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The last few days of Arwin’s life had melted together into a blur. He could still hear the echo of hammered metal in his ears and feel the tingle of the Mesh at his fingertips. Every single part of him was sore and exhausted.

He’d barely gotten more than a few hours of sleep through the whole time. Every second of both the day and night had been spent either crafting, theorizing, testing, or re-crafting — and it wasn’t just him.

Every single member of the Menagerie had been hard at work. Rodrick had led the group on multiple different dungeon runs, returning with a variety of different monster parts and gemstones for Arwin to work with. Madiv and Esmerelda had procured half a dozen samples of different metals to work with.

Lillia had kept him fed with magical food, both suppressing his need to spend time making bracelets while also filling him with energy to keep pushing forward. Arwin only saw them when they came into the smithy to deliver the materials they’d gathered.

They’d only had a week to make Melissa armor. There hadn’t been any room for mistakes, and Lillia’s call that it would be impossible for Arwin to do both dungeon diving and crafting in the time they had proved to be completely correct.

He’d spent a day alone just figuring out the proper way to make boots, and then every passing minute afterward determining exactly how he could manage a suit of armor that was both powerful enough to protect Melissa and not so strong as to completely screw him over if people learned of its abilities.

Arwin had crafted. He’d tested. He’d overcorrected and undercorrected — trying to find the proper balance for the massive undertaking. He’d made a full two-piece set for Lillia, but he’d never made a complete five-piece set like this one before.

There were just so many different variables to consider. The more he worked, the more he’d realized just how immense the task before him really was. If he’d been alone, he would have failed. It simply would have been impossible.

But Arwin hadn’t been alone. Lillia and Rodrick bounced ideas off him. Lillia had helped him craft, providing extra magical energy to work with for the hardest combinations. They’d made the armor piece by piece, pushing the limits of how many enchantments he could fit into every component before putting them together.  

Even the minor assassin’s guild he’d hired had proven to be supremely useful. Even though they hadn’t been anywhere near as competent as the Falling Blade, they’d used many of the same strategies.

And, after six days of work, Arwin was finally finished.

He’d settled on a metal called Rosium that Madiv had delivered him. It was light and flexible, though it wasn’t the most resilient thing he’d ever worked with. Folding it together with Brightsteel gave the material a way to absorb stronger blows.

That had been the easy part. The most difficult aspect of the entire project was working out the traits the armor would have and how it would be properly limited. The learnings he’d gotten from his gauntlets proved to be the tool he needed.

It was impossible to imbue a bunch of different traits at once. It just took too much energy and attention. The way to get more magical effects on a single piece was to split them into sections. Just like how the pair of gauntlets had been a single item, Arwin made the kneecaps of the greaves with one trait and the rest of the leg with another.

That, of course, came with its own difficulties. Not every trait was thrilled to join up with others. Some just fizzled out and failed. Others had… slightly more spectacular issues. There were several new blackened spots throughout the smithy and a good portion of his hair and eyebrows got singed off twice.

Figuring out the exact combination of traits that functioned together wasn’t easy. And, even if they did go together, adding too many could make the item drain so much power that it was completely unusable.

But difficult didn’t mean impossible, and Arwin wasn’t alone. Hour by hour, day by day, he learned more. He failed more than he succeeded, and that taught him more than anything else possibly could have.

Arwin used centipede chitin to reinforce the armor. He used gemstones to gather energy passively from anyone that wore the armor, and feathers to fuel the powerful bursts of air that would deflect ranged attacks.

He was pretty sure the feathers had actually come from Rodrick’s team rather than Esmerelda, who was caught up getting the metals together with Rodrick. She’d tried to offer him a phoenix feather a few times, but it wasn’t any more useful now than it had been the first time he’d needed one.

Simplicity was key when he was trying to make an armor that wouldn’t stand out too much. The more complex the items that went into it were, the more unique the enchantments were liable to be.

