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Leveling up the World (Chapter 822)
🕑 Added 2023-10-20 00:28:47 +0000 UTCGetting ready to forge felt slightly unusual. The realm had a special location for that, but Dallion decided to stir things a bit by forming a temporary forge in the sea itself. This was just a practice session—the real thing would take place in the real world.
Anvils and ingots were summoned and arranged neatly with a host of other instruments. The sky silver hammer was also there, but the moment Dallion took hold of it, the guardian shook his head.
“You won’t be using that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Big man,” Onda crossed his arms.
One brief glance from Dallion quickly told him that it wasn’t the best time to mess around. And just to make things more ominous, Harp was also there, standing a short distance away atop a seat of water.
“You need to learn how to splice magic. Broze is the easiest. When you get the hang of that, you can move on to more unfriendly metals.”
“Unfriendly metals,” Dallion repeated, amused. “Never heard that expression.”
“It’s because the other races can’t do it. Humans are good at magic, dwarves are good at magic, but only we do both.”
The boast sounded wrong on a few levels, to the point that even Harp sighed. Still, Dallion could understand what the teen nymph was going for.
“What about furies?”
“Close and yet so far away. Besides, they still only use natural magic. Anyway, watch carefully.”
Taking an ingot of bronze, Onda proceeded to melt it in the mellows Dallion had created in the temporary sea force. All of the realms’ inhabitants had gathered, observing the process with interest. Even Vermillion rose up from the sea, water splashing off the massive island that was his head.
Molten bronze poured into a crucible of aether. The nymph then took it with his bare hands and glanced at Dallion.
“This is the important part.” Magic threads extended from Onda’s hand, slowly falling into the crucible, like a line of syrup.
This wasn’t the first time Dallion had seen magic threads extending out of someone’s body. It wasn’t even the first time he had seen them transferred into something else, yet the method was not what he had expected.
“Just like potions,” he said.
“Err… yes, let’s go with that for now. The first step is to just get the magic there and form it. In my case, it’s easier since I’m casting the spell as the threads fall in. You’ll have to make your spell before you let it mix with the metal.”
“Seems simple so far.” Mentally Dallion repeated the process. Each of the separate elements was easy to perform. Because of magic’s nature, there was no difference if he was mixing it with water or with molten metal.
“Yeah, right,” Onda didn’t sound at all convinced. “You can’t let it dissolve freely, nor can you constrain it. Making potions is simple: the threads can become their own thing in the liquid. With this, you have to keep the spell as you harden it.”
Hundreds of markers appeared everywhere around the molten metal. There were purple ones, showing the state of the spell and how it could be modified, silver ones—indicating what Dallion could bend it into, and finally gold—indicating how to thread and weave one into the other while maintaining its integrity. For all intents and purposes, it was like looking at the lighting of a foldable Christmas tree.
“I’ll show you the quick way,” the nymph said, scooping the gooey metal with his bare hand.
Looking closely, Dallion could see the thin layer of magic covering his skin. On close inspection, he found that it wasn’t a layer, but a fine mesh of magic threads.
Almost like a dwarf, Onda stretched and folded the cooling metal. Initially, it seemed as if h were creating a blob of nothingness, but with each modification an object gained shame. After a while, the blob was replaced by a glowing red origami.
“Keeping up?” A note of smugness was audible in the nymph’s voice. “Bam! Spell’s still intact. Now I just finalize the final form and...”
Onda waved the dagger through the air, using a magic spell to steal away all its heat. In less than a second, the final item was complete.
“Here,” he offered it to Dallion. “Take a close look.”
With his current magic trait value, Dallion didn’t need to. He could see the thread clusters within the hardened metal. What was more, he could also read the instructions they contained, rendering the material around them flexible.
“So, this is how you make origami weapons,” he said, slashing the air with the dagger. One thought was enough to instantly transform the weapon into a sickle. One more, and it was a fork.
“That’s not the real deal,” Onda quickly said defensively. “Thirst thing I came up with.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Dallion applied some pressure.
Not being the strongest of weapons, the dagger snapped. Purple sparks flashed as the magic was released into the air, becoming part of the realm.
“Yeah, sure,” Onda grumbled. “Do that.”
“And the spell determines the effects of the weapon?”
“For cheap stuff, yeah.” The nymph shrugged. “Have a few goes. You’ll see, it’s not as easy as you think.”
Summoning another bronze ingot, Dallion split into a hundred instances and went into action. It took him considerably longer to fill the crucible. All the time there was the temptation to use a spell, but as he rightly suspected, using spellcraft left a trace within the material, causing the real spell to fizzle.
For his first time, Dallion decided to go with something simple, namely a fire sword. The spell was simple enough, as was using his magic threads to compose it in a near state of completion. The way he saw it, the spell had to become complete within the molten bronze, not before.
“Don’t overcook it,” Onda said, peeking over Dallion’s shoulder.
“Why do you take me for?” Dallion asked, even if there were five instances in which he had done just that.
Once the spell was safely mixed into the bronze, came time for the most difficult part—the shaping. Normally, Dallion would pour the material into a mold and start hammering it afterwards. In ten of his instances, he created an aether mold, pouring the liquid in to start cooling. That, unfortunately, turned out to be a flop. As Dallion suspected, his control wasn’t fine enough for him to prevent the aether from affecting his spell. In nine of the ten instances, the whole thing exploded in his face. In the nineth, it merely burned like a flamethrower.
