"Alright, Pan, tell me the three steps to making a good artifact for a client." Lady Baba asked me after only two weeks of working with her, yet it had been more than enough time to catch up with her when it came to the basics, so I answered in a second.
"The first step, which depends on the customer, is sourcing a good material supplier for said artifacts or weapons," I confidently answered as Baba nodded along. Not much later, my piece of metal started getting red hot from the blazing fire of the furnace.
"The second step comes down to us. We must research the materials we will use if we haven't before and adjust our equipment for the customer's needs." I continue my answer, but once I'm done with my answer this time, the metal bar in the blaster is red hot, forcing me to pry it out before it melts away.
"And thirdly! ALWAYS WORK LIKE THIS COULD BE YOUR LAST PIECE!" With this last, more energetic answer, I finally get to work on my first weapon craft under the supervision of a professional. My hammer strikes the hot metal against the anvil as it quickly cools down, forcing me to work harder than ever.
The heat of the metal and the blaster remind me of the first time I tried to craft something out of metal, but this time, things are much different. Everything from the set-up down to the most overlooked stuff, like the hammer and anvil I'm using, is top quality compared to the cheap stuff I bought back then.
I can feel the hammer's weight working its way into the metal with each strike as Baba reminds me of the striking rhythm to keep my piece uniformly distributed by introducing a controlled beat. One strike against the hot metal followed by a light tap on the anvil, then catch the hammer again and swing it against the hot metal bar once you turn it.
The heat from the hot bar and the air around us are intense. Still, compared to before, neither of us has any trouble maintaining a safe amount of MP around our skin and clothes to protect from fire damage or other heat-related incidents, another skill I was grateful for.
So not only can you gain skills, but if someone else wants, they can just teach you one if they care enough about it. The only downside I can see to this method of gaining skills is that they require an extended amount of time, and the person showing you has to really show you. It's time-consuming, is all I'm saying, so it's not like you can just watch to copy a skill.
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Nobody would ever need training if it were that easy to teach skills. Besides, if you're not even in the same category as a magical user as the person you're learning from, then you will not even be able to understand it.
For example, warfare and Civilian are the leading broad categories of magical users. Yet they both branch out broadly and, in many cases, even branch into each other, which is the branch I belong to. I'm a blacksmith, which means I'm neither fully into Civilian use alone nor warfare either; I can be into both and thus reach more branches, but still, I'm not on the scale to become the next Bruce Lee; that tree is too far hidden within warfare magic.
"Put a little more strenght into it, Pan; your hits are quite weak, my dear." Lady Baba soon reminds me of the task I'm currently on, and it seems as though I've been doing all of it on autopilot while my mind randomly wanders off, thinking about how crazy and complicated this world works.
Speaking of weird, I did find the origin of magical power weird from the tales I heard from Alice, but now that I occasionally listen to them from Baba, I can't help but feel weird about it. The Origin of Magical Power is a bizarre tale that simply tells the story of two dragons.
Apparently, a long time ago, when the world was still encased in chaos and disorder, two dragons fell upon the world from another land. These two dragons, seeing how empty the world they had arrived at, felt sadness and pitied the world, so they changed it.
The dragons created a shining star in the skies, which the planet would orbit alongside various moons, eventually clashing to make one big moon. Once the dragons had brought forth the cycles of day and night to the world, the dragons created life on the planet.
And finally, to ensure the happiness of their creations, these two dragons blessed this world with their unique power source, encased down to this planet's core. Therefore, the power of all magic comes from the blessing in the earth's core, as it draws the power of exploding stars in the multiverses.
Well, I did change things a little bit at the end, as the actual legend simply says that the device, whatever it is, draws power from stars that fade. Yet it would only make sense that, therefore, the so-called 'magicules' are nothing more than dead star energy that's been processed by the dragon's device.
It does make someone like myself wonder, what if some sort of evil deity or force tried to seize this device from the earth's core? I mean, just thinking about it. Whoever grabs and controls that thing will become the most powerful being on the planet!
Reincarnation is also not as rare as I thought before. There are many legends about reincarnations coming to this world, and if their accounts are correct, many of these reincarnations would mop the floor with someone like Lord Momonga {I couldn't think of anyone else, sowwy}. Yet they were all powered by the device.
Just how am I not meant to go crazy about such a thing existing in the core of the planet?! I get that most people think it's all just a made-up tale meant to try to explain how this world came to be because nobody really knows, not even the gods.
Still, what if the legend is true?