Chapter 80 79 - Equipment Show

After stepping off the ride and coming to Maria's rescue, Milo convinced the group that they should head over to the colosseum to watch the event taking place that day. Unlike most events, this event had a section for both first and second year students. It acted as a way for upcoming equipment artisans to get their name out there as well as maybe make some customers that they can then make equipment for during the school year.

It was for this reason that Milo wanted to go, he was hoping he could find someone their age that was good at making equipment so that he could commission something with the unique ranked essence core he obtained on his in-field experience.

After some more walking, the group had finally made their way to the colosseum. It was a huge round building that had entirely glass walls. It looked more like a stadium from the outside, but was called the colosseum because of its use being similar to that of the colosseum in ancient Rome. It was only used on occasions such as this, to host events for the school. Since abilities began to appear, sports and the Olympics began to decline in popularity due to ability users having an extreme advantage. Since then, gladiatorial type events grew very popular and the school's combat tournament was no different. It attracted the attention of many, and was even broadcasted out to the world for many to watch. The majority of guilds also used this as a major scouting opportunity as well, sending guild invites to many of the participants.

The equipment show, while not as popular, had a similar use, the school invited many high profile guests to the event, including the lead artisans at many of the equipment firms of the world that were known for creating the best equipment for gatecrashers. The students who created the best gear would then receive invites for internships or even job offers.

When entering the colosseum Milo was taken aback by the sheer size of the building, he had seen it from a distance while walking between classes but had never gotten up close enough to see how large it actually was. Inside the outer shell, there were many different stands and booths selling refreshments and food for the spectators to eat or drink, and the floor was packed full of people there for the event.

The group made their way around the colosseum checking out all the different things that were for sale, Milo didn't recognize any faces, but other members of the group began to pick out different gatecrashers and artisans that they knew. Mark was especially flustered after seeing one of his idols from when he was younger, it was a gatecrasher that used an ability very similar to his.

Eventually Milo and company made their way to the stands where they could watch some of the competitors in action making their equipment. It looked like a hard job, between the high heat that would be emitted from the forge to the strength and stamina it took to hammer a piece of metal into the right shape, Milo couldn't imagine what kind of resolve it would take to want to do this as a job, but there were people his age right in front of his eyes that were doing it.

Most artisans used abilities to help them with their work, the most common one was the reinforce ability, being able to strengthen one's body was especially useful in a smith's line of work. Other common abilities included elemental resistance, metal transmutation, and even the fire ability which Chris used.

Looking at some of the first year students working, Milo began to realize that without his system, he could've ended up out there. After watching the students work, he began to see some of the students finishing the pieces they were working on. This early on, most of the ones finishing were second year students, as they had become more efficient at doing their work. Once all the students were finished, they would be judged by a group of appraisers before being put out for people to come and look at. Seeing what the rest of the students were working on, there was a wide variety of gear being produced. The most common were swords and chest pieces, the strangest looking piece of equipment looked almost like the student was attempting to make a crossbow that reloaded with a magazine rather than inserting arrows one at a time.

After watching the students for another few hours, the competitors had all finally finished their work, and the equipment was taken to be appraised. Another hour after that and all the equipment would be on display for the public, and an hour later, Milo and his group proceeded down to the presentation room where all the armor produced by students was put out on display. Looking at all the pieces of equipment, they all were differing in color and materials. Some looked better quality than others, but Milo was able to look at the actual details using his inspect skill.

There were plenty of different ranked equipment, ranging from common all the way up to unique. While going through the pieces of equipment they all had different stat boosts, out of all the pieces of equipment, only 4 of the 28 or so pieces had an attached skill. 3 of which were unique ranked and 1 was at the rare tier. Looking at the different stat boosts between the pieces of equipment, the rare rank obviously had to lowest. Milo began to wonder what made active skills appear, which made him ask his friends if any of them knew.

All of them shrugged, except for one person, Maria said she wasn't sure what the exact cause of it was, but she heard a story from her brother about it, part of it involved the rank of the essence core that was used; the higher the core's rank, the higher chance there was of an attached skill manifesting. The other part of it involved how the creator made the equipment, some artisans had better control of their magic power flow and in some cases, the creator would forcibly overcharge the core with their own magic power on accident. She went on to add that her brother said that no one was one hundred percent sure how the overcharging process worked, but whoever discovered it would be someone found in history books 100 years later.

Based on this information, Milo took a look at the stats of the different pieces of equipment, the armor rating his system applied varied depending on the type of equipment he was using inspect on, which was expected, a chest plate would obviously have a higher armor rating than a helmet for example. The next thing to check was the stat boosts applied by the different pieces of equipment. When comparing the stat boosts to other pieces of the same rank, Milo found the first big difference, for some reason the rare tiered piece of equipment offered higher stat boosts compared to the other rare ranked pieces, where in comparison the unique ranked pieces of equipment offered a much more average boost. Milo wasn't sure why this was but when doing a bit of math, he found that the stat boosts for the rare piece were about 20 percent higher compared to other rare ranked pieces, while the uniques were around the same boost in stats as other unique ranked pieces, and in some cases even had lower boosted stats.

Based on this, Milo had found the person he wanted to make his unique ranked piece of equipment. Not only did they successfully add an attached skill to the equipment, but their equipment was much more efficient overall as well. Now the only thing Milo would have to do is find and meet the creator in person. Looking at the tag of the entry, the creator was actually a first year student, meaning Milo could even commission things next year as well, if things worked out. Finally he checked the name of the creator and took a note of it in his head. The creator's name was Avery Becket.

After picking out the student he wanted to make his equipment, the group finally decided to take a look at the entry that had won the event. It was a heroic tiered chest piece that was mostly silver in color with a bronze looking trim that made a filigree pattern running down the sides as well. Milo opened his inspect skill to take a closer look.

[Silver Defender(Heroic)]

Durability: 350

Armor Rating: 600

Str +10

Agi +15

Sta +5

Description: A lighter piece of silver armor meant to allow the wearer to have close to full mobility, what it lacks in defense, it makes up for in flexibility.

[clear]

Seeing the winning piece of equipment, Milo realized that the judging was a bit unfair, it looked like the judges favored higher tiered equipment over the overall quality. Not only this but it didn't seem that attached skills affected their opinion either, that is, if the judges even tested the equipment for attached skills. The only way one could do this, was by injecting magic power into the equipment, from there if there was any reaction from the magic power, the skill's effect would then be named and its effect would be written down. The system streamlined this process by giving the skills effect and name for Milo. In theory, one didn't need to use the name of the skill to activate it, but it took a lot of practice with magic power control.

After the winning piece was announced and put on display, the festival had ended for the day and pretty soon the campus began to be empty again other than the students. Milo and his friends went back to their dorms to sleep before the last day of the festival and what would probably be the most exciting day as well.