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Chapter 555 - Forge, materials and blueprints
🕑 Added 2022-11-14 13:00:11 +0000 UTCHera's Status
Looking over the forge, Hera realized why this place looked familiar. It was an approximation of what Helena showed her in her challenge hint. The only reason it took her so long to connect the dots was her worry about an ambush when they first arrived here. Having ten forges spread around also made things more confusing. However, now that she had looked at the area properly, it was clear that it was the same place, just with more equipment. She pulled the picture that Helena had and confirmed that, when isolating one of the stations, it would match exactly with the terrarium that was shown. But the items on the anvil and the box with scrolls were missing. Hera's best estimate was that those represented the item they had to reforge and the blueprints. Then again, the objects on top of the anvils looked more like blocks or ingots. Maybe the idea was that each item would take five different materials to make. That was one thing Hera had yet to understand. If they had to reforge an item, where would the supplies be?
Mylo and Hera were looking at different forge stations. They had the anvil, a couple of different buckets with liquid, and the forge itself. Each looked like a brick oven with some small details to differentiate them from one another and a metal lid in the front. When Hera opened one, a large gust of hot air came rushing out, and she could see hot magma moving inside as if a lava river was passing under the furnaces. Out of curiosity, Hera pulled one of the tools to the side and tried to poke at the molten rock. That wasn't possible. Between the magma and the tool, there was an invisible barrier, but it looked like this protective field was great for conducting heat. After Just a few seconds of letting the poker touch it, the iron was already starting to change colors.
"Hera," Mylo called, making Hera jolt up and drop the poker like a kid who just got caught doing something bad.
"Yes?" Hera turned around while keeping her back perfectly straight. That caused her entire court to start giggling, 'shut up all of you,' the Empress huffed in her mind.
"Take a look at this," Mylo was staring at something on the wall. He was all the way to the right, looking toward the corner. Hera walked over and saw a large plaque written in plain English, but she could see that this wasn't the case. Behind the letters, there was a flow of mana, something that was hidden behind it all, but it didn't seem like Mylo was able to notice that. It wasn't the same type of mana as the one being used to light up the place. This one felt less constricted, more free.
'Care and Maintenance of the Forges
1 - Do not keep any items inside the furnace overnight.
2 - If the material gets burned or destroyed inside the furnace, place the T-shaped green rock inside it and close the lid. The rock will clean the furnace, but you won't be able to open it for the next 30 minutes.
3 - Each tool is branded with the number of their forge. Return the tool to the correct forge after use.
4 - To request a material, open the first drawer of the workbench and pick the options while placing your item on top of the counter. The required amount will appear in the bottom right drawer. These materials cannot be taken from this challenge unless they are in the form of a complete item. To ask for another material, you must remove the first one from the drawer altogether. Each workstation only has a set amount of materials available. They are restocked every day.
5 - Keep your workstation clean. If needed, you can find cleaning supplies inside a box in the right corner of the forge.
6 - Once per day at 3 P.M., The fumes of the forge will vent through an internal passage. This causes a loud noise. Avoid doing any delicate work during that time frame.'
"That is all… surprisingly tame. I don't know what I was expecting," Hera said after reading the entire notice board.
"Yes, but it's good to know how to get what we need to make the items," Mylo nodded.
"Yeah, but aside from that, all other warnings are very standard to what one would see in a forge," Hera remembered the times she helped Silah out.
"Still, how are we going to find what item we should fix? Can you ask your relic?" Mylo looked around.
"You mean reforge. And I can ask, but I have to be very precise in how I ask the question. If I just ask where the item is, it will come up as 'in the storage' or something like that. I would probably have to ask where in the storage the item I have to reforge is located, but even that is a gamble. What if the item only shows up after another condition is met?" Hera sighed.
"Then why don't you ask how to find the item?" Mylo turned to her with a confused expression.
"Because I don't know if that will work. And then I will be out of questions."
"Can't you ask more than one question?"
"There is a two-hour cooldown, not to mention that I need to put mana into the relic. If I wanted to go all out, I would put everything I had and then be defenseless for a while," Hera replied.
"Don't you have weapons? And your flying court?" Mylo stared at Hera.
"I do, but still. I don't want to be caught off-guard."
"So save a little. Isn't your mana pool larger now?"
"It is, but then comes the problem of, 'what if we need a different question later?'"
Mylo stopped to consider her words for a moment. After about a minute, he sighed and turned around, "You are weird."
Hera just stared at him in disbelief, "Where did that come from?"
"You have a thing that gives you the answer for something you need, but since you are always thinking, 'this might not be the best question in the future,' you end up never using it. To make it worse, you complain about the relic not being as useful as others. Shane has a weapon, a very strong one that she can use for a bunch of things, but it's a weapon. Adriel has the drones, and they are just a special mount. The way I see it, you are the only one with a relic that does something that couldn't be replaced, and you never use it," Mylo opened one of the drawers to look at the materials available here.
