Velik wasn’t really sure what he was expecting. The crate was about ten feet long and a foot wide, resembling an over-long casket more than anything else. There was a stable mana matrix in it, indicating it was enchanted somehow. The configuration reminded him of the one on his cloak that enabled [Air Walk], but the similarities were superficial.

His best guess was that it was some sort of weight-alleviating enchantment, which meant that three laborers all around level 20 were struggling to lift something that magic was making lighter. Whatever was inside had to weight half a ton, plus a little extra to account for the magic.

“Is this the surprise Aria mentioned you were working on?” Velik asked.

“Ah, no. It’s a surprise, but not the one she’s been harassing me over for weeks now,” Jensen replied. “If I’d known she was going to be so… persistent… about it, I would have made sure to put it in a magically shielded coffer right away.”

Velik circled around the crate once, then, not seeing any convenient way to open it, dug his fingers under the lid and pried upward. It came loose with a brief squeal as nails slipped out of the wood, revealing a worked black metal pole. It was tipped with a spearhead of dark gray laced with veins of the same black metal the rest of the weapon was made of.

How heavy could a spear possibly be to justify this kind of transportation procedure?

Setting the lid aside, Velik reached in and lifted. The spear came free of its resting place amid some sort of leather harness that fairly thrummed with magic, and without the crate to support its weight, Velik held the spear upright.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Repurposed golem core,” Jensen said. “Heavy, durable. It took weeks to make this single piece and cost a small fortune. It should be strong enough that even you won’t break it easily, but it has no enchantments on it. It’s completely non-magical.”

“The perfect weapon for fighting beyond the boundary,” Velik murmured. He’d expected to do his fighting as a wolf, ripping and tearing with tooth and nail, but this was better in some ways. It wasn’t his old [Shape Shifting]

spear, but it wasn’t nothing either.

“I guess it took a master metal mage helping them reshape the metal,” Jensen said. “No one could so much as scratch it manually, so it should hold its shape against whatever abuse you care to dish out.”

“It’ll have to. Without [Mending] and [Shape Shifting] to blunt the damage I do when I’m fighting something strong, a normal spear wouldn’t last a single fight. Thank you.”

“Just be careful where you set it down,” Jensen cautioned. “It’ll probably break the floor.”

There was some truth to that—Velik was working hard to keep his weight evenly distributed—but the claim was probably slightly exaggerated. Unless he drove it point-first into the wood, Velik doubted it’d be an issue. Still, he gently set it back down in its special crate, then hefted the whole thing and started carrying it to the courtyard.

“Uh, where are you going?” Jensen asked.

“It seemed prudent to practice with it outside.”

“Oh. Right. I appreciate you not breaking the walls.” Jensen hesitated for a moment, wrestling with some inner decision, then added, “Stop by my office when you’re done. I’ll show you that other thing I’ve been working on.”

“Aria might be upset to miss it,” Velik said.

Jensen waved the idea away with one hand. “She’ll get over it. Besides, there’s still plenty of time left. It’s not like you’re going to merge two new skills together into something else in a week.”

“No, I finished that a few hours ago.”

“I’m sorry. I must have misheard that.”

“A few hours ago,” Velik repeated.

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“How?”

Velik shrugged. “It was very straightforward.”

“Shit,” Jensen swore. “I thought we had a few more weeks. Okay, change of plans. Leave the spear here for now and come with me.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I got you a bunch of stat fruit. I was shooting for a full set before I gave them to you, but that didn’t happen. If you’ve finished both skills, the clock is against us. We need to get started right away.”

“Started with what?” Velik asked, pulling Jensen up short as he tried to rush away.

“Stat boosters,” Jensen told him. “Thirty of them. Well, twenty-nine now. The goal was ten for each stat, but I fell a bit short. The thing is you can’t just eat them all at once. It takes time for it to solidify before you can add another one.”

“How much time?” Velik didn’t like the idea of stalling for months slowly consuming a pile of magic fruit, and found himself briefly annoyed with Jensen for sitting on this so that he could theatrically present the whole set all at once. That wasn’t really fair, of course. There would be no fruits if not for Jensen’s work, so he ruthlessly quashed the feeling down.

“They recommend a day between each one, but you can probably get away with about sixteen hours.”

“That’s still three weeks.”

“A little less,” Jensen said. “I didn’t get the full set. I’ve only got twenty-two.”

“Two weeks is still a lot.”

Frowning, Jensen offered, “You could take them on the road with you. They’re extremely valuable though, and anything that can sense mana will be attracted to them.”

“It won’t take two weeks to get to the boundary,” Velik said. “Will they still work on the other side?”

“I have no idea. I’m not even sure if you’ll retain the stat boosts if it’s true that none of the enchantments on your gear will work. But I couldn’t think of any other way to help.”

Velik didn’t know either, but if Morgus had been truthful, he was going to have a limited personal system out there. He could only assume that meant he’d keep his stats and skills, even if it wouldn’t extend to his kit. Stat boosts seemed like something he could hang onto, though he honestly wasn’t sure how much help twenty or so points would be. Compared to his current stats, it was a very minor boost.

Then again, he needed every advantage he could get if he wanted to hunt down and kill a divine beast. Seen in that light, he couldn’t possibly turn down Jensen’s gift just because it would cost him some time. Still, he’d go through them as quickly as possible and take whatever was left on the road with him when he went.

They’d been walking while they talked, ending in Jensen’s office. He locked the door behind them, then touched the control slate that activated a set of wards to soundproof the room. Velik looked around curiously as streamers of mana wove themselves through the fabric of reality, stilling the air within an inch or so of the walls.

How does that block noise? he wondered.

There was a noticeable temperature fluctuation closer to the walls to go with the still air, which was undoubtedly connected to the magic, but Velik had no clue why it was doing that. Whoever had enchanted the room obviously knew the connection between still air, cold temperatures, and noise, but there were no instructions in the mana.

Completely ignoring the magic he’d just activated, Jensen crossed the room and pressed on one of the wood panels. It clicked as some hidden mechanical mechanism popped it out of place, and he slid it into the wall to reveal a safe large enough to walk into.

Opening that required Jensen to pass some sort of magical scan that was complex enough Velik doubted he could trick the enchantment into letting him through, which was probably the whole point. Jensen didn’t want people to know about the safe, and those that did know still wouldn’t be able to get in without defeating the magic keeping it safe.

When the door swung open, it revealed four shelves stuffed to the brim. An open chest piled with gold fulmites sat on the bottom of the safe. Half a filing cabinet’s paperwork took up another shelf. Various trinkets that fairly glowed to Velik’s eyes were packed into the next.

And at the top was a thin black box, made of some sort of dark wood and banded in steel. Jensen reached up and pulled it free, then fished a key off a chain on his neck to open it. He turned around and presented it to Velik, revealing the contents in their own individual slots.

Velik hadn’t given much thought to the appearance of stat boosting food. Mostly, he pictured them as apples of three different colors, one for each stat. The reality was far different. There were apples, but there were also other fruits, and non-fruits as well. A wedge of cheese was stuffed into one slot. Another held a glass bottle of what looked like golden mead. A small bread ball was in the back row.

There were also eight empty slots, as Jensen had warned. The case had been specifically designed for the purpose of holding stat boosters, and Velik briefly wondered if it was custom-made or just something rich people kept lying around for when they wanted to gift their kid a strong start in life.

Jensen set it down on his desk and beckoned for Velik to approach it. “The back section is for mystic, middle is mind, and front is physical,” he explained. “For the quickest results, you should rotate between the three. If you’re not going to wait, then there’s no time to waste. Pick one and eat it.”

Velik hesitated for a moment, but in the end, it didn’t matter what choice he made. He was going to eat them all anyway. He settled on something that looked vaguely like a walnut and picked it up. “Do I crack the shell on this?” he asked.

“Unless you prefer to eat them,” Jensen said with a chuckle.

Velik squeezed, splitting the shell, and picked the nut out of it. It didn’t look like much physically, but it pulsed with mana. Shrugging, he popped it into his mouth and bit down.

[You have permanently gained +1 to mental.]