Two days to prepare where before he had four meant that a dense schedule became hectic, and some optional tasks had to be set aside. He'd not be able to get a second training with Ramsen on Limerence use, and he'd have to change his training with Soffal and Suliana to more direct battle training, hoping to consolidate his practice of using Attributes into actual fighting potential. Lastly, he gave up the thought of cashing in on the F-Grade material he was lugging around in the dead orc's ring. While he was sure the smith would gladly accept it as payment to upgrade his sword or armor, he decided it would still be too much of a risk to expose his knowledge of that situation, so the treasure would have to gather dust in his boot.

  First, he needed to figure out what to do with Moxlin.

  "I can stay here," she said, "since you're back in a week anyhow." She was eyeing a densely inscribed talisman hovering in front of her, almost her entire body blocked by the slip of paper.

  "You know about the chieftain," Axl said, hoping he didn't need to elaborate. "I'm only guessing when he's back, and lots can happen in the field. I'm not trusting my one-week estimate so strongly. "

  Moxlin shrugged, "Okay! I come with, then. It was nice to get a break here, but I figured you'd want to move on soon enough."

  "You sure? Do you have everything you need from here? We might not be able to come back, depending on how long we're out."

  "Yeah, unfortunately, Folom and I were not meant to be. A shame, but at least I can gaze upon his beautiful features some more before we leave."

  Axl stopped himself from rolling his eyes. "Sorry to hear that, his loss. But how about supplies? For talismans and the arrays you have planned?"

  "Yeps! The talismans I made for people got me enough of their coin to let me buy all I really need. I even managed to get enough to form an array from the [Temperance Eggs] you gave me, but I want to work on those glyphs more before using them. I'm also thinking I should use it later, it's too good to just bolster the early F-Grade."

  Axl shook his head. "No, you should use it early, I'm sure we can get you better stuff later as well. I'll keep an eye when I'm out for anything that could help with Mana control, none of the treasures at the shaman's swap fit the bill, and my plans to make an enhancement potion for that are too half-baked."

  He looked aside as he said it, expecting the issue to be sensitive with the little spider, the only time she ever felt subdued when talking to him, when admitting her weakness before they left Nox's territory. That it didn't come up since only made it weigh more heavily in his mind.

  Moxlin paused her work and turned to him, silent for a moment. "You've been thinking about that this whole time?"

  Axl nodded, ashamed. "I know I've focused so much on making myself strong, and not nearly enough on helping you. I'm hoping this next outing will change that while I'm out babysitting these orcs. I get first pick of treasures we run into, after all."

  The little ball of black fur slammed into his chest like a lightly thrown pillow. "Thank you for remembering. I... I'm not used to being thought about like this."

  Axl put his hand open to her side, letting her lean against him. "I promised you I'd help get you stronger, and I don't forget my promises so easily."

  Moxlin quietly pressed against his hand for a moment, then flicked upright again. "Also, you're a big doofus." She waved an accusatory forelimb at him. "You think you haven't done enough already? What perverse standards do you even have? My new fangs have helped so much that its barely a problem anymore. I couldn't even inscribe F-Grade glyphs before, and now they feel almost easy. Not to mention a full set of natural treasures that would be a peak treasure for glyphic cultivation back in the hive. And all this in barely over a week? Not all of us aspire to cheating that shakes the heavens, you know?"

  Axl grimaced, realizing he likely did instinctively compare her progress to his, and coughed to the side, hoping to push past the mistake. "So you got F-grade talismans now fully sorted out?"

  Moxlin nodded vigorously. "Yes! The medical triage ones are done, and can make those without much trouble. I can also make a set of the illusion ones as well with just a few hours of work."

  Axl was looking forward to those--the former as insurance from when he got severely injured, the latter for how well it managed to help him with the battle against the centipede. An F-Grade version of an illusory distraction would be a rather neat addition to his arsenal.

  The next few days were a sleepless blur of activity, from sparring matches with all the members of Aliferen's party to more potion-making and combat training. He also finally cleared out much of the stuff in his dimensional pouch, a lot of Olkan's G-Grade material no longer useful, and he could use the room in the container.

