MMORPG: Rise of the Primordial Godsmith

At those words, Arcaelus went ahead and grabbed a forging hammer from the tool rack as he was about to begin forging.

Though, just as he was perusing through the items contained within the material cache, a question from Valyr broke his concentration.

"By forging items, you mean forging them from scratch, right?" asked the young man.

In response, Arcaelus stared at Valyr with a slightly odd expression for a bit before nodding.

"I'm pretty sure something like that should have been self-explanatory, but yes."

Valyr wryly smiled at that. "Just wanted to make sure I wasn't going against the spirit of the fight."

"Speaking of which, upgrading any items I've previously forged doesn't count either, right?"

"They do not." Arcaelus shook his head, only to remain silent as gears turned in his mind.

After a while, he spoke once more, his words bringing the young man a hint of delight.

"However, I would consider it if you show me the forged item beforehand and you upgrade its rarity by one grade."

"To clarify, plus modifiers do not count."

With that, Valyr nodded in agreement, faintly grinning as he began to think about the items he would be forging.

On the other hand, Arcaelus watched the young man for a bit more before returning his attention to the material cache.

"I guess he isn't confident enough that he'd be able to forge more items than me once the five days are up," muttered the man to himself.

Picking up a few items from the material cache, Arcaelus then set the furnace ablaze as he began to chuck items into it.

"Though, if he does manage to upgrade more items than I forge within five days…"

"Then he's undoubtedly proven he's achieved consistency."

"It may be a different type of consistency, but consistency nevertheless."

…

"There's a few ways I could go about approaching this fight," muttered Valyr to himself, a slight frown adorning his face.

"I could either forge the same thing over and over again, slightly improving the speed at which I forge the item with every attempt."

"Or if Arcaelus doesn't want that, I could forge a series of items that vary from one another. Though, that'll be a challenge on my experience and skills I've accrued as a blacksmith so far."

Scratching the back of his head for a bit, the young man decided to ask Arcaelus a question regarding the thought he just had.

After hearing from the shifty man that each item would need to be different from one another, Valyr briefly had a bitter smile as he took in a deep breath.

Letting out a long and drawn-out sigh, the young man then brought up all of the blueprints he had collected in his mind, planning out the items he would be forging for their fight.

Focusing on a balance of speed and quality, a list of blueprints was soon made in the young man's mind as he began to take out items from his material cache.

Stoking the flames within the furnace with his mana, he then proceeded to chuck those items into it as he perused the cache of blueprints the Gates of Awakening had provided.

Unsurprisingly, a great portion of the blueprints within the cache were already something he had come across during the Trial of Four Rarities and Six Rarities.

However, there were still quite a decent amount of blueprints that he had not come across yet, prompting him to commit the information on those blueprints to memory.

After that, he took a brief glance at the furnace, keeping an eye on whether or not the items he had chucked in had reached their optimal forging temperature.

Seeing that there was still a bit of time before he had to take them out, Valyr went silent for a bit as a screen appeared in front of his field of vision.

"Identify [True Prodigious Mana Arm]."

Ding!

With how the experience and skills he had accumulated through his past life and his current life had brought him to this point, there was no doubt in Valyr's mind that he was quite fast when it came to forging.

Adding on the fact that he had a couple titles that reduced his forging time, it could be said that he might be one of the fastest blacksmiths on Veldanyr.

However, considering that Arcaelus had brought up such a challenge in the first place, Valyr had no doubt that the man was someone who could possibly forge items faster than him.

With that, he decided to make use of a forging skill he had not even used once in his current life, reading through its description to familiarize himself with it once more.

"Huh. I could conjure five arms now," murmured the young man, the gears in his mind turning as he pondered over how he would go through the forging process with five additional arms.

Fortunately, having used a similar skill to his current one in his past life, Valyr slowly formulated a plan in his mind.

"Thank the heavens that the cost for this skill greatly decreased," said the young man to himself, circulating mana throughout his body.

Whoosh!

Sometime later, he then pushed the mana he was circulating towards one of his shoulder blades, causing an arm similar to his to appear.

Slowly getting over the odd sensation of having to control another appendage with his mind, Valyr reminded himself of the wings he would conjure before proceeding to infuse more mana into the skill.

However, rather than infuse more mana into other parts of the body, he instead infused it to two spots detached from his body.

Swoosh!

Within seconds, four translucent arms appeared out of thin air, with a pair appearing on both of Valyr's sides. 

Though this caused the odd sensation Valyr felt earlier to somewhat intensify, a faint smile appeared on his face as he thought about how the current setup looked like he now had three blacksmiths working together.

Sparing a glance at Arcaelus, who seemed to be engrossed in forging his own items, Valyr soon willed two pairs of his arms to grab a forging hammer each from the tool rack.

After that, he brought out the anvil from his spatial bracelet to expand their workspace, only to take out a few items from the furnace.

"Alright then."

"Let us begin."