Chapter 36: Changes at the Abbey IV
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[THE SILVER SEAT - Tallow Ironworks]
“So this is what your window looks like... It’s a completely different colour to mine,” mused Cain. He poked at the little violet window floating in the air. “Synthesis Lv.2?”
“Y-yes,” said Nameen. “I noticed it changed after... after I met Master Vandamme. It didn’t have a level or anything before.”
“Whoa! Your System Mechanic can level up?” asked Muse. She turned to Cain. “Did you know this?”
Cain shook his head.
“No, mine just says Control Scheme. There’s no level or anything after it.”
Nameen nodded. That had been the same for him as well.
“Before, the only things I could make were some medical potions,” said Nameen, gesturing at his window. “And some wooden and iron weapons. But... after leveling up, there was steel in my list as well. And armour.”
Muse and Vandamme couldn’t see it, as was expected. Cain, on the other hand, could. He held a finger out to the violet window, before pausing. Cain thought for a second, before looking to Nameen for permission, and Nameen nodded.
Cain tapped his finger to the window. Nothing.
No response.
“So I can’t manipulate your window the way I do mine,” said Cain, as he continued to try and swipe his finger on it. “I can touch it, but... No, it’s not doing anything. I can’t even scroll down.”
Cain opened his window, and Nameen saw for the first time Cain’s golden panel. Nameen tried to slide his finger against it as well, but nothing happened. It really looked like Players couldn’t mess around with each other’s windows.
“I guess that makes sense,” said Cain. “This way some other Player can’t... Oh, I don’t know. Force Nameen to make something he doesn’t want to, or make me allocate my stats into something that would be bad for me.”
The idea was rather scary, Nameen agreed. The window, despite giving him the feeling of locking him down, was also an intensely personal thing in a way that he couldn’t quite describe. It seemed that Cain thought the same way, considering he had asked for Nameen’s permission first.
Muse and Vandamme watched them mess around with the air in bemusement. It must’ve looked pretty funny, seeing two people look so intensely at nothing while also intensely swiping at it.
Nameen looked at the golden window, which was showing Cain’s status screen. His stats were all higher than Nameen’s, which was probably because...
“You’re at level 4, Mister Cain?” asked Nameen. “How did you level up?”
Cain froze, before looking back at Nameen. The boy was unsure what the gaze meant. There was something dark in the expression. Nameen looked over at Muse for clarification, but she seemed somewhat uncomfortable about it as well.
“It’s...” said Cain, as though he was trying to find the right words. “It’s not something for you to worry about. You should... You should just stick with learning smithing for now. Get one thing done before you think about doing another.”
“O-Okay,” said Nameen. What was that about?
A rather uneasy air. Were they keeping something from him?
“So! Steel, huh?” grinned Muse abruptly, sensing the strange atmopshere. “Your wooden weapons were already so tough, I bet your steel weapons are amazing! Although, I guess we’ve already seen iron at least.”
Muse looked over at Cain, who had pulled out the iron shortsword that Nameen had crafted from Alonzo’s old blade. The thing was only a little bit longer than a dagger, almost too short to be called a sword at all. It didn’t look very intimidating.
But it had cut a fragment of a Divinity.
“Heh,” said Vandamme shaking his head. “About time that mutt finally gave up his childhood toy.”
Although Nameen didn’t know Alonzo well, he was the only one that the master referred to with kind of an unfriendly nickname. It was strange though, despite the words the tone he used was always full of warmth.
“Maybe Cain doesn’t even need a new weapon,” grinned Muse. “You can just keep Alonzo’s hand-me-downs while Nameen makes for me a pretty new saber!”
Cain shot her an unamused look, which she was in no way deterred by, keeping the cheeky grin on her face. Then they turned to Nameen, who had taken the sword into his own hands and began examining.
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Nameen shook his head.
“T-This -- I kind of made this in a rush,” said Nameen. “I know my weapons are strong, but... To be honest, they don’t really last a long time. That one especially, since I was in a rush.”
Cain and Muse once again gave each other looks.
“They don’t last a long time?” asked Cain. “But, the wooden sword that Alonzo had as evidence took ten minutes of hammering to break.”
“O-Only if you never use them.”
Nameen explained, and the three others in the room listened closely.
From his own experiments while hiding his abilities from the slavers, he had figured out a few things. Medicine and potions aside, the weapons that he created through Synthesis were almost consumable in their nature.
A wooden sword that could split apart a warhammer could only be used in battle for fifty strokes before it fell apart. As in, it could only make contact with something fifty times if swung. No matter the surface. He tried it on the ground, on trees in the courtyard, and he assumed the same must’ve been true of flesh.
