20 Volume 1 Chapter 20: Sting like a bee
(Walson)
It's snowing.
Winter has officially begun. Finally!
There is a significant decline for outdoor training sessions for the [Fighter] and [Mage] children during winter.
Similarly, the children who are [Commoners] are also more relaxed than usual, since winter is a farm slack season.
But we still have other jobs to do. We spend most of our time inside the indoor workshop pickling or drying vegetables... with salted water.
What they make here doesn't taste too bad, but my stuff tastes waaaay better.
Ever since Grace started to regularly eat the food that I made, she always sports a frown when eating food provided by the Orphanage.
Neither of us would be able to ever go back to those days where we were able to stomach their food. Not that we wished to.
As mentioned before, the kids are now ensconced indoors since weather conditions are not ideal for outdoor activities. Maany took the chance to teach the [Fighter] and [Mage] children other things, such as reading and basic mathematics.
For most of the children in the Orphanage, they find those lessons to be extremely bland and uninteresting.
As for me... I took the opportunity each winter to learn more about the language of this world. It took about three years give or take.
Incidentally, after coming back from the mountains with Grace, I came into contact with a [Stone Tablet of Appraisal].
... Troublesome, very troublesome.
I can modify my stats to show false information, to a degree.
The [Stone Tablet of Appraisal] comes in many different rankings. It's easy to influence the outcome of a "normal" one than it is to influence one of higher "quality".
The tablet in the Orphanage is a very old "normal" one. It didn't take too much effort for me to change the results from the scan.
I already tested this with the tablet inside my secret base, which is also a "normal" one. Grace and Melon were very willing when I used it to scan them, so it suited me just fine.
With that said, let's come back to the present.
I am currently inside my secret base. It took a lot of effort getting here without leaving a trail, since walking on snow would leave very obvious footprints.
An earlier promise I made to Melon demanded that I make a good weapon for her, and right now I am doing my best to tailor a sword for her.
So I brought out the gigantic stinger from the wasp queen that we got. But it could be said that this stinger isn't actually a stinger, since it looks much more like a gigantic, irregularly shaped blade.
It's already shaped like a bladed weapon, it's about fifty centimeters long, and has a black sheen to it.
It is also more durable than my black iron, but I wonder how durable it actually is? Seems like a good component for a weapon.
It would have been aggravating for the normal crafters to use such durable materials, but I have no trouble on that front since I have a [Crafting Table] from Minecraft.
A lot of stuff which is not in Minecraft can still be created by using it as long as it fits with the things I want in my head...
I think this ability is related to my imagination, using it to bridge the gap.
Aaaand, it's completed! (Yes, it was super effortless)
The original shape of the stinger remains mostly unchanged, with some minute differences after it is officially made into a weapon.
By the way, the stinger is hollow inside. There exists a small tube-like structure connected to the poison sac that would have pumped poison into the victim in its original state.
The hole is very small and does not hamper the sharpness of the weapon, so I decided to modify it for my own benefit.
I connected a small bag that contained a [Magic Stone (Air)] to it.
I obtained this magic stone when rescuing Melon, discovering it on the broken carriage nearby.
After identifying it, it was confirmed to be of 'High' quality. Not something obscenely expensive or rare, but it's the real deal.
A magic stone is basically a stone that can store magical energy/mana inside it.
By injecting a bit of mana into it, a spell that was keyed into the stone would activate. Once it runs out of energy, you just need to refill it and seal it inside to be able to reuse it.
The small bag that has the windstone is then implemented into the hilt of the blade. Aside from being made out of my black iron, I also added some powdered mythril.
Mythril is something that has very high magic conductivity, and therefore valuable on the open market.
It is also quite rare. I only have a little bit of it available, so I need to be careful and efficient.
Weapons made out of mythril could also be strengthened by magical enhancements that were given to the weapon, a useful property that not many other metals or minerals have.
The magic stone I have connected the black blade with has the spell [Heavy Wind] keyed into it. It is a spell that produces winds with heavy pressure. And since it is condensed while sending it out of a thin tube from the blade, it is quite deadly.
If you stab this weapon into an enemy's body, then activate the magic stone... you can cause an explosive amount of damage.
I gave this weapon the name: Blade Bee
... Stop laughing at my naming sense, I know you're laughing...
After that, I placed it onto an [Anvil], seeking to enchant it.
In Minecraft, an [Anvil] can be used to enchant equipment when used together with enchanted books.
You might wonder what these enchanted books are. Well, essentially I take ordinary books, and place it onto the [Enchantment Table], and bestow the book as a special property.
One book can only hold one enchantment, and because of this, some people might think it's stupid to use enchanted books.
But there are many different enchantments that are available in Minecraft, and if you want something specific, then the chances of getting what you want are way too small. You have to repeatedly enchant it until you got what you were looking for, wasting a lot of time and resources.
Which is why enchanted books are a good thing! By enchanting the books separately, I just need to collect the necessary books I want and then use them together to get what I need.
Currently, I can produce two enchanted books per day. After so many days, I have finally acquired the books that I was looking for.
Speaking of which, since real life physics are actually applied, what are the things that could possibly be altered?
In Minecraft, the enchantment table required EXP, but now in this life, it uses my mana. What else could change?
There are so many possibilities! It's worth looking at, I suppose.
Opening the [Anvil] interface, I immediately used [Sharpness IV], [Knockback II], and [Looting II].
That's three books already gone. But I don't feel any regret.
When I presented this gift to Melon, the smile on her face and the happiness that practically oozed from her was all worth it. What kind of man would I be if I didn't live to make girls smile?
I didn't forget Grace either.
Sneakily stealing a book from the library, I researched more about the structure of magical staves.
It would hardly be any trouble to create a basic mage staff. But why the heck would I want to create something so normal (and boring) to give it to Grace? She deserves much better.
I am definitely going to give her something awesome!
... Or try to. The book I snuck out of the library only recorded the barest of facts. I will end up going blind if I truly wanted to make something better. It's not something as easy as making a sword, so I can't just wing it.
I guess I will have to be a bit of a jerk and leave Grace hanging for a while.
