Author’s Corner: HELLO HELLO! A NEW LOOK ON THE CRAFTING AREA! NOW WITH MOAR MAGICKS!

ANYWAY, I would like to give a shout-out to Loco15 and ask something out of him. FOR THE LOVE OF CYGNAS, STOP DOING GUESSWORK! IT’S THE SECOND TIME ALREADY YOU ALMOST GET IT RIGHT! I’m starting to think of censoring your comments for possible spoilers, really! So from now on I shall call you: Almost-spoilerlord! (This is a joke, no need to worry.)

ALSO, I would like to point out that, I really hope all this craft-a-ton isn’t bothering you guys, since it’s all I’ve been writing for the last chapters… Sorry about that. I seem to have some problem guiding the story myself… (BAD STORY! STOP GETTING REPETITIVE!)

ALSO(2), as a random rant for today, I kind of felt like speaking of something that I don’t think many people would actually ever notice if I don’t say it here. Those who read the comments might notice that a lot of things in the story are last second/minute additions (Lieutenant and Aura as a character herself for example), but there is one that I think you would never have guessed, and that is Cygnas. Really, she was only added (at first) for the whole LET THERE BE LIGHT joke. But she kind of stuck around and now have her own little cult and is one of the main driving points of the story!

*ADD MIND BLOWN GIF*

Have a good read!

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“So… Mind telling us what exactly is your idea?” Arcus asked me excited while completely ignoring Elraira’s opinion.

“Well… Firstly, I would probably need someone who can do some fine-work with metals and such. Blacksmithing would probably completely fail in this part, so I do not think I can do this. Secondly, I need an enchanter to engrave something for me, since I don’t think the idea I have will work simply with the alchemical methods alone. And I also need someone who can polish jewels…”

Yeah. Very specific methods, I know. But hey! I’m doing something brand new again!

I’m so going to hate myself when this ends…

‘’Well, I can do something about the metal fine-work and the gem.” I blinked surprised and turned toward Han-chan, who got me completely by surprise with her sudden offer. Since when can she work on metal and gems? She noticed my surprise, and frowned slightly. “You do know that I got the jewel-crafting skill, right?”

Wait, when did she get a crafting skill? I do remember her saying that she was going to look for one, but I don’t think I remember her ever saying that she actually got the skill… Oh! Now that I think about it, she did say something about getting a crafting skill back at Melinda’s, but I think I was a bit lost in fluffiness to hear her. So she got jewel-crafting, huh? It’s actually a good choice, since right now that is the only area I’m not delving into in my crafting.

Okay, so this is one thing done, now I need to find someone who have enchanting…

“You can leave the engraving part to me.”

“OKAY. Stop.” I immediately stopped Arcus as soon as he made his offer. “Look, I accept the fact that Hanbei has jewel-crafting and can take care of the whole jewel-part. But you? The head-on damn-it-all brawler? Having enchanting? I don’t buy it.” I said while looking at him slightly annoyed. Sorry Arcus, but I don’t think that enchanting fits you at all.

“Well… I kind of picked it up after seeing Lila’s magic gun... And I kind of wanted to put it together with my swords and make a gun and blade mix.”

Okay. Now I buy it. Gunblades are completely badass and fit him perfectly.

Well, then what exactly are we waiting for? I quickly explained my idea to the two of them and they seemed to like it. Yuu and El, who were left out were looking at us a bit confused, but noticing that we would take some time with our idea, they decided to sit down and start talking about something that I couldn’t hear.

After defining what exactly we were going to do, I left-them with their part of the job and materials and went towards Torg’s.

Luckily, this time only a small part of the work is mine, so my part was surprisingly simple this time. I quickly heated up the forge after quickly greeting a surprised Torg who didn’t expect to see me so soon. As I prepared the metal and crystal alloy, I quickly explained him my idea. He laughed loudly and said that it was another interesting idea I had.

I quickly did my work and, after a quick chat with Han-chan, I started to prepare the steel-crystal alloys and used a technique similar to the one to make the chain-mail, but instead I made a long wire with it. Actually, I made four wires, two that were very thin, and two that were flat and wide.

