Chronicles Of The Crafting Hero [REMASTERED]

Tyler stared at the instructions for drawing the rune, the words sitting stubborn and unmoving in front of him no matter how many times his eyes passed over them. *What the hell does it mean by full pressure?* He straightened his back against the edge of the mattress, and as if in answer, another panel layered itself directly over the first.

[THE USER NEEDS TO APPLY MANA ONTO THEIR FINGER OR QUILL PEN WHEN DRAWING THE RUNE ONTO AN ITEM. APPLYING MANA PRESSURE WHILE DRAWING THE RUNE IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, ALONG WITH THE TIME SPENT DRAWING IT]

"Oh. I get it now." He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing at the panel. "Still, those are very specific instructions. Does the rune not work if I don't do it correctly?" The panel vanished, and another rose in its place, layering over where the first had been.

[CORRECT]

"Looks like this rune thing may not be as easy as I thought." He let out a breath through his nose.

Both panels disappeared at once, leaving him alone in the quiet again. He planted both hands against the mattress and leaned back, the springs shifting faintly beneath his palms. *I'll try it out tomorrow. It's probably better if Hector's there when I do this. Right now I should get to crafting.*

He leaned forward again, elbows finding his knees. *System, craft three Gloomfang coats. Use the blueprint for the design.*

The panel appeared first, plain and waiting. [SCANNING BLUEPRINT] The words shifted a moment later. [SCANNING COMPLETE] The panel disappeared, and a smile pulled at the corner of Tyler's mouth. *It's working.*

Another panel rose in its place. [CRAFTING]

Tyler watched the loading bar creep across the panel, filling in steady, even increments that were neither quick nor sluggish, just a pace that seemed to take its time with itself. *I thought it'd be faster. Is it because of the blueprint? Maybe it's trying to get every detail right.*

He kept his eyes on the bar until it filled completely and the panel blinked out of existence. A new one replaced it. [CRAFTING SUCCESSFUL]

"Nice." The word had barely left him before another panel appeared. [THREE ITEMS WITH ENOUGH MANA ENGRAMS TO DRAW OUT A SKILL HAVE BEEN DETECTED]

"Oh." His eyebrows rose sharply. *Three? All of them at once?* He turned both palms upward and summoned the Gloomfang coats into his hands. All three settled onto his palms at once, their weight dropping into him in a single instant, solid and real against his skin.

The coats held a deep blue color, folded with a precision so neat it looked untouched by hands at all. Even folded, he could make out the shape of the high collar and the outline of the pockets pressing against the fabric.

He'd known the system crafted with care, but holding the coats now, he could feel just how far that care extended, the fur that had covered the Gloomfangs was gone entirely, replaced by something that ran smooth and even beneath his fingers, without a single ridge or catch.

He pressed mana into the clothing and activated his assimilation skill. The fabric lit with a faint blue that swelled outward in a single burst before fading low again, the light rolling off it the way distant thunder rolls off a darkened sky. A panel appeared. [ASSIMILATION SUCCESSFUL]

"Great." He let the word settle as another panel rose above the set of armor, drawn there by nothing more than his own curiosity.

[SKILL: RUSH- INCREASES THE USER'S SPEED BY 30% FOR 2 MINUTES

MANA CONSUMPTION- 20]

"Ah." The sound came out flat, disappointment threading through it as his shoulders sank slightly. He thought back to the Gloomfang that had used this same skill against him in the fight, how its speed had picked up only a little, nowhere close to matching his own.

*I thought this skill was the same as my own.* He exhaled slowly. *But it only increases speed by 30 percent.*

*Well, it's still a skill, so that counts.* His head lifted as fast as the thought struck him. *Wait a minute. I can just enhance these.*

A grin spread across his face, and he pushed himself up off the bed, laying the coats out flat across the mattress. He lifted one of them and opened his right hand. An enhancement crystal materialized against his palm, its surface catching the moonlight pouring through the window and scattering it in thin blue lines across his skin.

He pressed the crystal against the armor and let a thread of his mana flow into it. The crystal broke apart into fine blue dust that the coat seemed to pull in on its own, drawing the shimmer straight into the fabric until nothing remained on the surface. [ENHANCEMENT SUCCESSFUL]

His smile widened, relief and excitement pushing through him together as another panel rose above the coat.

[Gloomcoat

DEF: 100

SKILL: RUSH- INCREASES THE USER'S SPEED BY 60% FOR 4 MINUTES

MANA CONSUMPTION - 40]

"Nice. Let's try that again." A second crystal formed in his hand, and he repeated the motion, pressing it to the armor and pouring his mana through. This time the panel that answered him came back in red.

[ENHANCEMENT FAILED]

[THIS ITEM CAN ONLY BE ENHANCED ONCE]

"Oh man. This one too?" He sighed, dragging a hand down his face. "Oh well. At least it can be enhanced." He gathered the remaining coats one after another, running each of them through the same process, trying twice on every one, and each second attempt failed the same way the first had.

