Jake slept fitfully that evening, and waited impatiently the following day as Gordon went back into Casthorpe to see what details he could find about the Dungeon.

  Eventually, Gordon returned with two small pamphlets that he’d purchased for a handful of Wyrdgeld each.

  “Well, this isn’t quite what I expected,” Jake said, chuckling as he flicked through the small booklet. Each page detailed a different floor, with approximate maps and monster counts. “Saying that, there’s a lot more detail than I thought we’d get.”

  “Apparently this is a whole industry in the higher Realms, or so I’ve heard,” Aspen said, swapping books with Jake to look at the other one. “There are a few differences between these, but not too many.”

  “Hopefully, that means they’re pretty accurate then,” Jake said, lingering over the page detailing the floor with the steaming pools full of snakes. That was as far as they’d reached last time, and if he was reading this right, it was far from the worst thing in the Dungeon.

  According to what he was reading, the Guardian floor of the second tier had five Fire Serpents, which Jake assumed were the Enhanced version of the ones he’d seen already. Backing them up would also be twenty of the Lesser Drakes, which were the Enhanced lizard-like monsters.

  To top it all of, the Awakened monster would be a Drake, which was essentially a bigger, tougher and nastier version of the Lesser Drakes. The author had even left a note to watch out for its flame spitting, which was apparently much stronger than what a Lesser Drake could do.

  “Well, this is going to be pleasant,” Jake said, passing off the book to one of the others as he considered any potential changes to their plans.

  There wasn’t really much they could do to prepare for something like that. They had no specialised equipment they could buy or prepare, and they’d all advanced as far as was possible until Jake could bind this Dungeon.

  Actually, there was one thing he could do, and Jake kicked himself that he hadn’t considered it until this moment. Giving Gordon some Wyrdgeld, Jake sent him back into Casthorpe with a specific requirement.

  A few hours later, Gordon arrived back with a long, wooden wand that started off black at the grip and slowly lightened as it progressed, ending with a bone white tip.

  Jake took the wand eagerly and excused himself from the current discussion of tactics to head down into the cellar. The thick walls would be just what he needed for this.

  Channelling Wyrd into the wand, Jake pointed it at the far wall and released a small burst of icicles that smashed into the stone and shattered and turned into a small patch of mist.

  From experience, Jake knew that the mist would be incredibly cold, sapping the strength of whatever was within it. The mist didn’t last long, so the effect wasn’t too powerful, but it was still useful.

  Satisfied that the wand did what he wanted, Jake went through the process again. This time, however, he focused on controlling the Wyrd he fed into the wand and following the patterns it went through.

  Infused items and infusions to create effects in items were essentially the same thing as far as Jake was concerned. The difference was that an Infused item was permanent, whereas the infusions he could make with his Wyrd were temporary.

  Jake wasn’t a crafter, and he certainly wasn’t a Weaver, so he didn’t really know how the effects were made. No doubt Varin would explain if he asked, but for what he was trying to do now, it didn’t matter.

  Again and again, Jake fed his Wyrd into the wand, activating it and studying how the magic moved within it. He lacked any sort of System benefit to help him sense the movement of Wyrd, but his training with Gargan certainly helped.

  Every tenth attempt, Jake would take a break for a minute or two and let his mind dwell on what he’d found so far as his Wyrd recovered.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Some ways of working his Wyrd into the wand seemed to provide more or less detail, so he started mixing it up, testing what worked and what didn’t.

  After an hour of repeatedly firing the wand at the wall, Jake finally managed to follow the magic through the pattern. It was hazy, incomplete and hard to follow, but it had happened.

  The creeping fatigue from Wyrd use vanished as adrenaline coursed through Jake’s body and he did it again. Each time he fired the wand, he felt himself getting a better grasp of the pattern within.

  It was a fairly straightforward one, much like the others he knew, which was probably a good thing. This method of learning them felt like a brute force solution to a delicate problem, which was fine for now, but probably wouldn’t work with more complex things.

  Eventually, Jake had to stop and rest for a time to recover his Wyrd properly. Thankfully, Alma had sent Gordon back with supplies for them all.

