บท 23: Wolves Fang

Three days before the ruin would open up, Jack made a request to Lucius to make a sword for him. After noticing Lucius' skills and realising he was a lot better than the royal blacksmith Jack starting gathering materials to build himself a sword. Lucius agreed straight away and got to work immediately. Lucius knew Jacks sword style and knew he was heavy handed and powerful with his strokes. Instead of making a standard sword that was of superior quality, Lucius decided to make Jack a special two handed sword named the Zweihander which was translated literally to two hander. Most Zweihanders had a large handle and hilt along with a second smaller hilt that was mostly too small to be considered another hilt. Lucius would make the blade first so he started by purifying and smelting all the ores he received from Jack. Jack had given him high quality spirit steel and a good deal of SST along with a special ore called Flames Lick ore. He had found this ore when he was a teenager in the ruins, he had kept it all this time since he had never found a blacksmith good enough to use it. The Flames Lick ore was named like that because if it was used in a knife or sword, when it cut the enemy it would leave them with the sensation that they were burning yet wet, almost as if they were being licked by fire. It was a cruel material that had reached the mid grade of tier 2. Lucius was given enough to coat the outside of the blade and use it to forge the edge of the blade. Lucius began working by using the steel as a core that he forged into a simple steel plank that was 15 cm wide and 250cm long. He inscribed some toughness, smoothness and other auxiliary inscriptions and then melded SST over the plank. He shaped the SST layer into a sword with a hammer while keeping it heated with his qi techniques. He cooled and hardened the blade in some spirit water. Spirit water was even better than oil since its ability to distribute the heat slowly and evenly was even better. After repeating the quenching a few times he brought out the Flames Lick ore and melted it. It had to be smelted at a much higher temperature as it was an ore with a fire affinity. After smelting it he hammered it into the edges of the blade adding a red ring to the blade that was a purplish silver colour, almost like Lucius' hair, and then added the smaller hilt in too. The smaller hilt was shaped like two bloody fangs sticking out of the waist of the blade. This would be a deadly attachment that could stab or scrape the opponent in unexpected places and inflict the fire lick onto them. After crafting the blade and sharpening it on a whetstone, Lucius spent a few hours inscribing the highest grade inscriptions he could and using special herbs and oils to treat the blade. He increased its longevity and decreased the oxidation of the blade and coated it with a protective layer of oil that would protect the inscriptions from scraping and such. Creating the blade took the entire day in total after Lucius' careful working, but even then it was a lot faster than other blacksmiths. Jack and John had been watching in awe the entire day and were stunned by the beautiful end product. As a Colonel of the army and a middle aged man he had seen many blacksmiths craft blades but he had never seen anyone as swift and smooth as Lucius. He felt that if even the royal blacksmith were to do the same thing he would need a full 3 days to create that blade, especially since the inscriptions should have taken an entire day by themselves alone.