"Sir, I'm Pro Gram, a blacksmith from White Orchard." Chen Xu had no choice but to reveal one of his skills. He also drew the steel sword Gram and presented it to the officer, trying to gain his trust.
He looked toward the Crow's Perch smithy at the inner gate, using [Deception] with practiced ease:
"This is my work. I heard there was a master blacksmith here, so I wanted to exchange knowledge and learn a few things. I happened to meet the baron's wife and merely agreed to pass on a message for her."
"Oh? How will you prove it?" The officer in the winged helmet raised the steel sword and examined it, then flicked its blade. The scattered cold gleams and clear ring of steel spoke to its maker's skill.
He had seen this sword cut through the standard-issue longswords of the baron's men like butter, and believed he had found another hole in Chen Xu's excuse:
A top-tier swordsmith had come to exchange armorsmithing techniques in the middle of a war?
No such all-round blacksmith existed anywhere in the North.
Chen Xu also realized something was amiss and had no choice but to patch his story:
"We could have a contest."
"Interesting." The officer rubbed his chin. The other man's stubborn insistence had actually piqued his interest.
He took Chen Xu to the Crow's Perch smithy and pointed to a blonde young woman tanning leather with a dwarven assistant's help. "This is your opponent, our master armorer, Yoana."
"A challenger?" Yoana showed not a trace of fear or unease. Skelligers never tolerated cowardice, and she was quite confident in her skills. "Welcome!"
[You have triggered the normal quest [Prove Yourself]: craft a piece of armor. Quality requirement: fine Base reward: EXP ×100]
The EXP reward was too small, and there were no points. It was thankless work.
If he made something too good, the Nilfgaardians might even seize him and make him work for free.
These Chosen had caused him no small amount of trouble. Right now, he actually missed the brainless Penny a little.
"Sir, there's no need to go to all this trouble..." Zhaotian Zhi seemed to have caught the scent of a quest. Seeing his maneuvering end up benefiting Chen Xu instead, he anxiously tried to stop it.
"Yes, sir..." The other Chosen chimed in.
Their enemy had come to snatch food right out of their bowls. How could they stand for that?
"Shh!"
The officer raised a hand to silence every objection, his sharp gaze sweeping across them until everyone fell silent as cicadas in winter.
So many people dared defy his decision. The Empire was still too merciful.
Chen Xu could not help turning to glance at Zhaotian Zhi and the others. These fellows really were efficient.
In the original game, this blonde young woman from Skellige was indeed a master armorer, but no one believed that such a rather cute young woman could make mastercrafted armor.
So she had reached an agreement with Fergus, the local dwarven blacksmith:
Fergus would handle the storefront, while she did the actual armorsmithing. After all, people were more willing to trust a dwarf's forging skills.
Yoana really was skilled, and customers vied to praise Fergus's workmanship.
Gradually, the dwarf let it go to his head. He actually began believing his own skills had earned all that applause and started ordering the real master around.
Unable to stomach it, Yoana decided to compete with Fergus and reclaim the reputation that belonged to her.
At this point, players could accept a quest called [Master Armorers]:
Help Yoana kill an archgriffin and obtain its acid gland so she could use it to quench the armor for her contest.
Now that Yoana was already the officially recognized master, these Chosen must have completed the quest.
"Wait, sir." Hesitation crossed Zhaotian Zhi's face before he finally made up his mind and spoke. "I also know the art of forging. Recently, I conceived a weapon of unparalleled power. Why not let me help you test the strength of the masters' armor?"
The officer in the winged helmet was quite surprised. Zhaotian Zhi's switch from opposition to support had caught him off guard.
"Are you sure? We use military crossbow bolts for our tests." There was a teasing edge to the officer's smile as he began slipping his own agenda into his words:
"If your weapon fails to meet the requirements, you'll be wasting my time. Then I'll have no choice but to conscript you in accordance with the law."
Join the mighty Empire? Zhaotian Zhi could not have asked for more.
Only the baron's sergeant looked grim. The man was poaching his people right in front of him, showing him no regard whatsoever.
Zhaotian Zhi's sudden intervention gave Chen Xu a faint sense of foreboding.
But seeing that Yoana had already begun working on her design sketch, he had no choice but to follow suit and start on his first piece of armor.
He remembered Yoana's contest for the title of master armorer. Their method of testing armor strength was brutally straightforward:
Put the armor on a living person, shoot them with a crossbow, and see whether the wearer died.
The best armor material in the Witcher world was dragon leather. The hide of these magical creatures contained large quantities of chitin, making it virtually indestructible, and naturally possessed powerful elemental resistance.
