Chapter 55: Comparison
The next morning, Zephyr woke with a clear plan in mind. Today, he needed to get the job done- securing the heart of a Blue-Headed Ice-Python. If he could finish early, perhaps he might even catch the old apothecary unaware, delivering a pleasant surprise and hopefully finding him in a more talkative-less inquisitive mood.
After completing his usual morning routines, he exited the cave and headed deeper into the forest.
In his hands were two battleaxes he had gotten from the local blacksmith. They were basic. A stark contrast to the finely crafted weapon he had wielded back at the military camp. Each axe was double-headed, measuring approximately three feet in length, with the formidable blades consuming nearly half that span. He had chosen to acquire a pair purely due to their mediocre quality.
Years spent forging weapons at Bjorn’s Forge had honed his eye, allowing him to instantly discern that the metal used was far from exceptional. It had even begun to chip at the edges because of how he used them. And there was no way to enhance the weapon with runes. he had lost all his personal possessions in the gateway link that had brought them to this world. That violent transference had incinerated everything not intrinsically part of them, including— to Zephyr’s frustration— his specialized rune-inscribing tools.
Back at the military camp, he hadn’t had the time, nor had he deemed it necessary, to enhance the battleaxe he wielded. The quality was already sufficient, and any further effects he might have added would have been purely of a magical nature. For him who had a difficult enough time simply maintaining the Mana Barrier spell, it would have been a waste of precious effort.
But he was here now, and some simple [Structural Stability] runes could go a long way to help him. He had made some observations about the state of runesmithing here, and he’d found that it was actually well developed. In fact, not at all dissimilar from the level of his own world. It most likely had to do with the fact that the people here were used to drawing out models in the first place, but still, rune language and spell models, despite their similarities, were fundamentally different fields.
True rune inscribers were few and far between here, which meant that while the field was developed, prices were exorbitant. Zephyr could afford them with his current funds, but a pair of dual battleaxes enhanced with an equivalent [Structural Stability] rune would cost him nearly a third of his savings.
Firstly, he’d rather save the money and just get new weapons when his current ones wore out. Secondly, as a runesmith himself, his heart would bleed every time he used a weapon he’d bought, knowing the cost and the fact that he could have done an even better job. And the ironic part was, Zephyr couldn’t even inscribe runes at the moment.
If the minute frequency adjustments needed for a simple fire spell were giving him so much trouble, then inscribing runes without his specialized tools was out of the question. But even knowing that fact... He still wasn’t going to buy an enhanced weapon.