Messing with the cottage didn't result in it blowing up on my face and then killing me, who would have thought? The effects seem to be consistent no matter what I tampered with as well.

  The circuitry wasn't inside the cottage, well, it is, it's just on a much deeper level than the interior. It runs through the walls and underneath the floor, the furniture or the equipment didn't have anything to do with it.

  Basically, I wasn't wrong when I guessed that the mender may have had some form of OCD, at the same time, the general similarities between cottages also had a purpose in that they produce a field that prevents corruption and pushes away monsters.

  They also gather mana I think? That's still a working theory, one supported by my own magical awakening, I mean, why else would Wardcruncha do the ritual in a cottage? Obviously it's because they're capable of utilizing the leylines in some way.

  Since it's now confirmed that the cottages won't get affected even if you destroy the furniture inside them, I decided to eventually move into the cottage close to the humus dungeon, once there, I'll be able to easily survive the winter and slow down my corruption.

  Saving up on my corruption-trap lockets is a given once I move inside, leaving me open to use my resources on other things, like turning inhuman.

  Which is still a work in progress by the way, and right now, I'm scouring the cottage for anything that might help me with it. The mender should have something like that around here, she has so many books that it's only natural one of them has to have knowledge when it comes to becoming an inhuman.

  Wardcruncha should be able to help me as well, it's too bad he's in Ghorise and I can't risk coming close to humans in my current state.

  "What's this?" After a few minutes of digging through one of the bookshelves, I found a strangely colored book. Picking it up and opening it, I see that it is some kind of story book. "Why does she have this?"

  The story is about a dryad— which are commonly depicted as "plant people" in fantasy, here though, they're carnivorous plants that mutated to look human. — who wanted to live in a city but couldn't because the humans are scared of her, so she devised a way to become human.

  She designed a ritual that gives her flesh, starts living with humans, and eventually finds romance with a noble, standard fairy tale stuff, however, everything ends in tragedy when the noble dies and she's forced to show her true identity in order to heal him.

  Once they learn that she's a dryad, she gets hunted down, the village gets angry at her for tricking them and even her lover tries to kill her.

  In the end, she wiped out the entire village and left, never to be seen again.

  "Yeah, I don't get it." I closed the book in regret, reading the entire thing didn't clue me in as to the purpose of this book. A dryad becoming human? What does that have to do with anything?

  Unless it implies that the mender is a dryad? Which, no, it was explicitly stated in Firelight Chronicles that she wasn't, she's human. It can be argued that she might have disguised herself but that would be even weirder, why would a dryad disguise themselves and blend in with humans when they can just kill everyone?

  As dark as it sounds, dryads aren't known for their kindness and caring attitude, humanity views them as monsters that needs to be killed.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  A kind dryad only exists in fantasy books, like the one that I'm reading right now.

  "And I learned nothing in the end," I closed the book and put it back on its shelf. I gave the book one last solemn look, "maybe the dryad is just childish and likes those kinds of stories?"

  Childish. Does that description apply to the book I just read? With how tragic it is, the kids reading it— or are being read to. — will probably cry instead of learning some kind of moral lesson.

  "Eh, whatever." Everything that needed to be done in this cottage had already been done so I went and walked back to my current home, I packed everything I could and then made my way back to the humus dungeon.

  Reorganizing the cottage and then activating it was the last thing I did before making my bed and sleeping on it.

  Come morning, I replaced my locket and worked on the next iteration of my dagger. With my previous experience in doing this, I'm able to rush through the various steps when making the weapon and the blade was finished in just a single day. It even has the runes and everything!

  When night strikes, I picked up my wand and headed out to scout the forest. Finding the gloves should be easy, I know its general area and all I need to do is find it.

  Sadly, I came back empty handed, tomorrow, maybe?

  For the next few days, I went into a comfortable rhythm of making my dagger, scouting, and going to sleep. I also occasionally practice my magic, since I'm level 35 now, the old practice dummies— trees. — I used are no longer effective, this made me invest in making another trap for magic, and it is far more potent than my lockets.

  After shoving the cylindrical device inside of a straw dummy, I left it alone and let it corrupt the materials. The chances of this making a mimic is pretty high but right as long as I keep damaging the dummy, it should be fine.

  That done, I went back and finished my dagger, the changes to this one are the biggest ones yet.

  Compared to the first and second iterations, my current dagger needed to have spells that fit with my level, the increase in firepower is big enough that the two previous wands combined wouldn't be enough to beat this thing.

  I still use basic spells to fuel it, making it cheap, and thanks to what those basic spells become, I basically turned myself into a living weapon capable of spamming low mid-level spells.

  Said spells are: [Microseism], — which is a miniature earthquake. — [Thunderous Blast], — for when I need to disorient a large crowd and kill a large group of weak opponents, like a swarm of bugs. — [Gale Blade], — a straight forward attack, or attacks, rather, being on the opposite end of this spell is like being blendered. — [Gelid Bones], — in case I fight something I can't damage, poisoning it (in a sense) should work. — and, of course, the trusty [Freeze] spell.

  With this dagger and my stats, I should be able to kill most of the monsters inside this forest.

  Also, unlike my previous dagger, which had an iron blade, this one is purely carbon. I've gotten used to making graphene from charcoal so I decided to abuse that fact and created a weapon made entirely of the material.

  I'll do the same when I upgrade my armor as well.

  Aesthetically speaking, the blade looks futuristic? I guess? That's the word I'd use to describe this thing: it's a sleek, all black knife with a grooved handle, the blade still has growing lines on its surface but I've blocked most of the runes with an added layer above them and created an outline of a grinning, fanged mouth on both sides.

  The edge is super sharp too, even without the constant vibration produced by [Microseism], it can cut wood like a hot knife through butter. It's true, I used it to chop down an entire tree and it only took me a few minutes, much faster than an axe.

  The dagger also has its own sheath— also made of graphene. — which turns off its magic, preventing me from accidentally cutting myself and the blade from becoming corrupted on top of that.

  With this blade, I will blitz through the forest, collect the rest of the mender's set, and then proceed to gather the ingredients I need to become an inhuman.

  I sheathed my dagger and walked out of the cottage. There's so many things to do and very little time to do it, winter is going to end in just a few weeks and I'll have to meet Ifira then.

  Preferably, I'd want to keep going and improve until I'm at least somewhere close to Ifira's level but that's impossible, even if I spend 24 hours killing monsters, I still would need a few years to get to level 70, which, yeah, is where Ifira's strength is comfortably sitting in.

  Currently.

  She can level up herself, and since she's the perfect vessel, she actually gets an exp boost with each kill, making my hard work pointless.

  Confronting her won't work, and so I have no choice but to be her lackey, much like in canon.

  "Maybe if I become an inhuman I'd be able to fight her?" I murmur.