Jim sighed heavily and set the staff he was working on onto the table.

Thunder Staff

Quality: Great

Special Effect: Lightning Spell Attack Up (Weak)

[+75 Crafting Exp]

Since the day he was able to cast his first spell a whole week has passed. In that time he and Egrevaht were busy creating staffs, accessories, rings, bows and so on. Of course most of it was done with Fenrir bones for extra lightning damage and stats. Jim felt like he had crafted almost a dozen weapons with how much Egrevaht pushed him. Recently they started making two weapons a day each to meet the king's demand.

His crafting level reached level 19, surpassing his normal level which was still at 11, but the stat gains were worth it and Jim figured that he would have an easier time fighting higher level monsters if his crafting level rose further.

Other than crafting, Jim has managed to cast the first tier spells pretty quickly. He could easily cast fast fireball, and with a bit of effort he could also use a bit of status boosting magic, though he mostly used fast boost to buff his speed and work faster with metal before it cooled. He even got a fire healing spell called 'healing warmth'.

Jim also managed to master almost every weapon form, leaving the Fenrir head hammer for last. He looked over at the boosts the other two hammers that the Fenrir series gave him and smiled.

Thunder Fenrir Hide Hammer N

Abilities Mastered: +5 Defense

[O]

Thunder Fenrir Bone Hammer N

Abilities Mastered: Lightning Resistance (Weak)

[O]

At this point I'll have the stats of a level 50 before even reaching level 20. The wave is gonna be a breeze.

Speaking of waves, Jim was getting restless. It has almost been two weeks and yet he still didn't see a timer that told him of when the waves would start.

"That should be all for today," Egrevaht stood up from his chair and began to gather everything. "I'll come by tomorrow and we'll try shields."

"Finally! Something new. This week was a repetitive nightmare," Jim groaned, leaning back in his chair.

"I know, same here. But the king needs these done by the next wave. Everyone is busy preparing for the monsters to invade us again. All the blacksmiths in the country have gathered here on the king's orders to prepare the troops for the waves."

"Speaking of the waves, how do I know when it shows up?"

Egrevaht seemed to hesitate for a moment before answering.

"Well, none of us know where and how the waves show up, so we're all doing our best to patrol the whole country."

"You don't? But didn't you guys have an hourglass? I remember the king mentioning it once. He said something about it ticking down the time to the disaster."

Jim looked at Egrevaht in confusion, but the blacksmith avoided his gaze and seemed to hurry out of the room.

"You should ask the king about it, I'm not sure myself," he mumbled as he left the room. Jim raised an eyebrow as he watched the door close.

"Well, that was weird. I suppose I could ask the king about it. Which way was his room again?"

Jim began to wander the halls of the castle again, occasionally passing by people moving from room to room. The crafter hero avoided them as much as possible as he tried to remember which way each hallway went.

It took him almost an hour to finally find the large set of double doors with four knights guarding it. But the second he tried to approach it, four spears were aimed at his neck.

"Eyo, cmon. It's me, the crafter hero. I need to talk to the king real quick," Jim exclaimed, trying to move the spears away from his neck, but the knights were stronger than he expected.

"No one is to be allowed into this room while the king is preparing for the wave," one of the knights said in a low monotone voice while looking at Jim.

"Yeah, the waves. That's what I'm here to talk about," Jim complained, still trying to push the spears away. But the level gap was obvious.

"No one is to be allowed into this room while the king is preparing for the wave," the same knight repeated.

Jim transformed the hammer on his back into the boss head form and tried to push on the spear, but the effect was exactly the same as before.

"No one is to be allowed into this room while the k-,"

"-king is preparing for the wave, yeah, I heard you the first two times. But, and hear me out, wasn't it the same king that summoned me to fight the waves?"

"What seems to be the problem here?" a familiar voice rang out. It was the advisor of the king, surrounded by several knights.

"Oh, finally a familiar face. I was going to ask the king about the waves, but these guys won't let me inside," Jim pointed to the knights who were still pointing their spears at him. The advisor frowned and looked over Jim's hammer.

"As I'm sure you heard, the king is preparing for the wave and is not to be disturbed. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me."

Jim sighed and took a step towards the advisor.

"Good enough. So when and where is the wave gonna happen? I wanna start preparing to fight the boss."

Jim pulled his hammer off of his back and swung it around a couple of times, transforming it to show off, but the advisor seemed unamused.

"When you are needed we will call you."

The advisor walked past Jim and was about to enter the throne room, when Jim stepped in front of him again.

