"Issac, get over here. I'll show you what to buy for the best results." Duncan said
Issac walked over and made his status visible to Duncan, and he immediately made Issac purchases: [Runecrafting] and [Runic Circuit].
Duncan nodded in satisfaction. Those two skills, along with the rest of Issac's build, would help fix his rune work. He would get Issac to pick up the [Blacksmithing] class for his next level so he could help Issac round out his build. Maybe get him the [Soul Flame], no definitely getting him the [Soul Flame] skill.
Issac also decided to drop his other classes and become a full-on level 6 [Runesmith]. Duncan made him keep the skills even if the sundering had weakened them slightly.
"So what are we going to be crafting?" Issac asked.
"I'm not sure yet. I don't think we're going to be able to help with the goblins beyond just showing up. Everyone is too low-leveled. Hell, I'm too low-leveled. I have two levels to assign, and I still need to reconsider my class." Duncan admitted.
"[Settler] not good enough?" Issac asked.
"Not by a long shot. Don't get me wrong, some people here are really good at some of the crafting, but they had no idea how to incorporate these skills into their crafting. So I'm having to do everything, and I don't have the skills to really make anything worthwhile. Instead, I've got them working on bunk beds, and there are plenty of those Cheval de frise things to grind out their skill levels and get us a little more protection. We should be finished up with both tomorrow, maybe the day after," Duncan said, looking nervous.
"Where are you going to assign your levels?" Issac asked.
Duncan froze.
"Hmm. I don't know," Duncan muttered to himself as he opened his status up.
"I've got two extra levels to assign. But I haven't bothered with the chaos going on." Duncan muttered to himself.
That wasn't a bad thing, shit had been hectic, and he had been freaking out. But now he was at their base, and it was time to take a hard look at his build and consider his options.
"So, what are you thinking of picking?" Issac asked again.
"Well, I need a crafting class. I really don't want to go back to being a frontline fighter again. I got a degree to be an engineer, not a hatchet man. To be perfectly honest. I think I'm going to sunder my [Settler] Class."
"What? Isn't that your only class?" Issac asked.
"So?" Duncan shrugged. "I took [Settler] because of a crisis. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was useful, and I'll probably keep all the skills I already have. But I'm not going to run off into the woods to build a town. On the other hand, now isn't the time to start throwing curve balls at myself. I should pick something I know works for me."
"And that is?" Issac asked, clearly frustrated by how vague he was being.
Duncan smiled.
"I mean a crafting build. Between my experience in-game and my diploma, it's the only thing I'm good for. The problem is so many crafting builds are specialized."
"Can't you just get a bunch of mastery skills?" Issac asked.
"I could, but that's not enough. Your [Runesmith] class doesn't just let you work runes into metal. It has other skills that can affect the end product. So even if I loaded up on mastery skills, my creations wouldn't be able to match yours, even if I'm an objectively better crafter than you," Duncan explained.
"But that leaves me with the second problem. Where do I go with my build? Enchanter? Smith? Ritualist? Glasser? Construction? Jeweler? Artificer? Alchemist? No, Abaddon has alchemy covered. But there's so much to do, and I have to reinvent everything. Maybe I should get some people to try to delegate, but then I'd be micromanaging everything instead of crafting."
"Isn't there a general crafter build?" Issac asked. "Something that just improves all of your crafting?"
Duncan paused as an idea came to him.
"Most of them aren't worth considering. Except for one. The [Dungeon Engineer]"
There was silence for a moment.
"Are you going to tell me what that is or …"
Duncan rolled his eyes.
"The [Dungeon Engineer] is the pinnacle crafting class. It allows the user access to every crafting skill and specialization."
"Then why the hell am I bothering with [Runesmith]?" Issac asked. "Why bother with any other crafting class?"
