Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! LET DEM CRAFT BEGIN!

ANYWAY, here we have the weapon that I had chosen since the beginning for what Gon would make with Doggy’s material. It will be a huge change in his battle style, but that is what happen when you change weapons in monhun, so yeah. I also tried adding something that kind of marks the weapon in the game. Tell me what do you guys think, both MH players and not.

ALSO, Yeah, we are getting closer and closer to finishing the arc, and with that, the break. Since I’m still deciding on what I’ll write, and it seems that many people actually liked the idea of a Re: style story using the characters from Insania (which was the original idea behind the insania offline, but I didn't explain very well…).

ALSO(2), I just noticed, but it seem that we have almost 1600 followers! THE CHURCH OF CYGNAS IS SPREADING! CYGNAS BE PRAISED!

Have a good read!

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Aura, Yuu and me walked down the streets back towards the main elevator. The kitsune had her face completely gone into a complete scarlet coloration while she tried to calm herself down. I kept smiling awkwardly at her, as pure as she had shown herself up to now, I don’t think she would manage to regain control anytime so soon. Thinking so, I automatically ended petting her, which only made her even redder. A bit of a mistake, but a flustered Yuu is also good.

Well, this did strike a jealously attack from the other fox, so I ended up having to carry a sullen Aura all the way towards our next stop.

We arrived at Melinda’s store after a few minutes of a slightly awkward silence. Since it was still deep into the night, I motioned for the two to keep quiet as we advanced towards the back of the room. There, I started to work on preparing the two pieces of leather by spreading salt on them. If I were to compare with the last time, this should take around a whole day to work, so I decided to start with this.

However, due to the sheer size of the hide, they didn’t really fit into the rack, so I had to spread it over a table. Which pretty much meant that half of the workshop was suddenly overtaken with two huge hides that left even Aura’s previous one to shame when it came to sheer size.

But aura’s was much fluffier, so she’s still the champion.

Leaving that aside, I could go around with the hide of the smaller wolves, but I thought that it would be better to leave it for later. Giving priority to what I could do immediately, I quickly wrote a message to the Half-garuda and left immediately after.

Yuu looked slightly confused, since she hadn’t seen this step of leather working yet, so I started to explain to her what I was doing. Aura took this chance to once again occupy my arms before I could end up petting the kitsune.

“Where are we going now, Shishou?” Yuu asked, still a bit embarrassed, but much calmer.

“Well… for now, I think I will start working on my next weapon at the forge.” I said after some thoughts. “What will you do until then?” She blinked confused and tilted her head.

“Can I not go with you?” She asked innocently, before suddenly remembering Sol’s words and adding hurriedly. “I do not think I have seen Shishou forging something before… That’s it!”

I smiled wryly a bit more before explaining to her.

“You see, the forging sector is ridiculously hot. If you go there without some skill to resist the heat you won’t last very long.” I told her reminding myself of the suffering I went through when I went there the first time.

However, Yuu simply smiled defiantly while making a small guts pose. Almost as if saying ‘leave it to me’. I sighed a bit before nodding in defeat. Following that, I guided her towards the main elevator and took it to the lower levels of the mountain. I noticed the Kitsune getting visibly affected by the heat, but before I could offer her to go back, she suddenly closed her eyes, focusing for a bit, and I felt a cold air current gathering around her.

She turned back to me and smiled proudly.

But that is cheating and unfair! I had to use a special ring or earn a special skill to walk here, and she just go and use her magic? I call unfairness!

I grumbled on my way to Torg’s forge, which left Yuu extremely confused for the reason behind my sudden sullen mood.

As soon as we arrived at the forges, I went to the smaller ones and started dumping out all the materials I planned on using here, and this included a lot of the crystal chunks, some extremely large crystal fangs and claws, a few smaller pieces from Excel’s armor, as well as some ridiculously huge crystal bones. Courtesy of Doggy.

Yep, that guy was so badly infected that even his bones became pure crystal. It was a bit bizarre when I started skinning him and saw something transparent in the middle of the muscles.

Well, let’s leave the small talk for later. I motioned for Yuu to go and sit down somewhere far away from the forge since it would get even hotter in a few seconds, and I didn’t think that her magic would manage to withstand the increased temperature. I ignited the forge before sitting in front of the loot and starting to think about it.

