Chapter 105: Lord Urdwellan
After three days of frustrations and failures, Irwin angrily glared at the table before him as he ticked with his fingers against the edge. Two mission papers were lying there, each with a few Purple Bordered cards on them. Both were finished, but it hadn't been as easy as he had initially thought.
In the end, he'd almost failed the first one. Only with Ambraz's assistance had he managed to succeed on the very last card. The second mission had been an equally close call, and when the third card had failed, he almost believed he'd need Ambraz's help again. Luckily, his fourth attempt had been a success, albeit only barely.
That was a few minutes ago, after which he'd slumped on the chair, where he was still sitting.
From what he sensed, he would need dozens of cards to practice this new technique to get any sense of surety of success. He had two more missions with cards that potentially had some use to Greldo, but he wasn't willing to risk that just yet.
Perhaps I should just have Ambraz help with those so Greldo doesn't have to wait, he thought. He knew it meant Ambraz would be out of energy for over a day and would need to consume cards from the missions, making it even more dangerous. The problem was that if he hoped to reforge a card himself, it might take weeks, perhaps longer.
"Isn't there a way to practice this without using cards?" he asked.
"No," Ambraz grunted. "Unless you can get a Ruby or higher rank smith to help you, the only thing you can do is keep trying."
Irwin blinked, wondering why Tensor hadn't taught him anything about this. Perhaps he could ask Balarn and Yogog? They might know more.
"Don't get your hopes up," Ambraz said as if he had read his mind. "Why do you think these missions have five attempts? Even then, only very few smiths are able to consistently reforge cards beyond their predisposed paths. The fact that you managed one, on your own, in such a short time is…"
The Anvil let out a soft, weary laugh.
"Well, I guess it's only right for the smith I chose to keep showing off!"
The outburst seemed to cost him what little energy he had remaining, as his mouth turned vague and his wings hung down. The way his tiny form was almost draped across the table, it was obvious how much the last few days had cost him. Especially the previous day, when he had helped Irwin reforge the card that had drained him.