After he finished with the planning meeting with the others he had a to do list of his own that he now had to work through in the next few months before the event. In terms of prep for the event he wanted to get production of good quality weapons going. He didn’t want to personally create every weapon, it would take too long and he didn’t want to waste his own time churning out advanced grade weapons that would give him little to no experience. What he could do though was act as a guiding hand.
The first trip he made was to the forges, he wanted to spend some time to see the quality of work they would be able to make and what materials they were working with in more detail. When he did arrive at the forges they were in the middle of a class. Rather than interrupt he looked around and found a number of finished weapons in one area and in another finished parts of metal armour. When he identified every piece he found they were all simple grade but of a decent make.
The weapons were mostly different types of swords and daggers but there was also some spears and other bladed weapons. He picked each one up and tested it physically, then he pushed the smallest amount of mana through it to test its mana conductivity. He concluded that both were average but usable for someone in the F grade or early E grade.
As he was making his way through the row of blades he saw someone coming up to him, by the looks of it they were someone that worked in the forge.
“Are you here to buy? You should know that although we produce decent weapons, we are predominately a teaching facility.” Shaun identified the man and found that his name was Jai and he was surprisingly at level 15.
“I am not here to buy. Actually, I was here to check what weapons you make and to see if they could be improved on.” Shaun considered for a moment before continuing. “Who runs the forges?”
“Have you got a profession related to metal work? Jane runs the forge, she doesn’t teach but she does a lot of the planning and mark ups on what we create here. She would be in her personal forge back there if you want to talk with her. But she doesn’t really like being interrupted.” Shaun put down the dagger he was still holding back in its place and moved towards where Jai had indicated this Jane would be.
Shaun knocked on the door that separated the main forge from Jane’s and didn’t wait for an answer before he went in. Inside he saw a woman hammering away at a piece of metal, the heat in the room was high but to him he barely felt it.
“Hello, Jane is it?” He spoke loud enough that the women could hear him, the moment he had spoken she whirled around with hammer still in hand and stared at him.
“Go away I am busy. Speak to Jai outside if you want something.” She didn’t even bother to wait for him to reply before she turned back to her work.
Rather than leave he looked around at the weapons in this room. Perfect. The weapons in here were all advanced grade and much better than what was outside. Every blade was sharp and crafted to an excellent quality. Using his own skill he tested out the conductivity and structure of each blade, he was impressed with what he found.
He saw a few things which he might be able to improve to better be able to place runes on the blade but overall he could easily upgrade the weapons. “Why are the weapons in here better than the ones outside?” The hammering had gone quiet while he had been looking over each weapon, he knew he was being watched so didn’t bother trying to get her attention again.
“The quality of metal is better, the designs more advanced and they take longer to forge. For the most part a lot of the smiths outside do not have the skills or ability that I do. I also don’t have the time or patience to spend every waking moment guiding them. If they want to improve they need to do so themselves, just like I did.” Jane’s tone had changed considerably since she told him to leave, she was much more willing to talk to him now.
“If I supplied the with the materials, and a plan of how to create the advanced grade weapons. Do you think they could do it?” He needed to know if it would be a waste of his time or whether there was a chance that he could push this forge to a higher quality.
“Theoretically sure. But creating a plan that someone could follow would take time and effort. I have no desire to do it. Like I said I don’t think that holding their hand every step of the way would be valuable to me or them.” He agreed with her, at least if he didn’t have a different goal in mind.
“Would you mind if I created plans of the weapons, and adapted them a bit? I wouldn’t mind your input to ensure I don’t change them beyond anyone’s ability to craft. You know what they can do better than I do.”
“I am willing to look over your plans, if you really want to waste your time doing it. But only because of who you are. I doubt you would take no as an answer anyway.” He chuckled at that. If she had said no, he wouldn’t have pushed, but he wasn’t going to tell her that now that she had agreed.
Picking up the sword he liked the most he placed it on a free table away from anything else and activated his planning skill. The pain he had been feeling was practically gone now so he activated his other skills one by one until he was able to fully pull apart the sword in his mind. The first thing he did was replicate each part of the sword on the plan and continued to add extra information on how he saw it created from his skills.
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“The metal needs to be heated more here before being shaped.” She pointed out a flaw in his replication. And when he fixed it, she continued pointing out different things he hadn’t considered when actually forging weapons. His own skills let him bypass a lot of this. His process relied purely on mana not manual labour, so without Jane’s assistance he would have failed miserably.
When he had finished the plan as an exact replica of the sword Jane had created he started to make his own adjustments to it. A little thicker in some places and with a place for a gem to be placed in another. She questioned him on every change and he explained his reasoning each time.
Once the plan was done it had only taken 10 minutes and he gave Jane a questioning look, asking if it was achievable for others to use.
