Draco moved onto designing the hilts for these swords. He chose a reasonably unique style, with a dragon head for the cross guard and a relatively thick grip. The pommel was styled into the shape of a curved tail, this one also of a dragon.
Clearly, Draco had decided to let the mythical beast that he was named after be the sigil for his creations. The Dragon Soul saw this and gave a thumbs up, as if saying 'not bad kid, you tend to be smart every now and then too.'
Draco ignored the arrogant soul and moved onto the completion phase. A screen popped up asking him if he wanted to either enchant, augment or re-forge the item.
Naturally, Draco chose enchant.
Now enchanting was a thousand times more complex than any other Tradeskill. This was because it wasn't a simple matter of selecting what you want from a menu and adding soul gem to get the result you want.
Firstly, one had to learn and memorize all the runes and pronunciations of the enchantments. This was a bit difficult, but easy enough since most runes were two to four letters to make a word each. They were also simple enough in translation, so it could be memorized.
But it was the drawing of the runes that was hard. Of course, those of Asian descent and those who practiced calligraphy had a head start over everyone on this. Runes were noticeably similar to the symbols used in Japanese, Chinese and Korean languages, although not exactly the same.
Assuming one could master the two above, there comes the limitation set by the Tradeskill level. That came in the form of fusing the runes together to achieve the required effect.
Runes were separated into three categories. Naming, Power and Execution.
Naming involved deciding upon the type of rune you're trying to make. If one was trying to make an enchantment for a dagger, one would use the 'dagger' rune – Tse. Similarly, if one was aiming to make a sword enchantment, like Draco, he would use the 'sword' rune – Sin.
The Power aspect was simple. This essentially was the utilization of the rune in which one wanted to be the main source of power for the enchantment. For example, fire. The Fire rune was – Huo. If Draco wanted to make a flaming sword enchantment, he'd use the fire rune. If he wanted to use an ice one, he'd use the ice rune.
The execution section however, was the true cut-off point for enchanters. This was where the enchanter would decide upon how he wanted the Power aspect to be utilized by the item.
Don't look at the previous two segments and think it was simple thing. The execution section alone can take up to 50 runes to get right depending on what you were trying to achieve.
Draco directly drew the runes onto the word with willpower. Nothing exaggerated like dragons blood, mermaid's tears etc. were needed, just plain willpower to coalesce the runes into being.
Still, to achieve such an effect was difficult for most, because it required you to know every single contour of the rune to will it into formation. Just taking a cursory glance and memorizing the general outline wasn't enough.
Sin, Huo, Po Ruka Rera. Sword, Fire, Focus into strike.
It wasn't a simple fire enchantment Draco used. Most fire enchantments sought to have the fire cover the sword as a whole or focus on a single point for simplicity's sake. What Draco made would see the enchantment support the strike as a whole. However the user decided to wield the weapon, the enchantment would be there to give its support.
This was typically called a dynamic rune and was very difficult to make. It wasn't like Draco was the first to try this, but the problem with dynamic runes was that they required much more mana and soul energy than static enchantments.
If a typical static enchantment needed one low grade soul stone, a typical dynamic enchantment needed a medium grade soul stone or two at the least, or it would fail to activate.
Draco decided on this enchantment and used five medium grade soul stones to activate it. The more soul stones used, the higher the chance of activation. If the amount of soul energy was beyond what was required, the excess went into increasing the enchantment's potency.
With a smile, the fellow watched as the eyes of the dragon's head in the cross guard lit up and the sound of a dragon's roar spread over a large area around the cave, startling all living things in the vicinity.
Before Draco could do anything else, a screen popped up before him.
｢Congratulations on creating new weapon: Unnamed (sword) (rare)
Rewards:
145% Exp
Special title: Pioneer
200 gold
200 reputation with the Tradeskill Association｣
｢Unnamed – One handed Sword
Rank: Rare
Atk spd: 6
Dmg: 45-80
Effect: Fire mastery +10, Damage boost +13%｣
Draco wasn't surprised by this. Apart from militaristic universal powers like the War Maniac Pavilion, there were organizations with similar rank that didn't focus on combat like the Tradeskill Association.