Weapon-wise, I think that these claws and fangs aren’t a good match for a blunt weapon, so I immediately discarded the idea of the hammer and the hunting horn. I could use Excel’s metal for the hammer, but most of his pieces were far too large to put on the small forge I was using, so I decided to leave that material for later, deciding to work with the smaller pieces.

This leaves me with: Great sword, Long sword, Dual blades and Lance.

After some though, and a quick look at the material, I finally decided on what would be my course of action.

I threw some of the smaller pieces from Excel into the forge. Even if it was a very fancy and ridiculously strong metal, it was still simply a metal, so there wasn’t much need to change my way of dealing with it. Except making the forge even hotter, of course.

I left the pieces smelting before turning to the large leg-bones and taking them to the forge. Thanks to the tutorial that Arkhoss gave me, I found out that the trick behind these crystals is that they can be modeled directly, or processed into a more malleable form. The technique I chose for the weapon was for me to simply reshape them. And for that I would need a huge amount of mana. Of course, heating up also helped a bit.

Taking some mana crystals, not to be confused with crystalized mana, I left them besides me after I took the crystal bone from the forge and took them towards the grinder. This is what you usually use to give an edge to the weapons, but this time I will use it in a slightly different way.

After extending a cloth beneath the tool, I started grinding the bone into shape. This bone in particular is from the doggy we defeated back when he was in defense mode. I used the feet-powered grinder to slowly reshape the bone into a rod. It was a slow and grindy process, in both meanings of the words. But after around ten or fifteen minutes, it finally had taken the shape I wanted.

Afterwards, I took the rod to the anvil, where I started to slowly reshape it into a bar, with the repeated process of re-heating and slamming it down with the hammer. Thankfully, different from the blazing-tail materials, which once cooled down, I would lose it, this one did not have something like that. I just had to be careful to not let it get too hot, or it would lose its strength.

Between the hammering sessions, I would quickly check the metal on the forge, but the buggers were taking a lot longer to melt than what I originally expected. But it looked like it wouldn’t take that much longer of a wait. Taking my focus back to the crystal, I quickly left it into a flat bar shape before picking up next bone and copying the same shape as the previous one. Each bone had around seventy centimeters, so they were a bit too small for what I planned originally. Thus, I had to use two of them..

After reshaping both pieces into bars, I quickly took the two and joined them on their edges before sprinkling some of the grinded down crystal I gathered on the cloth beneath the grinder. Afterwards I took a mana crystal and put it over the junction.

The crystal started to shine slightly, before slowly losing its coloration. After it finished, I took a quick look at the bars, but it still wasn’t enough, so I repeated the process once more. In the end, now the two pieces were fused into a single bar with one and a half meters of length. Afterwards I quickly re-heated it a bit more and started to give it a slight curved shape. I took a better look at it and smiled satisfied.

One more quick check on the super-alchemysteel, and I noticed that they were ready to be used. I dropped the still liquid metal into a bar mold using the help of a blacksmithing pincer and a crucible. I waited until it solidified enough to not lose its shape and quickly put it on the anvil, where I started hammering it down into shape by lightly folding it in half on its width.

After this, I took the crystal bar and slotted it between the ends of the folded metal before starting to hammer it down tightly. At first, there was some resistance when both pieces met, but after some more hammers, they stuck nicely to each other. Probably because the metal was already used to being fused with the crystal.

By the end, I had a long crystal bar with a long metal bar hugging it from its side, going from almost thirty centimeters below the top and extending all the way to the bottom. There it made a slight S curve so it could align with the center of the crystal and continue from there on for some more centimeters. I smiled proudly of my work. Seeing this, Yuu looked at me slightly confused.

“What is that, Shishou?” She asked getting closer to me. I smiled at her and said.

“This is the base of the weapon.” I said while taking it back to the anvil for some final adjustments. “Can you get me the claws on the table? The ones from the enraged wolf, please.” I asked her while I quickly re-heated the weapon. She nodded and went to the table, picking some of the sharp claws. Meanwhile I took the object to the mechanism we use to puncture the metal, where I quickly made two holes on the crystal-less part of the metal, where I would eventually put the grip.

