"Success … kind of," I declared as I looked at the blade in my hand, one that shattered the moment I swung it against a random rock.
I didn't care about it. The value of that sword wasn't in its quality, but in the process of its forging. It used a mixture of insect shells and lizard claws as the base, combined with a solid base of iron.
My first successful attempt at using two different concepts to imitate Radiant Flame.
It was not a complete process. No, the prototype merely confirmed the viability of the idea, and there was a lot of work to be done to turn it into an actual, scalable process, but that wasn't a problem. As long as I got more familiar with balancing the two, I could create some inferior versions of the Radiant Flame concept in less than a minute, which would be a good material for making arrows.
Of course, that method wouldn't be enough to arm an entire army, but these arrows would be a nice addition to a small team of elite forces, harassing the enemy scouts and ambushing their supply lines.
"Not a winning move, but every bit counts," I said in celebration as I opened a gate outside. Testing Meditation once again created an intense exhaustion that begged me to sleep, but I couldn't sleep on the fourth floor. Not because I was afraid of danger, but the opposite.
I couldn't constantly check outside while I was sleeping, and we had too many enemies for me to be comfortable disappearing for half a day.
My destination, was the fortress on the second floor that was supposed to be a guild base before things had escalated uncontrollably. And, now, it was mostly a bedroom I used whenever I needed to be reachable.
"Sir," the lead guard greeted me.
"At ease," I said. "I'll be resting for a while. As usual, use the bell to wake me up if there's an emergency," I said as I stepped into my room, using Observe to check every inch of the room made of pure metal before I melted the doors back into the wall.
No one could sneak into my room if there were no doors.
Even then, I didn't remove my armor before I laid down on my bed. When one made as many enemies as I had managed to — even though I stumbled into them — a comfortable sleep was not a luxury they could afford.
I closed my eyes, sleep coming easily.
Surprisingly, I hadn't been woken up by the emergency alarms, but a stab of pain. I jumped to my feet, ready to fight before I realized it came from the dungeon.
The fifth floor, to be particular.
"It would have been a shocker if they let me sleep uninterrupted," I said. Though, despite the interruptions, I couldn't exactly be too sorry, as the dreams had been overwhelming as usual. It wasn't anything coherent, just endless memories of war between the insects and the creatures that invaded from the sky, without anything truly identifiable.
"At least it gives me some ideas when it comes to decay spells," I muttered before I recreated the door and walked out. Due to the nature of my dreams as an external observer, I wasn't able to understand a lot during them, but even the external shape was beneficial.
The biggest benefit was getting a better sense of Wisdom-based casting strategies; where images transformed not only the mana they gathered, but also created a cloud around them, gathering to some size before launching it out.
Too bad I lacked the spells to add a certain ease to the subject.
Once I stepped out, I talked with the guards to let them know that I had left the room. Then, I opened a portal, and arrived at the fifth floor.
The moment I arrived, I saw a scene of battle. What I was fearing had finally happened. The enemy dungeon finally produced a boss monster, one that invaded the fifth floor, currently fighting against my army of insects.
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"And, losing," I muttered happily.
I was happy to note that, while I was sleeping, the fifth floor also started to gather environmental mana. And, even in lower densities, it was proving to be beneficial, allowing the larger insects to counter the boss lizard's flame aura with their own, made of corrosion.
It was not enough to fight against a boss monster alone, but while my side of the army lacked boss monsters, they had both the numbers advantage and the assistance of the decay trees. Yet, even with those advantages, the real advantage came from decay's ability to slow down regeneration. It wasn't an intense effect, but the ranged attacks of hundreds of giant insects worked wonders.
I could have destroyed the boss monster by intervening, but it was more important to watch the performance of the insect army, even with the losses they were taking.
However, despite the slowed-down regeneration, the insect army lacked the power to take down the lizard in one hit, so I went to the third floor. Rebecca was there, preparing the trees for the fifth floor, but to my surprise, she wasn't the only one.
She had nine other helpers, every single one using Tend to create the plants. They lacked her grace as they worked. With my experience, It was easy to see their skills were likely Rare, while their Wisdom was almost certainly limited to single digits.
That didn't make them useless, of course. Ultimately, while I hated the intention behind it, there was a reason towns and cities preferred to use thousands of low-level farmers to manage the plantations rather than raising a few high-level ones.
Ultimately, personal attention had its own advantages.
"It's good to see this place more crowded," I said, interrupting their focus.
"Professor," Rebecca greeted me while the other nine pulled back quickly, their attitude somewhere between awe and fear. It looked like their recent improvement did nothing to prune the unnecessary worship they were showing.
Rebecca didn't miss it either. "You can take a ten-minute break if you want," she offered.
An offer they jumped on immediately, emptying the greenhouse in a great hurry.
"So, it looks like Terry didn't lose any time," I said.
"Yeah," Rebecca said with a gentle smile at the mention of him. "He has always been pretty enthusiastic about improving the farmers." Then, she paused. "Thank you for giving him the opportunity, professor."
I waved my hand. "On the contrary, I'm the one that's thankful," I replied, amused by the blush she wore at the mention of Terry … though I was aware that it was something I only noticed thanks to Wisdom. It was not the kind of thing I would have noticed without Wisdom helping me connect the dots. "Unfortunately, I don't have too much time, so give me a summary of what's going on."
"The land cultivation effort is going better than expected, professor. It's likely the mana density will increase further. I can actually detect it now, but absorbing it is difficult."
"That's probably its conceptual nature making it harder," I guessed. "What's the status of our tree production?"
"Significantly faster now that I have direct assistance from others with Tend, though their Rare skill keeps them from operating as efficiently as me, so it's not exactly ten times faster."
"Every bit counts," I said. "Do you have any needs here?"
"We can manage —" she started, but I cut her off.
"I'm sure you can, but this project is giving us far better results than we had hoped, enough that I want to replicate the same thing for the second and fourth floors as well, directly under your leadership. You can handle it, right?"
She nodded resolutely. "Even with the added responsibilities, we can handle, professor. We might need to ask for further assistance from the blacksmiths, but there's nothing that needs your direct intervention. I know you're busy with more critical tasks."
"That's good to hear. Just don't neglect to ask for assistance if you get stuck for any reason. Even with everything going on, this project is very important."
"I will do so, professor," she declared resolutely, giving me the impression that she would only ask for my help as a last resort, but I didn't continue to argue. Still, I made a note to visit occasionally to see for myself.
"Excellent. Then, let me take the current saplings, and you can recall your team," I said. Rebecca chuckled at their attitude as well.
I spent the next twenty minutes making several trips between the third and fifth floors, splitting my attention between watching the battle between dungeon monsters as I planted the trees across, each tree increasing the mana density of the dungeon.
The effect was minimal. Even I wouldn't have noticed if I was just planting one or two trees … or a dozen. But, during that twenty minutes, I had planted almost five hundred trees, and the resulting difference was enough to change the battle between the monsters, the mana density strengthening the insect army further.
I watched as they finally toppled the giant boss monster, but even after it died, the insect monsters didn't stop, continuing to destroy every part of its flesh. Some handled the corpse with their ranged attacks, while others directly ate its flesh, even at the cost of burning from the inside.
In the end, they left nothing behind.
"It's good to see the defense is somewhat automatic," I said, glad that I didn't need to assign any forces to observe the situation.
Then, I opened another portal, this time leading outside.
I wanted to see if there was any progress before I started mass-producing Radiant Flame based weapons.