Birth Of The Crafts-God

Throughout the entire SS vestige craze, the biggest winner in this event wasn't actually Lucas, but Legacy Crafts dealership.

The SS vestiges —as they became called due to the branding on them as well as the fact the vestiges originally came from the Seven Sparks Forge store— were rare pieces of equipment that could potentially define a whole new era of vestige-smithing. As such, the technology behind it became desired by various vestige-smithing companies.

There were only forty SS vestiges released by the Legacy Crafts dealership which made it very difficult for people to get one. The main method was to apply on the waitlist, but even doing so didn't mean that one would get a vestige right away. In the most case, they might only get one after a month or two, when Lucas had resupplied the dealership with a new stock.

Due to this, the only way to be able to truly get one was through backdoor access, where one would have to pay an inflated amount for this. This was thought up by the hierarchy at Legacy Crafts dealership, which was mostly those from Lucy's faction.

The executives knew that many vestige-smiths would want to research on the SS vestiges and would do whatever they could to get their hands on one for this reason. So, they decided to profit from this desperation by charging those who went through the backdoor with sky-high prices for the SS vestiges.

Naturally, this would delay those on the waitlist from getting their hands on the vestiges. But the executives countered this by putting a limit on how many SS vestiges could be sold through a backdoor. This in turn raised the value of the vestiges even more, as once someone got it from the backdoor, they could sell for an even higher price on the black market.

The reason why this was possible was because of the fact that the Legacy Crafts dealership sold the SS vestiges in limited quantities, and what's more, they hadn't officially sold any yet. They were still in the pre-order phase where people would have to first make a pre-order, get on the waiting list, and then, wait. However, there were now some who could skip this process with their connections as well as an incredible amount of wealth.

All this in turn, generated so much fanfare and attention to the vestiges, which was good for business. Those who got theirs through the backdoor would have a sense of value-for-money, since they had the SS vestiges earlier than others. They would then find it difficult not to show off the vestiges, after all, who wouldn't want to?

Through the attention they received from showing off the vestiges, the Legacy Crafts dealership would become even more popular. In a sense, this was like a free advertisement for them, but it also worked in Lucas' favour as well. Through all this, whether it be profits or advertisement, the Legacy Crafts dealership became the biggest winner.

However, Lucas didn't care much about that. He now had way too much money and decided to lessen the 'load'.

While there was chaos in the vestige-smith society, Lucas went material shopping. Be was planning to take on the challenge and become a supplier for the Legacy Crafts dealership. But to do that, Lucas would have to depend less on the materials provided by the system as that would limit his works. For instance, elemental materials and metals, like Igrum Steel or Violent Sun ores, were not provided by the system. This made it impossible for Lucas to make vestiges with elemental affinities, unless he sourced for those materials himself. Read latest chapters at empire

. . .

In a research facility located somewhere in the South Mountains district, a group of scientists, vestige-smiths and engineers were working on a Blue Spear.

"Have you reverse-engineered it yet?" A man in a luxurious outfit walked into the laboratory, glancing at the led researcher who was a vestige-smith.

"N-no, not yet. It's just too cryptic and complicated. The technological base might seem common, but the matrices and runes are unique; unlike anything we've ever seen before." The vestige-smith replied.

"What do you mean? Do you know how difficult it was to get a hold of this thing? Find out the secret. Unwrap this shit and tell me how it works!" The man growled before storming out of the laboratory.

Similar to others who got their hands on the SS vestiges before they officially came out, he had pulled on his connections and spent an outrageous amount of money just to get one for this research. Despite that, the research team had failed to find a clue as to how the vestiges worked. Inevitably, he would become pissed by this.

"Team head, what do we do now?" One of the vestige-smiths on standby asked.

"What else can we do? We have to break the secret of these inscriptions, otherwise, we won't be able to understand this technology." The project head said.

When a vestige-smith created a new design, apart from applying for a patent to protect their work, they also installed certain measures to prevent it from easily being copied. Plagiarism was quite common in the vestige-smith industry, and due to the nature of the industry, it was very easy for one to be creative about it.

Such situations were quite common in fact, and as a result, vestige-smiths tried to install protective mechanisms in their creations. One such protective mechanism happened to be the hiding of stellar matrices and runes knowledge.

To vestige-smiths, their inscriptions and techniques were their life and what made them stand out. Inscriptions were the main difference between a vestige and a piece of modern technology. Although there were other factors required, this was one of the necessary ones.

Due to the importance of inscriptions, vestige-smiths rarely taught any unique knowledge or self-discovered principle to outsiders. Only their direct students or family members in the craft could know about it. Hence, there existed differences in each vestige.

Another method was to create a 'safelock' mechanism on the vestige, which prevented people from studying the nature of the runes or stellar matrices. In his case, Lucas had done so, and with the added fact that stellar circuits were rare, it was impossible for anyone to be able to figure out how they worked.

While this went on, the man in luxury clothing who had visited the research team, connected online to a secretive meeting.

The research facility he owned wasn't the only one performing experiments and reverse-engineering analysis on the SS vestige. There were a few others, most of which belonged to the top corporations in the industry. Similar to it, the others had all failed to make much progress on their individual research.

"Since we are stuck like this, there's only one thing we have to do to avoid being pushed away from the market." One of the attendees of the meeting said.

"And what's that?"

"We have to go to the source and get the technique." The man said.

"Oh wow. Why didn't I think of that?" Someone said sarcastically.

"You don't really think he would just hand it to us cause we asked nicely? And I doubt he's stupid enough to even sell the concept, otherwise, Novanio Tech would have beaten us to it." Another person challenged the suggestion.

"Naturally I didn't mean something as simple as pleading or compensation." The man who gave the suggestion said.

"Since we can't do things nicely, let's go ahead with the old ways. It's time we show these newborns how the industry works."