Infinite Mana - Chapter 181: Progress and Good Business (Thank you for your support, Conrad Monson!) (Patreon)

Sieghart finally succeeded with his second Poison Magic spell two days after leaving the capital, almost perfectly timed with the first distant view of the dungeon camp he had marked on his new map.

The breakthrough came after dozens of failures made while driving, resting, eating, and occasionally stopping beside the road whenever splitting his attention between experimental poison and steering became unnecessarily dangerous.

Poison Magic had always felt different from his ordinary elemental spells. Fire wanted to burn, Wind wanted to move, Water flowed naturally, and Earth responded best when Sieghart imagined weight, shape, and physical stability.

Poison required something more unpleasant. The mana needed to feel invasive. Not angry exactly, and not destructive in the straightforward way Fire Magic became destructive. Sieghart had to shape the mana with the intention that it did not belong inside whatever biological system received it.

Poison Sphere worked best whenever he imagined the spell entering tissue without permission, clinging to the body, spreading through vulnerable pathways, and interfering with ordinary biological functions rather than simply damaging everything through raw magical power. That mentality had originally been difficult because Sieghart instinctively treated mana like a tool he controlled from outside. Poison demanded that he imagine the spell continuing its work after entering something else.

The difference sounded small until he tried reproducing it deliberately. Mana became unstable whenever his intention shifted too much toward burning, cutting, freezing, or simply overwhelming the target with magical energy.

For the new spell, Sieghart needed to take that invasive feeling and narrow its purpose even further. He did not want the poison attacking organs randomly. He wanted stamina. More specifically, he wanted the target’s body to become increasingly inefficient at producing and maintaining the physical effort required for continuous combat.

The fight against the Aura user gave him a useful reference. Sieghart remembered the burning sensation in his own legs after repeated Impulse casts, the strain in his joints, his accelerating heartbeat, and the heaviness that developed after forcing his body through too many violent movements.

That was the feeling he began feeding into Poison Mana. Heavy limbs. Weakening muscles. Breaths that restored less than expected. A body that demanded increasingly more effort for increasingly worse results. The idea finally stabilized when Sieghart stopped thinking about draining stamina directly. That interpretation kept making the spell behave too much like some imagined energy-stealing technique he did not actually understand.

Instead, he imagined sabotaging recovery. The target could still move. Still fight. Still push itself. But every burst of effort would accumulate fatigue faster because the poisoned body could no longer recover efficiently between movements.

That felt much closer to Poison Magic. It was not stealing strength. It was making the victim waste their own. A thin green construct formed above Sieghart’s fingers while he sat behind the carriage controls, noticeably different from the rounded Poison Sphere he had spent so long using.

The spell became narrow. Pointed. Barely longer than one of his fingers. Sieghart stared at it.

“Why a dart?”

The System apparently considered the question irrelevant.

[BLACK MAGIC — POISON MAGIC]

[New Spell Learned: Fatigue Dart — Level 1]

[Fatigue Dart weakens the target’s physical stamina and reduces the efficiency of stamina recovery. Effect increases according to spell level and successful exposure.]

[Fatigue Dart — Level 1]

[+2 Magic per level.]

Sieghart read the notification twice before looking back toward the narrow green projectile floating above his hand. The shape made some sense once he thought about it. Poison Sphere dispersed across a broad area, while this spell was designed to enter one target quickly and concentrate its effect.

A dart naturally represented penetration. Still, naming spells according to whatever shape Sieghart happened to imagine during creation produced an increasingly questionable magical vocabulary.

“Fatigue Dart sounds like something sold by an assassin with terrible name branding.”

He dismissed the spell and leaned back slightly, satisfied despite the name. The effect mattered considerably more. Against ordinary enemies, ending the fight immediately would remain easier than gradually exhausting them. Against powerful Aura users, however, anything capable of reducing sustained physical performance could become invaluable.

Sieghart imagined tagging an Aura warrior repeatedly while forcing them to chase him with Impulse.

Every charge would cost more. Every recovery would provide less. Eventually, the difference between impossible speed and manageable speed might become enough for Sieghart to survive without depending upon tricks that only worked once.

That was worth the two days of failed experiments. He looked toward the horizon. His next destination had finally appeared. The golem dungeon sat at the base of a rocky ridge surrounded by broad stretches of exposed gray stone, scattered mining cuts, and several roads carved deeply by years of heavy wagon traffic.

