Silas felt the heat of the forges before he saw them, the deep-rooted swelter reminding him of Valrun’s Keep. The structures occupied an expansive length of space near the river, claggy humid air rising from the area. As before, his and Iris’s statuses did wonders in earning their group easy admission to the forges, entering an open smithy operated by a couple dozen blacksmiths. They were quickly introduced to Damon Steele, the highest level Metalworker and most experienced smith there.

His appearance was mostly what Silas would expect from one of his trade: average height with a bulky build and short-cut brown hair. His arms were stocky and his chest barrel-like, a thick, stained apron covering his front. When looking at him, most of one’s attention would inevitably home in on the thick mutton chops that adorned his bulldog face. While they walked up to him, he was quenching a red glowing strip of metal, the sizzling sounds cutting through the underbelly of the surrounding clangs.

Noticing them, Damon dropped the metal into the barrel of water and grinned welcomingly, somehow appearing menacing all the same. “Good day,” he said in a fittingly gruff voice, recognising their intentions with a brief glance. He tore off his safety glasses and placed it on a nearby table, sliding his gloves off beside it. With this done, he wrung his hands and massaged them for a moment before beckoning them to the exit. “Let’s go somewhere else and talk.”

He briskly led them into an office room, shutting the door behind them and somewhat dulling the noise from the forges. “Ah, that’s better,” Damon said, shifting his full attention to his guests now. “I had heard you had returned, Silas, but I hadn’t expected a visit so soon.”

Silas arched an eyebrow, curious why the blacksmith was treating him such familiarity on their first meeting. Not that he found it unpleasant, just unusual.

Noting this, Damon explained himself, “I’m originally from New Derby, and I fought with you there, what, two weeks before.”

“Ah, right,” Silas replied, shaking hands with the Metalworker in a cordial manner. Despite this, he failed to dig up any recollection of Damon, no matter how hard he worked his memory. But then again, this wasn’t too surprising given the thousands of people who had participated in the war. “What made you come over then? When I was there, they seemed confident in their manufacturing sector.”

The blacksmith shrugged and gestured at Iris. “Same reason many Healers and Alchemist came over, I guess. We heard about the manastone here, and although quite a bit makes it over to New Derby as well, it’s immediately hoarded by the council and given over to the engineers before the rest of us can even soil it with our eyes. So it made more sense to migrate over and try my hand here.”

“So you’ve made manastone weapons?” Silas asked, leaning forward. His imagination went wild as he pictured the sight of a militia armed with magical weapons.

Damon opened his mouth to answer, then thought better of it. “It’ll be easier if I show you it,” he said, moving for the door, “I’ll be just a second.” He took considerably longer, but eventually he returned lugging a crate of blades. Silas sorted through them and quickly realised that they weren’t quite bladed yet, all dull and unusable as they were. All the same, the metal rods had varying amounts of neon blue slivers in their bodies, which kept his excitement up somewhat.

“Why haven’t you made these into weapons?” Mia asked, stroking one of the rods and scratching at the blue lines. “I can sense a great deal of mana from them.”

Sighing deeply, Damon picked a particularly glowing rod and pointed it to a wall. Holding it from both ends, his arms quivered with effort as he strained the rod until finally it snapped, shards exploding against the wall and pattering onto the floor. “That’s the thing with manastone - it’s a brittle material. When we put it into the weapons, it greatly reduces the overall toughness. And even if that didn’t happen, the only real advantage to adding manastone into weapons is that you can absorb mana from it during a fight. Nothing else, really.”

Ask him why he doesn’t use the mana crystals instead then? Iris telepathically said to Silas. That’s how we made our potions work.

Hearing the question, Damon acknowledged the logic of it but still spoke bleakly. “That’s what we thought as well when we heard of the Alchemists’ successes, but the issue with that is when we tried to smelt the crystals into an alloy, the whole thing just exploded. The first lad who tried it almost died from it, so since then our experiments to do with the mana crystals have been far more constrained and just as unsuccessful. The second you try to break apart those crystals, they just go wild.”

Silas felt a storm of dark clouds drift over his excitement as he listened. “Have you asked the Order about it then? When I was in Lyfort, it seemed to me they had been using manastone for a long time, so maybe they know more about it.”

“Oh, you’re right about that one: they know a lot more than us, but they only give us small bits of information after we sell them crateloads of manastone ore,” Damon said, chuckling wryly. “Although, to be honest, I don’t know how much they can help us since they mostly just use it as a fuel source. I’ve heard tales that some of them have manastone weapons, but none that I’ve seen, so I reckon there must be very few of them. Likely only their higher-ups have them.”

Silas thought back to Ish and Krisa, but couldn’t recall any memories of them wielding glowing blue weapons, something he was unlikely to have missed. But they were the higher-ups, so if they didn’t have such weapons, who would? There was a chance that they were even rarer than what Damon suggested, meaning it could be that only their top dogs, the Avatars, were armed with such weaponry. Either way, he resolved to search out Ish soon and ask about it. If they could mass manufacture magical weapons here at Riverside, then it would turn the tables on every future foe they faced.

The group spoke with Damon for a while longer, and although the conversation was pleasant, there was little else the blacksmith could say, so they left soon after. Before they were out, Silas told Damon to notify him if they made any progress, or if they needed any resources to continue their research.

The day had passed far quicker than they had anticipated, and as such, they simply returned home and retired for the day after leaving the forges. It was while they were having dinner that Ethan mentioned to Silas that he was planning to join the constabulary, having been impressed by the sight of the hundred-plus trainees duelling. He wanted to become stronger like his brother, and Olivia seconded on this decision, admitting a similar desire in wanting to make something of herself. Pleased at their determination, Silas said he would speak to Josh on getting them started at once.

