Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! ANOTHER CHAPTER FOR THE CHAPTER GODS!

ALSO, Since people asked me to place the warnings about Wordpress Updates, I guessed that I should start by telling what I already have there. Project Hero is up to chapter 3 and Project Horsemen is up to chapter 9, both up to date to what I had written up, so updates might take time from now on.

ALSO(3), AND CRYSTAL TINKERER! WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT WOULD COME BACK! YAY!

Have a good read!

-----

Yes. After much thought, I finally reached the only logical conclusion on how I could somehow deal with the situation before me. Standing up on the still rocking wagon and ignoring both Lily’s and Ozzur’s attempt to talk to me, I quickly made my way towards the back of the carriage.

Looking down I could see as the ground lazily passed beneath us with a certain speed. After a brief calculation, I decided that it wouldn’t be difficult to do what I wanted at all. Turning back to the two people who looked at me curious, I made a goodbye sign with my hand while putting up a handsome face.

“I’ll be going ahead!” I said.

Then I jumped out of the carriage and quickly turned back towards the nearby grassy plains, activating my movement skill, darted ahead of the carriage under the curious glance of San, who simply watched as I went ahead of the carriage.

As I saw the vehicle hide itself under a turn back on the road, I started laughing happily at how genial I was. Running away from my problems WAS the correct choice in the end! While thinking so I sped up ahead and my laugh became a mad cackle.

Now, all I had to do was to arrive at the mine before them. I could take a few minutes to start crafting the sonic bomb I needed so much and still manage to do something before them!

Yes!

YES!

I AM A FREAKING GENIUS!

Now, all I need to do is to reach the mine!

Easy peasy!

No way this can go wr…

Not saying it! Won’t jinx!

Yeah. So smart.

Totally!

Now…

Where was the mine again?

…

“Master is so smart!” Crys said in a fake cheerful tone.

“Shut up.”

“Decided to solve the situation by running ahead!”

“Please, stop…”

“Nyanananana! Nyanananana!”

“If only you knew where the mine was, it would have been a great help, right?”

“My pride… it hurts… Stop it… please…” I said in a dry tone while crouched in the corner of the wagon, drawing circles on the ground.

After noticing that I was completely lost, I ended up sitting on the side of the road and awaited for the carriage to come by and get me. I couldn’t help but feel like a massive idiot for making such a basic mistake.

Even Lily and Ozzur both only stared at me, their unbound pity making me feel even more depressed than normal, so I curled up a bit more and started escaping reality. Only San kept on laughing the whole way. The worse part was that I was the only one who jumped out of the vehicle, so Aura and Co stayed inside comfy since they knew what I had gotten myself into.

So the humiliation was purely and exclusively mine for having done such a huge blunder.

“I hope this teaches you to not try doing reckless things anymore, master.” Crys said sternly to me while puffing out her cheeks. A scary aura surrounding her.

“Yes… Master has learned. Master will be a good boy.” I said brokenly.

“So, Wargon is ordered around by his pet. I see, I see…” Ozzur said while noting down something on his notebook. I really felt like saying something about it, but decided to leave it for later and simply kept quiet.

While I broken-heartedly kept quiet on my corner, Aura was the only one who was kind enough to give me some moral support, offering me her fluffy fur to dig into and pet to my hearts content.

Although I can’t help but also have this feeling that she’s taking advantage of my depression to get some free petting, but once again, I didn’t feel like commenting it as she was the only one who was actually on my side, seeing how Lieutenant simply mocked me and Rio was cutely napping on top of a nearby barrel.

“Teacher… What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be coming up with a plan or something?” Lily said while trying to get me up from my depression.

“Hmm… You have a point.” I said nodding and quickly sitting up. “OKAY PLEBEIANS! OPEN SPACE FOR THE CRAFT MASTER SHALL NOW CRAFT!” I said in a pompous voice, startling the two travel companions.

Still, they complied to my words and scuttled away as they watched intensely what I was about to do. Each with their own reasons, if I had to guess.

However, it was enough for me.

The moment that I deemed the space to be enough, I opened my menu and dropped one of each elemental crystals on the wooden floor of the carriage. As well as some mana crystals that could work for holding back the crystals reserve.

“Teacher, what are you going to do with these?” Lily asked as she saw me looking intently to the fragments.

“A bomb.” I explained.

“…With those? Are you alright teacher?”

“… Those things can’t even make a decent firecracker. Players already tested it.” Ozzur said with a shake of his head and a disappointed tone.

I simply took out one of my flash-bombs, held it touching a mana crystal and activated it, blowing up in a massive ball of light that blinded the two who had complained about the uselessness of the elemental crystals.

“Never again speak of the crystals as useless, you infidels!” I said in a cold tone to the infidels who dareth mock the mighty elemental crystals.

