alex long mane of hair left free until then, falling half of his back, was braided through spells. Two small tight braids on each side, with a fifth looser and larger at the top. Put together at the top in a high ponytail, before crisscrossing around the main braid, held by leather straps.

~~~

Having enough time to work around the few problems, Alex returned to craft the runestones. The external edge rune line remains but as a simple security line. What changed the most was the core of the rune cluster. Ironically, the best set up turned into a well know form to Alex. Based on the Ægishjálmr, each branch would connect to a corner, with the centre as a scheme's neuralgic point.

The meaning wasn't lost to Alex, as the helm of awe retains his principal function, protection for him, for granted victory. Rather than make the runes face the surface, he crafted them vertically to it, hiding them as the runestone's sides and the gem in between would blur them.

In this form, he knows that only north gods would understand his origin, but with the various blessing he receives from them, those gods would immediatly spot Alex anyway. In mixing parsel runes in a nordic formation, none would be able to pierce their secrets.

Another boon of the formation was the drastic increase in range. The previous ten centimetres diametre had expanded to a fifty-centimetre radius or a complete meter of range from side to side.

The already small gem kept to three centimetre with the new configuration due to the now twenty gram of magic steel imbued inside. While he would craft half less, he was more than happy with the power-up.

The rest of the days passed rapidly for Alex, barely enough for him to craft another fifteen more. Those sixteen runestones were divided into four groups: stunner, incendio, bombarda and ribbon cutter spells. Left with a little more than half his supplies in metal, Alex took a hot bath before rapidly turning for the night, drained from the day.

~~~

On his second day, Alex would alternate between forging more magic steel and crafting runestones. Thank to the blessing he obtains, Alex magic stat would receive a slight power-up every time he would drain his reserve dry. The enhanced combination of his new status and raising stats allowed Alex to smelt a piece of two kilos of magic steel, from three kilos of magic iron, bringing the conversion rate to 66%, before needing rest and recharge his magic.

By the end of the second day's morning, Alex had created four ingots of two kilos worth of magic steel. The other five hours of the afternoon needed to craft another sixteen runestones, as he needs 20 minutes to craft one.

At the end of the third day, Alex raised his magic steel supplies to ten magic steel ingots, minus 960 grams need to crafts the 48 runestones. He now had a collection of twelve of his four spells. Those numbers raise to twenty, on the fourth day, at the coast of a lack of new ingots. With those eighty runestones, Alex feels confident enough to start crafting the second part of his plan.

~~~

On the morning of the fifth day, since he established his base, and exited the dungeon, Alex had gathered and crafted eighty runestones, nineteen kilos of magic steel, two hundred kilos of steel, made during the night.

His supplies amounted to still 79 goblin Monster gems, 11 variant Monster gems and 6 Dungeon cores.

Now standing in front of the burning cokes in the smithy, Alex put an ingot of magic steel, steel in the fire, and a cut of wood, heating the whole.

-What will you make?- Asked CS, curious as to what he had in mind.

"One bladed throwing lance. I was thinking of javelin at first, but it would be a waste of metal since I would rarely use the two side." Responded Alex, while keeping his attention on the heating ingots.

As soon as the steel was ready, he extracted a tenth of the ingot. Working fast, the lump of metal rapidly turn into a thirty-metre long double-edged blade. Thick of only half a centimetre and board of three, Alex carved a central groove and thin arcs curving from the edge to the groove.

Turning to the magic steel, Alex worked half the amount of metal on edge. Alex also fills the arc and groove, giving the blade an additional centimetre of thickness and few of length. During the forging process, Alex had kept an eye on the cut of wood.

Using his tail, Alex had manipulated the wood, burning it inside the coke and continuously turning it. The cut of wood was, in fact, a branch of ironwood. Alex had climbed one of the trees and selected several straight branches. While he had made the steel, he also experimented with the wood during the early hour of the night.

With this, he had crafted better arrows shafts from the straight branches.

Now that he had a good grasp of the metallic tree processing method, he used the wood to craft his spears' handle. As the wood was more metal than organic matters, he had little difficulty merging it with the steel and magic steel spearhead.

Another useful fact was that the wood was heavy. In using it, Alex could easily balance the throwing spear while cutting down on the needed steel.

~~~

Nearing the completion of the spear, Alex created three runestone-shaped indentations on both handle sides. While the magic steel was still hot, Alex started to extract treads, and form the arrays need around the three indentation edges.

Looking over the crafted weapon, Alex pushes a consistent amount of magic in it, sealing the magic steel in its final shape.

When the flare of light subsided, Alex had a silver spearhead with light blue marbling on the outer edge. The marbling spread to the central groove and arcs, to the triangular shape of the runestone indentation.

Taking out a runestone of an incendio, bombarda and ribbon cutter, Alex inserts them on the handle. Following the registered slot order, the glow of the blade edge brightens as the magic connect.

Sending a pulse of magic in the imprinted circuit inside the handle, Alex threw the spear at the five stone pillar he raised. Put in a square formation, the fifth pillar at the centre, the spear whistled in the air. As soon as it exited Alex's hand, the blue marbling on the blade belly took an angry red colour, while the edge shone of pinkish light.