By the end of the fifth day, he’d made something he was truly happy with. The armor was resilient, with a focus on preventing stabbing attacks. It could hold up to slashes as well, but not quite as well. As long as its wearer wasn’t completely out of magical energy, it could deflect ranged strikes.

Rodrick’s dungeon team also brought him the vocal cords of what had apparently been a very loud, six-foot-tall rooster. Arwin had used those to work with the shock-absorptive properties of Brightsteel to reverse powerful physical blows. That enchantment drew a lot of magical energy, so it wasn’t always active, but it was a good way to finish off opponents.

The final two enchantments were possibly the most important of the entire set.

For the first, Arwin used the essence of a shade — courtesy of Esmerelda, who had refused pay for it and muttered something about a pot — to conceal the armor’s stats from everyone including its wearer.

The second wasn’t to make the armor stronger. It was to make it weaker. The armor’s second trait was a permanent binding to himself — a mental connection that let Arwin shatter the entire set from the inside out, rendering it worthless with a thought. The item it was based on was one of Arwin’s own fingernails. He felt a bit gross hammering it into the metal, but he refused to let a suit of armor this effective out into the world without a way to ensure it was never turned against him.

That wasn’t to say it was the strongest armor he’d made. If Arwin was being honest, it had some serious flaws. It didn’t provide much protection against magic and someone suitably strong could crumple it like paper.

Lillia’s armor was probably more effective despite being a two-piece set, but this set was specialized specifically to deal with assassins. It was a little more powerful than he’d have ideally liked to make, but with the concealed stats, it would be enough to stop anyone from realizing just how effective it really was.

And that was that. On the sixth day, Arwin looked down on the completely finished armor together with Lillia, a look of mild amusement on his face. He’d finished the final tweaks and polishes to the set over the night.

It was a little strange to look down at something he’d made and be unable to see any information about it. Fortunately, he’d tested the armor so thoroughly that he knew what it could do. The presence of the faint, almost unnoticeable, connection to it in the back of his mind was the only other proof that it was anything other than a beautiful piece of art.

A tired smile crossed over Arwin’s features. While he couldn’t see the actual stats of the armor, he could see everything he’d gotten out of making it. In addition to a rather significant amount of magical energy for all the tests he’d made, he’d also gotten several Achievements.

[Full Hand] – Awarded for forging a full 5-piece set. Effects: One skill in your next Skill Selection has been upgraded. This achievement will be consumed upon choosing your next skill.

[Couple of Crafters - II] – Awarded for forging a set by linking your desires together with your partner. Get a room. Effects: The dissonance between you and your partner’s intent has been reduced for this set. Repeated instances of this Achievement are possible and rewards scale with its tier.                                                       

[Sleepless Set - I] – Awarded for re-forging an entire set with less than 1 hour of sleep in the past day.Effects: One skill in your next Skill Selection has been upgraded. This achievement will be consumed upon choosing your next skill. Repeated instances of this Achievement are possible and rewards scale with its tier. Keep at it and see what happens if you get another level of this one.

Arwin didn’t miss the mild warning in the Mesh’s last sentence. And, judging by the tired amusement in Lillia’s eyes, she hadn’t either. They’d spent nearly every scrap of energy they had. Even with her magical food fighting to keep them aware, it was a losing battle.

“We did it,” Arwin said, lowering himself to the blackened floor of the smithy with an exhausted groan. The smell of soot and metal hung in the air, but he was too tired to care. Lillia flopped down on top of him, driving the air from his lungs.

“Sorry,” Lillia said, a hint of amusement in her drowsy tone. She looped her arms around his neck and rested her head against his chest. “I’m not sleeping on the floor. Too tired to go to bed. Stay here.”

“I was…” Arwin yawned, then let his head rest against the stone, “…planning on it. We can give Melissa the armor when we wake up.”

Behind them, the door creaked open. Arwin caught a glimpse of Rodrick stepping into the room before the exhaustion finally took him and he let himself drift off into much-needed sleep.

