My front door busted in, the wood around the lock exploding into splinters.

  "What the fuck?" I said.

  Whoever it was just ruined my door! It's called knocking asshole!

  A small group of three what were clearly thugs came in through the busted door. They were all carrying swords.

  "Give us all your loot in the name of Barton Traxby!" the middle one said.

  He had a bald head, a goatee, and a silver earring in his left ear.

  "Who is Barton Traxby," I said, "and why are you knocking down my door?"

  "Barton Traxby," he said, "runs these streets. Your father hasn't paid his protection money in the last couple days, and we're looking to collect, with interest."

  "My father's dead," I said. "Can't you leave a grieving family in peace?"

  I tried to look as pitiful as possible, but he wasn't buying it. I still had no weapons or fighting skills and wasn't wearing any armor. I couldn't try to fight them. At least, not yet.

  "You can go back to grieving when we get paid," he said.

  "Valda," I said, "pay the man. Get the money from the bedroom."

  I turned and winked at her. She nodded. She left her mace in the bedroom. She grabbed it and came back, wielding it.

  "What do you think you're gonna do with that, Missy?" the man said.

  "Bust your damn head open!" she said.

  Valda rushed the leader and ducked just as he swung his sword over her head. She smashed her mace into one of his knees, breaking his leg and bending it backwards.

  "Bitch!" he said.

  She got under him and pushed his body into one of the other thugs, knocking the sword out of his hand and sending them both to the ground. The third thug swung at her, but she blocked it with the shaft of her mace. Then she kicked him in the stomach, sending him to the ground as well.

  Valda brandished her mace at them, just daring them to try to come back at her. The two thugs with functioning legs grabbed their leader and pulled him through the door.

  "You'll pay for this!" the leader yelled as they dragged him away.

  I hoped I'd be better prepared for when they came back. Hopefully, they came back later rather than sooner.

  I tried to close the door, but it swung open. I wished I had something to fix it with. Hmm. Maybe I did. Woodworking was a skill in this place, so it must be apprentice level. This was something I should be able to fix.

  "Thanks, Valda," I said.

  "No problem," she said. "You saved my life. So I figured I'd return the favor."

  "Still, thanks," I said.

  "Wow! How did you do that?" Brent said.

  "Yeah, you were all like pow! Bang! Splat!" Delia said. She made punching motions in the air.

  "I'll teach you when you're older," she said. After a beat, she asked Delia, "So how old are you?"

  "Eight!" she said. She held up her fingers to count to eight.

  "I'm twelve!" Brent said. He tried to mimic Delia's finger counting, but then he realized he didn't have twelve fingers.

  Valda laughed. I didn't hear anything else after that because I went into my father's workshop to grab his tool box.

  I grabbed some pieces of different sizes of wood and brought the whole toolbox out. I also made sure to grab the glue. We didn't have the modern glues of my old world, but animal glue would work just fine.

  I could feel my class skill expertise leaking into my mind. While I had been handy with a hammer and nail, and screw and screwdriver, I didn't know anything about the difference between glue types until the system installed it into my brain.

  Unfortunately, I didn't have screws available to me. They apparently hadn't been invented yet. That, or they just weren't widely available yet.

  I examined the lock and the busted part of the door frame. The lock was still in workable shape. It was just the frame that was broken.

  After another brief examination, I used a chisel to cut away the rough splintered wood. Then I cut pieces of wood to fill the hole and recreate the missing part of the door frame.

  Using a combination of glue and carpenter's nails, I fastened the pieces of wood into the hole, layering pieces on top of each other until it was flush with the rest of the door frame.

  Then I got to work with a few different sizes of wood files and smoothed out any imperfections. Then I painted over the spot and from a few feet away, you couldn't even see the damage anymore.

  Nice. My first fix job since choosing the Maker class. Exactly the thing I needed to validate my choice. Now, with all the things I gathered in the dungeon, I was going to spend the day making things and validating myself even more.

  Valda looked at it.

