Infinite Mana - Chapter 219: Better Equipment (Thank you for your support, Thieflord171!) (Patreon)

By the time Sieghart finally climbed the last staircase and stepped beneath the massive stone arch marking the dungeon entrance, darkness had already settled across the surrounding countryside. Cool night air immediately replaced the stale underground atmosphere clinging to his clothes.

He stopped for several seconds and simply breathed. After hours of blood, smoke, molten stone, goblin bodies, and healing magic, the ordinary smell of grass and distant campfire smoke felt considerably better than it had any right to.

The young adventurers from earlier had returned as well. Their equipment rested beside several newly erected tents near the entrance, while empty sacks and open packs suggested they had already sold everything collected during their previous expedition. Apparently, one successful trip had not satisfied them. They had returned almost immediately after converting their loot into money, probably intending to enter again after sleeping enough to recover whatever stamina and Aura they had spent.

Sieghart could respect the efficiency. He also wondered whether they knew anything about the enormous underground city, or whether they simply hunted isolated goblins near the upper corridors and deliberately avoided descending far enough to discover it. One member of the group remained outside keeping watch. At least, Sieghart assumed that was what the teenager was supposed to be doing, because the spearman currently sat beside the fire with his head repeatedly dropping toward his knees.

The boy would suddenly straighten every few seconds, stare into the darkness with determined professionalism, and then slowly begin folding forward again until his chin nearly touched his chest. Sieghart watched the process happen twice before continuing toward his carriage.

“If that counts as keeping watch, then I’ve apparently been sleeping incorrectly for years. Maybe the real technique is holding a spear while doing it so everyone feels safer about your unconsciousness.”

The adventurer never heard him. That was probably for the best. Sieghart had no desire to explain where he had been, why he smelled faintly burned, or why several goblin weapons floated behind him through Telekinesis. He reached the carriage without attracting attention and began removing every security measure he had installed before entering the dungeon. The wheel chains came off first, followed by the locking pieces protecting the storage compartments.

Sieghart opened the rear section and started unloading everything collected underground. Spears, curved swords, bows, armor pieces, metal plates, several intact shields, and miscellaneous equipment gradually filled the available workspace inside the carriage.

The Goblin Champion’s equipment came last. Sieghart lowered the enormous cleaver carefully onto the reinforced floor, followed by the warped iron shield, which occupied enough space that storing both permanently would become inconvenient. Seeing them beneath proper light made their quality even more obvious. The weapons had survived heat, explosions, lightning, and impacts that destroyed surrounding buildings, yet neither had suffered enough structural damage to become useless.

Sieghart ran Magic Vision across the cleaver again. Dense mana remained trapped throughout the metal, but there were still no obvious runic circuits explaining its durability, leaving either unusual material composition or some forging method he had never encountered.

That mystery could wait. For now, the equipment represented something considerably simpler.

Money.

Potentially quite a lot of it.

Sieghart leaned against the carriage wall and looked over everything he had collected. He had entered the goblin dungeon shortly after arriving and emerged before the next sunrise. Technically, he had cleared most of what mattered in a single day. Whether killing one Champion counted as actually clearing the dungeon remained uncertain. The city had contained thousands of goblins, and Sieghart had no intention of pretending he had exterminated every inhabitant merely because one district became temporarily empty.

Still, he had reached something powerful enough to function like a Guardian, killed it, gathered its equipment, and survived the retaliation afterward. By Sieghart’s increasingly questionable standards, that qualified as a successful expedition. Part of him wanted to wait.

The golem dungeon had reconstructed its first Guardian after death, and Sieghart was curious whether the same principle applied here. Would another Goblin Champion eventually appear somewhere inside the underground city?

Would the same creature return? Would another goblin somehow evolve into the role? Perhaps the dungeon simply generated one after enough time passed, equipment included, which would raise several extremely interesting questions about where the Champion’s weapons actually originated.

Sieghart looked toward the dungeon entrance in the distance. Then toward his arm.

“No.”

Curiosity had limits. His left arm remained wrapped beneath layers of cloth, and Healing Mana still moved through it constantly. Several patches of skin remained visibly damaged even after hours of restoration. Waiting several days beside the dungeon simply to discover whether another eight-foot goblin wanted to hit him with a building-sized cleaver sounded considerably less appealing than it would have before the burns.

The dungeon could keep its secrets for now. Sieghart had more immediate priorities. The first was money. The second was equipment. He pulled one ordinary goblin spear onto his workbench and rotated it beneath the small mana lamp mounted inside the carriage. The weapon was crude enough that modifying it should be easy.

Sieghart started with reinforcement runes around the spearhead. The metal quality was mediocre, so increasing durability would make the weapon considerably more attractive without requiring any expensive materials.

He added a Wind Rune along the lower portion of the blade afterward, designing the circuit so mana would activate whenever the wielder committed to a forward thrust. The effect would not produce anything close to Impulse. It only needed to add enough acceleration that an ordinary spear thrust became noticeably faster and harder to react against.

Sieghart tested the circuit with minimal mana. The spear jerked forward.

Good.

He adjusted the rune slightly. The next activation moved more smoothly. That would sell.

