Chapter 15: Chapter 15- Two Crafters , One Sword.....
Leo heated the forge; the smell of burning coal filled the air as flames roared to life.
Shen stood at the workbench beside him, watching silently.
The cinder hide was on the anvil, dark and glossy like smooth rocky glass. He started cutting the cinder hide with precision. The hide could become soft at certain temperatures while it would become harder than metal at other temperatures.
To get the right temperature was the key.
Then he began weaving the cut strips with leather strips. Leo heated the woven strip of leather and hide. It changed color from orange to smoky black.
The forge temperature reached the required degrees and Leo tossed the metal ores into the crucible at the center of the hearth. The metal started to melt. Leo quickly poured it into the mold.
Then Leo heated the hide until it became soft and malleable. At this temperature the hide didn’t melt but it had gained plasticity and mouldability. Leo inserted the malleable hide into the mold.
When the mixture of melted liquid metal and hide cooled, a thick sword was already taking shape, but the hide and metal could still be differentiated.
He heated the metal-mixed hide to a certain temperature and pulled it onto the anvil.
He lifted his hammer.
Clang!
He started hammering it.
The smithy was soon filled with the resounding sound of hammering, but the hammer sounded a bit different.
Clang, clang,
Clong,
Clang, claong,
There were occasional claong sounds between the clangs—it was because of the hide.
Leo used the folding method to perfectly fuse the hide into the metal.
He hammered the metal flat, then folded it and repeated it a couple of times until the separation of hide and metal, which was previously visible, was no more.
Leo hammered the metal and folded it two more times. For the final time, he was a bit nervous. He had already pushed the folding limits by folding many times.
Excessive folding might make the sword not durable and stiff enough to cut through.
So if he pushed it too far, hours of hard work and the rare material would be ruined.
But he still had to bring his hammer down.
Clang!
No fracture. No failure. No plasticity.
Fortunately, there was no problem.
The fire pulsed in the hearth, and Leo kept feeding the fire into the metal with every strike. The metal also kept absorbing the heat and slowly turning from orange to gold, something close to a deep amber gold.
Sweat dripped down Leo’s temple.
This is fucking more difficult than working with normal metal. No wonder Hugh asked me if I could handle it.
Leo followed his Forge Sight detection and kept hammering in a rhythm at the points indicated by Forge Sight.
Slowly, he was getting into a rhythm, and his moves became instinctive.
Then, something shifted.
He felt his body working on its own, as if he were spectating his own body from a third person’s perspective. His hands were no longer his own. They moved with muscle memory that shouldn’t have existed.
The ancestor’s echo had stirred unknowingly—no visions, only muscle memory had taken over. He was experiencing the forgings of thousands of blacksmiths.
Leo kept hammering, but something seemed amiss. He felt like the metal was fighting him.
He inspected the metal and found that it was uneven, brittle, and even a bit weaker, like it had a mind of its own, wanting something else.
Leo stopped hammering.
He was confused; the curve of the blade seemed wrong, as he had planned to forge a straight sword, but the sword seemed to resist being forged as a straight sword.
He looked to see if anything was wrong with the process and metal, but it all seemed okay.
The metal was resisting. It gave off vibrations that almost seemed to be saying... no, not that way.
Hmmm? You don’t want to be a straight sword? Okay, let’s try it your way...
Leo didn’t bother trying to correct it to his previous straight model and just went with the flow; he continued to hammer where he felt the metal pointed.
Ancestral cadence had activated on its own, his MP and STM were dropping, but the 20% chance to repair any weapon while forging was also in effect due to the skill, so Leo relaxed a bit.
He looked at the metal again. The blade profile had turned into a half-forged sword that was clearly bent, arching like a crescent moon.
Is this what you wanted?
It seems... correct. Perfect.
Shen, beside him, had a confused look.
He had asked for a straight-edged sword, but this was clearly not straight.
Seeing the shape coming out wrong, Shen called out. "You sure it’s okay? That’s not a standard profile of a sword, right?"
"It’s not," Leo replied with his hammer still raised, ready to strike again. "But it’s what the sword wants," Leo replied.
What the sword... wants?
Shen got even more confused.
"You’re making it up as you go?"
"No, the metal seems to have a mind of its own."
Shen stopped questioning, shook his head, and just watched.
Leo hammered until his Forge Sight detected no more points to be hammered.
He quenched the sword.
Hisssssssss...
A stream of steam rose into the air with a hissing sound, filling the area with white mist.
Leo withdrew the sword from the trough and placed it in the forge fire, letting the residual heat temper the blade until it turned a bit golden in color.
He hammered again in a few places to correct slight warps, then he fixed the previously woven hide and leather into the blade handle. After that, he ran the whetstone along the edge of the curved sword, sharpening it.
Leo finally finished his part of forging the sword.
The sword was dark red, with patches of black spreading across the surface and amber veins coursing through the blade, where the forge fire had once flowed.
Leo checked the sword’s status.
[Item: [Unnamed Cinder-Hide Longsword]]
[Grade: Uncommon (Flawless)]
[Level Requirement: 6]
[Damage: 28-34]
[Attributes:]
STR +4
VIT +3
Fire Resistance +15%
[Description:]
[Forged by a novice blacksmith who has seen the ancient forge. The Cinder-Hide binds with the steel in a way that should not be possible with standard technique—suggesting the smith’s hands moved with knowledge beyond their experience. A single step away from Rare quality, as if the blade is waiting for something more.]
