Chapter 958: Divine Forging Begins
With that thought, Ethan’s heart began to race again. He reopened the avatar’s secondary profession panel, the source of his earlier disappointment still lingering faintly in his mind. He already knew that finding a Divine-tier Forger at this stage of the game was practically impossible. In his previous life, even five years after launch, he had never heard of anyone reaching Divine-tier forging. The same applied to Divine-tier Smelters. Without one, Divine-tier materials simply could not exist, which meant upgrading equipment to Artifact-tier was nothing more than a fantasy.
The only realistic option would have been buying rare drops from other players, and those would cost astronomical sums that only the wealthiest guilds could afford.
Then he remembered the legacy his avatar had inherited.
Hope surged back to life.
He opened the panel again, and three secondary profession skills appeared before him. For a moment he simply stared, as if afraid they might vanish.
[Mining: Divine-tier.
Forging: Divine-tier.
Smelting: Divine-tier.]
Ethan burst into laughter, the sound sharp and unrestrained, bordering on madness. Divine-tier Smelting alone changed everything. With it, he could break down low-grade ores, refine their essence, and reforge the extracted materials into Divine-tier components. What had once been an impossible bottleneck suddenly became a solvable problem.
At that moment, even that old geezer Morzan felt strangely lovable, as though the man had carefully arranged every step of Ethan’s future long before he realized it himself.
There was no reason to hesitate.
Ethan reopened the Divine-tier Forging interface and quickly located the equipment recrafting and upgrade function. He selected one of his own pieces of gear and placed it into the slot. The item was Gold-tier. Upgrading it would push it into Dark Gold.
The required materials appeared beneath the interface.
He scanned the list and immediately grimaced. Every single material was painfully rare. He had seen several of them in the auction house earlier, each priced at ten thousand gold or more, and even then the quantities available were pitiful. There was nowhere near enough supply for a full equipment overhaul.
Then he noticed something strange; the recraft button was glowing.
"Huh? I can upgrade this right now?"
That meant the materials were already in his inventory.
Ethan opened the avatar’s storage and began checking through it. Sure enough, stacks of high-tier resources filled the space, many of them matching the listed requirements perfectly.
"This is incredible..."
Excitement flooded through him. A quick mental calculation told him the avatar possessed enough materials to upgrade every piece of his equipment to Dark Gold. A full Dark Gold set at this stage of the game was not merely top-tier. It completely exceeded what normal players could even imagine.
He pressed the button without another thought.
[Ding. System Notice: No forge detected nearby. Unable to craft.]
"Damnit."
Ethan clicked his tongue in annoyance. Of course. Forging required an actual forge.
Without wasting time, he glanced around, then stripped off all his gear and transferred it to the avatar. Standing there in nothing but his boxers, he issued a single command: head to the Forging Association and rent the best forging studio available.
The higher-tier studios drastically reduced crafting time. Expensive, yes. One hundred gold per hour would make most players faint. But to Ethan, time was far more valuable than money.
The avatar departed with his equipment.
Meanwhile, Ethan slipped quietly into the All-You-Need Engineering shop and headed straight upstairs, moving quickly enough that no one paid him much attention.
"...Hey, I think I just saw some guy run upstairs naked," one employee said, staring at the stairwell.
"Quit joking," another replied. "Only the Mad Engineer has access to the top floor. I saw him go up earlier and he hasn’t come down. You’re imagining things."
The first employee frowned, genuinely confused. He could have sworn he saw a pale figure sprint past wearing nothing but boxers. The more he thought about it, the less certain he became.
"...Maybe I really did imagine it," he muttered. "Guess I need a drink after logging off."
He didn’t notice the salesperson beside him breaking into cold sweat after overhearing that comment, silently wondering what exactly the man thought he had hallucinated.
Ethan, completely unaware of the misunderstanding brewing downstairs, reached the top floor and entered a private room that even the Mad Engineer himself could not access. This chamber belonged solely to the shop owner. The system enforced absolute authority here. No permissions could be shared, and any unauthorized entry attempt would result in immediate deletion by the system.
Inside, Ethan activated the control panel.
Through it, he accessed the shop warehouse. He already knew the Mad Engineer had been obsessively stockpiling ores. Engineering projects devoured mineral resources, and the man frequently purchased refined materials outright to keep production flowing.
