I'd hoped my poleax would retain enough condition to retain its ability even while melted down before we started, but as I saw, no dice. The weapon’s condition had reached zero and its 7 Essence points were reclaimed, which filled me with all sorts of feelings, considering everything we'd been through together. Then again, it was just a tool, and tools were meant to be used and repurposed.

  I noted that Rocky’s Essence cost had already decreased by 2 points. Looks like the cost just ticked down over time continuously.

  I’d already ripped apart my [Uncommon] shirt and hose leggings before arriving—I figured I’d rather avoid causing a scene by doing it in front of them—so I was now at 326/370, leaving me 54 points if I was willing to expend my buffer.

  Which I was. The prospect of gaining an arsenal of ultra-lethal knife-darts outweighed the benefit of having a buffer. I hadn’t really needed that in a long time, anyway.

  Then again…

  I glanced at Aerion, who watched on enthusiastically.

  “Rogar?” I said, turning to the dwarf-like man. “Mind telling me whether you can reforge Aerion’s sword, Aurora?”

  I gestured for Aerion to show the smith her sword. Unsheathing it, she handed it to Rogar pommel-first. Her face was neutral, but there was no mistaking the excitement in her eyes.

  Rogar inspected the blade, holding it like it was some holy object.

  “Magnificent,” he said. “Only an elf could have forged this blade. True Mythril… I suspect I’ll not see another blade like it again.”

  He passed the blade to Philip, who also looked at it with reverence.

  Aerion looked proud, but I could only cringe. “I suppose this means you can’t reforge it, then?”

  The pride in Aerion’s eyes vanished, replaced with a frown of worry.

  “Afraid not, Grug, and that’s not only a matter of skill,” he said, no doubt referencing my ability. “My forge simply isn’t hot enough to reforge the stuff. If you recall, yer blade only had a Mythril coating. Mostly for show. When we reforged it, we lost any benefit it might’ve imparted. Not that such a small amount would’ve done much…”

  “Figures,” I said, glancing at my elf friend. While her face was a mask of stoic non-expression, her ears drooped sadly.

  I squeezed her shoulder. “We’re not nobodies anymore,” I muttered. “We’ll find you a proper forge, and then you’ll have a reforged, Initialized blade that can wipe the floor with Eskil.”

  Aerion nodded, her lips curling upward slightly.

  Of course, finding a forge that would allow a total amateur like me to pound on the blade was… Well, let’s just say it limited the pool, but Aerion didn’t need to know that.

  “Metal’s ready for forging,” Rogar said. “If yer gonna break that crystal, you’d best do it now.”

  “Right,” I said, returning to the forge. “Let’s do this.”

  The process went smoother than last time, and thankfully, there was enough of the Soul Crystal to create several darts worth.

  This was also a good opportunity to test whether I could bring up my Soulweaving interface without having first Initialized gear.

  The answer, as it turned out, was I couldn’t. Rogar began by sprinkling the crystal dust into the smaller blank we’d split from the ingot we’d made of the poleax, and hammering it again and again, folding the metal over.

  It wasn’t very high quality steel, which meant softer metal. Things went quite a lot faster than with Light of the Fearless, mostly thanks to an interesting device Rogar had for shaping cylindrical objects.

  I helped Rogar with the basic shaping, which was the first step. I took his hammer… and smashed the ingot, completely disfiguring the shape.

  “What are you doing!?” Rogar snapped, some of his older persona showing before he corrected himself. “I mean, er… That’s no good at all.”

  “Well, I tried,” I muttered, ignoring him. It seemed my interface did, in fact, only work for objects I’d previously Initialized.

  Which left me with something of an issue. I had to physically touch the glowing red pieces of metal to Initialize them, but I had to Initialize them before we finished the forging process.

  We waited for them to cool slightly, then I took the thickest gloves Rogar had, and quickly touched and Initialized all six of them. Neither Rogar nor Philip said a word as I wrapped up my task, but their incredulous gazes pretty much spelled out what they were thinking.

  I had to admit, I was a little bummed by my findings.

  On the one hand, it made sense that I’d have to Initialize things to unlock the interface. On the other, the stats I was able to modify came purely from the Soul Crystal I’d crushed when we reforged Light of the Fearless.

  Philip worked the bellows while we reheated the newly Initialized darts, as the System called it.

  Steel Dart [Common]

  Made from the remains of an actually useful weapon, this thing… kinda sucks!

  Essence Cost: 4

  Condition: 15/15

  Stats:

  — None

  Abilities:

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  — Ouch! [Foundation - 0]: Inflicts a small wound on touch. Kinda like a bee sting, but bigger.

  I had to admit, as far as crappy [Common] abilities went, this one wasn’t half-bad. In fact, it would synergize quite well with [Gouge] ability I’d picked up from the store.

  — Gouge: Augments any damage inflicted by a tiny amount.

  The moment I picked up the hammer, the Soulweaving Interface came alive, showing the dart in a beautiful rainbow of colors.

  Well, that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Last time, each color represented a stat. I assumed the same was true here… Except this Crystal gave me no stats. Would it suddenly impart stats if I optimized for any particular color?

  My hand remained poised above the metal, unmoving as I tried to sort this out.

  I didn’t want stats. Stats on a thrown weapon were useless, especially since I planned to fire it directly from my inventory. It would never be equipped.

  That said, something told me that optimizing for one stat was better than striking a balance, so that was what I did.

  As for the stat in question—that was a no-brainer. I picked Black. Dominion was the only one I’d even consider.

