Chapter 317 - Runes and Forging

~~

Christopher,

My stay here with the Eternal Flame Faction is going rather well. Vanessa tried to recruit me but I turned her down once again. She'll get the picture eventually. Also, achieving all I set out to is taking longer than first anticipated.

With the amount of people in the Faction on the edge of evolving, my time with the Eternal Flame is getting harder to secure. I've already had to go out and tamp down on a few Dungeons in the area to keep them from breaking.

That said, I feel I should relay some of the things that are going on around here. With our closer proximity to other Factions, word has spread that Zuri, who they call the Starlight Mage, has evolved into a powerful D-rank.

With her personal power, along with the massive population she has at her back, she plans to push Empire City up a level. I'll keep an ear out to find out when it happens and what that looks like so we can be ready to do it ourselves.

New Boston has struggled with Liam's death. They have yet to pick a new Leader as there are a few pushing for the spot. It hasn't gotten to the point of Civil War inside the Faction, but news is grim coming out of the Northeast. The Title of Baron, especially with them close to evolving, is too juicy to pass up.

Lastly, the Admiral has ended his expansion. His past actions to resecure what was lost have finally come to an end. He ran into another Faction in the Florida Isles and has met up with where Zuri sits in New York.

He by far has the largest amount of land under his banner.

With the litany of Factions to his West, if he wants to continue expanding, he will have to go through one of them. From what people say and the whisperings around here, that's unlikely to happen. There have been no reports of him ever declaring War.

The land he has now is strictly from taking it back and those who have joined him. That doesn't mean that War is above him, just that he hasn't done it yet.

I've included an updated map with what are tentatively agreed borders. Vanessa isn't happy with how much land Zuri's claimed. With the Lakes surrounding her, she feels cornered.

Everyone is still preparing and readying themselves to evolve, but I fear for what comes after.

With Love,

Aunt Rachel

~~

Chris

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, no one tried my patience while Abigail was gone. Admittedly, she wasn't gone for very long, a few months, but that was still enough time for something to happen, which it didn't.

By the time she came back and took over her duties, the first snows were threatening to fall. We were once more on the precipice of Winter.

Seeing how close we were to yet another Cycle around the sun, I couldn't help but feel... left behind. I hadn't thought it would have taken me so long to finish off my Profession.

There were many reasons for that, most of them my own doing, but it still felt slow to me. Austin was already gaining levels into the D-rank, Abigail was just about to go through with her evolution, Jonathan was getting close, and so were a few other people.

Elliot almost felt bad that he was getting ahead of me and it took me talking to him before he evolved. He'd been waiting out of 'respect.' I nearly wanted to slap him upside the head when I heard that.

I didn't care if he evolved before I did. Any of the Order could for that matter.

The levels coming so slowly were for a few reasons. My two passive skills didn't help, but they honestly weren't that large of an impact. They only came into play when I was getting points into Strength and Endurance, which Runesmith didn't have a lot of.

The biggest reason why it was taking so long was because I chose for it to. I needed to take time and revisit the fundamentals before I kept rushing forward.

I could have done the same thing I had before and slapped Runes on things Vincent had already made, but that was a shortcut. It wouldn't exactly lead me to a High-Grade Profession.

If I had done that, I would have been lucky to keep a Rare Profession, let alone have any chance of increasing it.

Still, while the levels did come slowly, that didn't mean I made no progress.

Status.

~~

Name: Christopher Zalenski

Race: (E) Human*

Class: (E) Hammer of the Jotnar(Legendary) – Level 100 Evolution Available

Profession: (E) Runesmith(Rare) – Level 97

Affinity: Arctic

Faction: Frostheim (Leader)

Title: Baron

~~

I was three levels away. I also received my second-to-last Profession Skill.

So far, I had leaned quite heavily into the Rune side of Runesmith and I aimed to change that. I'd debated switching to a more Enchantment-aligned profession but decided against that. I liked the smithing aspect of it, even if I wasn't as good as Vincent.

The Level 50 Skill gave me [Runesmithing]. Level 60 gave me [Beginner Runic Language]. Level 70 gave me [Rune Strings]. 80 Gave me [Runic Compression]. That skill was a bit of a letdown, but it did what it was described.

It allowed me to put more Runes on one piece of equipment. If a Spear would normally only hold two Runes, the skill would allow me to shrink them down and fit a third on it.

All four skills were Rune-related in some way so far so for my fifth, I went with something purely Smithing related. It felt like cheating compared to how I used to go about it before.

I'd grown from just the mundane neutral metals and now branched out into what I was more comfortable with. With the number of Ice Affinities rising, we always needed more gear aligned with them.

Surprisingly, there weren't a lot of Smiths that excelled in the Cold. Nearly all of them had a Fire or Metal Affinity which made their work with Cold metals and gear... subpar.

