“He’s still here?” Allan muttered as he read the notification in front of his eyes while he climbed the stairs of the Pavilion.

When he had reached the edge of the Filter Dimension, he received the same kind of notification that signaled him of a friend being present. So, he accepted it and predicted to see Rakna resting on the couches or training in one of the rooms, but what he saw forced him to make a double-take.

* * *

Rakna brought down the hammer in his hand for what felt like the thousandth time, sweating ever so slightly because of the strain. He was still working on the expanded steel ingot, trying to work out the most efficient ways to forge it.

Old Wang had exited the smithy to go to sleep after guiding him for around an hour. He had given him permission to stay for as long as he wanted while also mentioning that the place was insulated so he didn’t need to mind about the noise.

And so, Rakna just decided to continue hammering with terrific absorption. He wouldn’t mind spending the entire night if he needed to. As he was pondering that, his HL began to ring and he answered with a scowl.

“Wha-”

“RAKNA! There’s a goddam T. Rex in your section’s lounge!” Allan’s voice pierced through before he could ask what was going on.

He blinked in surprise. “…what? You mean Tyran?”

“You gave a pet name to that thing?!”

“Calm down. Why are you so agitated?” Rakna responded with an even tone, hammering the last corners of the original steel ingot. The clanks couldn't be heard on the other side of the line since the HL transmitted nothing but his voice. “He should barely look more threatening than a cat.”

“Seriously? You’re sure you’ve seen that thing clearly!?” Allan retorted confounded and he sighed, preparing to say something else when his blond friend sent him a video through his HL. He closed his mouth almost instantly.

The video depicted Tyran and Pronos sleeping on the floor. Well, that wouldn’t have been very problematic if only the now-undead T. Rex wasn’t doing so in his original size. Rakna had to admit that he did look intimidating, and the considerably strong gusts of wind that the beast was causing with his breathing alone didn’t help to pacify the image.

“Well… don’t worry. He’s docile,” Rakna ultimately said.

“Rak, I’m sorry to tell you that there’s no way I can relate the word ‘docile’ to the most historically glorified carnivorous predator on Earth!”

“Just ignore him.”

“Way ahead of you! I’ve already left that death trap.”

Rakna shook his head exasperatedly. “Whatever. So? How did it go?”

“What do you mean?”

“The training with Evelyn.”

“Ooh, that. Well, we got her to level 24 and she said she has re-learned pretty much all of what she had lost over her time spent in the seal. She’s also doing pretty good with Hell Blaze. She’s also caught up with us. We brought her to the 10th Plateau.”

“So, I’m the only behind now, huh?” Rakna said blankly while putting the half-done blade he was forging under the care of Karna’s flames.

“Like hell you’re behind. If anything, we should be grateful you’re crippled so we can dig the gap between us, or else you’d leave us in the dust.”

“Ah, I fixed that, by the way. I’ll be fully healed in two days.”

“…of course, you will. Where are you right now anyway? When I was given the authorization to enter your private section, I thought you were in there but my welcome was a damn T. Rex.”

“I’m learning blacksmithing,” Rakna replied dully, resuming his hammering. “Speaking of which, I guess the fact that you were able to join Pronos and Tyran means that our friend status extends to our pets. Interesting to know.”

“Apparently… wait, did you say blacksmithing? What for?”

“To hopefully improve my spells or my Magic Theory.”

“Uh, so you’re following in the footsteps of the old master?”

“As if,” Rakna retorted with a scoff as he increased the strength behind his swing. The hammer struck the red steel and bent further. He was now following the old dwarf’s instructions to change the angles to control the flow and shape the sword. “If anything, I would wish to make my footsteps in the opposite direction of his.”

“…I never heard you say that,” the blond said, genuinely taken off guard.

“Allan, if there’s one thing you should know about my old man, is that his ‘footsteps’ lead nowhere other than hell. In other words, something I’m trying to get away from.”

“I see… Well, in any case, tell us whenever you’re ready to come to the 10th Plateau. I’m gonna hit the hay for today after passing by the shop. The girls are having a sort of sleepover right now… at a hotel, I guess? All I know is that they’re probably having their girls’ talk.”

“{That is definitely something you don’t want to intrude in,}” Higure commented mirthfully.

“Well, have fun, Rak. Oh, almost forgot; Flavia and Evelyn wanted to ask you if you could train them to use weapons. They asked Nyx but she said she wasn’t very good at teaching, so…”

“I get it. I’ll call them when I’m done on my side,” Rakna said as he broke through one side of the blade for the tang that would go inside the handle.

“All right! See ya.”

And with that, the sound of the smithy and hammering was the only thing left again. Rakna looked at the piece in front of him and marked the thicker sections. Normally speaking, forging an average sword would take days of continuous work but for someone like him, with strength far beyond normal humans, if he did it right, it would only take hours, half a day at worst.

After about an hour of drawing the basic shape of the weapon, he then started to tweak the parts that were a bit irregular as well as smoothing the edges as best as he could. Then, as he was doing that, the notification he was waiting for finally popped up.

❮ ◈ ❯

Through accumulating practice, you have learned a new proficiency, Blacksmithing!

