Chapter 73 - First Original Equipment

The designs for the dagger and halberd together would cost him a total of 150 contribution points. He had 120 contribution points and he needed at least 30 more points for getting these designs. He quickly sold a few boar tusks and antelope horns to get those few contribution points he needed and bought the two designs.

Once he got the designs, he went to the bank. Rudra had stored all the stag and antelope horns that his team as well as Merlin's team collected in the bank before they went for the quest. Merlin had sold everything they collected to Rudra.

Rudra also had players collect other materials like meat, warg claws, iron ore, red moss, etc, which he stored in the bank or shop. So, Shadow went to the shop also to collect whatever he could and then went to the forging association to book an advanced forging room.

Once, in the forging room, he decided to start with the level 5 greaves which he received from Merlin. These required only refined iron ore and blackrock crystals. He immediately learnt the design. Even though Shadow was at level 9, most of the players who started playing at the same time were still at level 7 or level 6. So, level 5 equipment would still be used by most.

The greaves were easier ones among both of these level 5 equipment designs he had. It was just melting 2 Refined Iron Ore along with 2 Blackrock crystals and etching a few runes on it once, it cooled down. With the Blue Glitter Flame in the forging room, he easily managed to melt and make a rectangular piece of the require dimension.

After the rectangular metal pieces were done, he only had to heat them slightly and beat them into the proper shape with a pair of tongs and a hammer. This was followed by quenching the hot plate greaves. The entire process took him only 5 minutes. This was an easy job for him. The only remaining part were the runes which give it the special effect. Once, the runes were carved using the stylus, the plate greaves were done.

"+30 experience points. +4 Forging proficiency"

In less than 10 minutes, he managed to create an equipment. But he received very low experience because the level of the equipment he forged was quite low when compared to his level. He had previously received 100 experience points for a level 3 shield. Now, he didn't even get half of that for a level 5 equipment.

Shadow had totally forgotten about the effect of the level difference between the equipment he made and his own level. Luckily, it didn't seem to have any effect on the proficiency points he gained for completing a piece of equipment.

Remembering that he would get low experience for these, had him change his plans. He decided to give up the level 5 goblin chest armor to Rudra. He had hired quite a few trade profession players. There was bound to be someone who could use it.

He decided to focus on the Antelope horn daggers for now. These daggers could also be used by him. The Antelope horn daggers were quite different from the other weapons. These were made form bone and not metals. It didn't involve melting ores and materials, but rather sculpting the horns into a form that could be used as dagger before he cast a metal layer on it.

The fanged antelopes had straight horns with circular ridges. These were perfect for creating daggers or spear heads. He put the horn carefully in a lathe machine as he smoothed off the ridges and cut the bone to a thin edge creating a proper shape for a dagger, except for a length of 10 cm at the base of the horn.

This ridges at the base of the horn would form a good grip for the handle. He had an iron ore melted with the mystic fire and coated the blade area to create the dagger. He only had to buff the blade and sharpen it.

The dagger was his fastest creation in this life. Though carving a bone would have many issues like the bone might break while operating the lathe. Sometimes, fissures may appear if it is not properly handled during carving or when the bone is being carved to form a sharp edge.

Even though the tool are all provided in the advanced forging room, many players would be the first time users making a number of silly mistakes. But Shadow had a lot experience in his previous life which allowed him to finish these tasks at a quick pace with relative ease.

"+100 experience points; +4 forging proficiency;"

Shadow was glad that forging the daggers at least gave decent experience than the plate greaves. He continued with forging the same daggers. As long as he didn't make any mistakes in carving the horns.

Though level 10 would allow him to enter the city, it wasn't easy to finish off the quest at level 10 either. He remembered the posts describing that teams at level 10 failed to finish the quest.

He quickly continued with making the anterlope daggers. By the time he made 5 sets of daggers, he got enough experience to level him up. Once, he was level 10 he didn't get the same amount of experience as before. He got only 70 experience points per set of daggers.

He decided to change and start with the halberd instead. Halberd was a two-handed weapon. The two-handed weapons are usually much heavier than one-handed weapons and hence, had to use more materials than the one-handed weapons.

As it is in all the weapons that used horns as materials, the horns had to be processed first. The stag horns had branched horns called antlers, which were properly sculpted could be made to use as curved blades coming out from the main part.

The main branch was also was sharpened to a point. With two of these sculpted horns placed one beside the other, it formed a shape similar to a halberds head with two curbed blades on opposite sides. Once, he was done with sculpting the bones, he melted an ore piece and used it to coat the bladed edges of the bones and bind the two carved horns at their base to form the head of the halberd.

The remaining three iron ore he melted and poured them into a cast cooled it down. Once, the temperature fell down by a bit, he pulled it out of the cast and welded it to the head of the halberd.

"+200 experience points, +3 forging proficiency"

Making level 10 weapons definitely provided more experience than the daggers. The only problem with this was that carving the stag bones was a time-consuming process compared to the antelope bones. This is because, they were curved, and he needed to be a lot more careful. If he accidentally cut some parts not along the curve, the entire bone would be wasted and form a defective product.

Each halberd took him at least 15 minutes due to this. He earned 1000 experience points in 90 minutes and also lost few materials as it was difficult to carve them properly. He was bored and this wasn't being any useful. He hardly had four hours left before he had to leave the game.

He was about to leave the game when he remembered something. He had the experiences from past. He could always create new weapons if he had the materials. Moreover, it was a common practice among the Forgers in his previous life to make small changes to existing weapons to form a new one.

Creating a new BlackIron equipment is one of the requirements for one to become an advanced forging apprentice. It usually took a log of forging experience and a good understanding of various materials available. Only after a lot of practice and study would they be able to create a completely new equipment of decent quality.

