23 Becoming a Prince

"Sir Sebastian, who are they?" The king asked. The sudden appearance of these intelligent monsters have baffled the king and the major nobles. If they were invaders, shouldn't they have been attacked immediately? Their closest guess is that only Sebastian knows why they're here. He turned to the king and the weapon holding nobles and calmly replied, "I'd like to introduce them to all of you. As Hailyn had become the ruler of the nearby Regarus forest, she had started a school for intelligent monsters so they can be integrated with society."

"Wait, so the lady on the stage is a monster?" A noble asked. "Well, not exactly." She replied. "The two monsters beside her are masters at their own specialties after being taught by her." A jealous crown prince asked loudly, "So if they are masters, prove it!!" The prince cannot lose more of his pride. He cannot stand to believe that someone had achieved a feat that even he considered as impossible.

'Wow, he's such a sore loser.' Sebastian didn't like how the crown prince tries to rebuild his pride by constantly finding a way to slander or break his reputation. To annoy him further, he calmly tossed the wood he took out from the world crystal to the blue phoenix dragon and commanded, "Svorak, make a sword from it." The dragon nodded and began the forging by burning the logs of wood with frostfire. After 5 minutes of burning the wood, he applied immense pressure to them by squeezing pieces of them on his hands.

After a half minute of squeezing, the logs have turned into pieces of diamond. The royal forgers of the palace who watched the process is in awe. The diamonds the dragon produced had a very high purity and radiated a small cold aura despite being only shards. Some of them even lowered their guards and ran until they reached in front of the stage to see the process firsthand. The dragon then used its chilling breath to meld the glistening shards together.

Using it claws, it took the spare log of wood and carved out a small piece of it for the hilt. It then used its claws to carve glowing blue runes on it. The process is so fast that even the apex ranked advanced blacksmiths could only see flashes of diamond blue light. The runes emitted a blue aura around the wooden hilt it was inscribed on. The dragon took the merged shards and used its claws to refine the blade's shape.

The friction between the dragon's claws and the blade caused light blue sparks to appear. The dragon soon refined the blade to perfection in just 10 seconds, the refined blade had blue lines around it and its color had transformed into a silvery hue. Svarok breathed out frostfire as he held the hilt and the blade together. After a minute of merging the blade and hilt through frost fire, he abruptly stopped and then swings the sword. The sword's lightness allowed it move at great speeds, as it swings, afterimages form.

The major nobles and royalty looked at the sword in awe. Even the envious crown prince had to admit that he wants the blade for himself. "I shall name this blade the silver frost." He handed the sword down to the royal blacksmiths in front of the stage. They examined the sword like inspecting a diamond's authenticity. They traced the sword's patterns with their fingers and discussed what techniques they needed to reproduce this.

One of the royal forgers asked, "Sir Svarok, what is your rank of mastery?" The dragon replied with a little grunt, "I should be an Intermediate Master Blacksmith." "What!!!" The forgers had very surprised expressions on their faces, some of them had their mouths wide open in shock. Even the other nobles who did not see much of the blade felt disbelief. Master blacksmiths are very rare, even empires only had one or two and they're all basic master blacksmiths.

Only the top seven empires of Terradeus have an intermediate master blacksmith, yet they are in the presence of one. The royals and the nobles had greater respect and admiration of Sebastian and his servants. They had actually reeled in an intermediate master blacksmith for the kingdom. With Svarok as the chief royal blacksmith, the kingdom would have better weaponry and expansion would be easier. Adding the economic factor from bloodthorn city's placement as an intersection of five trading routes and the aid of an intermediate master blacksmith, reaching the status of an empire would not take longer than a few years.

He need not to question Svarok's words as he knows that even if he questioned it, the royal blacksmiths seem to have a way to verify the dragon's words. "Sir Svarok, I am willing to give you the title of duke and the position as the kingdom's chief forger. Do you except this offer?" The king's words stunned the nobility but his royal blacksmiths had excited looks on their faces. A master blacksmith, even a basic one can impart techniques that could make their processes much easier and increase their creation's strength.

For an advanced blacksmith to reach the master rank, they have to invent at least 3 of their own techniques and create 3 epic ranked items using these techniques. Only 1 in a few hundred advanced blacksmith would actually achieve this. It took talent, hardwork and inspiration to achieve, any knowledge from people who achieved this is treated like an empire's crown prince, almost irreplaceable. The dragon found the king's offer interesting but had his own condition in mind.

With a respectful tone, he replied to the king, "My king, I have a condition to your offer." The king is intrigued. 'What condition would this dragon offer.' He felt that he had given it all the best treatment with this offer. However, it is better that the dragon propose a condition than disagree, as long as its reasonable. "What condition would that be?" The king asked. Svarok did not wish to leave the city as this place is the closest to his place of birth and to his teacher, Hailyn who had yet to give him his complete training yet.

The dragon then spoke, "My king, I wish to remain in bloodthorn city only. I can forge anything you'd like from here. As dragons, we hold our birthplace as sacred ground and those who live around it are under our service and protection." The king quickly accepted his condition as it's not to hard to fulfil. He expected the dragon to be greedy as most dragons are reported to be. To be exact, only dragon kings are greedy while the rest have various human like personality. He had some respect for this dragon as he did not try to take any of his wealth and wanted to protect his people.

As the king approached the dragon, it flew down the stage gracefully. The king brought forth a scroll to act as the dragon's royal contract. The dragon used a pen a royal herald gave to him on a red pillow. With the dragon's contract completed, the nobility clapped and cheered to thank Sebastian and his servants for the wonderful gifts and opportunities they provided that will raise the kingdom into a great empire soon. The day's activities ended with the king congratulating Sebastian and increased his reward. He now bestows him the title as a prince, he will now become a friend of the royals that can only be outranked by the royal family themselves.

As for the silver frost, the royal blacksmiths brought it in a silver sheath back to the palace to examine and hopefully find inspiration for a breakthrough. The noble girls and the princesses chatted and flirted with Gusion and Sebastian before leaving. The eldest princess left a kiss on the cheek to Sebastian before leaving with blushes on her face. The kiss left him dumbfounded for a moment before making him smile and gain a newfound attraction for the eldest princess. 'She sure is something.'

As the king leaves, Sebastian and his servants start cleaning up the town square. With magic, they finished cleaning in less than half a minute. Hailyn and her monsters left in a gust of wind and teleported back to their hidden academy within the depths of the dark Regarus forest. He then met up with Li Yao at the town hall, cooking. She is delighted that her ancestral recipe and her cooking is loved by the royal community. She started to dream of becoming a great chef of the world one day.

He recalled that Hirani mentioned about a system update that should be done by the time the sun sets today. He spent his remaining 2 hours studying in his library to improve his forging and engineering standards to master rank so that he could start building modern comforts in this less advanced but more interesting world.