"Fine sword!" Chen Xu clapped in feigned admiration, then asked with affected puzzlement:
"Master Willis, I've seen weapons with special patterns that make swords lighter and faster. Some even have gems embedded in them and can wield elemental power. Do you know that technique?"
"...You know quite a bit." The old dwarf hesitated briefly, but remembering his promise to take him as a "formal apprentice," he steeled himself and said:
"That's the art of embedding runes. It's normally a closely guarded secret...but since I gave you my word, I won't go back on it."
Willis drew lines on the freshly cast blade with a charcoal pencil, then flexed his arms to shift the heavy anvil aside and dug a leather pouch out from underneath it.
Brushing the dirt off its surface, he carefully took out a small glass bottle and a quill made from an unknown material.
After soaking the quill in the bottle's purple ink, he traced patterns along the lines drawn on the blade.
The ink slightly corroded the metal's surface, leaving patterns coated in a film. Willis took a remarkably regular oval stone from the pouch:
"This is a runestone. It can make weapons forged from ordinary iron rival or even surpass meteoric iron!"
[Willis ([Blacksmith] Lv.2) taught you Runic Forging. Your [Forging] improved slightly.]
He was only demonstrating the technique and did not actually embed the runestone.
These weapons would all have to be handed over to the Nilfgaardians. A runestone cost dozens or even hundreds of crowns; nobody got a bargain like that.
"This is the potion formula."
Willis generously handed over a sheet of parchment. "Give it back as soon as you've memorized it. I made this quill from a cockatrice feather I bought from a witcher, so don't get any ideas about that."
There's plenty of time ahead. I'll show this seemingly talented lad a few tricks first and put him in his place! Then I'll be able to take it easy.
Willis, who prided himself on being a professional blacksmith, uncorked the bottle of spirits Chen Xu had brought and sat down against the wall of the burned-out house.
He tilted his head back, took a swig, and ordered:
"The rest is up to you. Make five acceptable sword blanks before this afternoon."
[You triggered the normal quest [A Show of Authority]. Base rewards: EXP ×50, points ×1.]
The furnace was packed with iron strips glowing red from the heat. Willis had clearly held something back: he had not taught him how to refine iron ore or make molds.
Yet the panel filled in all of that the moment Chen Xu first hammered an iron strip.
The courtyard soon rang with clanging hammer blows. Willis had initially intended to offer pointers and correct mistakes, but after watching twice, he could not find a single flaw.
He only felt irritated and jealous, and began drinking faster.
Seeing that Willis seemed to have drunk himself into a haze, Chen Xu immediately put down his forging hammer.
The lump of iron weighed over ten jin.
Honestly, smithing was far more exhausting than harvesting wheat. Still, he had endured the ache in his arms and held on until Willis passed out drunk.
This old bastard wants to teach me a lesson? He can try again in his next life.
He had shown off too much earlier, prompting Willis to assign him five sword blanks. After a little thought, Chen Xu put the EXP awarded for catching the arsonist into his [Detective] subclass.
[You used EXP ×150. Current Detective Lv.3. Constitution +1, reaction +1, free attribute points +1.]
Ordinary people stopped developing completely by around twenty-four at the latest. After a brief peak lasting a few years, their physical functions would begin to decline.
Yet when he used EXP to level up, his body seemed to return to the developmental stage of puberty.
Powerful vitality flowed from the crown of his head throughout his body. His flesh had never felt so alive, like a fully compressed spring, desperate to release its energy.
Putting the free attribute point into strength produced equally immediate results. The forging hammer felt noticeably lighter.
Going all out, Chen Xu actually delivered ten whole acceptable sword blanks by noon.
"Very good...wait until I sharpen them this afternoon...we can ask the Nilfgaardians for a raise!"
After slurring those words, Willis shifted position and fell asleep again.
He really seemed to have nothing left. Not only was he drowning his sorrows in drink, he even dared ask the Nilfgaardian army for money.
[You completed the normal quest [A Show of Authority]. Time taken: 2 hours, 26 minutes (gold), quality (gold), excess completion (gold). Overall rating: perfect! You received EXP ×125, points ×1, Advancement Card ×1.]