Somehow, they’d managed to make Melissa her armor.

Now all that remained was to see if it would be enough.

Chapter 214

 

Arwin’s eyes fluttered open against his will as someone nudged him in the shoulder. He groaned. There was a crimp in his spine and the floor was ice cold against his back, but the warm weight on his stomach and wrapped around his neck somehow made it comfortable.

Weariness still hung from his mind like strands of torn cobweb clinging on even as sleep attempted to brush them away. The temptation to close his eyes again was strong, but he’d spent far too many years training to jump into battle at a moment’s notice to humor it.

Arwin pushed himself upright. He only remembered halfway up that the warm weight on top of him was Lillia. His hand shot out before his eyes were even fully open, grabbing Lillia and pulling her back against himself before he could accidentally dump her onto the ground.

She jerked in his arms as she woke with a surprised breath. “Huh? What? What’s going on?”

“Sorry,” Reya said from beside them, her cheeks coloring slightly. “I wanted to let you sleep longer, but it’s been a while. Rodrick thinks those assassins might try to come back again pretty soon. The week is nearly up. If we’re going to give Melissa anything or send her off, we need to do it sooner rather than later.”

“How long were we asleep?” Arwin asked as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his free hand.

“Through the rest of yesterday and all night. Something around fourteen or fifteen hours I think,” Reya replied with an impressed shake of her head. “I’m not surprised. It’s a miracle you stayed awake that long in the first place. Should we just give the armor to Melissa? You could keep sleeping then.”

“No, it’s fine,” Arwin said through a yawn as he shook off the last of his weariness and rose to his feet, lifting Lillia along with him. Her hair was frizzy and more than a few strands were stuck in her clothes or her mouth.

He set her down beside him and looked at himself. His clothes were stained with soot. Holes had been burnt into several spots on his shirt and pants.

He tried brushing himself off for exactly a second before realizing just how fruitless the endeavor would be and giving up. He had more sets back in the tavern. These were done for and probably weren’t even worth using as fuel for a fireplace.

“Where’s the armor?” Arwin asked, glancing at the spot where he’d left it in a pile before falling asleep. “Did Rodrick move it? I think I remember him coming in a bit before falling asleep.”

“Yeah. It’s in his room in the tavern. Easier to keep watch over and we didn’t want to disturb you,” Reya replied.

“Smart,” Lillia said. Her face paled as a thought struck her. “Hold on. Did anyone come to the tavern while I was passed out? I slept through a whole night!”

“You did miss a few customers,” Reya said with a wince. “We told them the tavern was closed since you were preparing some new stuff. Everyone understood. They’ll probably be back tonight or tomorrow.”

Lillia’s nose scrunched in distaste but she nodded her understanding. “At least they weren’t left wondering what had happened. Thanks, Reya. I don’t want people thinking the Devil’s Den isn’t reliable. I’ll have to make sure not to miss any more days in the near future.”

“Is Melissa waiting in the tavern, then?” Arwin asked.

“Yeah. Anna and Olive are with her. Madiv and Esmerelda were there as well, but Anna sent them off because they got into an argument over the price of pickles.”

“Pickles?” Arwin blinked. “Why pickles?”

“Madiv apparently likes salty things. He wanted to buy some, but Esmerelda only had magical ones. I don’t recommend asking. You’ll regret it,” Reya said, her eyes glazing over as a shudder racked her body. “And Esmerelda is in a pretty bad mood as well. She hasn’t even tried selling me anything weird in the last few days.”

“Is… that what she normally does?” Lillia asked with a frown. “I fully expected her to give up on that once she saw we weren’t interested.”

“It’s basically how she says hello at this point,” Reya replied. “I kind of feel bad for her. We need to find someone for her to sell something to soon. I’d probably buy something if she ever actually had any of it. She keeps asking us to go back to her store in town, but we’re all too busy to head over to it.”