  The evening before they were to set out, Axl decided on one final piece of preparation he couldn't bear to leave without, namely getting some metal to keep working on his cultivator's core.

  The mana surrounding the massive slab of tungsten felt heavy and cold, a somber presence making the other metallic Mana seem playful against its heft. Axl first took a deep breath, inhaling the Mana and driving it to the pit of his gut, letting it pool. Then he activated [Mana Shroud], and it surged in, the Skill helping him remove the unwanted Mana, making the tungsten Mana denser and more vibrant.

  It was no accident that Olkan mistook his first Skill as a cultivation one, since it let him take in Mana at a much higher rate than usual, as if breathing in with his entire body in an endless surging inhale. And that was not the most useful feature, it was how much it let him purify and select the Mana he brought in. He could even look into the very fabric of how the pieces of Mana interlocked together, as was essential for the shrouding feature of the Skill, but Axl didn't want to spend too much time experimenting with that just yet. The one downside was that using [Mana Shroud] relied on his inner Mana stores, that resource a misting, neutral force vaguely filling his entire body, one that never quite felt like the Mana he could accumulate at the pit of his stomach.

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  He'd asked around for more information on the difference between Mana and internal Mana. The few elves around confirmed that inner Mana was vaguely attuned to your Lineage, and diffuse, while what a cultivator's core could produce was often more refined and dense, better for fueling Skills and lasting longer. Not to mention the amount, the available Mana pool tripling with even a common core.

  But today he wasn't here to collect the tungsten's Mana, he was here to get a big chunk of it to carry around with him. It wouldn't emit as much of its attuned Mana as the large ore growth still tethered to the ground, but it would have to do.

  Axl started with one of the pickaxes the smith kept in a communal bucket near the entrance and started wailing at the metal, his ringing strikes joining the many others in the courtyard, even as evening approached.

  After a few minutes, he realized his pace was too slow, the meter-long rectangle he was starting to carve out barely started. So he switched to mimicking what he saw a nearby spellcasting orc do, and enveloped the ore with his arms, then started to circulate the Mana like a chainsaw.

  He started with only using his internal Mana, to get the hang of it, but soon he turned on [Mana Shroud] to start pooling the Mana better and accelerating the grind. He found using other Mana than the tungsten's own was more efficient, a motley mix even better, as his broad circle of Mana churned faster and faster, grinding deeper.

  With a loud snap, the large flat square of metal fell to the ground with a thud that Axl felt in his bones, the nearby miners all pausing in their work to stare at him in disbelief.

  Quickly, the slab was put into his dimensional pouch and Axl moved on, not wanting to draw any more attention. Next stop was a beautiful strand of ore that looked like flowing water hanging in the air, a stark white with blue edges. This was the metal that made up the entirety of his gear, Helkan silver.

  It was, by a good margin, the most popular metal for the middle and late F-Grade, with four miners crowding around it, leaving no space for him. Axl chose the location that would give him a long, curved spike of metal nearly two meters long and bribed the orc working on a much smaller chunk above it to let him have the slot. It cost him a healing potion, but that felt like a damn good bargain, and gave the orc another one as a tip.

  Helkan wasn't nearly as hard as tungsten, but Axl struggled, since he had to curve the flow of the Mana he was using to cut into the ore to effectively cut it at all. This strained his control of [Mana Shroud], not that it was hard to do in short bursts, but keeping it up for several minutes got difficult. This reminded him he'd only use the more demanding aspects of the Skill in short stints, usually in crucial seconds during battle, so he took this opportunity to train his ability to consistently keep the skill on.

  Several hours later, nearly twice the time it took him to get the tungsten, the large sliver of Helkan peeled off from the main chunk. As if proudly announcing its birth into the world, the ore's final cut emanated a high-pitched screech. Axl was careful this time to make the end of his cutting less dramatic than the tungsten, but somehow the Mana in the shard surged and produced the startling sound, despite his best efforts.

  "A peal of creation from collecting ore?" A burly orc that was mining to his side loudly proclaimed as he approached, a ravenous grin blooming on his scarred face "One hundred mid Burrils for that chunk, G-Grade. That's at least double what that thieving smith would give you for that load."

