MaeveMcCarthy
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Chapter 73
🕑 Added 2025-02-11 23:17:02 +0000 UTCFour more days passed. Monica wheezed as she came back to life, sprawled near a veritable mountain of half-finished bracers she had forged.
Dworsul examined a pair with a scrutinizing eye and nodded to himself. Moments before, Monica had collapsed after pouring the last drop of her Vitality into Fire Transmutation, smelting yet another batch of iron for the bracers. Still shaky, she pushed herself upright, brushing away the caked dust and sweat.
“You’ve finally mastered iron, Avatar,” Dworsul said, his tone surprisingly impressed. He set the bracers aside on a low wooden table already crowded with similar pieces of equipment.
He was right: she’d lost count of how many sets of bracers, shields, and other items she’d forged in the last four days. She barely slept—Dworsul hardly allowed it. The moment she managed to craft a decent dagger, he had shifted her to forging shields, then swords, then chest pieces. Finally, he proclaimed that a true blacksmith had to know how to forge bracers and gauntlets.
That had tested Monica's patience in a way she had not expected.
She found that making gauntlets was a far cry from hammering out a simple sword or shaping a breastplate. Gauntlets were made by interlocking individually forged pieces, and Dworsul had thrown out entire gauntlets that hadn't been up to his standards. Not only did Monica have to forge each piece individually, but when tempering them, Dworsul required Monica to perfectly control her Fire Breathing in order for the Mana in the equipment to be perfectly distributed.
At first, his unrelenting critique grated on her nerves, but the more she worked, the more she understood his insistence on perfection. She learned to watch how Mana distributed itself through each segment and link. If one plate soaked up more Mana than its neighbors, that spot would weaken or stiffen unpredictably in battle. Again and again, Dworsul made her undo hours of forging and start from scratch—but each time, her sense for shaping the metal’s inner flow grew sharper. By the time she finally got a passable pair completed, her arms trembled from repeated forging. Yet the next day, he demanded more.
"Mana is just a telltale sign of good craftmanship," Dworsul had lectured her time and again. "It's how someone like you will be able to tell whether a piece of armor is less resistant in one place or the other. You don't want a shield or a protection piece with weak points, now, do you?"
Of course, Monica agreed.
But going through the repetitive motions of the Blacksmithing process had truly made her go crazy. She had learned how to bend, twist, and form all the shapes she wanted. The theory and the application, with all the Attributes she had in Dexterity, were nothing complicated. What truly made her lose her mind, however, was how maddening it was to try and evenly distribute Mana throughout a piece of armor.
"If I were you," Dworsul said, "I'd check your levels."
Dworsul had forbidden Monica from being distracted by notifications. So, for the last four days, she had been denied looking at her status. The Dwarven master said that it would only take her mind off what truly mattered at the moment: forging.
She was pretty sure she had passed Level 25, but when she opened her status dashboard, it would be an understatement to say that she was stunned.
Ding
Class – Phoenix Forge (Epic) Lv. 12 → Lv. 25 (Malus Removed)
Ding
Class – Phoenix Forge (Epic) Lv. 25 → Lv. 68
Ding
Utility Skill – Forging Lv. 9 → Lv. 89
Ding
Utility Skill – Hammering Lv. 7 → Lv. 86
Ding
Utility Skill – Smelting Lv. 15 → Lv. 93
Ding
Utility Skill – Temperature Control Lv. 6 → Lv. 88
Ding
Utility Skill – Fire Transmutation Lv. 18 → Lv. 81
Ding
Utility Skill – Meditation Lv. 39 → Lv. 56
Ding
Perception Skill – Mana Sense Lv. 79 → Lv. 95
Ding
Healing Skill – Golden Flame Lv. 70 → Lv. 72
Ding
Offensive Skill – Obsidian Flame Lv. 63 → Lv. 65
"How is this possible?" Monica asks, stunned.
Her Phoenix Forge Class, which had started at Level 4, now towered at Level 68—overtaking even her primary Class, Phoenix Healer, which sat at Level 60. Scores of forging-related Skills had skyrocketed too. Hammering, Smelting, Temperature Control, and Forging all hovered between Level 85 and Level 93. Even Fire Transmutation stood at Level 81. It was a staggering surge in so short a time.
She scrolled further and saw that Meditation had soared as well—from somewhere in the thirties to Level 56—and Mana Sense had climbed to an eye-watering Level 95. Monica’s mouth went dry at that number. She was no stranger to leveling quickly, but this…
“How is this even real?” she whispered, shaking her head in disbelief.
Dworsul tapped a finger on one of the bracers.
"Blacksmithing levels are tied to the material used. Iron is perfect to level up in the first fifty levels, Avatar. Most get bogged down trying to complicate their lives with other metals. Steel is only useful if you can forge it properly. With the foundation we just built for you, you will be able to combine steel and other materials without trouble, especially considering how your Fire Transmutation works."
"Why didn't we stop before, though? We could have gone over the Blacksmith District—"
"You would have still needed to practice the basics. And, as I said, I didn't want you distracted. With you using Meditation and Mana Sense the whole time, you were completely absorbed in the crafting process. That is how you managed to level up this much. I wouldn't be surprised if your forging Skills were on the cusps of 10% Skill Efficiency as well. You will also have gained a few levels in Mana Sense and Meditation."
Monica immediately checked the Skill Efficiency of her Skills with the monocle and felt her heart caught in her throat.
Skill List
Golden Flame - Lv. 67
SKILL EFFICIENCY: 8%
Obsidian Flame - Lv. 63
SKILL EFFICIENCY: 8%
“So forging can push my Flames’ efficiency too,” she said under her breath, still marveling at the synergy.
"Levels are not as important as Skill Efficiency," Dworsul said.
"I know," Monica said. "Gromrolig said the same and I've also met the Twin Phoenix who gave me an entire lecture on the subject."
"You've met your patron?" Dworsul asked curiously.
"Yeah. It was an interesting meeting. I was told how to use my Skills to develop Skill Efficiency. I've also recently learned that I can apparently raise the Skill Efficiency of the Obsidian Flame and the Golden Flame as well despite the fact that they were the Skills the Twin Phoenix ascended with."
"Fascinating," Dworsul said. "I didn't know that was possible."
"They've yet to reach 10% anyway," Monica shrugged. "But yeah. I imagine that when they reach Bronze Rank, something interesting will happen."
"Well, Avatar, it's time for you to receive your hammer now. Before we move on to the Blacksmith District, as it's customary. We're about to see what your fate as a Blacksmith will be. Now, go and step between the four pillars."
Comments
ChaosOmega98
Well this is intresting