Storing away the depleted mana crystal for more research later on. I heard as San checked up what was going on the back of the carriage after seeing the flash. I told him that it was nothing without even moving my glare away from the crystals.

“W-Wargon have flash-bangs. Uses elemental crystals as crafting materials… Scoop scoop.” Ozzur said as soon as he recovered from the blindness.

“T-Teacher! That was mean.” Lily complained in a teary tone.

I simply ignored their complaints and kept my attention back on the matter at hand. For one, I knew that I would need explosion to make the bomb work, so I could be almost certain that a combination of fire and wind would be needed. But instead of a shockwave, what I needed would be a loud noise, and this is where things got complex.

Anyway, for now I started by parting the wind crystal and the fire crystal twice until I got one quarter of each, then I separated those pieces and settled the remaining back on the lines, where I faked some kind of organization of kinds.

“So, what are you trying to do, Teacher?” Lily asked me.

“I sincerely don’t see anything like that.” Ozzur said with a confused look.

“...Any chance you might keep this a secret?” I asked curious for a moment. Ozzur blinked and stared at me for a moment before nodding and accepting. “Anyway, what I’m trying to do right now is to create a sonic bomb.” I explained.

“Sonic bomb?” Lily asked confused.

“Hmmm… A bomb that uses high volume instead of impact to attack the enemy. Very limited use seeing that it have an extremely wide range, and if it affects the opponent it most likely affects the user too.” Ozzur explained with a confused tone. “I don’t see how useful that might be.”

“Well, for one, I don’t plan on making anything that will affect me.” I said while gathering a few of the gems and looking at them curiously, trying to imagine whether the combination would work or not. “Second, the monster I’m going to fight is blind, but have an improved hearing. If I get this thing working, it should be nuts against it”

“Oh, the spider is blind?” Ozzur asked surprised.

“Yup. If you had asked San here, he would have told you that.” I said pointing to the dwarf. “Thus, having a bomb that attacks its main sense is actually a very good strategy against it.”

“I… See…” Lily said as understanding dawned onto her. “So, teacher actually did have some plans in mind…”

“…I would complain about you thinking that I didn’t have plans, but I don’t exactly have the right to do something like that. ” I complained wryly.

“And why exactly would you resort to such tactics?” Ozzur asked me curious.

“Because I what I want to do is reckless, to say the least.” I explained to him with a serious expression as I focused on my job. Taking the crystals I had separated, I quickly selected a combination that I thought that could work, involving the explosion part plus one more half of wind crystals. “Whatever edge I can have against the monster that I’m fighting I’m going to take it.” As I said it, I rolled everything in a leather ball and held it before me with a wind crystal. "Watch out. Going to test it."

Trying to see if the combination would work, I activated it, hoping for the best. But instead of a loud sound that left me nearly deaf, we were all blasted backwards by a heavy burst of wind. That spread in every direction.

Being the one closest to the bomb also meant that I was the one who was knocked back further, and ended up hitting the back of my head on the wood.

Ozzur and Lily, having taken some distance as I requested for some space, didn’t take the brunt of the blow, and were only lightly bothered by the wind. Still, it seems that the effect of this bomb really decrease over distances.

Well, it wasn’t what I was after. I did briefly think of grinding the crystal and try again, but it would simply increase the size and decrease the damage, so by that calculation, I decided that it would be useless to try doing it, as it would still only blow me back.

“Stone-mister… What did you do?” Rio asked with a yawn as she raised her head, probably confused about the commotion I ended up causing.

“Nothing, little wyvern.” I said and gently petted the little dragon, who closed her eyes lightly. “You can go back to sleep.” I said and she nodded weakly before lowering her head and yawning.

“Do you always test them like that?” Lily asked me worried, and I nodded my head.

“Well, the damage is really minor most of the time, and only the effects can be nasty to be honest.” I told her as I stored the spent mana crystals and rearranged the crystals.

“The effects?” Ozzur asked me confused. “You said that there are various effects you can create with these crystals?”

“Yup.” I said while taking out one of the throwing knives I had in my bandolier over my chest and throwing it to the mummy, who picked it up hastily. “I use a kind of secret technique to craft those knifes, but the principle is the same. They use the crystals to have specialized effects.” I told him.

“Oh… I think I remember it.” Lily said, probably back to the time when I was teaching her blacksmithing. “I never really understood what they were for…”

“Well, that one is to poison the opponent.” I told while pointing to the knife that the mummy held. Both became shocked and Ozzur even dropped the knife surprised for a moment. I laughed bit before picking it up and storing it away. “It will only poison you if you have it stabbed on you and it activates.”

“…Oh…” He said slightly surprised. “I see, a safety mechanism, is it?”

“Nope.” I denied flat out. “It’s just how it works to be honest.”

