157 Nova's Passion

Paging through the rest of the booklet, Jayde didn't see anything that attracted her attention until she reached the last page. The final page described a fire sword found in the same ruins as the rune cubes. Jayde had wanted to replace her sword for quite some time now. She only had the dagger that the Kato Freehold had left behind as well as a couple of low-quality swords she found in the old man's cave.

Raven noticed that Jayde was staring at that the last page of the booklet, leaning over she read the description of the fire sword.

"Hey Jayde, you interested in this sword," Raven said taping on the page.

"Mm-hmm."

"It's going to be expensive, since it was found in the Frozen Barrens," Raven cautioned.

"I know," Jayde said quietly, "but gold is not an issue, I need a better weapon."

Raven's eyebrows rose at Jayde statement, she knew very little about the girl sitting next to her. Jayde didn't strike her as one of those rich heiresses, but she had such a powerful aura around her that there was no way that she came from an ordinary family.Raven suspected that Jayde came from one of the hidden clans, and while she was curious about Jayde's background, she didn't want to antagonize her but asking questions. For the first time in Raven's life, she felt as though she had found a group of real friends.

"Esteemed guests, we have a real treat for you, a last minute addition to our auction," the auctioneer's voice rang out.

Jayde looked up from the booklet. I wonder if it is my ores, she wondered.

"One hundred percent pure storm iron. Yes, that right the highest grade of storm iron, something we haven't seen in over a decade."

"Wow, pure storm iron," Nova exclaimed.

Jayde frowned as the whole gallery burst into excited chatter. She knew that storm iron was a rare metal, but she didn't expect the passionate reactions from the crowd of mages in the gallery.

"What's so great about it?" Jayde asked.

Nova turned to stare at Jayde in disbelief. Has this girl been living under a rock, he asked himself.

"Pure storm iron is hardly ever made available to the public," he explained.

"Have you any idea how difficult it is to create pure storm iron?"

Jayde shook her head.

"First you can only find storm iron in The Dark forest, and then only a master blacksmith can create pure storm iron, there are only four or five master blacksmiths in the Lower Realm," Nova said.

"And all their storm iron is commandeered by the royal families," Nova continued.

"Oh," Jayde muttered.

Damn, Jayde thought, no wonder that assessor was acting the way he did. If she had known that these ores were so rare she would never have put them up for auction, the last thing Jayde wanted was to attract attention. These guys had better keep my identity secret, Jayde thought.

Seeing the indifferent look on Jayde's face, Nova concluded that Jayde still didn't understand the importance of storm iron. Reaching for his dagger on his hip, he unsheathed it. Holding the blade out to Jayde he said: "This is a dagger made with storm iron. The reason that storm iron is so valuable is that when mixed with normal iron it changes the properties of iron. Iron itself has no magical properties, so any weapon made purely from iron cannot be infused with magic."

"Now when you add a small amount of storm iron to normal iron, you can make a normal weapon into a magical weapon, and depending on the amount of storm iron used, the more magic the weapon can hold."

Jayde nodded as she listened carefully to Nova's explanation. She had meant to study some of the books left by the old man as well as the scrolls she had picked up in the cave where she found the fire spirit, but up until now she just hadn't had the time. She had been hoping that she would have had the time while in the artifact during the night, but White had kept her busy with his intensive training.

"Do different ores have different magical abilities then?" Jayde asked.

"Of course, storm iron is unique as it can be used for any element, but the downside is that is it also weaker. A sword infused with storm iron can be used by any mage, but the magic infused into the weapon will always be weaker than say a sword made from dwarven dark gold. Dwarven dark gold can only be infused with fire, but dwarven dark gold increases the potency of the fire magic so you would need to use a fifth of the fire magic you would use for a storm iron weapon to get the same results."

"How interesting, then what about the other elements, which ores are best for them?" Jayde asked.

"Well, doom copper is used for fire, humming titanium for water, astrilium for air, xutrium for wood, truesten for light, methril for dark and opalnite for earth."

