Runesmiths around Vivi jumped into action. Frewell and his new dwarf friend warmed their base swords with heat guns. They sharpened their carving knives and readied themselves for long carving sessions. They sat comfortably in the shade of their canopies.

Vivi summoned her sack of ether roots. It was larger than the portable forge. Every root inside was at least a mid-tier ether root. Red mithril, rainbow-colored ensium, a few adamantite roots. The rarest roots she’d found were orange palladium: a sturdy root similar to iron, but an upgrade in essentially all ways. In the surface, palladium roots costed around two hundred ether. Here, Vivi had bought them for a hundred each.

She’d spent over six thousand ether on ether roots alone in preparation for the competition. If she was going to enter a competition, she at least wanted to enter with a serious product: a three-runed sword with respectable ether roots accompanying a strong metal.

Crafting another three-runed sword would probably take her multiple attempts. She had a week of time. And Vivi wanted to make sure that the amount of ether roots would not be what stopped her from succeeding. Investing in ether roots was worth it.

She tightened the first red mithril root in the vise, stretched her fingers, and lined up her crochet hooks of different sizes. Lucius, initiate the root.

Lucius focused. The disdain and rivalry he felt toward Vivi’s opponents was forgotten as he focused entirely on his flow of ether. Lucius was a good assistant. Vivi fully trusted him. The ether root cracked open, and Vivi let her hands into work.

Not one minute into the process, before she could even get to the first branches, Frewell glanced in her direction and said, “Ah, I see. We’re dealing with a witch. What the hell is this?”

“Is that an ether root?” the dwarf asked. “Is she sculpting something? Gardening, perhaps?”

This will be a long week, won’t it… Vivi thought.

“Focus up,” Lucius said. “They can laugh at us now. But what about when the sword is done? They’ll stay in low split while we move up. You’ve already crafted two three-runed swords. A third one is inevitable.”

Vivi would have nodded, but she was already lost in focus. The red mithril grew under the facets’ bright and scorching glare. It was time to shape the first branches.

Vivi focused on the vision in her head. The image of a sword was there. Some ideas were missing—the small details that Vivi trusted herself to figure before the time came. The general idea of the sword, however, was clear.

The judges of the competition, if Vivi understood correctly, would pick the winning sword through two criteria. The sword’s strength and sharpness, of course, but also, perhaps even more importantly, beauty.

Vivi didn’t just need to create a sword that could one-shot bosses. She needed to craft a showcase sword.

That was Grandpa’s term. A showcase sword was a sword not crafted for a specific purpose, but rather, to generally impress any customers that took it for a test swing. Grandpa’s showcase swords were shiny, veins glimmering and clearly visible inside the metal, and he always accompanied the swords with weight-altering runes to make test swing’s feel extra appeasing. A showcase sword still had to be a good sword to please the customer who bought them.

Vivi had never managed to make her swords as pretty as Grandpa. Her first three-runed sword was practical more than it was beautiful. The veins inside had been barely visible. Her swords were proficient, but she always struggled to make them beautiful.

Abyss Destroyerwas an exception. Something about venerium combined with ether made the sword look like an anomaly within reality. The sword was definitely beautiful in its own weird way. If only it didn’t poison anyone it touched.

Vivi needed to craft something like Abyss Destroyer, excluding the poison. She wanted to showcase all of the tricks inside-carving had to offer. Complicated branches, looping techniques, tight formations and perfect symmetry.

She completed the core veins of her sword in one hour. She had a thin main branch with curved branches, pointing upward like the veins of a leaf. Already, the branches took a lot of space. The rune that accompanied it—which would probably be a swiftness rune—would use the space well, but Vivi would struggle to fit the remaining runes.

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She did her best to ignore her neighbors’ remarks and guesses about what she was doing, and prepared the hole for the second ether root to take. Inside-carving seemed to be so amusing that the outside-carvers around Vivi were more focused on laughing at her over carving their own swords.

The whole square was filled with the sound of scraping as carving knives dug into metal. The sound rang in Vivi’s ears. She thought she’d enjoy the sound—she was surrounded by runesmiths, after all—but somehow, the sound reminded her of knives scraping against plates.

Outside-carving wasn’t supposed to sound like that. A proficient carver’s work was said to sound similar to peeling an apple. The scraping sound came from poor technique.

