He knew that his original call to remain in the tutorial was the right one but now he knows that for people like him it is the only safe place within the tower and the second he leaves he looses the only protection he has, like a tutorial on hell difficulty in a game.
That is exactly what this is for the higher ones, a game where they pick their favorite toys and pets while throwing everything else in the trash.
I look at the books I have bought and know it isn't enough as none of them even mention this fact, most likely because they think no one will buy the more expensive ones until they are already to far in and can no longer escape like them. It is said that elves are often in service of the winged-ones and dwarves serve the dragons, these books are only meant for one to buy when the hole has already been dug and these two species drag the others down with them.
All of those that have left the tutorial floor are at the mercy of any of those higher species as the tower allows those of higher floors to come to lower floors if they pay a steep price and agree to restrict their strength and cultivation to that floor but a dragons scales can't even be scratched by anything under legendary and so they can rule the floors simply by relying on that alone.
I am now stuck in a endless loop of needing to reach the ability to forge at least a legendary grade item before I can leave here, but the items needed for such a task can't be reached from this floor which is how even the dwarves can only bow and obey despite being able to forge such blades.
First thing first my cultivation needs to improve as quickly as possible, not in this passive if it happens it happens I have allowed to come thanks to the slowed passage of time.
Next is forging needs to be my primary focus or more specifically how to make a legendary item without the proper material.
I need to accomplish my unique fighting style in order to be able to even get close to dealing enough damage to anything of such level even with both of those as my energy needs as much help it can get, armor is also important and if he wants to do that he needs to learn leather working and that means buying druid language books and leatherworking books along with all the parts needed for such an endeavor.
He needs to learn all he can and make himself a one man team, he already can do the parts of most people on the team but his mana is far from reaching the amount needed for him to fully accomplish it.
More and more things have now come and even a small break could put him back hours, he can no longer relax.
He first practice his fighting style that he now needs to fully realize in the ring, he uses the chakrams made like a samurai sword and thinks of how much more powerful the items are now with such technique and decides that should be his focus when he forges.
He feels the scratches from where he moved wrong or didn't flow right when using this fighting style but knows as time goes on he will fix up those mistakes, he enters the 17th wave with the assassin goblin and dies.
He can't move quickly and fluidly enough due to his loss leg that to this point has not been a massive problem but now when even a small of detail matters he needs to heal it, he knows means to heal a loss limb is possible but to buy such potions are at their cheapest 1 million coins.
He will only buy the most basic things and beyond that won't spend another coin until he reaches it, his days will be hell and he will collapse but at this point if he doesn't wake up and get serious he will be stuck in this tutorial forever.
Time skip- Unknown
He is gasping for air as he finally kills the berserker goblin using his unique style that he has spent what he can only describe forever on, he has sold all normal and mana types weapons he has made but the more experimental ones using mixtures of different metals and energy have either been scrapped due to their uselessness or held onto due to not wanting to alert anybody to their existence yet.
He looks to the status screen on his growth and the coins he has now earned.
Status-
Strength-150
Speed-50
Agility-70
Intelligence-80
Regeneration-100
Detection-200
Health-100
Mana-600
-your mana type is purifying, tainted energy resistance, master energy detection, grandmaster energy manipulation, master blacksmith, apprentice
He has almost the one million at this point though he is unclear how much time has truly passed as he has collapsed several times through this period as although he stopped to weave he has remained over working himself and forgetting to sleep.
He has pushed himself to master all the abilities he already has and now that the amount needed to repair his leg has been reached he enters the tower store and finds it, a million coins on the tutorial means nearly 10 million on the first floor, for people like him who come into the tower disable you nearly need to sell yourself for ten years to buy it and that is only if you have a great talent.
He buys it and a pure gold liquid in a glass bottle appeared in his grasps, he removes the prosthetic that he has come to be used to and drinks the whole vial.
It is like someone is trying to burn him from the inside out as a sense of heat he hasn't truly felt since the weasel comes rushing through him, He can feel a sensation like some type of goo is slowly being added to where my left leg once was and after it finally settled a decently muscled leg is left in it's place.
The bottle said it would restore the limb to the state it was in when lost and for him that was before the tower even appeared, he now would have to retrain the entirety of his body to get accustomed to this new limb.
He has another long road now ahead of him and he will finally begin buying more things to learn and experiment with now that his body is whole, he stands and looks at his now completely normal left leg and knows from this point on it is all up hill climb.
Forge, practice his martial arts and dances with his new limb, weave, woodwork, earn coins in the ring that he can now reach the 50th wave on.
Normal goblins through to round five, 1st evolution to 10th wave, 2nd evolution till 15th wave, 3rd evolution till 20th wave, then comes the fourth evolution which are more diverse the main one is a swords one with equal attribute but no outstanding one.
Then is the joker goblin a goblin dealing in poisons and debuffs, the tainted goblin is an advance necro goblin that is better at hiding, a range goblin dealing with arrows and throwing knives, a fire mage goblin that is pure red after reaching this advancement, a evolved berserker goblin, an assassin goblin that is faster and slightly smarter, a explosive goblin that because of a fire grand mage goblin became explosive, and a ice mage goblin that is pure blue due to the advancement.
