"What a pity... Then you will never become the protagonist of this era. Struggle all you like, child."
A god, or a devil? Gaunter O'Dimm murmured his regret, yet there was no disappointment in his eyes.
Maintaining his elegant bearing, he strolled through fields, across stone bridges, and through forests like a carefree traveler, slowly disappearing beyond the horizon.
[Quest [Choice] terminated]
The order of space and time returned, and everyone carried on with their lives as though nothing had happened.
The cool notification tone seemed to have taken on a slightly lighter lilt. Chen Xu breathed a small sigh of relief and sat back down at the drinking table.
[You have incurred a true god's loathing. Fortune -90%] [Corrupted creatures' favorability -50%]
Outside the panel, his already pitiful hidden luck stat dropped straight from 1 to 0.
A sense of dark clouds looming overhead descended on him-almost divine punishment!
That bastard Gaunter O'Dimm acted so respectable, only to play dirty behind the scenes?
Bang! Chen Xu slammed a fist into the table. He wanted to curse, but feared a god's might, so he gulped down beer in an attempt to calm himself.
His breathing began to grow labored, his heart racing wildly.
Cold sweat poured down. This feeling was all too familiar: the warning signs of a panic attack, his mind on the brink of collapse.
Ordinary people thought logically, while Chen Xu thought mathematically.
This manifested as irritability, a tendency to panic, difficulty fitting in, and skipping the working to write down answers directly when solving problems.
At his primary school teacher's insistence, his mother had taken him to a hospital for an examination. The doctor had offered this reassurance:
"Asperger's syndrome. It's not severe. With proper guidance, he won't be very different from ordinary people in the future."
The panel had hit the nail on the head. His talent destroyed his will, making it no different from a curse.
"Respect others, respect yourself. Repay kindness, avenge wrongs. Keep your word, see your actions through..." He hurriedly recited the formulas for human interaction his parents had compiled, breathing deeply to try to calm his mind, but it did little good.
Just as the thread of his reason was about to snap, his overloaded brain suddenly seemed to be submerged in Antarctica's icy seawater. He shuddered, and his emotions, on the verge of collapse, were actually soothed.
He opened his eyes. It was not a god who had helped him, but the old witcher.
Vesemir dispelled the Axii Sign in his hand and asked, looking thoroughly puzzled, "Boy, what's wrong with you?"
What's wrong? I can't exactly say I'm a grown man prone to emotional breakdowns.
"Nothing. Just an old condition acting up."
Great powers have had zero luck since ancient times. Fortune is nothing but a minor concern.
Man can conquer heaven.
Recording the grudge over his stolen fortune in his little mental notebook, Chen Xu immediately adjusted his mindset and began exercising a traditional skill of the Chihuang people:
Urging others to drink.
At this moment, he yearned for the witchers' Axii Sign more than ever before.
After a round of drinks, Vesemir's drinker's nose had grown even redder.
Chen Xu invited him home to rest, but he politely declined:
"Hic, thanks, boy. I need to wait here for my apprentice. He might need help at any moment."
Vesemir leaned against the wall. Having lived for well over two hundred years, nearly three hundred, the old witcher's body had ultimately still been worn down by time.
"You know? Young people are the biggest worry."
That young man you're talking about is almost a hundred! Though Chen Xu felt somewhat speechless, he still laid on the flattery, using [Deception]:
"You're right. An elder in the home is a treasure. You know, you really do look like my late seventh great-uncle."
"What..." Vesemir clearly could not make sense of such a complicated relationship. He leaned against the wall, drowsy.
Seeing that the time was about right, Chen Xu cautiously asked, "Master, that Sign of yours really helps my condition. How do you use it?"
The old witcher waved a hand dismissively and gave a slurred explanation of the connection between the Sign's hand gestures and magic power.
But he might as well have said nothing. As far as Vesemir knew, the first step toward casting Signs was undergoing the "Trial of the Grasses":
The process by which young witcher apprentices underwent mutations to their bodies and physiological structures after taking an alchemical decoction known as the "grasses."
