"You’ve got to be kidding me. The apprentice designed and crafted a Rare Magitech weapon? Oh, George will be so pissed." Dominic heard someone mutter.
George, the Journeyman Armourer with hopes to be the Royal Forge’s new Master before Pops was called up, was not impressed at all.
"There is no way that he made that on his own. I don’t know how you did it, but you have cheated." He insisted.
A few of the other smiths laughed at him, and an old man with skin nearly as dark as the coal they used to increase the carbon in the steel thumped George on the head.
"You think they fooled all of us? I’ve been watching as well, and I saw the boy improvise when he realized he had messed up the plan. Unless they’re secretly psychic, you lost fair and square. Now pay the man and take it as a lesson not to be stupid in the future." The Master Armourer insisted.
George reluctantly pulled a bag from his inventory item, a fancy golden rectangle that hung off the side of his belt.
"So, what do you plan to do with that now that you’ve made it?" Pops asked, while gesturing to Dominic’s new sword.
"Well, it’s nice and light, so I had considered stabbing something with it. But maybe I should trade it for good stuff." Dominic shrugged.
"You would... stab someone... with a Rare sword?" One of the apprentices asked in shock.
"Something for sure. Possibly, a Goblin. But it’s a sword, that’s what they’re made for." He replied.
"But you’re a blacksmith, not a soldier." The Apprentice reminded him.
"And a Sorcerer. So stabbing them is somewhat redundant, as I can cast spells, but it is still rather satisfying," Dominic agreed.
Pops laughed and shook his head at the silliness of their argument.
"Both of you have work to do. But if you don’t want to keep that blade, I can have it sold to someone who needs it." Pops suggested.
The other apprentices gave Dominic envious glares. Nothing that they made belonged to them, it was all the property of either their master or the Royal Forge. But that didn’t hold true for Rare Magical items. They didn’t come about often, so the Royals only demanded a cut of the sales price for the ones made in their forge.
"I have the recipe, I can always make another. However, right now, I need Enhancement gems or Magitech Orbs to help with my skills and my spells." Dominic explained.
"Do you think it’s so easy to just make a Rare Magic item?" One of the other apprentices asked.
"The recipe is right there. I don’t see what the problem is. Why not ask your master if you can make one as well if you’re hard up for cash?" Dominic asked.
It was only natural. If you had the skills to make what people needed, you made it, and you traded it for what you needed.
However, Dominic was not human, and the way that he imbued the weapon with mana as the Mana Core dust was absorbed into the blade was not something that your average human could do.
Dominic could do it, and Pops could do it. But they were both born with magic. Other than the two of them, there might not be another in the forge who could actually use that technique.
In short, no. The Apprentice couldn’t simply make one for himself, even if he had the plan in front of him.
The apprentice laughed ruefully, while a Journeyman came over with a set of materials in his hand.
"That’s an excellent idea. All the apprentices will spend the day recreating those blades for sale or distribution. If there is a rare item created, the apprentice will get the full creator’s cut of the funds." The Journeyman Weaponsmith announced.
Pops chuckled and placed a crude drawing in front of Dominic.
"This is what you’re doing today. I want fifty enchanted spearheads out of you before you return to your room tonight. Lunch will be served soon, and dinner comes straight to the forge, no need to waste time going anywhere." The smug Dwarf informed his apprentice with a demanding look that promised that Dominic was not getting out of his daily quota of work, even if he had won Pops a couple of extra months’ salary.
Dominic got the iron for the spearheads, and then realized that he had no idea how he was supposed to enchant them without using up all of his own cores.
"Hey, are there more mana cores here somewhere for the regular weapons? Pops wants enchanted spearheads." He asked.
The apprentice beside him shook his head. "The best we’ve got are the enchanted oils from the Alchemists. Dunk the annealed and glowing spearhead to temper it, and it should absorb a bit of mana from the oil. If you’ve got fresh oil, it’s usually about a fifty-fifty whether it holds a Common enchantment."
So that was how they were doing it. There was a bucket of quenching oil by his station, but Dominic hadn’t had to use it when he was creating the sword with the monster core. But Pops wanted him to hammer out a hundred spearheads by the end of the day, just to make fifty enchanted ones? That was plain unreasonable.
Well, he could just cast them and then forge an edge, but that was liable to introduce bubbles and make for crappy, brittle metal compared to Pops’ usual standard of work. It might be the only way to finish, though.
So, he took one of the half-completed spearheads from an unattended station and pressed ten moulds into his sand table, then returned it and got to work.
The forge workers had metal already heated for him, sitting in the forge waiting for him to get to it, and Dominic gave them a polite bow.
"As we said, don’t count on it, but you won us a bunch of money today, and we’re feeling generous." The boy whispered.
Dominic poured the first ten spearheads, and waited while they cooled in the wet sand enough to begin to work with. Then he took a punch to cut notches and hammered the first one into a nice serrated edge that would cause a savage wound both going in and coming out.
Then he hammered the leading edges to a wedge shape for the cutting edge. After that, he just had to use the rasp and file the spearhead to a decently sharp surface, and Dominic sighed at the slipshod workmanship. The magical upgrade would have to compensate for the fact it was not pretty.
After grabbing a spear handle and hammering the cupped portion of the spearhead into notches cut to hold the head in place, he noticed that much of the Hobgoblin core dust he had crushed was still in the crucible. He had some regular Goblin Core dust as well, which he took from his Inventory Cube and dumped into the oil to make room for the Hobgoblin Core Dust in its container.
Then he infused the oil with a bit more mana, giving it a shimmering glow, before he dunked the spearhead in it.
[Uncommon Weapon Created: Brutal Spear] his trade skill core flashed.
Dominic smirked at the success of his crafting hack and began to hammer another one into shape. It would take hundreds of dunks to wear out that shimmering oil, he just needed to add mana. Maybe being a Sorcerer really was suited to the job of a Weaponsmith.
He used the tongs to pull another one from the sand and pounded it to shape, then repeated the process.
[Uncommon Weapon Created: Brutal Spear]
Finally, someone noticed what he was doing as he was finishing the third one.
"Journeyman Jones, the new Apprentice is glitched." He shouted.
A middle-aged man came over and watched Dominic hammering out a strangely vicious spearhead, then mounting it to the shaft before tempering it in the enchanted oil.
[Common Weapon Created: Brutal Spear]
That time he didn’t add more mana to the mixture, but it still turned out a fairly decent result. That seemed to be the great difference between crafted items.
He could innately use magic, Pops could use magic, but very few others could without relying on the spell gems or magitech orbs, which did them no good here, unless they had a spell gem designed to add mana to an Alchemist’s oil-based potion.
"Are you in a rush to get something done, Apprentice Dominic?" The Journeyman asked.
"Pops says he wants fifty of these enchanted before bed. I’m assuming that means just pound them out to a Common Grade Magical item or better. Or am I supposed to be making them all Uncommon? Because that sounds like a real pain." He replied.
The Journeyman laughed. "Go ahead then. If you think you can get fifty enchanted spears done and still make it to bed tonight, I wish you the best of luck."