I met staff with blade, and the real fight started. I was still a little clumsy due to the added weight, but this was the best place to adapt and overcome. It wasn’t a fierce fight as Mord realized something was off. He slowed his attacks down to allow me to properly dodge and parry. I didn’t even try to search for an opening. This wasn’t a complete reset to zero, but it had been a while since we practiced with weapons, and I was still a bit off.

  As the session went on, we gradually picked the speed back up. It was repeating the same series of katas over and over in an ever-quickening cycle. I adapted fast, but I could feel my muscles burning, and I knew the session was coming to a close. I missed a pretty telegraphed swing from the staff aimed at my midsection. I could dodge or even possibly parry the attack, but would really expose myself to the follow-up. It was test time. I canted my blade and brought my forearm in for a block. This was not a held-back swing from Mord. He was forcing me into the dodge or deflect dilemma to see how I would react. This was almost an exact copy of what broke my arm earlier. I saw him notice my forearm moving to block, and I could tell he was trying to stop the swing. At the speed we were fighting and the strength we were using, that was not an easy thing. If my arm broke, it would end the session a little early, but Mord was less concerned with time than with causing injury. In spars like this, causing injury seemed to be a taboo. He must have noticed my face. I wasn’t downplaying or hesitating on the block. I guess he accepted my gambit because the once-slowing strike sped back up. It hit my forearm with a thunderous crack. I felt a shit ton of pain. A small bit in the impact site, but more in the shoulder. I winced a little, but my face was nothing compared to that of Mord staring at the broken end of his staff.

  Faster than I could react, he had my wrist in an iron grip. It was painful but far less than it should have been, just the pain of skin pinched against metal. Looking at the small bleeding gash where the stick had hit, he spared a glare my way. He produced a small blade, like a scalpel, from nowhere and dug it into my arm. While that stung, his fingers digging into the wound was far worse. Eventually, even I could see the gleam of the silver-white lattice that was the surface of my bone. He dropped my arm with a satisfied grunt. I did my best to remain stoic in the moment, not knowing how to react.

  “Good. Smart. But risky and stupid. I like this. How much? Just arm or whole body?” His tone was more academic than judgmental.

  “Just the hands and the arms from the shoulder down for now. I didn’t want another broken arm.”

  “It’s ok, but must commit full or undo. Hurts here, yes?” Mord pointed to my shoulder.

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Metal skeleton is rare, not unheard of. Strong but vulnerable. Go. We train after you commit.”

  I took the dismissal with gratitude. I was initially worried about judgment or outrage, so acceptance and advice was welcome. I had some shopping to do.

  The vending room, once a source of envy, had become a mecca. I dropped the stones into the blackjack machine and received my ill-gotten booty. A little less than I expected, but I was distracted. So distracted that I had completely forgotten the flask I had purchased.

  While I often skipped through the vending room, it’s not like I didn’t have a list of things I would buy if I had won the lotto. Everyone does that, right? I took my Obols and started my shopping spree. I bought a few more of the single-use flasks and one of each of the typical ones. I also bought some more clothing, including a cloak. I left the weapons and armor for later as I was still prioritizing. I hadn’t noticed any changes in the dungeon, but I trusted one day, and one day soon, I would be on my last trip through. Purchases safely stowed away, I made for the stairs.

  This time, I did a repeat of the stairs to adjust to my new arms. I even took a few extra trips to make up for my previous skips. I could run the stairs in less than ten minutes, so I won’t waste that much time.

  This time, before I got started on grafting my skeleton, I pulled out the potions and flasks. The bottles seemed to be made out of glass, but it felt different somehow. I wasn't as concerned with the containers as I was with the contents.

  A quick dive showed I was very much out of my depth. The contents of the flask with the green label were a confusing jumble of vastly different materials, all with way more complex strands of interactions than in any of the materials I had seen before. Even as I watched, the connections shifted and changed. I dove as deep as I could on a single material, but even there, the concoction was odd. The base material was held in suspension by a half dozen different interactions. I traced a few of them out, and the end of each was another complicated puzzle that I couldn’t even begin to unravel. I counted no less than twenty ingredients, and even among those, there were variations depending on the number and types of connections. I caught glimpses of runes as I dove deeper, but none were present long enough for me to grasp.