Previously, Willis's daily workload had been ten standard-issue longswords, plus maintenance on some armor and horse tack. Nilfgaard treated craftsmen well, paying a fixed wage of one crown and fifty copper coins a day. He was practically a civil servant.
Now that Chen Xu could nearly double production, a raise was only reasonable.
But he had actually wanted to hide five of the sword blanks. He was not worried about the tallest tree catching the most wind; he was simply afraid it would be hard to get away when he wanted to leave White Orchard.
One point a day? I'd have to work for over three months to save enough points to leave this world. That's letting myself die holding in a fart.
He planned to leave the beginner village with Geralt as soon as possible.
Opportunities lay beyond the beginner village, and they were fleeting.
At noon, the Chosen, who had been given a break, decided to search in the direction Geralt had left, only to be driven back halfway there by patrolling Nilfgaardian cavalry.
The number of monsters in the wilderness had recently surged, and these cheap laborers were strictly forbidden from wandering around.
Still, seeing Chen Xu continuing to sweat away in the smithy eased their sense of unfairness a little.
[[Commoner] Chosen Alexei Seridovich was torn apart and divided among Drowners.]
The notification suddenly sounded, and the Chosen in White Orchard paled. Alexei was the red-haired, freckled boy.
Just before the Nilfgaardian cavalry drove them back, Alexei had gone to relieve himself and avoided the patrol behind a mound of earth.
They had thought he had gotten damn lucky, only for him to die out there!
The Chosen could not help mourning the fate they might share, and their excitement at meeting a special character quickly faded.
After more than a day together, Chen Xu also knew who Alexei was. He did not dwell on it much, merely raising his assessment of the world's danger by one level.
The so-called Chosen died so casually. They were nothing special.
For lunch, he ordered a plate of grilled fish at the tavern. Calling it tasty would have been impossible; it was simply terrible.
It was unbearably salty, burnt, and bitter. Chen Xu had to take matters into his own hands to appease his stomach.
After obtaining the [Cooking] skill, he also wrote a few recipes for the tavern and modified its poorly designed oven while he was at it.
Returning to Willis's courtyard, he picked up a sword blank and tried polishing it.
The sword he produced was even better than Willis's first one, most noticeably in its attack, which was one to two points higher.
He recalled the patterns Willis had drawn and decided to try making a sword for himself.
[You used an Advancement Card. [Forging] advanced to proficient. Forging efficiency +50%, quality of forged items +20%.]
An unprecedented swelling pain struck him. The enormous amount of knowledge from the advancement in expertise nearly overwhelmed his consciousness. More forging experience flooded his brain, and wildly imaginative forging ideas and methods kept surfacing.
After a long while, the pain gradually subsided, and a gleam appeared in Chen Xu's eyes. Finally, something substantial.
The early stages of the forging techniques imparted by the panel were almost identical to those developed on Blue Star. But upon reaching proficiency, they actually led to the use of a certain special energy.
It was the [Dark Energy: 0] displayed on Chen Xu's panel.
Blue Star also had theories about dark energy and dark matter, but they had never been detected and verified. He did not know whether the names were merely a coincidence or whether there was a genuine connection.
No wonder even Geralt, the foremost swordsman in the North, only had proficient [Swordsmanship]. That rank carried considerable weight.
Countless closely guarded secrets were branded into Chen Xu's mind. Even the inscription technique Willis treasured seemed somewhat crude.
It turned out that the old dwarf used a corrosive potion not only because he lacked the ability to engrave precisely, but also because the film left by corrosion increased energy conduction efficiency.
In fact, although this film conducted Dark Energy better than iron, the inconsistent degree of corrosion greatly affected the sword's quality and durability.
Moreover, with this ready-made energy circuit available, Dark Energy's penetration into the weapon itself would be greatly reduced. This would leave the weapon fragile, without reinforcement from its wielder's Dark Energy.
It was not obvious at lower tiers, but for high-tier transcendents, it was a fatal flaw.
Still, things had to be judged in the context of their era. In the witcher's world, an ordinary person who learned Willis's methods could already make a living anywhere.