Chapter 149- The Holy sword of Dawn

Chapter 149: Chapter 149- The Holy sword of Dawn

Normalization? Does that actually work on a material like this too? Leo thought to himself, mildly surprised that the process worked at all. Still, he didn’t let the thought linger — there was more work waiting, and curiosity could wait its turn.

Once the metal had cooled all the way back down to room temperature, he crouched beside the anvil and inspected it once more, running his forge sight over every visible seam.

Nothing looked wrong anywhere along the merged alloy. The composite structure held firm, the grain alignment steady and even, with no sign of any hairline stress that usually gave away a bad fusion.

Since both annealing and normalization had gone off without a hitch, a new thought crept into his head. Should I go ahead and try hardening it as well, while I’m at it?

The most basic approach to hardening was simple enough in principle — straightforward quenching, nothing fancier than that. So Leo heated the sword back up over the eternal flame, watching the color shift carefully until it reached the exact temperature he wanted, then plunged the glowing blade straight down into the water trough.

HISSSSS!

A violent burst of steam exploded outward, swallowing the whole chamber in a thick, churning cloud of white mist. Leo waited for it to clear before lifting the blade back out to check it over.

Both the scale and the Devil Iron had survived the shock, and the bond holding them together now felt locked in place for good — permanent, the way he’d hoped it would be.

"Good," Leo muttered under his breath, running a thumb along the flat of the blade in quiet satisfaction.

From there he moved into grinding and smoothing the surface, carefully working the edge down into something sharp.

He polished the blade patiently and with that final pass, the sword was finished.

This one had come together through pure blacksmithing skill from start to finish — no inscriptions, no shortcuts, nothing but heat, hammer, and careful hands the entire way through.

[Ding~]

[Forging completed.]

[Devil’s Fang — One-Handed Sword]

[Rank: Epic]

[Quality: Flawless]

[Attributes] STR +140 / DEX +110

Damage: 410–560

Durability: 125/125

Effect 1 — Devil-Mana Circulation: The scale shapes devil mana at the edge; the Devil Iron carries it through the blade in an unbroken loop. Energy never pools, so the blade never overheats or destabilizes — even at full output.

Effect 2 — Scale’s Edge: The cutting line is a high-rank devil’s scale, worked thin and fused into the blade. Ignores 35% of physical defense. Wounds struck by the edge bleed for 3 seconds.

Active — Crimson Fang: A crescent slash of condensed devil mana fired along the edge’s line. 240% ATK, travels 8m, leaves a burning red wound that bleeds for 5 seconds. CD 26s / Mana 140.

Active — Hunger’s Wake: For 6 seconds the edge drinks the energy of everything it cuts. Each strike restores 8 mana and 1% of max HP. CD 40s / Mana 70.

Passive — Unfed Wrath: While held, the blade feeds its own circulation from ambient mana; all skills cost 10% less mana.

Passive — Conditioned Steel: Resonance-annealed Devil Iron accepts devil mana without strain. Devil-attribute damage to the blade is reduced by 60%; durability recovers 1 point per minute while circulation is active.

Leo held the finished blade up, turning it slowly in his grip, admiring the clean line of the edge and the way the crimson threads still pulsed faintly beneath the surface.

Hugh and Sigil wandered over before long, both curious enough to set down their own tools and take a closer look. Hugh reached for it first, lifting the sword through a couple of practiced test swings — but the instant he felt the devil mana pressing back against his own, he set it down fast, shaking his hand out like something had bitten him. He could feel his own mana being pulled steadily out of him, drawn in by the blade itself.

Sigil stepped in next and picked it straight up without a flicker of hesitation. He didn’t seem to have any trouble with it at all.

He ran through a handful of test swings of his own, testing the weight and the balance, before giving a satisfied nod. "Good sword. Properly balanced, and it conducts a lot better than you’d expect given the shape and the heft of it."

Off to the side, Elly quietly logged the sword’s full attributes into the guild’s archive as the two men talked it over between themselves.

Leo turned toward the two older blacksmiths. "So — have you two prepared the rare-rank quota for the auction?"

Both of them nodded. "Still got a handful left," Hugh said, "but they’ll be done well before the auction date." Sigil nodded in quiet agreement beside him, already turning back toward his own hearth.

Leo nodded back and shifted his attention to the next piece waiting on his list.

Hugh and Sigil returned to their own work shortly after, the rhythm of three separate hammers soon falling back into the chamber’s usual noise.

This time, Leo had something different in mind — another sword, but built around the exact opposite attribute from the one he’d just finished. A holy sword, to balance out the devil-forged blade sitting beside it.

He called on Elly again, asking her to help him sort through the material list for anything carrying a holy attribute.

And once again, she didn’t let him down. Within a minute, she’d already located a holy-attributed ingot tucked away in storage.

Leo pulled it from the guild’s inventory and carried it over to his workstation.

