The First Legendary Beast Master

At the mention of filling a set amount of progress, Forgemaster Granite began to laugh.

"So, it works like Blacksmith or Weaponsmith does as a System skill. You need a thousand points of progress to reach Journeyman. Not every creation will give you an advancement, but sometimes when you learn more than expected it will give you more than one point.

Now, it's all up to talent and time. If they're starting as Apprentices, it might be a year or more before they're Journeymen, and a decade before they are getting close to being called real Rune masters.

But lucky for us, the System will give them new bursts of knowledge when they advance."

That was the one saving grace for the new crafters of all sorts. If the system wasn't giving them knowledge, the entire craft that they had gotten a skill for might remain lost to time.

Before the Apprentices could head to their stations, Hawk came out to stand on top of the armoured glass enclosure of the clean room, startling everyone with his massive and majestic presence.

"What's up Hawk? Decided to say hello to everyone?" Karl asked.

[They don't know fire well enough.]

That explained it.

"My friend Hawk says that he's willing to help enlighten the smithy on the wonders that can come from Fire Magic." Karl explained, as Hawk began to draw mana into his body.

The fires of the forge began to flicker, then turn faintly blue as Runes appeared on the walls above the forge pits.

"What is he doing?" Granite gasped as he read what was appearing on the walls.

"It's something that I found written on the wall of a Dwarven Forge in a trial. He's improving the forges here with his innate Ghostfire ability. I don't know what it will do to the weapons, but you won't have to worry about the forges being hot enough for your alloys anymore." Karl joked.

But the Forgemaster was already out the door and headed for his forge station.

While there was no doubt that many of the others would be able to turn out high-quality weapons with a Ghostfire Forge, the Forgemaster himself could make a true masterpiece with this sort of quality equipment.

It was almost painful for a Dwarf to work with a human forge, no matter how much they insisted that technology made it just as good.

So, he happily tossed a handful of coal in the forge, not for fuel, but for the carbon that the steel would pick up as it was stuck in the ash bed to warm. One way or another, it needed to make its way into the alloy, and this was still the best way, even in a magical forge.

The blue light would take some getting used to, but the steel heated quickly, and the bellows kept the forge heat exactly where he wanted it to be.

"Monarch, how much of the Dwarven Forge did you record?" Granite asked as he realized the bellows were linked to the enchantment as well as the airflow.

"All of it, I hope. The city was damaged and abandoned, so there might have been more that wasn't carved into the building itself, but we got everything that was written on the walls and the forge base.

Is it working out alright?" Karl asked curiously.

"We will know in five minutes, but it looks promising so far."

As the Forgemaster turned back to his work, Karl settled in to wait, and Hawk observed the smiths from the top of the clean room. They were so happy with his fire that the Ghostfire Thunderbird was beginning to see some logic behind Thor's 'help people all the time for no particular reason' logic.

The Forgemaster was making a mighty two-handed battleaxe, so Karl began to plan the Runic design to turn that weapon into a true masterpiece of their combined arts.

One of the Overlord Ranked Berserkers would be over the moon with joy when they saw what Karl was turning out for them.

Life Steal would be the centrepiece of the effect, draining the enemy to restore their ally. Add to that some skill power enhancement, sharpness and a combination of reduced weight with increased inertia.

That would let the Overlord spin it like a toy, but the force behind the strikes would not be reduced the way that a lighter weapon would be.

The only issue was that Life Steal was ugly.

Not the runes for the ability. It was one of what the Runemaster's book had called the third path, unlinked runes. So, unlike the rest of the weapon, it was just a cluster of runes with no coherence or intricate patterning.

[Why not carve it into a gemstone, then put the stone in the axe? You can hide all the ugly that way.] Remi suggested.

Oh, that was a wonderful idea. If he just added a few more sets of Runes to link a gem setting to the rest of the inscription, it would be perfect.

He just needed to warn the Forgemaster.

"Master Granite. Please put a setting for a half-fist sized gem in the blade. I will need to set an enhanced stone to create one of the effects." Karl warned.

"Understood, Monarch. I know just how."

Karl thought about his pattern for a second. "Make that two gemstones, if possible."

If he put Life Leech on one side and Brutality on the other side, it would balance out the design, and an Overlord would get a seventy percent strength and size increase from the second buff.

Utterly terrifying.

Hawk dropped a few stones out of his space, and Karl showed them to Granite before he started the carving.
Enjoy exclusive adventures from empire

That part only took a few minutes a stone, as he wasn't trying to recreate the whole spell, only describe the effect well enough that it would merge with the rest of the Runes on the weapon.

"Runemaster, the axe is ready." Granite declared, half an hour after he had started to forge the axe.

It glowed faintly blue, the same colour as Hawk's flames, and there was a stone setting on either side, where he had embedded the two stones, ready for Karl's handiwork.

Already, it would have three spell effects on it, from the forge and the stones. But they were just getting started.