For the 30th wave he fights them all at once and has never been more upset by the small size of the ring as there is no where to duck and hide, he has learned how to perfectly time his blocking skin and fire resistance. From wave 30 to 50 it is an ever impressive mixture of all the goblins I have fought against to this point, the 4th wave is even just five assassin goblins versus me.
I have gained more abilities like earth swamp that traps somethings legs in the ground, and earth escape that allows him to travel through earth like it is water.
Slowly he has realized that although describes the basics of his capabilities the status screen only shows broad overviews of ones abilities not an in-depth one so he has written his own on a paper of all the abilities and elements he can use for both experiments and self tracking.
- Abilities
increase speed (From tainted rabbit)
Tainted mana creation (From tainted Rabbit)
iron skin (From golden sheep)
Fire proof (From fire weasel)
Water breathing (From water otter)
wind ride (From glider squirrel)
earth wall (From bronze bull)
Increased strength (from bronze bull)
healing mana creation (white lizard)
self recovery (White lizard)- a ditch effort to try and recover a loss limb on his own, healing capabilities to weak to do so.
fire spout (flaming lizard)- allows a lizard to cover themselves in fire to protect themselves and speed up healing.
blood manipulation (crimson frog)- only able to stop his blood flow and fake death for a small time, prevents blood loss deaths.
water treading (water spider)- only for up to ten seconds he can stand on water.
Earth swamp (earth croc)
Earth escape (earth groundhog)
darkness mana creation (dark owl)
Night vision (dark owl)
He has gone through several attempts with different animals but these are the ones that abilities could be semi translated with a human body and the amount of mana I have, the darkness attribute is very low on his double helix even below the earth attribute so the only ability he can make use from it is the night vision.
The healing mana type is interesting as it is in the center of tainted and purifying energy, despite many saying it is the better version of what purifying should be it is a high mix of purifying and tainted rather then one or the other.
Healing is often said to be the blessed mana type to get and entire planets gather their efforts to raise every single one but they are pitifully weak even in the eyes of us purifiers as they have no combat capability other then healing themselves, and to perform even a small bruise heal they spend nearly 100 mana and a scratch it would take all the mana I currently have and around 300 mana for them.
But they are rare as only one in a billion are produced at any point, add on most planets only have somewhere between 5 and 10 depending on the time and their worth more in the eyes then purifiers.
But purifiers make it so they can use the mana crystals to cultivate, can consume the meat of creatures caught, can use materials that would otherwise cost a fortune to purchase, we are over all worth more and provide more for the worlds we exist in yet they are seen as better then us.
I know I can't ever say this for others to learn but it is infuriating, it is like they can enchant and enslave everyone simply by healing them.
But enough on his personal grievances, he now has only 5 mana types left to integrate and he has been alerted the shining scorpion he wants to purchase is almost ready. It will cost him nearly 100,000 coins to purchase and the two blades he has sold will pay for this, he had to do a lot of negotiating with them to hunt it at night as they are more dangerous then and add on killing it with a dagger and the price tag was astronomical but worth it.
He sits down and waits, and it finally arrives with it's whitish color that lets it blend into the scorching sand along with glow brighter.
He eats and begins his memory integration, he feels the mana flow pattern come to him naturally and soon he can add light mana creation to his ability list along with flash bang that blinds those with eyes. Now only 4 more mana types are needed, animals, plants, space, and time the hardest ones to find in nature and even trickier to capture.
He knows one for the plants but that would mean consuming a humanoid creature, aka an elf, he also knows he could consume a druid which isn't humanoid but rather animal forms for the animal one.
He knows no one wants to be known to have done such a thing so without private messaging he can't do it yet, and a druid is the same as they are intelligent species. But for space he has a clue that one such creature may exist on the first floor to have one make a spacial bag, if he can pay them a high enough price they may be willing to catch one but doing so would mean buying a space freeze scroll costing 200,000 coins on the first floor and killing it and the space creature is a space cat a small species making them difficult to kill even without their space abilities.
I make the offer on the market that I will give a down price of 200,000 coins for the space scroll and another 500,000 coins for the meat of the cat cut freshly and sent directly to me from the kill sight.
It is a massive price to earn on the first floor and can mean the difference between life and death on later floors so when those of the first floor see the offer it blows up and many wonder who I am to make such offer, after all what if someone takes the down price and then doesn't so it.
It is a gamble for sure but I sweeten the pot by adding in I will give them a mana type weapon specially made for them along with the 500,000 and it will be shipped in at most three weeks to them.
Now even the higher floors are looking at this offer in greed and ask if it must be a space cat, I reply if it is a space type creature that used the space ability just before you kill it like with the space cat the yes the price would remain the same and it was wild.
Moans over it having to have used the ability recently and others over the fact no space creatures exist on any floor but the first one, but one person on the fourth floor who has nicknamed themselves earthen soldier says he will do it.
