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Chapter 67: Selection
🕑 Added 2025-07-03 15:03:06 +0000 UTCHalf an hour of absolute silence later, Ven and the dwarf came back. Ven had a large bowl of some sort of soup in one hand, and a black tree branch on the other. The dwarf carried a small brown sack. He placed it down in front of Vivi. Behind them, the armored man carried a portable emberstone crucible furnace with a large crucible inside. He placed it down in the corner of the smithy—the only spot they still had space left.
“That’s all the ether roots we could find,” the dwarf said. “The tree and some food. And a furnace from the blacksmiths. This should be everything.”
Ven laid out a towel on the table before placing down the branch of black aspen. He wore gloves to avoid coating his fingers with aspen particles. Black aspen was technically a tree, but its structure was similar to metals. When untreated, its surface was similar to coal.
Vivi examined the sack’s contents. She recognized the ether roots inside right away. There were a total of eleven ether roots. A few white obsidian roots, iron roots, and a lone green mithril root. All were common roots, ones that Vivi had worked with on the surface. Green mithril was technically a variant of mithril, but it was a low-tier mithril. The difference between low, mid, and high-tier mithrils was large enough that green mithril was closer to iron in value.
But green mithril looked a lot prettier, and thus, it was one of the most common roots Grandpa bought in batches. Vivi had worked with it hundreds of times.
There was also one red mithril root. That was a mid-tier mithril. An extremely solid one at that. It was an all-rounder that accompanied every rune well enough. It also looked pretty. If only it wasn’t so expensive, Grandpa would have used it for all of his projects.
At the bottom of the sack, Vivi noticed something. A bright red root, shining like a noble’s jewel. She blinked in surprise.
It was a locium root. The same metal that Andre’s mining team was fond of hunting. In metal form, locium was useless for runesmithing. As an ether root, however, locium had one property that made it best in its category. Unstable locium conducted ether at an incredibly fast rate, making it the best root for swiftness runes. Locium roots were rare; Grandpa had never worked with one once, even when Ellandor had specifically requested a locium root. Shaping locium veins was as difficult as it was costly. If Grandpa bought a locium root and made an error shaping it, the smithy could have fallen bankrupt from that failure alone.
Vivi nodded slowly. It didn’t seem like the demons knew how much a locium root was worth. Or perhaps they just didn’t care. Either way, she pretended like it was no big deal. “These are great. Thank you.”
She sniffed the bowl of soup. Or slop, whatever it was. The liquid was red. Pieces of root vegetables floated on the surface along with tiny cubes of what Vivi hoped was meat. The slop had a sharp smell of spices she didn’t recognize.
The taste was what she had expected. Whatever spices the demons were using left a bitter aftertaste. The roots were hard to chew, and the pieces of meat were rare in between.
“I would prefer to work alone,” Vivi said.
“We will check up on you twice a day,” Ven said. “We will deliver food and water as needed. Otherwise, you will work in private.”
“That works,” Vivi said.
Ven still didn’t look convinced. “I don’t expect you to be done before the next collection day. But if you can show meaningful progress by then, I am happy to keep providing for you. We will meet in twelve hours.”
With that, the demons left.
Vivi placed the bowl of slop on the table. She stretched, eating a spoonful of slop between preparations. Her hands were already getting excited.
“Lucius,” Vivi said. “Heat the forge to nine hundred kelvins. That’s the melting point for black aspen. You know how this works.”
“Got it,” Lucius said. Vivi sensed slight excitement from him as well. He must have been curious about what she was going to create next.
She picked up the branch of black aspen. Today, she intended to carve proper veins for her runeswords. Not the simple single-runed branches she’d carved for her first one. She had plenty of time to work now. For that, she needed proper tools. A tuning fork worked fine for simple one-runed swords, but she’d need something more accurate for more intricate veins.
She cut off a suitable stick of black aspen and placed it into the forge. The aspen heated up quickly. Despite black aspen being wood, it withstood heat and a hammer surprisingly well. This was thanks to its crystalline atom structure, similar to most metals. Black aspen would work perfectly for what she intended to craft.
Vivi placed the heated-up aspen on the anvil and started hammering. She hit the aspen softly to avoid causing cracks. Slowly, the aspen started to take the shape of a smooth stick.
“What does this have to do with runesmithing?” Lucius asked. He spoke out loud now that they were alone.
“We’re not runesmithing yet,” Vivi said. “I’m creating a tool.”
“A tool?”
“Just a simple crocheting hook,” Vivi said. “The tools they have here are too clumsy to shape anything intricate. Crochet hooks are essential for shaping veins. I plan on creating real products today.”
She spent the next half an hour hammering the aspen stick and another fifteen twisting the tip into the desired shape. By the end, Vivi was quite happy with the results.
The end of her stick was crooked, exactly like a grandma’s crochet hook. Vivi’s creation was slightly larger and stronger, and the mouth of the hook was far more bowl-like, but the tool was essentially the same thing. Black aspen crochet hooks, combined with a knife, were Vivi’s preferred tools for Vein shaping.
With the crochet hook completed, Vivi stretched, then picked up an ether root. “We’re ready now.”
“Will we really require a week to craft a sword for them?” Lucius asked.
“No,” Vivi said. “The sword we’re selling will take a day at most. I asked for a week to give us extra time. If Ven tries to scam us, we need a stronger sword to fight back. And regardless, we need a sword for ourselves.” She grinned at Lucius. “I wonder how far a two, or a three-runed sword will take us in the main dungeon.”