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  I did the reasonable thing with the bottle. I drank it. My stamina bottomed out hard. So hard I fell over like a puppet whose strings had all been cut. As I lay there, I noticed that my stamina was really slow to fill up. I was an idiot; I’d poisoned myself and destroyed my stamina in the process. At about a quarter full, I was able to get back up. I decided to test how bad id messed up. I started to run wall-to-wall sprints like I did long ago. This time I didn’t notice my stamina budge. It actually continued to climb. I started running faster and faster. I was running so hard and fast that I was partway across the room before I heard the echo of slapping the wall. I finally noticed the stamina start to drop. I was an idiot, but not in a foolish way. Well, yes, foolish but also to great success. I hadn't cut my stamina; I enhanced it by a lot.

  I wanted to take another flask right away, but my curiosity got the better of me. I pulled out what was sure was a mana potion and dove into it. This was far less complex. No more understandable, but there were far fewer ingredients and fewer interactions. I could even catch actual glimpses of the two runes flashing around. It took me a second to get the pattern. Right as I got the pattern, I felt my destruction skills kick in. It was as if they triggered on instinct. I felt the potion and bottle dissolve into nothing.

  Runes and Materials Learned!

  Rune: Mana

  Rune: Potion

  Material: Glass

  Material: Water

  Material: Magiglas

  I was intrigued. Sensing my intrigue and that he missed something, Ink gave me a trill. I pulled another of the mana potions and let him have it. He let none of it go to waste. I didn’t know if he had mana, but I felt the surge of power go through him.

  I burned through the lime green stamina potion much to the same effect as mana. I learned the stamina rune as expected. The red health potion also had the same end result, except Ink wasn’t interested in either of these. I was left with a yellow-ish potion, another dark green potion, and two of the flasks. I had purchased both the yellow potions that the machine had in stock; the dark green was a one-off like the flasks. I contemplated giving Ink one of the flasks, but, much to my relief, he turned his metaphorical nose up at all of them.

  I had a demonic guess as to what the yellow potion was and wasted a deep dive on it. I could recognize all the flashing runes. It was a combination potion of health, mana, and stamina. Exactly as predicted. Even though I could see the runes, I was pretty sure I could neither learn this as a material nor directly recreate it. It seemed that Alchemy was its own animal, and I was not going to tame it here.

  I dove into the deep green one as well. I had no real idea of what it was nor what it did. This was definitely more complex than any of the mana or health potions. Its pattern, once I got a hold of it, was a series of four runes. I could only recognize one, health. The others looked familiar, but something was wrong with them. ‘Wrong’ was the wrong word; if I had to say it better, ‘not right’ was right. I was burning time and mana in this deep when my peripheral caught the problem. Two of the remaining runes were the runes for stamina and mana, but they were twisted. Not revered or inverted, more of an upside-down and inside-out. I was seeing the purpose of this mix. I had no chance at learning the material, but I was going to learn the magic. The weird inverse runes precluded the last unknown rune and were followed by health. I had the transformation aspect, and I felt that the missing link was not directly related. It felt more like a destructive process. The stamina and mana fed the last two runes, something, and health. Or they fed something, and it was bound by health. There was magic still making the third rune hard to decipher but I was pot committed to this. Either I solved it or bottomed out my mana and passed out.

  The answer came as I started to guess what was going on. I thought of all the potions I knew that would involve your stats, especially those that would drain your mana and stamina, but not your health. Health was the key. This was a much more difficult and complex potion, so it wouldn't be used to trade one for the other unless it did something different, like grew back an arm. The rune resolved, and I knew it at its base.

  Rune Learned!

  Rune: Regeneration

  I could also tell that this was a potion of regeneration, but that was weak compared to the knowledge of what the rune could do. I felt the knowledge filter through my brain. This rune could also grant regeneration to a person. In the potion, the health rune after it was a limiter, preventing it from running rampant like a cancer. The other two were sources. It would use your mana and stamina to fuel the regeneration. But it was limited, as all potions were. I could feel the power this rune held. It was more complex than my others, except for durability.

  I must have crossed a threshold of knowledge. I knew seven runes. Information rushed into my head, the system or something, filling in gaps to further my power. I saw the power of rune magic. With this ability, I could see the basis of all magic and these concepts in their simplest forms or weave them into patterns as complex as any spell. I was not there yet, but I could feel the potential of making items of great power. Now to hope it wasn’t a saturated market.

  Mind significantly blown, and regeneration potion safely stowed, I went back to the tasks before me. I had flasks to drink, rune stones to make, and a skeleton to coat.