Empty Barrels

The next day as Shui and Yur went to Bartos' forge. They heard a loud voice that seemed to be arguing with him. Curious, the two carefully went closer to eavesdrop.

"Bartos! Must you be so stubborn? I'm offering to buy your little artifact."

"Offering? Why does it sound like you think I should be overjoyed to sell something to you? Much less at the price you're giving."

"Hmph, you seem to have gotten more arrogant lately. You think you're the only blacksmith in the clan?"

"No, so why don't you bother someone else?"

"You!"

"If you have nothing better to say, can you move out my way? I have better things to do."

The person who was arguing with Bartos realised he wouldn't make any progress so he eventually left.

"Master, who was that?" Yur asked.

"Oh, you two are back. Just another elder bothering me."

"Oh, are they still refusing to pay?"

"No, but they're asking for some ridiculous discounts."

When Bartos had asked Shui if he would be okay making artifacts for the clan, he replied that it would be fine as long as he was paid. However, even though the most stubborn of the foolish elders had agreed to pay, they wouldn't pay the full amount. Additionally, they were even threatening other people who wanted to do proper business with Bartos.

"Those old guys are really stubborn. Have you gotten any more requests from the clan?"

"No, it's been a week since the last one."

Bartos made more than sufficient funds by auctioning his artifacts so he had no problem if those in the clan didn't do business with him. However, it did hurt his pride when he was given a request and then it was cancelled due to them 'changing their mind'. As such events became more frequent before all of the orders eventually stopped coming in, Bartos couldn't help becoming bothered by it.

Though they were annoyed by the situation, they weren't going to bend over backwards for any stupid elders. Shui did find it odd though. Even if Bartos was of the Heaven clan, he was free to leave at any time. Therefore, it wouldn't be surprising if he got fed up and left the clan, so Shui wondered why the elders were so stubborn and why no one was trying to stop them.

Despite the situation as it was, Shui was still able to do his work. Since he wasn't strong enough, the weapon and armour artifacts he made were never as good as those made by Bartos, so he ended up specialising in support artifacts. Due to this, Shui grew increasingly familiar with jewellery since they were the most common form for support artifacts.

For the earrings, he planned on making one set of earrings for the twins. One of the earrings would be made of frost hawk's beak while the other would be made of ice cat's claws. Though pair items were usually made with complementary materials, Shui chose to use two evolved beasts who were competitors in nature. By utilizing the conflicting nature of the items and the twins, he planned on creating a synergetic effect. In other words, their differences wouldn't conflict but rather make up for the weaknesses of each other. Of course, coming up with an idea like this should have been impossible for Shui at his young age, but he had the Primordial Library to learn from.

While the idea was innonative, a synergetic effect wouldn't be the sole result that could occur from using the two materials, so in addition to other materials he would use to reduce the opposition between the two, he also planned on inscribing the basic inscription of 'Link', to the earrings. With this inscription, not only would a bond be formed between the two earrings to help facilitate the combination, the twins would also be able to sense the condition of each other.

This would be his first official commission so he worked very hard to ensure he wouldn't mess it up.

As Shui focused on making the earrings, there were those who had malicious intent towards Bartos, and their leader was one of the three top forge masters in the clan, Lus. Lus was the second son of Nalos, but he was never considered more talented than Nate or more popular than Suiri when they were young. Even as one of the top three forge masters, Lus was still less influential than even Iris and was behind Bartos in skill, but he could never accept it.

Lus believed himself to be very smart. Though he was less skilled than Bartos, by currying favour with elders he had more influence than him, and though he was less influential than Nate, due to his dealings with most of the elders and the status of his son, he couldn't be punished by anyone other than Nalos or the High elder. He had reached a rather luxurious status but he still wasn't satisfied; he was always looking for more ways to increase his authority. And so he would definitely not waste a chance to suppress Bartos.

He knew better than anyone else that Bartos couldn't have forged the harmony series, but there were hard facts suggesting he was behind it so he used it to his advantage. If Bartos had weaker knees his scheme wouldn't have worked, but he knew that not to be the case. There was also a chance that some other master had requested Bartos to sell the artifacts for him, so he didn't rashly openly confront Bartos. However, he believed it more likely that Bartos had discovered the works of a dead forge master and was selling them under his name, an idea he was more likely to carry out.

"Soon, very soon, you'll be kneeling before me."

Lus was sure, that the scheme he thought he had made would further his status. He was sure everything was going the way he planned.

A week after Shui began working on the earrings, Kate advanced to the sixth level in the Mortal Realm and the first thing she did was to look for him to spar.

"I suppose I can play with you a little."

"Hmph, we'll see who's playing with who."

Though her cultivation had gone up, they were at the same level so Shui didn't expect there to be much of a difference in terms of the result. However, even though she was obviously not used to the sixth level yet, she had taken his advice and moved more unpredictably. Normally, this would be very hard to do since there was a wide difference between understanding and execution, but for Kate it was easy. She had been told by her instructor to think about her moves before she executed them and so though it only happened for a split-second, she was always wasting time thinking of her next move instead of actually doing it.

However, after losing to Shui she stopped trying to think about her moves and just did whatever her gut feeling told her to do. This quickly increased her fighting ability and reaction speed which made it hard for Shui to predict her moves. Even so, he could still do it since he had been watching her for far too long.

'To think being simple-minded would work so well for her.'