“Of course! Where else could it be if not there…”
Abel suddenly stood up as he mumbled, shocking the couple before him.
“Abe, did you figure it out?”
Melissa was interested to know what he had thought of with her suggestion.
“I’m not sure but I have an idea… I’ll have to check up on certain places but… if I’m not mistaken, the place is most likely in a forbidden zone.”
“What? Aren’t those places very high-leveled?”
Frankie knew a bit more about the game’s world than his girlfriend so he was stunned at what Abel just said, while Melissa just looked on blankly, waiting for an explanation.
“Its not just high-leveled. It’s basically a death zone without hope of escape for those below level 200. Why do you think such an area would be termed ‘forbidden’?”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“If I’m not mistaken, then I have to have a really high blacksmith level and an even higher gaming level before I can start the next phase of the quest. But it might be a part that comes much later on instead of the next one, I’ll have to finish this quest before I can know for sure. But it wouldn’t make sense if the very next part sent me off to a forbidden zone!”
The three discussed the different possibilities ahead but they couldn’t come to any conclusion, they were still lacking a lot of information.
After finished up their meal, Abel washed the dishes while Melly and Frankie went to get ready for work. Once he was done, he got into bed and tried going to sleep.
But sleep seemed to elude him as his mind was thinking about the forbidden zones he knew of. He didn’t actually know much about them, only that Caelondia’s forbidden zone was underwater. Kaelia and Valtoria had a single forbidden zone each, Elyndor had 2 while Aranthus had 3!
At least, these were the known forbidden zones of the world.
‘It can’t be in Caelondia, the region’s full of islands and their forbidden zone is under the ocean. I doubt it’s there from all the clue’s I gathered. It could be in any of the other regions with Valtoria being the most likely. But I’ll have to do some research about them…’
Time passed slowly and eventually, Abel felt his drowsiness overwhelm his thoughts as he drifted off to sleep.
When he opened his eyes again, he took a look at the time and saw it was slightly past 11 am.
He lay there in bed, just resting with his eyes closed for a few minutes. Eventually, he got out of bed to wash up and brush his teeth.
He took care of a few small chores like washing his dirty clothes and cleaning his room. He also checked up on the soaking rabbit pelts and put some more food and water for the chickens and rabbits outside.
After he was done, he stepped outside and started practicing Tai chi. He completed 3 sets of the 24-step Yang style and another 3 sets of the 108-step long form. By the time he finished, it was half past noon and his stomach was grumbling in discontent.
After a quick shower and a light lunch, he jumped back into the pod feeling refreshed in both body and mind.
Whoooosh
After connecting to Realm Quest, Abel found himself back in old man Rye’s study. It was late in the afternoon, just before 4 pm in Velskryn’s time.
Taking advantage of his refreshed state of mind, he dove right back into the many records before him. He was especially paying attention to any mention of forbidden zones. Although most of these books and scrolls held journal-like entries, perhaps the old Battlesmith ventured into these perilous lands and recorded his findings.
After an hour of reading all sorts of different entries and gaining a diverse range of knowledge about many things, he finally came across something exciting.
While it wasn’t any of the known forbidden zones in the 5 regions of Faeron, Branthor had apparently once gone to an ice-covered landmass far in the ocean. Abel’s breathed hitched as he realized what this piece of knowledge meant.
There was another continent in the world!
It was covered in snow, surrounded by dangerous icebergs and home to a varied range of ice-type beasts! From Yeti’s and Frost Giants to Ice Ants and Glacial Serpents, the diverse range of monsters there was an ecosystem onto itself.
Branthor had named the icy continent Avnvard, after the ancient god of ice and snow from the era of celestial convergence.
He carried on reading, trying to find mention of how the man even reached it but all it stated was the Battlesmith had gone there through a teleportation portal found in a ruin he had been looking into for his own quest.
Unfortunately, it didn’t state where the ruin was but it did mention it was in the Kaelia Region, within the Ethereon mountain range.
The was both good news and bad news, the Ethereon mountain range spanned the whole damn continent, splitting its vast hills and pastures in half. The good news though was that Branthor had mentioned which kingdom he had been in prior to his exploration of the ruin. So, Abel had an estimated range of where it could be.
If he went to the kingdom of Woldam's city of free trade and went to the Ethereon mountian range through there, he might come across a destination he could explore. He wrote down this piece of information and carried on reading.
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He came across the means of how the man got back after a few months of living there.
He had given his wind-treading boots to his little brother and couldn’t fly out so, he was forced to build a boat out of the bones of the slain monsters and sail back, bypassing treacherous icebergs and the stormy ocean. After a month of treading endless water, he found himself on the western coast of Valtoria, all the way across the world.
‘It should be east of Kaelia and west of Valtoria. I wonder if you could reach it if you go north of Caelondia or south of Aranthus…’
This was a huge piece of information that he doubted anyone else would have. Even when the average players progressed in level, he doubted more than a handful of people would be able to reach such a distant place.
When he was done reading the whole book, Abel took a deep breath, still finding it hard to overcome the excitement within. Branthor had only explored a small region of this vast landmass but he had come across icy tundra’s, frozen lakes and towering glaciers.
‘There’s no way such a huge landmass doesn’t have any sentient race’s living on it. They were probably hiding from him due to his strength while he didn’t bother exploring such a place because he was looking for a different location entirely.’