"Alright, I guess I'm finding out last second. So can I at least take a look at the dragon hourglass while I'm here?"

"I'm afraid no one is allowed to the hourglass at this moment. It is an ancient relic passed down from generations and we would rather avoid it getting damaged," the man explained and tried to sidestep Jim, but was stopped again.

"You think I'd break an old relic just cause? Who do you take me for?" Jim protested.

"It is not about who approaches it. We let only a select few anywhere near it at this moment."

With a huff, Jim finally got out of the way and began to walk down the hall.

"Fine. If the king asks, tell him I'm off leveling in the fields."

However before Jim could get very far, several knights stepped in front of him, blocking his path.

"Oh, what now?!"

"I'm afraid that until further notice the castle is on lockdown. Please hold tight as we prepare for the wave," the advisor said in a calm monotone voice. Jim looked at a nearby window, but the advisor just smiled.

"You can try if you want. But th-," he didn't get to finish as Jim was already full sprinting out the window.

Suddenly several thunderbolts exploded right in front of Jim, sending his unconscious body flying into the wall. The advisor looked in awe. He knew he said what he said, but he didn't expect the crafter hero to actually try it.

The advisor shook his head in disappointment and turned to the knights.

"Please escort the crafter hero back to his room. And I want you to guard him this time."

"Yes sir!"

Two knights picked up the unconscious body of their hero and dragged it back to the smithy.

[]—

"*Ghasp* WHAT THE HELL?!"

Jim shot up like a rocket and began to wildly look around the room, startling Evendel.

"Please calm down, I'm not done healing you yet," she complained, smacking Jim on the head, causing him to wince. There were still some burns from where the lightning bolts hit him and Evandel was having a hard time healing them.

"What the f*ck hit me?!" Jim yelled, trying to remember what happened as he sat back down. Then he remembered the lightning bolts that hit him once he got too close to the window.

"That would be the castle's self defense system. Why would you go out of your way to trigger it?"

Evendel asked, continuing to heal Jim. He looked in awe as the burns on his body slowly faded away.

"Well, I wasn't exactly informed about lightning based defenses. So forgive me if I wasn't aware that all the windows were turned into a deathtrap."

"You live, you learn," she muttered, healing the last burn. "So, have you been practicing your magic?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah. I got fast guard, power, boost, fireball, and heal," Jim smiled proudly as he listed off the spells.

"That's good. You should be good to start learning advanced spells soon," Evendel said, smiling back at the hero. She stood up and headed towards the door. "Do be careful from now on. I'm not exactly the best healer."

"Will do. Thanks for the help," he replied. Jim waited for a few minutes after Evendel left, and then he tried opening the door. As he expected, it was locked from the outside.

"Well, sh*t."

"First time?" an unfamiliar voice suddenly called out to him, causing Jim to jump and swing his hammer around in panic. However his hammer met nothing but air.

"What?! Who…?! Where the hell are you?!" Jim yelled, trying to locate the owner of the voice.

"Calm down, I'm not in your room. Though I am nearby and I'm here to help," the voice replied.

Jim lowered his hammer, but stayed on guard.

"Help how?"

"My boss asked me to break you out and organize a meetup for you two."

"And your boss is?"

"The owner of the Vassal Ring and the king of the country of Starke," the voice replied, but Jim was even more confused now.

"What the hell is a vassal ring? Am I supposed to know what that is?"

The shadow didn't answer for a moment and Jim wondered if they left.

"You there?" Jim asked, walking up to the window. But he retreated when he saw sparks start to gather at the windows' edges.

"You are the wielder of the legendary crafting tool, correct?"

"Yes?"

"Well, other than the Holy Weapons, there are two Vassal Weapons weapons. Their methods are shareable between weapons which will make all the heroes stronger. The two Vassal Weapons of this world are the Vassal Ring and the Vassal Pickaxe."

A ring and a pickaxe? I know pickaxe, but do you even fight with a ring? Do you use it like brass knuckles and punch people?

"I… see… wait! Did you say that methods between the holy and vassal weapons are sharable? Are we all not using the same ones?" Jim looked towards the wall that he thought the voice was coming from, and slowly made his way over.

"All of the weapons methods are special for that weapon. If you could tell yours, I could report back to our king and he would grow stronger."

"Are you gonna tell me the vassal ring methods first?" Jim wondered, tapping the wall with his hammer. No response to the tapping followed.

"I'm afraid that my boss didn't inform anyone of his methods. He would rather have a conversation with you face to face."