All three coats disappeared into his inventory at once. A moment later, light shimmered faint and blue around his body, tracing down his forearms and spreading out to touch every corner of the darkened room, and the clothing reformed directly onto him.

He stood there wearing the coat, stretching his arm out in front of him to look it over. "Wow."

It fit like it had been measured for him alone. The collar sat slightly large, brushing against the bottom edge of his ear, and the hem fell just past his knees, exactly as he'd pictured it. He slid both hands into the pockets, sinking his arms in nearly to the elbow, and found them deep enough to hold almost anything. But beneath his fingers, he found something he hadn't expected at all.

"Fur?" He went still, feeling it more clearly now, soft and fine, barely noticeable until he moved his arm and felt it shift against his skin. It sat concentrated at the cuffs of his sleeves, right where the fabric met his wrists, though the rest of the sleeve, all the way up to the shoulder, held none of it.

He found more of it tucked behind the collar too, faint at first touch, but unmistakable once he focused on it. He folded the sleeve back and looked down at the fine blue strands lining the inside. "Huh, did we specify this design?" He ran his fingers through the fur slowly, and the corner of his mouth lifted. "Still, it's not bad. I actually kind of like it this way."

A panel rose in front of him, laying out his stats in full.

SPECIES: HUMAN

NAME: TYLER EVANS

RANK: C

LVL: 58

CLASS: CRAFTSMAN

HP: 280/280 MP: 258/258

STR: 282 AGI: 242+[47]

DEF: 244+[100] STM: 237

SKILLS: WEAPON CRAFT-LV2, ARMOR CRAFT-LV1 ACCESSORY CRAFT- LV1, ALCHEMY-LV1, RUNECRAFT, RUSH LV2-MC20, CHAMBER-MC:50

RUSH-MC:40

PASSIVE SKILLS: WEAPON MASTERY-LV1, ASSIMILATION, MANA SIGHT, PRIMAL SUBJUGATION MANA ABSORBTION

EXTRA POINTS: 30

*Since I have equipped the coat, I should be able to use the skill. Maybe I can even stack two skills on top of it.* He pictured using his own Rush skill and then triggering the coat's Rush skill right after it, layering one over the other. He wondered if it would even work that way, but something about trying it now made him hesitate. He didn't want to test it tonight. He wouldn't know where to put all that leftover energy once it hit him.

He took three steps forward, then curved into a small circle, testing the weight of the coat against his shoulders as he moved. It settled fine against him. It moved with him instead of against him, the fabric shifting loose at his knees with each turn. *This is pretty good.* His steps slowed to a stop. *But the defense stat is lower than the armor made from hexhorn hide.*

He lifted his fingers to his chin, dragging them slowly along the edge of his jaw as the thought settled in. *It makes sense, I guess. Hexhorns are tougher than gloomfangs after all.*

The blue coat lifted off his body and reformed in his hands, the weight of it dropping back into his palms. He turned it over, eyes catching on the design stitched into the back. A slow smile pulled at his mouth as he studied it. It matched the blueprint exactly, stroke for stroke, except where the original had been drawn in black, this one had been rendered in a deep, saturated blue that stood apart sharply against the paler blue of the coat itself.

His hand passed over the pattern, fingers tracing the raised lines of it. "Not bad." The armor dissolved from his hands and folded away into his inventory. "Right, time to craft something else." He dropped back onto the bed, the mattress dipping under him.

He thought back to asking Kai to draw him an iron helmet with the symbol worked into the back of it. For a moment he wondered whether he should have asked for the design at all. Helmets had never been something he cared for personally. He understood the safety they offered, especially out in the monster zones, but he hadn't once felt like he needed one himself.

Still, he knew that once other people started buying from him, some of them would want one. He'd seen it plenty of times at the hunter base, hunters wearing every kind imaginable, steel ones, iron ones, some nothing more than leather wrapped snug around the skull.

"System, Craft five—" The words died in his throat, the rest of the sentence slipping away from him as though his breath had simply run out. He pushed himself up off the bed at once. *Wait a minute, these things just have one ingredient. My chances of using assimilation on them are pretty low.*

He thought back to the skill liquid he'd used on the sword, and the idea of doing the same here took hold of him. But the memory came with it too, the sheer weight of that liquid bubble pressing down in his hands the first time he'd held it. This time was different though. He was stronger now, far stronger than he'd been back then, and the thought steadied him.

He drew in a slow breath and let his eyes fall shut, then opened them again. Mana Sight activated at once, and his eyes caught a faint blue glow.

The ambient mana came into view around him, red particles and blue particles scattered through the air, along with the smaller dark mana particles that hung still and unmoving in most places, though a few drifted lazily on their own. He narrowed his focus further, and that was when he caught sight of his own mana particles threading through the rest, still moving, still weaving past every other speck of light suspended in the room.

*Huh. So there were still some left.* He brought one palm up in front of him, then set the other above i

t, leaving a wide gap of empty air between them. "Let's see if this works again. I hope I wasn't lucky."