  I brought the hammer down, pounding out the other colors from the metal. I didn’t even focus on the actual smithing. My ability guided my motions, telling me where to strike, with what force, and rhythm. The best part was I felt each and every action. I was there, present. Observing. I was learning the patterns. Patterns I could later put to use.

  As good as I was, though, I couldn’t beat a machine. I’d just handle the initial shaping, getting the ingot into a roughly cylindrical shape. Rogar’s press would do the rest.

  While I maintained some awareness of my technique, I was more focused on the colors, and stamping out every last trace of the others. I had a hunch as to what these meant, and if I was right… I grew giddy at the prospect.

  The interface vanished as quickly as it had manifested, and the dart was ready for the next step.

  “Solid work,” Rogar said, picking up the ingot with his tongs and inserting it into the press.

  The device basically smashed two halves of a mold together. There were several molds, actually, of various thicknesses. Rogar and I spun a large wheel, which smashed the hot, malleable ingot into the mold, creating a perfectly straight cylinder.

  It only took a few heating passes to get the dart perfect.

  In the downtime, Philip and I crafted the tail fins from some scrap steel Rogar had. Being flat, triangular surfaces, these were a lot simpler to pound out, and we worked together to shape and cut out the pieces.

  Finally, Rogar took a tiny hammer and pounded three fins into the dart at the back, before dunking it in a bucket full of oil. “Couldn’t have done better myself,” he said as the oil vaporized and sizzled.

  I smiled. He didn’t know the half of it. What I’d done was nothing short of miraculous.

  I’d taken the already useful [Gouge] and turned it into something far deadlier.

  Steel Dart [Common]

  Made from the remains of an actually useful weapon, this thing… kinda sucks! But now it has some pretty slick magical abilities that make it… actually kinda awesome?

  Essence Cost: 4

  Condition: 15/15

  Stats:

  — None

  Abilities:

  — Ouch! [Foundation - 0]: Inflicts a small wound on touch. Kinda like a bee sting, but bigger.

  — Burst [Foundation - 0]: Creates a localized explosion on contact. Definitely a lot bigger than a bee sting.

  While the forging process had been more involved than I’d first anticipated, it’d be more than worth it. My darts not only shot out of my inventory at crazy speeds, they could resist more damage before breaking, and they caused wounds and exploded.

  Not freaking bad at all. I was tempted to do the same thing for the other five darts we had to forge, but I kept my curiosity in check. I’d make two others with the same ability, but I had to mess around with other options.

  For the next dart, I concentrated entirely on the gold of Vigor, pounding out all the other colors.

  The result… was surprising.

  Steel Dart [Common]

  Made from the remains of an actually useful weapon, this thing… kinda sucks! But now it has some pretty slick magical abilities that make it… actually kinda awesome?

  Essence Cost: 4

  Condition: 15/15

  Stats:

  — None

  Abilities:

  — Ouch! [Foundation - 0]: Inflicts a small wound on touch. Kinda like a bee sting, but bigger.

  — Mend [Foundation - 0]: Heals the wielder a small amount on contact.

  Decidedly interesting. It healed me upon contact… but I couldn’t very well stab myself, because its other ability would hurt me. Still… With this, I could heal myself by attacking my enemies. A tiny amount, to be sure, but fascinating nonetheless.

  For the next one, I tried splitting Vigor and Dominion 50/50, but that just yielded the same [Gouge] ability the Soul Crystal had to begin with. Apparently, mixing stats diluted the effect too much. At least, at my current level. Was it my own lack of skill at fault here? Or was it the weapon’s [Common] rarity that made it this way?

  Something to play around with, for sure.

  I didn’t bother making another with Passion or Order. The former was useless in a dart, and I still wasn’t sure what the latter did. That was somewhat mind-boggling, considering what I was… There was no chance the stat was useless, but I just didn’t have the luxury of messing around with it right now. Not to mention my Order had already hit its ceiling, and it was a low ceiling right now. To improve it, I’d have to invest in armor that upped that stat at the cost of others.

  I knew that Wisdom let me modify certain characteristics of my magic, so I prioritized blue next.

  The result was again surprising. This time, I got no second ability at all. [Ouch!], already the dumbest name for an ability I’d ever heard, had changed. Now it was [Ouch In So Many Ways!].

  I had to take back my previous thought. This was the dumbest name I’d ever heard.

  — Ouch In So Many Ways! [Foundation - 0]: Gone are the days when abilities dictate what damage gets done where. Now you determine the size and depth of the wound.

  So this one gave me customizability over the original magic. Not unexpected, but it was good to see my guess play out correctly.

  I had one more to experiment with, and it came down to Cunning or Grace. I bet Grace gave the dart an ability that allowed it to fly straighter, or more reliably hit targets somehow. Cunning, though? I didn’t have the faintest idea. Cunning had to do with awareness, but what did that mean in the context of a dart?

  I was about to find out.

  I pounded out all the other colors, leaving only purple, and when it was finished, I got…

  — Extrasensory Perception [Foundation - 0]: On contact, the weapon imparts rudimentary awareness of the immediate area back to the wielder.

  Okay, now that was cool. I was pretty sure that at F - 0, that ‘immediate area’ was probably all of six inches across or something equally useless. I was willing to bet that even at F - Max, it wouldn’t amount to much, but if I ever did this with higher quality metals?

  I couldn’t even imagine the possibilities.

  Grinning from ear to ear, I proceeded to work the remaining three.