"We have a ten minute downtime before we move on to the next segment. Questions?"

  Lev immediately asked, "How much does the paint cost?"

  "Which one?"

  "The better one."

  "Hmm, that varies," Edward rubbed his chin. "Oftentimes, when there is an especially terrible wave, some large cores can be bought at low price. Distilled water is easy to create and infuse, so you can get a large amount of the paint for a few gold. In Runespires, the same amount could go for another gold or two."

  Some students coughed at the casual mention of gold. Even Lev felt it was expensive, which convinced him that his plan to hunt for materials was perfect.

  "What about matching metals for that paint?"

  Edward grinned, accurately answering Lev's question before the enchanter even spoke, "Depends on your budget."

  Lev snorted and backed down, letting others ask their questions. Many of them were related to the materials, the same questions that were planned to be answered during the last hour.

  "The next segment is going to be basic practice. Everyone, form groups of two."

  Nolan glanced at Lev, who motioned the boy to join him.

  "Do you have any experience in this?" Nolan whispered as the students shuffled around.

  "Just carving," Lev replied.

  "Help me along a bit if something goes wrong, please."

  Lev gave him a meaningful glance. "I sincerely doubt we can hide anything from a Master, and don't worry, I doubt he will leave you behind."

  "Correct," Edward's voice reached them from behind. Nolan jumped, but Lev had seen the man blur towards them.

  "There will be no discrimination regardless of talent or experience. If you need help, I'll be here. You will get your money's worth today, and in every upcoming day as well."

  Lev looked at Nolan and shrugged. It was exactly like he'd said. Even he was actively ignoring other conversations to not eavesdrop, otherwise his perception let him observe every little detail in the room with ease.

  "Now, how many of you have enchanting skills?"

  Nobody raised a hand.

  "Well… that's certainly rare. Even better. I will give each group ten small iron plates, the same one I used in the demonstration. Your task is to carve a few runes while focusing on NOT getting the skill. This is just a simple exercise to get a feel for how runes stand out to your senses without any related skills."

  Lev looked at the ten plates given to their group. They were squares half the size of his palm, with no notable property. Just simple iron.

  Nolan only spared them a glance as well. When all the groups had their plates, Edward clapped once to gather everyone's attention.

  "Focus."

  The air shimmered in front of him as mana gathered as an illusion of a plain whiteboard came into being. The heating rune from before formed on the board in black, letting everyone observe it with maximum clarity.

  "This is a simple heating rune with a direct input function. Your task is to carve this to the best of your ability and determine the efficiency of the result. You have thirty minutes to do so. Did anyone bring the relevant tools?"

  Several students pulled enchanted styluses out of their pockets while most of them were simply confused.

  "Don't worry, I brought extras for today," Edward smiled, distributing similar tools to everyone who didn't have one. "But only one per group. Don't hoard them and share them equally. Remember to bring your own from tomorrow onwards."

  Lev observed the stylus with scrutiny, noting the enchantments that made carving easier from the tip.

  "Hey, show me it for a second."

  Nolan glanced at Lev before handing the stylus over. Lev held it up in his left hand and formed a barrier in his right, slowly forming a barrier stylus. When the shape was adequately copied, Lev carved a small sharpness rune on the tip.

  "Barrier, huh?" Edward mused, appearing in front of them in a flash. "Why not arcane constructs?"

  "They're focused on enchantments and conductivity. Not viable for combat."

  Edward regarded Lev for a moment, a smile on his face slowly growing.

  "Well, I'm glad to see a future combat crafter in my lecture. Test the stylus, see if it works."

  Lev gazed at the rune on display for a long few seconds before putting mana into the sharpness rune. Gently, Lev put the tip of the stylus onto the iron plate and nudged it to the left.

  The stylus moved with little resistance, which was close to what he wanted. Lev lowered the trickle for the sharpness rune even further, finding a bit more resistance during carving.

  Satisfied that he wouldn't accidentally ruin it now, Lev started working on the rune in earnest. The heating rune was basic, devoid of any abrupt turns or twists. It took only a few seconds to finish.

  He held up the now carved plate in front of him, comparing the rune on display and his handiwork side by side. Lev's work was… pretty good, in his opinion.

  To test it out, Lev sent a tiny stream of mana into the rune. The iron plate slowly heated up as the rune accepted the mana without issue, wasting a small portion due to its efficiency.