Leo checked the description.
One step away from Rare. One step....
Knowledge beyond their experience......
....
Leo felt these words were true, because, if he had not entered that strange state of clarity, he would not have been able to forge a sword of such quality.
Leo checked his logs and saw that forge resonance hadn’t been triggered for some reason, leaving the sword in the uncommon flawless state.
Leo nodded and passed the blade to Shen.
"I have forged the best sword I can at my current realm. Now it’s your turn."
Shen took the blade and turned it over, watching carefully.
His eyes widened as he read the sword’s status panel. "A flawless sword? Wow, you forged a flawless sword as a level-six novice forger. Leo.... You... this is....."
....
He didn’t finish. Instead, he set the blade on the bench and unrolled his parchment set.
"I think it’s ready for inscribing," he said.
Shen dipped the needle in ink that seemed to shimmer with obsidian light; the ink appeared to float in water without mixing with it.
He slowly crafted the tiny channels for about the first thirty minutes and then his speed started to increase.
Shen’s hand moved with the precision of a professional inscriber.
The lines ran along the blade’s spine, no wider than a hair.
They started at the cross guard and extended all the way to the tip of the curved blade. Many lines also branched away from the main line to the edges of the sword.
Soon, the entire blade surface was covered with thin, hair-like lines.
The fine, hair-like pattern began to glow. Leo watched silently as the lines formed a network, overlapping at angles that seemed to shift when one looked at them.
Shen began to explain the lines to Leo as he kept drawing, "This talisman I am inscribing is called ’Guardian’s Pact.’ My class branches off the talisman warrior as a base. I have been grinding talisman inscriptions since level zero, and ever since I reached level ten—due to a weird promotion quest I was stuck at level ten—I have been doing nothing but inscribing talismans."
"How long did it take you to learn all that?" Leo asked.
"Ever since I started playing this game, but I’m still bad at this," Shen replied.
Shen finally completed the final stroke. The entire network of lines now resembled a constellation of fine lines covering the sword from top to bottom, occasionally releasing a faint obsidian glow from the blade.
"Okay, I’m done. Now I need you to use your blacksmith fire to seal these runes permanently in the sword. Just use your fire to temper it a bit," Shen said.
Leo nodded and lifted the blade. The blade felt warm and alive. Leo held it over the hearth; soon, the flames in the hearth seemed to respond, but the tempering power felt weak, so Leo actively called upon the eternal fire.
Golden fire emerged in Leo’s hand.
This was the first time Leo had summoned eternal fire in full. While forging, he had been mixing the fire with the hearth’s fire, so Shen could not recognize the flame. Now that Leo had actively called upon the golden fire, Shen felt a flicker of familiarity.
This.... this fire....
But as the tempering was yet to be completed, Shen kept his mouth shut.
The golden fire touched the first line of the rune, and the ink began to ignite from the point of contact with the fire, spreading to all other parts.
The pattern started to brighten, turning from obsidian to silver and then to white. The golden glow flowed through the channels like liquid metal, flowing across all the carved channels and veins.
The blade began to glow.
Shen looked at the golden fire in disbelief.
Impossible!! ... This fire... how does he have it? ... The vision I saw... What’s going on?...
Before he could finish his thought, the sword vibrated and lit up again.
[Ding!]
[ITEM UPGRADED]
[Unnamed Cinder-Hide Longsword] → [Cinder-Guardian Blade]
[Grade: Uncommon (Flawless) → Rare]
[Level Requirement: 6 → 8]
[Damage: 28-34 → 38-46]
[Attributes:]
STR +4 → +8
VIT +3 → +6
DEX +3 (new)
[Fire Resistance] +15% → +25%
[Effect — Guardian’s Pact: Absorbs talisman energy without structural stress. Talisman activations from this blade have +15% duration.]
[Effect — Ember Veins: On critical hit, deals an additional 8 Fire damage over 3 seconds.]
[Skills Granted:]
Sealing Strike (Active): 40 MP, 12s cooldown. The blade channels stored talisman energy into the next hit. On contact, applies a sealing effect that reduces the target’s damage output by 15% for 6 seconds.
Cinder Ward (Active): 60 MP, 30s cooldown. Slam the blade into the ground to release a 3m eruption of embers. Allies gain +20% Fire Resistance for 10 seconds. Enemies take 12 Fire damage and are knocked back.
[Effect: Self-repair.]
[Description: A blade born of two crafts—forged by hands that moved with the memory of an ancient fire, inscribed by a bloodline bound to that same flame.]
"Whoa, no way—it actually worked! The blade is complete," Shen exclaimed at the notification.
This was also Shen’s first time working with a blacksmith and his first time carving a talisman into a sword.
The amber veins from the forging now perfectly merged with the silvery-white veins from Shen’s runes. The pattern pulsed with steady, rhythmic light.
Leo checked the crafting log once again and found that soul forge attunement had taken effect, meaning the rare blade had the ability to self-repair, recovering 1% durability per minute while sheathed.
While the blade was forged and Leo was admiring it, Shen did not know where to focus first—the blade or the blacksmith.
Then his necklace began to glow... a soft glow that gradually intensified into a blazing light.
Shen’s doubt was clarified.
He staggered back, gripping the pendant. He supported himself with his other hand on the workbench and caught his breath.
He ignored the sword for now and confronted Leo.
"Your fire... it’s gold..."
