With that done I called it a day and headed back to the church to try and push my cursed energy through my weapon again since I really wanted to be able to craft cursed tools due to the sheer versatility of them. A cursed tool creator didn't actually need to be able to personally use a cursed technique in order to make a tool with it attached. While also true that the most common cursed tools are ones that just have cursed energy imbued in them that was by no means the limit to what was possible.-
In fact from my understanding of the subject that was just the first step in most cases. All it was was turning whatever the tool was into a vessel to hold whatever cursed technique was being added to it. From there the manga didn't really give all that many details about how cursed tools are made other than that the power had something to do with the skill and power of the craftsmen themselves. For example a third grade sorcerer couldn't make a special grade cursed tool without seriously weird circumstances that usually involved a lot of sacrifice and death.-
Before I could even dream about making a special grade tool though I had to first figure out how to imbue cursed energy into an object permanently. Even after having gotten the enlightenment of black flash I was not making much progress in this regard as while I could coat an object in cursed energy temporarily it dissipated rapidly if I stopped. My gut told me that I may in fact actually need to wait until i leveled up to make cursed tools which kinda sucked. It made sense though since no one could add effects to equipment without the blacksmith developmental skill which could be gotten only when leveling up.-
Developmental skills are different than the normal sort as they are basically buffs given by the falna upon leveling up that are offered by what you have done in your life up to that point. Blacksmiths tend to get the associated skill, alchemists get mixing, archers get archery and swordsmen get swordsmanship and so on. Developmental skills are categorized in three categories, occupational, augmentation and supportive. The first type was skills like archery and blacksmith that you got because of your occupation. -
The second and third types were slightly more argumentative in nature as to some degree many skills could be counted as one or both. Mystery for example was a skill that usually was counted as augmentation if used by a crafter as it allowed unusual and rare things to be done when used in conjunction with the blacksmith skill. However if used in conjunction with the mage skill it could be counted as supportive. The difference between augmentation and supportive skills was that the former added an extra layer of depth and complexity to whatever it was applied to. The latter on the other hand merely granted a jump in efficiency and power to what it was applied to.-
Unlike normal skills developmental skills also had ranks that grew with the skill, knowledge and power of the person that had them though improving the rank of a developmental skill was notoriously hard with the highest ever recorded only being C rank. The reason for this was actually very well known too. Basically the only way you could get a developmental ability higher than this was if you focused so much on it that all the rest of your other abilities simply atrophy and can't improve any more.-
It basically meant sacrificing all else to focus on this one aspect of yourself and it simply wasn't worth it. Very few things ever actually require a higher developmental ability than that after all. Technically it was speculated that you could also raise a developmental ability by simply pushing what it allowed to the extreme and thus not have to sacrifice all else but the theorized methods of doing so were self inflicted torture without a shadow of a doubt. For example it was theorized that you could raise abnormal resistance by continuously exposing yourself to poison, curses and debuffs like that in higher and higher potencies.-
This was a dangerous game though as if you go even a little too far you could end up dead or worse from one of your "doses" of your chosen affliction. Like I said though there was no point in going for higher than C rank unless you were basically left with no choice. I assume that in order to create cursed items I needed either the blacksmith or mystery developmental skills.
'Looks like it's time to head back into the dungeon and go on a killing spree to max out my magic stat and find out what it is so i can raise my other stats to that point as well.' I thought slightly impatiently.
After making this decision I spent the rest of the day making figurines while even moving away from humanoid races and onto monsters. I didn't just choose monsters from this world either but ones from myth, tv and anime as well. I made one of each goblin, kobold, war shadow and griffin with the last being the hardest due to the sheer level of detail I added to each feather. Hestia was surprised to see these monstrous figurines but still thought they were beautiful in their own way and planned to sell them as well.-
We ate and the next day I stopped by the hostess and improved the ingredients, got my lunch from Syr who was rapidly improving with each meal she made and headed to the dungeon. Once in the dungeon I didn't bother trying to get drops but went straight for breaking the magic stones in the monsters as fast as possible since I was after that smoke rather than money or drops. I still collected any that appeared alongside the magic stones but otherwise I didn't care.-
I had a slight panic attack when I finally stepped unto the fifth floor since that was where the minotaur had shown up at but I managed to calm myself by repeating "That was a freak accident" multiple times in my head. Frankly speaking war shadows were by far the easiest monsters for me to kill on this floor since their stones were right in plain view on their faces. I just needed to hit them with a quick spark of flame on it and they went poof almost immediately.-
My first encounter with killer ants was unpleasant to say the least as the fuckers kept running when I'd rapid kill all of them except one somehow which made that one summon way more. At some point I stopped trying to go melee and just reset the board with a fuck everything in that direction style flame blast. That turned out to be a poor decision as the flames didn't kill the ants immediately and spread to the others that came as a result like a perpetual motion machine until the dungeon clearly decided that was enough of that and stopped sending more ants. That was fine by me though as I had gotten a fuck ton of liquid from that, almost as much as i got from the minotaur in fact if that tells you how many fucking ants showed up.