For every other increase in the level of forging. It was required to create a completely new equipment of better quality. For an advanced forging apprentice, a new bronze equipment and more than 3 BlackIron equipment was required. New Secret Silver equipment for Basic forger, Fine Gold for Intermediate forger, Dark Gold for Advanced Forger, Epic equipment for a master forger. Due to this condition, it was extremely had to become Master Forgers.

In his previous life, players didn't become an advanced forging apprentice as soon as they gained the required forging proficiency. Once, they reached that stage, it took a lot of effort to create a new design to become an advanced forging apprentice. A number of players make the same designs by combining two or more other armaments like he did. They could all end up with the same designs, but this was not an issue. The game allowed multiple player to create same new equipment. However, only the first one would be allowed to sell the item to the forging association.

But this became harder as they reached higher levels. It was deemed impossible to create a completely new Epic equipment by mixing up other equipment. Even if someone did, they mostly would fail to end up an Epic equipment. A lot of research was required to make sure the materials used were compatible with each other.

Even though Master Forgers would have at least one design of completely new Epic equipment, they would never sell it. Epic equipment were very valuable and it would be extremely hard to create multiple epic equipment. Players who were known to have created more than one epic equipment could be counted by Balthazar on one hand.

This option of creating forging designs made forgers, extremely famous and rich. The process of fabricating a forging design was very simple and a player could easily make tens to hundreds of them any time they wanted. Otherwise, how much money could they make, even if they exhausted themselves by forging equipment every single day?

He already had over 200 forging proficiency points and he required 500 forging proficiency points to get to intermediate forging apprentice. He had begun to plan on what new forging designs to become advanced forging apprentice as soon as possible. Else, even if he created equipment, he wouldn't be able to gain any more proficiency after 1000 proficiency points without becoming an advanced forging apprentice.

The hard part with the halberd was sculpting the stag horns. If he used an antelope horn instead of a stag horn, he could get a decent spear with quite ease. He immediately took an antelope horn and began to work on it

This time along with smoothing the ridges at the pointed end, he smoother off the ridge on the base. He further grinded the base to make it smaller and easier to fix into an iron pole. The remaining part he made it similar to the dagger.

He soon made the iron pole similar to the one used for the halberd. Once, he coated the blade with metal and fixed it into the iron pole, a notification sounded indicating that he had successfully completed a new weapon.

[____________] (BlackIron Two-handed spear)

Level 10;

Requirement: Strength 30; Endurance: 20;

Attack Power +40; Strength +5;

Special Effect: Impale: Pierce the opponent to cause a bleed effect of 30HP per second for 5 seconds. Cooledown: 5 minutes.

Durability: 30/30;

"+ 200 experience points; +4 Forging proficiency;"

System: Congratulations on creating an entirely new piece of equipment in vita-nova. Obtained an additional 2000 experience points. Rewarding a Runic hammer (Bronze rank) that increases the forging success rate by 10%.

System: Please provide a name for the new equipment you have created. You are also eligible to leave a personal mark on your creations. Kindly think about a personal mark to imprint it on the equipment.

He simply chose it as Antelope horn spear and confirmed the name. He had chosen the same personal mark he chose when he created new equipment in his past life. It was blade with blood dripping from it.

As soon as he selected, the equipment information changed. His personal mark also appeared on the shaft of the spear. It looked like the blood was dripping off the blade with the red color glistening.

[Antelope horn spear] (BlackIron Two-handed spear)

Level 10;

Requirement: Strength 30; Endurance: 20;

Attack Power +40; Strength +5;

Special Effect: Impale: Pierce the opponent to cause a bleed effect of 30HP per second for 5 seconds. Cooledown: 5 minutes.

Durability: 30/30;

System: Naming successful. Forging Design for the Antelope Horn Spear has been automatically generated. Player can now voluntarily make forging designs for the Antelope Horn Spear, allowing others to learn the Forging Design and produce it.

System: "Crimson Blade" stamp has been successfully registered and bound to your account. Nobody else can use it.

With the successful creation of the new armament, an additional window appeared in the Forging panel. It was named Personal Forging designs. It allowed players to create Forging Designs. Balthazar was very happy when he saw the new panel.

As long as he had a pen and drawing paper, he could gather from any shop, he could fabricate as many copies of the Forging Design for his creations as he wanted. This was an option which was only available for original creations.

Forging Designs are much more valuable than the equipment or resources. At this stage of the game, hardly any of the forging designs were available at the auction house. At this stage forging designs would go for a very high value. And new forging designs such as the Antelope Horn Spear would be much more valuable as they wouldn't be available by default in the game.

Guilds would fight with each other crazily for something like this. Even equipment like the ones he forged from the designs he got from Kade would be fought for. But he wouldn't want to let anyone know about the it right now.

With the designs he had, it would be an easy job to earn even gold coins when the players realized the difficulty of reaching the city. Considering the fact, that there were a lot of players coming to the Blackrock town now and no shortage of guilds among them, they would earn a great price.

But he couldn't sell them right now. He wanted to avoid providing his competition any weapons that would help them. The same was the reason, he had for selling designs.

Moreover, the design of the new equipment that he had, was for a level 10 equipment which wouldn't be of much interest to most players as no one was at that level yet. He couldn't see any player in the leader board at level 10. If there was any, he obviously selected for his ID to be not displayed in the leader board.

There was another benefit for an original creation of equipment. When forging your own creation, the success rate for creating them would be increased by 10% and there is a chance for it to also come with an additional ability. So, he continued to create the spears till he finished the ingredients that he had. In the next two hours, he managed to make 20 or so spears.