System Change

With his thoughts gathered and new plans loosely laid out, time flew by. During that time, Derek slowly checked off one box after another. First came Brandi’s birthday, which they celebrated by having Silvi make her a delicious cake and gifting the smith with even more materials to choose from—materials that Derek had painstakingly bought and traded for from Tyron.

During that time, Brandi even finished the project that had been giving her a headache, then moved on to some new ones. She had created a pretty great pair of gloved bracers. Usually, the gloves and the bracers would be separate pieces of armor, but she had run into an issue etching all the runes she needed on the back of the gloves—and doing the runesmithing on the front wasn’t an option, as the runes would eventually come off with the wear and tear. Then, there was the matter of placing the mana cores. There just wasn’t enough room on the gloves for everything.

So, to combat this problem, Brandi added a pair of bracers to the mix and turned them all into a single piece of armor—well, a single piece for each arm and hand. Once she added the bracers, the rest of the process had been smooth sailing for her. She was able to etch the runes with room to spare, and it was no problem fitting the cores on, either.

Now, what exactly was so special about the armor that she had to do such things? Well, she had combined wind element mana cores to the drake hide to create them.

She had piggybacked off of some of her last inventions, the boots with fire cores used for boosts, and gloves with wind cores for direction. An issue she had with the gloves after updating them was their durability. She solved this issue with the drake hide. However, she hadn’t just left it at that. Instead, she wanted to create something that could be used in combat as well.

So now, she had a pair of gloves—and bracers—that not only helped direct her when she flew with her boots, but also allowed her to release actual deadly attacks. One of the most common skills for wind-based users was the Wind Blade. It was one of Rayna’s go to moves, and one that Brandi had seen over and over. Now, with nothing but the gloves, she could release wind blades at a frightening speed that was comparable to Rayna’s own Wind Blades.

Both Brandi and Derek saw this as a great success. However, there was one thing that disappointed the both of them. She hadn’t received an Achievement for creating the items out of the drake hide. So, her version of the ‘Draconic Infusion’ Achievement that Roman had received would have to wait until she was confident and skilled enough to create something truly unique with materials from the wyverns.

It would come eventually, and at the rate she was progressing… soon. So, neither of them were all too worried about the fact that she hadn’t gotten the Achievement. That was also if she could get it, as Tyron had crafted items from the wyverns, and he had said nothing about the Achievement. Then again, he mostly crafted things he knew—with the only difference being the material used. He never really created anything truly imaginative. So, Derek figured that was why he hadn’t received the Achievement, but Brandi would.

Sure, Harbinger was an amazing legendary weapon, but it was created as nothing more than a standard glaive that happened to be made out of the dark wyvern and infused with Derek’s own mana. Tyron knew what worked for him, so that’s what he stuck with—and Derek couldn’t complain about that. He loved his glaive, after all. But Brandi was on a completely different level when it came to imagination.