Abe the Wizard

When Abel opened the sack, he saw there were a total of 150 low-tier spiritual beast crystal cores inside. After being softened with a special potion, they were all merged into the shape of rune signs. He also received a bottle of rune ink. Judging from how big the bottle was, he could probably draw about 200 runes in total.

Before he got to work, he decided to make a little comparison first. He tried comparing the low-tier spiritual beast crystal cores and his synthesized blue howling rabbit crystal core. While the former was a bit inferior in terms of its quality, he could discern that the two were about one level apart from each other.

He was really starting to understand something. If the mission had a total of ten military points as its reward, then it wouldn’t be easy at all. If he had to choose, the easiest would’ve been to fight outside the Miracle City wall, and that’s a very exhausting task in itself.

If it’s about forging and maintaining magic weapons, one must learn to understand how magic weapons were made. That was a job for master blacksmiths, which meant that it was a job for the professionals among the professionals.

Same with the rune-making. Without being directly instructed by a wizard, no one would know how to draw the runes. Like, even if they could, it’d almost be impossible to have a success rate that was at least one-third.

This just showed how tough it was to be on the orc battlefield. With the next three years, if he didn’t have any specialties whatsoever, he would’ve had no choice but to keep fighting on the frontline. Come to think of it, that’s probably why the Miracle City was built in the first place. As dangerous and extremely challenging as it was to be here, it made certain that the one who survived could truly become a battle wizard–not someone who was undeserving of the title he possessed.

Anyways, Abel decided to go back to his own residence. When he arrived at his study room, he took out fifty crystal cores from his own portal bag. It’s been a while since he had last drawn on any crystal cores, but he was confident that he was just as good as before. Like, before he even had possession of the world stone fragment; he already had a very high success rate in his rune drawing.

He was thinking about drawing four different runes. There were 16# lo, 17# lum, 18# ko, and 19# fal. None of them were exactly for attack purposes. To be precise, they were for enhancing different bodily functions within a short period of time, which would then help him with boosting his combat ability.

Actually, these were the first four runes that Abel chose whenever he faced off a strong opponent. That being said, he figured that they would have the highest demand out of all the runes.

As he held a crystal core with his left, he picked up the “Akara’s rune pen” with his right. He dipped the pen in some rune ink, and his eyes observed closely at the crystal core.

Soon, the world around him seemed to be a lot slower. His pen started drawing rapidly on the crystal core. By spreading the mana evenly with his power of the Will, the lines were drawn neatly on the places that they should be at.

Under a flash of light, the #16 lo was drawn in an instance. If Abel had to make an estimate, it probably took about thirty seconds in total. He was really feeling good about himself.

After doing this for about thirty minutes, he had a total of fifty perfectly-drawn runes placed on the table. He wasn’t thinking about using the rest of the crystal cores. At this point, he had no need to practice rune drawing. He was already too good at it. To him, it’d made more sense to give the crystal cores to Wizard Morton, just to show how much of a model disciple he was.

After five days, the rune-making mission was finished. Obviously, he was not going to declare that he finished right away. He didn’t want the others to think of him as a freak. It’s not like he minded being thought of as one, but it was usually a lot safer if he stayed low.

After he was done, he stood up and did some stretching. Next up, he decided to go to the blacksmith department to finish his second mission. He could do it in the Rogue’s Encampment, but there might be a problem if he wasn’t seen by the Miracle spirit.

Out of all the buildings in Miracle City, the blacksmith department was probably the easiest to recognize. It’s the one with smoke coming out of its multiple chimneys. Even if one couldn’t see the building, they could just tell by looking at the sky.

As soon as Abel walked inside, he started to feel something very familiar. The sound of iron clashing against each other. The smell of gunpowder. The fizzing noise the hot metals made when they were placed in cold water. It was just like when he first studied forgery under Master Bentham. Come to think of it, that was a really relaxing time back then. Now, he had way more priorities than he’d like to handle.

A blacksmith apprentice came to greet Abel, “Master Wizard, greeting! Are you here to learn how to forge? With just one military point, you will have access to the furnace here for an entire day. If you want, we’ll also have a professional blacksmith teach you.”

Abel was a bit surprised by the sudden advertisement, “Uh, no. I didn’t come here to learn how to forge. Is that what a lot of wizards do here?”

The blacksmith apprentice explained, “Absolutely, sir. When everyone heard about the great Grandmaster Abel, many wizards started to apply to become blacksmiths themselves. It was the reason we installed extra furnaces around here.”

The “great?” That’s the first time Abel’s heard someone refer to himself like that. Normally, the word “great” was only used to refer to emperors and legendary spirits. He was already a celebrity a while ago, but he’d never expected to be worshipped like this.

On a side note, Abel’s success story had brought what was called a “revolution” to the blacksmith class. Before, there were virtually no human blacksmiths who could control their power of the Will. Anyone who exhibited such abilities all turned to wizardry. Now, since the wizards were starting to place a new focus on becoming blacksmiths, it would certainly help to integrate different techniques and skills together.

Abel said as he took out his military tag, “I received a mission to repair damaged weapons. As you can see, this military tag belongs to me. Please take me to a furnace that’s vacant.”

The apprentice said in surprise, “You are a blacksmith? Most impressive! We do have a lot of wizards who want to be one, but, oh, I’ve said too much…”

“Anyways, please,” the apprentice said as he promptly guided Abel to a furnace, “Master wizard, you’ll not be charged for this furnace for the next month. That is until your mission has ended.”

“Many thanks,” Abel said. He really liked the furnace. All the equipment was there. Even the charcoal was all made with the best ingredients.

“Thank you. You are free to go now.”

Despite having said that, the blacksmith apprentice still wasn’t leaving. Abel understood right away. He wanted to see if a wizard was truly capable of forging. He didn’t like being watched, though, so he just asked him to leave him alone.

“Yes, sir. If you have no more problems, I’ll leave you to your work now.”

After the apprentice left, Abel picked up the heaviest hammer he could find. Still, it was too light to his liking. For a man as muscular as him, he needed a lot more weight to bring out his true potential.