Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story

Thomas held the sword for a bit longer before setting it down gently on the work table. He looked over the beautiful weapon for a bit to admire his hard work. It wasn't his most artistic piece ever but it still had a deadly beauty to it. Still, it wasn't finished yet and it would become more beautiful with the touches he planned to add to it. He started by removing some Mithril from the same ingot he made the pommel from. The removed piece was quickly broken into four much smaller pieces. From there he turned the four pieces into small chain links. Three of the links were set together with the opening fused closed into a perfectly smooth surface.

For the final link, he fed it through the D-link at the bottom of the sword and fused it together. The four links now hung from the pommel of the sword but he still wasn't done with the small accessory he was creating for the sword. Another tiny piece of Mithril was transmuted into a tiny shiny sphere with a diameter of no more than a couple of millimeters. After setting the Mithril sphere to the side, he extracted a Troll mana crystal from his inventory and quickly purified it. Once purified, he set the Mithril ball on top of the crystal and Transmuted the crystal around the sphere. It was similar to a trick that jewelers used to make gems look brighter. They would place the gem on top of a reflective surface so that the light that entered the gem would bounce back and make the gem look brighter.

He wrapped the mana crystal around the Mithril sphere for the same purpose, to make it look bright thanks to the light bouncing back from it. He left the natural striations in the mana crystal alone as much as he could while morphing it into a perfect sphere. Once it was formed he used another small piece of Mithril to wrap a thin wire cage around the 'gem'. At the top of the cage was an open D-ring. He fed it through the last link of the chain on the sword and fused it together. When he picked up the sword the 'gem' dangled below the pommel and gently swayed in the air.

Naturally, the new 'gem' on his sword wasn't just for looks. Though it was small the mana crystal was still a battery of sorts. Thanks to the Mithril core, chain, and pommel, the mana from it could easily be moved into the sword. He set the sword back down and started pulling out his enchanting supplies. He quickly mixed up some of the enchanting medium. While doing so he opened the internet browser and began searching. As the weapon was a katana it deserved to have proper kanji markings on it for the enchantment.

After picking out the phrase he wanted to carve, he got to work. Naturally, because he wasn't a native speaker of the language and was using online translating software, it might not be completely accurate. He summoned his favorite Mithril engraving tool along with retrieving his ball-peen hammer. The Manaborne Truesteel was likely to be much harder than regular steel so he decided to have a little extra behind his engraving tool. Slowly he began tapping away at the end of the engraving tool. He was very careful and followed the lines of the kanji to the best of his abilities. He was no expert on the Japanese language but anyone could trace the lines of the words, even if they didn't completely know the meaning behind them. He just hoped it was close enough to his desired meaning.

As he carved the words onto the flat of the blade he focused on the image he had for the sword. It was a classic in fantasy games, stories, and more. The 'sword beam' or 'compressed air' or whatever you wanted to call it. The trope was common enough that anyone would recognize it. Those white slashes of light that would fly off of a sword when it was swung and cut through just about anything at a distance. He wanted to add such a feature to his katana so that it could be used in close and medium-range combat. Or to just simply slice deeper into the enemy. Or maybe... he just wanted to look cool.

After finishing the kanji on the first side, he flipped the sword over and began to perform the same actions a second time. He wanted both sides of the sword to mirror each other. The longer he worked on the enchantment, the more he could feel his mana draining. Every enchantment took some mana to create. However, the amount was usually so minimal that it was hard to notice. He'd only ever felt a large drain once before and that enchantment had turned out rather powerful, for the time when he'd made it. Feeling his mana draining filled him with excitement for the potency of the enchantment.

The enchanting was completed without any issues. He looked over the blade and smiled at its appearance. He just needed to do one more thing and the sword itself would be completed. The blade was moved over to the sharpening stones provided by the guild. After wetting the stones with some water, Thomas began the process of sharpening the blade. He very carefully and very deliberately slid the edge of the blade against the stones at the proper angle. He worked from the lowest grit of stone to the highest going from roughly sharpening the edge to refining it. He wanted to bring the blade from dull to razor-sharp.

As he slid the blade along the final sharpening stone for the final time the sword emitted a bright flash of gray light. It was finally finished!