After pulling the almost finished sword out of the bed of coals glowing with vibrant blue fire. The next step was assembling the handle the tang I believed it was called was a long protrusion from the blade area and hilt was the backbone of the handle. I had already created the holes necessary and a slightly lengthy process gave me the nails required two one from the top and another at the bottom.
Selecting a nice chunk of wood I cut it to shape and smoothed it out. Then I connected the wood handle to the tang, mostly finishing the sword. Next came was sharpening, it was long going process as I had to be careful not to mess up the edge of the gladius. Wiping the sweat from my brow I wiped the blade clean, revealing the soft golden blade. The small circular hilt and the nice point gave away the swords purpose as a primarily stabbing rather then slashing.
...
[Gladius of the Star Flare]
Rank Two Rare Sword
This Terran style sword is designed primarily for thrusting and stabbing. Crafted from high quality Aluminum Bronze which was smelted under the glow of cosmic fire this sword has been imbedded with cosmic energies.
Effects: [Legacy of Rome], [Unnaturally Sturdy], [Purified Alloy], and [Cosmic Origin]
-[Legacy of Rome]
This item has a unique connection to a prominent pre integration society. This item is recognizable by all Sapients born on the planet [Terra]. This sword does more damage when the user is in a military formation.
-[Unnaturally Sturdy]
This item has been purged of connections to the Conceptual Plains of [Weakness] and [Decay] making it uniquely resistance to breaking although this is not absolute.
-[Purified Alloy]
This weapons metal components are extremely pure and this sword was forged by fledging Divine granting this item greater strength against Undead and Necrotic infected creatures.
-[Cosmic Origin]
This item possesses flecks of unrefined cosmic energies granting its attacks a small chance to ignite into cosmic flames.
...
The blade was beautiful, a little rough around the edges at least compared to pre integration forging. It would work and the abilities where frankly insane if I could produce enough for each, although we would have to be careful and make sure we recovered any and all of them.
Now that I had completed one I could refine the processes and do batch productions. Wherein you complete all the swords at stages, refining and smelting all the bronze and then shaping all of them.
'Hey, Anastasia how many are you planning on making?' I asked telepathically as I prepared for the production process.
'Depends, I've a prototype of a totem enhanced puppet but its not a substantial upgrade I'm going to need more testing, so just make a thousand for right now' she stated acting like a thousand swords was a small task. Thankfully I could instruct the puppets to do basic tasks to elevate the time consuming tasks.
So I began production firstly I sent a full day searching for and purifying enough aluminum and copper in order to make the required 1000 swords. Thankfully I had my magic powers to actually make the search feasible. I had had rigged up a big pot of soup and Instructed two puppets to add certain safe vegetables and water into it. The stew didn't taste the greatest being rather bland and the vegetables at varing stages of cooking made for an overall terrible quality soup as I couldn't add any of the local wildlife into it as all of them where infected by the Necrotic Energy.
Once I was finished with purifying all of it I had to make the alloy.
...
To Anastasia's P.O.V
...
The first totem empowered puppet was a proof of concept as Kien would call it. Abilities wise it was better at climbing trees and staying hidden in trees and was a single level higher according to the system then it's peers but beyond that it was still weaker, in fact substantially weaker then the Draugur. Luckily it was great at hunting down more resources for its peers.
Right now I was focusing on making a bat totem the subject of which was a level 9 peak rank one. Of its abilities the most useful would be its flight unfortunately as I was right now I couldn't create wings!
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Fortunately it had another useful ability, echolocation. The Puppet would lack the actual biological things required for the adaptation but I was hoping to make it work.
Taking a nearly finished puppet I opened up its neck area specifically where Kien described where the voice box would be. Linking the totem to the right Mana threads was always tedious but essential.
Connecting the final threads to the totem I waited for the puppet to awaken. Slowly moving it fingers it awakened, then I nudged it to use its ability. It nodded at me and I felt the flux of the puppets innate mana was mostly only good for moving their bodies around and processing basic tasks, so I had to find the limit of the magical power and how much she could improve.
I nearly freaked out when the puppet shrieked the sound echoing and reverberating of the cave walls. Taking notes of the fact that the totem gave off a nice sonic attack. However fortunate the out come I did need to find out why the totem gave off a different effect then what was expected. Opening up the puppet was easy though I made sure not to disconnect the totem I inspected it.