After making sure that the wires were thin and flexible enough to be worked by Hanbei and Arcus, I left towards Hanbei’s location. It was a small shop a couple of levels above Melinda’s.

When I got there, a slightly grumpy dwarf greeted me before grunting and pointed me towards a nearby door, where I found her and Arcus working on the Blazing-tail and Aura’s gems.

Arcus had a Blazing-tail gem in his hands, albeit a lot smaller than it’s original size and with a much more prominent shine. He was holding the gem on his hands as he muttered something lowly while using a strange needle-like to lightly poke the gem, making a small symbol that shone briefly.

Han-chan, meanwhile, was polishing Aura’s gem in a grinder, slowly diminishing its size until it became more fitting. I also saw a couple of sockets in the shape of the grinded down jewels. I quickly greeted them just in time as Hanbei finished shaping the blue gem and passed it to Arcus.

I left her with the wires and quickly explained her the shape she would have to make with them. She nodded after I finished and went towards a strange equipment which reminded me of some presses and pincers and started using it with some weak fire magic to reshape the wires. Afterwards I went towards Arcus as he finished his gem.

“I must say that I expected engraving to involve more… engraving…” I told him as I watched him work.

“Right? I was kind of surprised too.” He told me after putting the red jewel into the socket. “It seems that it once was like that, using knifes and whatnots, but it looked kind of ugly, with so many cuts in the material, so they decided to change to this.” He showed me the needle as he said that. “They call it virtual engraving or something like that. I have no idea on how it actually works, since I pretty much slept as Lila told that to me. But I know how to work with it, so it’s fine.”

“I see…” I said as I watched him murmur a word and poke the jewel making a symbol briefly appear. “So it works kind of like runes?” I asked as I watched him, but he shook his head.

“Nah, runes are much more complex, and they only work if the user understand their meanings correctly.” He turned to me with a wry smile. “Believe-me when I tell you that I tried it out. That thing is hard! Besides, it seems that in the very basics, it’s a completely different process, even if the results are similar. Once again, I slept through this part, so I’m not sure.”

Geez, this guy is one irresponsible guy. Almost looks like someone I know, I wonder who?

I patiently waited as the two of them finished their jobs, as Arcus engraved the second gem, Hanbei finished making the main body of the weapon. Afterwards, Arcus started to engrave the metal with some slightly different symbol.

After around twenty minutes, we locked the sockets into the reshaped metal wires and we took off towards another crazy person. Sol.

All this time, when thinking about all the alchemy I have been doing, I’ve been mostly taking on the chemistry-like part of the crafting, but I have barely touched the more mystical part of this art. This will probably be my first true magical crafting experience.

We reached her shop in a few minutes and quickly invaded it without much thought, only to find her in her usual gown while sleeping in the out-of-place bed. Arcus’ reaction was simply amusing as he stared unbelieving towards the girl-looking granny and then towards me, wanting to ask me if he was going crazy.

I ignored him and kicked the bed heavily, making her wake up in shock.

“What? Who? An attack?” She asked surprised.

“YES! I CAME TO STEAL YOUR CANDIES!” I said in my best dark and menacing voice.

Her eyes widened in shock and she quickly jumped from the bed and ran towards its edge, where she quickly jumped benath the bed before leaving through the other side holding a bag in her hands.

“YOU WILL NEVER HAVE MY CANDIES!” She shouted in a defiant tone while frowning slightly and extending her hand towards us. When I burst out into laughter, she finally woke up from her trance and scowled. “Gondorrer… You scaly rascal…” She said getting up from the corner of the room and kicking her bag of candies back to under the bed. “So, what brings you here so soon?”

“Didn’t I say? I came for the candies!” As I said that, she jumped back to the bed and sat on it after taking her hair from beneath her. When she looked to me angrily I went on. “Also, I’m in the last part of creating a new type weapon because why not, and I need to know how to work on creating magic staff.” She blinked surprised at my words.