Lucius? You couldn’t muffle my ears somehow? And protect me from the sun while you’re at it?

“I’m already focusing on keeping these roots active, Vivi,” Lucius said. “And I’m focusing on precision. It’s more demanding than you’d believe.”

Vivi sighed. Well, let’s get this done, then. I’m decently warmed up.

She tightened the second root in the vise. An ensium root. Lucius initiated it, and the process continued.

Thirty minutes later, Vivi was surprised to find her project still alive. She had expected the first attempt to fail by now. The second ether root coiled around the core of the first. From there, the ensium branches weaved around the mithril branches like tendrils. Vivi shaped loops along the way in preparation for the third ether root.

Each branch was thin, around the thickness of her ring finger, requiring Vivi to use her smallest crochet hook. The sword was so filled already that larger branches simply wouldn’t fit. Still, she tried to make the branches as thick as she dared.

Thicker branches meant more ether could fit through, but it also meant the process required more precision. It was a thin balance: to craft the strongest sword possible, Vivi had to use as much space available, but not so much that the next root wouldn’t fit.

Near the end of the second set of veins, Vivi was comfortably in the zone. She felt surprisingly like a runesmith. The scorching facets were annoying, and she was surrounded by the most awful screeching noises she could imagine, but somehow, her project was moving well.

Until, inevitably, a stupid mistake happened.

As Vivi was finishing the final loops near the tip of her sword, the tendrils of the eighteenth branch swerved a little too aggressively toward the sword’s fuller. She quickly pushed it back to its path, but the damage was done. The deviation was more than a sixteenth of an inch. Enough that the veins would have touched the rim of the metal. The veins literally wouldn’t fit.

Vivi could possibly make the sword a little thicker to make the veins fit. That, however, would make the sword far too inefficient. Only one of the veins was long and off path. The remaining veins would be far from the edge.

While she was trying to decide whether she’d continue with the attempt, when another stupid mistake happened; the branch made contact with another and cauterized.

She sighed. Lucius, it’s a ruin. Next attempt.

“Huh?” Lucius asked. “What?”

Vivi unscrewed the vise and tossed the veins aside. I screwed up the eighteenth branch. A dumb mistake. Let’s start again. I’m warmed up.

Lucius appeared confused more than anything, as if the floor had been pulled underneath him and he hadn’t even noticed. “Uh-huh. Okay. I see. Let’s go.”

“What’s this?” Frewell asked, seeing Vivi’s work on the ground. “The slum smith has given up?”

“The first attempt is always a failure,” Vivi said.

“So you’re starting from scratch?” Frewell asked.

“Yep,” Vivi said. “Now shut up and let me work.”

***

The first day went poorly, as Vivi had expected. Failure after failure, Vivi’s pile of screwed-up veins grew to the point that she had to cram her failures into spatial storage just to get them out of her sight.

She made a total of six attempts, spanning eleven hours. Only one of the attempts made it to the third set of veins, which promptly failed after Vivi steered one of the branches straight into a crash.

The facets above were losing their light, and the scorching sweat-inducing heat was turning into a chilly night. Vivi’s hands were rapidly losing their touch. She was covered in sweat from the hot day, which turned into cold shivers come evening. Her crochet hook slipped from her hold.

The veins failed right on the spot. Vivi blinked, realizing what had happened. Her eyes barely saw straight anymore.

She sighed. Looks like that’s all I’m going to get from today…

“Vivi…” Lucius said. “Is everything alright? Those last attempts were sloppy.”

Yeah, I was losing my touch, Vivi thought. But that’s fine. I didn’t expect to succeed on the first day. That’s why I bought so many ether roots. We have a week. I’ll allow failures for tomorrow as well. I need to get my consistency up to reach the third root more often. Once we reach that point, getting a lucky successful attempt will come. I’m hoping it’ll happen on the third day.

Lucius looked concerned, but he nodded. “So, what’s the plan? Sleep?”

Yes, Vivi thought. She lay her head on her anvil. Wake me up when the temperature starts rising. I can’t work in this cold.

Lucius nodded. “I’ll help you fall asleep. Do you want to practice in Paradise?”

No, Vivi thought. Just make me fall asleep. I don’t want any dreams with ether hunters. We’ll start tomorrow the moment I wake up.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep