?


    Eclipse went on to exin everything that had happened between when this whole thing began, to the moment he entered the cksmith''s shop.


    ording to him, Greed had found the weak spot of every general, even himself. Using the information she had found about them, she chose to ckmail them or threaten them with the thing that made them weak.


    For some reason, Eclipse was adamant about the fact that he wasn''t going to tell Ss about these weaknesses, but in reality, Ss already knew half of them.


    After all, Greed was not the only one keeping tabs on everyone. Ss had been investigating all the generals from the very start. The only person he couldn''t get proper information on was Eclipse, something that was no longer the case.


    He had information on Archie too, however, unlike Eclipse who was essentially a nk sheet of paper, Archie hid in in sight, making all his information readily avable, yet anyone with a trained eye could tell that it was simply a cover-up to hide everything real about him.


    From what Eclipe had told him, not even Greed was able to find anything on him, which was probably one of the main reasons he was able to even go up against her in the first ce.


    However, a few things didn''t add up.


    Greed was terrifyingly silent about everything she had been doing all along. Even Archie, who probably had eyes and ears all over the city and even outside it, wasn''t able to see her ning.


    She had been nning for this for a very long time. The amount of enchantment residue within the people was enough evidence of that. She had somehow tainted every single thing the people of the city needed to survive.


    "What did she threaten you with?" Ss finally asked after the long conversation the two just had. Throughout the entire conversation, the sound of loud bangs could be heard in the background as the cksmith kept mming his hammer onto a hot-white metal.


    Grant was still angry, but right now he was simply sitting on the stone bench, looking at the ground with enough intensity that it felt like it might have actually bored holes into it.


    "She has something that means quite a lot to me." He muttered before looking outside with a solemn expression.


    "Then, why did youe here? Are you not scared that she will destroy the thing she took from you?" Ss asked with a raised brow.


    "I quickly realized that, depsite following her orders, she most likely wouldn''t have returned it in the first ce. She''s nning to do something big, and she doesn''t need us around to do it. She just needs to make sure we''re not against her until she finishes whatever she''s doing." Eclipse exined, causing Ss to nod wryly.


    Despite Ss'' trust issues, everything told him that the man in front of him was telling the truth. Everything from the small movements in his life force, to even the mana inside of him. It all told Ss that he was telling the truth, but even then, Ss couldn''t be sure.


    The man before him was old... Really old. What were the chances that he was experienced enough to fool the likes of him? Ss was only in his mid-50s. The man before him was probably in his 90s if not more.


    After finishing his talk, Ss walked over to the cksmith and waited until he took a break.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Throughout it all, Ss watched as the man continued to m his hammer onto the smoldering-white metal, yet, despite it seeming random and almost barbaric at first, Ss quickly understood the precision and care that went behind each strike.


    The cksmith himself didn''t have an awakened mana core. It was still as filled with impurities as the rest of the unawakened cores on Gilea.


    At first, Ss was confused as to how he was even producing the mana to create and embed the runes onto the things he crafted, but after scanning him from head to toe, he quickly understood how.


    ''The hammer.'' Ss thought while looking at the dull-emerald crystals within the sides of the hammer. However, unlike Keira''s staff, these crystals were real. Ss could immediately tell the moment he saw them.


    They were on a different level. Despite being detached from its origin, it still released a terrifying pressure that made Ss feel like the very air was heavier around it.


    Anyway, mana would circte around the hammer as if it was circting within the body of a living being.


    Using will alone, the cksmith would send a rune toward the front of the hammer, causing it to shine on that very surface for a few seconds before being immediately transferred toward the thing it was hitting.


    With his other hand, he would swerve and weave his fingers above the runes he had created, causing them to connect through small lines that allowed mana to travel through them. Eventually, they all connected near the crystal that powered the piece of equipment.


    Other than that, Ss didn''t really understand the rest. The runes wereplicated, butpared to the life equation, they were nothing. The problem Ss was having with them was the fact that he hadn''t actually learned about them before, so he couldn''t understand what was happening beyond what he already knew.


    "How''s the production of my axes going?" Ss asked with a grateful smile.


    "You owe me big time for this, kid. I used my own batch of sapphire cores for this." The cksmith sneered.


    "They''re only a few solid-sapphire cores." Ssmented, yet when he saw the expression on the cksmith''s face, he could not help but take a step back.


    "I didn''t mean-"


    After that, Ss suffered the wrath of a tired cksmith, who apparently, wasn''t tired enough to not give him a 30-minute lecture about appreciating things.


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