Assimilate All Talents

Chapter 128: Crafter’s Curse

Sol laughed upon seeing the reaction of the short man. He didn’t need that many cartridges, but this way he would at least be paying the man for his work.

Fabio sighed, "I don’t even have 300. I have to make those by hand, so I only have a little over 100. Is 100 good enough?"

"Yup, I’ll take it."

Sol handed 100 gold and received the new Lipon along with 100 empty cartridges.

"By the way, why is it that the Lipon doesn’t show up with [Analysis] unless I activate it?"

"Ahh, that’s the curse of every good crafter."

"Curse?"

"Well… not exactly a curse per se, but something that every good craftsman worth their salt will encounter when creating something new. If the weapon or item is too unique or unheard of, there is a good chance the system won’t recognize it or treats it like a normal object."

Sol didn’t quite understand how it was a problem.

"But how is that a curse? That doesn’t stop it from being usable, right?"

"No, no. The real issue arises with trying to sell them. People tend to be suspicious towards items not recognized by the system, for a good reason. It makes it harder to verify its authenticity, which leads to a lot of counterfeits or fakes being sold. That’s why I demonstrated the Lipon last time to prove it worked. The same can’t be said for all items, especially if they are consumables. Because of that, most craftsmen tend to not invent new creations and stick with what is already known, in fear of it not being well received. I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t be so invested in the Lipon if not for the fact that the system at least recognizes it when it’s activated."

"That’s unfortunate then. Is that why I never saw these types of items before?"

"Hmm? You’re an adventurer, no? You should have seen the remote archive the guild uses to store and retrieve information remotely."

"Oh! I didn’t know that."

"Yup, larger organizations are more likely to have something like that implemented as the remote archives have been around for 200 years or so. It’s actually one of the examples people point out when referring to system unrecognized items."

"Well, I hope yours takes off then. From what you say, it won’t be easy."

"That’s why I have you! Even if you don’t win, make sure to show off the Lipon as much as possible."

"Hah, I’ve been working hard, I’m sure I’ll make it to the finals.."

Sol fully intended to keep his word, but now knowing how much it mattered to Fabio to showcase the full power of the weapon, he would do his best in doing so.

"Oh, by the way, what if there was a way to unleash the full power of a cartridge in one attack-"

"Nope! You already gave me waaaay too much to work with. Save the rest of the ideas for the Lipon 8.0."

The two laughed as Fabio showed them outside of his workshop.

"Alright, I’ll leave those ideas for after the knight selection, see ya later."

"Stay safe, kid."

Leaving Gearworks, Sol looked at his new Lipon.

’Funny, I went in to fix my old one but now I have an even better one.’

Done with all their tasks for the day, Sol decided it was about time they relaxed after working so hard the past week.

"Let’s take a break. Do you want to walk around the city or go somewhere?"

"Training."

"Really? Didn’t we just do a whole lot of that in the dungeon?"

Amber shook her head.

"Skills. Not levels."

It had slipped Sol’s mind that her growth, although fast, had been hindered because they had been spending a lot of their time fighting undead in the dungeon. While battling does help with battle knowledge and sometimes skills, most people didn’t consider it as a good way to train one’s skills.

There were two superior ways of training skills: the first was repeated usage, and the second was studying and manually improving. The first was considered the easiest and sometimes even faster way of training, while the second was considered a gamble. One could drastically improve a skill within a day or spend days meticulously studying a skill just to not find any way to improve it. Sol was lucky he had [Reinterpret], which gave him an extremely unfair advantage in analyzing every single aspect and also gave him unlimited mana and stamina to continue without break.

"Oh, my bad. Sure, we can do that. Where do we go to do that?"

’Maybe the guild, the underground training area was pretty large, but there are many eyes there. We could also go outside the city and find a quiet place in the nearby forest…’

Amber, without hesitation, answered.

"Dungeon."

"The dungeon? We just returned from there yesterday… and you want to go back in?"

She nodded. "21st floor. Empty. Big."

"I can’t deny that, but even so…"

They had not even been back to the surface for over 24 hours, and Amber wanted to head back inside.

"I was hoping for… something not a few miles underground."

Amber was very practical, which was why she chose the dungeon. Few venture to the 21st floor unless they are A-Rank, and it was a very open area allowing even large scale skills to be practiced, which meant it was the perfect secluded space to train. She didn’t understand why Sol was unwilling to head back inside, as they had already spent weeks in the dungeon. A few more days wouldn’t change anything.

Seeing Amber’s questioning state, Sol relented, "Fine, but can we at least come and stay in the inn and not camp out in the dungeon?"

"Okay."

Amber considered it a loss in time from having to travel between the locations, but it wasn’t egregious enough to impact her training.

Sol sighed in relief but then thought to himself.

’Since when did she start becoming so vocal about her opinion?’

The time in the dungeon blurred, but he believed it was when they shared each other’s status pages. The thought of that made him smile.

’Maybe we won’t need dad by the time we find him.’