Nameen had run this experiment countless times with the different things that he had in his menu. A wooden axe lasted only forty blows, and a wooden bow could only shoot forty arrows. He had even tried to destroy one weapon with another, and the one he attempted to break with always broke first before the intended target.
Nameen looked at the iron shortsword that Cain had brought in.
[RUSHED CRAFTED JOURNEYMAN’S IRON SHORTSWORD]
[DURABILITY: 14/15]
This was the first time that he had studied one of his crafted items in close detail since his Synthesis had leveled up. For some reason, he wasn’t surprised that he now saw numbers that clearly showed just how long they could last.
“If you hit something with this fourteen more times,” said Nameen. “It’ll break.”
Silence.
Muse groaned and slumped backward against the wall.
“Awww... I guess it was too good to be true,” said the disappointed knight. “A saber that’s good for only fifty hits, or even less... That’s not exactly something I can rely on in a Dungeon, huh?”
Nameen had passed by her and Cain’s sparring sessions in the mornings sometimes. He agreed. Within a single sparring session alone, he counted at least ten or so times when their wooden swords had made contact with each other. One of his weapons wouldn’t last five battles in a Dungeon, and who knew just how many magical beasts there were?
Cain put a hand on her shoulder reassuringly.
“Hey, it’s still an amazing weapon,” said the knight Player. “Maybe you could keep two sabers? One for usual use and one for emergencies. Having one of Nameen’s Synthesized weapons around would make for an amazing ace-in-the-hole.”
Nameen shuffled awkwardly. He didn’t like this feeling. Muse and Cain had saved Master Vandamme’s life, and now he couldn’t repay them with what they wanted.
“Hey, lad.”
Nameen turned around, only to see that Vandamme had carried out a few planks of wood.
“Make another one of your wooden swords.”
He tossed them over to Nameen, who blinked in confusion.
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[THE SILVER SEAT - Tallow Ironworks]
“Fifty-five now instead of fifty?” asked Cain.
Nameen looked at the wooden sword in his hands in shock.
Vandamme crossed his arms, satisfied. It seemed that his suspicions about the lad’s System Mechanic had been correct, then.
“Lad, meeting me was not the only thing you did during that time you said you had this level up,” said Vandamme. “I may have provided the opportunity, but you had another meeting. One with the forge itself.”
The old dwarf remembered the way the boy had taken to the anvil and hammer. The way that he had immediately become mesmerized by his own movements, repeating them one after another, attempting to strike at the perfect angles to create. Certainly, the lump of iron that had been the result of that creative process was nothing like a sword.
But there was something in the child that resonated with the entire process of creation. That had been when Vandamme had become certain that he wanted Nameen as his last disciple.
“Y-You mean, I leveled up my System Mechanic because...” said Nameen. “Because I learned how to forge?”
“Learned how to forge!” Vandamme broke out into boisterous laughter. It felt good. When was the last time he had laughed like this? Certainly, it had been before the dark days.
But since the boy had agreed to be his apprentice, it felt as if time had started moving for him again. The whispers of his family no longer snapped at his heel, and he could feel the colours of life return. Laughing was good. It felt good.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself yet, lad! Your Synthesis aside, you’ve still got a long way to go. Make a dagger that lives up to my standards first, and then you’ll be able to claim you’ve learned how to forge!”
Nameen nodded, slightly chastised but still smiling. That was also good. An eager apprentice, but one that didn’t get ahead of themselves or prideful. He had learned that lesson the hard way, and the old dwarf did not intend to forget it.
He had once highly rated ambition and pride in his students, but life had taught him through hard knocks that they did not always lead to a life of excellence. Sometimes they led to shortcuts and corner-cutting that led to a tragic downfall.
“I-I think,” said Nameen, turning to the knightly pair. “The more I learn how to forge, the better my Synthesis items will be too. Sorry! I can’t make you a main weapon right now, but... Maybe one day?”
The pair smiled warmly at him.
“Think I’ll still take something small, though, if you can make one for me, Nameen,” said the half-orc girl. “Cain’s right, I can keep it around for emergencies. Saving one of your weapons for emergencies can definitely save my life.”
Nameen nodded, and ran off to where they kept the steel ingots. They were certainly not low on material. Grandmaster Baal had spared no expense in stocking their inventory as well as providing whatever Vandamme had asked for. Just how much money did they have?
“I can make you a saber myself, if that’s your preferred weapon,” offered Vandamme. “It won’t be on par with what I used to make, but I can still match the best works of any other artisan in the city.”
Muse’s eyes gleamed at that.
“Oh, a Vandamme original!” she cried, holding her hands together. “Please! Please!”
“And as for you.”
He turned to Cain.
“You’re going to need something more special,” said Vandamme.