Over the next few days, Seth began to work through the blueprints of armor sets he had inherited from Forgebrand. He made one of each armor to truly understand how they worked. He had to admit, the construction truly showed the maker's experience with materials, as expected of a dwarf.

Instead of relying on one powerful metal or material with a specific affinity, as Seth might do it, the dwarfs had used different materials of similar affinities that complimented each other, disregarding their original ranks.

The armors were made up of uncommon, rare, and epic pieces. Although the final armor's base values fell short of and armor made something like , the resistances against specific elements they offered easily made up for that. That was... originally.

With the effects of Seth's items and skills, each of the originally epic-rated armor sets was not only directly promoted to a relic-rated set, but the base values did not fall far behind the pure , only lacking the specific effects of the silver.

Another thing to keep in mind was, that it was a relic-rated armor set before adding any kinds of enchantments. This really showed Seth how important it was to truly understand more about the properties of materials.

Although his skills had reached the master rank, this kind of knowledge was not something he could have easily gained over the past almost three years. It was in line with his idea of streamlining the effects of items like the Harbinger of Winter.

This was the kind of effects he was trying to work towards. Using an assortment of lower-rated materials to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts was the true master tier for a blacksmith.

Making these armors and trying to truly understand them, helped him comprehend some of the dynamics between materials that needed to be considered. Disregarding ranks, even materials with the same superficial properties could hold a hierarchy or different roles in the construction and flow of energy.

It reminded him of another work of Forgebrand, the Spear of Bitter Mercy, that granted Magic immunity on thrust using the properties of to conduct magic away from the user. This was somewhat similar. The armors used one or two materials with a strong elemental resistance, which was then strengthened and distributed throughout the rest of the set. The individual parts were okay, but it was the set effect that gave the armor a huge boost.

It was a concept contrary to Seth's previous approach. For the most part, the blacksmith had usually just tried to use the best materials he had or make things from only one material. It was a completely normal behavior from the perspective of someone that gained game-like skills to make items. Use great materials, and great skills, to make great items.

Maybe Tored would have taught him about these intricacies a little later once his skills were there, but he simply had not spent enough time with the dwarven master to touch upon this kind of advanced knowledge. After all, it was more a thing of experience and learning from others, than system skills.

Through the armor sets he got a grasp on what he was lacking in. He got acquainted with the properties of the materials used in these armors, but what he really understood was that he would need to find other materials and their synergies to get the effects he was looking for.

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This also reminded him of his experience with Alchemy. Balancing the synergy between ingredients with individual properties. He jokingly started thing of this as the alchemy of armor-making.

Ultimately, Seth's goal was to make armors that could buff specific powers even before he started enchanting them. That was he could create very powerful, specialized armor for the others. But to do so he needed a better knowledge of materials.

Thinking of a source of knowledge he suddenly had an idea. He felt almost stupid for not looking there earlier.

Opening the Auction House through his personal interface, Seth did not start a hunt for all kinds of materials to add to his catalog, but he used a tab he had seldom touched before. Books. It was a little shameful, but it was the first time Seth realized, that there should also be books about the knowledge he needed.

Admittedly, he had managed so far and he DID use the books at the bard college. Anyway, now he was flipping through the pages of the auction house and quickly realized why it wasn't an immediate thought to look for knowledge in the auction house.

It was an auction house! As much as it reminded him of an online shop, their assortment of items was usually very precious or rare items. This was not a comprehensive choice of products like he would find them in a bookstore or a library. He wouldn't find something elementary like "The Minehiker's Guide to Geology" in here.

Of course, this raised his hopes that if he did find something it would be a very precious and helpful book with irreplaceable knowledge. The question was, how long would he have to look? He couldn't sort the books by genre, and since he was looking at the whole assortment, there were several dozen pages of books up for sale.

The blacksmith ultimately bit the bitter apple and looked through everything one by one. He didn't trust the search option, since the title could also be something like "Arkham's Study on Material Science". How was he going to find that if he queried for, say, Metallurgy?

Another Idea was to contact Simon to see if the system church could get him books on the subject. This idea came to him, as he was doom scrolling through the stacks of books in the auction house, without finding anything.

Most of the stuff was about magic, obviously. Wizards LOVED to write down everything and anything they found out and most of the books in the auction house were either Ancient Magic tomes or the latest findings of their respective worlds.

That day he learned another important lesson, Craftsmen didn't write down a lot of stuff. The was no ancient diary of a legendary blacksmith or something like that. At least there wasn't in the auction house.

Since he couldn't find anything in the auction house, Seth decided to bet on the system church and he wrote a letter to Tored, to tell him about his recent worries. Although Seth had been busy pretty much always, he only kept sporadic contact using letters. Maybe Tored had some advice for him.

In the meantime, while waiting for a response, Seth experimented on the armor sets he had made to see whether and how different enchantments and engraving would interfere with the material effects.

He spent his time like that, experimenting and managing the new craftsmen until he a week after their return from Agra:

~Tower Master, A teleport beacon has been registered. The frequency suggests that Lord Evee succeeded in setting up the teleport hub. ~

Seth was finally informed that Evee had managed to fulfill her mission and set up a Teleport Hub in the Holy Land. They could finally start the main stage of their preparations. Farming experience, reaching lv.100, and see what comes after.

The blacksmith already had a suspicion, thanks to what he saw and Bement said, but he had no idea what exactly would happen. Still, he guessed it was a chance to make a jump in strength, this was one of the reasons he wanted to reach it quickly. If they all got to that point, Seth wouldn't have any worries, even if they picked a fight with Y-City.

~An external attempt to connect a spatial channel to the coordinates of Minas Mar has been registered. It stems from a beacon in the Holy Land, grant access?~

That was unexpected. Although the Teleport Hub was supposed to harvest its own energy from the dragon veins of the canyon, it was originally planned for Minas Mar to open the first spatial corridor from their side. Was there a reason for a change in plans?

"Access granted. Teleport me to the lobby and notify the others. Let's go and greet Evee."