"But the next floor is going to be harder. It is still plains, just like this one, but the grass is waist-high and the beasts hunt in larger packs. You stay in the middle, you keep your head down, and you let us handle the surprises. Clear?"
"Crystal," Jacob said.
Carlos paused, his eyes lingering on the chest plate of Jacob's coat. The leather still hummed faintly with residual mana where the Gatekeeper had struck him.
"That armor of yours held up incredibly well," Carlos admitted, scratching his chin. "Better than my shield, honestly. That was your enchanting work, right?"
Jacob nodded. "Defense and impact distribution runes. It is basic stuff, but it works."
"Basic stuff," Carlos chuckled, shaking his head. "Kid, that saved your life. Tell you what. We have a bag full of cores from this run. When we stop for camp later, how about you take a look at my breastplate? If you can put some of that 'basic stuff' on my gear, I will let you keep a few of the cores for your own projects."
Jacob's eyes lit up at the mention of the cores. "Deal."
"Good," Carlos grinned, the tension finally gone from his face. "Let's go see what else the System wants to throw at us."
The second floor was exactly as Carlos had promised, which meant it was a miserable slog through waist-high razor grass.
The monsters here were denser variants of the first floor. The jackals had thicker fur that turned glancing blows, and the boar-lizards had developed a nasty habit of circling behind the party while hidden in the vegetation. It was a tactical nightmare for a novice group, but for Carlos and his team, it was just a day at the office.
Tamsin's new skill paid for itself within the first hour. His Critical Eye highlighted the soft spots between the heavy plating of the boars, allowing him to drop enemies with single, surgical strikes that saved the party energy and time. Grimmand complained about the humidity, but he swung his axe with a rhythmic efficiency that left a trail of monster corpses in their wake.
Jacob stayed in the center, keeping his head down. He watched the flows of mana, studied how the monsters moved, and kept his sword ready, but he didn't need to use it. The team was a well-oiled machine. They carved a path through the sea of grass until the terrain finally opened up into a large, circular clearing paved with ancient, indestructible stone.
The Safe Zone.
"Camp time," Carlos announced, dropping his heavy pack with a groan of relief. "My legs are burning. I swear the gravity is heavier on this floor."
" Gravity is the same," Elara said, checking her mana readings as she sat down gracefully. "You are just getting old, Carlos."
"I am thirty-two," Carlos grumbled, unbuckling his breastplate. "In adventurer years, that is practically ancient. Tamsin, get a fire going. Grimmand, water duty. Jacob . . . you and I have a date with some armor."
While the rest of the team set up the tents and started a pot of stew, Jacob sat cross-legged on a flat stone. Carlos handed over his breastplate and the bag of monster cores they had collected.
Jacob inspected the steel. It was good quality, C-rank standard, but it lacked any magical reinforcement.
It was just dead matter, shaped by a hammer and left alone.
"Alright, wizard," Carlos said, sitting opposite him. He gestured to the bag of cores. "Pick whatever battery you need."
Jacob shook his head, pushing the bag back toward the knight. "I don't know how to use those yet. I use the ambient mana in the air to feed the pattern. My own magic just jump-starts it."
"Suit yourself," Carlos shrugged. "Cheaper for me."
Jacob pulled out his etching tool. It looked like a simple stylus, but the tip was made of pure mithril. It wasn't designed to cut metal; it was designed to conduct magic with zero resistance. When Jacob worked, he didn't carve the steel. He etched the concept of the steel.
He closed his eyes for a moment, shifting his perception. He didn't see the scratches or the dents on the breastplate. Instead, he visualized the armor as a three-dimensional wireframe floating in the dark.
Don't just make it hard, Jacob thought, remembering the rock he had exploded on the farm. Hardness creates brittleness. The floor is full of heavy hitters. It needs to displace force.
He began to construct a composite field in his mind.
He pulled the aspect of Strengthening, the rigid geometric locking of molecules, he used to make things unbreakable. But instead of applying it as a blanket layer, he wove it into a lattice structure, a honeycomb pattern that sat deep inside the steel's grain.
Then, he pulled the aspect of Durability. He used its flexible, shock-absorbing nature to fill the gaps in the honeycomb.
He was logic-ing a new effect into existence: Impact Distribution.
If he combined the rigid honeycomb of Strengthening with the spongy webbing of Durability, the result would be a plate that was as hard as diamond when struck, but instantly vibrated the kinetic energy out toward the edges rather than letting it punch through to Carlos's ribs.
Jacob opened his eyes. He pressed the mithril tip to the center of the breastplate.
He didn't scratch the metal. He pushed a pulse of his dense, blue mana through the tool. It flowed into the steel like water into a sponge, burning the invisible lattice he had visualized directly into the armor's mana field.
As he worked, movement at the edge of the clearing caught his eye.
Another group emerged from the tall grass.
This was not the terrified trio of novices they had met earlier. This was a five-man squad moving with confident, loose strides. Their gear was worn but well-maintained, the mark of veterans who knew how to keep their equipment alive. They had heavy packs that looked like they were bursting at the seams.
"Ho there!" the leader of the new group called out. He was a tall man with a scar running through his beard and a massive greatsword strapped to his back. "Room for a few more at the fire?"
Carlos stood up, his hand drifting casually near his sword hilt before he recognized the man.
"Brann?" Carlos relaxed, a genuine smile breaking out. "I didn't know you were running the starter floors. I thought you were pushing D-rank up north."
"Carlos!" Brann laughed, walking over to clasp forearms. "Good to see you, you old warhorse. And we were up north, but we heard the rumors about the drop rates down here today. We decided to come see if it was true."