Storm 1

As the festival came to an end, all the giants went to sleep while the guards changed shifts. Carus approached Jack to ask if he needed anything, and Jack just asked to be left alone and that no one come into his room no matter what for the next 12 hours. He then went back into his cottage and pulled out his blacksmithing hammer; thanks to it, he did not have to worry about needing a whole forge for this process. 

He placed all the ingredients on a table in front of him—the adamantite ingot, the wind infusion gem, and the stormhawk feather—and thought of what needed to be done. First on the agenda was to make a design. The rest of the process was pretty much like the book thing, but that didn't mean he didn't enjoy it. But if anyone at all asked him, which part of blacksmithing did he enjoy the most? It was the first step in making a design. After a while of thinking, he settled on a design he thought looked good.

He put the adamantite ingot down on the table and took a deep breath, channeling his mana into the hammer as sparks of blue lightning appeared around it, and as he smashed it down, white light emanated from the ingot, lighting up the room completely for a second before it faded away. 

As the light did fade away, it left behind a pair of dark blue shoes with purple highlights that matched his flaming armor. He was completely satisfied with the shape and design, so he moved on to the next step, the much harder one. The feather, along with the other items, had just popped out in front of him when he clicked buy. But there was only one feather, meaning he cannot afford to fuck up by any means. So he put the stuff down for a second, put on his armor, and took deep breaths. "Don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up," he kept repeating to himself as he put on his armor for good measure. He placed the feather on top of the boots and channeled his mana into the hammer before striking it down.

Suddenly everything went dark as he found himself in the familiar mindscape. White light particles flew around him and then collected in front of him as they formed the image of a hawk. The hawk was no bigger than a normal human hawk, honestly, so he thought to be a bit more gentle with it. 

"Down, boy, let's not hurt each other now," he said, slowly approaching the creature. At first, the creature only ignored him, but as soon as he started getting closer, the creature formed immediate eye contact with Jack. Jack, knowing he backed down would be considered submitting, walked forward towards the bird, not breaking eye contact.

Meanwhile, the bird considered it an act of aggression and let out a loud shriek; the battle just got real. Jack was up against the will of an intermediate-rank beast; he had no idea what rank that basilisk was, but this hawk was no joke. 

The bird flapped its wings as he suddenly took off and flew upwards. Jack had no real way to follow it up there, and following the bird there would leave him defenseless. He was not sure if he should use his skills already, and while he was sure Gigantification could fix the range issue, he had to remember that if he killed that thing, it was over. He hated situations like this, but his teacher was right; he couldn't hit his way out of everything it seemed. 

Before Jack could even have a chance to think up a plan, the creature flapped its wings together, forming a tornado from just flapping his wings. The tornado moved towards Jack as he tried to get out of its way but was caught up in it, causing him to be spun around like he was in a washing machine before being thrown into a nearby wall, making him cough blood. This was the first time since getting his armor that he had been injured. It seemed he was really starting to get cocky here, but he was still as killable as ever. 

"Great, so it can go all out and try to kill me, but if I kill it, I'm on the losing end. If I die, I lose. If it dies, I lose. Sigh. Why do things have to be so hard?" He thought to himself before simply gripping his hammer tightly as he started running towards that bird. It was about time to teach that bitch that those who fly high fall harder.