Chapter 57: Working with student on the forge (1/2)
After Shingi talked with his Player students and told them what he wanted them to do to prepare for their Boss hunting, he went out with Volig.
Cause of his size, he couldn't hide, but they didn't care much about others watching them and made their way to the shop.
When they got in, Shingi checked for Garry's signs, but there wasn't any until he checked his desk.
Up there, there was a note and his Spirit Hammer. Garry had taken his Spirit Hammer last time he went away, so Shingi was curious why it was here this time.
Reading the note, it seemed like Garry wanted to take care of some of his businesses, but he shouldn't wait for him to return any time soon. His Spirit Hammer gave him limited access per day to use and should pay attention to it.
Shingi knew that he wanted to pay attention to the hammer cause if it showed signs of vanishing or vanished entirely, it meant that its owner was in a life-threatening situation or died.
As for the limited access, he wasn't aware that this was possible, but Volig told him it was most likely an option for only him since Garry was his father. Either way, these were great news for Shingi as this would raise his projects' success rates, although he would prefer Volig to be allowed to use it and not him.
But it seemed it was an excellent way to test it out once again and his improved skills. But he wouldn't make his usual orders but work on something more beneficial for them—some equipment for the student players of him.
He was an official Master Smith, although most likely haven't even reached the middle of it even after his special training. He had Volig, who may have his Skills reset but still had all his knowledge, which reached almost a Grandmaster Rank. The two of them together would be capable of creating equipment that any Player would only dream of having.
So they started by preparing the materials, which Varic brought out. He had brought with him quite a few metals of various quality for them to use in their future projects.
He brought out some Special Iron that was strengthened with Earth mana to increase its toughness and was not far from turning in the same quality of a Low-Quality Mithril. Of course, this didn't mean it was easy to find or create, as it took years of infusing it with Earth Mana without breaks, or the procedure wouldn't work, but in the end, it was worth it.
He had enough to create either a full suit of heavy armor or a couple of weapons. Even if the armor could be useful, the only Tycoon would generally be able to use it, but she wouldn't need it soon. So they moved on, creating few weapons and, more specifically, a new axe for Tycoon and some daggers for Hineko.
As for the rest, their weapons, if they had to use one, weren't made of metal, mostly wood, as they could use mostly staves. But Volig had some special wood that they could use, but first, Shingi had to learn his WOODCARVING skill and raise it before working on them. Also, they needed unique mana gems that Volig didn't have since one can't store them in Spatial Rings, but they could find them in the future.
Also, there were some trinkets he wanted to make that had the shape of Enchantment Circles designed on them to use them fast without spending much time creating one and cast them as soon as possible. But he had to make multiple ones as even the materials that Varic had at his disposal wouldn't handle the Enchantment too many times, at least twice at best four times.
These kinds of preparations were costly but necessary if he wanted to raise their power as fast as possible. He had to speed up his plans as much as he could to get the chance to meet Mikhail again. He knew that a guy like that probably had ways to check on Shingi from time to time without Shingi noticing and would return when he thought he made considerable progress but most likely wouldn't try to stop him because of his curiosity.
Shingi was confident that he would act, and he was sure that Mikhail had a similar line of thought like him, or at least as he used to. Before, he was moving to one project after the other for his ego and curiosity, but now he had a different purpose; saving his sister.
Both his and Volig put everything they had as they turned the forge on and worked on the materials. Shingi used his Light Mana to purify them even further, as every bit counted, as Volig used his Half-Stone Giant's
Earth Mana to further strengthen it. It is more suited for the work than Shingi's Earth mana because of his race and his being pure Earth and not coming from a source of multiple-element Mana Tree. This was one of the disadvantages of having a multiple-element Mana Tree, as there were some cases that your mana wouldn't be able to be used as if it came from a single element Mana Tree, but these cases were rare.
Shingi also, for the first time, not only used the air coming off the Mana Blower to feed the fires with mana but feed them with his Light Mana personally, too. He had noticed that when he tried to keep the heat up of the blade the other day when he made the unique Enchantment of Annoue's sword that the heat was benefited a lot by his Light Mana, so he wanted to put to the test the possible benefits they could gain that way.
His mana consumption had been lowered after his special training, but he pushed himself more than ever, so his mana kept getting spent quite fast, but he used some Mana Regen Potions that helped a bit.
They worked on the axe first, but it wasn't going to be a simple axe. They would make two battle axes that they could be connected to and extend their new handle to make a great axe. That way, the user could use different tactics depending on the opponent, depending on if speed was better than power or the other way.