Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 119 Sword Smithing

Within the spectator area, the various members of Atid's dojo that had opted to watch the Forging Event could be seen mostly lowering their heads or cringing in shame. All of a sudden, they had become the targets of the entire arena's jealousy, bitterness, and unwillingness to accept Elizabeth's situation. Atid had it worst of all, as he was relatively well known in the Martial Society and the exasperated crowd as a collective didn't care to offend him with their off-hand comments.

"She's already that insane without help?! Imagine how amazing she'd be if she didn't have the backing of a backwater's faction and learned from the best of the best!"

"Imagine? Are you r.e.t.a.r.ded? Ten King Stage Monster Cores says she won't stick with such a worthless mid-size faction after the tournament ends."

"Hahaha… I wouldn't dream of betting against the obvious..."

Conversations like those plagued the grand majority of the arena for a solid minute before the interviewer left the compet.i.tor's area and the announcer prompted another buzz to announce the start of the third and Final Stage. The announcer said, "To finish off the Forging Event, the final competing hundred smiths will be given twenty-five minutes to complete an entire artifact. The competing smiths will be given the option to make their selection of items now and after two minutes pa.s.s, the Final Stage will commence."

As the announcer's words concluded, one hundred attendants brought with them tablets to the various compet.i.tors to process their requests. The same attendant that Elizabeth called during the second round was a.s.signed to her, and after returning to her side, the attendant handed Elizabeth a tablet and stood by in case she had any questions.

Elizabeth scrolled through the various materials listed in the tablet and quickly decided on four materials before handing over the tablet. As the attendant curiously looked over her choices whilst making his way back to fetch her materials, he had to stop dead in his tracks as a look of horror came upon his face. Breaking out into a stutter, the attendant turned to face Elizabeth and said, "You… are y-you sure y-you wnt to r-reque-st these?"

Biting his lip and digging his nails into his left hand out of pressure, he acted to forcefully calm down before taking a deep breath and saying, "Not to be rude… but, if you ruin the materials without anything to show for it, the higher-ups in charge of the tournament will hold you accountable for paying the materials..." The attendant knew Elizabeth was a G.o.dsent heavenly talent when it came to forging, but as someone who had experienced the past couple Wus.h.i.+ Tournaments as an attendant, he knew that first-timers would take this time to try their hand at fooling around with precious materials; not knowing of this rule.

It wasn't that he didn't believe in Elizabeth's skills as a smith as she had proven herself both in the first two rounds as well as through her nonchalance. It's just that the materials she requested… the attendant wasn't even sure if elder Spirit Realm smiths would be able to make anything of use if only given twenty-five minutes. Although he wanted to help her out, unfortunately, the shock he was under made his words come across as belittlement…

Elizabeth didn't mind the attendant's words, she just nodded her head and said, "Yeah, I'm sure. I'll be making a sword, so it shouldn't be a problem to finish within twenty-five minutes~" In her mind, making a sword const.i.tuted as a small artifact. She felt that by telling the attendant she would "merely" be forging a sword, that he'd calm down. Her obliviousness reached new bounds as she succeeded in doing the complete opposite…

For a second the attendant's perception and reality clashed as his mind skipped over that side comment. But, after he went over to retrieve the materials Elizabeth requested, as he spoke out the words, "...and five kilograms of Evergreen Copper." Both the attendant and the man in charge of the resources for the tournament had odd looks sp.a.w.n on their faces. The head of resources asked, "Did you read that correctly? Is it five kilograms or point five kilograms?"

At that moment, the attendant's head short-circuited upon understanding that Elizabeth wished to use Evergreen Copper as her source material. He just mindlessly nodded, and responded in a monotone, "F-five kilograms… To make a sword..."

Rubbing is forehead in expectation of this playing out very, very, ... , very poorly for whoever was dumb enough to think so highly of themselves, the head of resources could do nothing but helplessly leave to retrieve Elizabeth's materials. A couple seconds later, the attendant delivered Elizabeth her materials and downtroddenly walked off the arena. He sighed at the thought of a talent as great as Elizabeth losing her momentum by making a fool out of herself, as practically anyone that heard what she was planning to do would respond in the exact same way.

Soon after her materials were delivered, the announcer proclaimed that the two minutes of intermission were over and that the Final Stage began. For the first time, Elizabeth was excited to take part in the Event as she herself picked something that would at least challenge her current skill set as a smith.

She began by casting the five-kilogram chunk of Evergreen Copper Ore into her furnace and after an extreme control-dependent procedure, she finally took it out of the furnace and to the anvil to begin shaping the refined metal into the general form of a sword. In the refinement and shaping process, eight whole minutes were consumed.

Taking the base sword back into the flames to ease the process of engraving, Elizabeth took to her inscriptions pen and elected to inscribe a basic Neutral Augmentation Enchantment atop the surface of the sword. Completely out of Elizabeth's expectations, as she finished inscribing the last couple strokes of the final inscription layer, her Enchanting Skill both surpa.s.sed Level 10 to enter the Master Rank whilst also finally bringing all her Enchanting Principles to Basic-tier.

[Alert! Breakthrough from the Mortal Rank of Enchanting into the Master Rank complete!!!

With Macro/Micro-Transmission surpa.s.sing Basic Tier, all Enchanting Principles rise to above Basic Tier

Enchantment Level 10 (53,000/68,750)

Current Effect: High-Peak Grade Mortal Enchantments inscribed by the user come out 10% more powerful.

Hidden Quest: Enchanter Rank Milestone #1 (Complete)

Difficulty: D

Degree of Completion: Par

Objective: Reach Basic-tier Proficiency in all Principles of Enchanting✔

Description: It took you long enough to reach Basic Tier...

Reward: Choice of all Mortal Grade Enchantments for one type of elemental energy

Bonus: None; do better next time!]

Although she didn't get nearly as much experience engraving inscriptions for her Forging profession, her Enchanter skill was still being cultivated as the process was essentially the same; albeit much easier. Moreover, as she began inscribing on objects of different sizes, her Macro/Micro Transmission Principle was finally trained to reach the level of the rest of her principles of Enchanting.

Content with her advancement, Elizabeth moved on to the Synchronization phase of the forging process. Pa.s.sing along her Neutral Magic along the half-finished sword, she ensured there was nothing else that she could possibly do to augment her refinement rate or engravings before setting aside the base of the sword and reaching over for a different material she had requested.

Atop the table containing the other items Elizabeth requested, there was a small block of wood. Using her various smithing tools, Elizabeth cut, fitted, and roughly polished off the wood in preparation of turning it into her sword's handle. She quickly refined the impurities out of the wood before affixing it into place on the sword itself.

At this point, the sword could have been called complete, but Elizabeth still had several materials she had yet to finish using… With just over ten minutes remaining, Elizabeth took hold of the Attribute-less King Stage Monster Core she requested and Tempered the sword with it. The various engraving she had etched onto the sword began glowing and the intensity only increased as she used up more and more of the energy within the Monster Core.

As Elizabeth moved to finished the tempering process, the sword lying before her suddenly exploded with a pulse of bright light so intense it momentarily overpowered the rays of the sun up in the sky. However, even with the sword's creation technically finished by the traditional methods of magical smithing, there were still about two minutes left before the Final Stage concluded.

Smiling at the thought that she could try her hand at the Supplementary Forging Principle of Sharpening, Elizabeth happily reached over for the final object she requested, a Spiritual Whetstone, and added the final touches to her prized sword. Running along the length of the sword's double-bladed edge, Elizabeth alternated between sharpening the left and right sides of the sword. By the time a buzz calling for the end of the Stage rang across the arena, the sword in Elizabeth's hand seemed to s.h.i.+ne with a deadly light even without her touching it.

For this Final Stage, Elizabeth actually managed to somewhat put a dent in her reserves of Inner Strength, so instead of continuing to practice Enchanting with the various disks she still had on hand, she focused on meditation as the judges evaluated her work. Not even bothering to wait for her attendant to come on the stage to take her sword, Elizabeth entered meditation and missed the priceless reaction of total disbelief her attendant expressed after seeing the work she managed to complete.

Never had this poor attendant been more terrified than at this very moment as he walked over to Elizabeth's side. What was he to do? Disturb the demon meditating before him to ask if it was ok to take the sword? Even from a distance, he could feel a threat coming from the sword as if it would cut him just from looking at it… However, Elizabeth had been nothing but cooperative since the start of the Event and with her so casually meditating on the main stage, his judgment compelled him to feel that it would "probably" be alright to just take the sword without bothering her. As he did, however, his nervousness caused him to fidget about and he actually ran his skin by the sharpened edge of the blade!

'f.u.c.k!' The attendant cursed his carelessness internally, yet as he moved to stop the blood from trickling down his arm, he felt his heart stop as Elizabeth's eyes had opened and were staring in a manner that he could only describe as "menacingly." Of course, Elizabeth was only squinting in amus.e.m.e.nt for how silly her attendant composed him.

She got up from her stool, which succeeded in terrifying the attendant even more so than before. But fortunately, before his heart gave out, Elizabeth told him to sit down on the stool for a second. Hesitantly, he followed her orders whilst still being terrified by her, but along with those emotions, there was a hint of confusion. In the next moment, when he watched Elizabeth materialize some needles on his hands, he went completely pale and enter stasis.

But after being treated by her Acupoint for what seemed to be a fraction of a second, the attendant finally stopped with feeling terrified. He watched as Elizabeth took the sword into her hands and cleaned off his blood from it and after being told, "Here you go~ be careful this time~"

He silently made his way over to the judges' panel. After confronting Elizabeth, who didn't seem to care that he had tainted what was obviously a treasured sword and had even healed him, the conflict between his expectation of her fury and the reality of the situation caused him to not know how to react. Thus, his capacity to feel as a whole shutdown to preserve his sanity…