“I thought you weren’t planning on using magic?”

“It’s not for me. It’s for her…” I turned to point at Yuu, but I noticed that she wasn’t here. Since when? Noticing that I was looking for her, Hanbei face-palmed herself. Heck, besides Arcus and Hanbei, I have no idea where the others are! “It’s for the Kitsune.” I said to a smirking Sol.

“Oh, your pet?” She asked in a mischievous tone.

“That one!” Hanbei nodded in accordance.

“I guess she does look like one.” Arcus nodded with a pensive pose.

Et tu, Arcus?

I sighed in defeat after some time, and explained her the idea. She nodded after a moment and took us to the depot.

“You see, when it comes to changing a simple stick and gem into a full-blown staff, you need to perform a kind of ritual that involves alchemical materials and some infusion. Which I guess that you never did before?” She asked me with a raised eyebrow.

I shook my head at it and she smiled at me.

She took us to the very end of the depot of excess materials, where there was a large metal door. She said that it was made to protect the truly fragile and expensive equipment.

She opened the door revealing a simple and bleak room, with nothing much in there except for some kind of strange bronze altar, with a large and tall part in its middle and some sort of smaller concavities in its base, one on each side, making four in total.

According to Sol, this is an infusion altar, which help us to merge the jewel and the staff into a single and unique piece of equipment. She had us put one of the prototype and, hopefully, final project into the middle area before making us step back.

“Basically, the center part is the focus where the essence merge will happen.” She said while walking around the altar and checking if everything was in place. “Now, you see these small holes?” She said pointing to the concavities. “These are where you are going to deposit whatever it is that you feel that describe the main element of the jewel’s original owner. When we activate the altar, it will slowly suck up the essence from these objects and transfer to the non-gem part, melding their essences together.” She said that and looked at the concavities for a moment. “Also, no need to fill the four holes. Actually, the less items, the better chance of getting it right.”

After explaining that to us, she took a step back and left us to think for ourselves. So, I have to use items to explain a blazing-tail? As I started to think, around and ask for Arcus and Hanbei for some ideas, I finally came to a slightly unorthodox answer.

I put another Blazing-tail gem on the smaller altar, which earned me a good laugh from Sol, who simply nodded and gave me a thumbs up.

After putting the gem into the small concavity, and took a step back while waited for something to happen. As I raised an eyebrows towards Sol for the delay, she made me a signal of waiting with her hand and looked towards the altar with a smirk. For a bit longer, nothing was happening, until I finally noticed it. Some slight glow was coming from the gem, and just when I started to ask her what was happening, the glow started to flow from the gem into the hole towards the weapon into the altar.

As time went on, the flow seemed to get stronger and stronger, until the gem shone in such a way that we could barely see what was happening, and finally disappeared.

We blinked surprised and looked towards Sol, who was smiling savagely.

“Damn, boy. You really did it.” She said while picking the weapon in the altar and taking a look at it. “A dead lock in the whole magic-weaponry that lasted for centuries, since the creation of alchemical staffs, and you break it 'just because', only by adding a bit of crystal in the mix.” She said while passing the weapon to me.

“What do you mean?” I asked while receiving the weapon and looking confused at her.

“Do you really think you were the only one who tried to do what you are doing?” She asked me. “Fusing two different methods together to get an even better method? That is something that many people have been trying to do. However they never could find this small linking piece that allowed them to piece the two together. Yet you find it just like that!” She told me with some slight admiration.

“I… Did something like that?” I asked a bit worried, and she nodded.

“You see, the main problem of the alchemical method, is the need to use a large body to hold the magic power. While the engraving method, is because the large formulas need a huge area to process the magic, but they can store it fairly easily.” She explained to me.

Yeah, that is the main reason why we were taking this approach. Arcus engrave the items to store magical energy, then we use the Gem to process the energy into magic itself. When I told her this she laughed and told me.