That’s one thing to avoid, Dallion thought, moving to plan b: sand molds. Since this was his realm, he could easily erect anything anywhere, which is what he did, causing a square pillar of sand to rise up from the space in front of him. The shame of a blade formed within the sand, in which he then poured the magic bronze.
“Not bad,” Onda nodded. “It’s cool to control a realm.”
“You control your own realm,” Dallion said, careful not to cause the spell to escape its wrapping.
“Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself.”
It seemed an eternity before the blade could cool down enough to the point it lost its glow. Copying the methods he’d seen from the nymph, Dallion covered his skin with magic threads and picked it up. The weapon was rough, crude even. However, one slash through the air was enough to reveal the trail of fire it left behind.
MAGIC WEAPON EXTREME
(+2 Perception, +2 Reaction)
Congrats! Your first magic weapon. It takes quick reflexes and good eyesight to make one of those. A pity you went with such a cliché.
“Everyone’s a critic,” Dallion whispered as he slashed through the blue rectangle, causing it to disappear into a cloud of fading particles. “I admit, I’ll need a bit more practice,” he turned to Onda.
“Nope. You’ll need a lot more practice. After getting the hang, we move on to unfriendly metals. Then, maybe in a week, we start the real stuff.”
“Real stuff?”
“You thought that was it?” Onda laughed. “Maybe for another race, but that’s not nymph magic forging. Anyone can make crap. If you want to do something cool, you’ll need the right tools.”
“And by that, you mean?”
“A new hammer. I’m teaching you all this to make a magic hammer.”
There was no dishonesty emanating from the guardian, but even so Dallion turned towards Harp. So far, she had remained silent, observing the toil with interest and even a smudge of pride. Seeing Dallion’s hesitation, the guardian nodded.
Guess there’s no way around it, Dallion thought and summoned a new ingot of bronze.
The training continued. Hours turned into days, then—despite Dallion’s best attempts—to weeks. This time it wasn’t someone else holding him back, but his own desire for perfection. Having obtained the power of a domain ruler, he no longer wanted to be limited by his personal domain, but to create a new one in the real world. More than that, he wanted to take all inhabitants from this place along with him. Despite the beauty of the realm, despite all the levels it had provided him, all the valuable insight in getting there, it had completed its task. From this point on, it wouldn’t grow, no matter what Dallion did. As such, it was best to leave it among his memories and continue to bigger and better things.
With every new weapon, the quality drastically improved, as did the spell effects linked to it. It was slightly annoying that such crafting could no longer affect his forging and spell craft skills, but every now and again an achievement would pop up within a blue rectangle.
Three of them boosted his reaction and perception traits, same as the first one. The fourth—called Industrial Machine—provided five points to his body trait.
Each night, when Dallion stopped to take a rest, he’d spend the time chatting with his familiars and guardians. It was almost like in the past, as if he was reliving things from his awakened childhood. For the blink of an eye, he could forget his cares and the outside world. Alas, at some point, even the endlessly stretched moment came to an end.
Once Dallion mastered the process of creating magic weapons out of sky silver, it was time to complete the final step.
“That’s actually cool,” Onda said, fascinated by the latest weapon Dallion had made.
The weapon itself was a whip blade that used an aether thread instead of a physical one. It wasn’t hard to guess who the weapon was intended for, just as there was no denying that she’d like it.
“So.” Dallion brushed the sweat off his forehead. “The final step?”
“A final step,” Onda said, suggesting it wasn’t. “A major step in any event. Changing this is like acquiring a new skill. You’ll be able to forge magic in the real world with just a hammer and a bit of effort.”
“Even with a normal one?”
“When you learn the process, there will be no normal hammers. You’ll be able to thread your magic through all of them… and maybe not bust them in the process.”
“That can happen?” Dallion was amused.
“There’s a reason blacksmiths hated me,” the guardian grumbled. “Anyway, summon your sky silver hammer.”
Dallion did so.
“That’s your skill, so you can’t melt it. Instead, you have to push the magic threads through.”
“Sounds easy.” Dallion looked at the hammer. Mixing magic with molten sky silver was difficult; this was likely going to be ten times as tricky. Yet, he didn’t feel it to be in the least impossible. “Any spell I choose?”
“No spell.” Onda took a step back. “You need to make a hammer.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You can see magic threads, right?”
“All the time.”
“If you ignore the physical outline of their container, can you tell what they are?”
The past Dallion would have come back with a quirky answer of sorts. Now, though, he kept his mouth shut, considering the question. It was undeniable that the threads in every magic entity, be it item, area, or creature, were unique. What was more, with enough practice, one could distinguish the object by magic alone.
“No spell.” Dallion extended the magic outside of his fingertips. “No metal.”
The entire reason that Onda had trained him for weeks wasn’t for him to create a new hammer with metal, but out of magic and then place it into a shell he already owned.
Here goes…
Ignoring the physicality of the hammer, the magic threads went inside. Dallion had to be careful: the threads weren’t supposed to get stuck, just as they weren’t supposed to pass through the object entirely.
Like vines in a pottle, they continued, twisting throughout the middle of the hammer, though never going beyond its outer limits. Twisting and turning, they went in further and further. Feeling the magic within him decrease, Dallion reached out, taking a few strands from the realm itself.
For several minutes, he went on, changing the position of the threads so they acquired the form he wanted them to. Only then, when everything was perfect, he severed them, releasing the magic within the hammer.
MAGIC FORGING obtained.
You’ve broken through your eighty-sixth barrier.
You are Level 86.
Choose the trait you value the most.