But all he had on hand was military-issue cowhide and assorted chunks of metal, and another Chosen would be responsible for testing the armor's defenses.
His opponent could openly attempt to kill him with any weapon during the test.
Making leather armor that emphasized flexibility was a dead end. His only option now was to mindlessly pile on thick steel armor.
The first thing Chen Xu thought of was the pinnacle of Han Chinese armor-Song infantry armor.
The defensive capabilities of this heavy lamellar armor needed no explanation, but making it involved far too much work, so he could only rule it out. Gothic plate armor, famous during the Wars of the Roses in northern Europe, suited his current needs in both difficulty and protection.
A lazy man had his own clever tricks.
First, he took off his Temerian infantry armor and measured it.
This armor came with metal arm guards. He only needed to sew on a plate vest, which would greatly reduce the workload and fit him perfectly.
Yoana had already fired up the forge to soften metal plates. She still had plenty of quenching acid left over from before and was confident she could win this contest.
Chen Xu was in no hurry. In truth, acid pickling did little for steel's hardness or strength; it was only good for fooling outsiders. In the original game, players who wanted Yoana to craft mastercrafted armor also had to help her find the appropriate special tools.
Besides, the quest only required him to prove his skill, not win the contest.
He was more concerned about the uncertainty Zhaotian Zhi introduced. The man had neither taken up the smithy's resources nor shown any intention of disrupting his work. He had even called several Chosen into the inner keep with him, and there was no telling what they were putting together.
Overthinking was pointless. He could only stick to his own course and respond to whatever came.
Conditions at Crow's Perch were much better than in White Orchard village. He did not need to smelt ore himself, since ready-made metal ingots were available, though he still needed to temper and hammer out the impurities.
With mastery-level [Forging] supporting him, Chen Xu was confident his steel would be no worse than Yoana's, no matter what she used to quench hers.
The Nilfgaardians' armor-testing method also had a loophole. He planned to put slots over vital areas of the breastplate, then forge thick steel plates to fit inside them.
With these armored sections blocking the shots, he could stop not just crossbow bolts, but bullets too.
He forged the corresponding grooves into the processed metal plates, leaving space for straps on each armor plate so they could be easily removed.
He riveted on a thin metal sheet to form an interlayer, with the Temerian leather armor underneath.
The entire suit weighed over 20 kg, not including the armor plates. Chen Xu used Detection on it, only to discover that its quality did not meet the requirement.
Just then, Yoana noticed his design:
"Are you going to inlay glyphs?"
The armor runestones of this world were called glyphs. They only amplified magic and did nothing to improve physical resistance, so she was quite puzzled.
In a flash of inspiration, Chen Xu combined the armor plate slots with the glyph sockets, then used Willis's corrosive potion to etch energy circuits.
Under the pretext of conducting a test, he borrowed a set of glyphs from Yoana and inlaid them.
[You have completed the normal quest [Prove Yourself] Time taken: 3 hours 26 minutes (gold), quality (silver) Overall assessment: pass You received EXP ×150]
After all that work, the quality finally just barely reached fine, and Chen Xu returned the glyphs.
By afternoon, Yoana's work was finally finished: an exquisite suit of Nilfgaardian winged cavalry armor.
She had chosen a cavalry armor design because its weight restrictions were more forgiving. She, too, intended to pile on armor.
Chen Xu's modified Temerian infantry armor was equally striking.
Its imposing, heavy design shone bright silver throughout, with barely any impurities visible. The easily removable armor plates, in particular, were undeniably a bold innovation.
"Who wants to test theirs first?" Zhaotian Zhi, who had been quiet for hours, watched the two of them with a beaming smile.
"Ladies first." Chen Xu shamelessly extended a hand in invitation, trying to have Yoana sound things out first.
But she clearly had the same idea. Moreover, she was the official armorer, so the Nilfgaardian officer naturally favored his own. "You came here to challenge her. You go first."
Fine. A lone man really was easy to bully.
Chen Xu readied himself. Although he had gone nearly a day without sleep, his extraordinary constitution could still keep his nervous system functioning normally.
He put on his armor and walked toward the shooting range, only to discover that he had still underestimated just how far Zhaotian Zhi would go to court death.
As the saying went, when the children went quiet, they were definitely up to no good.
A handcart slowly emerged from the inner keep and stopped less than twenty yards from Chen Xu.
An iron tube nearly seven centimeters in diameter was mounted on it, its dark muzzle pointing straight at him.
These sons of bitches had cobbled together a mobile cannon!