This was a gathering of elite crafters who focused on achieving the pinnacle of design and creation. Most of the upper echelon of the Tradeskill Association were fanatics who spent most of their time in their work.
It was only the lowly members who'd handle meager construction jobs in order to win contribution points within the organization, like those who were hired by Draco to build his residence in Cario City.
Normally, reputation with this organization would be a precious commodity for majority of Tradeskill players, as the comparative value of reputation to contribution points was like platinum to bronze.
What Draco had made was a unique type of weapon with a relatively unique physical design as well as an ingenious enchantment. Creating something that wasn't already produced would naturally astound the world and earn favor with those fanatic crafters.
A special reward for creating a unique design was that one could sell the recipe for it to bigger buyers and NPCs. If Draco took the basic mana potion design he got as a drop, he could only sell it to other players and at a pretty low price. It could also only be sold physically, and not in a shop.
However, Draco could quite literally mass produce the recipe for this sword and sell it in auctions, to NPCs or in shops he did or didn't own.
First things first, he'd have to name the weapon.
'Seeing as there was an audible Dragon's Roar due to the unique design and enchantment, I'll call it Dragorugio.'
With that in mind, Draco decided to append the name to the weapon. He also used his own name, Draco, as the name of the creator of the design. Right after he did that…
｢Sturgehaven Kingdom Regional Announcement
Player Draco has created the unique sword forging design, 'Dragorugio'. Players can now purchase the design from player Draco and achieve a 10% extra success rate when forging the equipment.｣
｢Cario Continent International Announcement
Player Draco has created the unique sword forging design, 'Dragorugio'. Players can now purchase the design from player Draco and achieve a 10% extra success rate when forging the equipment.｣
｢Boundless System-wide Announcement
Player Draco has created the unique sword forging design, 'Dragorugio'. Players can now purchase the design from player Draco and achieve a 10% extra success rate when forging the equipment.｣
At this point, players in the world who had opted to focus on the path of Tradeskills were utterly flabbergasted. They had long been sneering at those who chose to focus on combat and exploration, ridiculing them for letting a random unknown achieve all the glory.
And before even 24 hours could pass, he gave them a resounding face slap!
Combat oriented players might feel that such a thing was a bit amazing since it was announced to the whole world, but those who had been trying to raise their crafting skills over the past few hours felt their minds imploding.
Even with their shallow knowledge and experience, they were aware of how hard it was to achieve what Draco did. Forget creating a unique design, majority didn't even have access to a basic sword forging design.
Naturally, players assumed that in order to craft, they needed recipes first. Despite how crazy and adventurous most gamers were, this fact would only be realized for a few months into the game, or so it was in Draco's past life.
Majority were raising their levels the costly way, by refining, refining and refining! They had burnt through their freebies long ago and had sold what few success they had in order to buy more raw materials.
A single copper ore was sold at 1 bronze, so buying even a batch was 5 bronze! Buying 12 sets meant paying 1 silver. Aside from those who were lucky to sell to Draco, majority received pittance for selling their common stuff assuming they bought advanced or master packs.
Selling a single copper ingot to an NPC merchant only gave 1 silver. To most players, it seemed that they were earning profits assuming that even 3 out of every batch of 12 was successfully refined and sold.
However, Draco pitied them for being played with by the NPC merchants. The selling price of a batch of ore is ideally 5 bronze, but most sold it at either 10 or 15 bronze, giving the excuse that the ore was in high demand. That was true, since every player who chose smithing would be trying to madly raise their level through refinement, but the price increase was bumped by more than demand would push it to.
The selling price of a single copper ingot was supposed to be almost 3 silver, but NPC merchants only bought it for 1 silver. After all, who asked these Immortal Adventurer's to be ignorant, hmph!