  Axl quickly disappeared the chunk into his pouch and shook his head. "Sorry, comrade, I need this for my alchemy. But how about if this happens again, I come to you first as a buyer?"

  A flurry of emotions crossed the orc's face, starting with indignation and rage, then eventually settling on annoyance. "Very well, young artisan. Name's Polkkan of the two axes, and I hope to do business with you soon."

  Axl nodded to the looming orc and left, making note of that name and thanking his training in Charisma, feeling the interaction could've gone in a very different direction without it. And as much as he wouldn't mind a formal duel to stretch after all this mining, he frankly didn't have the time, since he only had a few more hours till sunrise and one last stop at the mining courtyard.

  He needed to get lunar fulger.

  His soul wasn't fully healed yet, and every inch of his body urged him to reconsider, stick to the normal metals. A reasonable, safe impulse. Slitting pit, he was more likely to even just live long enough to see the end of Terrania's nexus quest if he took the safer path and settled for a tungsten Core, perhaps a mixture of tungsten and Helkan. But then he remembered Kas Caltan, Lilly, his brother. The ticking clock sitting in his Status like a time bomb for his entire people. There simply wasn't enough time for the safe path.

  Many of even the more accomplished orcs like Suliana and Soffal stayed for years gaining barely a few levels and slowly improving themselves. And these were Intent cultivators, those that used a Core, like him, often took longer to progress. Axl was only level 17, and wasn't gaining levels as quickly as he was hoping. He figured that at the bare minimum he needed to form a Core and break through to the F-Grade to have a chance at going against the metal dryad. After all, if she was leading her own faction, it was unlikely she'd be only in the middle of F-Grade, and likely would be at the peak, like the Orc leader.

  Axl knew his bursts of increased power came from taking extreme risks, be it with killing Puppy, completing his Alchemy quest, and even at the Poison body tempering trial. These last few days of consolidation were necessary, but any more would bring his progress in line with what the orcs around him managed to get, and he also doubted even his exceptionally well-endowed build would be able to deal with a peak F-Grade. That's even assuming the metal dryad was a normal F-Grade.

  This was all, of course, an excuse. He simply couldn’t stop thinking of the lunar fulger, the taste of its Mana against him, the stark elegance of a metallic claw reaching up to the sky as if to tear it down. Sorry, boss Terrania, but I'm gonna take this as hazard payment. He even paused for a moment, smirking at his Foundational Nexus quest, giving the neuromorph a chance to respond.

  The branching lunar fulger glowed with an eerie red beneath the silvery dome of its protective array, and Axl took a deep breath, loosening his shoulders, and he approached.

  First, he tried the pickaxe, but the array stunted its momentum, and the ore's Mana fought against its descent. Axl's full power, together with whatever empowerment he could squeeze out of [Mana Shroud] barely made a dull ding on the metallic base of the branch he targeted. Not only that, but a jolt of electric energy surged through the axe with each hit, cutting through Axl's arm and escaping down a leg, ravaging his body in its path. After only three strikes he had to take a third of a healing potion to recover his injuries, and he realized he'd be well into potion resistance before making any real progress into the branch.

  Setting the smoldering axe aside, Axl prepared to strike with [Attuned Drill Strike]. After all, what's a better way to get some ore than with a drill? He first started with the weakest he could make the attack, drawing in the ambient metallic Mana to coil against his own internal stores, launching a test punch at his target from a safe distance. Much to his dismay, the array's protection nearly dissolved the entire Skill, barely a sliver of its explosive power touching the ore.

  He'd asked the smith about that barrier and the lunar fulger inside, and after he stopped laughing, Gildear admitted he didn't know how to operate that array, and even if he did, he sure as his rotted eyes wouldn't take it down to let lightning mess up his garden. Axl gave up trying to ask for more information after the smith's third consecutive joke claiming Axl must already be twice dead, his first death killing his fear and the second any common sense.

  This left only one option Axl could think of, and he braced himself to strike, drinking the remainder of the healing potion he used earlier, in preparation for what was to come.