“That is the problem.” She told with a smile. “The magic the gem uses is stored in the object’s BODY, yet engraving doesn’t count as the body of the object, but more of as an aura around it. Yet, the infusion clearly worked. How? I have no idea, but I’m willing to bet that your crystal alloy works as some kind of middle term between the two. I will be analyzing it later. For now, sleep.” She said before yawning loudly.

We quickly put the next weapon in the Altar when she left to catch up on her sleep that, according to her, she has been missing because of all the research I asked her to do.

I REGRET NOTHING!

For the next one I decided to go around with a similar tactic for the essence as the previous, but since I didn’t have any other freezing-tail gem, I tried to be creative, once again, and put another blazing-tail gem into the concavity, but on another one I decided to put an ice crystal, to show its different element.

However, even when we waited longer than the previous one, nothing happened, so I was forced to stop and rethink my idea.

I sincerely don’t think it’s the wrong idea, but just that I went on the wrong way around the lines, so let me rethink that.

If I were to take what I just did as a direct relationship between the meanings, I would be saying that Aura was a normal Blazing tail that used ice instead of fire. But if I think back to our fight, she was clearly different, with her attacks being more focused on the physical side rather than the magical, even if she also uses her elements and sometimes attack from distance.

Thinking about that, I decided to change the crystal, which I would take for a symbol of magic, and put on a freezing throwing knife in its place.

This time, it worked, and we saw the light show once again before the weapon was done.

The three of us high-fived before leaving excitedly, wanting to show it to the others. Since me and Hanbei were in a party with Yuu we could see where she was, and we quickly guided Arcus towards her with us while trying to explain him the concept of minimaps.

We found her, together with Lila, Elraira, Whisi, Aura and Lieutenant wandering around some weapon shops. It seemed that Elraira was helping Yuu to find a good magic spear for her to use.

Magic weapons aren’t all that different to make when compared to staffs, as the method to add magic-bending capabilities are pretty much universal. But doing so seems to reduces the physical damage of the weapon, so it’s not exactly the best choice. It's also very expensive, since you have the crafting of the weapon itself, followed by the process of adding magic, which nearly doubles the costs.

It’s at times like these when I notice that El is a rich girl, with her engraved scythe.

Shaking my head, I immediately dragged Yuu off from the shop while receiving some confused and slightly angry eyes from Elraira, who seemed to be having her fun.

The three of us quickly took Yuu outside of the city towards the field where she once was, and I immediately pulled the weapon from my inventory, but as soon as I tried to pass it to her…

WARNING: You can’t trade this item until all its related windows are cleared.

I sighed in defeat. It seems that me, Han, and even Arcus were a bit afraid of seeing these windows that had popped up and had been expecting the other to clear it. I quickly opened all the windows flashing in the corner of my view and was bombarded with their texts.

Congratulations. You have created an new kind of weapon. Please choose this kind of weapon’s name: (_________) Congratulations, Hanbei, Arcus and you just created a new kind of weapon. Would you like to disclose your name, and yours only, for other players? (Yes/no)

Okay, so we started with a bombastic window. We created a new TYPE of weapon. Forget the historic cloak, even if the works quality is lower than my cloak, which it really isn’t, since historic don’t fit into normal classifications, this will probably have an even bigger impact on the game as a whole.

I looked at the two at my side, and then nodded. Also, I guess that Arcus window said something along the lines of revealing his name for the Chosen, but I can’t be sure.

After a quick discussion, we chose the weapon to be called, Jeweled Foci.

Foci as in plural for focus.

The players: Wargon, Han-chan, and an unnamed NPC have completed a new kind of weapon. From now on, it will be called:

[Jeweled Foci]

From now on, this kind of weapon will slowly spread through the market, and some monsters may now very rarely drop them.

So, Arcus chose to remain anonymous, huh? Well, its his choice. Me? Altough I did get a bit worried, I’m already a bit too deep into it to even have the right to worry about it.

Now, let’s move on to the next windows.

Spirit of the Sun (Jeweled Foci)(Hands)

(requires level 15) Magic damage: 12-17 Element: Fire Def: 4 M. Res 6 Quality: Excellent Durability: 25/25 Description

An innovative kind of weapon, made with new techniques and Blazing-Tails materials. The fire in its gem burn with a never-ending rage.

INT+8 MND+5 AGI+7

(This type of weapon also occupies hand armor slots)

(Made by Wargon, Han-chan and Arcus)

Soul of the Moon (Jeweled Foci)(Hands)

(requires level 15) Magic damage: 12-17 Element: Ice Def: 4 M. Res 6 Quality: Excellent Durability: 25/25 Description

An innovative kind of weapon, made with new techniques and Freezing-Tails materials. This gem’s energy could freeze entire rivers.

STR+8 TGH+5 AGI+7

(This type of weapon also occupies hand armor slots)

(Made by Wargon, Han-chan and Arcus)

Well, what can I say? They are amazing!

The names are copyright of Hanbei Inc.

We quickly passed the weapons towards Yuu, asking her to equip it. She had a slightly conflicted look in her eyes when she looked at the weapons. When I pressed her for answers she said.

“Well… It is a lovely present from Shishou, Han-chan and Arcus-san, so I really want to use it… But the status are worse than my actual staff and armor…” She said with a conflicted look in her face.

However, I simply laughed.

“Apprentice. It seems that you are missing the point here.” I told her while gently patting her back. “There are TWO weapons in your hands, why must you only equip one?”

She blinked surprised.

“I… Can do that?”

“Well… That was the intention when we made them, at least…” I said while shrugging.

She quickly nodded, removed her hand-armors and staff before adding the weapons.

It really does fit her. As I thought that, I looked back at Hanbei and Arcus, who seemed to be having the same thoughts as I do.

The weapons, as we made them, looked anything but a normal weapon.

It was a mix between a glove, a ring and a wristlet where we had a large and a small wire circles she could use to fix on both her wrist and middle finger. These two parts were interlocked by a simple, yet exquisite pattern using the wires running on the back of her hand to form a base where the grinded and polished jewels were fixated.

It was a simple, yet beautiful piece of equipment that was worthy of being called a jewelry more than a weapon.

Stats wise, it seems that the defense is still lower than wearing gloves, but the status themselves are fairly similar to her staff. The damage output would have to wait for a bit thought.

Your recent weapons formed a set.

CELESTIAL SOUL SET (2 pieces)

Set Bonus:

Casting Fire magic increases Ice magic damage by 3%, stacks 3 times. All stacks are consumed when casting ice magic.

Casting Ice magic reduces Fire magic cast time by 3%, stacks 3 times. All stacks are consumed when casting fire magic.

Your level of Ice and Fire magic mastery will be the average between the two while using this set.

You can use the following skill while using this set: [Frost-fire spear]

Just… Wow.

We immediately had Yuu start her casting to see if there was any change to what she was used to. She blinked surprised when we urged her, but complied. Using her usual Element Emission skills, she quickly tested the two, and according to her, although the attacks did feel weaker, they came much faster than before without the cost of extra mana.

Just by that alone, the three of us were already doing a party commemorating our success.

But things didn’t really stop there.

“Now that you have two casting weapons, why don’t you try casting two different spels at the same time?” Elraira said suddenly.

We all blinked surprised, but Yuu immediately put herself to work.

She cast a fire-ball and an ice spear at the same time, something that was impossible before. Finally, she cast her favorite spell. Frost emission: Weaponize.

Since now she didn’t have to worry about holding her weapons, since they were fixed to her arms, her movements did seem a bit more refined and precise. At least according to El. I sincerely couldn’t see the difference.

I approached Hanbei while looking at Yuu happily playing around with her new weapons and said.

“So… We just created the first dual wielding mage…” I said a bit absentmindedly.

“Yeah…” She nodded in accordance.

“And she was already a good mage even without them…”

“Yup….”

“Besides all that, she is also a master at martial arts…”

“Exactly…”

I looked down towards her and smiled worriedly.

“We might just have created a monster…”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”