  A meal full of Dungeonous ingredients was just what Jake needed to perk right back up, and soon enough he was back in the cellar.

  With a big delve planned that evening, Jake wouldn’t push things too much, but if he could make this work, it would make all the difference in the Dungeon.

  Bit by bit, he slowly got a rough grasp for the inner workings of the wand, eventually realising that it was actually two patterns linked together.

  Changing over to the thorns wand he carried, Jake went through the same tests, finding that it also had two patterns within it and one of them was the same for both wands.

  The shared pattern was likely whatever caused the wands to project the effect, so he could ignore that for now. Swapping back to the ice wand, he instead focused on the second pattern until he had a loose image of it.

  Wearily putting the wand aside, Jake took a short break before grabbing one of his mundane daggers and manually infusing the pattern he’d learnt into it.

  Nothing happened.

  The Wyrd was expended, but as best Jake could tell, there was no benefit.

  Doing the same thing but activating his Wyrd Infusion Skill, Jake felt the pattern he was creating shift slightly as it took hold within the dagger.

  Touching the blade, Jake felt a slight chill from it, though it quickly faded.

  Calling up his Skill, Jake read it over once again, paying careful attention to the wording.

  Active - Wyrd Infusion (IV) - Rare - You are able to infuse Wyrd into any item you are touching. The effects of any patterns that you create have a medium boost to their power and stability. This effect remains for a moderate time once you are no longer touching the item.

  “Medium boost to their stability…” Jake muttered to himself before repeating the infusion, this time with the Skill active. Unlike last time, however, he paid close attention to the changes the Skill was making.

  When he’d been developing a pattern from scratch, he’d had to build it based on what he’d seen elsewhere. The Skill had helped it stay together, but not much more than that.

  Now, though, the Skill was actively changing the shape of the pattern. Not by much, but just enough to make it work a little better.

  Jake rubbed his jaw in thought as he tried to work out why it was different. The best he could come up with, though, is that he knew this pattern was right.

  This wasn’t an experiment where he wasn’t sure what the outcome was. This was a known pattern that he was trying to recreate.

  Felix had always said that intent was powerful with the System, that it could change how Skills functioned.

  The implications of that slowly filtered through for Jake and he let out a somewhat menacing chuckle as he called on his Wyrd and infused it into the dagger again, this time trying to match how the Skill had shifted the shape.

  The blade was colder this time, and it lasted for a heartbeat longer than before.

  Excitement thrummed through Jake’s veins as he realised that if he copied the changes the Skill made, he could use it as a guide.

  This was so much more than he could have hoped for, no pattern was beyond his reach now. Sure, each one might take endless hours of repetition to learn and perfect, but Jake was stubborn.

  This was a path to power, and it was one he could walk along without need of Dungeons or Wyrdgeld or any of his other requirements. Time and effort were all he needed, and for now, he had both.

  A somewhat manic desire to push forward overtook Jake as he settled in and repeatedly infused the dagger, using his Skill as a guide.

  Time slipped by as Jake worked, the pattern he was creating changing and becoming more stable little by little.

  Unfortunately, Jake’s plan of using this method to develop the most powerful infusions he could hit a snag. The boost to stability took the form of adjusting the shape of the pattern, but only until it was mostly correct.

  Once the pattern hit some sort of threshold of stability, the Skill instead reinforced it directly, rather than changing things.

  While useful, it was a little disappointing. Still, he supposed it made sense to limit just what he could do with a Skill like this.

  Infusing the dagger for the last time, Jake wore a proud smile as he watched a slight sheen of ice cover the dagger. Striking at the wall, his eyes lit up as most of the ice shattered on impact, leaving behind the same cloud of freezing mist that he’d seen with the wand.

  Perhaps if he improved the pattern further, it would last for more than a single hit. That was something to work on another time, though.

  Stretching and stifling a yawn, Jake made his way back up stairs to get some coffee and relax for a while. He’d been down here a while, but there was still a few hours to go before they left for the Dungeon.