[intermediate Mental Resistance] > [Masterful Mental Resistance]

  And there it is, after countless nosebleeds, headaches, and I nearly collapsed close to the cage of the ferret and almost died, my mental resistance passive finally reached the [Masterful] tier.

  [Physical Resistance] did the same some time back as well, and now I'm both physically and mentally resistant, I'd say that I'm tougher than most adults now even. The passives will only grow with my stats as well.

  Something rattled and my eyes immediately went to the cage. The ferret is struggling again, I'm not really worried about its escape though, it can keep trying to break its cage and it will be a long, long while before it succeeds.

  And that's even with bad weather like constant snow and cold, the debuffs my magic circles are peppering it with every second are simply too much for it to handle.

  Adding debuffs to my arsenal sounded useful so I'm planning on revamping all the spells I'm adding to my dagger, changing my main mode of attack into something vibration related is the first of the changes I made.

  There's this blade in Pricorian ruins, it's one of the early game items that a player can get, and discounting its in-game stats, the flavor text the weapon has described it as using "vibrational energy" to make the blade cut things easier.

  Putting that into my blade will increase my chances of winning when in melee, and during range, I can use it to release a powerful shockwave that literally causes the bones of my target to break apart from the inside.

  The attack is more effective than hail shot, and I can use it to escape prisons too, since vibrations can break concrete easily. Hell, I can break the surroundings with this spell, giving me a new way of fighting an opponent compared to before.

  Cooking food is usually the first thing I do after coming home. This time, I sat down on my work bench and pulled out the parts of my wand and started assembling them. Monster cores went inside the hollow space of the handle, fitting exactly four of them.

  Magic began to flow into the carbon, the runic lines I etched glowing ominously as it powered up, they flowed to the dagger when I socketed it, the runes in the metal also beginning to glow, both sides of the blade varied in design, signifying that they contain different spells.

  Just like the blade, the handle also has spells, except these ones are debuffs, well, a few of them are. The best one— in my opinion. — is the debuff that made the surface sticky, which will make it hard for me to let go of the dagger during combat.

  Another debuff is one that makes me ignore pain, in most cases, something like this will make a fighter forget about his wounds when fighting but for me, who's going to be far from the fight anyway, it will make me ignore the exhaustion I'm feeling from constantly repositioning.

  The last one is an enchantment that makes the material more durable, which is there for an obvious reason.

  As for the blade itself, I figured out how to utilize the available space in it and instead of just three spells, I managed to fit five. The constant practice using firewood wasn't for nothing,

  [Shockwave], [Sinkhole], [Frozen Arrow], [Freeze], and [Frost Bite] are the spells I stuffed into my wand, three use [Water Ball] but the first two need an entirely new spell, learning [Wind Blast] wasn't difficult and I managed to expertly use it after a single day of practice.

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  Currently, the most useful spell out of all of them is [Shockwave], which should have armor piercing properties, it can still do damage even if I use it on something with higher levels than me.

  [Sinkhole] meanwhile is there to replace [Ice Wall], it's a lot more hazardous, but that's the point. I don't care if I risk my own life every time I use it, at least the spell does something.

  [Ice Wall] only really became useful now because it's winter and that I needed to build something, in any other season, it would melt without doing anything.

  A useless seasonal spell, that's what [Ice Wall] is.

  Gently, I placed the wand on the table, I treated it like it was made of glass and could shatter from the smallest pressure.

  Beautiful. It looked beautiful.

  The blade is dull gray, the color of a sky before and after a storm, the blue lines running through it look like lightning, the vibrations that come from [Shockwave] form at the sharp edges, creating a line of constantly warped air, looking through the small space reminded me of the wavy way heatwaves distort one's vision.

  Socketed in a ring between the handle and the blade sits the Flay containing all the physical information the runes need to function, from stabbing motions, the way air distorts, and brewing storms. This one is a much higher quality compared to the Flay in my first wand and is incredibly efficient, like a modern CPU.

  Okay, probably not comparable to a modern CPU.

  My fingers brush the handle, the blue lines created by runes didn't fit the charcoal black surface of the material yet it didn't make it look bad either, aesthetically speaking, the colors blue and black have always been good together.

  I picked it up and waved it around, my ears picked up the hum from the blade's vibration, "[Wind Blast]."

  The vibrations picked up as the runes in the dagger got fueled with magic, an actual spell. The warped air surrounding the blade is now more visible, a silver lining amidst gray clouds, rays of sunlight filtering through thick layers of nimbus.

  I went out of my igloo and after walking a fair distance from it, proceeded to practice with my newest spell. Waving the wand to the side like I always do caused an invisible wave of pressure to erupt from the tip and blitz towards a nearby tree.

  Wood splintered as my spell made contact, a creaking sound echoed out before it was drowned out by the hum of the shockwave.

  Then... Silence. The forest went quiet, and even snow refused to fall, or maybe the pressure from my spell caused the local air to warp for a moment, blowing away the snowflakes that would have otherwise fallen down.

  [Shockwave] is powerful, destructive, and can break a tree apart like it's nothing, but more importantly, it is hard to spot. I can use this against an unsuspecting victim and they wouldn't be able to sense it unless they have a particularly sharp ear.

  Watching closely, I notice that the hum in my blade is less prominent now, weaker. I only have one more [Shockwave] left inside of this thing, so I decided to use it, this time I aimed it at a rock.

  Much like the tree, it broke apart the moment the spell hit it. But unlike the tree, the damage is more obvious, which makes sense in a way, the harder an object is, the easier it is for vibrations to break it apart.

  Trees are soft, malleable, they can withstand the pressure brought on by [Shockwave] by a fair bit, I'm guessing the way the fibrous wood coiled around each other helped with that as well.

  "Doesn't change the fact that I can do a lot of damage to it though." I murmur, eyeing the damaged tree trunk, the center of it is an open gash, exposing the soft flesh beneath. "How effective can this be when used against something living?"

  The worst outcome I can come up with is that they die from the shockwaves passing through their organs, or better yet, their brain. Other than that? Bodies are mostly water, so they're fairly resistant to vibrations.

  At a certain frequency, someone who likes to party can say that they can stand in front of loud speakers blaring heart hammering bears for hours on end but put them in front of, say, a plane's engine and they would probably start getting a headache.

  I did plan for this outcome though, because when [Shockwave] becomes ineffective, I'll use [Frozen Arrow] and freeze their blood, making them more vulnerable to the attack, if not outright susceptible to it.

  With that being said, I put on my leather gear followed by my cloak. Besides upgrading my passives and designing my dagger, I've also spent time scouting out the local area and I think I found where the mender's cloak is.

  I haven't confirmed it yet, I still need to see if it really is the right spot, but my gut tells me that it is.

  Going out of my temporary house at night while it's halfway through winter is a bad idea in most cases, right now though, it's an opportunity to further improve on my [Cold Resistance] passive, hopefully it gets upgraded soon, I really don't want to keep worrying about the cold.