But first, his shield. He inspected it as closely as he could using [Enchantment Analysis] and [Enchantment Testing], trying to activate the enchantment as he usually did. He could tell the enchantment was there, it just didn't seem like his mana was able to activate the enchantment. Almost like it was stuck.

He paused eating to focus, setting down the shield like he had when he had enchanted it the first time, even though it was already enchanted. He focused like he did when using [Basic Elemental Enchanting], forcing his mana into the shield, trying to set the enchantment…

There was a flash of light, and what little mana he had managed to recover was, again, almost totally drained. But…

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Tower Shield, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 13/14, Enchantment: Reflect (10)]

The Enchanter had repaired the enchantment.

Exhausted once again, James dug into the now ready porridge.

Too tired to do anything physical or magical, James pondered.

When he had enchanted the shield with the Basic Light Enchantment: Reflect template, there had been a question.

How big to etch the pattern?

When Meridox had enchanted the sword, the pattern had already been customized to fit the shape of the blade, so James had done similarly, and stretched the enchantment pattern to a size that would fill the front surface of the shield.

And that had worked.

But there was another option, considering how the "defensive" set of basic elemental enchantments looked.

For instance, the Basic Fire Enchantment: Fire Resistance template was triangular shaped. And the Basic Air Enchantment: Wind Resistance and Basic Light Enchantment: Reflect templates were square. Similarly, the Basic Water, Earth, and Dark enchantments were hexagonal.

What this meant was that the enchantments could be tiled: repeated over and over in a pattern on a surface, one edge of the enchantment flowing into the next.

There was an obvious downside: the more etching of patterns James did, the more magic crystal dust he would need to fill the pattern. And it was possible that it would require more effort to enchant.

The upside was unclear at best. It might produce a stronger enchantment, but there was only one way for James to find out.

He would have to test it out.

Additionally, he had another goal for his testing. His current helmet design was essentially a cylinder with holes punched into the front for him to see through. And he had kept the helmet design because it had worked, saving him from grievous injury in one of his early fights with the mole monsters.

But since then he had learned the [Joinery] skill, and he hadn't taken any blows to the helmet from which a proper visor couldn't have protected him.

So the Smith, still magically exhausted but feeling better physically after that time thinking and eating – the porridge now finished – set himself to forging test helmets. He warmed up his forge and took out some regular iron ingots. For this design, he produced a rounded shape to fit around the shape of his head with a flared bottom to provide more coverage to his neck and collarbone, overlapping with the top of his cuirass. The front had a hole large enough to provide unrestricted vision, and he riveted a visor onto the front with a grated pattern, allowing enough vision to fight and even some peripheral vision, something he had lacked all this time.

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The first helmet wasn't perfect. The top wasn't perfectly smooth, and some of the bumps interfered with the visor sliding up and down.

So he forged another.

And another.

After several prototypes, he had produced two nearly identical helmets that functioned as he wished.

[Appraisal]: Iron Visor Helmet, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 16/16]

[Appraisal]: Iron Visor Helmet, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 16/16]

Next, James very lightly scratched the Basic Water Enchantment: Water Resistance template onto the first helmet, stretching it out as he had with the shield. Of course, on a rounded surface that wrapped around on itself, parts of the pattern inevitably stretched, but James did his best, occasionally hammering mistakes out and re-scratching out the pattern.

Then on the second helmet, he tiled the pattern. This took far longer, but because the pattern was more compact, he was able to cover more of the helmet, and he even scratched the pattern onto the visor. Once the patterns were scratched into both helmets, he properly etched them in.

[Smith] Class Skill: [Filigree] has reached level 2.

Having lost track of time, James found he was quite hungry again once he was finished. He ate more monster meat and porridge, and felt that his mana, though cold and stiff, was recovered enough that he felt comfortable using his Earth War Hammer's [Heavy Blow]. He hardly even noticed the mana usage when he used it normally.

James donned his Green Iron armor set and took his Earth War Hammer and Green Iron Tower Shield in hand. Scanning the cavern, there were no monsters present.

It was time to hunt down Water Magic Crystals.

Of the two tree monsters he had killed previously, one had dropped a Water Magic Crystal, and the other an Earth Magic Crystal. If that ratio held, James would be able to collect a Water Magic Crystal after every other tree monster he killed.

The walk to the tree monster room was uneventful. Bat monster carcasses still littered the cavern floor. James set his warding stakes closer to the entrance to the tree monster room, had some bread and water, and advanced into the room.

He was on the offensive this time.

The vines he periodically severed from around his ankles, and as soon as he spotted a tree monster, he moved to meet it, taking the ineffective whipping of branches and vines on his armor before taking it out with a [Heavy Blow]. Once the monster stopped whipping at him, he took the wooden remains and tossed them towards the exit of the room. By the time he had finished with that, usually another tree monster was approaching.

Taking on the tree monsters one at a time was no trouble for James. Occasionally while he was fighting one, another would try to snare his legs with vines, but when he noticed, he would sever them with the spiked bottom of his shield.

In this way, the Smith committed arborcide until he noticed his wood pile was spilling out of the tunnel and back into the room. He withdrew to the exit of the room, finished off the last two tree monsters that had followed him, and then picked his way carefully around the pile.

It was the work of an hour or two to toss wood from the pile into the warded area he had set up earlier.

In the end, out of fifty-five collected magic crystals, James did collect twenty-four Water Magic Crystals. Slightly worse than expected. However, he collected ten brownish-green crystals he couldn't identify, and the remaining twenty-one were Earth Magic Crystals.

Twenty-five Water Magic Crystals would be plenty, at least for now. Plus, the tree monster wood was a welcome addition to James' stores. It meant better smoked meat.

Thinking of that reminded James of the boss monster he had killed some time ago. Although his experiment in drying vines to make rope had failed – the vines just dried out and became too brittle, snapping easily – he collected some of the vines from his fighting and took them to the boss monster room, after collecting his warding stakes.

The journey was uneventful, and the giant pangolin(?) was still there, a half-butchered carcass. James set his wards and finished the job and tied the collected meat into a bundle. It was less than he would have expected from the size of the monster, compared to the moles. In the end, when tied into bundles with the vines, James was able to carry the meat back to camp in three trips, after storing his shield in his magic bag.

He set the meat to smoking, and went out on one last excursion. This time, to the brightly lit passage leading to the pool of foul water. Not for the water of course, but for the large amount of glowshrooms in the passage. He thinned them out, collecting an even hundred Light Magic Crystals before he stopped and returned to camp.

James wanted more warding stakes. A lot more, if he could manage it.

Finally, after a long day's work, James sat down and munched on bread while feeling out his mana reserves.

Still not fully recovered.

He topped off the magic power of the ward around his camp, and settled in to sleep intentionally for once.

Tomorrow: enchanting.

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