Journeyman Smithing
[Strength raised by 1]
[Endurance raised by 1]
Receiving these stat notifications for the third time, I simply let the hammer fall from my hands before lying down on the ground and shuddering tiredly. This was one of the rare occasions in which my body was actually burning and throbbing from exhaustion, ignoring the use of First-Aid or even the healing spell Oleander casts over me. It sucked eggs, hard.
[You have been afflicted with the Debuff: Fatigued. Your physical stats will be halved for: 3hrs. Sleeping can shorten the duration of your affliction]
"I've been debuffed from exhaustion," I inform the others as I crawl backwards on my elbows to the far side of the smithy, stretching out in the cooler air as far from the forge or furnace as possible. "I need to sleep… for a couple of hours… to get rid of it. Let the steels air… cool to soften."
Then I fell asleep even with my eyes open.
What felt like only a few moments later I found myself sitting upright with a short gasp, looking around to find that the sky had darkened considerably into late evening. The others and even the local blacksmith were all hanging out on the other side of the smithy, though, gathered around a small table eating and drinking while sharing stories and jokes. I suddenly felt incredibly hungry as I climbed slowly to my feet.
"How are you feeling, sleeping beauty?" The usually quiet Stonewall asks when I arrive at the table and wordlessly grab a small loaf of bread and an entire kettle of tea to start eating and caffeinating. I simply narrowed my eyes at him while chewing and drinking at almost the same time.
[Overeating Leveled]
[+12XP]
"I feel absolutely wonderful," I say after I eating not just that loaf of bread but a large slice of some roasted meat and then another small loaf of bread. None of the food or tea lasted for more than a minute. "You ready? You've got a craftiness title so you have to help me finish the shield. Oleander, got any mana transferring skills?"
Caught off guard by the question because she had been eating, Oleander takes a few moments to reply with, "No, but it will probably be easy enough to learn. You want me to fuel Stonewall since he is a magic inhibited race?"
"Yes, ma'am," I reply happily, hoping to further increase the benefits Stonewall receives from the new shield. If I was right, based on the pieces from his last shield and how the new steel weapons recently had turned out, this shield could easily do exponentially more damage and defense as well as durability than the last.
Mostly because I really was going to go all out on this project.
The first outer layer was already a folded sheet of one thousand layers that had been heated and slow cooled twice to make it a 'soft' steel. Now it was time to start making the shield spikes. Just to conserve time, though, I had the others and Stonewall each craft three three-thousand-layer stakes, leaving me with five to craft on my own.
Since they would do the most damage, my five would be the centerpiece for the shield's spikes. Since there were thirty-five instead of fifteen, this time, there would be two more sets of five offset to the sides above and below the very middle stake in my central 'X' set. This would be the main exponential increase in damage on top of the absurd weight.
Once the stakes were done, we had to spend almost twenty minutes alone waiting on Oleander to work out a mana transfer method through manually fusing sensing, imbuing, syncing, and then both draining as well as refilling. Once she worked out the method, all by herself, she even acquired a mastery skill and title about mana conversion.
Pretty much as soon as she had worked out the method of supplying mana to another person the rest of us took around another half hour working out how to do it ourselves. None of us got any titles for it but I, as a classless, acquired the same skills and fusion that Oleander used to make the mastery skill. Hers, though, started at ten-percent buffs while mine were only five.
Whether this was due to her class, race, or the title we did were not sure because there was no explanation but her title DID increase mana, healing, and mana control in general.
[Successfully Crafted: Burning Ancient Shield Spike]
[Saved Quick Crafting Recipe: Burning Ancient Shield Spike]
[+1500XP*5]
[Leveled Up]
[All stats raised by 1]
[Agility has reached 200 points]
[Acquired Agility Perk: Superhuman Senses]
[+500XP]
[Superhuman Senses: After achieving a speed of thought and action far beyond the abilities of the common man, all of your physical senses are heightened a further 10% while your speed of vision, thought, and action are increased 10% more. Thanks to your natural control over your mind and body, your sense of pain is also dulled by 10%. +20 Imperial Reputation]
[+1500*5 Blacksmithing XP]
[Blacksmithing Leveled]
[+50XP]
[Blacksmithing Upgrade: Journeyman Smithing]
[+100XP]
[Journeyman Smithing: Now that you have proven your abilities as a craftsman are beyond that of a mere novice or apprentice, your future works in your travels help you to learn more varieties of metals and methods to employ in your smithing. All metal related crafts are now made 10% stronger and 10% more easily while you seek out a permanent place to hone your craft. All metal crafts below the grade of Signature Craft: Ancient Burning Fuller Bastard now reward halved experience]
"Thank you, sweet RNGeezus," I sigh softly now after reading my new gains from creating a base stake that did eighty-three damage in my hands on top of fifty fire damage. The others were all either done or finishing up as well, which meant that I could mass temper the ones everyone else made. Then we finally reheated the front plate.
The front plate was an immense one-inch thick square with five-foot sides that, once Stonewall got glowing a bright orange, we laid out on the ground beside the smithy. Using long pairs of tongs, Stonewall and I both held and channeled shield spikes while Papi once again did the honors of using his pick-hammer to hammer the stakes through the front plate. Using Lil's and Agnes' magic to hold the pierced stakes in place after all thirty-five had been set, Stonewall and I both rush through the process of heating and hammering the back inch of the stakes into thick round rears.
