Chapter 301
Chapter 301. The Weapon Is Forged and a Sudden Incident
After Fulan used one charge of Radiance, she still had not finished forging the weapon.
First, Fulan applied a set of inscriptions that could slightly strengthen spell power and assist spell guidance, carving them beside the patterns that strengthened Divine Spells.
As Habos’s disciple, her first lesson from Habos had been the method of crafting high-tier staffs, so naturally she knew how to perform such operations.
Although carving these inscriptions onto a staff and then setting gemstones that strengthened spells into it was something every craftsman knew how to do, Habos was a master in this field.
What he had explained to Fulan was naturally not such relatively basic things, but how to use and process materials so that a staff’s performance could be optimized.
Under the enhancement of Extraordinary-level Forging, Fulan carved these inscriptions very easily, turning the Dragon-Bone Club into a very standard high-tier staff.
Even if Habos were here, he probably would not be able to find any fault with it.
“I do not have any suitable gemstones on hand, so I might as well not set any. I can add them when I craft another weapon later.”
Fulan rubbed her head, letting herself relax slightly, then took a deep breath.
“Next comes the main event.”
As weapons were things that practically everyone on the continent possessed, there were already many intricacies involved in choosing the materials used to manufacture them, let alone in how to strengthen them.
One very common method for low-tier weapons was carving runes onto them. At the lower tiers, such runes provided very powerful enhancements to weapons.
However, rune weapons were still acceptable at the First Tier and counted as something everyone could use. Once they reached the Second Tier, however, the enhancement provided by runes became somewhat unable to keep up.
Fulan guessed that this was because Ancient Runes had suffered a break in transmission. The Ancient Runes she could currently inscribe could not be considered the limit of those Ancient Runes. She even felt that the true limit of Ancient Runes lay above the Second Tier.
But because of various reasons, such as Fulan having never seen the full form of a deity and not having suitable materials to bear such runes, Fulan did not have any especially powerful Ancient Rune weapons in her hands.
She took out the purple short sword she had forged. On it was the rune of the Goddess of the Currents.
Fulan could sense that if she found a suitable material, then this Ancient Rune weapon could reach the level of the Third Tier.
“But how could Third-Tier materials be that easy to find? Not to mention, I would have to find suitable ones...”
Fulan smiled and set this matter aside.
Returning to the matter of weapon enhancement, since runes on high-tier weapons were almost the same as not carving any at all, the people of this world would naturally think of methods to strengthen weapons.
Among those methods were attaching additional high-tier materials onto weapons, or using certain runes that could contain special materials...
For example, at the Second Tier, Dragon Blood could be used as a temporary method to strengthen weapons.
Different types of Dragon Blood could produce different effects, and there were also runes that could be applied to solidify the effect of Dragon Blood over the long term.
At even higher tiers, Professionals had even more elaborate techniques. Quite a few abilities could only be used through a certain weapon or a certain material.
Among these, there were many universal enhancement methods, and the [Weapon-Forging Rite] created by Habos himself was one such universal weapon enhancement method.
The condition for using it was to cast this spell on a newly forged weapon, along with certain materials, so that the weapon could be directly strengthened.
Of course, this strengthening also had its own underlying principle. This spell used the mage’s own Mental Power to enhance the weapon.
In addition, the weapon would gain a special effect, and this was related to the Elemental School that Habos had belonged to at the time.
This special effect was that when the caster possessed affinity with a certain element, the weapon would transform into a state similar to an elemental weapon.
During battle, the user could use Mental Power to draw out the element on the weapon.
The only flaw of this spell was that when Habos designed it, although he had considered inscriptions used by mages to strengthen spell guidance, the smoothness with which warriors wielded weapons, and even partially accommodated the patterns on church weapons, he had not accommodated the most universal method of strengthening weapons on this continent—runes.
In other words, if Fulan used this spell to strengthen a weapon, then she would not be able to carve runes onto it. She also did not know why Habos had not considered runes when designing this spell.
In Fulan’s view, runes and this spell should actually be compatible. She did not know why Habos had simply made it incompatible with runes.
Then she would have to wait until she trained this spell’s proficiency to the Proficient level.
Perhaps then, she could add rune compatibility to this spell, but that was absolutely not a problem she could solve right now.
After thinking it over, Fulan ultimately decided to use the spell Habos had taught her, [Weapon-Forging Rite].
She stretched her hand to a position about thirty centimeters away from the Dragon-Bone Club floating in the air, then began guiding [Weapon-Forging Rite] in her palm.