"Likewise. How do the vassal weapons work by the way? Are they different from a holy one?"

"Not that I know. The transformation and copying mechanics are identical. Beyond that I do not know."

"I see. Well, I don't really have any ideas as to how the hell I'd meet the guy. Unless your king wants to walk all the way to this country, I don't see how we could ever cross paths."

"Fortunately we do," the shadow said, and suddenly a circle of darkness appeared in the center of the room. A person's silhouette slowly appeared out of the shadow and sat down on a chair in front of Jim. "The wave is in 9 days. That is when you must make your move."

Jim poked the shadow circle in front of him with his hammer, but the shadow started to warp around him, so he pulled away.

"How do you know that? How does that help me? Wait. Are you saying I should escape when most of the knights are busy dealing with the waves?"

"No, of course not. Most knights are already out either leveling or getting in position. The knights that are here at the castle will stay defending this castle. However, the wave will teleport you out of here and onto the battlefield."

"How would it do that? I can't even get out of the castle, how would I make it to some random teleporter to the wave."

The shadow, their face still covered, seemed to smirk. Though Jim could have been imagining it. It reached into its pocket and pulled out a golden cylinder. They tossed it to him and Jim just barely caught it before it hit the ground.

On it were the numbers 09:01:27:46, but it changed to 45 in the next second.

"This watch is counting down the time till the wave. It was made and manually set by my boss."

"And how does this help me?"

"When it counts down to 1 hour you'll need to break out of this room and head straight down. Just below the dungeon you'll see a guarded room with a golden door. Behind that is the dragon hourglass."

"Oh, finally. More info about the damn thing," Jim exclaimed, startling the shadow. They cleared their throat and continued.

"When you get to the hourglass, you need to raise your weapon and the two will synchronize. A timer will appear in the corner of your vision and you will be teleported to the wave when the timer hits zero."

Ah, so it's the same function as in Leodine Online. The only difference is it's an hourglass and not a beacon.

"But how do I get there? I can't exactly walk in there, and I can't overpower a level 50 knight."

"What level are you?" the shadow asked, looking around the room.

"11."

"…what…"

"Well, with my boosts, and my boss weapon, I'd say I'm as strong as a level 25 knight with armor and a sword, but that's probably not even close to what the knights have."

"I see… that is way lower than we had anticipated."

Jim looked at his weapon and thought for a minute. Up until now he hasn't used any of the methods except crafting level. He didn't have many special effects to synthesize, however, he could use quality up if he could get his hands on energy.

But even if he turned all the monster remains in his hammer into energy, the current weapon form would only get quality up boost, but it still doesn't get a quality power boost since it was made by the weapon. What he needed is a level 10 hammer with an excellent or higher quality tag to copy, and then pray to any god that he was lucky enough to get quality up from normal to divine, or at least excellent quality.

Jim saw that the shadow was looking at him as they walked around the room.

"I have an idea of how I could shorten the gap a little," Jim said, pulling out a pencil and a piece of paper.

[]—

"C'mon, slow poke. I know you're faster than that," the ring bearer called out to his knight, who was still carrying the jar he gave him. "Here, take a few of these."

The ring bearer tossed him some monster parts of the monsters he just killed and he watched his knight absorb them into the weapon's gem. The knight watched in awe as the jar transformed into a slightly different jar with jagged fangs at the top.

"Ooooh, nice. Fang jar," ring user commented.

"Are you sure it is necessary for me to go through all of these areas with this? We could just go to the highest level areas and start from there."

"No no no no no. See, there is an order to these things. You can't just skip the lower monster weapon forms just cause you got the levels, cause then other vassals like myself who mastered beginner level monster forms will have a few extra stats on you. Plus, we just need to get you one of each so we'll be done in a week."

"If you say so," the knight answered, watching a small monster bite him. It didn't do any damage, however the jar the knight was holding was quickly filling up. Once the charge hit 100%, the knight pointed it at the monster and watched the beam obliterate it. The monster parts made their way to the gem and became an extra few weapon forms.

Through the testing they found out that the amount of damage the jar forms were able to store depended on the knights and the weapon forms defenses. The higher the defense, the more it could store, and the harder its beams hit.

The two of them commissioned their blacksmith to craft them a few large jars out of different materials they had. While they waited, the ring user decided to take his royal knight to power up the jar weapon. And currently they were in a level 40 ish forest, depopulating it of the local monster wildlife.

"Now hurry up, I want to finish up this whole area by today. Erst Blast!"

The vassal ring sent a beam from its gem, vaporizing the monsters on the spot.