Before using Detection on Geralt's stats, Chen Xu had indeed entertained the idea, but once he understood the details, he decided to forget it.
The side effects were too severe. It was not worth the cost.
He shook his befuddled head, stood up, and paid the bill.
Drinking first thing in the morning. How degenerate.
By the time Chen Xu wandered over to Willis's burned-down house with a bottle of dwarven spirits, the old dwarf was already hammering away at his anvil in the yard.
The Nilfgaardians had urgently allocated a batch of materials. The poor old fellow had lost his home and still had to work.
"Been drinking this early in the morning?"
Willis frowned at the smell of alcohol coming off Chen Xu. No matter the world, seeing a young person spend all day in a drunken stupor was troubling.
"I'll give you your first lesson right now. A professional blacksmith only gets drunk at night!" He tossed aside the spirits Chen Xu had brought and lectured him:
"A drunk blacksmith can't hold his hammer steady!"
Willis placed a red-hot piece of iron on the anvil. His muscular arm swung a hammer weighing over ten jin without pause, striking every part of the iron in turn.
After reaching the end, he started again from the beginning. Every blow landed squarely beside the last, and impurities visibly separated from the iron at a rapid pace.
To ancient people, this was refining iron into steel through repeated hammering. But to a modern man like Chen Xu, it was squeezing slag and impurities out of the blade, including the carbon that could make iron harder.
Excessive hammering would actually soften an iron sword. A hundred rounds of refining was already rather excessive.
Chen Xu watched the details for a while, then held out his hand. "Let me try."
Willis felt a little indignant, thinking Chen Xu probably had not grasped the finer points.
An apprentice should listen and watch more. You want to try your hand when you don't know a thing?
Still, he did not refuse. Letting the boy suffer a little would do him good. Intending to teach him a lesson, he handed Chen Xu the hammer and chuckled inwardly. With that puny frame, how many swings can you manage?
Clang! Clang! Clang! A rapid yet distinctly rhythmic hammering rang out.
The dwarf's eyes instantly widened.
Chen Xu effortlessly reproduced the hammering technique he had spent half his life honing. That difference-engine-like brain made every exertion precise to the smallest degree.
[You have comprehended the specialty [Hammer Technique], beginner level. Hammering speed +10%, precision adjustment +25% You have comprehended the specialty [Forging], beginner level. Forging efficiency +25%, forged item quality +10%]
The simultaneous infusion of two specialties instantly overloaded Chen Xu's pig brain.
The forging hammer in his hand paused. Willis thought he had exhausted himself and had just breathed a sigh of relief, ready to ask for the hammer back, when even faster hammering rang out.
The two specialties could actually complement each other. After one pass of Chen Xu's hammer, the iron was as smooth as a polished mirror!
The old dwarf was so shocked that he pulled out some of his own beard. His mouth opened, but after spending ages assembling a criticism, he could not get it out. After struggling for a long while, he managed:
"...Not bad."
He snatched the hammer back and placed the iron bar in a wooden bucket full of water to cool it rapidly:
"This step is called quenching. It makes the sword harder."
"Once it's quenched, you've got a sword blank." Willis took out the iron and placed it against a whetstone, carefully grinding an edge onto it.
Finally, he picked it up and swung it twice to test its feel, then lightly thrust it into a dummy wearing cowhide armor. The sharp point pierced straight through the dummy, cowhide and all.
A longsword meeting the Nilfgaardians' requirements was freshly completed. Chen Xu used [Detection]:
-------- Item: Standard-issue longsword Quality: Common Attack: 17 (slashing) (durability consumption increases significantly against targets with Constitution above 17) Durability: 14/14 (can withstand a maximum infusion of 14 units of dark energy) A piece of iron wielded by the natives. Produced by the God-Chosen Battlefield. Cannot be sold; can be taken out of this world after grid conversion. --------
That's it? Honestly, those few tricks were not even as good as the beginner-level [Forging] the panel had instilled in him.