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Chapter 457 - Bottleneck
🕑 Added 2023-11-10 01:34:39 +0000 UTCLater in the day, Red met with Marina in her company’s headquarters. Although she remained composed, he couldn’t help but notice how talkative she was, and that was saying a lot knowing the woman.
She sat on the floor cushion, waving her fan and looking at Red with a smile. “I have already sent out the word that our forge is ready to take on clients. Some people are eager to put in their own commissions, considering that their relationship with the Golden Hand is not friendly either. That being said, they have shown some reluctance as well…” Marina trailed off.
“They don’t trust my abilities,” Red said, picking up on her meaning.
“Well, it’s not quite like that. It’s just that they don’t know you, so while the operation seems legitimate, they are hesitant to spend too much money on an unproven service.”
“And the Golden Hand? Haven’t they tried to discredit us on this?”
It seemed like the perfect opportunity for the merchant’s guild to turn clients away from this new business rival.
“Well, some of them have, but most of the guild has been rather quiet on the matter,” Marina said. “They were still trying to recruit you just today as well. But in truth, I suspect they will wait and see what we are capable of achieving before deciding on a course of action.”
“Can we expect direct intervention in that case?”
“Direct intervention?” She frowned at this question. “As I said, maybe if this was outside the capital or against any other family, they wouldn’t hesitate, but since it’s the Fairclough… I doubt they will take any underhanded measures.”
“What about that noble family?”
“Claiborne? That’s even more unlikely. If they moved against the Queen’s family, it might as well be considered treason.”
Although Marina gave him her assurance, Red was still on guard. The meeting from earlier today was still on his mind, and if the Claiborne were potentially contributing with demonic cultists, would they really hesitate to attack Aurelia’s manor? Granted, that would be a bold move, but Red didn’t feel comfortable discarding it out of hand.
“In any case, since most of our clients still want to wait and see the quality of our products, I’ve decided to approach one of our allies that has no issue putting their trust in your skills.”
Marina slid a sheet of paper over the table to Red. He picked it up and examined it.
On the paper, there were instructions for the construction of a shield artifact with simple specifications. Most of the function and form were left up to the artisan’s discretion, but a list of the potential materials and budget for the artifact were also specified below. What caught Red’s attention, however, was the name of the client.
“Leon Northvale?” He looked up at Marina.
“Yes, well…” She shrugged. “Who better to give our business legitimacy than a ducal family?”
Red supposed she was right. He hadn’t met with Leon since the accident in the sewers, though it didn’t seem like he was avoiding him. Rather, from what he heard, the young noble had just barely left his manor since then.
“When do you think you can start working on it?” Marina asked.
“Today.”
“Today?”
Red nodded.
She smiled. “Great! Can you make a list of materials for us?”
He did as much, and soon enough, a carriage was taking him to the Fairclough manor.
When Red entered the workshop, his nostrils were immediately invaded by an acrid medicinal smell. He looked up, sensing the alchemy laboratory working at full power as the odor of herbs and other unknown ingredients filled every inch of the building. This was something he failed to take into account when agreeing to working alongside an alchemist, though he supposed he could deal with strong smells while working.
As Red prepared the workshop, attendants brought in the ingredients for the shield, which happened to include Black Iron ore as well. This artifact was far simpler than his own sword, and with his familiarity using the forge, he didn’t hesitate to activate the Spirit Gathering Formation and start working.
…
On the second day of the forging process, the smells from the laboratory ceased, and Red noticed Lady Ilse walking down the stairs. Her apron was far dirtier with soot than usual, and her entire body smelled of medicines as she approached him with a tired and frustrated expression.
“What are you crafting?” She asked without ceremony.
“A shield,” Red said as he operated the forge.
“What will it do?”
“It will create a barrier similar to the Shielding spell, though in this case, it can expand up to thirty meters.”
Lady Ilse frowned. “It seems to be going well.”
“It is.”
She let out an exasperated harrumph and walked back upstairs. A few minutes later, she walked downstairs, carrying a sword hilt and a scabbard.
“Here it is,” she handed the items to Red.
He accepted them, examining the woman’s work. The scabbard was made of a fine black leather, which Red could tell came from some kind of monster. A golden criss-cross pattern extended along its length, making the item elegant without calling too much attention to it. The hilt followed the same line, a black leathery grip, a lobed silver pummel, and a tilted silver guard with the quatrefoil designed at its ends.
Red had half expected the woman to hand him some ostentatious parts when she promised to make something for him, but it turned out both the hilt and scabbard weren’t overly adorned and yet fit well together with his sword.
“What do you think?” She asked.
“It’s good,” he nodded.
“Good. I assumed you wouldn’t want something too golden, so I kept it simple. Make sure to fit your sword with those.”
With that, she turned around and returned to her own laboratory, her mood not having improved.
This same scene seemed to repeat many times over the course of the next few days. Lady Ilse, seemingly frustrated with her own lack of progress, would come downstairs and observe Red’s work for a while, only to return to her laboratory with a frustrated expression.
