Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story

After working on creating bar stock for a while, the sword breaker on the anvil finally finished cooling down. Thomas picked it up and dismissed the metal magic spell that had been holding it straight to get rid of the small warp in the blade. He held it by the tang and observed it from a variety of angles. Spotting no more signs of warping he gave a nod of approval and carried it over to the grinding wheel. Sparks flew as he worked on the blade and started to bring it to its final form. The sword breaker looked rather vicious with the long blade, curved tip, and comb-like spikes of metal making up the spine. It's hidden trick would cause quite a bit of surprise for the unprepared.

Before putting the final edge on the blade he took it back over to the workbench and collected a bit of steel. He still needed to make the crossguard and handguard for the blade. The handguard was really just a piece of metal that would be formed into a ring and help prevent blades from cutting the hand of the person wielding the sword breaker. Oddly, or by design, the handguard would be on the opposite side of what was expected as the blade would essentially be held backward. The sword catching spikes were meant to be the 'edge' of the sword breaker while the edge was meant to be the 'spine'. Honestly, the sword breaker was a really fascinating design.

After planning out the shape of the crossguard and handguard, Thomas channeled his Transmutation ability into the hunk of steel and slowly started to reshape it. The lump quickly spread out into a long bar with a hole in the center that the tang of the blade could fit through. He kept the bar of the crossguard rather thick to give it some strength while shaping it into a diamond cross-section. On one side of the hole for the tang, the metal started to morph outwards forming the ring that would act as the handguard. Like the crossguard, he made the metal ring thick and sturdy so that it wouldn't bend or break easily. Within just a couple of minutes, he had a fully formed guard for the blade held in his hands.

He fed the tang of the sword breaker through the guard and used his Transmutation to adjust the guard so it fit perfectly against the shoulders of the blade. Now it was really starting to look like a proper weapon. He made sure that the handguard was on the opposite side of what would be expected so the back of the hand of the wielder would be protected when the spikes faced forward. Any time a blade was missed and not caught by the spike it should hit the handguard and bounce off harmlessly. In theory, anyway.

With the crossguard properly in place, he set the weapon down and collected some wood to use for the creation of the handle. A little grinding and Transmutation created a handle that fit perfectly on the tang and had an ovoid cross-section that would provide a good grip. To make it a little nicer, Thomas collected a bit of leather to wrap around and fuse to the handle. He didn't even need to use glue anymore as a, now, simple bit of Transmutation let him fuse the leather directly with the wood. He found all these little perks of the ability to be extremely helpful with his work. 'All Seeing Eyes' might be a Rank S ability, but it was nowhere near as helpful in his day-to-day work as Transmutation was.

With the crossguard and handle fitted to the tang of the blade, all that was left was to peen on the pommel. The sword breaker usually had a good-sized pommel to act as a counterweight and change the weapons center of gravity to be closer to the handle. Much like the rapier did. This made it easier to wield and be accurate with as the user didn't need to fight the weight of his own sword. For the pommel, he selected another left-over piece of steel and reshaped it into a thick ring that somewhat matched the ring of the handguard. He formed a hole in the ring for the tang to fit through and slipped it onto the tang beneath the handle.

Normally he would use a hammer to peen the pommel onto the tang but he was feeling a bit lazy right now. So instead, he used a bit of pure strength to tightly hold the pommel against the handle to form the necessary pressure to hold everything together against the shoulders of the blade. With everything under some pressure, he quickly flattened the tang just as a hammer would have and then fused it to the pommel with Transmutation. Once it was on he went through and fused the handle to the tang as well as fusing the crossguard to the tang and shoulders. It was now impossible to take the blade apart. Not that anyone would really want to. If his plans worked the sword breaker's blade would end up shattering before any of the other parts wore out.

With the whole thing assembled he only had two steps left. The first step was rather easy and just required him to use the grinding wheel to put the final touches on the edges side of the weapon. He honed the edge down and finished sharpening it to a nice sharp edge. It was rather superfluous to the concept of the weapon, but it could still be used for slashing if necessary. With the edge of the blade sharpened and gleaming he moved onto the final step, enchanting it.

He had a rough idea of how he wanted to enchant the blade. Obviously, he would have an enchantment that complimented the inherent heat nature of the weapon but how exactly it would do that he was still debating. After thinking for a bit he smiled and went to work carving out the enchantment using the 'flame' rune for reference. The idea of the enchantment was meant to go hand in hand with the concept of thermal shock. Though the enchantment mimicked the 'flame' rune, it's intent was a little different. The enchantment was meant to store the mana channeled into the blade and hold it until the user willed it to be released.

If it worked as intended, and he had no reason to think it wouldn't, then the user could channel mana into the blade without heating it up. Once the user caught or collided with a weapon chilled by the Icebound Rapier they could then unleash all the mana stored inside the enchantment. Doing so would instantly dump a load of mana into the blade and cause its temperature to spike dramatically. When the overly hot blade had a cold blade trapped or collided with it, the huge difference in temperature would cause the thermal shock to induce metal fatigue and fracture it. Hopefully. Once fractured even a little bit the weapon should be easy enough to break completely.

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Carving out the enchantment took a little time as he had to make several additions to it. These additions consisted of circular areas that were carved out and filled with the enchantment mixture to act as batteries or holding areas for the mana stored inside of the enchantment. When the enchantment was finished it looked like a circular line surrounding symbol that looked vaguely Japanese or Chinese in origin with three large circles surrounding it in a triangular formation.