First, the Smith smelted and reforged his Green Iron Bucket Helmet into a Green Iron Visor Helmet, putting as much care into it as he could while he waited for his mana to recover. After two days, he was ready to enchant. He had decided to use slightly larger "tiles" for the enchantment, reducing the number of patterns that needed to be etched.

To his frustration, even with less patterns, enchanting the helmet still wiped out his mana reserves. James still didn't know about the increased difficulty of enchanting elemental iron with differing elements. Even so, water and wind don't have the worst affinity.

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Visor Helmet, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 18/18, Enchantment: Water Resistance (15)

Bit by bit, James enchanted his armor with Water Resistance. Occasionally a mole monster would wander into the cavern and prowl around the edges of his ward until James would take a break from enchanting to slay it, and several times he had to return to the tree monster passage for more Water Magic Crystals. But eventually, he finished.

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Cuirass, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantment: Water Resistance (14)

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Armored Skirt, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 8/8, Enchantment: Water Resistance (16)

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Codpiece, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantment: Water Resistance (15)

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Greaves, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantment: Water Resistance (15)

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Cuisses, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantment: Water Resistance (17)

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Left Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Enchantment: Water Resistance (16)

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Right Pauldron, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 9/9, Enchantment: Water Resistance (18)

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Bracers, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 10/10, Enchantment: Water Resistance (17)

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Cleat Boots, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 12/12, Enchantment: Water Resistance (14)

The Enchanter was starting to recognize the factors that affected the enchantment's "score". How well the tiled pattern wrapped around the three dimensional item mattered, how small and densely packed the patterns were, and how much "stretching" the pattern required to fit on the object all affected the overall strength of the enchantment.

James armed and armored himself and set out to resume exploring. Using [Product Testing] and [Enchantment Analysis], James noticed a passive magical energy field within each piece of armor just like with the Ward enchantments. Interestingly, the field extended slightly beyond each piece of armor, filling in the gaps between them as well, ensuring all the joints were covered. It seemed wearing the armor as a set provided more protection than just the sum of its parts.

The small room was empty. A mole monster was shuffling around the second cavern, and James slayed it efficiently. The bat monster carcasses had suddenly all vanished one day, James knew not where, but he was unconcerned. He had already collected the materials he wanted from them.

He made his way through the propped open door, skirted around the giant pangolin carcass, and made his way down the staircase. Closer and closer the end of the tunnel grew, until James noticed a rattling sound growing louder and louder. He stopped, but the rattling continued until, surprised, James realized it was himself making the noise.

He was trembling. And once he recognized that, he realized.

He was afraid.

Would his armor be enough? What if there was more than one of those monsters in the lake this time? What if there was some other monster that was even stronger than that?

It was with a sense of relief that James realized that although he had repaired his shield's [Reflect] enchantment, he hadn't improved it at all. It could be tiled, after all.

With that sense of relief, James turned away and climbed back up the stairs and returned to his camp.

Unsure how to disenchant items, James tried to pull the magic from his shield like he did when disempowering the warding stakes. Of course it didn't work, so in the end he smelted the shield down entirely and reforged it, making minor improvements to the shield itself and using the last of his Green Iron stocks. Etching the enchantment pattern, tiled as closely and as small as James could manage, took several days, as did the process of grinding extremely fine Light Magic Crystal dust and applying it.

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[Smith] Class Skill: [Filigree] has reached level 3.

After applying the Aqua Magia, James realized he might not have enough mana to actually complete the enchantment. And in fact he passed out at the moment the enchantment completely set, completely drained of mana.

The first thing he did upon waking, even before eating though he was ravenously hungry, was [Appraise] his shield.

[Appraisal]: Green Iron Tower Shield, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 19/19, Enchantment: Reflect (30)

It was the hardest enchantment yet, but James was most pleased with the results. Surely reflecting a water spear attack like before wouldn't overload the enchantment now. He cycled his barely recovered magic through it and felt it warm up faster than before, although he almost immediately grew dizzy and had to stop.

After two days of recovery, James armed and armored himself and set out again, to explore the second floor of the Dungeon.

And again, near the end of the staircase, he stopped. The trembling was so bad he almost lost his footing and fell down the stairs.

He checked and rechecked his armor, trying to make sure he had everything he needed, when he remembered.