In the meantime, Red’s work was going smoothly, and he even had the time to study the smells from the laboratory. He couldn’t tell from what ingredients they came from, but every time before Lady Ilse came downstairs, the same familiar burning smell would reach him, indicating her failure. Since the woman constantly peppered him with questions about his own work, he decided to ask a question of his own.
“What are you trying to do?”
“Medicines,” she said with a smirk.
“Alright,” Red returned to his work.
“Wait! Aren’t you going to ask more questions?”
He turned back to look at her. “What medicines?”
“Mind clearing medicine, to use against that serpent’s cult.”
“Against them? Wouldn’t some kind of anti-corrosion or antidote be more appropriate against them?”
From his experience, the most dangerous aspect of those snake demons was that corrosive gas.
“You can use physical barriers to block their poisonous gas, but conventional protections can’t defend against their charming techniques,” Lady Ilse said. “You were lucky that you only fought against mindless demons and a formation expert. But the truth is that cultists of the Serpent’s World are all adept in Spiritual Arts that can charm others into doing their bidding.”
Red frowned beneath his mask. This was indeed something he had failed to take into account. Even though he was confident in his mental strength, would he be able to resist a charming technique from a Greater Ring Realm cultivator? It was hard to say.
“Are you close to completing this medicine?” He asked, now very interested in the matter.
“It’s hard to say,” Lady Ilse shook her head. “Concocting medicine is not a straightforward matter, and it’s possible the recipe I have is flawed too. I can only experiment and guess at the next steps.”
“Is there any way I can help?”
She looked at him with suspicion. “Why would you want to help?”
“I’m interested in these pills, too,” He didn’t lie.
“Well, unfortunately, I can’t imagine how you could help in this particular instance. Perhaps the best way to assist me is to keep working on the forge so I have more money to experiment with.”
Red nodded. Since he didn’t know alchemy, there was no point in pushing the matter.
Two more days passed before Red was done with the shield. It was a metal buckler, a duelist’s shield, with a smooth grey surface where a circle of runes was written. If one wasn’t paying attention, they would think it was just a common item.
After testing the artifact and making sure the shielding spell was working, Red called Marina to deliver it to the client.
“You’re done already?!” She asked through the message talisman.
“I am.”
“I’ll call someone to pick the order up!”
It didn’t take long for a group of attendants to arrive and pack the shield up in an ornate box with the Lehmann’s Trader’s symbol. They also gave Red his payment, a hundred spirit stones for his share. Seeing how easily he made this much money, he knew that his decision to work alongside Marina had been right.
Lady Ilse came downstair after hearing the activity and stared at Red in surprise.
“You’re done?”
“I am,” Red nodded, packing his things.
“How is that possible? That sword of yours took more than a week to make!”
“My sword was much more complicated.”
“Well, I suppose… Wait, where’s the shield?”
“They took it to be delivered.”
“Oh, no!” Her expression changed. “Why didn’t you let me see it first?!”
Red was confused. “It was working.”
“That’s not the problem! Knowing you, I bet it looks like a regular shield, right?!”
He nodded.
“Agh, damn you!”
She ran out of the room, chasing the attendants that had just left.
Still somewhat confused, Red left the workshop and returned to his own home.
…
It turned out that this shield was all they needed to get their business going. A deluge of clients put in their own orders for artifact, so much so that a backlog that would probably stretch for months was quickly created. What caught the attention of the city the most was how quickly the shield artifact was completed, which was a testament to the skills of the person working behind it.
Many of these clients wanted to meet with Red, but he simply refused. Fame was not something he sought, and Marina agreed to keep his identity anonymous, or at least not bring any attention to it. As for fulfilling the orders of these clients, Red decided to strike a balance that allowed him enough time to cultivate.
One week, he would work on orders, and the other he would practice. Although Marina tried to convince him to dedicate his time to the forge more for now, Red refused to budge on this matter, much more so when he was at such a vital juncture in his cultivation.
A month went by, and during this time, he fulfilled four more orders, and with the hundreds of Spirit Stones he earned from that, his cultivation reached a bottleneck. This was to say, the next step in his progress was to break through into the middle-stage of the Lesser Ring Realm. As for his sword cultivation, that was progressing slower than he would have liked.
Forming sword energy turned out to be a very complicated process, and Red had yet to achieve initial success in either of the Sword Spiritual Arts he had been practicing. In fact, even if he had focused on only one of them, he wasn’t sure he would have achieved success either.
‘What am I missing?’
He stood in the living room of his manor, staring at the claymore in his hands. Up to this point, Red hadn’t even been able to form a stable sword arc. He knew his talent in swordsmanship wasn’t great, but there seemed to be a problem he wasn’t able to identify that hindered his progress.
“Isn’t the problem obvious?”
Aurelia manifested in front of him, as if reading his mind. Red looked at her smirking expression, which seemed to be waiting for him to ask for help. He didn’t do it, though, instead closing his eyes in thought.
‘An obvious problem.’
He could guess at the answer.