Abel assumed there might be some races living there but the Battlesmith had simply never crossed paths with them before so he wrote about it being inhabited by beasts alone.
After going through a few more scrolls and a couple of books, Abel realized he had read everything left behind by his predecessor, even those half-finished schematics. He was hoping to find a hint in there but he was left disappointed as it seemed to be some unfinished designs to high-grade weapons.
While he hadn’t gone through old man Rye’s books yet, he wasn’t betting on finding anything there. He planned to take a look at them later as they were still a source for general information.
He then went over the riddle in his mind once more but he was still missing the key information. He figured he should test out his theory about the forge.
‘I guess I’ll need to check the royal library for records about forbidden zones… something with a taboo flame. Ugh, this quest is far more time consuming than the last one. If this is C grade then how hard would B grade difficulty be.’
Despite his internal grumblings, Abel got up and made his way back to the forge he had visited last night.
When he reached the forge itself, a prompt came up asking him to spend 100 mana to start the fire.
While the forge was heating up, he filled up a bucket of water from the well in the yard. He then filled up another tub at the side to have cool water at the ready for when he needed it.
‘Alright, lets get started with forging.’
He refilled his mana and took out an iron ingot to start heating it up. Once the prompt came up deeming the iron hot enough, he pulled out his hammer and grabbed the iron piece with a pair of tongs.
This was where having a blueprint came in handy, he would receive prompts about what and when he should carry out a certain task. After placing the heated iron ingot on the anvil, he took a deep breath and started actively using his blacksmithing skill.
Bang
Bang
Bang…
He hammered away and tried controlling his strength exertion, slowly tapering the metal ingot into a short but elongated form. After 5 minutes, it started taking shape but still required more hammering so he heated it up again.
Bang
Bang
Bang…
Another 5 minutes passed by when he saw he’d done a good enough job to get started on the tang.
Drawing upon his memories and the blueprint before him, Abel made quick work of the tang and went back to shaping the blade. He would have to re-heat the metal every few minutes to maintain the malleability.
It took him another 20 minutes to finish shaping the blade, paying careful attention to bevels and edges. This was a speed that would have been impossible in reality. Thankfully, it was in the virtual world where his strength was much greater and the forge’s fire housed a mystical flame.
After he finished the shaping of the dagger, he placed it back into the forge to re-heat it. Once the prompt showing the critical temperature reached a certain point, he pulled it out for quenching in the bucket of water.
‘I was a little slow… Next time I should pull it out a second before the gauge hits critical’
This low-level dagger only required a single quenching and tempering process which Abel slightly messed up at the onset. He took note not to repeat such an error in his second attempt as he adjusted the forge to the lowest temperature setting.
After re-heating the blade, he started the short but essential tempering process.
Bang
Bang
Bang…
He hammered away at it with quick but controlled swings, he had to temper it as much as possible as it was gradually cooling down.
After 17 minutes, he deemed the weapon to be too cool for any more tempering processes. While it was still most certainly hot, it was stated he should stop any attempt at tempering after 15-20 minutes.
As he waited for the weapon to naturally cool down, he stepped off to the side to bring up his depleted stamina and mana points. He had been at it for nearly an hour, his stamina and mana would have never held up without his increased stats.
His endurance aided in faster stamina regeneration while his mana was a little better off due to the skill requiring less of it in the first place.
‘I hope it turns out well, although I messed up in the quenching, it wasn’t a huge mistake…’
As Abel pulled up his mana and stamina points, he thought about the outcome of his first forging attempt. When enough time had passed for the blade to cool down naturally, he started with the next phase right away, grinding.
The forge had several different grinding wheels for all types of weapons. He picked out a grinding bench for shorter blades and got to work, shaping and sharpening the blade further. He removed any excess impurities he had missed during the tempering process and then brought the blade to the belt sander to smoothen the flat side and give it a nice shine.
After he grinded it out on all sides, he pulled out a pommel from his spacial bag and started lightly hammering the tang into place, peening it into its pre-arranged slot. The pommel had a small hilt attached so he didn’t have to go through the trouble of creating one.
Once he was done, he looked around to see if there was any reaction of sorts but was disappointed to not see anything.
*sigh*
‘I’m either wrong about this or just too low-leveled for anything to happen’
Pushing aside his expected disappointment about not finding another clue, he noticed a notification in his interface.
‘what’s this…’
+200 forging proficiency points
+50 EXP
‘I can gain EXP from smithing too! At least this shows the final product was a success, let’s take a look at its stats’
“Inspect”
*Ding*
[Iron Dagger]
Attack: 10-12
Durability: 15/15
Description: A straightforward dagger with a double-edged iron blade and wooden hilt. Forged by ____
He was gladly surprised about the end result, his memories and experience in forging as Xiaowen played a crucial role in succeeding. He also had to thank his trusty forging hammer, along with the crafting process being over all simpler and easier in-game, it basically guaranteed a near perfect result.
The attack and durability were merely lower by 2 and 5 points respectively from the perfect result in the blueprint. It was commendable for an absolute beginner and if his blacksmithing skill was higher, it would have pulled up the stats even if his earlier mistake was bigger.
As he looked further down, he realized he could insert his name at the end but just as he was about to do so, he stopped.
‘Maybe I should use an alias as a blacksmith… hmm what should it be.’
He thought for a while before deciding to use Xiang. He was paying homage to his other last name that was behind the knowledge of the skill while also keeping it simple with one word.