Unlike the earthworm dungeon, the camp surrounding this one looked almost permanent. Wooden buildings replaced most temporary tents. Warehouses stood beside repair workshops, covered stalls, sleeping quarters, stables, and several reinforced yards containing piles of ore separated by quality.

Sieghart could see smoke rising from multiple furnaces even at this distance. The reason became obvious after checking the reference guide again. The dungeon produced golems. Stone golems formed most of the upper levels, while deeper sections contained monsters constructed from denser minerals, magical ores, and occasionally mana-rich crystalline material.

Killing them could provide valuable stone, ore, mana stones, and cores depending upon the individual construct. Sieghart understood immediately why a permanent economy had developed around the entrance.

This dungeon was practically an underground mine where the ore occasionally stood up and punched people. That sounded inconvenient. Also profitable. His next magical objective seemed obvious as well.

Barrier Magic.

Protection worked on his body. Mana Shield created an independent defensive construct. What Sieghart wanted now was something capable of controlling space. The golems described in the guide relied almost entirely upon physical attacks. They punched, charged, crushed, threw stone, or simply used enormous bodies to overwhelm intruders.

A stationary barrier placed across a corridor could completely change those encounters. Sieghart would not need to withstand every strike personally. He could stop the golem several meters away, force it to waste time breaking through a defensive field, and attack safely from behind the obstruction.

Even a barrier that survived only several seconds would be useful if Sieghart spent those seconds firing Water Jets, Mana Swords, Wind Blades, or whatever element worked best against the construct involved. The concept also fit his carriage defenses. A proper Barrier Magic branch could eventually provide the external protection he wanted while sleeping, traveling, or storing expensive merchandise.

Fatigue Dart solved one immediate weakness. Barrier Magic could solve several more. Sieghart smiled faintly while the carriage approached the dungeon camp.

“One thing at a time.”

The smile disappeared once people started noticing him. Workers standing near the entrance looked toward the approaching horseless carriage with the usual confusion, but their expressions became noticeably less friendly after realizing Sieghart appeared to be another independent traveler.

Several miners frowned. One merchant stopped talking and watched him carefully. A group carrying pickaxes looked toward Sieghart’s cargo compartment before exchanging annoyed glances among themselves.

The reaction was not openly hostile. It was something much more ordinary.

Competition.

Sieghart understood after looking at several nearby stalls filled with stone fragments, mana crystals, metal chunks, and processed monster materials.

The golems produced valuable resources. More hunters meant more material entering the local market. More supply meant lower prices. Anyone already making a living from the dungeon had a perfectly practical reason to dislike unfamiliar adventurers arriving with enough equipment to start collecting the same resources.

Sieghart almost found the resentment refreshing. Nobody seemed terrified. Nobody appeared desperate.

There were no trapped miners running out of supplies, invading armies surrounding the region, kidnapped children, corrupted monsters, or giant worms trying to swallow an expedition.

People were simply worried about money. That was normal. The camp residents looked far better than the soldiers he remembered from the Firian war. Clothes were dusty, equipment scratched, and several people carried bandaged injuries, but nobody appeared exhausted enough to collapse.

Most expressions carried irritation rather than fear. A few adventurers even sat outside one tavern laughing loudly while comparing stone fragments collected during the morning. This dungeon was dangerous. It was not currently a disaster.

Sieghart drove toward an open trading section near the camp’s outer edge and stopped where several merchant wagons had already formed an irregular row. The nearby traders watched him carefully. One thick-bearded man looked directly toward Sieghart’s carriage before sighing loudly enough that the message probably was not accidental.

“Another one.”

Sieghart climbed down.

“Another what?”

“Dungeon runner.”

Sieghart glanced toward the entrance.

“Eventually.”

That answer earned several confused expressions. Sieghart walked toward the rear of his carriage instead of explaining further. The sour mood around him remained obvious as nearby merchants and miners continued watching the unfamiliar young traveler.

Sieghart opened the cargo doors. That changed things. The first items visible inside were not empty ore crates, mining tools, or sacks intended for carrying dungeon loot.

They were equipment. A lot of equipment. Sieghart pulled out one reinforced shield and placed it against the side of the carriage before activating the simple runic circuit engraved across its inner surface.