Firstly their was an overlap between the mana threads imbued with the concepts of sound and Understanding which originally meant to interpret the sound that would come back from echo location. A simple Mana switch could convert the echolocation totem into a disorientating attack and back to scouting easily. Making the haphazard modification as I figured I could make a more stable version for scouts.
Hopefully my Puppets could stand one to one against the Draugur, although I did know I needed to find a series of totems that could empower them into a second ranks first. Maybe I could farm some stronger animals forcefully making them more powerful before killing them...
...
A Day later, Kien's P.O.V
...
It was tough working, as I hammered the rough shape of another gladius I had manged to get ten not including the finishes one hammered out. My supernatural strength gave me the ability to easily hammer the bronze but also made it so I had be careful not to swing to hard and crack it. I understood that I was crafting at an astonishing pace pre-system but compared to the fast pace I had been going at it was tediously slow. I had yet to take the [Gladius of the Star Flare] out for a field trip but I had a reason.
The various undead had been like a swarm scouring the cavern and the caves for any signs of us. Luckily they only sent low level undead which allowed our scouts to easily handle them and because they traveled some distance they hopefully obscured our true location. Me and Anastasia had met briefly to compare our crafts, and I had to say I was definitely impressed by her additions so far. She had created a prototype scout using two totems one from a squirrel or other climbing creature and another from a bat. Together it gave it echolocation and great climbing skills though only slightly better battle prowess.
My injury on the other hand remained stubborn only do to my enhanced perception and memory had I noticed it healing at all. I had feeling that the whole level had some Necrotic Energy and it was making the injury stay for longer then it should with my regeneration.
Shrugging it off as much as I could I returned to the task at hand. Raising my hammer I struck the bronze metal in front of me forming the circular hilt. Once I was done with the current one at least at its current stage I let it down to cool as I grabbed another ingot and began to heat it up in the vibrant blue coals. When my skill recognized it at being at the right temperature I pulled it out and onto the rock I was using as I anvil. Hammering the ingot into a long rectangular shape I began to distinguish the blade from the tang and hilt.
...
a week later
...
The past seven days or at least what I thought was seven days was tiring and stressful. I had Barely managed to meet my quota of a thousand swords each one being better than the last as my personal skill became more refined and I understood what my Smithing skill was trying to impart until roughly three days ago I stopped hearing or feeling its whispers and as I wrapped up my a thousandth sword I received two different system notifications.
...
[Achievement Earned]
You have earned an achievement for Smithing a thousand of the same swords in a week while being below a third rank craftsman.
[A Thousand Swords]
Uncommon Achievement
This is an Uncommon achievement typically gained by apprentices with enough talent and work ethic. This Achievement makes all blades weapons that you craft higher in Quality and their edges less likely to chip or become dull.
...
[Skill Leveled Up!]
-[Basic Item Creation] Lvl:3
You now know how to craft Basic equipment and armor. You are particularly skilled in crafting Chintin Based armors and Bronze Gladius. You also now understand the process of batch productions better and able to make them faster.
...
Ah, sweet skill level ups how I've missed you! I had long learned that only the first level up of a skill came fast the ones after you had to actually have the skill before hand. The achievement was nice, though apparently forging a thousand swords in a week was not rare which I found odd until I figured they might have had more help than the puppets to pull the feat off. Unfortunately the time Consumed by the swords left the Puppets lacking armor which was arguably pretty important. That was until Anastasia unlocked an actual totem crafting skill...
...
Anastasia's P.o.v
...
The length of time that constituted a week was odd. Seven days such a measurement wasn't used by me and my siblings although to be fair many things weren't. Wait what was I doing? Oh, yeah my master piece! Looking up at my best work I felt giddy as I looked at it. Boss didn't have the time to forge armor for the elite puppets so I had to make do with scavenged armor from the undead and the stuff we brought with us. Although my master piece had something to help compensate for it. My new skill [Totem Crafting] was a Rare Skill that also gave me the insight on how to craft totems from non organic matter! Or at least partially, using a bit of Bosses Blood and a lot of resources I manged to craft a totem capable of copying a weaker version of Kiens [Knight's Bulwark] it was substantially weaker but still extremely valuable.
...
[Totem Crafting] Lvl: 1
Rare Skill
This skill allows the user to make crude and basic totems from organic and some non organic materials.
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[Elite Silk Puppet] Lvl: 17
Psudeo Rank Two Automaton
...
