Once everyone had their food and got back to the inn, Roge shut himself in his room and took a deep breath. His butler was still out with the others, as well as Alton, as he’d asked for some space. He wasn’t sure if his experiment would work, and since it didn’t have any chance of exploding, he wanted to do it himself. Taking out an ironwood root and branch, he huffed at their weight. Considering their black, silver, and rust coloring, he assumed the trees had a higher iron content than before. Molding them would take a bit of work, but he wanted to make the item out of the best possible material he had.

  Taking the branch to make a sword hilt went off without a hitch, the shape simple to get a rough estimate of. The finer details, however, took him a good bit of time to make, each little detail needing a good chunk of the wood to shift, as he wasn’t carving it. He wanted to make sure the hilt would fit well in hand, as well as look nice after all. He ended up working a scale pattern into the hilt, with the guard being a normal ‘T’ shape with rounded edges. The whole time, he made sure to leave a gap in the middle, to leave room for the blade to fit in.

  He knew he wouldn’t be able to get the sharpness of the sword correct, so he left that part alone to make sure he at least had the right shape. It was easier than he thought it’d be, as once he thought about it, a blade was just a cylinder with an oblong diamond shape. He knew it wouldn’t be easy if he was actually smithing the sword, glad once again for his somewhat cheaty skills. The hardest part of the process, and what actually took up the most time, was the balancing. He knew from random movies he’d watched, that if the sword did not balance right above the hilt, it’d swing less efficiently. Especially badly balanced swords could even hurt the user’s arm during combat. ‘No way am I letting that happen…’

  Breathing out a sigh of relief, Roge finally got the sword balanced correctly, looking it over for any imperfections in the design. He wasn’t surprised when his screens pinged at him for the work, though his eyes did widen at how many he received for it.

  He pulled up his frankly complicated [Status] at that, grabbing the effect description before freezing at the upgrades he’d missed when perusing before.