The runes glowed.

Several people nearby immediately stopped pretending not to watch. Sieghart had spent the previous two days modifying merchandise whenever Fatigue Dart training became too frustrating.

The golem dungeon information provided an obvious market. Most golems relied upon blunt physical force. So Sieghart built equipment intended to make blunt physical force less unpleasant. The first shields used reinforcement circuits combined with simple impact-distribution patterns. They could not make the user invulnerable, but they spread concentrated impacts through a wider portion of the shield instead of allowing one stone fist to shatter everything around the contact point.

Next came reinforced bracers designed for miners and close-range fighters. Metal strips beneath the leather distributed impact along the forearms while runic channels strengthened the structure whenever something struck from the front.

Sieghart had also modified several breastplates with layered shock-dampening engravings, using designs inspired partially by the same Protection experiment that stabilized his carriage at higher speeds.

The effect remained much weaker than actual Protection Magic. Still useful. An ordinary fighter hit by a golem would probably prefer losing balance over losing ribs. Sieghart placed a pair of boots beside them. Those contained minor reinforcement around the ankles and soles, intended to help adventurers maintain footing whenever heavy golem strikes shook the dungeon floor.

He also had padded gloves for reducing transmitted vibration through weapons, reinforced helmets, and several inexpensive cloaks treated against dust. None of the equipment was revolutionary. That was intentional. Sieghart wanted things he could engrave quickly, sell reliably, and reproduce without requiring rare materials.

The bearded merchant who had complained earlier approached first. His expression had changed considerably.

“What does the shield do?”

Sieghart activated the circuit and held it out.

“Reduces concentrated impact.”

“How much?”

“Enough that getting punched by a stone golem should hurt less and you won’t leave the dungeon with a new broken bone everyday.”

The merchant stared.

“That is an incredibly vague sales pitch.”

Sieghart shrugged.

“I haven’t been punched by one yet.”

Several nearby adventurers laughed. The tension around the carriage weakened immediately. One broad woman wearing heavy leather armor stepped closer and inspected the engraved shield carefully, following the runic lines with considerably more understanding than Sieghart expected.

“This redirects force toward the edge.”

“Mostly.”

“And reinforces the center?”

“Yes.”

She looked toward him.

“You made this?”

Sieghart paused.

“Yes.”

That answer attracted considerably more attention than the carriage had. The woman picked up the shield and tested its weight before hitting the front with her fist. The runes flashed briefly. She nodded.

“How much?”

Sieghart suddenly realized he had not prepared exact prices. That was a merchant failure. He considered his material costs, original purchase price, engraving time, and the amount he had recently spent in the capital.

Then he added profit.

“Thirty-five silver.”

The woman immediately reached for her money pouch. Sieghart almost increased the price. He had bought it for 25… perhaps he underestimated the power of his own runic work.

Too late.

“Deal.”

The first sale happened faster than expected. Several people nearby noticed. That was all it took. Within minutes, the sour expressions surrounding Sieghart’s arrival had transformed into something considerably friendlier.

Miners crowded around the carriage asking about impact-resistant gloves. Adventurers examined the reinforced bracers. One older man wanted to know whether Sieghart could add the same defensive circuit to armor he already owned.

Another asked whether the boots could survive repeated stone impacts. Sieghart answered as carefully as possible without pretending his equipment performed miracles.

Sieghart started laying more goods across a folding table built into the side of his carriage. The scene became increasingly satisfying. For the first time since leaving Seraphina, his merchant plan actually functioned exactly as intended. Buy ordinary equipment cheaply. Improve it through runic engineering. Travel somewhere the modification became useful. Sell for profit.

Coins began replacing equipment inside his carriage while several customers discussed which runes would work best against the deeper golems. Sieghart listened carefully. Selling equipment provided information for free. That might become even more valuable than the money.

Apparently, stone golems became faster deeper underground. Iron variants appeared beyond the commonly mined floors. Some crystalline constructs could release stored mana through their bodies, although the attacks remained mostly physical. Several veteran teams deliberately targeted specific regions because certain golem types produced better mana stones.

Useful. Very useful. Sieghart stored every detail mentally while negotiating another shield sale. The camp no longer looked annoyed by his arrival.