While being able to compose the materials in perfect ratio, along with how limited my knowledge about metallurgy was, I didn't really believe that it would apply to the rare materials. Orichalcum, mithril, fluid gold, golden jade… Those names were already commonly appearing on the high-class markets of the arena city, only showing how useless stuff like steel would be later on!
Even if my lacking knowledge couldn't be applied to the reality with all varieties of new ores and materials, I could still use my ability to mix them in diffrent proportions, make the most simple blade out of them and just inspect its statistics! While this process would take a rather long while considering how I could only do this in a trial and error way, it was still something that every blacksmith would turn green from jealousy if he were to heard about it!
Thinking about how I was supposed to provide three good swords for the three out of the major, local powers, I debated with myself whether or not should I use this steel sabre as a negotiating chip, but still discarded the idea in the end. Even if it was far greater weapon than anything that this city saw, one had to reach great levels of expertise to actually notice its awesomeness! Truth to be told, I couldn't help but worry if the statistics shown by the Bonger applied to everyone equally, or if they were influenced by the very fact that I possessed the system in the first place!
Not willing to waste any more time on this topic, I stored the sabre back in my storage ring, before pulling out some of the materials provided by Venna, that I judged to be suitable for new weapons. Like I mentioned previously, Orichalcum, golden jade, mithril… They were like a staple material inside the ring! Guided by the pure intuition, I reached out for some other ingots, despite being unable to discern them at first glance.
After analyzing the unknown materials, I couldn't help but wonder whether this world has some shifted sense of naming, or if there was some kind of deeper history behind the names that my analyzing tool showed in front of my eyes.
Dragon's iron? Serpentine core jade? Balkhavian steel? Out of the three that I grabbed, only the last one didn't sound like a chunni name of some kind of stick!
But there was no denying to their properties. While I had no way to inspect it directly, just by making some simple sharpened sticks out of them in my mana forge I was able to see a clear difference in the quality of the produced craft!
To make things as clear for me as possible, I crafted an exemplary, sharpened stick out of the same kind of steel that I used to make the sabre back then. With Earthly material, it reached forty added strength, when just the Dragon's iron brought out an extreme two and half hundred! But the true surprise came with the Balkhavian steel.
When I made the pointy stick with it, there wasn't any increase to the strength or agility, not to speak about wisdom or intelligence that a stick made out of the serpentine jade managed to improve. Instead of them, I stared at a damn hundred points in a resistance!
Curious whether this was something that should be used on the armour instead, I took our my utopy and the sharpened stick with this incredible resistance stat, only to slash at it with my sword! I have to add at this point, that I didn't hold back my strength at all!
In the end, despite using such a great weapon with my full power, I only managed to put a dent on the cutting edge of my treasured blade, unable to leave even a single mark on the stick!
Not holding myself back, I used most of my leftover iron to create a simple, steel sabre, before coating it entirely in a thin layer of this miraculous steel. Considering how I was able to freely reform any broken part back into its shape, I simply placed this new sabre on the anvil, before taking out my energy sword that appeared to be the strongest ace card, and started slashing at the Balkhavian coated sabre!
But no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't able to carve even a single, minimal line on it!
I wonder what this steel is made off… Astounded by the effectiveness of this material, I placed the sabre back into the mana forge and tore out the layer of the special steel with the simple use of my combined abilities. While this didn't pose any problems to me, when I tried to inspect what it was made off, I was only met with a red, flashing light!
"Unable to inspect this item, please upgrade the ability!"
God damn it! So I had to invest my points again already? Not willing to hold back when it came to smithing, I quickly ordered:
Bonger, I want to upgrade my blacksmith's eyes and mana forge!
"Blop!"
"Upgrading said abilities required upgrading the entire system."
Fuck!
So I had to look for a way to raise my levels again? Who would've thought that just a few days after upgrading it, Bonger would start bothering me for another rise of the levels and shitload of attribute points!
Putting this matter aside, I finally got back to my real task, creating the sword. With how resilient the Bakhlevian steel was, I decided to use it as a coating for the entire blade, with the serpentine core jade used as… a damn core of the entire weapon going from about two-thirds of its length all the way to the handle part, before filling the entire intended shape of the weapon with the Dragon's iron.
Seeing how I used way more than half of the Dragon's iron on this single sword, I had to suck quite a bit of it away from the sword, filling the gaps with the Serpentine jade. After all, as something related to mana, it would still be of use to me on my mage path, while I required as much of Dragon's iron to make the weapon for the Eve!