4 04 - Second Knife
"I believe that 6 copper coins are enough for three more mentoring sessions of yours while I make a few more knives?" Damien asked, acting in an 'innocent' way.
The blacksmith at the time was a little doubtful. Initially he just wanted to find some young man from the countryside to be able to deceive, make the boy create some garbage in his forge while he would charge an absurd price for the materials the boy had used, earning a lot of profit on top of that, since he was hurt and couldn't create anything in the next few days.
But who would have thought that the young man he thought would have come from a small village, in fact, was even smarter than him, and even using that absurd price of materials he managed to deceive a very stupid person and profit from it.
"Boy, if before I thought you only had talent in the art of forging, now I can say for sure that you will be a great blacksmith. Even if you are not the best, your eloquence can make you sell your works at even more expensive prices than the best blacksmiths," the man said with a slightly sad expression as he looked at the swords he had made, which were dusty on the shelf because no one wanted to buy any of them for 5 copper coins.
And who would have thought that a young man who had learned to forge that very day, in fact, had managed to sell a trash knife at a price more expensive than the swords he had been trying to sell for months.
"As you are willing to receive my mentoring, I accept. For everything you forge here, I will charge you 2 copper coins. Regardless of the price you are able to sell them for, you can keep the profit," the blacksmith said while pretending to be an honest man.
But Damien had already understood the personality of this man. He was probably happy to have found a stable source of 2 copper coins in him, while he would not have to do anything. However, for Damien this was also a good scenario. After all, he didn't know how difficult it would be to get a forge to be able to use outside the tutorial village, so he felt he should seize this opportunity for himself.
Before starting to forge another item, Damien invested the point he earned, making his dexterity stats a little higher, going up from 5 points to 6. Mathematically, Damien's dexterity went up by 20%, and he wanted to test how good that would be for his forge. As tiring as it was to have to go through the whole process each time, Damien was amused to see the raw metal taking shape and turning into something he envisioned. He never had had much dexterity in real life, so Damien was never able to draw or play any instrument in a good way, but in the game he was doing very well.
Then, with the blacksmith's mentoring, Damien repeated the fire process and started making another knife. Unlike the first time, Damien now knew about the right time to take the blade out of the fire.
Because of his first mistake, the game system had "learned" roughly what color the iron bar should be. It wasn't very accurate, but it was enough for him to be able to hammer the metal without damaging the structure of it. With the hot metal on top of the anvil, Damien held the 1.5 kg hammer in his right hand and started hammering the metal that would become the knife.
During the process, the system issued a few tips from time to time about the ideal place to hammer and get a good result based on the mistakes that Damien had made on the first knife. This surprised Damien quite a bit.m, not only because it made the forging process much easier, but because he was starting to instinctively feel the right place to hammer without depending on the system guiding him as if the system's hints were penetrating Damien's mind and making his learning speed take off at an astronomical speed.
This rapid increase of proficiency increased to the point that the blacksmith who was supposed to be guiding Damien was now just watching with his mouth in the shape of 'o', not believing that this young man in front of him was the same young man who did not know of any basic processes during the first forge. It was as if he had switched from water to wine between the forging of one item and another.
It wasn't as if Damien had become a God of the Forge; he still made countless grotesque mistakes in the blacksmith's vision, but still, the repeat mistakes that Damien was failing to make on his second knife would have taken a few dozen forged knives to understand had any other beginner tried to avoid that.
'I found a monster of the forge...' the blacksmith thought.
'I am improving my forging. Just you wait warriors; while you are happy sporting your beautiful armor for the capital, I will appear with the first Legendary armor of that game, and I will make everyone jealous. Even if I am a blacksmith, I will find a way to make my equipment more powerful than everyone else's!' Damien thought as he invested all that desire to grow in the next knife.
With each hammer, Damien learned that the strength of his swing had been too weak or too strong. With each strike, Damien learned that he had chosen a place too far to the left or too far to the right. With each hammer blow, Damien was learning a lot about the forge. Often he didn't have to hit hard, and often it was just hammering the right way in the right place that would cause the metal to do exactly what he wanted.
In a few moments the metal was starting to become very deformed, making Damien have to heat the metal again to be able to remodel more easily and prevent it from breaking.
Slowly the knife took shape, and for Damien's eyes, which had always been passionate about the appearance of weapons and armor, it was clear that this knife was much better than the first one he made.
Even he knew how much he was improving, so Damien hoped that this knife was at least an 'unusual' item, or perhaps even a 'rare' item.
'I wonder? Did I perhaps just become the first player to make a rare item in the world? Everyone would know my name, and I could charge a lot more money for my weapons!' Damien thought excitedly.
For almost three hours, the only thing Damien did was hammering, heating, hammering, sanding; his whole focus was being invested in that knife. Everything Damien learned from the mistakes he made on the first knife had now been avoided on the second knife, making his hope grow even more as sweat ran down his forehead.
But life doesn't care about your hopes. When Damien had finished forging the knife, and placed the dagger hilt on it, a system message appeared in front of him:
[Congratulations on forging an 'ordinary' knife! As a legendary blacksmith, you have received a lot of experience in this, which has been converted to 2 stat points.]
'Just... an ordinary knife? This is very anti-climatic...' Damien thought, a little disappointed.
But when he noticed that even with a common item he received 2 statistic points, Damien perked up again.
He was still a level 01 player. While all normal players at that level had only 5 points for each basic statistic, Damien had 3 more points, without even going up to level 02.
'If I continue to forge, I will always be stronger than other players of my level... and if I am stronger, I will be able to kill monsters with levels higher than me, consequently leveling up faster and catching up in the future!' Realizing this, Damien's eyes lit up.
But this did not last long, as outside the forge there were three people looking inside with suspicion: a tall, muscular man, a short, skinny man, and the chubby man that Damien had already met.
Seeing the expression of the three and knowing that the chubby man had already been deceived by him, Damien held up the 'ordinary' knife he had forged and his expression of happiness immediately changed to a cold expression.
If someone looked at this muscular young man brandishing a knife in a dark place like this blacksmithing forge, they would probably think that this young man was contemplating murder.
Damien didn't mind beating people up in real life, let alone worrying about killing people within a game. If that group of players came here to cause problems, Damien wouldn't mind giving his all to kill all three here.