“So, you never considered creating a safety mechanism for your weapons?” he asked me shocked and I nodded. “Wargon is extremely lax with safety procedures… Scoop scoop.”

“I somehow really feel like hitting you, but I guess that me doing that would lead to another scoop scoop situation, wouldn’t it?” I asked angrily. The man looked at me for a moment before nodding.

“Erm…” Lily said suddenly while looking at us confused. “Why are you so interested in Teacher? Is he that famous?”

“Famous?” Ozzur asked surprised as his eyes brightened. “This guy is almost a legend amongst the chosen thanks to his crafting feats! Not only he was the first one to create a rare quality piece of equipment, that most crafters still struggle with, and keeps pumping them out like they are water, he also made a whole set of it, another first, and he somehow made something with a kind of quality that we didn’t even know it existed!” Ozzur said with an amazed tone.

“Eh? Quality you never heard before?” Lily asked confused.

“My cape is a historic quality item that increases the stats every time I defeat a boss or complete a really difficult quest together with Aura here.” I said pointing to the fox besides me.

As I said that, I noticed how the two looked at me in shock. Did they never hear about the effect of the cape? Must have been it. Nodding to myself in my head, I noticed how the two stared at me with a strange thirst for information.

“…So?” Ozzur asked me after some time.

“Not telling.” I denied outright, making them blink in shock. “But I can at least tell you its useless to try and steal the cape seeing that it only works with me.”

“So, the legendary item only works with the crafter… Scoop scoop.” Sighing loudly at the man's dedication to his works, all i could do was sigh in defeat. However, after a moment the man stopped and stared at Lily. "What about you then? Why do you follow Wargon around if you didn't even know about his fame amongst pla... Chosen?" Ozzur asked the undine while frowning. "And now that i think about it, you keep calling him your teacher. Is that as a crafting teacher?"

For a moment i stopped my work in trying to find a way to create a sonic bomb and focused on the undine curious. Although i did have an idea about why she would follow me around, i never really asked, so I couldn't be so sure about it.

Lily was seemingly caught off-guard by the question, seeing how she hesitated for a moment thinking on het answer.

"Well... The reason i'm learning under teacher..." She looked down at her clothes curiously for a moment, before finally sighing. "Well, to be honest, it's because i find crafting boring."

"...it that didn't sound so serious i would have exploded a flash-bomb right here."

"Eh? Why?" Lily asked.

"... Sorry, wasn't supposed to say that out loud..." I said feeling slightly embarrassed. The two looked at me with mixed reactions for a moment before Lily went back to explaining.

"E-ehem!" She cleared her throat before going on. "I didn't word that correctly. What i meant is, i always liked the crafting process. I would watch as the smithies back at Eldor would hammer away their own creations in marvel, see as the leatherworkers sewed up beautiful and powerful garments to protect the wearers." She had a lightly dreamy look to herself as she said that. "I always loved seeing people working on their crafts like that, and i always dreamed of it being myself in their place!"

"That doesn't sound like something you find boring." I said with a dubious stare, and Lily nodded.

"I never thought of the act of creating boring, to be honest." She said with a shake of her head. "It was more like... The results were boring." Oh! I think i'm starting to get what she meant. "The final results were always the same. And if one thing changed, at most it was the values of each stats, and that was it. The only pieces that had truly interesting results were the ones that had extremely expensive ores and other materials." She stopped for a moment. "That was when i heard the rumor of a certain crafter who was making some interesting gears."

"Ooh! Ooh! Let me guess, it was me!" I said cheerfully.

"No. It was Torg." Huh? My head took a moment to wrap around the conflicting information that had been given to me. "I met the big half dwarf back then and asked him if he could take me as an apprentice so i could learn how to make the interesting gears he was doing, even when using relatively cheap material." Strange, i never heard of that? "He refused me on the spot." Okay, didn't expect that. "He told me that he had no right to take me as his apprentice if it were to teach me that new technique of his because he had copied from his own apprentice." She then looked at me with a hint of admiration that made me feel embarrassed. "Then, he told me to look for gear made by a certain Gon. That was how i met Argento and got a job so i could buy the dagger and hopefully meet you!"

Well, Torg copying my crafting method isn't all that troubling or surprising, seeing how he was the one who taught me blacksmithing in the first place. But i didn't expect that those trash items i dumped in the market would be that amazing to be honest.

Also, please, stop looking at me with those respectful eyes. It pains my heart the fact that you will be heartbroken when i tell you i have no idea how i do that!

"And why the hell are you looking like a doujinshi artist who found something interesting?" I shouted angrily to the mummy who had rough breaths as he wrote down everything with a speed faster than what i could type. Sighing loudly, i shook my head and raised the sonic-bomb-ball MKII. "Well, lets try the next one, shall we?"

As i said that and activated the bomb, i barely managed to get sight of Crys putting on an amused smile and knew before the bomb even went off that my half wind, quarter fire quarter darkness bomb was a failure.

