Arthur knelt down. He reached out and touched the leather coat Jacob was wearing. It was the enchanted coat Jacob had made for himself before the trip.
Arthur ran his thumb over the chest.
There, right over the heart, was a deep scuff in the leather. The fibers were compressed and shiny, as if they had been struck by a hammer.
Arthur knew leather. He knew what kind of force it took to make a mark like that. That wasn't a scratch from a briar patch. That was a direct impact from something heavy.
He looked at the shoulder. Another small dent.
Arthur looked at Jacob's face. The boy looked happy. Healthy. Unharmed.
If he hadn't been wearing this coat, that blow to the chest would have shattered his ribs.
"Standard run, huh?" Arthur whispered, looking at the door where Carlos had just left.
"What?" Jacob asked.
"Nothing," Arthur said, smoothing the leather over his son's heart. He felt a faint vibration under his fingertips. The magic in the coat was still active, still protective.
Arthur felt a chill go down his spine. He had almost lost him. If Jacob hadn't been prepared . . . if he hadn't been special . . .
Arthur stood up. He put a hand on Jacob's head.
"You did good work on this coat, son," Arthur said thickly. "It is sturdy."
"Thanks, Dad," Jacob beamed. "It worked really well. I didn't feel a thing."
Arthur swallowed the lump in his throat. "Good. That is good. Now go put that rock away before you drop it on your toe. It is bedtime."
"Okay!"
Jacob ran off toward his room, the heavy stone gauntlet clutched in his arms, his mind already racing with new patterns.
Arthur watched him go. Then he walked to his desk and opened the old, cracked journal of his grandfather. He picked up his quill.
He had a feeling he was going to need to write down a lot more than just crop yields this winter.
The farmhouse was quiet. The only sound was the settling of the timbers and the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside the window.
Jacob sat on the floor of his room surrounded by his haul.
The forty pounds of salt-grass bulbs were already safely stowed in the barn in prepared beds of sandy loam for storage. The monster cores were sorted into glass jars on his shelf. They glowed faintly and cast a soft, multi-colored nightlight across the room.
But his attention was focused on the table.
On the left sat the Void Gauntlet. It was a massive, articulated piece of black stone. It absorbed the light from the candle. It looked like a hole in reality shaped like a hand.
On the right sat the dagger.
It was the blade Old Thom had given him years ago. It was a simple, brutal thing. It was just a thick, rusted slab of metal with no edge and a wrapped leather handle. Thom had called it "scrap." Arthur had called it "junk."
Jacob picked it up.
He had carried this dagger for years. He had tried to sharpen it, polish it, and understand it. He had always known it was special. But now, with his soul expanded by the dungeon and his Combat Insight from Carlos still fresh in his mind, he looked at it differently.
He activated his mana sight.
He looked at the Void Gauntlet first. The structure was complex. It was a dense, chaotic lattice of mineralized mana. It was hard, yes. It was magical, yes. It was the kind of material that high-level smiths would kill for.
Then he looked at the dagger.
It didn't glow. It didn't hum. It sat there like a dead weight in his perception.
But when he pushed his mana against it to find the grain, he hit nothing.
Or rather, he hit everything.
The Void Stone was dense like a brick wall. But this dagger? This material was a singularity.
His mana slid off the surface like water off oil. There were no pores. No microscopic cracks. No grain to weave into. It was an absolute matter. It was so incredibly dense, so fundamentally stable, that it rejected his attempt to interface with it.
Jacob frowned. He remembered the day his father had given it to him. Arthur had tried to name the metal. He had tried to say "Star Metal" or "Adamant," but the System had glitched. It had censored him.
"That is a sturdy metal."
Jacob picked up his mithril etching tool.
He held the Void Gauntlet steady. He pressed the tip of the tool against the black stone. He pushed a pulse of blue mana.
The stone accepted it. It was resistant like pushing a needle through tough leather, but it yielded. He could feel the mana pathways opening up. He could weave a Strengthening aspect into this stone if he focused. It was high-level material, but it was workable.
He set the gauntlet down and picked up the dagger.
He pressed the mithril tip to the flat of the black blade. He visualized a simple Sharpness lattice. He pushed.
Nothing.
The mana didn't enter the metal. It pooled on the surface and dissipated. It was like trying to write on a diamond with a wet noodle.
He pushed harder. He poured more of his core's density into the tool to force a pathway open.
Come on. I just enchanted C-rank steel in a swamp. I bypassed a mage staff's safety protocols. I made a bag that eats boulders.
He strained as his forehead beaded with sweat. The air in the room grew heavy as he channelled more power.
The dagger remained unimpressed.
It wasn't that he wasn't strong enough. It was that his resolution wasn't high enough. His mana was like a blunt crayon trying to write on a microchip. This material required a level of precision and density that he simply didn't possess yet.
Jacob let out a breath and dropped the tool. He wiped the sweat from his eyes.
"Okay," he whispered to the dagger. "You win. For now."
He looked back at the Void Gauntlet.
The black stone sat there heavy and inviting. It was tough. It was magical. It was significantly harder to work than the steel of Carlos's armor, but unlike the dagger, it was possible.
It was the next step.
If he wanted to crack the code of the Sturdy Metal dagger, he needed practice. He needed to learn how to weave mana into materials that fought back. He needed to master the Void Stone first.
Jacob picked up the gauntlet again. He ran his thumb over the knuckles.
This wasn't just loot. This was a training dummy.
He would strip the existing enchantments from this gauntlet. He would study how the dungeon had built it. And then he would rewrite it. He would fill this black stone with so many complex, interwoven composite fields that it would make Elara's staff look like a twig.
And when he mastered this . . . then he would come back for the dagger.
Jacob set the gauntlet in the center of his desk. He opened his notebook to a fresh page.
Project: Void Weave Objective: Total Mana Integration
He smiled, picked up his quill, and began to draw.