Hera stopped to process what she had just heard. Unsure if that was an accurate assessment, she turned to Daskka, "Do I do that?"
The herald nodded, "You do, mum. It's just like when you are playing games. You never use items because you always think there is a better moment for that, even in the final boss. You had to try that fight again five times because you swore there was a fourth phase and refused to 'waste your healing items' after that big area attack. This is not the first time we had this conversation, but it looks like it didn't stick."
"I must agree. You are overzealous with some of the skills you can only use after a certain time. You constantly mention that your All In skill takes too long to rank up, yet you hardly ever use it," Nimbus nodded.
"That's…. Fair. Ok.. I'll try not to be as…."
'Stingy?' Armory asked.
'Greedy?' Ooze added.
'Paranoid?' Lurize suggested.
"I was going to say parsimonious, but thanks for sharing what you really think about me," Hera rolled her eyes and pulled Yarnball from her waist. Going off on what Mylo suggested, she asked, "How can I find what item I have to reforge in this challenge?"
Using about 800 thousand mana, she got a reply, 'Look for the blueprint you can read.'
"Ok, easy enough," Hera showed Mylo the answer, and they moved towards the storage with the scrolls and schematics once again. There were at least a couple of thousand blueprints inside, but they started checking one by one. It took them about an hour and a half before Hera found one she could read. It was a small scroll with the schematics of a small skinning knife. It had a wooden handle with some details made out of gemstones and a silver edge. However, a key part of the blueprint was that it required another skinning knife to be used as a base. In essence, the challenge wasn't about making a new item but remaking the old one, and the blueprint showed the step-by-step process. Hera showed the scroll to Mylo, but he still couldn't read it. Like they were suspecting, each challenger would have to find their own blueprint.
"Go look for the item. I'll keep searching here. It's not like you can help me," Mylo told Hera. She wanted to protest, but in the end, it wasn't like she could do anything. If the scroll could only be read by the person who would use it, having a second set of hands or eyes would be useless.
Hera pulled up Yarnball and confirmed the remaining cooldown, "If you can't find it in half an hour, I'll try using my relic to help you."
Mylo just nodded as she left the room, heading to the item storage area. She opened the scroll again to see what she was looking for. Her court was also able to read the blueprint, and Hera wasn't sure if she was surprised about that or not. In a way, it made complete sense. Her blades were part of her, and they were considered a single entity. At the same time, it was very weird since each of them had a personality, and she couldn't even consider them as pieces of her own mind. Some were so different from herself that this theory simply didn't work.
After getting past that internal struggle, finding the knife was very easy. Unlike the initial appearance, the storage was incredibly well organized. Each shelf, drawer, or box had a specific type of item. All she had to do was to look for leatherworking materials. In just a few minutes, Hera noticed a tanning rack on a shelf and a few tools in front of it, including eight different skinning knives, but only one of them matched the same model as the one in the scroll.
Hera picked up the knife and took a look. The blade was partially rusted, and there were some cracks near the base. The handle was splintered on one side, and the other side was much smaller, almost like whoever made it was overzealous with the sanding. Even the decoration was gone on that side. Speaking of which, the pattern that framed the handle was weird. It looked like someone ground up a bunch of different gemstones and just used them to fill the gap, but not in a good way. The colors were a mess, and it didn't look pretty, not to mention things were uneven, which made the knife horrible to hold.
She left the storage area with the knife in her hand, and the item didn't vanish like it did when Mylo tried to leave with the wrong one. Walking towards the main hall again, Hera started to think about the materials she could use. If she was considering the blueprint, she would only need three different materials. The metal for the blade and screws, the wood for the handle, and the gemstone for the details, but something was nagging her. After reaching one of the workstations, she placed the blueprint in the panel above it in a slot with a glass frame to allow her to not only see it but also use the markers by the side to make notes or changes without changing the blueprint itself.
Before anything, she pulled up the picture Helena sent her. The one showing the forge, "Why does this have five things on top of the anvil?"
"Maybe you have to use five materials?" Nimbus suggested.
"Isn't that a bit of a waste? Not to mention some of the things back there would need more than five, and others less, I think," Hera scratched her head.
"How about if you take off the parts of the knife first to see if there are any hidden features or something inside? It's a good idea to see the damage and how everything is set together," Daskka added.
'Also, this is not about making a new item. You should look for ways to repair as much as you can of the original before remaking parts of it,' Lurize added and pointed with the tip of the zweihander to one of the drawers he had opened. There was a book inside called 'How to repair items of different materials.'
"This feels very hand holdy," Hera frowned.
"Maybe that is because otherwise, only crafters would complete this. So it's giving you the opportunity by teaching you the steps. You still have to figure out how to make all this work," Nimbus picked up the book and started to look through it, "Here," he showed the first chapter to Hera, 'Disassembling with care.'
"I guess I should start then," Hera sighed and began the next step of the challenge.
