"So where are you going in the vacation Victor?"
"I got a job to escort some caravans. Their route are those going through some monster infested territory so I expect some good combat experience. How about you chatterbox?"
"I think my family might be the one you are escorting, so I guess we will see each other."
"How is that a vacation if the two of you see each other everyday?"
"We didn't plan it. The one who arranged for the escort is my parents. They usually only hire those with long history and reputable reputation. They must have seen that victor is in the same class so they recruited him."

Typical nosy parent then. Either that or they want to ask him how chatterbox is in school.

"Victor, don't tell them anything embarrassing!"
"I won't, I'll keep my answer bland so they won't pester me all the time. If I keep chatting with your parents, they probably won't release me to fight at the frontlines."
"Good, just tell them we spend most of our times hammering and talking about metal. How about you brill? Where are you going this vacation?"
"I'll travel to my hometown and visit my parents."
"That's always good. I should visit my parents too after finishing the escort quest."
"You need a lift to your hometown brill? My family's caravan will head to the Gold Capital."
"No thanks, I need to stop by some place first and buy some souvenirs."

I need supplies that could last me a month in the dessert after all. The gold capital is at the centre of this continent and the biggest and most controlled place. That is my goal in being a blacksmith and that is where I want to forge my legend. I want to show up there when I start that challenge. I chose a quiet life before but I got dragged in by the politics because of the princess. This time I would make a name for myself. A name so big that the ruling powers will have no choice but to be respectful to me.

I'm going to the desert so common sense tells me that I should bring a lot of food but the teacher found a huge worm that ended up tasting pretty good. I can somehow manage to kill it if I use magic, probably. The problem is finding where it is. I'll just stash food just in case.

Just in case I should pack enough food for two months, I can buy half of it fresh and the other half preserved. It is best if I can find something to eat at the desert but that seems unlikely. I can make water so I don't have to worry about the biggest problem in the desert.

I have a few of the knives I made but I can't use them as weapon since it would just break against monster in this continent. I would like some impact weapons but it would cost me at least 5 gold coins and the good ones around 10-15 gold coins. It would eat up all my reward for the project if I choose the good quality ones and I don't trust the cheap ones. This is a dilemma, maybe I can make a simple metal club from some leftover metals at the workshop. I suppose that will do for now, I will just make it in one piece and wrap the handle with some leather.

For armour, I don't think I would need it. Most of the armour here are for the heavy knight type and those things are really expensive. Those things aren't really compatible with the desert since they would sink. Light armour is useless for the monsters in this continent too so its just a waste to buy them. Normal clothes should be fine, I can just run away if things get too dangerous for me.

I want to train my body so I can do without the tent and most luxuries. I can survive under the elements. A cooking pan and a pot and maybe some change of clothes would suffice for most everyday living. Sleeping would be a problem since I don't have a way to watch my surroundings. I can't tank it and stay up for one months so I need to train my sense for danger too. I'll just have to survey the area and judge the situation before deciding, I do hope there is a cave I can stay while I rest, although I don't know how safe a rock cave is against monsters that swim through sand.

As for travelling, I can just walk there. If I am training myself I may as well walk to strengthen my legs. I want to save money where I can after all. If I do walk, I may need a new pair of shoes. Wait, I can just go barefoot. This will help toughen up my soles while training my weight distribution.

I guess that's all that I need for this travel. I guess I will need a bag so I can put some of my things or they will look at me suspiciously when walking out into the wild empty handed.

After a full week of walking, I finally arrived at the desert. If I don't exert myself in full power, I can last this long, huh. If only I found a way to rest my brain while still being awake, I can go on for a full year without sleeping. I could have days where I live a low-power mode or something.

For now, I should look around the place. This desert is actually glittering bronze and the feeling is hard too. This might shred my skin to pieces. I have my heal skill and a good amount of mana so I hope I can strengthen my skin to stand up to metal. I can't heal all of the wounds, of course, but let it slowly heal so I can toughen my skin like how breaking your bones makes the healed bone harder.

Maybe I could try that [Holy Magic] that 'hip' teacher taught. If the healing effect is too slow I could still use my own healing spells. Its a clad type magic so maybe I can adjust the strength of the effect depending on the amount of mana I channel. I don't know if it works like that but I came here to train and test things.

There are a few rock formations here and there. I have a place to sleep after all. I choose that tall tower like rock formation, I can just lie at the top. The wind might be a bit strong and cold at night but its better than being on guard against monsters underground.

After testing the sand, its not really metallic. It is hard but when I put it on the fire, it crystallized. This is real sand but hardened by the earth mana making it have the same hardness as real metal. Too bad, if this was real metal, I could also practice forging. Well, if it really was real metal a lot of people would have settled at this desert to harvest it already.

The plants can be used as metal for forging, to my surprise. However, only the really old ones since the fresh young ones have a soft centre. It looks like everyone also knew about it since I can barely find any old ones at the outskirts. There are some with bite marks but I can't tell if they are the young or old ones since they might have dried up from the intense sun shining over this place. Now that I mention it, I want some sunglasses. The sunshine reflects on everything around here since almost everything except the rocks and some plants have a metallic luster.

For my safety measure, I just need to leave some mana behind in case I get attacked and not drain myself physically in case I need to run away. That's it, I don't have any special weapons and any other aces so I can't prepare more than that for now.

Alright, that's everything I needed to be mindful about. All I need now is what I need to do for my training.

For starters, swimming in the sand is a good way to strengthen my skin. It would shred my skin but that is also a good way to dull my sense of pain a bit. I don't want to overdo it since I don't want to dull my sense because my skin could take it.

For balance and leg strength, running in the sand is best for that. I can't actually swim in the sand to at best I would just roll around in it so my leg's wouldn't actually be working most of the time.

For my arms, I can just do some push ups since my arms are already pretty strong from the hammering festival of doing a three month bulk order project.

That should take care most of my physical needs and since I don't know any real fighting style except defense I don't need to train for that. Keeping my body strong and flexible should be enough until I properly learn how to fight. I'm sure I will learn fighting at some point anyway.

Now the most important thing that I need to do here is to test my intermediate magic. I got the basic information about it in the book but since it might go out of control at the academy, I didn't put too much power into it. Now I can see them in their normal power.

The requirements to acquire [Intermediate Element Mastery] is to use all the magic listed on it once. I did use it once but maybe the system doesn't accept it because I toned down the mana too much.

From fire, I have [Fire Wall], [Fire Arrow], [Fire Ball] and [Flame]. The first three are a good addition but [Flame] is just the upgraded version of [Ember]. I toned down the mana for [Flame] and all I get is the same thing as ember.

Earth, Wind, and Water all have the same spells as fire but with their own variant. I have a lot of things to test but its too bad that I don't have ice magic. I wonder if I can get it if I learn the master level element magic. Too bad those things are kept as a national treasure. I either have to be the royal magician or one of the royal family to learn it. It's especially good if I have a target but there are fewer monsters here than I thought. Using my new magic works best if my target is big and tanky so the few birds and lizards don't really interest me.

I already figured out what to do so I guess I should start. I will leave around 4-5 days for the return trip, I can just run it if I can't find a ride home. I'm okay with walking home but if I can find a ride, I can sleep on the way back.