Next came the most arduous process of all, sheeting and folding and repeating those steps on three different fifty-pound blocks of steel. Once Stonewall and I had made three three-thousand-plus layers plates of steel, we both received the same three sets of stat increases while everyone who fed us mana also received magic stat increases. Now, though, came the most important part.
Wiring these three three-inch thick plates that were roughly three-foot squares together in a tight stack, I let the weakest magic users in the group expend their mana heating the steels up from cold without the forge.
Taking up a round headed but flat faced sledge the smith used for large projects, I used five light strikes around the intersect of four tightly wound cables and then dead on the center even lighter before simply smashing the cabling with a heavy Force Strike.
Using the same hammer but without the use of skills, I work the bonding plates into one another and outward from the center. This process was insanely arduous even while the others fueled Stonewall with mana. After most of an hour of hammering into the night I had finally bonded the three plates into one five-and-a-half inch plate of over ten thousand layers.
[Strength raised by 1]
[Endurance raised by 1]
[Willpower raised by 1]
[Intelligence raised by 1]
Now, we once again rested and gave the blacksmith a thousand gold then and there to spread around the village as an apology for our late work. I even spotted him a hundred gold for letting us continue to use his facilities while it was nearing midnight. Afterward, we placed the ten-thousand-layer plate on top of the thousand-layer spiked plate out in the yard and set to work in the much easier task of bonding the front plate, the mushrooming of the stakes, and the numerically impenetrable back plate of the shield.
"Temper it," I order Stonewall, collapsing once again under the immense pressure of continued work with little food and rest. I had avoided casting First-Aid more frequently that between stages as much as I could, but there was no way I could have gone as long as I did without borderline abuse at the very least. However, it was worth it.
[Successfully Crafted: Explosive Ancient Mobile Fortress Shield]
[+6600XP]
[Leveled Up]
[All stats raised by 1]
[+6600 Journeyman Smithing XP]
[Journeyman Smithing Leveled x3]
[+275XP]
[+6600 Enchanting XP]
[Enchanting Leveled x8]
[+120XP]
[Acquired Title: Expert Blacksmith]
[+250XP]
[Expert Blacksmith: Rare. Passive. In recognition of your Signature Craft: Explosive Ancient Mobile Fortress Shield, you are now recognized as nothing less than an Expert Blacksmith regardless of previous skills or achievements as well as any lesser crafts you create. +10% efficiency in all metal crafts as well as +10% strength of stats/effects/XP of all crafts involving metal as well as +5% overall for magic metal crafts. +30 Imperial Reputation]
I could tell that I was not the only one experiencing these gains as everybody was looking at their own sets of notifications of stats and levels from our shared efforts in this craft. It, because Stonewall and the others mentioned 'Adept' instead of 'Expert' it seemed like their title rewards were a lesser version of my own. However, we shared the same XP.
The shield itself was nothing short of amazing because of the compounding affect of everything we made and literally smashed together. The sheer physical damage of our two-thirty-pound wall shield was three hundred and ninety-nine by itself.
The burning damage and the shield's natural aspects had also coupled together, creating a thirty-percent chance to trigger a ten-foot explosion of kinetic-thermal energy with a combined fire and force damage equal to its physical attack.
However, the current level of Stonewall's primary offensive Shield Guardian skill, Shield Bash, did one-fifty-percent damage. One-fifty-percent on three-nine-nine was five-nine-eight. Stonewall now had the potential to one-hit a hobgoblin warrior and probably cripple a Chieftain with a single single skill.
Maybe even one-hitting a Chieftain if the Explosion was triggered! This was simply the attack power of this Shield Guardian restricted weapon which also required one hundred Strength to wield. The defensive power of the shield was equal to its physical attack, meaning he could potentially block the elite berserker undead's double spinning attack on Easy and Normal Mode.
Despite everything the others thought, thought, the shield itself was not complete. All of its current stats and affects were its natural abilities thanks to skill, magic, and a compiling of Crafty perks just from being made. Now, though, it was time for the others to finally feed ME mana.
The process of integrating mana as well as my awareness into the shield required twice as much mana as I had to offer, completely draining Stonewall, Go, and even Papi before Ivana finally stepped into play. Once I was finally in, though, I burned up ten mana per second just studying the seemingly infinite layers of steel and their various contents and qualities.
[Learned Metal Material Enchantment: Natural Strength Enhancement]
[+100XP]
Ivana, Lil, and Merch were all depleted in this process before both Agnes and Oleander as our purer mage builds both stepped up to the plate. Using all three of our mana pools to fuel two enchantments, I simply state, "Natural Strength Enhancement." The physical defense and attack of the shield immediately rose by one hundred apiece.
[+1000 Enchanting XP]
[Enchanting Leveled x2]
[+40XP]
"MY MASTERPIECE IS COMPLETE!" I cry out to the world, ignoring the annoyed looks of my companions who had also helped and shared in the benefits. However, now, I simply pretended to collapse on the ground then and there and log out.
*