Picking the claws from Yuu, I took them to the grinder, where I sharpened them a little more around the edges, and not only on the tip.

I took the huge crystal claws and aligned them with outer side of the curved crystal, where I started to sprinkle some of the grinded-down crystals and fused the two together with the help of Yuu’s magic, since she was a lot more efficient than the mana crystals.

When I finished the work, I had an evil looking blade, with a long, thin and slightly curved body, it’s wavy edge made by the succession of curved claws. As a finishing touch, I used doggy’s tail-blade on the tip, making it point inwards, this was more to make the blade look cool rather than to be of use. Now, all that I needed was to make the handle and then the weapon would be finished.

I quickly forged a pommel and a handguard with the remaining metal, making both of them into a sharp-looking shape to match the blade’s evil looks.

Not managing to hold myself back, I dragged Yuu and Aura back to the leatherworks, where I cut a piece from doggy’s aggressive hide off and hastened the process of curing and tanning using the skills. I judged that since I was using it more as the finishing touch, it wouldn’t matter much for quality if I hastened the leather’s preparation process.

There, I quickly made a handle using the hide and assembled it with the handguard and pommel. But not yet satisfied with that, I quickly took the fur from the remaining leather and started to rived it into the inner side of the blade, this way it would cover the metallic part, making it look like it was a weapon made directly from crystal and fur.

I turned to Yuu and smiled proudly while showing her sword, and she smiled awkwardly back to me.

And just then, the window popped up in front of me.

(Insert the name of your creation)

( heavy 2 handed sword)

(requires level 20)Attack:38-45Extra:(none)Quality:ExcellentDurability:40/40Description

A wicked sword made with the use of a mysterious beast. The ferocious claw-blade rips the earth and shred its enemies, yet its thirst for destruction is never quenched.

TGH +10 AGI+10 VIT+5

This blade does not loses durability when hitting stones. Softer stones may be entirely cut through.

Every successful hits converts 2 toughness into 3 strength for five seconds. Stacks up to 5 times

While using this weapon you can use the following skill:[Shatter earth]

(Made by Wargon)

I whistled in amazement at the sword. This thing is a BEAST!

At first I was a bit worried at the fact that the blade didn’t have a single point of strength, but after looking at the skills of the weapon, I started to almost drool. This meant that, during the fight, the sword would start to get stronger and stronger, while I would start to get squishier and squishier during the fight. If something, this was a really interesting skill.

But…

“Heavy 2 handed sword? This isn’t a two handed light sword! This is a longsword!” I said complaining.

“Actually, I’m surprised the game didn’t recognize it as a great-sword.” I heard Cyg suddenly say that besides me, making me blink surprised and tilt my head confused. “You see, for swords, the game divides it like this: Short-swords, which are the lighter ones; basic swords, which are the one you use; long-swords, the ones that can be used with one or two hands; Two-handed, which are obligatory use of two hands; And great-swords, the heaviest ones.” She explained while sitting on the ground and lifting one of her paws up.

“And, let me guess, mine is nowhere near the long-sword.” I said, and she nodded awkwardly.

“Long-swords are swords whose blades are up to one meter. Two handed can be even greater, reaching up to one thirty.” She looked at the weapon in my hand. “Yours have a blade of around one forty.” She said while looking at it. “I guess the only reason it’s not considered a great-sword is because it’s so thin.”

“But… But… Long-sword…” I said while pouting. How will I be able to use it as a long-sword if it’s not called a long-sword?

How… How… Such a blasphemy, can I even dare to do it? As I mourned the fact that my sword wasn’t called by it’s definitive name, I saw as Yuu approached Cygnas.

“Cygnas-san. What about skills?” She asked curious. Cygnas nodded as if she had been waiting that question.

“That actually doesn’t affect skills all that much.” She said in a teacher tone. “All that it matters is how you are holding the weapon. One-hand allows you to use one-handed skills. Two-hands, two-handed skills.” She said with a nod. “But, there are some exceptions. For example, some of the heaviest attacks made with the great-sword can’t be copied into long-swords. The same can be applied reversely. Some of the fastest two-handed skills can’t be used by great-swords. But usually, they share most of the skills. The main difference lies in attack speed and damage, to tell the truth.”

