The anger eventually gave way to exhaustion. James hadn't noticed the intense heat of the fourth floor, partly because of his own [Heat Resistance] skill, and partly because of his cooling system. But he should have known, should have realized it was hotter than any forge he had been in thus far, and he could have just put his shield and hammer in his magic bag, at least while the ward was up.

The thought gave him a moment of panic, and he checked the items in his magic bag. It turned out they were fine, and the magic bag itself was fine as well, perhaps because it had been worn close to the cooling system.

But James didn't know, and that put fear in his heart.

Even in this Dungeon without traps, he might blindly stumble into a situation where death was inevitable.

But… he wasn't ready to quit just yet. The lower floor had dealt him a heavy blow, just from the heat, but he knew he could overcome it. And he was confident he could take on the monsters, too, so long as he was properly equipped.

Ahh, that's what everything hinged on: so long as he was properly equipped.

James had sat himself down cross-legged on the ground in a ward some distance away from the staircase, facing out over the edge of the plains into the hazy distance. He didn't even want to look at the next floor or his broken equipment.

Eventually he passed out where he sat, and sometime later he jerked awake.

He felt the slightest bit better for having slept.

But he was still immensely frustrated.

He got up and put the last batch of serpent meat into the smoker, putting the smoked meat in his magic bag, and turned to face his equipment again.

[Appraisal]: Wind Visored Helmet, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 19/19, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (25)

[Appraisal]: Wind Cuirass, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 20/20, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (25)

[Appraisal]: Wind Armored Skirt, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 12/12, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (30)

[Appraisal]: Wind Codpiece, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (23)

[Appraisal]: Wind Greaves, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 14/14, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (25)

[Appraisal]: Wind Cuisses, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (30)

[Appraisal]: Wind Left Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 16/16, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (27)

[Appraisal]: Wind Right Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 14/14, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (27)

[Appraisal]: Wind Bracers, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 13/13, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (30)

[Appraisal]: Wind Cleat Boots, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 16/16, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (22)

[Appraisal]: Earth War Hammer, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantment: Heavy Blow (4)

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Round Shield, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantment: Reflect (6)

The durability of his armor, left scattered where it had fallen when he took it off in his anger, had returned as they cooled. The same for his hammer and shield.

But the enchantments were still weakened.

In the worst case scenario, he could simply reforge and re-enchant a new set of Wind Armor. The materials were plentiful on this floor, and he still had his forge and smelter near the staircase back up to the second floor, if nothing had happened to them.

No, the problem was his Earth War Hammer.

The hammer that had crushed the mole monsters.

The hammer that had defeated all three boss monsters so far.

The hammer that had been made with essence that only existed on the first floor.

Using his skills, the Enchanter examined the hammer and noted that the essence had diffused throughout the hammer head, no longer mainly concentrated in the center. And of course, the enchantment had weakened. Still present, but almost fuzzy, almost like ink bleeding across a page and smeared.

If you're an Enchanter, this makes sense.

Although the hammer was the greatest loss to James personally, it was the shield that had taken objectively the most damage. Large portions of the patterned enchantment had failed entirely, leaving only scattered fragments still active, with their effect spread thinly over the entire shield.

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James took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. He still had some time before the smoking finished, so he sat down cross-legged again, this time holding his right pauldron in his lap. The enchantment score was twenty-seven now, and it had been thirty-two previously. It wasn't that big of a drop.

He might be able to fix it.

He had, after all, repaired an enchantment before. Weeks ago, when his Green Iron Tower Shield's [Reflect] enchantment had been overloaded, he had repaired it by repeating the enchantment process. Not the preparation for enchantment, with the etching and magic crystals and Aqua Magia, but the actual magical enchantment.

That repair had been at the limits of his ability back then. But he had come a long way as an Enchanter since then.

He felt it was worth a shot.

First, he stirred up the mana inside himself. Then, he held his hands over the pauldron in his lap and keeping the memorized pattern for [Wind Resistance] in mind, and remembering how he had etched the pattern onto the curved three dimensional shape of the armor piece, he started forcing his mana into the damaged enchantment.

More and more his mana flowed in, reaching and then surpassing the amount he had used to enchant the piece originally. As he crossed the threshold, still keeping his magical grip on the enchantment, he started to re-align the smeared bits, drawing the magical energy back into clean, crisp lines. James continued pressing, and felt a small relief when he finished.

Until he realized that he had only repaired one part of the pattern of enchantments.

Stubbornly, he pressed on, moving to the next smeared part of the pattern. His entire world shrank down to the enchantment in his lap and he doggedly continued on.