I send the 200,000 pre payment that I have spent some time saving up from selling weapons over these days of readjusting to my new limb, I am curious what type of weapon he is hoping for as that is probably the most promising piece of my offer. I can only know if he succeeds, I wait nearly a month before a return message comes along with request for his payment, and a space cat now laying in front of me.
I pay him the 500,000 loosing the last of the money I just got back and immediately eat the cat meat sitting in front of me, I delve into the memory and the thing is decently vivid and clearly angry.
I feel the action of what can only be described as two things in the same place like how things over lap but don't touch running in perfect parallel of each other, even one off beat or to fast and the teleport will fail which I assume is probably how the space blocker scrolls work.
I see a man with a clearly unshaven look and a purely normal coloring and looks, this is probably the earthen soldier and I see him swing with a dagger into the cats head but the cat dodges to the left with a massive gouge from the dagger when a earth spike shoots up from under it impaling it and leaving it unable to run.
A stab in the head and the memory ends, I fore the memory to fade and find the concept of trying to replicate the space ability to be strange as I am not even sure how far or close the two parallel lines should be on my double helix mobius.
A lot of trial and error is waiting for me for this as one wrong thing and the test will be a failure, groaning I get a order from the guy for a interesting item. A dagger that will perfectly match to his earth element made from osmium, a very brittle metal that usually isn't used for such a weapon as it would break on it's first use but I need to find a way to make a viable long lasting weapon from it.
I send a piece of information back stating it will take longer then one month due to the specific metal chosen and he sent the request of okay back, these interactions is clear for all to see and they seem interested in our talks.
I had an idea for a while on integrating the minds of the things I eat into the weapons I make and if done right should allow it to recover on it's own, the best thing to use for this dagger is a bronze bull and so I offer one person 30,000 to get it after it used both abilities with killing it using a dagger.
I have the shape of a horn in mind which will match to the bull well, a day later the bull is here and I have the whole body not just the meat so I decide to add something interesting to the blade.
I put some unpurified iron ore into a bath of it's blood and send large amount of my own tainted energy into it to preserve it's mind for as long as possible, next is to cut off the leather and horns while burning the bones to ash for usage during the creation process.
While manipulating the tainted energy I hear a ding and see I gained tainted energy manipulation and realize this is in fact my first true use of that energy despite it being the second attribute I gained, well he really doesn't have much use for it as it takes to much mana to make much less actually use.
I figure the more of it I use when crafting the more powerful the effect will be, I purify and shape the blood soaked iron ore into a bar then begin to forge it into a dagger.
I use the ashes in the blade when it is burning hot making the primitive version of steel, then I begin to use my favorite forging method the folding method while each time I cool the blade I use the blood of the bull instead of water slowly shaping it in the style of one the the things horns which I intend to send the man to make a sheathe with from whoever he can find.
Through the steps I slowly ate pieces of the bull and purified it's energy while preventing dispersing with a small amount of tainted energy, it was a balancing game.
I put in the earth energy I purified from the bull itself into the thing as I made sure only the energy I gained from eating it went to the blade, it took long time and constant stopping due to mana restrictions and exhaustion but soon the blade took full shape and the handle for the blade was a wrap of the leather I commissioned for 10,000 coins using the bulls own hide.
I finally put the last of it's memory piece in after the handle is put in place and a new effect took place, a bone white color over took the blade and a crimson color appeared where I engraved my insignia.
The handle of leather seems to envelop the bottom part like it is alive and the color changes to a bronze one and the sensation it gave off was strange like that of something living but not, like something one would see from a necromancer it was disturbing.
A ding rings and a notification appears.
-You have crafted a item possible of growing on it's own, once named it will be completely loyal to the one to name it. You have achieved a unique means of blacksmithing {soul forger} and have advanced a level in your blacksmithing you are now a grandmaster blacksmith. Any weapon you make from this point on will allow you to analyze it. you have gained access to private messaging.
He had gained the analyze ability he had heard rumors of as well as made a completely unique weapon, he decided to analyze the current blade. He can also private message so now he can speak directly to people his request instead of on the bounty board.
-Unnamed earth blade-
-This is a blade using both the body and mind of creature but has been purified before completion, this blade will be bound to the person who name it who is the first one to say 'your name is []'.
-durability 100/100 (can self repair amount of damage dictates time to repair)
-strength 5
-sharpness 5
-mana enhancement 10
-mana type earth
-weight: 20 pounds
-evolution level 0
-Ability: earth wall, strength increase
I saw it was a 0 evolution like a monster is and I wonder if I use a human or other creature would it be like this, well I don't intend to test so I will simply have to wait and see with other things.
I send the blade to him with a note on naming it and the current status of it, if he doesn't name it that is on him but now I know this is possible and the future of my weapons have changed drastically as the weapon I make can grow with the restriction of materials to make it a legendary though the amount of time to get it there is hard to tell.
I need to earn back a lot of money from that spend thrift just now and so begin to forge my normal mana weapons and hope that the one to get the dagger was pleased with the outcome.