Godfather's System

088. Establishment - 33

My immediate destination after the meeting with Zolast was my own office, enthusiastic to apply my newest trick, glad that opening up to Zolast already paying dividends.

It was why I was sitting at my desk, casually flipping the skill stones while I kept two of the stones covered with my mana at the same time. It was not the way Zolast had taught me, but he didn't know the full extent of my Perception, which allowed me to analyze both of them at the same time, just after half an hour of practice.

I had a feeling that having that level of Perception as a caster was a rare thing, if not unheard of. Not that I could blame them, as it was rare for a class to have any free points to freely distribute, and without it, there was very little one could do if their class didn't grant both of them at the same time.

Of course, the likelier possibility was that there were some classes that granted the combination, but considering the obvious economic — and possible military — implications, those were probably aggressively recruited by the ones in power.

Either way, it meant that I had a rare skillset for the area — well, until more people started to arrive, hunting for the lost hero — and I was determined to use it to my benefit.

But first, I needed to make sure I had a better application. First, I focused on assessing the skill pairs, using the comparison to identify the damaged portions, one in each hand.

The ability to focus on both of them at the same time was certainly helpful … as even with the Memory, I didn't really trust myself to understand the whole structure at a glance and commit to the memory, not without understanding the working principles — and that required a time I didn't have.

Even analyzing the surface wasn't as easy as I had first hoped. It was a complicated, three-dimensional structure that put even the most complicated puzzle I had seen to shame, its functions impossible to decipher for me.

The internal structure was even worse. Unlike the outer structure that was almost the same — except the sections that I assumed to be damaged — the internal showed far more variation. I had no idea whether it was the result of the damage to the outer shell, or another reason … but that was true for all three sets of skills.

"It should be enough," I murmured, rubbing my head after an hour of ceaseless focus. I didn't have an actual headache, but the mental exhaustion of trying to examine it for one long hour made me quite a bit exhausted.

The benefits were worth the exhaustion. Not only I had discovered a rough but — hopefully — efficient way of assessing the quality of the skills, but also I reduced the process to a soft flash that could stay hidden.

Of course, it would only barely give me a flash of the outer structure, but it would be enough to avoid the complete duds.

Hopefully.

And, with the experiments on skill stones complete, I turned my attention to the next stage, the sole stat stone I had in my possession. I took it into my hand, closed my eyes, and focused on its structure.

The first thing I hit was a cloak of energy. It reminded me of the wild energies I had to deal with whenever I had eaten food made from the hunted animals. In food, the intensity of those energies was reduced by various cooking practices to change the ratio between Health it provided and the wild energies that it introduced … but even without cooking, no beast meat had energy in that intensity.

I was able to process those energies much faster than the others — probably about my elevated life status — but even for me, dealing with the thick cloud that surrounded it would have taken at least a day to handle successfully, and it would take something between two weeks to a month for others.

No wonder most people waited until their third promotion before absorbing them.

I increased the intensity of mana that covered it, using it as some kind of drill to pass the concealment of the layer … and met with a confusing outer layer. I felt captivated the moment I got a glimpse, going even deeper.

The sight was fascinating.

The stat had a plethora of colors and movements that looked like a fantastic show, a fascinating sight compared to the static nature of the skills. As I watched, I felt a sense of floating, almost like being drunk.

After spending some time on the chaotic nature of the surface, I went deeper, to take a glimpse of the internal structure … which was not a good idea. The moment I did so, I felt a sense of disgust and distress rise inside me.

Not because the sight was disgusting, but because what I found was extremely confusing. The inner structure was much more complicated than the skill, but if the problem was only that, I could have handled it.

What challenged me was the living nature of the stat, shifting radically every second, making me feel like I was having the worst roller-coaster ride of my life.

I barely managed to hold back until I managed to reach the trash can, emptying my stomach.

"Okay, no poking around the internal structure of the stats anytime soon," I muttered after cleaning my mouth, and looking at the seven stones. Then, I locked the stat stone in one of the safes I had installed, and left the room.

As I walked out, I let my mana spread into my halberd, curious if it could be used to assess it. The answer, it turned out, was it could, and quite sharply as well. My perception gave me a good impression of the structure, and after trying to get a sense of the skills, it was even simplistic … but just like the skills, I didn't have any real idea what the view I had received meant.

It was just a complicated pattern, one that was a mixture of inert metal, intersected with a web of crystallized Health… The pattern of that web of crystallized Health was probably the source of the supernatural durability of the weapons, but that was the extent of my guess.