An unknown amount of time later, he was finished.

Almost all his mana was depleted.

He was famished.

Smith Class Skill [Stubbornness] has reached level 2.

Enchanter Class Skill [Persistence] has been acquired.

And the pauldron's enchantment was repaired.

[Appraisal]: Wind Right Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 14/14, Enchantment: Wind Resistance (32)

Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantment Repair] has been acquired.

The Enchanter flopped back onto the grass-cushioned ground, exhausted.

He had a path forward, now.

First, he ate and slept.

Then he spent a day baking bread and checking his stores of food. There was no water source in the boss room, and the steam of the fourth floor was useless, not that he wanted to go there yet. Still, he had enough for a week or so, in two jugs. Good enough to finish repairing his armor's enchantments.

Then he spent several days repairing his armor's enchantments. It turned out that the more three-dimensional the item was, the harder it was to repair. His Armored Skirt was quite easy to repair, while the Codpiece and Helmet proved difficult.

Smith Class Skill [Stubbornness] has reached level 3.

Enchanter Class Skill [Persistence] has reached level 2.

Enchanter Class Skill [Persistence] has reached level 3.

Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantment Repair] has reached level 2.

The Cuirass, the largest piece of his armor, had taken two full days of work to repair. The shield had also taken two days, but that was due to the density of the patterns he had etched into it. It definitely would have been faster and easier to simply reforge and re-enchant the shield, given that there was no essence in it and he had the materials to do so, even with a forge made without clay.

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Round Shield, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantment: Reflect (28)

But the Enchanter wanted the practice. Because when he turned his sights to his Earth War Hammer, he knew it would be the most difficult repair.

He set aside an entire day for the Hammer, and after a hearty breakfast, he laid the heavy hammer in his lap and raised his hands and began.

The essence resisted him. Not only did he have to unsmear the enchantment pattern, he simultaneously had to force the essence back into the center. But he continued to push, forcing the magical energies back into alignment and impressing them into the physical material…

And then it was done.

[Appraisal]: Earth War Hammer, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantment: Heavy Blow (10)

[Enchanter] Class Skill [Essence Manipulation] has reached level 5.

Relieved, the rest of the Smith's plans were straightforward to execute.

He put on his Wind Armor and took up his large iron shield and Earth War Hammer and made the trek back across the third floor. The ridge with Wind Tortoises posed no serious threat, nor did the gusting wind. He avoided the bush type tree monsters, moving from stone outcropping to stone outcropping, and passed through the rainstorm. He endured the flying fish monsters' tackles, and when the opportunity arose he slayed a few, dragging them out of the storm to the closest stone outcropping, where he set up a ward and his smoker and set the meat to smoking. After just long enough for the meat to be smoked enough to be considered cooked, and therefore go into his magic bag, he packed his things back up.

He pressed on, mindful of the hawk monster that had attacked him before, but with the large iron shield on his back no attacks came. And then, James arrived back to his forge and smelter at the nearest stone outcropping to the second floor.

There he stayed for several hours, forging buckets and tubs and water jugs. After some experimentation, he determined the largest size tub that his magical bag would accept, for there was indeed a limit, and then he made a full two dozen of those tubs.

He did not want to have to make this trek again if he didn't have to.

That done, he filled the new jugs with fresh water and stored them away, more water than he could imagine needing for drinking, but perhaps enough for quenching hot metal.

Next he returned to the crab boss room on the second floor. Digging down below the pebbles, he collected tub after tub of sand and clay. His magic bag accepted it all.

At this point, he switched to his Water Armor with his heating and cooling strip system, and entered the sauna-like room of the second floor. Carefully and systematically he mined out all the ore he found, and using a basket and chain he saturated all his smelted Blue Iron with undine essence from one of the pools that didn't have a water serpent in it.

The crab monsters were plentiful, and he slayed any that came his way. While waiting for the iron to become saturated with essence, he collected what meat he could and filled some dozen buckets. Though he couldn't put them in his magic bag, he ferried them down the stairs two at a time to the crab boss room.

And so in this way, the smith collected the materials he anticipated needing going forward.

There was some back and forth going up and down the stairs. He set up his smoker in the nicer environment of the crab boss room and resumed smoking the flying fish monster meat, as well as the freshly collected crab monster meat.

At the end of this process, the Smith had collected more food and materials than he could imagine needing. He packed up his smoker and everything else, having already collected the essence-saturated Blue Iron, swapped to his Wind Armor, and returned to the his base on the third floor.

Now he pulled out the salamander essence infused Red Iron Ore he had collected on his ill-fated first exploration of the fourth floor.

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