As it passed between the two first pillars, the pink light dimmed somewhat while the top of the pillar slide on the cleanly cut stone. As the spear impact the central post, the rock split in two, extinguishing the pink edge. As the spear lost nearly no momentum, it passes the two pillar at the rear, before easily sinking in the cavern floor. The instant the spear stopped, the surrounding floor burst apart, under the explosion generated by the bombarda spell. With most of the heat and fire kept after cutting in the ground like butte; the shrapnel created turned ablaze.

With the leftover magic of the incendio spell bleeding in the explosion, the initial metre large bubble expanded further, while a shower of burning rock shard spread on 360°.

~~~

Both Alex and CS were left speechless at the destructive power of the weapon. While Alex had known that the different spell had a different effect from the stunner one, he wasn't expecting they to transfer so well on the blade, lengthening their activation period until all the magic spent.

After snapping out, Alex bolted to the spear. Retrieving it from the ground, he closely looked at it, seeking any damage. Thank to how he built the runestone, no damage to them of the blade was visible.

Seeing the results, a large, happy smile turns more sinister as he thinks of the Dungeon' goblins. Spurred with his success, Alex rushed back to the smithy, starting the other spears' production.

As he would leave a runestone of each spell he creates on a spear each time, Alex only needs nineteen other spears. Crafting them took a little over three hours. As he still does not need reinforcing throwing knives or arrowheads, Alex simply turns an ingot of magic steel into a tread roll. Once down, he started to weave a mesh shirt and pant from the millimetre thick tread. Heating the tread as he unrolls it, Alex carved an unbreakable enchant on them.

Even if he wasn't ready to turn the mesh into magical armour yet, the protection offered was still way higher than he had. After finishing weaving the meshes, he crafted them in the leather layer of his armoured pant and shirt.

For him, the additional weight was nothing, but his protective gears obtain a significant upgrade. On the evening of the fifth day, three since the new party of adventurer should have arrived, Alex finished his preparation to dive back inside the Dungeon.

~~~

Unable to contain his excitation and anxiousness, he focused on another project. Creating a runecore as the Dungeon core was different from the Monster gems, Alex needed to tinker on many changes.

His short amount of core was also restraining him on the creation of several projects. Thus he focused on two particular one. The first was the creation of an expanded pouch. While processing his storage, this experient would be the stepping stone of a bolder project, an house.

Alex didn't have for objective to construct a simple house, but a moving expanded home. He was basing the project on the existing wizard tent. Alex had already planned to use ironwood as the external frame. As the wood contain a large amount of magic iron, or magic steel once processed, it was the best he could afford. Due to its magical nature, Alex found that it would better accept and sustain the expanded space.

The project was to create a sort of cart, no dissimilar to camping car, only larger inside. Even if he could build the expended space, a plethora of other problems Alex would need to address before it could see the day, and his lack of Dungeon core was heavily impeding his aim.

The second item was a portable battery to charge his runestone. This project was far easier to achieve right now. As the Dungeon core have already a feature in the Dungeon, Alex was hoping to emulate it. This would prevent the need to charge them, saving time and magic for him.

~~~

As his mind had finally calmed down after working on those project, Alex made a rapid inventory of his weapons.

"20 Spears, check. One hundred throwing knives? Check. 6 long knives? Check. Ninety reinforced arrows? Check. Bow? Check. Both belt and shoulder harness are in good condition, too, as well as my armoured clothes. Did I forgot something, CS?"

-Not per-see, but I think it would be best if you crafted a pair of blades. It doesn't need to be real blade, short swords would do two, but you actually lack mid to close range fighting. I would recommend a pair of gloves too. You have enough leather left to craft another pair of armour and them.- Responded CS, happy to see Alex taking his security much more seriously after the accident.

"Why not." Shrruged Alex. Looking around from his stack of ore, Alex retrieved a particular metal. At first glance, it wasn't different from any other steel ingot, but Alex knows better. What Alex had in his hand was his only ingot of wootz.

Creating this block had needed Alex a lot of work, as he was unwilling to try to craft it on his first try. This had been only possible after salvaging the different ingredients from the surrounding and the outpost glass.

Through that, Alex would have already tried to create Damascus steel before, as he had all needed to form it. The only reason he didn't was because of mithril. With such convenient metal, Alex never really explored metalsmithing, until now.

Heating the block back to its appropriate temperature, Alex added a trace amount of magic steel. Working on the block, Alex forged three Damascus talon. With a blade of 36 centimetres long, the weapon was waving between the dagger and short sword categories. On the handle, a single slot for runestone was added on each side.

When Alex fixed the magic steel, the steel's initially white marbling turned light blue, giving the blade an otherworldly beauty. Spurred by his creation, Alex crafted a pair of leather gloves.

The back of the hand and phalanges was plated with magic steel, while the knuckles were spiked. Like his spears, Alex crafted three slots for runestone, forcing him to craft another five sets of the three spells.