This was going to go much faster than making Tools, because my Melee Class Bonuses now kicked on when I was making wargear.
Weapon Mastery applied when making Weapons. That was +4 for every Weapon I would make, and +8 for crossbows, shields, and swords.
Resolve +4 applied to every use of a Skill integral to war, which making weapons and armor definitely was.
+5 Way Mastery in Crystal Dragon applied to production rolls for Armor and Shields.
+5 Armor Mastery applied to making Armor and Shields, as well.
+4 For Natural Swordsman Talent for Swords.
Furthermore, I had Hammer Mastery/5, and I was using Hammers for my Tools. Another +4 bonus kicked in for forging metal items PL. I spent one day adding Sundering to my Shaping Set, for the express purpose of being able to reduce the effective hardness of a material in half, which effectively wiped away adamant's -10 modifier to Speed. My modifiers rose accordingly.
For Swords, I was now sitting on +71QL and +94 PL, x5.
An Autobow wasn't made on a Forge, so I lost a multiplier and only +79 PL, x4.
Shields were +65 QL and +98 PL, x5.
Armor pieces were +62 QL and +95 PL, x5.
Other Weapons were +61 QL and +84 PL, x5.
Yes, all this meant I could make a Sword at 81, if I could get a material that could reach that high. As Adamant only went to 55, that wasn't going to happen. Grand Angelcraft was mythical, nobody in the game had bothered to make a Weapon that good. There was simply no need to. QL45 got you firmly into the land of post-Twenty if need be and possibly Eternal or Legendary Runecrafting. It was just that nobody had the Ranks to actually make Eternal-class Gear, because, well, you had to be an Eternal to do that, right?
Which didn't mean I wasn't going to be satisfied. What I was going to do was loophole this whole system to just pour a crapload of work into a Sword.
The amount of Karma you could work into a Weapon was naturally limited by the Weapon's own QL. QL 30 maxed at +5500 gold, 11 goldweight. QL40 maxed at 21k, or 42 goldweight. QL 50 would top out at 46.5k, and so forth, +100 gp cumulative for every QL over 20.
I was a Grandmaster of the Sword. I had earned that Title with a simple Thesis: The Sword is a lousy weapon, but it is better than all the Rest.
To gain this Title, I had to Master a lot of Weapons to /5, and gain specific Feats for each and every one of them. When I was done following that path, I gained the ability to apply any Feat for a Mastered weapon that might be applicable to a Sword to a Sword. Axe Feats, Spear Feats, Hammer Feats, Glaive Feats, Rapier Feats, Knife Feats… I could use them all with a Sword. Staff, Lance, Whip, Mace, Club, Short Sword, Sticks, Greatsword…
In that vein, I took the adamant I was going to use to make my Sword, and out of it, I made all the other Weapons first, one by one, at QL 40.
Fifteen different Weapons before getting to my Warsword. -30 to QL got me to x17. 41x94 x20, x 50% for a 12-hour day, meant 11,562 gold in production per day.
Yes, I could make a Tier Zvei+ Weapon in one day.
Each iteration of a Weapon took 15,500 gp of work, or about 1.4 days, to make a Weapon so fine any person on Earth before this holocaust would have sobbed and nearly lost their soul to see it. I completed each to Angelcraft level, Sealed them into the metal's memory, and then melted down and reforged the metal into the next Weapon, adding more Karma into the Weapon at ten times the speed of Naming Karma… which I was happy to take the completed Weapons out to accrue every day, regardless.
Hollow soul hungry to be filled as I paid back my Karmic Debt...
My Forge sucked in 3k of power every day for free, raising its carrying capacity, now that my Crafting Set was complete. The Seal I'd set there to dominate the Node was also slowly filling up with power, but wouldn't come into its own until I was done with my base Crafting.
I also added 1k per day to my Clasp, adding Oozecutter, Health, Recovery, and Adaptation slowly. Oozecutter meant oozes wouldn't split when attacked by me, and would take damage normally, effectively suffering massive cellular disruption instead of merely being hit.
Health made me immune to all diseases, natural or otherwise, including mental disease. Recovery stopped bleed effects, allowed normal recovery of wounds, and doubled natural recovery of injuries and stamina, both of which would be doubled in speed by this effect... important for me, since I didn't have innate magical means to recover Health or Soak.
Adaptation would cover one of my remaining vulnerabilities, the fact I still needed to breathe. It would basically manufacture air within my Vajra, meaning I would have breathable air anywhere… including the fumes I was defying from this caldera, underwater, or in hard vacuum. Airborne effects and contaminants simply wouldn't be able to reach me, even if my Vajra wasn't doing part of that.
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It took me over two weeks to make and remake twelve Weapons. I accrued over 200k of Karma in the adamant I was working by the momentum of doing a week of work straight. Once I made ridiculously perfect examples of a dozen Weapons to make any weapon master cry, I melted them back down and began to work on my Sword.
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Tremble would be QL 55, right at the limit that adamant could sustain. Grand Angelcraft. Pretty much at the limit of what non-Eternals could make. 61x94x20 = 12,688 of work per 8 hours, momentum bonus basically 10/7ths or about 18k of work.
QL55 would take 63k of Karma, or four normal days of work. I took the full four days, using the extra crafting time to make the Summoning Stone for the Node Seal, put together a Carry Cabinet for my Shaping Tools, and upgraded my Masspack a bit.
The Summoning Stone would be used to defend this Node, capable of Summoning in a fraction of the Spirit of the Mountain as Earth, Fire, and Magma Elementals of great size. If they were killed, they could simply be re-Summoned without any difficulty. This was something normally done with Allegiance Karma, but since it was going to take three months to power up even if soaked in all the power of the Node, I wasn't worried about it. After that point, I had other things I could deposit here for free power-ups, like carving Trigger Wands of Fireballs out of the local obsidian, and suchlike.
The Stone had a base of crystal-bearing rock, a core of lava that was still pulsing with heat, and a top that was a three-foot brazier spun from five different Fire metals, blazing with a cheery Nodeflame. I made a work area around it, put in holders for various items that could be charged off the Node after the Stone was completed, and on the last day put Tremble on my Forge and moved its spirit to its new home.
Yeah, all that really, really glazes over what it felt to work on something at QL55.
It was purity at the molecular level, the spiritual level. No aberrations, no flaws. The crystalline patterns of the alloys themselves were attuned to my Vajra and effectively made the Blade a part of my body and soul. Pommelstone, hilt, guard, quillons, blade, fuller, edge, point. The Runes I'd scribed on each and every subweapon wound through the reforged metal, holding that Karma in there with a promise of power as I began to scribe in other Runes, layer on layer of meanings and perfections, Runes made of Patterns formed of Arrays formed of Runes, collapsing on down to levels beyond the visible eye, all of them an extension of me.
When I lifted the last touch of the scribe away, I could feel something stamp itself into reality, as if all of magic itself was recognizing what I'd just made here, singing out about something transcendent forged that had never been made before, and would form the basis for all that came afterwards.
Tremble moved eagerly over from its QL 29 home to its new one, flowing in from one Sword to the other, meshing in perfectly, and waking up with a new two-tone Song that seemed to strum on the very soul of the manafield, demanding your attention as the Runes on it began to light up, shining with new power, one after another.
Enmity/Mortals, giving +2/+2 against humanoid sentients. Slaughter would change that to /Elementals, Eternals, Scaled, Evil, or a bunch of broad categories, as Enmity was a sister enchantment to Bane.
Discipline Weapon, Ocean. +3/+0 for me, using Seven Dragons swordplay to activate the bonus, centered on Ocean.
Greater Ki-Bound. Two more Ki, another +2/+2. What was not to love?
Valorous. Double damage on a charge, stacking with other modifiers. Instant Kill effect.
Courageous. + Enhancement bonus vs Fear effects. Carried on its Song to all within hearing. Also added to Intimidate checks for me. Oh, and increased all morale bonuses in the area by 1/2 Enhancement bonus. Which, if set up right, would be +8. All of a person's Favored Enemy bonuses were Morale bonuses. So, among other things, +4/+4 TH/Dmg via FE/Slayer bonuses.
And True Arsenal, which was the +III to +V upgrade to Arsenal.
It all included a lot, and I mean a lot, of additions to Arsenal. The most important, however, was a True Arsenal addition, Healing Edge. It was basically an energy splash, like Holy or whatnot, for +1d8, twice to undead or Negative Energy beings... and I healed the d8 it did for damage with every hit.
It was a way for me to regain Health in combat. It wouldn't replace Soak, but that was fine. The ability to kill things and heal at the same time gave me enormous amounts of staying power for long fights.
There were a lot of minor additions to my Sword; it was surprising how fast and easily 300k of gold value went away. Each Bane, Arsenal, and Enmity was 2k. Each Greater Arsenal addition was 8k. Each True addition was +18k, as Drei was the current limit of what I could add. There were lots of Foundation effects that didn't have room to fit into the ten Slots of Tremble.
But I had a QL55 late game Weapon that still had lots of room to grow. I doubted anyone in the world had a Sword quite as devastating as mine was at this moment. After all, the Land itself had paid attention to it!
I bled on Tremble, tying it to me once more, binding the sanguinal that would let it phase through me if my Vajra wasn't in the way, lifting it up to sing to the whole of the caldera. The volcano seemed to go silent and pay homage to what had been hammered and forged into existence with the heat of its flame.
Then I shrank down the Carry Cabinet, heaped what remaining raw materials I still had into my Masspack or atop my Forge, and I left for the next volcano, the creatures that were coming out of it, and hopefully the boss monsters in there.
After all, I still had my Armor and Shield to forge, and my Autobow had yet to be made. With the sheer amount of Karma that would need, there was no reason not to do the job right on it, either. QL 45 or bust, feed it a +Vier or better Weapon to give it a jump, and have one hand throwing Shardings while the other spit out Phantom missiles.
Just like in game when I didn't have my Shield. Hee!
I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of anyone still living that wasn’t Fireborn, and precious little outside of them moving that wasn’t undead.
I was perfectly aware that it was very odd to be feeling this way, but all I felt like was that I was being given a great big open zone to play in all by my very self. Socializing with others could wait until I squeezed this area dry of all the Karma it could feed me... and my Hollow Soul was patting me and telling me that such was a very good idea, indeed.
It didn’t matter that I was alone. I could fight, I could run, I could rest, and I could go back. These creatures didn’t have the infrastructure to deal with me, only themselves, their numbers, and whatever static defenses they were starting to work on now.
That wasn’t going to be nearly enough to deal with the Sage of Swords.
“Tremble, She Comes!” I whooped to the world, and Tremble hummed in my hand in eager agreement. I had probably the most powerful Sword in the world right now, and it was only going to get stronger... and these sorry bastards invading us were going to be the lucky ones helping that process along.