After realizing how little he knew, Abel listened carefully to each one of the masters’ commentaries. As advanced as his “skills” were, he still had a lot to learn in terms of his “knowledge.”
The more he listened to what the masters were saying, the more he was humbled by the profound knowledge that they were sharing. In fact, just by listening to them talk, he felt like he learned things that would have taken him several years to learn. Due to his status, it was very rare to get a chance to get an open lesson like this.
Unlike the other twenty masters, Abel never gave his opinion on any of the pieces that were passed around. The others tolerated this. They were still too shocked about his display just then, so they all tried to avoid having their confidence defeated by asking for his opinion.
Master Morry spoke, “With respect, Master Abel, we all know that you aren’t prepared for this activity. It’s actually a tradition for us to not tell the newcomers about the rules here. It’s meant so that they could show us what they are really capable of. Now that we’ve all known what you can do, I would still like to ask you to present us one of your pieces.”
Abel just thought that he was left out because he was allowed to. After knowing that he still had to participate, he took out a knight’s big sword from his portal bracelet.
When the dwarven masters saw him doing this, they all had a smile on their faces when they saw him using a portal bracelet. As it turned out, he was very good with the elves. Otherwise, he would’ve never got his own portal bracelet, which was not meant to be sold to anyone.
As the knight’s big sword was placed on the table, Master Morry was the first one to examine it. After he was done, he told the dwarven knight that carried the 700-pound hammer to come over.
“Yes, Master Morry?” the dwarven knight came. He thought that he was going to be scolded, so he looked kind of worried.
“You! Hurry up and test this sword for me!” Master Morry said impatiently when he saw how timid and slow the dwarven knight was being
As long as you were a dwarf, even if you couldn’t forge, you were educated about the fundamentals of weapons. It was the same for this dwarven knight. As soon as he took the knight’s big sword, he could look into it with his combat qi.
When the dwarven knight inserted his combat qi into the big sword, the blade of the sword was instantly covered in frost.
Master Morry spoke out immediately when he saw this, “That’s 15, isn’t it? This sword can deal about 15 points of freezing damage.”
Hoover spoke out, “Just give the big sword to me. I’ll know its stats once I’ve handled it.”
“Oh, yeah, right!” the other master blacksmiths all laughed together, “A knight’s big sword for a knight’s head commander. How fitting!”
Hoover then took the sword over. He flicked its body with his finger, then a freezing qi suddenly engulfed him. His entire hand was almost frozen.
“Wow!” Hoover dropped the sword from his hand, then tried to get rid of the freezing qi with his own combat qi, “This is some crazy stuff going on here.”
“How is it?” Master Morry asked.
“That’s 21 freezing damage she can deal. This beauty is just as strong as an official wizard’s ice element spell. If you can’t guard yourself with your combat qi, you are going to be caught in it for a very, very long time.”
There was a part of Master Hoover’s explanation that wasn’t specific enough. Regarding combat qi guarding against the freezing qi, he was talking only about combat qi at least in his own current level. If the combat qi was anything below that of a knight’s commander, then the person in contact with this blade would’ve stood no chance against it.
After Hoover got his turn, all the masters began to examine this knight’s big sword. They were all very focused. It was like they wanted to learn something by looking into this blade.
“Alright, why don’t we all share our own inputs on this sword right here?” Master Morry said as he was the host.
“Uh, for starters, this is made of fine steel,” one of the master blacksmiths began to speak.
Another master blacksmith spoke, “Oh, yeah, fine steel. Master Abel, you didn’t happen to get the fine iron from a hematite ore, did
you?”
That wasn’t meant to be a joke. In fact, it was more of a statement than a question. After all, Abel really was just about to make a fine iron piece with his hands just then.
“It’s sharp, too. I can’t tell how much damage a fine steel sword could actually deal, but I’d say that it’d be at least 50.”
“Hey, do you guys notice something strange about this big sword? I think Maser Abel did a lacing on it, but I can’t find any slots on it. I can’t find any magic gemstones, either.”
“Well, yeah. He has definitely laced it. If there aren’t any rune patterns on it, there’s no way that the sword could deal ice damage.”
Despite all the commentaries that were made on the knight’s big sword, no one except Hoover could provide a stat on the amount of damage that it could do. Even then, he was wrong about the amount of freezing damage that it could deal.
Still, Abel was pretty surprised by how observants the masters were. It was not just the techniques of the Holy Continent that he had used on the knight’s big sword. He also integrated a lot of the stuff he learnt from the dark world. Apart from that, as wrong as these masters were with some of the stuff that they were saying, they were that not that far off either.
Finally, when all the master blacksmiths had their eyes on Abel, a smile appeared on his face.
Abel said with the knight’s big sword in his hand, “This blade can deal a damage of about 57 points. After I added a slot to it with my special technique, it can now deal a total of 21 freezing damage.”
Then, after saying that, he placed the knight’s big sword back into his portal bracelet. All the master blacksmiths looked very disappointed.
“Please, Master Abel!” Hoover came in and asked, “I still have so many questions about that sword! Can I have a bit more time to look
at it?”
“Oh. As long as you want, Master Hoover,” Abel said, then took the knight’s big sword out again. Since Hoover has saved his life before, he was never going to turn him down for something like this.
“Wow! Ha, ha ha! Thanks, Master Abel!” Hoover laughed. He didn’t expect Abel to do this much for him in front of the others, “Good on you! By the way, don’t worry about what you have in the Duchy of Carmel. I’ve got it all covered for you.”
At the same time, all the human master blacksmiths started glaring at Hoover. The other masters didn’t know about it, but it was no secret that intermediate Wizard Morton, who was Abel’s mentor in wizardry, was currently living in the Duchy of Carmel. With this kind of connection in place, Hoover was bound to gain Abel’s favor at almost any given time.
Abel whispered to Hoover as he suddenly remembered something, “Uh, well, Master Hoover, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask you about. I’m kind of stuck somewhere between a knight’s commander and a knight’s head commander. I was hoping that you could help me to do something about
it.”
Hoover’s eyes started widening for a second. He was starting to lose confidence when he heard about this. He was there when Abel just became a knight, and now only two years had passed, he was already asking to become a knight’s head commander.
Just what in the world? And this young man was also a master blacksmith and a wizard. If there was anything that Hoover could beat him at, it would be his progress as a knight. But now, even that was about to come to an end.