088. Establishment - 33

088. Establishment - 33

My immediate destination after the meeting with Zolast was my own office, enthusiastic to apply my newest trick, glad that opening up to Zolast already paying dividends.

It was why I was sitting at my desk, casually flipping the skill stones while I kept two of the stones covered with my mana at the same time. It was not the way Zolast had taught me, but he didn't know the full extent of my Perception, which allowed me to analyze both of them at the same time, just after half an hour of practice.

I had a feeling that having that level of Perception as a caster was a rare thing, if not unheard of. Not that I could blame them, as it was rare for a class to have any free points to freely distribute, and without it, there was very little one could do if their class didn't grant both of them at the same time.

Of course, the likelier possibility was that there were some classes that granted the combination, but considering the obvious economic and possible military implications, those were probably aggressively recruited by the ones in power.

Either way, it meant that I had a rare skillset for the area well, until more people started to arrive, hunting for the lost hero and I was determined to use it to my benefit.

But first, I needed to make sure I had a better application. First, I focused on assessing the skill pairs, using the comparison to identify the damaged portions, one in each hand.

The ability to focus on both of them at the same time was certainly helpful as even with the Memory, I didn't really trust myself to understand the whole structure at a glance and commit to the memory, not without understanding the working principles and that required a time I didn't have.

Even analyzing the surface wasn't as easy as I had first hoped. It was a complicated, three-dimensional structure that put even the most complicated puzzle I had seen to shame, its functions impossible to decipher for me.

The internal structure was even worse. Unlike the outer structure that was almost the same except the sections that I assumed to be damaged the internal showed far more variation. I had no idea whether it was the result of the damage to the outer shell, or another reason but that was true for all three sets of skills.

"It should be enough," I murmured, rubbing my head after an hour of ceaseless focus. I didn't have an actual headache, but the mental exhaustion of trying to examine it for one long hour made me quite a bit exhausted.

The benefits were worth the exhaustion. Not only I had discovered a rough but hopefully efficient way of assessing the quality of the skills, but also I reduced the process to a soft flash that could stay hidden.

Of course, it would only barely give me a flash of the outer structure, but it would be enough to avoid the complete duds.

Hopefully.

And, with the experiments on skill stones complete, I turned my attention to the next stage, the sole stat stone I had in my possession. I took it into my hand, closed my eyes, and focused on its structure.

The first thing I hit was a cloak of energy. It reminded me of the wild energies I had to deal with whenever I had eaten food made from the hunted animals. In food, the intensity of those energies was reduced by various cooking practices to change the ratio between Health it provided and the wild energies that it introduced but even without cooking, no beast meat had energy in that intensity.

I was able to process those energies much faster than the others probably about my elevated life status but even for me, dealing with the thick cloud that surrounded it would have taken at least a day to handle successfully, and it would take something between two weeks to a month for others.

No wonder most people waited until their third promotion before absorbing them.Follow current novels at novelhall.com)

I increased the intensity of mana that covered it, using it as some kind of drill to pass the concealment of the layer and met with a confusing outer layer. I felt captivated the moment I got a glimpse, going even deeper.

A very concentrated attempt to hide their gender from the others.

If their Vitality didn't turn to remove the risk of a heatstroke, the situation would have been tasteless, but with it, it was still an amusing sight.

Naturally, it wasn't just the entertainment value that kept me back. It was only a small part of it. The constant risk of the possibility of being caught acted as a mental pressure for them, allowing me to observe their performance to operate under pressure.

Some were already floundering and twitchy, while some worked even harder, determined to use their unique opportunity to the limit.

I particularly wanted to see if any of them was strong enough to handle the potential backlash targeting them once their situation was revealed and the blacksmith guilds started to target them. If they couldn't handle a little pressure of hiding their identity, they couldn't handle the possibility of assassins being sent

Ultimately, it was a good way to identify the potential leaders among them before I hired some more blacksmiths.

After examining them for a while, I turned my attention to the real objective, and walked forward. "You're all working very decisively, very good," I said as I walked toward them, finally alerting them to my presence.

"S-sir, welcome," one of them spoke, stammering, but considering the rest was frozen at my sudden presence, a good reaction. I nodded but said nothing. "Is there anything we could do to help?" she asked.

"No, I just came here to congratulate you a lot, your efficiency in producing the arrows impressed me. I'll make sure that every single one of you will have a bonus slot for dungeon access," I said, dangling a generous reward in front of them.

"Thank you, sir," they said at the same time, excited. Since a blacksmith was not a combat class, even as a part of the guild, they had to work a lot to get even one access. For example, the huge order of arrowheads was only worth one round of access, and even with their enthusiastic working speed, it would take half a week to complete.

"Continue working, I just want to observe," I said, and started walking among them as they continued to work. They tensed due to my presence, but as I said nothing about their secret, they slowly concentrated back on their work.

While they worked, I went around, poking stuff, getting a better understanding of how they were operating, but once again, without knowing much, I could only identify the main lines of the process even using mana.

The process basically happened in four steps, the initial melting of the ores, which required a constant feeding of Heath, but it came from the beast parts in the fire rather than the smiths. The shaping, on the contrary, required quite a bit of Health from the blacksmith, as each hammer hit was imbued with some, pushing out the wild energies while replacing the loss of Health with their pure Health.

Then, as the weapon was quenched and cooled, the metal trapped aligned Health into its structure, and at that moment, the blacksmith used a huge burst of Health to ensure the structure of the alignment, and at that point, the main structure was complete.

The fourth stage was the sharpening of the weapon, in which blacksmiths used tools and a bit of their Health to give the weapon an edge without damaging the solidified internal structure of the weapon.

I stayed in here for an hour, looking like I was idling while taking note of every step. I had no hope of replicating any of those, not when their Health moved with a complicated pattern that was impossible to copy without practice that would take years.

Of course, that didn't mean my trip was useless.

I had just learned enough to know which secrets needed to be stolen from other blacksmiths, which was a nice side mission for my next shopping trip.