  “Just keep humoring her. She’s a nice old lady, and she’s definitely got some connections since she was able to get the Rosium for the armor set. She’s just a bit odd.” Arwin stretched his arms over his head and shook himself off. “Okay. Is Rodrick around as well?”

“No. He’s off in town right now. I think he’s been keeping tabs on the assassin’s guilds and for any word of the Falling Blade arriving in town.”

Good man.

“Sounds good. We’ll be right over,” Arwin said. “Thanks, Reya.”

She grinned and nodded in response before turning to stride back out of the tavern. Arwin watched her leave, his head tilting slightly to the side. Reya moved with more confidence than she had just a few days ago.

Not just confidence, either. That’s more than just an attitude improvement. She’s stronger. All the dungeon delving she did with Rodrick must have gone pretty well for her. I bet she’s catching up to me in level.

That thought gave him a second of pause. He hadn’t kept exact track of how many magic items he’d made over the past week, but he’d definitely earned a lot of power amidst all the achievements.

Arwin adjusted his stance. Even through the weariness, his body felt stronger. Even stronger than it had at the start of the week. He dug through his memories as he summoned his status screen before him. It had been quite some time since he’d taken a proper look at it.

Did I —

Name: Arwin Tyrr

Class: Living Forge (Unique)(Tier: Apprentice 8)

Skills:

[Awaken] (Passive) – All items forged by your hand have the potential to take on a trait, determined by [Unknown]. The potential for the trait to be detrimental is [72%]. Materials with a higher chance to awaken will fight with you to exert their influence on the piece they are being made into.

[Molten Novice] (Passive) – You have spent enough time working immersed in fire that you have begun to understand it. Unlock your potential to prepare for the first steps in the path of Dwarven forging.

[Soul Flame] – Passion burns within you with such intensity that it become manifest. You may draw out your Soul Flame, empowering the fire of your forge, but be wary – any magical damage done to the Soul Flame will transfer onto your soul. Increasing the amount of magical energy you use to form the Soul Flame will increase its intensity. Your Soul Flame can pull all the traits from a magical item and allow you to transfer them onto other items without pre-existing magic.

[Arsenal] – You live and die on your equipment, so you might as well make it part of yourself. Bind yourself to [8] pieces of equipment, summoning and dismissing it at will. The number of equipment you can bind to scales with your Tier, up to a total of 10. Unbinding a piece of Equipment will make this skill inactive for 1 day. You may temporarily bind yourself to 1 extra piece of equipment after holding it for an amount of time scaling with the difference between your current Tier and the Tier of the item’s holder. Breaking this bond will not deactivate [Arsenal].

[Dragon’s Greed] – Your hunger for magical power has begun to manifest itself in the physical world. Extend your senses to search the area around you for magical items at the cost of significant magical energy. The range of this effect scales with the amount of magical energy used. At the cost of extra magical energy, the focus of this ability can be targeted to a specific type of magical item or material.

Titles:

[Scourge] – You have faced an entire army in combat and emerged victorious. Your physical strength can be significantly intensified at the cost of magical energy.

[Indomitable Bulwark] – You have withstood a blow that would have leveled a city. Damage from all attacks is reduced significantly.  

[The Hungering Maw] – An enormous burst of energy has permanently infused you with magic, but not without cost. You must consume objects or items with Magical Energy equivalent to your current Magical Power every week to survive. Consuming an item temporarily grants you some of its properties. The Hungering Maw’s palate has advanced and it has a significant chance to ignore detrimental effects of items that it has eaten.

[Magical Olfactory] – The Maw’s influence spreads. With sufficient concentration, you can smell the scents and quality of magic within items.

[Stonesinger] – You crafted an Awoken item with a magical component that was beyond your comprehension, and your efforts have attuned you to the whispers of the world. If you listen close enough, you can speak with magical materials – though they may not wish to reply.