Ironically, assessing magical weapons turned out to be even easier. Not only I still had my dagger and my sword, two weapons of wildly different qualities, but also they had both crystallized mana and crystallized health. On the dagger, those two structures wildly differed in size and shape, while for the sword, they had created a much more uniform pattern…

"A good reason to pay a visit to the smithy," I said to myself as I changed my destination, and after briefly checking the casino and the new gang situation — both currently stable — I arrived at the ground floor, a few workers still working on installing the furniture and making the last changes. It was going to work as a weapon store, but I wasn't in a hurry to open it.

After all, it was more of an excuse to have a lot of weapons in storage without raising too much suspicion from the young duke, as well as an explanation for the occasional weapon I would purchase from the black market,, rather than actually making money.

My casino gave me more than enough money in the short term.

Maybe, in the future, I could increase the number of blacksmiths by a factor of ten, or if some of them could actually learn to forge magical weapons … but without that, it would consume far more investment than it could bring any profit.

I ignored the workers and moved to the smithy, but stood at the entrance, concealed, watching them work without being disturbed.

The design of the room was interesting. A huge room covered all the space that wasn't occupied by the store. A huge blast furnace was at the center to melt ores, operated by the three of the eight blacksmiths I have hired earlier, each wearing thick leather clothes, their face covered with soot. The other five were busy forging weapons, mostly arrowheads as I requested, with occasional larger metal pieces of ballista bolts.

The hunting outpost still needed a lot of ammo, and their disposable nature of them — their damage potential increased much further if they were designed to shatter upon contact — meant constant work was required.

Of course, ultimately, I wanted to hire some more woodworkers and blacksmiths for the hunting lodge to simplify the logistics even further and free them to produce higher-value weapons, but that was for the future.

Before focusing on their work, I examined their clothing once more, which was far thicker than necessary even for the risky business

A very concentrated attempt to hide their gender from the others.

If their Vitality didn't turn to remove the risk of a heatstroke, the situation would have been tasteless, but with it, it was still an amusing sight.

Naturally, it wasn't just the entertainment value that kept me back. It was only a small part of it. The constant risk of the possibility of being caught acted as a mental pressure for them, allowing me to observe their performance to operate under pressure.

Some were already floundering and twitchy, while some worked even harder, determined to use their unique opportunity to the limit.

I particularly wanted to see if any of them was strong enough to handle the potential backlash targeting them once their situation was revealed and the blacksmith guilds started to target them. If they couldn't handle a little pressure of hiding their identity, they couldn't handle the possibility of assassins being sent…

Ultimately, it was a good way to identify the potential leaders among them before I hired some more blacksmiths.

After examining them for a while, I turned my attention to the real objective, and walked forward. "You're all working very decisively, very good," I said as I walked toward them, finally alerting them to my presence.josei

"S-sir, welcome," one of them spoke, stammering, but considering the rest was frozen at my sudden presence, a good reaction. I nodded but said nothing. "Is there anything we could do to help?" she asked.

"No, I just came here to congratulate you a lot, your efficiency in producing the arrows impressed me. I'll make sure that every single one of you will have a bonus slot for dungeon access," I said, dangling a generous reward in front of them.

"Thank you, sir," they said at the same time, excited. Since a blacksmith was not a combat class, even as a part of the guild, they had to work a lot to get even one access. For example, the huge order of arrowheads was only worth one round of access, and even with their enthusiastic working speed, it would take half a week to complete.

"Continue working, I just want to observe," I said, and started walking among them as they continued to work. They tensed due to my presence, but as I said nothing about their secret, they slowly concentrated back on their work.

While they worked, I went around, poking stuff, getting a better understanding of how they were operating, but once again, without knowing much, I could only identify the main lines of the process even using mana.

The process basically happened in four steps, the initial melting of the ores, which required a constant feeding of Heath, but it came from the beast parts in the fire rather than the smiths. The shaping, on the contrary, required quite a bit of Health from the blacksmith, as each hammer hit was imbued with some, pushing out the wild energies while replacing the loss of Health with their pure Health.

Then, as the weapon was quenched and cooled, the metal trapped aligned Health into its structure, and at that moment, the blacksmith used a huge burst of Health to ensure the structure of the alignment, and at that point, the main structure was complete.

The fourth stage was the sharpening of the weapon, in which blacksmiths used tools and a bit of their Health to give the weapon an edge without damaging the solidified internal structure of the weapon.

I stayed in here for an hour, looking like I was idling while taking note of every step. I had no hope of replicating any of those, not when their Health moved with a complicated pattern that was impossible to copy without practice that would take years.

Of course, that didn't mean my trip was useless.

I had just learned enough to know which secrets needed to be stolen from other blacksmiths, which was a nice side mission for my next shopping trip.