Details and Bell’s upgrade

“The sword itself will be easy enough to create in shape but I need details about whoever is going to use it if you want my best work.” I said honestly.

“Eh? Most smiths just need to know what the weapon is to make an order so why are you different?” he asked curiously but clearly believing me.

Not surprising really as I basically got endorsed by Hephaestus herself because of the comparison. She said that I was the best at level one like I had said so Hroldar and Ogun were very likely to take whatever I said as gospel so long as my reasons made sense.

“Well if you wanted a weapon that was good generally speaking then I wouldn’t need any details like this. I’d simply slap [Durability], [Sharp] and [Resistant] properties onto the blade and you’d have a weapon that was useful in literally anyone’s hands but not the best in anyone’s hand either. What you wanted instead was my best work and that means I need to know things like what stats the person favors, if they block with their weapon regularly, do they have a magic that uses their sword, do they prefer hard straight on attacks or fast shallow ones, things like this. By knowing all this I can make a weapon that is perfect for the job it was needed to perform.” I explained and Hroldar looked amazed.

“Bloody hell lad, that sounds almost like you were trying to make a top rate weapon rather than something for a level four.” he said honestly.

I shrugged “You asked for my best and that is how you get my best. Besides, if I’m going to be the best craftsman in this city I need to strive for perfection even when creating mere silverware.” I said with a grin.

“Ho? Lofty goals I see but you seem to have what it takes to reach them so you’ll hear no nay saying from me. I’ll need a couple days to get the information you need if that’s alright?” He said and I nodded.

He stayed and chatted casually for a bit after that but left since he had stuff he still needed to do as the Captain of his familia besides this visit. I wasn’t joking about the information I asked for either as depending on the answers I had to swap out properties to have ones that fit the wielder perfectly. While there were patterns that every type of weapon was used for normally each wielder of the weapons was unique and differed in ways that needed accounting for when crafting a weapon.-

For example if a sword wielder relied on a shield to block rather than the sword itself I could trade [Durability] for something else like [Severing] or [Bleed] that increased it’s lethality at the cost of longevity. If the weapon was brought for regular maintenance and treated as it was supposed to be though that would hardly be an issue.-

I would like to point out however that even without [Durability] everything I fully refine is already stupidly tough to begin with so even without it the longevity is still great. For example a fully refined piece of pine wood had the toughness to take a hit with a regular steel sword and barely get a scratch, pine is an inherently soft wood mind you. You may be wondering why I hadn’t added any properties to my own weapon since I would obviously know my own information. The answer is simply that there was no point for me to do so right now.-

My weapon was made of materials that were typically used to make second rate weapons which was easily more than good enough by themselves but I had fused several together. In other words my weapon just from a material standpoint was a higher level than I was at the moment without any properties added. Like I said it wasn’t necessary and served no point as I was wasn’t skilled enough to turn it into a proper cursed tool or use it to it’s full potential even if I could, hence pointless. Bells weapons though were a whole other matter.-

Besides the materials innate strength and the edge I gave it and maintained the weapons had room to be improved with properties. The trick was that I had to choose which properties to add as if I wanted to make the weapon the best I could which meant that I had four properties each without risking them being weaker than normal six total if I wanted to sacrifice some power. [Durability] was a must as Bell abused the unholy fuck out of his blades using them to regularly block and redirect attacks. For the dagger I could add [Severing] since according to Bell the dagger was more defensive and evasion based while the sword was mostly for his attacks.-

In other words the dagger was secondary and utility in use and didn’t need attacking properties as much. In the same vein of thought I suppose [Splitting] can also be added so he had an easier time retrieving magic stones since monster bodies can be quite sturdy even after death. Finally I think I can round off the dagger with [Piercing] since he quite favors stabbing things with his dagger. I understand that these properties sound the same but they in fact do different things.-

[Severing] and [Splitting] for example were used to accomplish two separate but similar things. [Severing] for example put emphasis on dividing softer things like skin, flesh, plants and rope. [Splitting] on the other hand was all about the harder stuff like bone, wood and metal, think of an axe if that helps. One is soft and the other hard and it was the craftsman’s job to apply the correct one. Moving on to the sword Bell used I already had [Durability] picked out to go on there but the other three were more tricky as he wasn’t going to only fight one type of enemy in the future.-

[Bleed] was a fairly safe bet since most monsters and ALL people have blood to shed so that was an easy one but the other two were less so. You may think [Sharp] would do but Bell wasn’t ever trying to cut through a monster but was more about opening a bunch of wounds or going straight for the magic stone. His slashes were light but frequent so having a property for cleaving things apart wasn’t the best fit. I ended up going with [Piercing] so he could hit the magic stones easier with lunges that utilized his speed.-

The final property was a pain in the ass to settle on though as there were so many that fit his style but I could only choose one more. We ended up having a discussion about it and he surprised me by choosing one I hadn’t expected as it was close to magical in alignment, [Gravity]. Not to be confused with [Weight] that increased a weapons weight in a straight forward manner. No [Gravity] was an anti-block property as effectively what it did was only applied when swung vertically. Swing up and your attack will be faster than it should like it had less weight and the opposite was true as you swing down your weapon will move faster but feel like it was way heavier upon striking.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep