Vol. 6 - Captivity - Chapter 18 (Patreon)

After working on creating bar stock for a while, the sword breaker on the anvil finally finished cooling down. Thomas picked it up and dismissed the metal magic spell that had been holding it straight to get rid of the small warp in the blade. He held it by the tang and observed it from a variety of angles. Spotting no more signs of warping he gave a nod of approval and carried it over to the grinding wheel. Sparks flew as he worked on the blade and started to bring it to its final form. The sword breaker looked rather vicious with the long blade, curved tip, and comb-like spikes of metal making up the spine. It's hidden trick would cause quite a bit of surprise for the unprepared.

Before putting the final edge on the blade he took it back over to the workbench and collected a bit of steel. He still needed to make the crossguard and handguard for the blade. The handguard was really just a piece of metal that would be formed into a ring and help prevent blades from cutting the hand of the person wielding the sword breaker. Oddly, or by design, the handguard would be on the opposite side of what was expected as the blade would essentially be held backward. The sword catching spikes were meant to be the 'edge' of the sword breaker while the edge was meant to be the 'spine'. Honestly, the sword breaker was a really fascinating design.

After planning out the shape of the crossguard and handguard, Thomas channeled his Transmutation ability into the hunk of steel and slowly started to reshape it. The lump quickly spread out into a long bar with a hole in the center that the tang of the blade could fit through. He kept the bar of the crossguard rather thick to give it some strength while shaping it into a diamond cross-section. On one side of the hole for the tang, the metal started to morph outwards forming the ring that would act as the handguard. Like the crossguard, he made the metal ring thick and sturdy so that it wouldn't bend or break easily. Within just a couple of minutes, he had a fully formed guard for the blade held in his hands.

He fed the tang of the sword breaker through the guard and used his Transmutation to adjust the guard so it fit perfectly against the shoulders of the blade. Now it was really starting to look like a proper weapon. He made sure that the handguard was on the opposite side of what would be expected so the back of the hand of the wielder would be protected when the spikes faced forward. Any time a blade was missed and not caught by the spike it should hit the handguard and bounce off harmlessly. In theory, anyway.

With the crossguard properly in place, he set the weapon down and collected some wood to use for the creation of the handle. A little grinding and Transmutation created a handle that fit perfectly on the tang and had an ovoid cross-section that would provide a good grip. To make it a little nicer, Thomas collected a bit of leather to wrap around and fuse to the handle. He didn't even need to use glue anymore as a, now, simple bit of Transmutation let him fuse the leather directly with the wood. He found all these little perks of the ability to be extremely helpful with his work. 'All Seeing Eyes' might be a Rank S ability, but it was nowhere near as helpful in his day-to-day work as Transmutation was.

With the crossguard and handle fitted to the tang of the blade all that was left was to peen on the pommel. The sword breaker usually had a good-sized pommel to act as a counterweight and change the weapons center of gravity to be closer to the handle. Much like the rapier did. This made it easier to wield and be accurate with as the user didn't need to fight the weight of his own sword. For the pommel, he selected another left-over piece of steel and reshaped it into a thick ring that somewhat matched the ring of the handguard. He formed a hole in the ring for the tang to fit through and slipped it onto the tang beneath the handle.

Normally he would use a hammer to peen the pommel onto the tang but he was feeling a bit lazy right now. So instead, he used a bit of pure strength to tightly hold the pommel against the handle to form the necessary pressure to hold everything together against the shoulders of the blade. With everything under some pressure, he quickly flattened the tang just as a hammer would have and then fused it to the pommel with Transmutation. Once it was on he went through and fused the handle to the tang as well as fusing the crossguard to the tang and shoulders. It was now impossible to take the blade apart. Not that anyone would really want to. If his plans worked the sword breaker's blade would end up shattering before any of the other parts wore out.

With the whole thing assembled he only had two steps left. The first step was rather easy and just required him to use the grinding wheel to put the final touches on the edges side of the weapon. He honed the edge down and finished sharpening it to a nice sharp edge. It was rather superfluous to the concept of the weapon, but it could still be used for slashing if necessary. With the edge of the blade sharpened and gleaming he moved onto the final step, enchanting it.

He had a rough idea of how he wanted to enchant the blade. Obviously, he would have an enchantment that complimented the inherent heat nature of the weapon but how exactly it would do that he was still debating. After thinking for a bit he smiled and went to work carving out the enchantment using the 'flame' rune for reference. The idea of the enchantment was meant to go hand in hand with the concept of thermal shock. Though the enchantment mimicked the 'flame' rune, it's intent was a little different. The enchantment was meant to store the mana channeled into the blade and hold it until the user willed it to be released.

If it worked as intended, and he had no reason to think it wouldn't, then the user could channel mana into the blade without heating it up. Once the user caught or collided with a weapon chilled by the Icebound Rapier the user could unleash all the mana stored inside the enchantment. Doing so would instantly dump a load of mana into the blade and cause its temperature to spike dramatically. When the overly hot blade had a cold blade trapped or collided with it, the huge difference in temperature would cause the thermal shock to induce metal fatigue and fracture it. Hopefully. Once fractured even a little bit the weapon should be easy enough to break completely.