The warehouse interface opened, revealing densely packed stacks of ores and crafting materials filling the screen.
"Heh."
Without hesitation, Ethan waved his hand and began transferring items.
The warehouse emptied at an astonishing speed.
At the exact same moment, the Mad Engineer stood inside his workshop preparing to assemble a new invention. He opened the warehouse interface to retrieve a component, reached out to grab it, and watched as the item vanished mid-motion.
"...Huh?"
He grabbed at empty air, frozen in disbelief. Quickly checking the warehouse inventory, he saw the truth unfold before him. Ores, rare materials, even stored leather supplies were disappearing one after another.
"HOLY CRAP. We’ve been robbed!"
Hair already in disarray, he jumped to his feet, snatched up a bizarre device resembling a half-finished firearm, and sprinted toward the warehouse. He kicked the door open dramatically.
"Thief! I know you’re here! Drop everything now or my Mana Hand Cannon sends you back to the starter zone!"
Silence greeted him.
The warehouse stood nearly empty. Where ores once occupied almost the entire space, only scattered leftovers remained. Valuable cloth, herbs, and completed engineering products sat untouched, as if selectively spared.
A cold draft seemed to pass through the doorway as realization slowly returned.
"This... this is a system warehouse. How could anyone steal from it? Did the system glitch?"
Before he could process further, his communicator erupted with notifications. Messages and video calls flooded in from engineers under his management. Every one of them reported the same thing. The warehouse was empty.
The Mad Engineer nearly burst into tears.
He hurried back to his workshop, opened the owner authority panel, and checked the warehouse access logs.
Then he screamed again. Line after line filled the screen.
[Item removed by: NotADruid.]
He rubbed his eyes repeatedly, convinced he was misreading it. When the name remained unchanged, he exploded into motion, racing toward the innermost room on the top floor.
BAM. BAM. BAM.
Inside, Ethan was calmly sorting materials between himself and his avatar. The avatar had already arrived at the Forging Association and secured a premium studio complete with its own private warehouse.
"Money really does solve everything," Ethan murmured happily.
The sudden pounding on the door startled him. His hand slipped, and a heavy stack of ores dropped straight onto his bare foot.
-1376!
"Hsss..." Ethan sucked in a sharp breath, hopping slightly. Without equipment equipped, even falling materials hurt.
"Who the hell is it?"
He limped to the door and yanked it open.
"BOSS!"
A tall figure lunged forward and wrapped him in a crushing bear hug while making dramatic sobbing noises.
"OW! That hurts!"
The Mad Engineer had arrived in full emotional meltdown, and unfortunately he stepped directly onto Ethan’s already injured toe.
Ethan’s stats were far higher than the crafting specialist’s, so he forcefully pushed him away before permanent damage could be done.
"Boss, you’re finally back!" the Mad Engineer said, eyes shining with relief as he tried to hug him again.
"Back off."
Ethan swatted him away, not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to stop the advance. The light smack finally restored a bit of sanity. The Mad Engineer stared at him with pitiful puppy-like eyes, clearly wanting to ask where the entire warehouse of ores had gone.
Ethan cut him off before the question could form.
"I’m busy. Wait until I contact you."
His good mood had taken a hit, and his throbbing toe did not help.
The Mad Engineer swallowed his questions. Orders were pending, deadlines approaching, and the warehouse had been wiped clean, yet he did not dare press further.
Ethan paused, then pulled out a teleport stone. After a brief moment of thought, he tossed a heavy coin pouch toward him before activating the stone and vanishing in a flash of light.
The Mad Engineer blinked, stunned. He opened the pouch and froze.
Gold coins. All gold.
"H... Holy crap... one point five million gold?!"
His hands trembled so badly he almost dropped it. The entire warehouse stockpile had been worth maybe two hundred thousand gold at most. Ethan had casually handed him more than seven times that amount.
He honestly could not tell whether he had suffered a catastrophic loss or received the deal of a lifetime. Production deadlines might still be impossible to meet, but technically the money had come from Ethan anyway.
Before he could finish processing the situation, a message arrived.
NotADruid: "Stockpile ores. High-tier materials. Low-tier too. Buy everything."