  "Excellently done, young man. I can see you have some prior experience in enchanting and a lot of attributes backing up your work," Edward nodded at him. "You don't need to participate further in this exercise, as that would just be a waste of practice plates."

  Lev had no issues with that, so he settled to observe Nolan when the boy started working on his plate. It took him considerably longer, nearly thirty seconds before he finished.

  The result was an acceptable squiggle. Nolan gazed at it proudly as he sent a trickle of unsteady mana into the rune, which was accepted with almost half of it going to waste.

  That didn't seem to discourage Nolan in the slightest, and Lev approved. It took Edward a minute to circle the entire class before he reached their table.

  "Was this your first attempt?" Nolan nodded. "Very good. It has over 50% efficiency, which is a good start. Don't be disheartened by your groupmate, he has already evolved once and has worked on enchanting before."

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  "I'm not," Nolan snorted. "Besides, there will always be someone better out there. Better get used to it early."

  Lev just shook his head slightly. He felt like Edward had just unknowingly alienated him a little. But that was fine, he wasn't here to make connections.

  "If it makes it any better, my first attempts were much worse," Lev casually commented.

  Nolan grinned a little, and Lev knew his words had the intended effect. Edward circled the class a few more times, giving tips here and there. To Lev's surprise, several people failed to form the rune properly. Some messed up the stylus enchantments and ruined the product, others couldn't get it to the "minimum" 30% efficiency, the lowest acceptable to be considered a success.

  Their failure made him reconsider his product. Due to his movements depending on his mind, muscle memory was irrelevant in the carving process. His mind didn't let any physical factors disrupt the process, resulting in a rune smoother than what most others ended with.

  Just one more advantage of my stupid class.

  Lev welcomed the new advantage with open arms, happy with his mentor's teachings paying off again and again.

  "Now that we've had each of you succeed a few times, let's move on to today's last exercise before the final theory hour."

  Edward moved as a blur, picking up all the used plates and putting twenty new plates on each table. These were visibly lower in quality, and Lev wouldn't hesitate to call them trash.

  "This time, we will carve the same rune and focus on speed," Edward held up a hand to forestall all complaints, "I know not all of you want to practice carving, and we will focus on the other types later, but this is important. The point of the exercise is to learn how runes can be ruined by the smallest margins, something you will do a lot today. Get ready."

  Lev readied his makeshift stylus and grabbed a plate. Even the tiny trickle in the sharpness rune felt no resistance, so Lev stopped using it and relied on pure physical force. The iron parted easily enough against his mind. Nolan, who was observing Lev, blinked twice at the display before focusing on his own plate.

  For the next few attempts, Lev failed. The rune took three seconds to carve from start to finish, and each time he messed it up a little due to the almost non-existent friction. He took steadying breaths to not throw the plates out the door and focused harder. His perception, which was willingly lowered to match everyone else, spiked as his stylus moved slowly.

  His insane perception turned out to be the missing key as Lev carved the rune in the much longer three seconds. The final product was even better than his first attempt.

  Edward was on him in a flash. He looked at the rune, and then at Lev.

  "Dear Monarch, boy, just how much Perception do you have?"

  "…I forgot I was holding mine back."

  Edward chuckled. "Oh, I remember when I used to do that. Only when the Master enchanters started speaking gibberish did I realize I was also doing the same."

  Lev nodded slowly, which was the best he could do to react while his expression was hidden by the illusion armor.

  "Good job, nonetheless. The efficiency is nearly 80%, which is an excellent start for an Adept."

  The whole room was listening to the exchange at this point. Lev felt more than a few competitive spirits rousing but nobody seemed to be jealous or sad, which was great. He absolutely did not want to develop meaningless rivalries.

  "Damn," Nolan breathed, failing his fifth plate. "This is harder than it looked at first."

  "Mhm, it will get easier with higher perception and dexterity."

  "Let me just go and beat a few orcs to death," he snorted.

  Lev glanced at him. "You sound sarcastic."

  Nolan gave him an incredulous glance. "Because I am? Why on Monarch would I go fight monsters."

  Lev looked at him in silence for a long few seconds.

  "I see."

  "Don't look at me like that," Nolan grinned. "Not everyone has the same size of balls as you do. Combat crafter, just imagine," he muttered the last part, as if it was a fairy tale that wouldn't ever be true for him.