As such, their second peaceful day in Riverside came to a close.

____

Going for tea this morning, Silas looked through his stats, appreciating the drastic changes that had taken place during his time in Valrun’s Keep.

Silas Wycliffe

Level 43

Level 10 Duellist

Mana: 198/253 (recovery rate: 1.25 per minute)

Strength: 29 (+9)

Agility: 42 (+9)

Constitution: 24 (+9)

Arcana: 16 (+9)

Perception: 55 (+9)

Abilities: Weakness Vision, Harrying Blows, Luminous Land

He had gained 5 levels, splitting the points between strength, agility, arcana, and perception, putting the extra point into agility. Also, due to his regular practise on runes, he had increased the stat bonus to +3 on every rune, pushing the duration up to a full day too. However, this was all second to the bigger change that had occurred because of the trip.

Level

1. Dahlia Howe - 60

2. Kuraim Jaffer - 56

3. Lucian Grimes - 54

4. Ajit Ghost - 52

5. Freddie Littlewood - 51

6. Katerina Ivanov - 51

7. Jeung Seoyeon - 50

8. Vivienne Durant - 49

9. Zafeera Bazzi - 48

10. Aengus Abercrombie - 48

…

31. Zhang Bao - 45

32. Lavanya Sanghvi - 45

33. Sandip Mand - 45

34. Sophie Chandler - 45

…

48. Matteo Rivera - 44

…

56. Floyd Godson - 44

…

67. Taika Ngata - 44

…

87. Silas Wycliffe - 43

…

92. Volkan Burch - 43

93. Waseem Bukhari - 43

…

100. Solomon Kebede - 43

He had undoubtedly been catapulted onto the list due to his high level kills when fighting off the ratkin. This meant that the skitterstaffs had likely been higher levelled than he had thought, which also explained his position on the notable kills list.

Notable Kills

1. Dahlia Howe - 5 E-5

2. Lucian Grimes - 2 E-5

3. Katerina Ivanova - 1 E-5

4. Freddie Littlewood - 1 E-5

5. Ajit Ghost - 6 F-1

6. Jeung Seoyeon - 6 F-1

7. Zafeera Bazzi - 5 F-1

8. Aengus Abercrombie - 5 F-1

9. Lavanya Sanghvi - 5 F - 1

10. Vivienne Durant - 5 F-1

…

24. Zhang Bao - 4 F-1

…

33. Sandip Mand - 3 F-1

…

43. Silas Wycliffe - 2 F-1

44. Floyd Godson - 2 F-1

…

98. Sophie Chandler - 1 F-1

…

100. Volkan Burch - 1 F-1

Laerdya had obviously been one of the F-1s he had killed, and he could only imagine the other had been a skitterstaff or maybe even Nicon? He had thought strict duel rules were required for the System to register a kill as a notable one, but it seemed it was a little looser than that. Either way, he was giddy to find his name on the leaderboards, finally clawing his way up there after all this time. It was also for this reason that his return to Riverside had kicked up a dust storm of excitement and boosted the morale of the residents.

He was no longer just a powerful classer but now also a ranker.

Classes

1. Elisha Luna - Primal Healer level 20

2. Kuraim Jaffer - Necromancer level 17

3. Hou Yu - Artificer level 16

4. Emmanuel Baasch - Alchemist level 16

5. Sophie Chandler - Demolitionist level 16

6. Katerina Ivanova - Hidden Blade level 15

7. Dahlia Howe - Abomination level 14

8. Conan Hughes - Druid level 14

9. Laila Samra - Mirage level 14

10. Aiyasha Okilo - Shaman level 14

…

57. Stefan Sommer - Chronicler level 13

…

65. Reynard Holden - Runesmith level 13

…

100. Roxanne Martin - Oracle level 13

On the note of classes, his quests had also updated after killing Laerdya.

Class: Duellist - level 10

Quests: Duel Talis Ratter (E-5), Duel Xe’Hekon (E-5), Duel Floyd Godson (F-1)

Activities: Solo kill E-4s, Solo kill E-5s, Solo kill F-1s

Abilities: Weakness Vision, Harrying Blows, Luminous Land (next ability available at level 15)

Floyd’s name was still there, but Ish’s name had been knocked out by two new entrants. They weren’t his first E-5 targets as the armoured bear had taken that spot, which he had only recently learnt had been downed by a joint effort from Riverside, New Derby, and Lyfort. However, compared to the bear, these names worried him a lot more as recalled that one of the skitterstaffs had called him Headsman of Fah’Rehak. The comment had stuck with him, and he had eventually concluded that Fah’Rehak must have been one of the sorcerers who had attacked Riverside just before he left, likely the strongest one who had exploded in his face.

Given that Xe’Hekon’s name shared the same format, it made Silas fear that this Xe’Hekon was a far more dreadful ratkin sorcerer. Talis’s name troubled him just as much since their surname was Ratter, which gave a pretty good indication of what race Talis belonged to. Based on this information and the fact that the System only picked suitable targets in his vicinity, it heavily implied that there were at least two ratkin powerhouses not too far from Riverside. This was a bone-chilling thought, to say the least.

When Silas had questioned Elise and Rolf about their search for the ratkin base, they had revealed that they now knew it was to the east of Riverside, which explained why they attacked Riverside, Lyfort, Valrun’s Keep, and Big Mike’s Den but not New Derby since the latter was further south-west to the rest of them. However, although they now knew the direction, they had made little ground past that since all the scouting parties they had sent had vanished into thin air, their names disappearing from the citizens list after a few days.

As such, their current plan was to erect a communication monument as soon as possible - allowing moderate distance messaging - so that the next scouting parties they sent out could regularly report on what they saw. Hopefully this would give them a better idea of what awaited them in the east.