Jack went to Sword in the Forge after school, right when Bastian was adding the finishing touch to a sword he was making.

The old man’s grumble distracted Jack from his unpleasantness.

“Jack, bring me the blue stone!”

Jack looked around and saw the material Bastian was asking for, wrapped in a soft layer of cloth. The stone was small, kidney-shaped, with small sharp spikes on it.

Jack recalled the frost property that Bastian and the books had mentioned. He quickly grabbed a pair of gloves and used a pincer to pick it up.

The newly forged blade was blazing and the red hot mana-infused metal was kept inside a mana barrier created by Bastian. The smith was all sweaty, his eyes opening wide and his breath stuck on the tip of his nose.

“Put the stone on the small hole in the middle of the blade,” Bastian commanded.

Jack obeyed. He carefully brought the stone to the designated location. When it got closed, the mana barrier didn’t open up but instead bent inside like a slime, slowly covering half the pincer. Jack could feel the energy inside the barrier being disturbed through the vibration of the tool.

“Hurry up. You think I have enough mana for you to mess around with it?” Bastian grumbled.

Jack quickly pushed the pincer and dropped the stone into the hole. He felt a force that made him step back and pull the pincer out. The stone slowly melted into a sparkling liquid, filling up the sword fuller. Bastian pushed the blade back into the oven. He opened one of the small hatches on the piping network, threw some mana crystals in there, then returned to the oven door, using his hand to adjust the heat flow and control the temperature. After finishing, he gave out a pleasant smile and a sigh of relief.

“A Crusader sword,” Bastian proudly said.

Jack wouldn’t miss a chance to take advantage of Bastian’s good mood.

“Do blue stones have essence inside?”

Bastian frowned at Jack, but as he had expected, that wouldn’t be enough to ruin the old man’s current pleasure.

“You fool, what the hell do you do at school? The blue stone’s frost is a property, not ice essence.”

Jack’s face was a bit dazed. Of course, he was exaggerating it to encourage Bastian to give more explanation. Besides blacksmithing, nothing interested him more than arrogantly laughing and looking down on others.

“Property and essence have their own pros and cons, got that? That stone you’ve just carried was a material with property. That means it only provides some bonuses on certain frost property stats and constants for any crafted items or weapons.”

“So unlike essence, it doesn’t require mana to be effective?”

“Yes,” Bastian said while looking for a beer cup in his inventory chest.

“So, is it better to use weapons with essence?”

Bastian choked on his beer, laughing. He wiped off the foam on his mouth, trying to find the right voice to mock Jack.

“You dumbass. Can a kid without thrash mana like you use an essence weapon?”

“I guess not,” Jack nodded in agreement, unbothered by Bastian’s cursing.

“Exactly. Now, don’t make me remind you again about property and essence. If you are somehow lucky enough to become a Herald, where the hell would you get the mana to sustain an essence sword, ey? You know why the rank is called Herald? Cause the power of mana capacity of those rankers is only good for running around and delivering messages on battlefield.”

Jack thought about this. From the system’s description, skills already consumed a hefty amount of mana. It wouldn’t be wise for him to use a weapon that had the same mana burden.

“But, if mana was to be resupplied constantly, would it mean essence will grow stronger and have the edge over weapons with property?”

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Some more beer was spilled on the floor.

“What the hell have you been studying at school?”

Jack shrugged. He had been quite occupied lately, leaving him with little to no time to do research on these matters. At school, Dan hadn’t been teaching anything besides his crazy experiments. Luckily for Jack, the teacher was still struggling with completing the illusion sphere. Subjects on Artificer were not the focal point of the school’s academic program.

“Essence, as fancy as it may sound,” Bastian continued, “were also limited by their quality. Blackpon stone, for example, is a material with low-quality fire essence and barely stronger than some other materials with fire property. It also doesn't take much mana to be fully activated. That’s why it doesn't have that high of a value. So, taking the cost into account, which one will you choose for your own crafting, boy?”

“Depends,” Jack answered, “I’ll make do with what I was given, based on the characteristics and quality of them.”

“Yes,” Bastian was waving his cup, “the material is the soul of the weapon.”

“And the smith is the god who gives it a worthy body?”

“Ha ha, cheers for that.”

Jack raised an invisible cup toward Bastian.

After a while, as the fire in the oven was dwindling and the blue stone completely fused, Bastian slowly took the blade out. He said the final step was to leave the blade to cool off the right way. Since it was crafted with frost property, the blade didn’t need to be dipped into water or anything but instead should be left alone.

Finally, as a flash of blue light sparkled and moved along the blade, Bastian smiled, huddling himself. His eyes brightened up as if seeing Jack’s money.

A notification message suddenly appeared before Jack.

You have contributed to the process of making an item.

You have earned experience that the system cannot process.

The experience will be reserved.

It will be used once the initialization is complete.

Initialization time: 65 days 8 hours 34 minutes 14 seconds.

Jack wanted to give out the same jubilant reaction as Bastian, but he kept his composure. His prediction was correct. The system did award crafting experience.

Bastian noticed Jack’s contained excitement, which took away a bit of his own. Searching in his slimy pocket, he took out a small stone the same size as the previous blue one and threw it at Jack.

Jack caught it cleanly. Holding it in his hand, he could feel a chill running through his body. The stone was a bit cold and cubic in shape. It had a transparent exterior with sparkling, lightning-like zigzag lines inside.

“What is this?” Jack asked.

“Your life-saving charm,” Bastian said, holding his chin a bit too high.

“So, like, I have to break it?”

“No, you swallow it!” Bastian laughed out loud.

Jack didn’t bother asking anymore. He could save the questions for Edward later.

“You will come to my aid if something happens?”

Bastian stared at Jack.

“I don’t have time for your crap, brat. Smash it, throw it, just break it so that you can unleash the lightning and Meinhard will come. Me? I’m too busy snoring at night.”

Jack laughed, feeling Bastian wasn’t so bad after all. He reckoned the stone was not something anyone could get their hands on.

Today, he returned to his usual practice. He was exercising and thinking about adjusting the training of Agos. The mana manipulation knowledge he had acquired from the Legacy Orb had helped him figure out new ways to guide the fat kid. Thomas was already there, running and jumping around with his usual energetic vigor. The clearest example of his improvement was that he had been outperforming Jack in Xerath’s practices.

After some quick training, Jack returned home. It had been a long exhausting day, but full of excitement as his body was at its limit, not his mind.

In his pitch-black room, Jack continued to practice Presence of the Night. After five rounds of exhausting his mana and refilling it, his head and body forced him to stop.

Maybe I have to make some trade-off between this and Xerath’s physical training, Jack thought to himself.

Jack circled his feet on the bed, not wanting to sleep just yet. After waiting for his heartbeats to slow down, he relaxed his mind and entered the knowledge point inside his head that contained the information about the Herald of Nightblade. Jack rewatched the moment the shadow figure had jumped between the trees and the bushes over and over again. He came to the conclusion that this was not the Shadow Dance that the system had recommended to him. It was something else, faster, more practical, more lethal.

Jack controlled the knowledge point to grant him more information about this particular skill. A flow of information immediately ran through his brain, his every nerve and muscle. Jack stood up, trying to simulate his physical and mental state according to the instruction. Then, he was stopped.

Since his awakening, he had never had so many system notifications as today. They usually brought good news, but not this time. The system once again showed its limit.

You are about to learn Shadow Jump.

Shadow Jump is not a skill that belongs to the system.

If you wish to learn it, the path of Nightblade will be disabled. What you learned from the system will be erased.

This action can only be undone if you reset your knowledge.

Do you want to learn Shadow Jump?

Y/N