...

"Su*cough*Sucess *cough* still *cough* got it!" I shouted happily as t waved the smoke away from my face.

"How the *cough* hell is this *cough* a sonic bomb?" Ozzur asked as he tried to find some breathing room in the cart.

"Why the hell are you even coughing when you have those bandages in your face?" I shouted angrily before being caught in a coughing fit too.

"Oh, good point!" He said while righting himself. "Wargon seems to have a decent grasp of races characteristics... Scoop scoop."

"Why is even *cough* that a scoop?" I asked annoyed while helping Lily up.

"Oi, lad! What the hell happened in there?" San asked worried as he saw the thick black smoke coming out from the wagon.

"Nothing too big. This is just a smoke bomb that went off by accident!" I shouted back to him. I saw as he stared at us in doubt for a moment before nodding weakly.

Rio woke up for good this time, sadly. At least she didn’t seem as heavily affected by the smoke as we were. If I had to guess it’s something to do with her being a dragon and all but I couldn’t be quite so sure.

Crys also was mostly unnafected thanks to her being made of crystals and all, not needing to breath, but Aura and Lieutenant weren’t so lucky. The smoke was heavier than a normal fire smoke, and so it came down onto them heavily. Grabbing Aura, I quickly lifted her so she could breath a bit more of clean air from up high. Lieutenant dealt with it by climbing on the wall.

“Sorry about that, guys.” I said after the smoke went all out.

“So, that wasn’t the expected?” Ozzur asked me and I shook my head.

“Nope. But it’s one less bomb I’ll have to research later on!” I replied with a wide smile before frowning. “Anyway, I kind of had forgotten how fun it is to play around with these things…” I said as I looked down at the crystals with a grin. “You know what? I feel like experimenting a bit more with them.”

As I said that, I quickly started grabbing up the crystals to try something new, but before I could do anything at all, the two of them grabbed my hands, stopping me.

“As much of a scoop it is to see the Famous Wargon’s crafting process, I believe we should withhold from any further experiments within the carriage.” Ozzur said.

“I… Agree with him there, teacher.” Lily said grabbing my other hand with a wry expression.

“But… I wanted to play with the crystals!” I pouted.

““At least don’t blast them inside the carriage again, okay?””

Yay!

…

…

“Wargon can be childish at times… Scoop Scoop!”

“STOP WITH THAT ALREADY!”

----

Name:Arcus EvencidRace&Class:Half-Beastman Half-Human BersekerSignature MovesEnrage/Berserk/EnchantingAttack:84Defense:73Magic:57M. Defense:75Speed:74Technique:40Sanity:45Elemental serpents raised:32A half-beastman orphan that was raised by a couple of Elemental serpents, with one of them becoming his adventuring partner. They started by joining the Silver Gauntlet together with Wargon, and now follow Elraiara serving as her partner and common sense."Shalalala-la! Shaashishaa sha sha sha! ” – Whisi

“Nyaa-nanyaa?” – Lieutenant

“Shia-Shaa! Shala-shia!” - Whisi

This one is an example. More below so it don’t get too long.

Spoiler :

Name:WhisiRace&Class:Wind serpentSignature MovesRoyale Straight Flush/Adorable look/Camouflage(only works on Arcus heads)Attack:97Defense:90Magic:98M. Defense:89Speed:95Technique:100Sanity:84Wine mugs needed to get drunk:Still unknown (Two barrels and counting)A small and cheerful wind serpent that can be deceptively good at poker. Raised by Arcus on his foster parents’ home, she grew attached to the reckless half-beastman and spends most of her time acting as his common sense. Except when fruits and poker is involved, then she becomes a bit reckless too.”Extra fluffy. Very huggy too… So cute…” - Elraira

Name:Elraira TerndeikRace&Class:Draconid Fire-bringerSignature MovesInferno Scythe/ Flame tornado/ Drunk immunityAttack:86Defense:45Magic:90M. Defense:45Speed:70Technique:50Sanity:88Charisma:90A Noble girl Draconid who wields a fearsome scythe and uses flame magic to spread destruction. Although her past is a mystery, it’s known that she plans on travelling the world to learn more about it. Loves cute animals and is Yuu’s Martial arts rival.”She’s good! I don’t know many people who can trade blows with me like that besides grandpa!” - Yuu

Name:Lila GoldspringRace&Class:Half-golem Half Construct Magic GunnerSignature Moves????/?????/????Attack:72Defense:68Magic:86M. Defense:73Speed:67Technique:62Sanity:87Shyness:100An odd girl that recently started following Arcus after he seemed to help her with something back where they met. Now she follows him around and began teaching him about enchanting. Extremely shy to strangers."Wait, now that I think about it, we are half siblings aren’t we?" – Wargon