The swords received similar treatment. Sieghart reinforced their weakest sections, sharpened several edges using careful grinding, and added basic elemental channels capable of supporting temporary Fire or Wind effects when supplied with mana. He deliberately avoided creating anything too impressive. Selling rare or obviously experimental equipment under his temporary identity would attract exactly the kind of questions he was trying to avoid.

Useful was fine.

Exceptional was inconvenient. The Champion’s weapons remained untouched. Sieghart wanted someone knowledgeable to inspect them first, preferably a smith or merchant experienced with unusual dungeon materials who could identify whether damaging the surface with runes would reduce their value.

More importantly, selling the ordinary equipment would help finance what Sieghart actually wanted. Gear built specifically for himself. That idea felt increasingly overdue.

Infinite Mana solved resource expenditure. It did not protect his skull from arrows, prevent cleavers from cutting through Protection, stop explosions from burning his skin, or magically give him enough hands to cast every defensive spell simultaneously.

The Goblin Champion fight had exposed that weakness painfully. Sieghart possessed enormous versatility. He lacked redundancy. If Protection failed, he had skin. If Mana Barrier shattered, he usually responded by creating another one. If enemies pressured him faster than he could cast, he depended on Impulse and hoped his knees survived.

That was not good enough anymore.

Sieghart looked at his injured arm again and started listing what he wanted.

Proper heat-resistant gloves and sleeves came first. Something capable of surviving his own Fire and Magma Magic without interfering with movement would have prevented much of the damage from the point-blank Giant Fireball. A reinforced coat or light armor came next. Heavy armor would interfere with mobility, but layered magical fabric combined with discreet plates could provide another defensive layer beneath Protection.

He wanted boots designed for Impulse as well. Repeated acceleration had already injured his knees several times, and better shock absorption could reduce the strain transmitted through his ankles and legs.

Bracers sounded useful. Not decorative ones. Actual reinforced casting bracers containing mana-conductive channels, perhaps capable of stabilizing spell formation or supporting temporary barriers directly over his forearms.

A helmet remained less appealing. Sieghart knew that was vanity talking. He also knew several attacks had nearly removed his head recently. Some compromise between protection and looking like he planned to invade a fortress probably existed.

Then there was the Gatling gun. Sieghart smiled. That project was absolutely unnecessary. Which did not mean he had abandoned it. A rotating weapon designed around his Infinite Mana could become terrifying if built correctly. Fireballs would be easiest, but Lava Spheres offered far more destructive potential once he solved the problem of heat buildup and accidental backflow.

He probably needed a professional machinist or smith for the rotating assembly. Sieghart could build mechanisms himself, but precision manufacturing without a proper workshop would waste days he could spend experimenting with magic.

Buying custom components made more sense. He finished engraving another spear before pulling out the map purchased in the capital. Several towns appeared along the surrounding roads, but only one looked large enough to support specialized smiths, armorers, and magical craftsmen.

Sieghart traced the route with one finger. The town was close. Conveniently close. Unfortunately, it was also considerably closer to the border. The same border where a new dungeon had apparently appeared. The same border toward which adventurers, soldiers, merchants, and probably every opportunist within traveling distance were currently moving.

And the same border where the Fallen were supposedly gathering because they wanted control over that dungeon as badly as the humans did. Sieghart stared at the map.

Naturally.

The best nearby place for buying equipment happened to sit close enough to the developing conflict that roads would probably be crowded with people heading toward exactly the problem he intended to avoid.

He could choose another town. That would require several additional days of travel and might provide worse craftsmen. He could return toward the capital. Absolutely not.

There was also the possibility of heading toward Seraphina eventually, though turning around after coming this far felt wasteful, and Sieghart still wanted to continue exploring independently.

The border town remained the practical choice. Practical choices had developed a disturbing habit of becoming disastrous. Sieghart folded the map halfway, stopped, then opened it again. He remembered the capital. He had gone there to buy books and accidentally found his younger sister wandering through an alley.

He remembered the golem dungeon. He had gone there expecting straightforward training and discovered corruption capable of altering Guardians and disabling entire dungeon regions. He remembered this dungeon. He had come to test Fatigue Dart against ordinary goblins and ended up detonating Giant Fireball directly against an eight-foot Champion’s face.

A pattern might be forming.

Sieghart looked toward the border route on the map.

“Surely my luck can’t work against me every single time I go somewhere interesting. Statistically, eventually I should arrive somewhere, buy what I need, and leave without discovering a conspiracy, a corrupted monster, or someone trying to kill me.”

He remained silent for several seconds. The statement sounded less convincing the longer he considered it. Sieghart sighed and folded the map properly. There was only one way to find out. He finished securing the collected equipment, returned the modified weapons to storage, and climbed into the driver’s position while keeping his injured arm carefully supported.

The steering wheel clicked back into place. Mana flowed. The carriage engine awakened beneath him. Pistons began moving, mechanical vibrations traveled through the frame, and the wheels slowly carried Sieghart away from the goblin dungeon while the sleeping adventurers remained completely unaware of what had happened beneath them.

By morning, Sieghart intended to be well down the road toward the border town. He needed money. He needed equipment.

And if his luck decided those perfectly reasonable goals required another catastrophe, then at least this time he intended to buy better armor before the catastrophe finished introducing itself.