❮ ◈ ❯

Almost instantly, Rakna felt a minor rush of information. It felt the same as when he combined his weapon proficiencies though it was considerably less complex. However, that rush of information merely served to consolidate the basics he had scrapped from looking at his uncle occasionally and the few directions Old Wang had given him.

“This is harder to learn than other stuff…” Rakna grumbled to himself. His instinct would usually allow him to master most things in instants but this was different. Well, if there was one thing he could do for sure, it’s to wield a hammer. He instinctively knew how to swing effectively but that did not extend to the forging of a weapon. He would have to get used to it before his instinct could guide him.

“{And I say thankfully,}” Higure snickered. “{You’re already brilliant enough as it is and even if you say that, you’re still learning pretty quickly. Leave some talent for the rest of us, will you? Wouldn’t life be boring if everything was easy?}”

Rakna hummed as he placed the sword vertically and lightly bashed the sides. “A boring life… is always better than a dangerous one.”

“{Says the one who purposefully provoked a Stampede while in a crippled state.}”

“…point taken,” he muttered and extended the sword inside the flames of the forge.

At this point, the overall shape was what he expected. It looked like a mix between a curved and straight blade; as if the creator had hesitated between the two styles. It wasn’t surprising since he had made several mistakes and he had tried to fix them. This had inevitably led to an irregular shape and noticeable ridges.

“Hopefully grinding and sharpening will make it decent…” He said to himself and as he watched the steel gradually return to forging heat, he got an idea and placed it on the anvil.

Then, his pupils constricted before duplicating and forming a cross. When he saw the focal points on what he was forging, he almost cringed. There were too many of them. Even if focal points were not something that could be exploited by normal people, they represented dimensional structural flaws. Having so many of them couldn’t possibly be a good thing.

“{I can guess what you’re thinking and you are correct,}” Higure intervened. “{Focal points are not something you can interact with normally, that is true. But they also are a rough reflection of the actual frailties of the material. In the case of this sword, were it to collide with another, there are high chances it would break on contact.}”

Rakna silently acknowledged her words and inspected the threads. There were two types of them all entwined together. To be exact, half of them were dark red while the other half was dark gray.

It probably meant a different kind of weakness and, if he wasn’t wrong, the gray referred to the base of steel while the red was the heated parts of it. That’s when he got an idea. He didn’t mind if this particular sword broke or became a failure so he took the occasion to experiment.

He lifted his hammer and activated Fabled Sight on top of Cross Sight to have the best possible focus on what he was doing. He breathed in and struck the spot with the smaller number of focal points. He then watched as the closest points seemingly shifted places while some of them outright disappeared.

From there, he continued to test all sorts of angles and places that would reduce the number of focal points, even sometimes without hesitating to forgo parts of the blade itself. He spent nearly two hours doing that over and over again and when he was done, there were only two focal points left that simply didn’t want to go away.

He theorized that every object, no matter what, would always have structural pillars, which was probably the reason he couldn’t do anything about them.

Ultimately, the blade he ended up with looked like some sort of patchwork. It was multi-edged with grooves on both sides and sharp ‘thorns’ sticking out. It made him think of the extravagant and odd designs that he would find in video games.

Nevertheless, he had managed to keep the thickness consistent and while very irregular, the blade struck somewhat intimidating.

❮◈❯ Blacksmithing has leveled up! ❮◈❯

“{That’s certainly an interesting model if anything.}”

Rakna snorted at the lioness’ satire and waited for the blade to cool down. He then went ahead to the grindstone and started sharpening the multiple separate edges as well as leveling the sides. After that, he proceeded to follow the old dwarf’s instructions about heat treatment.

The first step was to heat the work to a cherry red before plunging it into water. He did so and swirled the blade until it stopped steaming. This was the basic process of hardening. What came after that was tempering.

He polished the faces leading up to the edges with emery cloth until they shone. He then brought it to Karna who, all on his own, performed the correct progression of heat, prioritizing first the parts that required to be softer.

When the polished face started turning bluish, a color called ‘peacock’, he quenched the blade one more time before repeating the process once more so that every part that needed to be either soft or hard was suitably so.

Ten minutes later, he eventually placed down the finished blade on one of the workbenches and cast Appraisal on it.

❮ ◈ ❯

Designation: Blade/Cao Sword

Name: ---

Rarity: Green

Attack power: +40

Durability: 100%

Perks:

- Dimensional Structural Stability: While it is a sword made of regular material, the technique used during its forging has heightened its dimensional stability to make it remarkably robust.

- Focal Concentration: Dimensional power has been passively infused into the blade and, coupled with excellent stability, it allows the blade to cause more damage when hitting a focal point. It nonetheless necessitates being clad in the energy of a Shuttle Specter Physique to function.

Description:

A weapon forged by a beginner blacksmith, Rakna Xiorra, with high-grade steel. It possesses an irregular form and is impracticable in many situations and for many blade martial arts.

But it possesses a surprisingly sharp edge and tip thanks to its durability allowing intensive grinding without detrimental effects. The tortuous shape makes it a deadly weapon when used to pierce for its potential capacity to get stuck in flesh.

❮ ◈ ❯