Level 1 Fallen

Chapter 214: Darker Than Blacksmithing

While we were waiting for the client to answer Diane’s message, I went ahead and teleported to the Sanctum, sending the others to Fallcry. I needed to read through as many blacksmithing manuals as I could to understand how to properly make whatever item he wanted.

And, that was honestly the hard part, not knowing exactly what he wanted me to make for him beyond ‘a custom weapon’. It could have been a staff, a sword, maybe even a set of claws. So, I had to make sure that I knew all of the foundational techniques before getting started.

Stepping into the library, I looked at the towering aisles of books, knowing that I was very likely in over my head. Part of me was already thinking about how I could maybe create a skill that reads the books for me to register them in the system, letting me access the information whenever I needed to.

Maybe if I combined True Sight with Detective Analysis, I could directly analyze every page of a book at the same time? I thought to myself, before shaking my head. Even if I did, I’d need to read through all of the information still. I had found that out when I tried to rapidly flip through books in the past without properly reading them.

So, I looked around for the crafting section of the library, and began pulling out any basic blacksmithing books that I could find. Once I had a few on hand, I sat down at the reading desks and got to work. These books talked about how to handle the different tools like the tongs, vice, and of course the hammer. They also discussed how to control the heat of different types of furnaces.

As I continued to read, I felt slightly annoyed as I found surprisingly little about handling the actual material. I had to get through three full books before I found anything about working with raw materials. Even then, the information was too vague for me to really make use of. For instance, it talked about how to melt the metal and scoop away impurities when refining the ingot, but after that? There was talk about hammering out impurities, but not how to do so.

On the bright side, I won’t have impurities when using Shadow Forge, so I can mostly ignore that section, I thought to myself begrudgingly, moving onto how to extend the material and shape it into various forms.

Thankfully, this part was somewhat descriptive. Not enough for me to jump right into crafting anything, but I understood that hammering certain parts of the heated metal helped to stretch it out. It was just a matter of doing so evenly to prevent any areas being particularly thin and snapping in half when swung.

I wasn’t sure how much I would need to know about heating or quenching, given the material that I would be using, but I still read up on the process either way. For me, quenching would essentially be when I finalize the activation of the skill, letting it fully solidify and harden.

After reading through five manuals, I found that only a couple of hours had passed. Surprised at my own reading speed, I decided to try out what I had learned. To avoid any distractions, I teleported myself to my little cave that I had created along the tunnel between Fallcry and the Sunset Isles.

I first created floating orbs of flame to light the area, which was thankfully still free of monsters. Then, I took a deep breath and focused on channeling Shadow King and Shadow Forge together. Doing this should allow me to stall the skill long enough to focus on the construction progress, while pumping more ‘material’ into the creation.

I watched as a blob of black matter rose up from my shadow, undulating in time with my stray thoughts. As I focused, these movements became less and less, until I was able to make the mass into a neat sphere. From there, I imagined it being hammered at a specific point I was staring at, watching the point flatten slightly. Then again, and again, shifting to different areas each time until I had a rectangular slab.

Maintaining my focus for this long was no easy task, as any stray thought would cause the mass to collapse again. I had to restart twice because of that…

Eventually, I had a long slab of black ‘metal’ in the vague shape of a sword. Following the information from the books I read, I began grinding down the edge of the blade, imagining the black mass held against the spinning whetstone. The profile of the blade became more defined, and I created the crossguard, hilt, and pommel. Since this was my first experiment, I didn’t bother with any fancy decorations, just wanting to get something recognizable as a sword.

After all of that was done, I finished channeling the skill, letting the weapon fully harden. I grabbed the sword as it began falling, briefly surprised by its weight. This sword seemed to weigh about fifteen pounds, despite looking like a standard longsword.

While this meant that it packed a lot more of a punch when swung, it was a lot heavier than normal weapons of the same type. Though, for someone with advanced stats, a fifteen-pound sword might as well have been weightless.

As a test, I randomly created a longsword with Shadow Forge, comparing the two. The sword I created ‘manually’ was heavier, and its edge was noticeably sharper. Normally, I just created these weapons on the spot to throw them at an enemy, so it didn’t matter as long as it could pierce the target once. Additionally, there were small imperfections in the manually crafted one that the books warned me could become structural weak points.

Thus, the manually crafted sword wouldn’t hold up to the standards of a high-level player. I tossed it aside to try again, this time infusing more energy into the base stock. This time, I focused more on smoothing the entire weapon, spreading the material out evenly before grinding out the blade.