He was out of Green Iron. Sure, there was more on the second floor, but what if it turned out he needed some of the other types of colored iron? He never had gone and mined out any significant amount of the ore, and never bothered to smelt any beyond Green and Brown. What if he needed Blue or Red Iron for something?

And so, once again, James turned back.

He returned to the passage abundant with Brown Iron Ore and Coal, and spent half the day mining it out, and the rest of the day smelting down the Brown Iron into ingots.

The next day he went to the passage that had large amounts of all the colored iron ores, although he had already stripped it of Green Iron ore, and mined out all the Red and Blue Iron. That took the entire day, and so it was on the next day when James discovered a problem.

He couldn't actually smelt the Blue or Red Iron Ore.

Until now, his smelter had been hot enough to melt the metal out of the ore for regular, Brown, and Green iron, although Green Iron did melt the soonest out of any of them. And although Jared had taught James about smelting, he hadn't said anything about ore that wouldn't melt. In fact, Jared had only ever had him smelt regular iron ore, and then only enough to get the Smelting skill.

James removed the Red Iron Ore from the smelter and set it aside to cool next to the Blue Iron Ore from earlier. Although he had the [Heat Resistance] skill, he was still careful and tested the temperature of the Blue Iron Ore by dripping some Pure Water on it.

It sizzled and popped, despite having sat out for almost an hour already.

James put it out of his mind and busied himself with baking bread for several hours. During this time, he remembered the Bat Wing Fan he had created long ago. He hadn't needed it, but it should help his smelter run hotter. Maybe that was the problem?

James once again dripped water on the ore to test it, this time on the Red Iron ore first.

No reaction. It was now cool to the touch.

Out of habit he dripped water on the Blue Iron Ore, expecting it to be cool as well, and was halfway to touching it when he realized the water was sizzling.

The Blue Iron Ore was still hot.

James was puzzled for about an hour before he supposed that, perhaps, the Blue Iron was heat resistant? Although that wouldn't explain why it was cooling so slowly…

He decided to wait and see how long it took the Blue Iron Ore to cool, but it was still hot enough to sizzle by the time he went to sleep.

In the morning, the water no longer sizzled when dripped on the ore, but it was still warm to the touch.

Since it was already warm, he decided to try smelting it again. After a few minutes of no reaction, he pulled it out again and dripped water on it.

No sizzling. In fact, it was still just warm to the touch. Normal metal would be too hot to touch after even a few minutes in the smelter.

James tentatively decided that Blue Iron Ore was resistant to changes in temperature. If that was true, maybe the ore just hadn't ever gotten hot enough to smelt the previous day. He put the ore back in the smelter.

To speed up the process, James kept the fire as large and hot as possible, feeding it plenty of coal and fanning it with the Bat Wing Fan, which markedly increased the temperature of the smelter.

[Smith] Class Skill: [Heat Resistance] has reached level 2.

Eventually, after far longer than seemed reasonable, the iron started to melt out of the ore and pour into the ingot mold.

[Smith] Class Skill: [Smelting] has reached level 4.

James continued smelting all the Blue Iron Ore he had mined, the monotony of fanning the flames and waiting for the metal to melt causing his mind to wander.

When his thoughts turned to the next floor of the Dungeon, his hands started to tremble.

He paused, staring at his hands until they stopped trembling.

Then he remembered the suddenness of that attack from the lake and his hands started trembling again.

He let the fear pass, taking deep breaths until the smoke from the smelter sent him into a coughing fit. He resumed fanning the flames and spoke aloud to put his thoughts in order.

"Okay," he started, "so it looks like I'm scared of the next floor of this Dungeon. What are my options? Can I just stay here? Maybe, I have plenty of materials and I can handle the monsters here, but… I don't have enough food to stay here forever. Even if I ate nothing but monster meat, I'll probably run out. There was never that many of the mole monsters. So I probably can't stay here forever. I could leave the Dungeon, but-" James shuddered before continuing. "By now the slavers might be back, and I don't want to be a slave again. I want to keep enchanting and smithing…"

He paused to scoop out some slag and add more ore to the smelter.

"So I have to keep going, at least until I find another exit from this Dungeon that the slavers don't know about. Okay, so once I finish with this ore, I'm moving. I can't just stay here where it's comfortable. I'm moving my camp to the second floor as soon as this ore is done."

With a vague sense of unease and anxiety James continued smelting the Blue Iron Ore.

The soft breeze continued to blow through the cavern as it always had.

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