"You shut up and watch!" The words ca from Ethan’s main body.
Mad Engineer imdiately clamped his mouth shut, shrinking his neck into his shoulders.
Ten minutes later, under Mad Engineer’s—NoPaperOnTheBigOne’s—stunned gaze, the guy copying the schematic made his final stroke.
Where he confird the copy was complete, he wrote his own na.
[Ding...]
A crisp chi sounded, and the schematic before their eyes revealed the forging... no, the tempering thod for a single screw.
The entire schematic flashed with a brief, bronze light.
A brand new blueprint had appeared.
"An Advanced Forging Schematic... ’Mysterious Screw’?" Mad Engineer picked it up, read the na, and was dumbfounded.
He continued, a skeptical tone creeping in, "You plan to break the components down, lower the schematic’s grade, so a bunch of Advanced Blacksmiths can mass-produce them?"
He looked at Ethan, his face a mix of shock and sothing else... a hint of mockery.
"Yeah, got a problem with that?" Ethan grinned.
"Boss, honestly, I admire the thod. It works great for Engineers. I can have low-level craftsn work on assembly in stages, and I just handle the core, precision work myself. But... a Blacksmith? I don’t think that’ll fly. Any item a Blacksmith makes, its quality and precise grade are determined when it’s forged. It’s a one-shot process. They can’t divide the labor and combine things later. This copied schematic for the screw, I can see it’s slightly different from the original. Probably so changes happened during the tracing. The best screw you’ll get from this is Bronze quality. But the original schematic... I’d say it requires at least Silver-grade components."
Though Mad Engineer saw what Ethan was attempting, and even respected the approach for his own field, he was deeply skeptical about its application here. For Engineers, batch assembly was totally feasible. He could even copy and break down the assembly schematics himself into countless simpler parts, downgrading their complexity so low-level Engineers could understand them.
"Heh, don’t you worry about that. You just focus on your part," Ethan said with a laugh, then turned to Celia. "Celia, take this schematic to an Advanced Blacksmith. Have them forge one of these screws, now."
He knew the Renegade Alliance guild supported plenty of players with non-combat professions.
"Okay..." Celia didn’t waste words, taking the schematic and leaving. Though, truth be told, she was burning with curiosity to see how Ethan would pull this off.
After Celia left, Ethan, Lyla, and Mad Engineer stood in silence. About ten minutes later, Celia returned. She walked up to Ethan and opened her hand. Resting on her palm was a single screw.
"Hah! See? I told you it wouldn’t work!" Mad Engineer burst out laughing the mont he saw the screw, a triumphant gleam in his eyes. "This screw is a full milliter larger than the specs on the original blueprint. How are we supposed to assemble with this?"
Ethan could read the guy’s thoughts clearly: ’He thinks I’m a total amateur.’
Yet, Ethan didn’t get angry. His avatar reached out and took the screw from Celia’s hand.
With a wave of his hand...
Bang!
A portable forge materialized out of thin air, landing heavily on the ground. Flas licked from its vents.
Another wave of his hand, and an anvil landed with a solid thud.
"Holy crap... a portable forge and anvil? This is..." Mad Engineer was stunned once again.
Ethan’s avatar, using a pair of tongs, held the screw and thrust it into the forge. A brief, sub-ten-second heating, and he pulled it out, placing the slightly glowing tal on the anvil. A golden light flashed in his hand, and a peculiarly shaped forging hamr appeared.
He swung back...
CLANG!
A single, powerful blow landed squarely on the semi-red screw.
"Damn, Boss! Are you trying to pound that thing into a tal pancake?" Mad Engineer winced, quickly covering his ears.
Ethan ignored him.
His avatar struck again. Clang! Clang! Clang! Three hamr blows in rapid succession.
Hummm...!
As the third blow fell, a golden light erupted from under the hamr, so bright everyone had to shut their eyes for a second.
"Done," Ethan’s avatar announced.
As their vision cleared, they saw him holding a single screw that now glead with a golden-yellow radiance.
"No. Freaking. Way!" Mad Engineer nearly jumped out of his skin. "I’ve never, ever heard of a Blacksmith being able to upgrade a component forged by soone else!"
"Just because you haven’t heard of it, doesn’t an I can’t do it," Ethan’s avatar retorted, flashing a toothy grin.
At that mont, Mad Engineer was rendered utterly speechless. He’d always considered himself a genius, blessed with a hidden profession. But encountering this guy who looked identical to Ethan suddenly made him feel like a frog in a well, finally seeing the vastness of the sky. His complacency shattered, replaced by a sudden, startling clarity. There was always soone better, a higher level to achieve. While this guy wasn’t in his exact field, it was clear his mastery of Blacksmithing far surpassed Mad Engineer’s own prowess in Engineering.
Three hamr strikes. Upgrading a Bronze screw to Gold. That was a two-tier leap.
Ethan, for his part, smiled in satisfaction. His avatar wasn’t just any Blacksmith. It had one hell of a title:
[Divine Forger]...
A non-combat profession he’d triggered using his precious Wishbound Relic. And this ability to upgrade components? It was a skill that unlocked automatically upon reaching the Master tier. It allowed him to perform a single reforging on any semi-finished component, with a 100% chance to improve its grade by one or two tiers.
Thinking of this, Ethan let out a faint, almost imperceptible sigh. The skill wasn’t without its limits; each component could only be reforged once.
Ethan had no idea that if anyone else learned of his slight disappointnt, they’d probably want to strangle him. You’re still not satisfied with that? What the hell else do you want?!
Seeing Mad Engineer standing there, dumbstruck, Ethan assud he was just impressed. "Can we make this work now?" he asked.
He didn’t realize that NoPaperOnTheBigOne was undergoing a profound shift in his mindset, a personal awakening.
Jolted back to reality by Ethan’s question, he nodded, sowhat dazed. "Yeah... yeah, we can. I’ll go copy the schematics now. The components..." he turned and gave a slight, respectful bow to Ethan’s avatar, "...will be in your capable hands"
With that, he flipped through the stack of schematics, pulled out the section related to Engineer assembly, gave Ethan a firm nod, and headed straight for the guild hall’s main gate.
"Huh? That guy... he seems different sohow," Ethan mused, watching as the man, who usually swaggered with an ’I-own-the-place’ air, walked out the gate with a calm, asured pace.
Shaking his head after a mont, Ethan turned. "Lyla, let’s get going too."
Only Lyla and Celia remained with him now. Celia was only level 20, power-leveled by others, so she would naturally stay to manage the guild hall.
"Mhm," Lyla responded softly, imdiately slipping her arm through his.
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