He laid it down on the anvil and studied it carefully with his forge sight. It was the first time he could remember finding a material in such a genuinely pure state — no waste anywhere inside it, no flaws, nothing wasted in the structure at all.

The internal arrangement was clean and orderly, resonating steadily with a quiet, patient kind of holy power.

Leo lifted the ingot with his tongs and lowered it into the eternal flame. The metal offered no resistance whatsoever, settling into the heat like it had been waiting for it.

Before long it shifted toward a warm red-orange, then brightened further into yellow. Leo pulled it free and set it on the anvil, raising his hammer to begin.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

With every strike, the ringing note of metal meeting metal settled further into a clean, steady rhythm, each blow landing with a touch more precision than the last.

Strike. Lift. Turn. Strike.

Leo simply repeated the sequence, over and over, without pause. He hadn’t even started shaping the blade yet — this whole stretch of work was purely about folding, hammering, and reheating, cycling the same pattern again and again until the material itself began to settle.

He was tempering out every small flaw hiding in the structure — every faulty patch of grain, every hidden weakness that hadn’t surfaced yet but would eventually, if left unaddressed.

On top of that, the holy power resting dormant inside the ingot needed actively waking up, and the only way to manage that was through the tempering.

With no better option available, Leo began feeding small threads of eternal flame and holy-attribute energy directly into each hammer strike as he worked, layering the two together with every blow.

He kept the whole process cycling steadily. Having just finished the Devil’s Fang only a short while earlier, his mana reserves were already running thinner than he would’ve liked.

So Leo started drawing on ambient mana to keep himself topped up, pulling from Eldhrimnir to replenish his own reserves, letting him keep working without having to stop and properly rest. Just as with the Devil’s Fang before it, he’d eventually need a second material to pair alongside this one.

Faint traces of holy energy had already begun drifting off the ingot’s surface, but none of it would actually mean anything without a complete awakening first.

So Leo called forth the soul fire.

He let it wash completely over the holy ingot, engulfing it whole. This particular flame wasn’t meant to burn the metal itself at all — its real purpose was to burn through the ingot’s spiritual blockages instead, clearing out whatever had been clogging the holy power and keeping it from ever fully manifesting. Layer by layer, the soul fire stripped that residue away.

Leo spent hours locked into the hammering after that, losing track of time the way he often did once the rhythm took over.

Eventually, he managed to fully forge the second metal together with the holy ingot, the two finally merging into one. Part of him had braced for some kind of sudden rejection between the materials, the way it sometimes happened with stubborn pairings — but it never came.

He poured his own holy-attribute power into the sword as well, tracking every shift through his forge sight so the whole process stayed fully recorded as it unfolded.

The soul fire, it turned out, had been doing real work the entire time beneath the surface. A faint holographic network slowly took shape in front of him, still incomplete, straining to close the last few gaps.

The network kept stretching outward bit by bit, until finally the last disconnected point snapped into place, completed through the combined effort of Leo’s hammering alongside the eternal flame, the holy energy, and the soul fire, all three working together in quiet tandem.

The finished alloy — a fusion of quality steel and the awakened holy ingot — finally lay bare in front of them, fully formed. Leo had successfully drawn out the dormant holy attribute buried deep inside the material.

From there, shaping the actual blade didn’t take nearly as long as everything leading up to it. Once he’d worked it into the right form, Leo quenched it directly, reheated it briefly to smooth out a few lingering uneven patches, and finally moved into the sharpening work to finish it off.

[Ding~]

[Forging Completed.]

[Holy Sword of Dawn — One-Handed Sword]

[Rank: Epic]

[Quality: Flawless]

[Attributes]

STR +170 /DEX +120

Holy Affinity +90

Damage: 410–560

Durability: 125/125

Effect 1 — Holy Circulation: The holy resonance awakens in the sword and carries through the blade in a steady, unbroken loop. Power never pools, so the blade never overheats or destabilizes — even at full output.

Effect 2 — Dawn’s Edge: The cutting line is a holy-forged silver channel, worked thin and fused into the blade. Treats 35% of demon and undead physical defense as bypassed. Wounds struck by the edge resist healing for 3 seconds — flesh regrowth, blood-regeneration, and corruption-born mending all crawl.

Active — Dawnfall: A column of pale dawn light descends blade-first through the target. 240% ATK, 8m reach, burns away corruptive auras and devil-attribute buffs. CD 26s / Mana 140.

Active — Morning Respite: For 6 seconds each strike restores 8 mana and 1% of max HP. CD 40s / Mana 70.

Passive — Unfaltering Dawn: While held, the blade feeds its own circulation from ambient mana; all skills cost 10% less mana.

Passive — Sanctified Steel: Awakened silver carries holy energy without strain. Inverse and corruption-affinity damage to the blade is reduced by 60%; durability recovers 1 point per minute while circulation is active.

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