"So where does enchanted dust fit in?" Jayde asked.

"Oh, enchanted dust is vital. Enchanted dust is what allows these metals to fuse with iron." Nova replied.

"Hey Nova, so if you made a weapon purely out of dwarven gold, would that mean you had the best fire sword?" Raven asked.

"Ha, I wish," Nova replied. "Unfortunately these metals are too weak, you have to add iron to strengthen the metal."

While Nova was lecturing the girls about the different metals, the auction for the first nugget of storm iron had started. When Jayde returned her attention back to the auction, the price was already sitting at fifty thousand gold.

"Fifty thousand gold," she whispered softly, shocked at the price.

"That's nothing, the price will go much higher," Nova said confidently overhearing Jayde's whisper.

"With this amount of storm iron, a good swordsmith can create over twenty yellow rank swords or ten red rank swords."

Jayde knew that a yellow rank sword could fetch around a hundred thousand gold, while a red rank was worth five times that amount. Nova had talked non stop about it during the past week as he had seen a yellow rank sword for sale the day of the assessment, it was the main reason Ash and Nova had nearly missed the deadline for the assessment.

Nova was right, the first piece of storm iron was sold for three hundred thousand gold. Jayde was surprised — she had thought the assessor had been optimistic telling her that her ores would fetch five million gold pieces.

By the time all the ores had been sold, Jayde realized that the assessor had been overly cautious. Jayde's ores fetch double that price. Although this was mainly because it had been over a decade since just high-grade ores had been made available to the public.

Since Jayde had earned over ten million gold, she was now confident that she would now have enough gold to win the fire sword.

The next item to be auction was the seed that Isha had been so interested in.

When the auctioneer announced that the seed had been found in a small glass container that had a strong preservation spell. Since the glass container couldn't be opened without breaking the spell, the seed couldn't be analyzed.

Knowing that the seed was contained under such a strong spell, generated a lot of interest, but the mages were reluctant to spend a fortune on something that could end up being useless. Jayde was able to buy the seed for five hundred thousand gold.

Next were various weapons and armor, but Jayde had no interest in these items. Bored she got up and made herself some tea before returning to her seat where she drank her newly made tea and nibbled on some snacks while listening to Raven and Nova discuss different metal ores and techniques for creating swords.

Finally, the auctioneer bought out the fire sword. Using the picture plate, Jayde examined the sword. The design of the sword was similar to a katana. The blade was long and thin. Since the sword was made using dwarven dark gold, the sword was black but had faint speckles, that twinkled like stars in the night sky. Pure red runes ran down the length of the blade.

It indeed was a beautiful sword, just looking at the blade filled Jayde with a longing to hold it.

"Esteemed guest, our final piece for today," the auctioneer cried out. "A truly remarkable fire sword created with nearly seventy percent dwarven dark gold. Infused with fire runes. This once in a lifetime fire sword has a self-cleaning as well as a self-sharpening spell infused into the very fabric of the metal."

"Wow," Nova breathed out in amazement, "she a beaut."

"Hmm," Jayde said nodding absent-mindedly, still staring at the sword on the small display screen.

"Hey Nova, why is the auctioneer making such a big deal about the spells being infused with the metal?" Raven asked.

Jayde looked up sharply at Raven's question, she was also curious why the auctioneer emphasized that fact.

"Well see all spells are added to a sword after it has been created since these spells are cast onto a weapon, they run out and have to be recast. In ancient times they were able to infuse these spells when the metal was forming since they are actually part of the sword, they never have to be recast."

"Oh," Raven head scratching her head.

At the same time, Jayde asked: "Does that mean swordsmiths can't do that anymore?"

"Yeah," Nova said shaking his head sadly, "we lost that knowledge a long time ago, even Mid Realm swordsmiths don't know how."

"Shush, the auction is about to start," Ash said, up until now he had been quietly listening to his brother ramble on about metals and swordsmithing. Swordsmithing was Nova's passion, and Ash was quite happy to let his brother talk to his heart's content. It was the only time that Nova was serious.

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