“Not enough battle experience.”
Aurelia looked disappointed as she heard this. “… That’s right. Just think back to your experiences since you arrived in this city. How many times did you fight? Two? Three? Some of those weren’t even proper fights. When it comes to weapon arts, there’s no better teacher than experience, much more so for you.”
Red understood her point. He came to this city to get a safe environment to cultivate, and he achieved that, but safety was sometimes detrimental to cultivation, too. Red was someone who always learned from experience, from putting his life on the line, and although there was plenty of danger in the capital, there weren’t enough opportunities to fight and deepen his understanding of what it meant to be a Lesser Ring Realm cultivator. With his talent in wind spells, this didn’t prove to hinder learning wind arts, but with swords? That was a different matter.
‘Unfortunately, there’s no easy solution to this.’
What was he supposed to do? Go out on the streets and find opponents to fight to the death? Target the cultists? Either of those options was likely to get him killed instead.
“Maybe you can’t find opportunities to fight in the city, but you can maybe find a sparring partner instead,” Aurelia said.
Red frowned. “A sparring partner?”
“Yes, it’s what my sect did. Obviously, fighting experience is important, but entering a fight to the death without proper preparation is stupidity. So to prepare their disciples, elders organized sparring competitions which awarded many prizes for the winners. It was the next best way to prepare them for combat other than throwing them in a pit of monsters. Of course, these sparring competitions were useless to me, considering no one my age could keep up.”
She didn’t seem to be bragging as much as stating a fact.
“It is a good idea,” Red nodded. “But hard to put into action.”
For one, a sparring partner would need to be in a similar realm to him, and he also needed to trust them not to reveal his secrets after they fought. Suffice it to say, Red hardly trust anyone without being forced to.
‘If I had to choose a sparring partner, though…’
An idea came to his mind, though he didn’t know how to put it into action.
“Well, it’s just a suggestion,” Aurelia shrugged. “You can still master those sword arts. It will just take much longer.”
“I will think about it.”
Although Red said that, this was put to the back of his mind. He wanted to break into the middle stage of the Lesser Ring Realm as soon as possible, and that was because two things concerned him.
The first was the Golden Hand. Their silence regarding the success of this new Spiritual Forge was very concerning. Red would have understood their passivity if they had been told off by the Royal Court or some other faction, but no such thing had happened, which just led him to believe they were biding their time before doing something. On the off chance this something involved a direct attack against him, he wanted to be ready to respond appropriately.
The second was Rimold’s sister, Yrsa. According to the timetable Aurelia had given him, she only had a few more months to go before becoming an invalid, and Red wasn’t sure her condition could recover after that. He had gone to observe her a few times over the last couple of months, and although there were no external signs of her condition worsening, his crimson sense picked the instability of her body.
Red still had no idea where to start his investigation into how to solve her problem, but it was getting to a point where he needed to move, regardless of if he had a plan or not. He needed to investigate the Nine-Star cult.
This was why he wanted to hurry and break through, and to achieve that quickly, he needed some external help. Red needed a Condensation Spiritual Pill, and Lady Ilse was the only one that could provide it - at least one that would help him break through immediately.
He was hesitant to ask her for help, though. It wasn’t because he couldn’t pay for it - the Spirit Stones he earned from his work were more than enough. Rather, it was because Red knew she was busy with her research, and he already owed her a favor she had yet to call upon.
‘Whatever the case, there’s no harm in asking. If she can’t do it, I’ll just need to spend more money and buy as many Condensation Spiritual Pills as I need.’
With that in mind, Red took a carriage to her manor. When he arrived there, though, he was told by a servant that Lady Ilse wasn’t home.
“She has gone to visit Her Majesty, Master Viran. She should be back in a couple of hours if you’d like to wait.”
Red nodded, and he was led to a waiting room. As per usual, servants offered him food, which he refused, and he was then left alone. Ten minutes went by, though, before he suddenly noticed something strange. More specifically, his crimson sense seemed to pick up on a strange fluctuation.
‘This feeling…’
It was very familiar. A weak signal, hard to detect, yet still there all the same.
Showing no signs he had noticed the oddity, Red stood up and walked over to a servant.
“I will be waiting in the workshop. If your mistress arrives, tell her I’m there.”
The servant nodded and went about his own work.
Red then started walking towards the workshop, his crimson sense locked into this strange fluctuation at all times. It was following him, no more than twenty meters behind him, and yet he knew for certain there was no one there, as the servants walking by him showed no alarm.
Finally, he reached the workshop room and opened the doors.
‘As much space as I’m getting.’
With that, Red walked over to the center of the room and turned around in the direction of the strange fluctuation. He said nothing, but his gaze was trained at a shadow formed by the shade of an unlit lamp in the room as he unsheathed the claymore from his back.
A few seconds later, something seemed to emerge from the shadow. Or rather, it seemed as if the shadow was taking physical form as something grew from it. A human figure, completely covered in darkness, stared at Red from across the room.
The Shadow, come to take his life again.
