The first section was a wide open training ground that was about half of the total area of the underground base This would be the room that Randidly would spend most of his time training his spear Skills and images While building this area Randidly sighed sorrowfully that he hadnÆt thought to pick up the Skill that let the Squaders of Donnyton reinforce the ground It would have been invaluable in strengthening the floor enough to resist the Grim Chimera
The second section was a very rudimentary room for forging It was so basic that most of the elites from Erickson Steel would likely feel stifled by the lack of equipment But for Randidly this seemed like the perfect amount to truly force himself to get his hands dirty in the forging process
Some larger pieces of equipment such as the vacuum chamber and the different sized ingot molds were brought in RandidlyÆs interspatial ring But ultimately Randidly wanted to shift his style of forging away from the very finicky style that most of the people in Erickson Steel currently had Hopefully his time forging here would give him a better idea of the process he wanted
Above all most of the saved space came from the fact Randidly didnÆt bring any sort of heating equipment After all he didnÆt need a typical furnace Ignition of the Emerald Essence would provide plenty of heat to his forging
The final section and the smallest contained a small kitchen and hot springs that Randidly had created after he discovered a source of water rather close to the bottom of his base Honestly most of the time he had spent preparing his base had been Randidly struggling to not flood his newly formed abode after he stumbled onto an extremely frigid underground river
After that it was simply a matter of diverting an appropriate amount of fluid upwards installing runes so that one pool would be extremely hot while the other was left extremely cold and finally arrange for the water to filter back down and be gradually replaced by fresh water
Feeling quite pleased with himself Randidly treated himself to a brief soak in the scalding water of the manmade hot springs Taking a deep breath Randidly readily inhaled the thick steam that wafted upward from the heated water For the first time in a while Randidly felt himself slowly relaxing
The whole experience was rather enjoyable until he noticed that floating corpse of some sort of mollusk right in front of him For several seconds Randidly just stared at it More than anything else he was shocked that it somehow managed to sneak into his base without him noticing Randidly had kept a pretty constant buffer of Aether around the edge of the dome above
With a sense of trepidation Randidly got out of the scalding pool and looked over at the pool he left at the original frigid temperature Sure enough there were three mollusks within cautiously exploring their new environment
Randidly sighed I guess it was foolish not to think about filtering any living creatures that were within the underground river but at least they are only at Level 6 WonÆt be a problem to clear them out later Still they might be an interesting food source No harm in letting them develop in the cold pool
After carefully installing a runic filter in the passage that led to the scalding pool Randidly returned to his training hall and began to work No need to walk toward his hot tub one day and find that it had become a salty mollusk stew
The first thing Randidly did was sit down and inspected his Class for any lingering damage after it had been slowly nurtured by energy from his Soulskill over the past day
During a fraction of time that seemed pitifully small Randidly had briefly been on the receiving end of attention from a dangerous being peering out from the depths of a vast crystal Like a bug unknowingly in the way of a car RandidlyÆs Class was savaged while that being turned its attention to the connection that the Creature had maintained with Randidly
Perhaps the most fearsome detail of this interaction was that Randidly had no idea whether it would recur At any moment the focus of that being might come back to him Had that being found the Creature Would it remember that it used Randidly as a stepping stone to find the Creature Would that being feel compelled to return its focus to Randidly for any reason
To silence him perhaps
And if that being couldnÆt find the Creature in a short amount of time would it return to Randidly to dig out every bit of value it could gain from him
Randidly had been frantically throwing off Aether since the damage to his Class had occurred slowly wiping away the lingering chunks of Aether that had remained afterward as Neveah had recommended Whereas RandidlyÆs Aether shared quite a few traits with liquids the extremely calcified Aether left by that being possessed the tenacity of a fossilized cockroach
Even now operating at a volume of Aether that left Randidly extremely worried he would fall into that mindless cycle of energy release Randidly had removed only one tenth of the remnants clinging to him The only good news was that the rate of destruction was speeding up as more and more of the hardened Aether was washed away Those exposed flaws could be used to accelerate the process
When Randidly entered into the Dungeon he had seriously considered slowing down the rate at which he was producing Aether But for two reasons Randidly ultimately decided to keep on his current pace First he didnÆt know if the Aether remnants he was trying to wash away would recover if he let up the pressure And Randidly had no intention of finding out
In addition the ambient Aether in the air would benefit the metals that he created And as creating the vast quantity of metal that would propel Erickson Steel to a mobile fortress was one of the reasons for RandidlyÆs extended time here it was a valuable bonus
Randidly did worry that the overly abundant Aether would lead to a mutation amongst some of the nearby monsters but that might also be a positive outcome for him If the monsters grew significantly stronger Randidly could test more dangerous Skills against them and receive more meaningful training experience
Shaking his head Randidly refocused His mind was wandering right now he needed to carefully consider the state of his Class
After about an hour of examination RandidlyÆs worst fears had been slowly confirmed The strain that beingÆs attention had on RandidlyÆs Class was just as dangerous as he had believed On a very surface focused examination the damage to RandidlyÆs Class had been completely repaired The ambient energy of his Soulskill had nurtured the damaged areas allowing new substance to grow over the wounds The threads of his Class that he had so painstakingly chosen and woven together were once more glimmering and bright
A deeper analysis revealed this miraculous recovery to be a pretty lie
Ultimately Randidly was deeply glad that he had allowed himself to gain a few Levels after having his Class wounded He suspected that without the new growth of those Levels he wouldnÆt have been able to definitively say that he was still injured In fact he might have decided that the injuries were light enough to continue toward condensing his Fate
Because those new Levels were the only clear evidence of the persistent problem Because those two Levels were flawed
They mimicked earlier Levels very well seeming to be the woven of the same basic ideas and Stats as the previous Levels were But it was like comparing a flower to a painting of a flower No matter how talented the painter was artistical it wasnÆt a flower It would never be a flower
It was a subtle thing However Randidly had made this Class by hand He hadnÆt been as skilled with images then as he was now but the feeling was one he knew intimately Although he didnÆt fully understand what form his Class would shift into as it grew he did understand the different elements that propelled his Class forward
So after Randidly really scrutinized the two newest Levels he had received it quickly became clear that they were stitched together copies of earlier Levels There wasnÆt the faintest hint of an extension or growth of his Class within the Levels Those elements of his Class were regurgitated but all of the forward momentum had been lost