When the next morning arrived, I moved down the dungeon with a renewed passion, dragging the cart with me at full speed, not even slowing down by anything but the giant monsters. I left the smaller ones behind.
I didn't even sleep a wink after my revelation, still trying to process the potential implications of the peace field. A naive part of me was telling me to reveal the truth to the public and trust people. Luckily, that part had been battered even before the Calamity, so it was easy to silence.
Of course, the real reason I was able to silence it was having a better path, unlike pre-Calamity world, where trying to convince the masses to support me so that I could start working on the problem, with vague hopes of finding definite evidence to prove my conclusion was my only option.
Which then would have triggered a decade long political battle where utterly idiotic politicians mangled the truth just to score cheap points.
The System offered an alternative: personal power.
"Talk about an unhealthy coping mechanism," I muttered as I killed yet another monster that stumbled right onto my path, and stopped next to the forge, which was still on the third floor. I dropped everything there, changed to my silver anti-corrosion set, and passed through the gate, ready for a fight.
A fight that hadn't arrived yet. The monsters circled the tree line I had created, looking agitated — or at least, that was what I assumed was something like anger, insects were not exactly easy to read — as they circled the tree line, appearing right at the edge of the expanded range provided by the trees.
However, they were closer to the bodies of the tree than they were the day before, which meant that the effect might be temporary or include other limitations.
"Still, even if it's temporary, a forge could be set on the fourth floor. It's just a matter of picking a nice spot," I said, speaking to myself.
But, that meant that I needed to make a decision. The spot on the third floor was more than enough as long as I wanted to use it as a personal forge. I had already forged everything I needed, and even if I wanted to improve something, I could keep the forge buried until I decided to do so, along with the chopped wood from the temporary plantation.
Temporarily, it was alright to keep it on the third floor, but once the town had reached its full capability, things would be different. Sooner or later, someone would want to scope the area and see if there was something useful.
Which meant that I couldn't keep my forge out in the open, let alone expanding it further to produce more equipment. Which, I needed if I ever to make enough money to purchase more expensive skills and help others grow.
Technically, I could set a forge somewhere else. Finding a nice cave or another spot in the wilderness to set a forge was an option, so was setting one up under the guild's name, but both options had problems. Setting one in the wilderness would mean that the logistics would become more of a challenge. Meanwhile, one under the guild would have spies poking around it sooner or later.
In comparison, having one on the fourth floor had neither of those problems. The only challenge was to bring metal inside, but even that could be solved by melting the rocks with iron content I had detected. Collecting them would be a hassle, but not to the same degree as trying to smuggle a few tons of metal inside.
Even my cart trick wouldn't be sustainable once the scale reached a high enough level. Luckily, silver was much easier to smuggle, as the alloy still required a relatively tiny amount.
"That means I need to discover a spot rich in iron," I said. Inspect Perk from Repair could be used to examine rocks to see their metal content as long as they had more than a certain percent, and a quick test showed that Observe was even better.
Unfortunately, it required a touch … or did it? I couldn't help but remember the way Maria used Identify, with a line of Mana stretching toward the target.
"Maybe I could replicate it," I said as I quickly forged myself several thin silver-iron tubes, trying to expand the sense of Repair. To my surprise, it worked, but after six feet, the amount of details I could get started to drop significantly.
"Excellent," I said even as I started expanding the test, creating a tube as thick as my thumb, with a hollow center, which was the limit of getting any kind of detail.
I heard the existence of skills for this exact purpose. Unfortunately, all but the Basic one required Perception, and I doubted the Basic version was worth the attention the purchase of it would bring. I might change my mind if I couldn't find anything for the next two days, but for the moment, I decided to limit myself to my newfound solution.
If I could find a decent iron deposit on the fourth floor, everything would be dandy. If not, I could decide which strategy would be the better option.
However, as I pulled my trick, I couldn't help but wonder if I could use Observe on the movement of Mana, trying to get a better sense of what was going on. All I would need to do was to create a thinner tube and push the Mana through it.
It wouldn't come close to being perfect, but anything was better than the fizzled perception I had. While Essence allowed me to sense it, the Mana was more like a blob with fuzzy edges.
Hardly enough to make a judgment.
I was tempted to push that on top of my to-do list. To start understanding the secrets of Mana was just that important. Unfortunately, there were a lot of things to do, including finding an alloy that interacted with Mana the way I wanted it to.
That alone was a task that might potentially take days, not to mention it was hardly the only challenge in my plan.
"Focus on setting up the logistics first," I muttered even as I grabbed the thin tube, and pushed it to the ground. I didn't fear it breaking, as Mana alloys were extremely strong.
Just to see if there was any possible deposit, I spent twenty minutes checking the third floor, but I wasn't able to find any. If there was, it was either in a deeper spot, or more localized.
Then, I went to the fourth floor, and started using the stick every ten steps, covering the area around the gate. I wanted to understand the nature of the area, but in the process, I discovered that the depths of the dungeon had a limited amount of iron.
It wasn't high, less than a percent. It meant, a pound of iron would require more than a hundred pound of ores, and that assumed I could extract all of it. However, it was still good news. Especially since I carefully went through the entire area, and discovered two types of underground plants that reminded me of potatoes, and a new type of dungeon crystal.
A new type of crystal represented the possibility of developing new alloys, making it incredibly valuable for my purposes. And, while the underground plants weren't immediately valuable, the fact that they were able to survive in the weird environment of the bog was promising enough. I could potentially use these new plants to push my Nurture skill further even if I couldn't find any use for them.
I put them in the sample bag before I started moving once more.
Once I left the protective field of the trees, I picked a direction, started the exciting life of mineral prospecting, interrupted by waves and waves of monsters, enough to raise a lot of people to a new level. "Nice," I muttered as I found my first inferior deposit, which contained a mere five percent iron density. I quickly dug a pit there, mostly as a signpost so I wouldn't miss it, and continued to go deeper.
Once again, half a mile later, the dungeon door disappeared behind the mist. I pushed half a mile more just in case before I returned, and started repeating the same thing from a different angle. Ideally, I wanted to set up the forge where the dungeon gate wasn't visible.
The harder it was to discover, the better.
I walked back and forth, killing monsters in the process. However, even as I spent half a day killing giant monsters, there wasn't a level up, nor was I able to discover any usable skills. I still piled them on top of each other, trying to get Rare skills, but I either got ones that were incomprehensible, or I got another Rare Nurture.
Still, I continued. It was a tedious task, but persistence was a virtue. And, I didn't want to settle on that deposit with five percent content. Especially since it was already close enough to the gate, which made it a troubling target.
Then, I discovered a nice rocky outcropping, one that would be more defensible than anywhere else. I started searching its immediate surroundings more carefully, and soon, I discovered a lovely deposit, one that reached almost ten percent iron content.
"Beautiful," I said. I knew that such a purity would not be even treated as a mine outside, but I didn't care. Once again, its value was relative.
My luck must have turned, because one of the skills reacted.
[Skill Stone: Quake Hammer (Rare)]
"Fascinating," I muttered. Any other skill, I might have delayed absorbing it, afraid whether my Mana trick would be able to push it to the next level, but a Hammer skill was different. With the way it synergized with Forge, I would eventually raise it to its new limit.
It was an excellent test target.
Especially since I had two more skills that were extremely useful for combat.
However, despite my excitement, I still returned to the third floor first. No need to get distracted in the most dangerous spot I could currently access.
[Hammer of Might (Uncommon) 100 - Quake Hammer (Rare) 1]