[Indomitable] – Your body has been beaten, and yet it carried on. Your mind has teetered on the precipice of oblivion, yet it refused to give in. Forged in the ghosts of the past and tempered in the present, your mental fortitude has been honed to a point beyond what most can comprehend.

[Inevitable End] – Awarded for killing an overloading monster a full Tier above you from a location where it could do nothing but wait for death. Try not to make it a habit. Perceptive opponents will be able to pick up the promise of death that seems to find those who place themselves in your way.

Achievements:

[Smart Set] – Awarded for forging a set made entirely of [Awoken] items. Effects: Gain guidance on a single class-related choice. This achievement will be consumed upon usage. 

[Full Hand] – Awarded for forging a full 5-piece set. Effects: One skill in your next Skill Selection has been upgraded. This achievement will be consumed upon choosing your next skill.

[Couple of Crafters II] – Awarded for forging a set by linking your desires together with your partner. Get a room. Effects: The dissonance between you and your partner’s intent has been reduced for this set. Repeated instances of this Achievement are possible and rewards scale with its tier.

[Sleepless Set - I] – Awarded for re-forging an entire set with less than 1 hour of sleep in the past day.Effects: One skill in your next Skill Selection has been upgraded. This achievement will be consumed upon choosing your next skill. Repeated instances of this Achievement are possible and rewards scale with its tier. See what happens if you get another level of this one. It’ll be fun. 

Challenges:

[Curb the Hunger] – You’ve unveiled a hidden aspect of your Class. All that lives must consume to persist, but some hunger more than others. Unfortunately for you, your hunger is far greater than what your body can sustain. Find a way to bring it under control before you consume yourself. Rewards: range on completion. Failure to complete a sufficient amount of the Challenge will result in your death.

Milestone 1: Discover your lack of knowledge and initiate the Challenge.

Reward 1: [The Hungering Maw] will have an extra variant to choose from upon your next Class Specialization. This achievement will be consumed upon your next Class Specialization

Milestone 2: Shed your training aids and take your first step onto the path of true smithing.

Reward 2: 1 bar of purified Albunium, 1 bar of purified Steel, 1 Palestone, 1 Ripperfish tooth, and 1 chip of Rockspider Carapace.

Bonus Reward 2: Achievement: [Yes you did.]

Milestone 3: Unknown Title

 

“Holy shit,” Arwin said, blinking in pain as golden letters flew at his head like miniature arrows. He’d never tried to view his fully expanded information before, and now he had a damned good reason to not do it again.

I’m not trying to read a novel every single time I take a look at my abilities. Let’s keep that condensed in the future.

It took him a moment of sifting through all the words floating before him to realize that he actually had leveled up again. He’d missed the notification from the Mesh while he was in his work-induced haze.

That meant he hadn’t gotten a new skill with the advancement, but that really wasn’t a surprise. New skills became less frequent the stronger one got. He was fairly certain he’d probably get one at Apprentice 9, but the real important advancement would be right after that, when he moved from Apprentice into Journeyman.

“Look at your information,” Arwin said, his eyes still scanning over everything to make sure he hadn’t missed any other changes in himself. He summoned Verdant Blaze to his hand and a thrum of energy met his palm.

The weapon was brimming with power. It wasn’t fully Awoken yet, but it was a soft breeze away from it. Arwin wasn’t sure how he could tell that — he just knew it from the touch alone.

It would become sentient with the next one or two pieces of magical equipment he made. What that meant, he didn’t know.

“Whoa,” Lillia said, her eyes widening in shock as she finished reading her status screen. “I reached Apprentice 7. I’ve got a new skill to select as well. When did that happen? I didn’t realize I’d cooked that much. I was so focused on improving the quality and magical effects of the food that I wasn’t even paying attention to the Mesh. ”

“You zoned out even harder than I did,” Arwin said with a laugh. He gently brushed some of the hair scattered around her face away. “Good options?”

