With a wave of my hand, my dagger activates and shoots out a blast fast enough to reach my target— a moose with a thick coat of fur and horns with ethereal sand constantly flowing out of them — seconds after it was released.

  I had deliberately aimed for the creature's head, making sure that its brain takes the full power of my spell. If it doesn't die, then I can make sure that it gets knocked out.

  The spell hits, the moose shudders followed by a wail that sounds like it came from a collapsing building, finally, its legs give out and it falls down hard enough to bury itself in the snow.

  [Shockwave] is more effective than I thought, every hit does heavy damage while also giving monsters internal bleeding. I'm thinking of using passives that increase my running speed in the future, I think I wanna move to using vibrational attacks as my main way of attacking from now on.

  "Every iteration of my dagger will have [Shockwave] or a different variant," the words just slip out on their own, my mouth moving independent of my body while I hobble to the corpse. "The blade being able to cut so easily because of [Shockwave] is good too, much better than having to force my way into the body."

  Using this dagger is like using a miniature chainsaw, it's genuinely satisfying feeling it cut through flesh. Am I becoming sadistic? I totally am, aren't I?

  "Fuck..." I rub my broken leg, standing up has now become an arduous task that makes my face go pale every single time. I pocket the monster core, alongside the ones I got from the monsters killed by that giant deer, I have collected over a hundred of them.

  Close to two hundred actually, maybe it even passed that number, I haven't exactly kept count. I'll do it eventually though, when I start building the traps.

  My blueprints have been whispering to me these last few days, from how to repair my leg— or at least to make some kind of bear trap that wraps around it, acting as a prosthetic. — or making objects that can trap light, heat, water, and everything that I can get my hands on, creating grenades, to gigantic traps with enough firepower to bring down a mountain.

  Or a particularly annoying Warped.

  Making that particular trap will take a while though, especially with how many enchanted grenades it uses, the monster cores alone are enough to make me cry.

  "It's worth it." I tell myself, my crutch pressed against the ground, the pointed tip stabbing the earth and stabilizing me for a split second, my leg moves, I can barely feel it, then I use my crutch again.

  Walking from one place to the next is tedious, annoying and inspiring. The weakness that I'm feeling from not being able to walk properly only serves to make me more spiteful, more eager to take down the bastard responsible for making me this way.

  The levels that I'll get from killing it is one thing, the mender's cloak is another, spitting on its face though? Just thinking about it gets me excited.

  Making my way back, I go inside my igloo and sit down. It's warm here, a perpetual soup is cooking on top of the hearth— which now uses enchantments and a contraption that can only be called a "heat trap" to burn for longer. — and the protections that I've placed outside is keeping it safe.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  The moment I let go of my dagger, pain rushes in: my hand goes numb, my body begins to ache, and my head starts to throb.

  All of these come from the cold, the winter bite isn't a joke, which is why it's weird that I haven't upgraded my [Cold Resistance] to intermediate yet. I wanna say that it's suspicious as hell, but I know I'm just being impatient with my growth.

  [Cold Resistance] gets upgraded when it gets upgraded, forcing it is impossible and if I somehow managed to do that manually, then it will cause me to get corrupted and become an aberrant.

  "Hahhh..." It's warm enough that the air I breathe out doesn't turn into white mist. I stand up and fill my bowl full of soup, vegetables follow, then monster meat then gets added on top of that.

  Eating a lot is beneficial to me right now, it helps heal my leg while letting me recover my stamina. I haven't slept a lot lately so it keeps me sane too, if not for this perpetual soup and my recovery passive, I would have collapsed from exhaustion long ago.

  This thing doesn't have spices but the taste isn't bad, all the vegetables and meat I've added into the pot all this time have created this weird abomination of taste that, while gamey, is also incredibly delicious.

  Adding more ingredients to the pot— from more monster meat, vegetables, to chunks of ice. — is going to add more flavor as well. I can't wait how this thing turns out a few days from now.

  I finish my soup and put down the bowl, my collection of monster cores grows as I empty my pouch, the chest closes, I like to think it's like Pandora's box, which isn't a wrong comparison really.

  Going out now is pretty pointless, instead I take off my cloak and go to my workbench. I haven't been wearing armor these days, I want to enchant my gear before I throw them again.

  The clothes I'm currently wearing are enchanted, leftovers from my constant practices. My shirt has protective and cold resistant enchantments while the pants provide minor stat buffs and cold protection.

  Different enchantments can sometimes be hard to seperate, that's why I practiced with two separate runes for each cloth before adding cold protection on top of them. Doing this is an efficient way to learn the limits of my enchantments and skill.

  Knowing the upper limit of enchantments per item is four is different from applying that knowledge and actually making something with four different effects.

  While my dagger technically only has one type of effect— and that's spell casting. — my dagger has three, spell casting, the added stickiness in the handle, and also the reduced pain I feel when holding it.

  These are mostly useful however, and these effects can be substituted by a class perks, hell, I'd say that perks are even better than mere enchantments... Which is obvious, I guess.

  "I'd love to have boosted spell casting though," I murmur as I finish stitching a single rune into the fabric of another shirt. "Increased magic power sounds useful,"

  Only against low level mobs. I refuse to add verbally. Memories of the Warped the power disparity between the two of us came rushing back, no matter what gear I have right now, damaging it is impossible.

  My hands stopped shaking and I exhaled sharply, I held my face, "is trauma not affected by mental resistance or something?" I murmur in horror. "How can I still get traumatized?"

  And is it such a bad thing to feel this kind of heart wrenching fear? If it's not debilitating or crippling then experiencing PTSD should be fine right?

  "How long will it take before I experience something that's really traumatic though? Getting a broken leg is enough to increase my heartrate just by thinking of the monster responsible..." Most people would probably not even consider the fact that they can get PTSD, they'd say that they're immune to it until they actually get it.

  I pick up the shirt and go back to engraving, doing this while my hand is shaking is good practice too, I try my best to make the line as straight as I can. My pulse reaches my ears and the sound of wind coming from outside dies down, the panic I'm feeling giving me tunnel vision helps too.

  Weaponized panic attacks, I almost want to laugh at the absurdity of all this, [Mental Resistance] can't help with PTSD but I guess panic attacks help me focus now, it's unironically going to be useful in a fight too.