  He groaned as he realized his mistake, the stress of being called a fae and the attack from the doppelganger snake having made him forget about the [Bonded Tools] upgrade. ‘What’s done is done…’ he thought to himself, thinking over his options for the various open slots he had. He didn’t want some of them to go to waste, but he also didn’t want to leave them open, just willy nilly. He could try and bind the sword, but he had no sword skills, so it’d be useless. Same if he added a bow to it. Armor, however, seemed like a nice fit for him, though he was unsure if he could wear armor or not, considering how Sean needed a skill for padded armor. ‘Let’s go ask them…’ he thought to himself, depositing the new sword into his inventory.

  ~~~

  “That’s… actually quite the conundrum,” Hops muttered after Roge explained the situation to everyone, the elf running this hands through his hair. They all were sitting in the main tavern area, considering they didn’t have a living room at that inn. “Though I will say you’re on the right track for armor. Cloth armor specifically, though I’m not sure if you can make other types of armor…”

  “There’s cloth armor?” Roge asked, frowning as he looked to Sean. “Why didn’t you mention that before when you were listing off the armor types?”

  “Because it’s the only armor you don’t need a skill for,” Sean said. “It’s also a bit of a misnomer. Clothing is considered mundane cloth ‘armor’. The cloth armor category is just enchanting normal clothing to be more protective.”

  “It’s actually what I wear,” Hops interjected. “Though I haven’t had enough money to enchant it beyond rank one.”

  “So you think I should go with armor for one of my slots? Or… at least cloth armor? If it doesn’t consider all armor one category…” At the nods his party members gave him, Roge tried to think of enhancing his clothing. ‘Probably adding protection…’ he thought to himself, trying to activate the same effect that he’d gotten when making the cards. He pulled up the ironwood tree’s description, nodding that he’d remembered the abilities correctly.

  Pulling a coin out of one of the nuts, he tried putting it into his clothing, almost feeling that familiar resistance when he tried to think of enhancing the protection of the ‘cloth armor’. The coin wanted to slide right in, as [Protection] already worked without [Bonded Tools] being involved, but Roge tried to ’add’ to the resistance he could feel when trying to leverage the skill. He didn’t want to just use [Screen Hoard], but both skills at once, feeling everything click as a screen popped up.

  Similarly to how he made the cards, he simply pulled out two of the nuts and placed them against his shirt. With a thought and some expenditure of mana, he made the new bonded item, smiling at the [Inspect] screen when he pulled it up.

  Without skipping a beat, he moved on to the rest of his clothing, only belatedly realizing that he was still in his kobold form, and thus enchanting his kobold clothes. ‘Whatever…’ Similar to how, with his cards, a full deck was one bonded item, Roge could feel that every article of clothing could be bonded as a ‘set’. So he added the [Protection] ability to his jacket, pants, and boots to finish all of it off. He decided to keep them at rank one at that moment, as he didn’t want to use up all of the nuts he had. Especially considering the avaricious looks he was getting as his party members looked at the screens for his new ‘armor’.

  “So, I don’t have a lot of the nuts, but I can at least add rank one protection to everyone’s armor,” Roge commented, squinting his eyes at Sean’s armor and giving a disappointed sigh. “But it looks like anything leather and above I can’t ‘craft’, so it’ll have to be coins only on those.”

  “That should work…” Hops muttered, Roge smiling as he noticed the elf writing everything down. “Just give Marge and Sean’s armor the boost today. Then we can go up by one every day so as to not overtax your supply.”

  “Right. So… about the other two slots…” Roge mumbled, noting that he still had one more bond left, as well as a recipe. “I was thinking of making bows and swords for Sean and Marge-“

  “Oh, that’s not going to work,” Sean interjected, the dragon giving him an affronted look. “The godfire will burn up anything you make. I either need to summon a sword, or have a metal one that can handle the increased heat.”

  “But if I make it fire resistant…” Roge said grumpily, looking at the sword in his inventory with a frown.

  “That… might work? But how many abilities can you put on it?”

  Roge blinked at the second ability on the sword, cocking his head to the side and thinking on it for a moment. “Hey Hops? Do you have a description for ‘Earthen Blade’?”

  The lion looked surprised at the question, though Hops quickly pulled out another book and leafed through it. Before Sean could say anything, the elf had found the page. “Got it! Says it hardens the blade, making it have more force when swung.”

  Roge nodded, deciding that, even though he couldn’t wield a blade, having Sean have one of his higher rank items could work out in their favor. He pulled out an [Earth Magic] coin from his inventory, half excited to see what either metal or earthen coins would do when he added them to his hoard. Shaking off the thought, he tried to slot the coin into the [Earthen Blade] ability, finding the resistance and screen easily.

  Turning the confusing screen around towards the rune expert, Hops whistled as he read and copied out the words. “Yeah I thought that might happen. For everything except alchemical items, enchanting anything into tier one requires giving the item a rune. And my book said that [Earthen Blade] has a minimum rank of ten.”

  “What makes it different than your runed items?” Roge asked, pulling the blade out from his inventory to the gasps of both Sean and Marge.

  “Mine need to hold a charge all on their own or take energy from someone else using other runes. Yours will just need one rune, but it can activate with a thought, no [Mana Manipulation] required. The ambient mana will fuel it, and so it don’t drain the user either. Can I have that?” Roge nodded as he handed over the sword, the elf taking out a carving knife and starting the rune near the hilt. “I’ll add the basic earth rune into it, as we want a good baseline for what runes change the effect.” It took him only a minute to get the rune in place, Roge thinking that it looked like a weirdly textured boulder. Once he had that in place, and put all of the ingredients on the table, he focused on enchanting the blade, grunting as the large expenditure of mana was ripped out of him.

  Roge groaned as the message popped up, having forgotten about the restrictions on the abilities. He face palmed as he had the even worse thought that adding another ability would lower the cap even more. ‘Fuck it’… he thought to himself, pulling out two [Warding] and [Flame] coins to do what he wanted, trying to add all of them at once to hopefully keep [Earthen Blade] as high as possible. He wanted it to be more flame retardant to help keep its durability when Sean used his skill, blinking as another message popped up instead of the coins going in.

  “I… don’t know why it’s asking for this,” Hops muttered, for once not writing down the box as he looked at it, confused. “You’re just trying to add [Flame Resistance], yes?”

  “Basically…” Roge muttered, shrugging as he handed over the sword for Hops to inscribe again.

  “How exactly do you know how to make a sword?” Sean asked, looking the blade over with a dubious expression. “It doesn’t even call it a ‘novice’ sword…”

  “I knew the fundamentals from watching others,” Roge replied, looking around to make sure no one was watching their table. “Like my songs.”

  “Oh. Right…” the lion muttered, glancing around as well. Roge quickly took back the sword, barely hearing Hops’ warning that the sword couldn’t hold any more runes after two. He simply took out the ingredients he needed, grunting as the crafting took him down to about half mana.

  “Well… that sucks…” Roge muttered, looking to Sean with a frown. “What’s your sword skill at?”

  “Twenty.” Roge groaned, flicking over the screen and feeling like throwing out the sword.

  “That seems… low,” Sean mumbled, grabbing the sword and [Inspecting] it himself.

  “Oh right… you guys have other things your [Inspect] says,” Roge mumbled, letting out a sigh as he saw the increased durability. “How long do you think it will last?”

  “Well, durability is a bit… complex,” Hops muttered, flipping through a few of his books before landing on the passage he wanted. “To simplify, since Sean’s skill is rank twenty, and the cap is twelve, it will take eight durability per minute just from the skill. Hitting things also causes durability depending on certain factors.”

  “And an iron sword is around the same, durability-wise,” Sean stated, giving Roge a grin. “Most iron swords have a hundred and twenty per rank, and yours has a hundred. So with the enchantment, it actually works much better than an iron one would.”

  “Oh…” Roge muttered, gently grabbing the sword and giving it a look. “Welp… I better get to sharpening it, then.” The others all either rolled their eyes or chuckled as Roge used his magic to make the sword sharper, his shenanigans apparently not enough to faze them anymore.

  ~~~

  “Knew he forgot about them,” Proton muttered, having gone back up to Roge’s room to look over more of the dragon’s [Status]. “That dragon is going to be so hard to manage…”