Yuu nodded while focusing herself to remember all of that. Well, that was actually news for me too, so I can’t say that I wasn’t focusing my attention to it.

“But, there is a way to change that!” She said smugly, and now even me turned towards her curious. “If you manage to increase your skill to intermediate, and have been using that one type of sword for long enough, you can specialize into that type of sword. And at advanced, you can specialize even more!” She said proudly, and I raised an eyebrow at this, intrigued. “For example, if you want to specialize in katanas. Katanas are considered long-swords, so you could approach from either side, only having to worry whether you would use it with one hand or two. Then, once you get your skill to intermediate, you can spend one derivation point on it to change into long-sword. Then you increase it to advanced, and you spend two derivation points, and change it into katana! That way you get many katana exclusive skills! And the more specialized, the bigger the damage bonus!”

Wow.

I mean, I knew that personalization was a huge point to this game, but she does take it to another level.

I shook my head to clear it, suddenly feeling pumped up to keep on working on the sword. It’s not like me to simply give up just because it’s not called the right way! Okay, let’s finish this beauty, because there is one important part that I still haven’t worked on.

But first, let’s name it.

I stopped to think of the huge wolf, and started thinking about something that I could use as a reference about him.

In the end, I decided to use one of his most remarkable points, for me, at least.

The Howler.

I nodded, proud of myself, before leaving the sword atop one of the tables, since I had one more thing that I had to finish before I could call it a job well done, The long swords were the only weapon in the whole Monster Hunter game to have a certain feature, even if only cosmetic.

And that is, the sheath!

I quickly took a sheathe mold I brought from Torgs and started by making some hardened leather and molding it to the shape of the sheath, but making it long enough to hold the sword as a whole.

For the sheath, I thought about making it simple, but ominous, so I went with a simple black sheathe, with some fur attached to the upper part. But thanks to the scythe-like tip, a simple sheathe wouldn’t work very well, since it would get stuck, so I made it that, instead of sliding the blade from the top to the bottom, I could fit it nicely from the side.

This also solved another big problem, when I stop to think about it. The blade was so ridiculously long that taking it out of the sheathe like the usual way would be night impossible, but with a side-entry, that wouldn’t be a problem. Even when I hang it on my back like in Monster hunter.

However, this also means that the blade is a lot looser than usual, so I had to make some kind of lock to make it so that I could fix it in place when not using. I decided to make a leather flap near the top that I could lock it with button whenever I wasn’t using it.

I smiled proudly as I put the sheath on my back and fixing it in place with my bandolier, in such a way that the blade handle would stick to the left of my head, and the blade end to the right of my waist.

As I picked the sword on the table so that I could test it on the sheath, but I noticed something. For some reason, the crystalline blade had turned into a opaque black blade, and the wavy pattern on the blade seemed a bit smoother than previously. I looked at the two of them, confused, but neither of them had noticed this previously. Still, since it still looked badass and had the same status, I didn’t bother too much. I kind of like its new shape, to tell the truth.

Afterwards, I somehow managed to put the sword on the sheath I my back with a bit of trouble. It was a bit troublesome since I wasn’t used to putting the sword on my back, but damn, did it look badass.

I turned to the girls and raised my eyebrow, asking how I was. Yuu smiled happily while nodding, seemingly liking the new looks from her Shihsou. Cyg put a pawn on her chin and gave me a thumbs up.

“Now, I should start working on some other pieces of equipment and something…” I said seriously afterwards, before shrugging. “But I’m too pumped up to test this new beauty. What do you two say?” I asked them, and they both nodded.

We immediately left the room and walked towards the main elevator. Just as I was about to take the elevator going down, I looked towards Cyg and sighed.

“Cyg… Would you mind if…” I started asking, and she interrupted me by shaking her head. “Thanks… Anyway, it shouldn’t be for too long before you come back, anyway.” I said afterwards, making both girls tilt their heads confused.

So, we took the elevator upwards, instead of downwards.

“Where are we going, Shishou?” Yuu asked me confused. I smiled at her, and pointed towards Cyg. Or rather, towards Aura.

“It would be a bit unfair if I were the only one to test my new skills, right?” I said with an awkward smile.