"Because [Dungeon Engineer] is for crafting only. A [Blacksmith] can use [Hammering Blows] on someone's head as easily as a sheet of metal, and a [Posioner] is just as toxic on the battlefield as off. But a [Dungeon Engineer] is limited purely to crafting. Most of the skills will only activate when crafting. Not only that, but it's such a generalized class that you're unlikely to ever max out your skills. I'm only considering it because I'm literally starting from nothing and need to build everything. Hmm, if I add in the [Gatherer] class, I could do a Minecraft build."
"Wait a minute, there's a Minecraft build?" Issac asked. "Does it do what I think it does?"
"[Gatherer] and [Crafter] combo, then you can rape the natural world for resources and build whatever you want. It's a fun build but not a great build for combat, as you basically have to sacrifice at least sixty levels to do it right. The main advantage is the fact that you can quickly build up anything you need with what's around you. But you tend to struggle in direct combat. But if I'm using [Dungeon Engineer], maybe I should look into high tier [Gatherer] classes, maybe add [Ritual Architect], and maybe." Duncan muttered to himself as he considered the possibilities.
"Okay, so what do you need to do to unlock the [Dungeon Engineer] class?" Issac asked.
"Five crafting classes with a total level not exceeding ten with five skills each."
"Fuuck," Issac muttered. "Yeah, I'm not doing that."
"Yeah, that's the other reason [Dungeon Engineer] isn't popular. It takes a lot of grinding to unlock. And if you don't know the requirements, you're likely to blow right past them," Duncan muttered as he started going over the various skills he would need to pick up.
"Issac, I need you to go to the kitchen and grab me the following," Duncan said as he penned a note for Issac.
"Is this a recipe for chocolate chip pancakes?" Issac asked.
"Yep, now go, meet me in the cauldron," Duncan said as he picked up two levels in [Blacksmith].
He moved over the cauldron, finding Abaddon inside.
"Hey, Duncan," Abaddon smiled and waved.
"Hey Abaddon. I need to unlock the [Dungeon Engineer] class." Duncan said.
Abaddon nodded in understanding. He knew the class requirements. Standing up, Abaddon prepared an alchemy station for Duncan.
"Are you really sure you want [Dungeon Engineer]? I mean, you normally need an entire dungeon to grind out its skills." Abaddon reminded him.
Duncan rolled his eyes. "I have an entire settlement to build. From scratch."
"Fair," Abaddon said as he returned to his own station
Duncan sat down at the station Abaddon had prepared and got to work. He created ten mana potions and ten poisons.
"Hey, Duncan, I got your pancakes with some assembly required," Issac said as he came into the room.
"Great, hand it over. I need to improve my cooking skill." Duncan said as he brought out everything he needed for cooking.
Ten minutes later, the three of them were chowing down on pancakes.
"Thanks, Duncan," Abaddon said as he ate the pancakes.
Duncan returned to the foundry and got to work. He started by sewing together some of the ruined clothing they had for an easy skill. It only took an hour to get the skill he wanted.
The part was more difficult. He stood in the foundry as Issac assisted him. The glow of his forge bathing the cluttered room in warm, flickering light. Tools lay meticulously arranged on one side of his bench, while raw materials—gold, gemstones, a soul stone, and a dozen shards of glass. He was going to try and knock out a bunch of skills all at once. While at the same time doing something for his girlfriend.
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The forge roared as Issac fed it more fuel, its heat rising to perfection. He pulled on his gloves, grabbed some gold jewelry they had… liberated, and tossed it into the forge to melt it down. And not a small amount of gold; it was a lot of gold. He also smashed a few soul stones into a powder and added that to the mix. This would allow him to enchant the material later.
He had done this before, and he mostly worked off of routine as he melted down the gold. As he worked, Duncan murmured under his breath, infusing each movement with intent. He alloyed the gold with a hint of palladium. Once ready, he poured it into a snake-shaped mould.
Even as the metal filled the mould, he used magic to force more gold into it, making the material denser and heavier than it was supposed to be.