  Lev didn't bother trying to convince him. Despite the planet's apocalyptic state, the combatants were still a small percentage of the populace. Most people simply couldn't overcome their fear and froze in front of a monster.

  That was completely fine in his opinion. Humans were not meant to face abominations to live.

  The next half hour passed in peaceful scratching. Plates were wasted, runes were botched, and someone even caused a tiny explosion by overloading the rune for fun.

  Such idiots, Lev thought with a grin. He wouldn't ever tell anyone that he wanted to do the same… in the name of science, of course.

  He planned to do that after the lecture.

  ****

  The final segment was… boring yet interesting at the same time. Lev got to learn a bunch of material names and efficiency/cost numbers, which were hard to remember, so he oversimplified them for himself.

  The most commonly used metals were iron, copper, bronze, silver, and gold. More exotic metals included titanium, rhodite, irinite, mythril, enderium, tungsten, etc.

  Unconventional metals like platinum, nickel, orichalcum, dreamsilver, and dreadcrystals were either too dangerous or too time-consuming to acquire, making them not worth the sky-high cost.

  I love that most of them don't matter to me at all. Lev almost skipped to the hunters guild. Barriers for the win.

  His element was not only better at conducting mana than most of those metals, but he also had an endless supply of it. Matching the durability of most of them was, well, a task for the future but he would work on improving them with enchantments soon.

  Most of the metals they discussed in the lecture could be infused with mana to convert them into infused metals. Infused metals usually exhibited the same but improved properties, typically improving the mana conductivity of the converted metal greatly.

  Just for that reason, Lev's barrier fell behind sharply in the durability department. He could match normal metals with enchanted barriers but infused metals were simply superior.

  His armor however, would match them with ease. The straightforward resilience bonus ensured that. Lev just needed to enchant it to the brim.

  Other materials included different types of woods, threads, stones, blood, gems, and even water. The whole segment of the lecture was focused on these details, and Lev could somehow remember them all. The improved memory was coming in clutch.

  "Welcome back," the receptionist greeted. "What can I do for you today?"

  "Dungeon locations, and what kind of quests are associated with them?"

  She raised a brow, "Have you settled in properly yet? If you are having trouble with that, we can lend a hand."

  Lev took a few moments to formulate a response. "I think you're misunderstanding. I already have a room booked, and I even attended a lecture today. Some training for the rest of the day seemed like a good idea."

  She still gave him a look like he was overworking himself, which confused Lev. What else was he supposed to do with all this free time?

  "Which level range of dungeons are you looking for?"

  "High Classer and early Adept."

  "That just covers almost all of them."

  Lev coughed, "I didn't know that. What's the highest level dungeon around here?"

  "170-200 range. It's an extremely dangerous spider infestation, with too many traps and stealthy monsters. The rewards at least, are very lucrative which is the only reason some teams that counter the dungeon delve it to keep it from breaking."

  Lev noted the bit about lucrative rewards, before inquiring about the locations of dungeons near his level.

  "The quests for Classer dungeons are simply clearing quests. Three clears per dungeon can be turned in daily for one silver per clearance token. The higher level dungeons have quests for cores, mainly, with only a select few for other materials."

  "Can you tell me about dungeons with monsters between levels 100-150?"

  Lev got another flat look. "There are five of them. Your questions are very broad for some reason. One is a troll dungeon, one of the more difficult ones. The others include panthers which focus on stealth, kobolds that make a bunch of traps underground, spiders that have very durable exoskeletons, and the last contains cursed golems. We do not recommend ever going into that dungeon. Darkness permeates every nook and cranny, and it's difficult to look around without very high Perception or skills to counter it. Moreover, like the pit monsters, these also radiate an aura of fear and confusion which is lethal at best. Only Masters are recommended to enter and clear it regularly."

  That was a lot of information. Lev thought. "Sorry about all these questions. I don't know where else I can find this information."

  "The questions are not an issue," her eyes softened. "Please don't overdo it."

  That made Lev pause for a few seconds. He gazed into her eyes, finding her concern genuine.

  "I will not," Lev honestly promised. "I just wanted to train the abilities I was falling behind in. Weaker monsters are enough for that."

  The woman just dipped her head a little. "Which one would you like directions to?"

  "The spider one, if toughness is their strong suit."

  "It is."