As much as I wanted to start forging the sword that could potentially allow me to use better mana attacks by leveraging the new materials and properties I had discovered, I didn't do so immediately.
Instead, I sat on the ground and started working on a conceptual design and making some rough calculations based on my observations. It wasn't particularly easy to figure out the necessary design. I tried to do my best to get inspired by electrical system structure. It could have even worked if I was dealing with a perfect insulator and a perfect conductor, but neither material had been perfect for their role.
And, my skills were singularly unhelpful. Every single design I could access relied on one type of material, whether it was an alloy or a pure metal. What I was trying to do with the sword was more of a composite material, with layers of different alloys and shapes.
While the rough calculations helped, there was a limit to what I could achieve without a computer to do anything computationally intense. In the end, without any supporting materials, at best I could come up with a rough design.
It was a short sword, nothing too complicated. A shorter, thicker scimitar, to be exact. The one end had been made entirely of mana-resistant hexagonal pattern, as fine as I could manage, to prevent the leakage, and the main body also had a similar outer layer. However, there was a thin layer of conductive silver-iron alloy that started from the center, and went forward to reach the center.
Forging it hadn't been fun … because, with every move I made, I had to ignore the asinine suggestions of my skills to 'correct' the process, which would have ruined everything. It registered the composite approach as a mistake, and Repair was even worse.
Still, I bit my lips ignored the intense sense of wrongness, and managed to finish it.
"What a piece of junk." I examined the sword with a big smile. Admittedly, it was not for no reason that my skill had been giving me an incredible amount of negative feedback about my invention. It was thick, poorly balanced, and unwieldy. I doubted whether it could survive even one hit, as the hexagonal gaps had destroyed its integrity. And, the conductive alloy I discovered was too soft to support the center.
Still, it didn't matter. It was just a training wheel equivalent.
"Let's try," I muttered even as I focused on my mana. A mana glow immediately appeared around the blade, extending two inches without problem. More importantly, it was stable. I swung the sword a few times more, shifting between skills to get a better understanding of the flow.
It was a beautiful process. I was able to extend the mana flow almost half a foot before it destabilized. "Excellent work," I muttered even as I tried a ranged attack. And failed.
I went back to the drawing board, and changed the design multiple times, trying to find a way to achieve ranged attack. Unfortunately, I was soon met with an unfortunate realization. I had reached the limit. Not the material, but the technique. Just like swordsmanship gave me better control and tactical awareness, Forge gave me better control of the minute details. And, I needed to improve it to get finer control.
For that, I needed gold.
I looked at my remaining gold coins, wondering if it was worth the sacrifice to enhance the speed of improvement. Eleanor and Maria should arrive in one or two days at most, and I could probably arrange the delivery of pure gold, which must have been cheaper than system gold coins.
I just needed to wait two days, maybe one extra for material delivery. Was it worth wasting forty coins, especially since there was no guarantee that the amount would be enough to trigger the System and improve the skill further?
I was reluctant because it meant losing all my money. While I already had eight hundred coins in my account, it was just a promissory note. There was no bank to cash it, and there was no government I could sue them to get if they decided to hold it.
There was a reason most transactions were based on cash, and even that was only because of the existence of the System-backed coinage.
However, delaying three days, when I had solved every other problem standing in my way, was unbearable. "Why wait," I concluded even as I pulled the coins and destroyed them, turning them into raw material with confidence.
Then, I went to the forge and forged a small stiletto dagger made of pure gold, the smallest weapon I could imagine. The System didn't respond. I tried again, this time once again bleeding over it and using the Health trick, and pushed all the mana I had in my reserves.
It didn't trigger again.
"Let's see if you will work," I said even as I looked at the steam-powered crusher I had in place.
I spent easily two thousand points of mana. It failed again. "Alright, no surrender," I said even as I repeated the experiment. This time, I made a couple modifications to the setup, expanding the crusher area to make its mana output even more intense, started it, and forged another gold dagger.
It only responded when I spent roughly twenty thousand mana points, something that would have taken a lot of time to crush by hand and interrupt my forging repeatedly. The forging alone took ten minutes.
The reward was worth it.
[Mana Forge (Rare) 102 - 117]
"Industrialization for the win," I muttered even as I looked at the small, beautiful dagger in my hand. Curious, I tried to use it to create a mana edge. It conducted mana better than the alloy I discovered, but my sword maintained a better edge.
Confirming the viability of my composite design and my path to improve the class skills at the same time.
I once again started with the repetitive act of forging, damaging, repairing, and destroying. With my setup in place, I was able to extract mana easily. As an added benefit, the tainted energy was collected in a container, so whenever I ran out of material, I just needed to go to the edge of the base, open the container, and fight against the resulting swarm.
I was glad that I came up with a way to cut the shell with a mana blade, as it made the process far faster. And, I didn't even need to carry them back. I just needed to put them in the conveyor belt, and they would go back on their own.
Too bad the conveyor belt was too much work to expand even at moderate distances. Conveying power mechanically had its limits, not to mention every yard of metal belt took some time for me to forge and assemble.
Not the best use of my time, especially when the monsters were kind enough to visit my base in the first place.
As usual, improving the skill got harder the more it improved, and the incredible amount of mana it required to trigger made it even more difficult. However, in the end, I received my reward.
[Mana Forge (Rare) - 202]
[Mana Repair (Rare) - 201]
The perk selection had been almost trivial. Advanced Observe was a no-brainer. And, while I might have been split between Advanced Mana Control and Advanced Creative Forging, I only received Advanced Creative Forging as an option, which I accepted.
Advanced Creative Forging didn't allow me to forge the composite weapons, but every little bit still helped.
"I wonder when I will be able to push it to the next stage," I muttered, feeling impatient. It was greedy, I knew, but I didn't care. Now that I had discovered the method of improvement faster and faster, I couldn't ignore the addictive pull of its sensation.
I wondered if platinum would have given me the same boost gold did. Admittedly, the only reason I believed that was the fact that the next coin in the System was the platinum coin. Still, the theory was worth experimenting with.
But, even if it did, I couldn't even imagine how much mana it would consume in the process. The mana requirement between silver and gold to trigger the system had gone up almost thirty times. I didn't want to even imagine how much it would require for platinum, assuming the original trick held true in the first place.
Which, unfortunately, was not guaranteed.
"Prioritize," I grumbled, reminding myself about the more important problem. One step at a time. I still needed to solve the issue of the ranged mana attack. However, instead of making a new variant of the sword, I started experimenting with gold, wanting to utilize its superior conductive properties.
With the setup in place, it didn't take too much time to design a gold variant that conducted mana far better. Then, I simply replaced the silver core with the golden one, focusing on the hexagonal structure at the back of the scimitar.
An hour later, I was looking at a successful ranged attack. It barely went five yards before it dissipated, but I didn't try to improve it. Instead, I destroyed the sword and instead started to work on a new weapon based on the same principles.