  "Are you a carpenter?" she asked. "How did you do that? And so quickly, too."

  "It's part of my class," I said.

  "Oh," she said. "That's cool. What's your class?"

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  "Maker," I said.

  "Never heard of it," she said.

  "I'd say most people probably haven't," I said.

  "What does it do?" she asked.

  "So far," I said, "it just gives me proficiency in all crafting skills."

  "Isn't that a lot?" she asked.

  "Yeah," I said, "but it gives me no other bonuses to start."

  "Oh, that blows," she said.

  I shrugged.

  "It's a tradeoff," I said.

  "So how are you going to be able to fight?" she asked.

  "The hard way," I said. "By learning. Or I could make bombs.

  "What are bombs?" she asked.

  "Uh," I said. I hadn't realized they might not have bomb technology yet. "You know how the fireball spell explodes?"

  "Uh, yeah," she said.

  "It's like that, but without magic," I said. "It's alchemy."

  "Alchemy can do that?" she asked.

  "Alchemy can do lots of things," I said, "but let's get on the road. I have to grab something and then we'll be off."

  "Ok," she said.

  I went into my room and packed the alchemy set that my father got me over a series of multiple birthdays. I think he really wanted me to do something other than just run the shop with him. I put it in another pack.

  I put clothes in between the pieces so they were less likely to shatter, but I still had to be careful. Luckily, it was still early in the morning, before my shop opened and before there were many people on the street. Which made the interruption even more rude and unnecessary.

  We made it to the shop safely, and I set up my alchemy set in the back. I also planned to do some enchantment later, so I cleared a space for that on one of the counters and then I threw a bag on it. I was planning to make an infinity bag, so I needed a bag.

  I spent the next hour showing Valda how to run the shop. How much everything cost including repairs and other services. I also showed her where the money was.

  She was very wide eyed about the whole thing, which seemed weird, but maybe she just had never worked in a shop before. I had her fully set up before we opened. I also showed her how to open the shop.

  Once we were open, I handled the first several customers so she could watch, but then after an hour, I had her take over so I could fiddle with my experiments in the back.

  Since I had the knowledge installed into my brain, all I had to do was think of either the ingredients I had, or what I wanted to make and the pieces would fall together in my mind, as long as I had enough proficiency in the skill of course.

  I had what I needed to make a batch of uncommon health, mana, and stamina potions, as well as dark sight potions, and a mild poison from one of the mushroom types. When I examined it, it said "poisonous mushroom." How original.

  I started on making stamina potions since those were very useful in the dungeon. I crushed, mashed, and powderized ingredients in a mortar and pestle. I put them in a small cauldron that I placed on top of the furnace to heat up.

  While I let that brew, I moved on to refurbishing the Delphian steel swords I got from skeletons in the dungeon. I ended up with about twenty of them, between what I strapped to my pack and what I carried in my arms. They weren't very sharp anymore, so I didn't have to worry about that.

  I started by removing the hilts from the swords. They were grimy, the leather was worn and rotting, and they were loose. After removing that, I washed all the swords. Then I placed them in the furnace. I would have to reheat them a couple times to get the whole blades, but in the end, I could probably sell them for a pretty penny.

  I removed the scale that accumulated on the outside of the metal from oxidation. Then I pounded away the chips by filling in the spaces with surrounding material. Luckily there wasn't anything that needed welding, because that was a pain in the ass, and I'd need to use one of the swords for material.

  The way I was doing it, I'd be able to sell the whole bunch. It was tedious, but I got it done pretty quickly considering how many there were. I didn't have to reinforce any of the tangs after checking.

  I didn't have any quenching oil, and I didn't want to quench with water for fear they'd crack, so I settle for just letting them cool down on their own time. The carbon content seemed high enough where I couldn't quench with water anymore. The higher the carbon content, the more careful you had to be and you couldn't quench with water after a certain content percentage, because it made them too brittle and likely to break.

  With journeyman level skill in blacksmithing, I could tell by how the metal behaved under heat and under the hammer. After they were adequately shaped and cool, I ground them down to sharp edges and the scratches out of them.

  I polished them, put a finish on them, and fitted them with new handles. Then I displayed them for purchase. Using my appraisal skill, I made a judgement on where to price them and carved that into the wood above the rack I hung them on.

  My most expensive sword on the racks before had been twenty gold. I set the Delphian steel swords at fifty gold coins. It would put a dent in most men's or women's coin purses, but based on what I saw, they were worth it.

  My pricing probably wasn't pinpoint accurate because I was still an apprentice in appraisal, but it would serve for now. I hadn't grabbed any armor from the skeletons yet because it would have been too hard to carry without an infinity bag.

  I got a notification in the upper right corner of my vision. When I clicked on it, it said I had leveled up to level 2. It gave me choices on how to level up. It gave me a stat point to distribute, an additional proficiency level in anything crafting related, and a new ability.

  I put the stat point in intelligence, obviously. The additional proficiency level I had to think about. I would get the most mileage out of boosting my blacksmithing or alchemy up to 5 right now. I just didn't know which to do.

  I would probably get another proficiency next level, but what could I use right now? Since I was still making potions, it made the most sense to level up my alchemy proficiency first, despite how badly I wanted to level up my blacksmithing skill, just for the fun of being able to create high-quality weapons and armor. I could do that later.

  When I leveled up the proficiency in alchemy to 5 it said (Expert) next to it. Then I immediately realized I had the cauldron on the furnace for too long. It wasn't getting a ton of heat from the furnace, but after nearly two hours, it accumulated. The concoction was overcooked. I poured it out and started fresh.

  I still had a lot of ingredients left. I mashed and ground the ingredients again and put them in the cauldron with water and placed it on the furnace again.

  I wasn't sure how I was going to tell how much time had passed since watches and clocks didn't exist, but I could periodically check the cauldron and tell how close it was by the conditions of the brew.

  As I was getting ready to try enchanting a bag to hold infinite items, I heard a familiar cackling. It was unfortunate for me that any cackling would sound familiar to me, but better to know who it was rather than not, I supposed.

  Stats:

  Strength: 5

  Dexterity: 4

  Constitution: 3

  Wisdom: 4

  Intelligence: 7

  Charisma: 2

  Resources:

  HP: 70 hit points

  MP: 140 mana points

  Stamina: 70 stamina points

  Proficiencies:

  Bartering: Apprentice (3)

  Appraisal: Apprentice (3)

  Repair: Apprentice (3)

  Alchemy: Expert (5)

  Blacksmithing: Journeyman (4)

  Enchanting: Apprentice (3)

  Tinkering: Apprentice (3)

  Woodworking: Apprentice (3)

  Artifice: Apprentice (3)

  Leatherworking: Apprentice (3)

  Stoneworking: Apprentice (3)

  Glassblowing: Apprentice (3)

  Textiles: Apprentice (3)

  Papermaking: Apprentice (3)

  Pottery/Ceramics: Apprentice (3)

  Jewelcrafting: Apprentice (3)

  Inscription: Apprentice (3)

  Brewing: Apprentice (3)

  Cooking: Apprentice (3)

  Herbalism: Apprentice (3)

  Architecture: Apprentice (3)

  Engineering: Apprentice (3)

  Shipbuilding: Apprentice (3)

  Cartography: Apprentice (3)

  Ritual Magic: Apprentice (3)

  Calligraphy: Apprentice (3)

  Painting: Apprentice (3)

  Sculpture: Apprentice (3)

  Spellcrafting: Apprentice (3)

  (And More)(Far too many to fully list)(Will come up in the story as they become relevant)

  Abilities/Spells:

  Analyze: Ability to analyse people, objects, and creatures, and learn information about them, such as identification, classification, level, abilities, health, etc.

  Design: Create 3 and 2 dimensional designs, plans, and schematics in your mind and holographically in front of your eyes. Can only be seen by the user.