Carving out the enchantment took a little time as he had to make several additions to it. These additions consisted of circular areas that were carved out and filled with the enchantment mixture to act as batteries or holding areas for the mana stored inside of the enchantment. When the enchantment was finished it looked like a circular line surrounding symbol that looked vaguely Japanese or Chinese in origin with three large circles surrounding it in a triangular formation.

System Notice: You have created an Uncommon rarity Flameshock Sword Breaker. Quality: Above Average. You have gained 763 Magitech Engineering experience. You have gained 381 experience.

Weapon Type: Flameshock Sword Breaker
Rarity: Uncommon
Quality: Above Average
Description: The sword breaker is a classic fencing weapon designed to capture and redirect an enemy's sword. This sword breaker takes that concept and runs with it in a new direction.
+25 Power (Attacks with the Sword Breaker only)
+Mana channeled into the Flameshock Sword Breaker is stored in its enchantment until deliberately unleashed. Once unleashed the temperature of the Flameshock Sword Breaker will drastically increase temporarily and damage chilled weapons. The damage dealt will vary depending on the difference in temperature.

Thomas read the notice on the completion of the weapon and frowned. It had been a while since his quality dipped below 'Excellent'. Then again, he did kind of gloss over a few steps using his Transmutation so the quality taking a hit might not be completely unexpected. Still, it was a good weapon and fit in the roll it was meant to. Once he read over the description, he held it in his left hand with the spikes facing out properly and began to channel his mana into it. As he did the enchantment began to glow but there were no outward signs of changes to the blade. He activated his 'All Seeing Eyes' and confirmed that the Heat element mana he'd pounded into the steel had no reaction to the mana he was channeling.

All the mana he channeled into the sword was absorbed and held inside of the enchantment and had no effect on the blade itself. After a short time, he could feel that the enchantment was full and he only needed to continue to put in a much smaller amount to keep it continuously full. Enchantments lost mana over time if it wasn't continuously provided either by the user or by a charged mana crystal. The amount lost was small compared to his over-all mana pool so he didn't feel like he was wasting mana to keep the sword breaker charged. Once he had a good understanding of the mana required to keep it ready he activated the enchantment and had it release all the stored mana into the blade.

The moment the enchantment was activated all the stored mana poured into the blade of the sword breaker. Instantly the blade turned from shining silver to glowing hot orange. The sudden change in the temperature caused the air around it to ripple and send out a weak blast wave of heat that generated a hot gust of wind. The wind was weak and barely ruffled the hair of the guards standing near the entrance of the room. Clad was less fortunate as he was quietly standing not too far away from Thomas to observe him. Clad was forcefully subjected to the sudden brutal heat of the sword breaker and instantly began to sweat. Mercifully, the heat only lasted for a few seconds before it vanished as if it had never existed to begin with.

From Thomas's point of view, there was no change in temperature as he was protected by virtue of being the one wielding the blade. Hell, his hair wasn't even ruffled by any wind. He had observed the mana particles within the blade with his 'All Seeing Eyes' and saw the difference between the Heat element and the Fire element rather clearly. When mana was introduced to the Fire element it would become hyperactive and bounce around rapidly within the metal containing it, causing a great increase in temperature and producing flames around the blade. He'd seen this in several of the weapons he'd recently made. On the other hand, the Heat element behaved more like the Metal element. When stimulated with mana the Heat element went from gently flowing waves to violent yet well-organized waves. When the mana stored in the enchantment interacted with the calm waves and made them violent it instantly raised the temperature of the metal. Once the mana was expended the waves instantly calmed down and the metal returned to room temperature.

It was actually rather fascinating to watch as metal that was heated up should not be able to cool down so rapidly. At least, not without some sort of external force acting on it. Like dipping it in water or oil. That was magic for you though. It clearly did not enjoy obeying the laws of physics and thermodynamics. In fact, watching this clearly showed that magic made those two principals its bitch. He didn't mind it and didn't ponder too deeply on it. Magic in video games was always a mysterious force that could do the impossible. Why would it be any different within AoG?

Now that he had tested the Flameburst Sword Breaker, he carried it over to the weapons rack and paired it with the Icebound Rapier. If those two weapons worked together they would be pretty damaging to any gear they came in contact with. Still, looking at the pair of weapons he wondered if it was possible to create items sets. He felt that is should be, but doing so would probably require him making the items with the intention of them being a set. In the case of these two weapons, he'd only make weapons that happened to work well together. They were two weapons that worked well alone but complimented each other and became more effective when paired together.

With the weapons finished he turned to look up at the sky through the hole in the ceiling. It looked like the sun was starting to set so the day was nearly over. He could still do a bit though. He returned to the forge and continued to work on making bar stock for the grenades. Tomorrow he would spend the first half of the day just making grenades so that he could spend more time making other items. If he remembered correctly there were some requests for armor on the list from the pirates. It'd been a while since he'd made armor and he was a bit tired of making weapons. He was also curious about how metals with an 'embryo' of mana inside of them would react as armor.

For the next hour or two, he turned ingots into bar stock and stored it off to the side. By the time the sun had fully set he had a nice pile that could easily be chopped into cubes and stored inside of the grenades. That would save him a fair bit of time in making the grenades tomorrow morning. He bid goodnight to Clad and made his way to one side of the cave where he'd set up his sleeping arrangements. He spent a little time working on his escape plan in his mind before finally falling asleep for the night.