Lillia nodded absently. She stared past him, studying the words visible only to her for several quiet seconds. A grin formed on her face after a few seconds. She blinked and her eyes refocused. “I got an ability that lets me take on attributes of things I eat. Anything I eat.”

“Anything?” Arwin asked. “Does it have to be cooked?”

“Not technically, no,” Lillia said. She scratched the side of her neck and snickered. “I could technically just try to take bites out of monsters mid fight like you.”

“You stole my trick?” Arwin demanded. “That’s just lame.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got higher standards than you do,” Lillia said, trying to keep herself from laughing any more. “I only eat properly prepared food now. I’ll have to get more into jerky. Carrying around preserved parts of powerful monsters we’ve fought will let me get some pretty strong power boosts mid-fight. I don’t have a lot of combat abilities that aren’t related to my tavern, so this’ll come in handy.”

“Can you eat inanimate objects?”

“No. It’s got to be food. Meat, vegetables, the like. I’m not taking a bite out of anything other than normal monsters unless we randomly run into something made out of bread.”

“Then my trick is safe with me,” Arwin said with an overexaggerated sigh of relief. “You are forgiven. Shall we go give Melissa her armor and figure out what else we missed over the past week?”

 “If only so we can finally do something else, yes,” Lillia said. She glanced over to the heart in the corner of their room. It was still beating, but it had slowed even further. They’d kept vague tabs on it over the course of the last week to make sure their efforts didn’t end up getting wasted, but time was definitely running out to make something of it. “We should really finish what we started here.”

“Yeah. We’ll get it after Melissa is sent off today,” Arwin said. He noticed a few strands of hair somehow poking straight out of the top of Lillia’s head and reached out to flatten them. With all the soot covering both of them, it looked like they’d been caught in an explosion.

Lillia pushed up into his hand as he ran it over her head.

He paused.

She paused.

“What?” Lillia asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Nothing,” Arwin replied, finishing the motion with a laugh.

“Good,” Lillia strutted past him and somehow managed to look elegant in the process of it — and also revealing the back of her clothing, which was somehow just as messed up as Arwin’s were. She paused at the door at looked over her shoulder at him, arching an eyebrow. “What are you staring at?”

“You.”

We both really need a change of clothes before we see Melissa or she’s going to think we just ran in after losing a fight against a soot monster.

Lillia’s cheeks went bright red and she quickly turned away in attempt to hide it. It struck Arwin that his words may have been misinterpreted, but rectifying that mistake was something he had absolutely no plans of doing.

He walked up beside Lillia and nudged her with his shoulder before pulling the door open. “Shall we? I thought we were heading over to give Melissa her armor.”

She cleared her throat and combed her hair back. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

Together, they stepped out of the Infernal Armory and headed for Lillia’s tavern. Every step they took brought them closer to the future. Once word got out about the magical armor, Arwin had no delusion that nothing would ever be the same again.

The steps he’d taken were to make sure nobody realized quite how powerful the armor truly was, but magical gear was magical gear. There was no taking this back — but this was the way forward.

No more making random armor. It’s magical from here on out. That’s the way to grow more powerful… but more than that.

By choosing the people I make equipment for, I’m making allies and equipping them with a way to grow even more powerful. This is about more than just equipment. I need to lay the foundations for us to grow. We need powerful connections and access to more and more material.

Melissa’s survival can open a path into the future if we play our cards correctly. We’ve got an opportunity here to begin making a presence on a larger scale, and I’m not going to let that go to waste.

Comments

Tommy

I kinda want Arwin to go all out and make a super saiyan set for Olive or Lillia or someone in his team. Or himself. Fully awoken iron man suit. With snarky intelligence sold as standard 😂

Danzafan37

I think there needs to be more or a deeper motivation to save Melissa. It screams of plot to rather than it's clearly laid out the 4-5 compounding reasons. Like he wants to spite the people who sent people to kill on his street. Or the specific plans of pairing with a connected set of guilds. It just doesn't feel like a normal snap decision IMO