Abe the Wizard

The hematite ores Abel got were the finest of their kind. After he picked them up from the inferno flame, he placed them on top of his anvil for a good hammering. He did this with his Horadric Malus. It started to flash in a dark golden light, and he adjusted his pounding force to 500 pounds.

For each of his hits, he would get the most out of the base that he was hitting. All the impure substances were hammered out, and every time the hammer made contact with the base, a dark golden light was poured into it. After one hundred hits, the hematite ore attained a level of purity that was never seen before.

When it reached two hundred hits, it was clear that the hematite ore had turned into something else. It was now a piece of fine iron. Fine iron was hard to find in nature. It was one of the rarest kinds of giant iron ore there was. It could only come to be after being hammered for multiple years.

Abel never thought that he could get a fine iron piece with his hands. Fine iron piece was supposed to be the rarest iron piece there was. It was only second place to meteoric iron, which was more of an alien substance than iron.

“Huh,” Abel murmured to himself, “Well, this could be the reason why the dark world has better gear than the Holy Continent.”

And that just gave him another thought. There were some unused hematite ore pieces left at Charsi’s blacksmith store. Despite their high quality, they were still only regular pieces, and that had been confusing Abel this entire time. If those were just ordinary pieces, how did Charsi manage to craft blue or even gold equipment with them?

Now, he probably got his answers. Anyways, he decided to craft a knight’s big sword right now. When he was about to be done with it, a reminder came out of his Horadric Malus. It was asking him if he wanted to spend some mana for a bonus effect. It was kind of surprising to him because something like this was never mentioned in the Horadric Malus’s attribute description.

Wait. It couldn’t be. So the ability to “add a bonus effect to an equipment” was just an ordinary effect that the Horadric Malus had. That’s as… WOW…. That’s just overpowered.

Abel decided to give it a shot. After making his decision, the Horadric Malus started to suck a huge load of mana out of his hand. In just a few seconds, 500 of his mana was gone. The knight’s big sword he made started being covered in a blue light, which disappeared after it scanned the blue from top to bottom.

When the knight’s big sword was complete, Abel decided to examine it by putting it inside his Horadric Cube.

Sharp and Cruel sword (normal)

Single hand damage: 8-41

durability: 50 out of 50

+12% damage increase

+19% maximum damage increase

+19 maximum accuracy increase

It was a blue piece of equipment. He did have to spend 500 mana on it, but there wasn’t anything complicated that he had to do. Maybe Charsi used to do the same thing.

Abel had more questions. He picked up another hematite ore, threw it on top of the inferno flame, hammered the rough base into a fine iron piece, and made a regular knight’s big sword with it. When he was done this time, the Horadric Malus didn’t send him a reminder.

To figure out what was going on, Abel decided to make twenty more of the knight’s big swords. After he did, he realized what the pattern was. For every ten of the same weapons he made, there would always be one time that he could turn a piece of regular equipment to a piece of blue-quality equipment. Now, one-tenth were pretty good odds, especially when he got something that he couldn’t make by himself.

Valuable big sword (normal)

Single hand damage: 10-20

Durability: 50 out of 50

+2 minimum damage increase

This was the second bue-quality sword that Abel got. After putting it inside his portal bracelet, he also put the other 18 regular big swords inside. The ones he didn’t put in were the more useless ones, the ones that either had very few slots for attribute bonuses or the ones that simply couldn’t help him as much.

There were two ways to handle the blue-quality knight’s big swords he got. One, he could use the 1/30 days chance to punch a hole in it with his Horadric Malus. Two, he could use his Horadric Cube to change its attributes into something else by random. Since he wanted to use the Horadric Malus for his magic staff, he decided to put all the valuable big swords into his Horadric Cube.

Formula: 3 pure gemstones + 1 magic weapon = 1 magic weapon with hole

After using up to 100 something pure gemstones, Abel finally got an attribute that he liked.

Savage sword of massacre (normal)

Single hand damage: 8-57

Durability: 50 out of 50

+67% damage increase

+24 maximum damage increase

Increase 2-9 freezing damage

Slot included (2)

This was the most powerful knight’s big sword Abel had ever created. There were even two empty slots that he could put his perfect gemstones in. When he placed in two perfect blue gemstones, the sword was given 8-21 freezing damage.

It’s a shame that he had to waste so many gemstones for it. Using the Horadric Cube was simply too unreliable. Abel still had a lot of gemstones with him, but he didn’t have a stable supply of it. That being said, he would have to wait if he wanted to do more testing.

For the next few days, Abel would stroll his way back to the Holy Continent during the day, and continue his search in the dark world during the night. Before he made his way into the dark world, he would make camp at a place 30 something miles away from Kitchener City.

During this time, he also used his Horadric Malus to punch a hole into the “fireball” magic staff he got from a fallen wizard. He did waste two magic staffs for it, but eventually, he got himself a magic staff with slots for two magic gemstones.

One day, Abel rode Black Wind to the super oak tree. To his surprise, it had already recovered from the damage from last time, when he was trying to attain a breakthrough. The leaves were green again, and the bark and branches were just as thick as they used to be.

Abel came so he could get some more crystal cores for himself. Well, that and some fresh blue howling rabbit meat. After days had passed, several hundred more crystal core pieces were stored up inside the oak tree’s body. There were so many of them that he couldn’t fit them inside his personal storage box. It was an inconvenience that most people couldn’t even dream of.

After having learned his lessons from last time, Abel decided that he didn’t have to take all the crystal cores away in one go. The super oak tree did have a big enough capacity, so he could always come to harvest only what he needed.

Abel decided to craft a total of six dark-golden crystal core pieces. He was going to use them to make the base of his rune patterns. He also synthesized some blue-quality crystal cores for his meditation sessions. To top it up, he took away 99 blue howling rabbits to store inside his personal storage box.

When he was about to leave, he fed another two bottles of the “soul potions to the super oak tree. It wasn’t like he was stingy to it. The oak tree’s soul was newly formed. If he fed it too much soul potion, that would do more harm than good to it. Two bottles were the right amount. It was just enough for the oak tree to absorb it up.

After spending an entire day making magic rune patterns, Abel had used up two dark-golden crystal core pieces and two bottles of “soul potion.” When he was finally done, he decided to prepare a gift for Bartoli before he arrived back to the Holy Continent.

As a dark-golden level boss in the dark world, Bartoli knew the language that was used to draw the rune patterns. She was once a guardian of rune patterns one. Still, she never expected herself to wield a rune pattern magic staff one day.

That’s the gift Abel prepared for her. He made a “leaf” combat magic staff for her. It was nowhere near as good as the “fireball” staff he was holding, but it was much better than a blackfire magic staff. Take the “fire wall” spell, for example. The technique bonus was simply in a completely different league.

“Leaf” rune pattern magic staff

TirRal

Two hand damage: 6-14

Durability: 46-46

+3 fire technique

5-30 fire damage increase

+3 bonus to inferno flame

+3 bonus to warmth

+3 bonus to fireball

+30 defense points

+33% cold resistance

+2% mana increase for every enemy you kill

+50% damage to undead creatures

Slots included (2)

According to Bartoli, the spell damage that her “fire wall” spell could do was at 113-137 per second. From that alone, the level of her spell should be about rank two, which meant that if she was wielding the magic staff Abel was about to give her, the fire damage she could deal would increase to 241-264 points per second–that was about stronger than a level 5 “fire wall” spell.

Since it’s been a while since he had last seen her, the level of her spell might have increased. The level of her “fire wall” spell might already be in level 3 right now. In that case, the “leaf” rune pattern magic staff would give an even higher damage bonus.