While it was an undisputed fact that players were making a profit, the NPC merchants were making even more than them. Selling these ores to other NPC crafters is how they'd make their profit off this transaction, as those fellows were aware of the full price.
Draco finished up by completing the enchantments for the other Dragorugio swords. Once these swords were complete, he moved on to creating common iron and steel swords, spear, dagger and great swords.
Draco also crafted a few bows and crossbows with a type of wood that was of an uncommon variety. He directly enchanted these ones with common low-grade enchantments for swiftness and accuracy boost.
After doing that, Draco pulled out some more Orichalc.u.m. If anyone had seen his actions up to now, they be startled and awed but slightly rueful of his earlier wastefulness.
But seeing him pull out another batch of Orichalc.u.m with the intention to refine again, they'd directly forsake everything and duke it out with him in a life and death fight.
Unfortunately, there was no one to stop this beastly fellow as he began refining again.
Draco checked his Tradeskill levels as the ore was in the midst of refinement again.
｢ Name: Draco
Class: Avenger (Optimal)
Rank: Adventurer (1)
Level: 14
Exp: 19%
Str: 10
Dex: 20
End: 10
Int: 10
Spr: 10
Cha: 5
Lck: 5
Combat Skills: Absolute Void, Revenger, Cloud Feet
Tradeskills: Smithing (level 13, 39%), Alchemy (level 3, 42%), Enchanting (level 6, 24%) ｣
Draco had evened out his stats after reaching level 14. At Rank 0, players received 5 points per level and at Rank 1 only 3 were given per level. Clearly, one needed to allocate their attribute points very carefully.
This time, Draco came out with over 35 refined sets out of 70, which was exactly 50%. Even he himself was shocked by his absurd luck. After all 'Forging Efficiency' only gave him a 20% assured success rate. His smithing level was ultimately still at the amateur stage, but his success rate from there was roughly 3%. Where the remaining 27% came from, he had no idea.
With this, he moved onto the action phase.
This time, Draco was making rare armors with the same effects as the sword but geared towards defense. That's right, Draco was trying to make custom set equipment!
The difficulty of creating a unique design was almost a 100 times less than creating a minimum 5 piece custom set design. After all, not only did each of the set items have to have a unique design, they need to possess a synergistic connection!
They needed to be able to support and merge together to create new effects when more were equipped together. These new effects could either be intentional or unintentional, depending on the skill of the creator as well as the circ.u.mstances and luck.
Most crafters who were able to create unique sets hoped for the latter, because unintentional set effects were more or less an icing on the cake.
Why? Because the intentional effect would still be present. Getting an additional unintentional effect was like hitting a jackpot on a gambling machine.
Draco himself was hoping for one, but wasn't counting on it. He'd need some serious luck to acquire such a boon at his low level, so he was aiming to make a simple set.
The set consisted of a chest plate, pauldrons, armguards and kneeguards as well as a cloak.
Aesthetically, the set looked pleasing to the eye. Draco set the color tone for the armor to be dark blue in color, while the cloth material that was underneath the armor pieces were a light blue.
(Authors note: "Essentially the armor he wears on the cover")
However, he reserved that for his own version. After all, the default coloration of Orichalc.u.m was brownish-red, so the other sets were made in that color.
It took more than a few hours to get everything together. When he was done, Draco smirked with satisfaction. While the Orichalc.u.m he had wasn't enough to make exactly 15 sets, he was able to make 12 sets which was enough.
Just as he wanted to check the stats and effects for the items, the Dragon's Soul in his body emerged and roared into the sky, causing a meteorological sensation to occur. Its bright eyes shot out a golden beam onto the blue set that Draco made for himself.
A noticeably smaller amount of the beam was split into the other sets.
Draco heard a replying roar from the set equipment that shook his whole abode and sent him straight into unconsciousness.