He turned his attention to the centrepiece: the gemstones. He had retrieved a few rough gemstones from his tutorial. Each one was massive by pre-system standards, and they glinted under the workshop’s light. The emeralds glittered in the firelight.
Duncan secured the emerald and set to work, a gem cutter’s wheel spinning with precision. He shaped the stone into an intricate, multifaceted cut, ensuring it would capture and refract light like a star caught in its depths. As he polished the stone to perfection, it began to glow faintly, a sign of its latent magical energy awakening. As the golden snake cooled, he set the two emeralds in its eyes.
He didn't need this next part, so he added Runes to the back of the golden snake to enhance the final product.
Then he moved onto the glass. Like the gold, before he added soul stone and glass to the forge, returning the glass to a molten material, then he added in iron oxides, titanium and a few sulfur compounds to turn it brown. Once the enchanted glass was ready, he took it out, rolling it into a rod. With steady breaths and deliberate movements, he coaxed the molten glass into shape. Once he felt it was solid enough, he wrapped the golden snake around his glass stick. He was using the glass to anchor the golden snake.
He also enchanted the glass for extra durability. He really didn't want this to break. He also enchanted the snake's main body.
As Duncan held the finished piece in his hand, a faint hum resonated through the room. He was inundated with notifications.
DING!!!
Duncan held up the finished product. It looked pretty nice, a golden serpent wrapped around a not wooden stick with emerald eyes. Honestly, it was shit. But Eve would like it for both the aesthetic and the practical effects. And it was an easy way to get most of his skill grinding out of the way. Now that he was ready to upgrade his class. Opening his menu, he selected his choice.
Duncan selected yes and then nearly collapsed to the ground as twenty levels worth of stats disappeared from his body all at once.
"Hey, are you ok?" Issac asked as he moved over.
"Yep. just sundered my class," Duncan groaned. "Oh, this is so much worse in real life."
Despite having just lost twenty levels, he could immediately reassign five of them, and he had two that he had never assigned in the first place, allowing him to bring his level back up to level 7.
He added his new skills to his new classes. Then, he spent five skill points getting the lore skill for each class and the remaining six skill points filling out each class's skill slots. Then, he activated [Zen Master] to combine his classes.
"Oh, that is so much better," Duncan groaned as he finally had a proper crafting class. He could already feel ideas starting to form in his mind. Long-forgotten YouTube videos and ideas popped up as his project to create a scorpion ballista leaped forwards as he recalled episodes from the History Channel on creating the weapon, but it didn't stop. Everything he knew of woodworking, along with everything that he knew from Noralon, started to come together as a design came together.
"Issac," Duncan called out.
"Yeah," Issac looked up at him.
"You currently have the highest level in blacksmithing. I need you to make some of the following," Duncan said as he brought up what he needed on one of the … he still wasn't sure if I was an iPad mounted in the wall.
Issac looked over the list as he muttered to himself.
"Five hundred Iron nails, Chisels, saw, knife, hand drill and … what's a block planer?" Issac asked.
"It's for precision work. It's mostly used for planing end grain, bevelling edges, finishing joints, and other similar tasks." Duncan explained.
Issac clearly didn't understand.
"Don't worry about it," Duncan offered. One of the teams has been clearing out Home Depot for most of the day. They should have everything in storage. It will make creating the exploding ballista so much easier," Duncan said.
"I'm sorry, exploding Baslista?" Issac asked.
"Don't worry about it," Duncan said.
"I am extremely worried about it." Issac protested.
You may skip to the next chapter.
Base
Personal:+4 DEX +3 STR +3 INT +2 PER +2 WILL
Racial: +3 CON +2 END +2 SPIRIT +1 EGO
Bloodline: +5 STR +5 INT
Level Bonus: +2 to all Stats
Mini-Character List
Duncan Coffeehouse: Head crafter
Issac Brown: A kid that stole from the guild's stores and is under trial. Gareths brother
Abaddon: The Parties Tank and the best alchemist in the school
AN: