Chapter 104. Crafting the Scale Armor
Chapter 104. Crafting the Scale Armor
"That was a pretty bold move you made," Bluedaze said to Jack. "Three gold coins are a substantial sum even for our guild."
"Don't worry, if we lose, you only need to pay the original stake. I will pay the extra two gold coins," Jack replied.
"You have two gold coins?" Bluedaze asked with wide eyes.
Jack answered by taking out two shiny golden coins to show her.
"Hahaha," Silverwing laughed. "I truly haven't made a wrong judgment about you, my friend!"
"Of course, if we win, I expect to take two out of the three gold coins from that annoying Queen as well," Jack said.
Silverwing nodded, "Naturally."
"Who will be joining this operation from your side?" Jack asked.
"Apart from the four of us in this room, Grimclaw will also join," Silverwing answered.
Then he turned to Bluedaze and asked, "Speaking of the fellow, have you managed to get in contact with him?"
"No, he hasn't replied to my messages," she replied. "I have also sent messages yesterday asking our members to keep an eye out for him and to pass along our message. But no one has seen him yet."
"That's odd… Tell Honeycomb to be ready in case we can't find him in time. She is the best Fighter we have in our group after Grimclaw."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that. If we fail, those Wicked Witches might blame us again. This time for not bringing one of our best members," Bluedaze said.
Silverwing nodded. He then said to Jack, "We will be leaving now to make the preparations for the operation tomorrow. What is your plan?"
"I will make my preparations. Where is this ruin we will be meeting at tomorrow?"
"Here, open your map interface, please. I will transfer the coordinates," Sinreaper said as he opened his Map window.
Jack did the same. Not long after, he received a notification that Sinreaper had sent him a coordinate. He accepted it, and a coordinate number appeared in his Map window with directions to that coordinate from his current position.
"So we can send map coordinates other than our current position?" Jack asked.
"Yes, provided that you have marked the place beforehand," Sinreaper said. "And you need to be physically at the place to mark its coordinates."
"That's convenient. This function will be helpful when informing others of an important location we discover," Jack said.
The others nodded, but then he heard Peniel's voice, 'you can only mark a maximum of five locations, though. If you mark a sixth location, the first one will be erased.'
After hearing Peniel's information, he said to the others, "but there will probably be a limit to the number of coordinates we can keep in our map."
"Probably," Sinreaper agreed.
"Okay, then let's meet tomorrow," Silverwing said as he rose from his seat.
After they dispersed, Jack went shopping for cooking ingredients, basic healing potions, and basic energy potions. He still had some iron ores, but he needed more to upgrade his equipment, so he looked for a shop that sold ores. When he found an ore shop, he noticed a smith workshop beside it.
Peniel's voice sounded in his head, 'If you are thinking about upgrading your equipment by smithing, you should use that blacksmith workshop. If you rent one of their special rooms containing advanced tools, you'll have a better chance of success when upgrading equipment."
'Really? I was just about to stock up on iron ore, as upgrading equipment from level 8 upward has an increasing chance of failure. If this smithy can improve my chance of success, it will save me some iron ores.'
"About iron ore, you don't need to stock too much. You still have a lot of unused equipment in your bag, right? You should keep the medium armor pieces for use in the Transformation Cube and dismantle the low-level equipment for materials. You will likely get some iron ore from that."
'Dismantling? I remember you mentioned it before.'
Jack still browsed through the ore shop first to see what was available. Mostly they had iron ore, but there were also six pieces of steel ore. Steel ore was much more expensive than iron ore at two silver coins apiece.
Seeing the steel ore reminded Jack of the blacksmith recipe he had learned for Scale Armor, which required one scale, two iron ores, and one steel ore. He still had the rare material, red scale, from the Lizardman Blood Guard he had fought inside the Trigitech building. Though the recipe mentioned scale and not red scale, he thought it should be usable. Perhaps using that rare scale could even give better results from the smithing.
He purchased 30 iron ores and all six steel ores. If he wanted to buy more of either ore, he would need to wait for them to restock the next day or search for another shop that sold ore.
Jack went next door to the blacksmith workshop. He approached the NPC in charge and asked him about the room that Peniel had mentioned.
The NPC advised him that they had two types of rooms that he could rent; one that contained uncommon blacksmith tools for five silver per hour and one that contained rare tools for 50 silver per hour.
The prices took Jack aback, especially the room with the rare tools. It was half a gold coin just for an hour!
He plaintively asked Peniel, 'How much difference is the effectiveness between uncommon tools and rare tools for blacksmithing?'
'Uncommon tools increase your success chance by 10%, while rare tools increased it by 30%,' Peniel answered. 'But if you are thinking about making that armor recipe with that red scale, I suggest you rent the one with rare tools.'
'Oh? Why is that?'
'Because that rare material is a variant of the uncommon material, scale. It has a chance to produce an upgraded version of the originally intended equipment, and your chance of getting this upgraded version will be better if you use higher grade tools."
After listening to Peniel's explanation, Jack gritted his teeth and paid 50 silver coins to rent the room. He now had less than two gold coins. He would need to earn more coins before the meeting tomorrow, or it would be embarrassing if the White Scarfs people wanted him to show the two gold coins for the bet.
He was brought to a small room with a circular forge in the middle. The NPC activated the room, and an intense fire rose in the center of the forge. Beside the forge was a large anvil, with hammer and tongs, and a small tub filled with cold water to quench hot metals. This professional setting was more than he had expected. Did he have to use all those tools like a real blacksmith? That would be troublesome.
The NPC then left him after reminding him that he had one hour.
Since time was limited, Jack immediately went to work.
He warmed up by making three Whetstones. After familiarizing himself with the tools, he took out the materials for crafting the Scale Armor.
In his blacksmithing interface, he selected the option for the Scale Armor recipe and started the crafting process. The video instructions showed him how to process the iron and steel ores. Each hammering required a particular rhythm, and each heating required synchronized timing. Jack concentrated hard, striving to perform each step perfectly. He heated and hammered until he achieved the necessary shape.
Next, it was time for a scale. With some trepidation, Jack added the precious red scale. He then hammered and heated the combined materials again, slowly, magically, transforming them into a body armor shape.
Although it was not exactly a real blacksmithing process, it was also not a simple click-and-done process. He made sure to make no mistake, especially when dealing with the scale. He had no extra material for a redo.
Finally, it was time to submerge the completed form into the water in the tub.
The water bubbled and hissed, and billows of steam rose as the armor underwent the quenching process.
Jack waited anxiously until something gleaming red arose from the tub. A notification voice was soon announced.