Polar Steel was still my favorite to work with. It was durable, strong, and it wasn't prone to hairline cracks if I messed up.

An ingot got placed in the Spirit Fire and I got to watch as my new skill activated. It showed the Cold energy coursing through the Flame and the color cascaded through the metal as time went on.

The metal became saturated in it and just as the color started to shift to a darker blue, from the pale it once was, I pulled it out.

The magical Flame worked to 'soften' up the metal. It took me a while to learn that it wasn't all it did. Or, that wasn't what it did at all, but that was how it was portrayed.

It didn't 'soften' anything. I just thought it had. It had been so long since I'd worked with a real fire and forge that the amount of strength I was using felt normal to me.

Instead of softening the metal, it reinforced the crystalline structure of the metal. It was only through my new skill that I finally saw what was happening.

The Cold energy from the flame saturated the metal, seeping into its inner structure, and when my hammer came down on it, that energy was expended. It was used to make sure that the metal didn't sheer itself in half from my blows.

It also made sure that it didn't crack apart or generate stresses. My forging process didn't involve a 'normalizing' process that usual Smiths used.

Before now, it was through my feel of the metal that I knew when to put it back in the flame versus continue shaping it. Now I had something a lot more precise.

Thermal Regulation – Visualize the Energy, or lack there of, inside a piece while working on it. Both Heat and Cold energies can be seen through this lens.

From the description alone, it didn't sound all that impressive, but that didn't account for how instrumental it was. Being able to accurately see what was going on helped so much more than vague feelings.

Not that [Sense Frequency] didn't help, but that one skill could only do so much. If it were at Legendary or something, I probably wouldn't have needed another skill, but it was only at Rare. The resolution it gave back was good, and helped me, but gaining another lens to see what I was doing through finally pushed me over the edge in terms of my [Create] Skills.

Both [Create Weapon] and [Create Armor] were now at Rare.

Even without enchanting, I could create Rare equipment. It wasn't all due to [Thermal Regulation] that I could now forge Rare gear. The extra knowledge from studying the books and taking a step back worked wonders as well.

Being able to see was only half the picture. Knowing what I was seeing was the other. I did lose some time trying to force [Hammer Reverberation] to work, but that wasn't that bad.

I could confidently take steps forward and I felt good about what I was forging.

Celebrating the Rare Axe I made just from forging was honestly the highlight of my year. It sounded said when put like that, but it was a huge milestone for me.

My recent study of Metals also forced another Skill to upgrade to Rare as well. [Metallurgy]. With how much information was stuffed inside what we purchased, it was bound to happen, but it still felt good.

My year of advancing didn't end there, though. There was one more skill that got a boost. My [Forging Proficiency] finally hit Journeyman.

Since I focused so heavily on Metal and forging instead of enchanting and engraving, my skills more related to Wards and Formations didn't see as much love, but it was long overdue.

My goal now was to push for Epic!

Vincent achieved Epic while we were off fighting Orcs, the bastard. He could create some truly wonderful things. The spear he made Austin was a Mastercraft compared to some of the things I had forged.

I practiced for weeks before finally engraving the real thing. I was so nervous about messing it up. Thankfully, my hand was steady and the Runes filled out his work beautifully.

While the majority of my focus was on smithing, that didn't mean Runes were left out. I'd spent a decent amount of time on the Spatial Enlargement Rune as well as learning Tier 2 Runes.

Austin was lucky that my comprehension of Light wasn't as bad as my comprehension of Fire. If he'd wanted a Blaze Rune or Flame Rune, he'd have had to settle for Tier 1.

It took weeks just to learn the Tier 2 Lesser Radiance Rune for his spear and that was only for one Rune. I learned Lesser Durability and Lesser Piercing in a fraction of that time!

Not to mention learning the Tier 2 Frost Rune only took me a day!

Now that I was moving past the Basic Tier and into the Lesser Tier of Runes, I was truly beginning to see where my talents lay. Not that I didn't before, but it was rather obvious when comparing how long it took to learn certain Runes.

Now that I was closing in on my cap, there were a few things I wished to achieve before evolving. Encompassing both aspects of my Profession together was one of them.

To forge and enchant an Epic weapon. It wouldn't cause my [Create] skills to increase, not unless I could start forging Epic gear, but I still wanted to see how far I could go.

My engraving quality for the new Runes wasn't the best, but I was getting better. If I wanted to push my crafting to Epic, it would need to be a lot better than it was now. I was still only creating Low-grade Runes.

Making the jump up in Tier was hard. I'd been creating Perfect Basic Runes, the highest quality there was, and now I was back at the bottom. The Runes themselves were more powerful, as the Tier jump was more than enough to make up for the quality drop, but it still didn't feel good to see Low-grade on the gear I crafted.

Even if it was technically better than Perfect-grade of a lesser Tier.