As I was finishing the second experiment, my focus was interrupted by a message from Diane. With a crisp snap, the nearly-finished blade broke in half, causing my brow to twitch. I sighed, looking over at the message.

He said he’s able to meet you now to talk about the weapon. How’s your training going?

I looked at the snapped fragments of my work, shaking my head and responding. Decently, I guess. I know the process, so it’s just about practicing to get it right now.

I was honestly surprised that I hadn’t learned the Blacksmithing skill when I created my first blade, given that I was using the principles for it. Was it because I wasn’t using actual metal and tools, just replicating the general effects?

Regardless, I teleported to Fallcry, finding Diane standing together with a foxfolk man with black hair and a black tail. He had a charming smile on his face as he spotted me. “King Advent, it’s nice to meet you in person.”

“Just Drake is fine,” I said, a chill running down my spine. I could feel someone else watching me. With True Sight, I spotted Kelly standing atop a nearby building, staring daggers into the back of my head. “So… what type of weapon were you wanting me to make?” I asked, doing my best to pretend that I hadn’t noticed the annoyed bearfolk woman. She really didn’t like me having her teach all of the interested residents those dragon skills, huh?

“I’d like a glaive, preferably. If you can’t handle something that complex, a simple spear would suffice,” he said in an amicable tone. “More importantly, I want the weapon to have an enchantment that lets it extend and retract.”

…Of course he wants a polearm. After telling Diane’s Chosen just this morning that I wasn’t sure that I could make her a staff because of her dragon form, he’s asking for a polearm. “I got it… I’ll see what I can do. Just to be clear, what’s your level and Strength rating?”

“I’m level two hundred and three, with four-star Strength,” the foxfolk man said, to which I nodded.

“Got it. It might take a couple of days to get it finished, but I’ll have Diane let you know when it’s ready.” After I said that, I did my utmost to ignore the glaring woman on the building behind me, and teleported away again.

Creating this polearm would be anything but simple. I wasn’t using wood or anything for the staff, just more shadow ki, and the whole thing had to be made in the same generation. So, I told the others that I would probably be out of contact for a bit, and got to work.

First, I wanted to perfect the art of simply making the staff. I could add the extension enchantment later, as long as I could get used to making the staff itself. None of the books that I had read talked about staves, so I had very little reference material to go off of. I could either try to hammer it to length, and then grind the whole thing into a pole, or treat it as if I were shaping clay.

Ultimately, I went with the latter option, as it would save me a significant amount of time with roughly equal results. So, after making myself a chair to sit on, I channeled my skills together again, gathering more and more ‘shadow stuff’. Once I had roughly fifty pounds of material, I began to spin it, using my hands to knead it as it spun.

I knew that, when working with actual clay, the material would be flopping about all over the place if I tried to shape it into a narrow form like a staff like this. Thankfully, I could make the shadow material just firm enough to maintain its shape while I sculpted it.

When I created my swords the normal way before, I spent roughly two hours on each attempt. Using this clay shaping method, I had the staff completed in just twenty minutes. Moreover, it still weighed the same as the base material, and maintained a small amount of flex after I solidified it.

Tossing the staff aside, I created two more to ensure that I had the process memorized. Then, it was back to making blades. A glaive’s blade was roughly a half-meter long, shorter than the blades I had been practicing with. However, it was a single-edged blade, unlike the normal longswords I was using to practice previously.

Given the weight of a glaive, if I wanted to scale it to work for someone around level two hundred… I would need the entire weapon to weigh around seventy-five pounds. That should be light enough for someone of that level to wield normally, and still heavy enough to inflict serious damage on a monster.

First, I shaped the staff using about thirty pounds of shadow ki, taking my previous works as a reference. Then, while I let the staff rest at the side, I used the rest of the material to begin making the blade. Since I was making a blade far heavier than before, but also so much shorter, I had to condense the shadow ki.

This proved… harder than expected. When I tried to shrink the mass of ki, I ended up making it lighter. However, when I kept it large and hammered it to compress it, I made it extend outwards beyond the weapon’s desired profile.

Part of me was tempted to just make it extra large, and then shrink it as part of the enchantment, but I didn’t want the blade itself to grow when the staff extended. I needed to exert pressure on the shadow ki from all sides at once, compressing it without allowing it to extend. Like packing snow together, tighter and tighter until it became a solid mass.

Of course, I knew that analogy didn’t quite fit, but it was the best that I could come up with for what I needed to do. And with something like this, visualization is very important.