“If you provided the material and that plan to the blacksmith and weapon forges out there then I would say they have an 80% chance of success. It will only grow when their skills increase.” He was happy with that.
Finished with that plan he created a second and created the replica of the completed sword from his other plan. Then he simply marked it up with runes that allowed for a basic strike attack. This took only a minute or so to do. He could have done this in his sleep with how basic the rune work was but his plan wasn’t to do it himself but have others do it for him.
“What have you done to the sword? All I see is squiggly lines covering the blade.” It was a valid question, the art of rune work was not something that would be common this early in the integration.
“It’s a runic spell. Once put on the sword and activated, all that a person wielding the blade would have to do would be to push some mana into it and the spell would activate. This spell would be for a power strike skill. It could either coat the blade in a magical attack that would cause further damage on physical contact or could be launched from the blade for a ranged attack, although that would need more mana to achieve.”
She looked at him in shock, she opened and closed her mouth a few times looking like she wanted to say something but could find the words. Instead, she just picked up the sword he had originally based his plans off and held it out to him. “Show me.”
Doing the runes took no effort from him, it was very basic compared to what he had done before and it was a good test to see how it would affect him after his injuries. It took only a few minutes to engrave the runes with his skills and then power them up with mana. He had chosen an unattuned power strike for this one and as soon as he was done he got the notification around earning experience.
“Done.” He handed the sword back to her and she clearly identified it, the shock of how easily he had upgraded the sword was plain on her face. “You can do this to any blade?”
“Blade, armour, arrows, anything really with enough effort and if made well enough.”
“What is the plan here Shaun. Why now? What is the end game?” She put down the sword and stared at him.
“You got the message around the event?” She nodded at him. “We will be fighting a war it seems. To help us win we need better weapons than what people are currently using.”
“Okay, but why come here rather than one of the forges in the crating sector of the city?”
“Simple, I would rather people here grow and gain the experience. The more people learn and level here the more the kids learn and the better off the school is in the future.”
Jane searched his face to see if he was lying, after nearly a full minute of silence she seemed to be happy with his response. “Okay then, are you creating plans for the rest of these weapons or not?”
He smiled at her response, they got to work straight away, the first thing they did was copy every weapon and then they started making adaption to each of them. Different types of swords, short and long, some curved others straight, daggers of varying length and make. Spears and even battle axes joined the mix as well.
By the time they were done they had nearly 2 dozen plans. What he did then was create copies, 10 of each type to be distributed and stored for use. When he was done he pocketed two of each and then left the remaining 8 of each plan to Jane. “You want to get this production started in the forge or o you want me to?”
“This is still my forge, I will do the rest. The issue is material though, we have a budget and getting this started is going to cost us some coin up front. If we sell them after we should recoup the cost and more. Although that depends if you are planning to even charge for this.”
He thought about it for a moment and then came up with a plan. “Those from the school who can choose one weapon each, student need approval from their combat teachers though. Anyone outside of the school will need to pay. I will organise that with Viv. It would be smart to have a display of each weapon so that you wont have to get them out if someone wants to look at them.”
“You know, I think I might actually like you.” He chuckled at that. He also gave her enough coin that she could kick start the forging, to him it was nothing but Jane nearly lost her mind at the gold coins he gave her. After some final words and plans they parted ways so he could continue on with his plans.
The next place he went to was the general crafting facility, these were set up more like class rooms and he quickly found the person in charge of the building, her name was Jo and she warmly greeted him as he approached.
Their conversation was less intense than with Jane. He simply proposed a new class, one that focused around rune work that should be open to student that wanted to learn and adults that wished to pick up the profession.
She had loved the idea the moment he started talking about it. Jo proposed announcing it a dinner that night, to start the next day and he just said to talk to Eric about it. What he did do though was create plans of every basic rune he knew, creating dozens of copies of each. Then he started creating harder patterns that incorporated multiple runes and then finally full spells.
He handed all of them to Jo and explained what each of them were and instructions on how the process worked. She was a cheerful person and her energy practically bounced off of the room they were in. It had taken a few hours to supply everything they needed. He even went so far as to create a dozen tools that would be able to have mana channelled into them and used to engrave runes on both metal and leather.
The last place he visited that day was the leather working facility, he repeated the same process he had in the forge although to much less success. They would need to do custom orders for the most part due to the size of everything needing to be fit for the person. Although they were able to make some stock standard pieces that could be easily changed to a specific person.
The day had passed quickly and he finished it off with informing Eric of everything he had done that day and left the last bit of pulling it all together to him. He probably should have stated with Eric but he didn’t seem too annoyed at his meddling in process. If anything he was impressed with what he had accomplished in a day. He was only just getting started though.