Author's note: 30th chapter already, time flies... Anyway I decided to give the weapon crafting a chapter of its own as it might get quite lengthy. I'll try to draw the weapon and post a picture of it but my drawing skills are abysmal and a five year old might be able to draw it better, so please don't expect too much in that regard.

That said enjoy the chapter!

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Zaran rolled up his sleeves, took one of the black apron's that lied around and put it on. Zaran selected a few standard molds that Eoric had lying around and put them on the stone table. After instructing Nuvahn on how to operate the bellows Zaran took out the chunks of iron ore that he had and started to melt them down.

Meanwhile, Cindarrah jumped of his head as she couldn't stand the smell and heat of the forge and ran to the opposite cornor of where the forge was. This in contrast with Kirin who looked for a comfortable spot near the forge where she wouldn't disturb Zaran during his work. As soon as she found a good spot Kirin laid down and almost instantly fell asleep.

After removing the impurities Zaran cast a part of the liquid iron in a long rectangular mold that was about the size of his sides with meticulous precision. He didn't want the plating to be neither too thick nor too thin. After the first mold was filled Zaran started pouring another part of the liquid iron in a rectangular mold which was shaped to fit his back. Meticulously taking note of the thickness, he stopped pouring once the liquid reached a thickness of 5 millimeters. Lastly Zaran took yet another mold, this one shaped in the form of the tip of his shoes. Eoric had a lot of these molds lying around so he had already been able to select the right one. Moreover unlike the other molds this one he could just fill to the top as the end product would automatically have the correct shape. This meant he would not have to hammer away on the iron plating that was meant for the tip of his shoes.

A while later the liquid in the molds had finished cooling thus Zaran removed the plating from the molds and carefully refilled them, again meticulously taking note of the amount of liquid used.

Taking one of the long rectangular plates meant for his sides Zaran reheated it and hammered away on it, contorting the shape to fit his sides. With every bang of the hammer the iron plate slowly changed its form. After a process of half an hour Zaran fitted the plate to itself. Not happy with how it turned out he heated it up again and started hammering away again. After repeating this process a few times he was finally happy with how it turned out and started on the chest plate.

Nuvahn was attentively watching Zaran's progress. He wanted to catch up some more but seeing his former master so absorbed in his work he didn't dare to disturb him.

'Kling, Klang'

Every time the hammer rang out the metal contorted, coming closer to the shape of a breastplate. Sweat started to pour from Zaran's face from both the heat of the furnace and the concentration he was pouring in to the plate. Despite that he could rely on the system to take the majority of the work's load away from him Zaran had decided to not do so. As he had learned earlier advancing to the advanced stage to the expert stage required a deeper understanding of the skill itself... Thus people who only relied on the game to do everything for them would have a really hard time advancing. It was for exactly this reason that Zaran refused to let the game do everything for him. On top of that this way suited him far more.

Slowly but surely the breast plate had changed to the form Zaran wanted. After fitting it on himself once with Nuvahn's help, Zaran was happy with how it turned out.

The process of reheating the metal plates and hammering was repeated for the remaining two pieces. Taking the pieces one by one, he put them into the leather parts meant to hold them in the leather vest. After finishing he checked up on the stats but the game hadn't acknowledged the whole as a piece of armour and all of the stats were lost instead.

Zaran pondered for a moment and removed the leather parts used to hold the plates and cut them into straps. Then he hammered a few holes in the sides of the metal plates so he could connect the parts with the leather straps. Quickly he connected the metal plates with straps and firmly attached the straps to the vest. After finishing that Zaran nodded in approval of himself as he felt this looked more like an armour set than what he had previously created.

He cracked his knuckles and took the two metal half moons that he had created and placed them on the tip of his shoes. Then he took some leather and cut it in a slightly bigger half moon shape and used that to cover up the metal plates. After double checking that he had firmly attached everything he opened the stat screens of his new set of armour.

Leather plate armourLevel requirement10Armour100Bonus statsAgility+5Health+100DescriptionSimple leather armour made from leather of the silver line wolf reinforced with iron plate armour. Due to the added metal plating it gives a larger amount of protection compared to regular leather armour.

Fingerless leather glovesLevel requirement10Armour20Bonus statsFlexibility+5Agility+5DescriptionSimple leather gloves made from leather of the silver line wolf. They offer simple protection and improve weapon handling.

Leather leggingsLevel requirement10Armour50Bonus statsFlexibility+5Agility+10DescriptionSimple leather leggings made from leather of the silver line wolf. They offer simple protection and improve speed.

Leather bootsLevel requirement10Armour30Bonus statsStrength+5Agility+5DescriptionSimple leather boots made from leather of the silver line wolf.

The tip of the boots has been reinforced with iron plating, greatly increasing armour and slightly enhancing strength.

Zaran let out a deep sigh of satisfaction. Luckily all his hard work had not been for nothing and he had a decent set of armour right now.

"Hey Nuvahn, take out your iron ore, I'm going to wake up the old man." Zaran said as he walked outside the smithy. He knocked on the door to Eoric's house... but even after a few minutes of knocking no one answered. Zaran let out a sigh and pushed open the door. Zaran's eyes popped out of their sockets as he saw what a mess the place was. Everything was just strewn around on the floor, pots, books, chunks of ore, weapons, creates, clothes, ... It was so messy that you couldn't even see the floor.

"What the... how can someone live in a swine stall like this?" Zaran exclaimed in surprise. "Master, wake up!!!" Zaran yelled. He really didn't want to walk around in this mess of a place. He didn't want to see what the rest of the house looked like if the entrance was already this bad.

"EORIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Zaran roared after he didn't hear any movement. Another minute passed with no answer and Zaran cursed inwardly as he trudged through the house, trying to avoid breaking anything and trying to not fall by slipping on anything at the same time. The deeper he went in the house the messier it got and there were places where a room was stacked so full with thrash, books, clothes and whatnot that only a tiny corridor to pass through was left over.

Finally he arrived at the bedroom which was... completely clean. Not even a speck of dust existed in the bedroom. The difference between the rest of the house was so huge that Zaran's eyes popped out their sockets yet again.

"WHAT THE?!?" He exclaimed in shock. "Just... how? What... WHY?" he yelled as he looked at the completely clean bedroom.

"hmm uhh... wh...what?" Eoric mumbled as he slowly opened his eyes. "Who's yelling?" Eoric mumbled in a completely exhausted tone. A moment later he fully opened his eyes and saw Zaran staring at the room with an utterly confused expression.

"Never seen a bedroom before?" Eoric asked.

"Not one this clean with a house so dirty, no."

"Can't sleep when my bedroom is dirty so I just clean this place whenever I want to sleep and throw the thrash out of this room... I'm too lazy to clean the rest of my place so it stacked up over the years." Eoric replied with a blank expression, not even blinking once while saying it.

"Yeah... that said I'm going to work on the weapon. If you want to watch, please come to the smithy." Zaran said as he turned around and made his way through the mess again.

Zaran entered the smithy again and saw the pile of ore Nuvahn had stacked on the table.

"How much ore did you take out?" Zaran asked Nuvahn. The amount of ore he had available for the blade had to be carefully taken into account. Even being off a few hundred grams could make it so that the balance of the weapon would be completely skewed. If the balance was even a tiny bit off neither Zaran nor Nuvahn would even bother to use the weapon. Compared to ordinary weapons where being a bit of balance isn't as disastrous, with this blade it made the difference between swinging around a completely overpowering weapon or a random piece of metal. Even the balance between every section of the blade was important to take care of.

"Exactly 49.8 kilograms. It was that or 52.5 kilograms."

Zaran massaged his temples while milling over the best amount of weight. Both numbers weren't good to make the weapon with as it would skew the balance.

Suddenly Zaran had a flash of insight. Zaran ran to the left wall and rummaged through the mold's that were stacked there. After selecting a short sword mold for a dagger Zaran turned to Nuvahn. "Take out the extra 2.7 kilograms. I'll be making a short sword of exactly 2.5 kilograms and make the blade with the rest!"

The mold Zaran had selected was for a short sword that had a weight of exactly 2.5 kilograms. He started by melting the 2.7 kg ore chunk down and stacked the ore in four different sized stacks. The stacks were exactly 15 kilograms, 15 kilograms, 12.5 kilograms and 7.3 kilograms.

Eoric entered the smithy with a sleepy expression on his face. "You working on it yet?"

"Just need to get rid of some excess ore first so quickly casting a short sword into a mold first."

Once the excess ore was molten down he cast it in the mold and was left with a tiny amount of liquid iron. He put the mold away as he had no use for the shortsword and it was merely an excess weapon. He figured he could just take it out of the mold once it had cooled down and toss it at Nuvahn so he could sell it and earn some money from it.

"Time to work on the real thing!" Zaran said as he stared at the pile of ore in front of him.