Second World

The Wicked Witches left soon after, Warpath followed them out. Silverwing's group stayed in the room with Jack.

"That was a pretty bold move you made," Bluedaze said to Jack. "3 gold coins are a very large sum even for our guild."

"Don't worry, if we really lose, you only need to pay the original 1 gold. I will pay for the extra 2 gold coins," Jack replied.

"You have 2 gold coins?" Bluedaze asked with wide eyes.

Jack answered by taking out 2 shiny golden coins to show her.

"Hahaha," Silverwing laughed. "I truly haven't made a wrong judgment about you, my friend!"

"Of course, if we win, I expect to take 2 out of the 3 gold coins from that annoying Queen as well," Jack said.

Silverwing nodded. "Naturally," he said.

"Who will be joining this operation from your side?" Jack asked.

"Apart from the four of us in this room, Grimclaw will also join," Silverwing answered. Then he turned to Bluedaze and asked, "speaking of the fellow, have you managed to get in contact with him?"

"No, he hasn't replied to my message," she replied. "I have also sent messages to our members to keep an eye out for him and to pass our message when they see him. But no one had seen him yet since yesterday."

"That's odd… Tell Honeycomb to prepare in case we still can't find him. She is the best Fighter we have in our group to replace Grimclaw."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that, those Wicked Witches might blame us if we failed for not bringing our best members," Bluedaze said.

Silverwing nodded. He then said to Jack, "We will be leaving now to make the preparations for the operation tomorrow, what will be your plan?"

"I will make my own preparation as well. Where is this ruin we will be meeting tomorrow?"

"Here, open your map interface, please. I will transfer the coordinates to your map," Sinreaper said as he opened his Map window.

Jack did the same, not long after he received a message that Sinreaper had sent him a coordinate. He accepted it, then he could see a coordinate number appearing in his Map window and the direction to that coordinate corresponding to his current position.

"So we can also send map coordinates other than our current position?" Jack asked.

"Yes, provided that you have marked the place beforehand," Sinreaper said. "And you need to be physically on the place in order to mark the place's coordinates."

"That's convenient, this will be helpful when informing others of an important location we have discovered," Jack said.

The others nodded, but then he heard Peniel's voice, "you can only mark a maximum of five locations though. If you marked a sixth location, the first one will be erased."

After hearing Peniel's information, he said to the others, "but probably there will be a limit to the numbers of coordinates we can keep in our map."

"Probably," Sinreaper agreed.

"Okay, then let's meet tomorrow," Silverwing said as he rose from his seat.

After they dispersed, Jack also went for his own preparations. He went shopping for cooking ingredients, basic healing potions, and basic energy potions. He still had some iron ores, but he would like to buy more in order to upgrade his equipment, so he went looking for a shop that sold ores. When he found the shop, he saw that beside it was a smith workshop.

When he was observing the smithy, Peniel's voice sounded in his head, "if you are thinking about upgrading your equipment by smithing, it is better to use the blacksmith workshop like that one. You can rent one of their special rooms which contained advanced tools that provide you with a better success chance when upgrading equipment."

'Really? I was just about to stock up on iron ores, as upgrading equipment starting from level 8 got some failure chances. If the smithy here can increase my success chance, it will save me some iron ores.'

"About iron ores, you don't need to stock too much actually. You still have much unused equipment in your bags, right? You only need to keep the medium armor types for future use on the Transformation Box, the rests can be dismantled for materials. You would most likely get iron ores from that low-level equipment."

'Dismantling? I did remember you mentioned it before.'

Jack still went into the ore shop first to look at the wares available. He browsed through the wares. Most available ores were indeed iron ores, but there were also some steel ores, but there were only six pieces available in the shop and the price was much more expensive than the iron ores. They cost 2 silver coins each.

Seeing the steel ores reminded him of the blacksmith recipe he had learned, the scale armor, which required one scale, two iron ores, and one steel ore. He still had the rare material, red scale, in his storage bag. Though the recipe mentioned scale and not red scale, it should be usable? Perhaps using that special scale could even give better results from the smithing.

He then spent his coins to purchase 30 iron ores and 6 steel ores which were the current stock the shop had. If he wanted to buy more of either ore, he would need to either wait till tomorrow's restock, or searched for another shop that sold ores. After completing the transaction, Jack went to the next door blacksmith workshop. Jack approached an NPC who looked to be in charge, and asked him about the special room that Peniel had informed him.

The NPC advised him that they had two types of rooms that he could rent. One was a room that contained uncommon blacksmith tools, costing 5 silver for a one-hour usage. Another was a room that contained rare tools, costing 50 silver for a one-hour usage.

The price had taken Jack aback, especially the room with the rare tools. It was practically half gold coins just for an hour. He then asked Peniel, 'how much difference is between uncommon tools and rare tools for blacksmithing?'

"Uncommon tools increase your success chance by 10%, while rare tools increased it by 30%," Peniel answered. "But if you are thinking about making that armor recipe with that red scale, I suggest you rent the one with rare tools."

'Oh? Why is that?'

"Because that rare material is a variant from uncommon material: scale. Such material has the chance to produce an upgraded version from the originally intended equipment, and your chance of getting this upgraded version will be better if you use higher grade tools."

After listening to Peniel's explanation, Jack gritted his teeth and took out 50 silver coins to rent the room. His savings was now less than 2 gold coins. He would need to earn more coins before the meeting tomorrow. Otherwise, it would be embarrassing if the White Scarfs people asked him to show the 2 gold coins for the bet again.

The NPC took him inside after receiving his pay. The room he was brought to was a small room with a circular forge in the middle of the room. When the NPC activated the room, an intense fire rose up at the center of the forge. Besides the forge was a large anvil, with hammer and tongs, and a small tub filled with cold water to cool the hot metals. The setting was quite real-like. did he really have to use all those tools like a real blacksmith? He thought. That would be troublesome.

The NPC then left him after reminding him that he had one hour. Since time was limited, Jack immediately went to work. He warmed up first by making three Whetstones. After getting the hang of it, he then took out the materials for crafting the Scale armor. In the blacksmithing interface, he selected the option for the Scale armor recipe and started the crafting process.

The video instruction showed him how to process iron ores and steel ores. He hammered the material until they become a particular shape. Each hammering required a particular rhythm and synchronized timing in heating the materials using the forge, Jack put all his concentration as to be able to perform each step perfectly.

Afterward, he was instructed to add in the scale material, which he used the red scale from the Lizardman Blood Guard he had fought inside the Trigitech building. He then proceeded to hammer the combined materials again. The materials slowly transformed into a shape that looked like body armor. Once all the steps were done, he was told to submerge the completed shape into the coolant water in the tub.

Smoke rose up with hissing sound as the armor undergoing the final process inside the tub.

Jack waited with anxious feeling before something came out from the tub and he heard a notification voice.