It had to be said that this spell capable of strengthening weapons was still somewhat difficult for Fulan to use. After several failed attempts at guiding it, Fulan finally released the spell.
A faint white light appeared in Fulan’s palm, then instantly turned multicolored. The light then attached itself to the Dragon-Bone Club, turning the entire weapon white.
During the spell’s release, Fulan felt her Mental Power constantly being consumed, and that Mental Power continuously transformed the weapon.
The entire casting process consumed about twenty minutes. In the end, Fulan felt that she had used up half of her Mental Power before finally completing the spell.
The light on the weapon faded away. What entered Fulan’s eyes was a gray-white bone club.
Perhaps because of Fulan’s subconscious influence, only now did Fulan realize that this club looked very much like a baseball bat from her previous life.
On this “baseball bat,” Fulan could see golden patterns extending downward from the upper end of the club, then intertwining with the inscriptions that enhanced spell guidance at a position about one quarter of the way down.
The inscriptions, meanwhile, began from the middle. There were roughly six starting points, and they extended upward to slightly beyond the one-quarter mark. Their ends disappeared not far above the golden patterns.
Fulan lightly touched this “baseball bat,” then gripped it vertically in her right hand and gently swung the weapon with her arm.
“This weight is a little light, but it is also fairly suitable for my current strength.”
Fulan gripped it with both hands and swung it forcefully through the air. At the place where the bat swept past, a muffled explosive sound rang out, causing the surrounding air to heat up slightly.
“Not bad at all!”
Fulan was extremely satisfied with the weapon’s effect.
She felt that even if this weapon were used purely as a melee weapon, it could still count as a very good Second-Tier weapon.
Next, Fulan tested some of the functions she truly wanted this weapon to possess.
She held the weapon and released spells and Divine Spells. The amplification results were about what she had expected, which made her even more satisfied.
However, immediately afterward, Fulan encountered something extremely strange. After using [Weapon-Forging Rite], she had indeed sensed that this weapon should have gained that additional triggered effect.
That effect was that the weapon possessed properties similar to an elemental weapon. As long as Fulan injected Mental Power into it, elements would gather on it.
“How could this happen?!”
After Fulan injected Mental Power, she did indeed draw the surrounding elements together. It was simply that the elements gathered were somewhat wrong.
Fulan looked at the arcs of electricity flickering across the baseball bat and listened to the crackling sounds of lightning striking the air. Her mind was filled with confusion.
“I do not have any affinity with the lightning element! Why did this element appear?”
Fulan then looked back at the silver sheet Habos had given her, the one that recorded the spell. After carefully checking it, she finally discovered...
“It seems that it does not say that having affinity with a certain element will cause that same element to appear on the weapon. It only says that after a mage with elemental affinity releases it, properties similar to an elemental weapon may appear.”
After carefully reading the explanation written above, Fulan finally understood. The elemental weapon effect originally granted by this spell was random.
It did not produce a weapon of whatever element one possessed affinity with.
“Forget it. This is still acceptable.”
After thinking it over, Fulan could only accept this fact.
After sighing, Fulan began cleaning up the surrounding materials. But just as she had washed the used bottles once, she heard a knock at the door.
Only then did Fulan realize from the light under the door crack that it was already daytime.
“I worked through the entire night.”
Fulan thought this silently, then walked to the door and asked,
“Who is it?”
There was a brief silence outside the door, then Dylan’s voice sounded.
“It is me, Dylan.”
Fulan opened the door and saw Dylan with his mouth slightly open and his eyes widened, as though he had encountered something shocking.
“Is there something on my face?” Fulan asked when she saw Dylan staring at her face the whole time.
“Nothing. I may have heard wrong,” Dylan said slowly.
Only then did Fulan react. Her voice still had some problems even now. Perhaps Dylan had heard that voice just now and found it slightly different from her original voice, but after thinking about it carefully, he could not feel any real difference.
After all, the timbre of her voice had not changed. What had changed was that her voice now carried a trace of power.
Dylan blinked. His hand fumbled around in his pocket, and after calming his emotions a little, he continued,
“The Society President is looking for you. It is a very important matter, something that happened this morning. She originally wanted to notify you using that remote communication device, but you never responded. It was only just now that I discovered the record showing you had returned here.”
Fulan asked curiously,
“What is it?”
“It seems to be something related to the Alchemy School. Perhaps that achievement of yours from last time won an award.”
Dylan’s voice carried a trace of envy.