Soul of Searing Steel

Ling was pushing a dining cart as he was slowly walking on a quiet street. His destination was the mansion that was nearby the churchyard.

It was really too much trouble to enter and exit the blade-sealing chamber. Ling could still clearly remember the expression on the face of his master. He remained in silence as he did not say anymore further. He just lifted all those alchemy instruments and the forged items by the side of the blade-sealing chamber altogether. Then he straight away walked towards the path that led to the outside and threw all those things over into the mansion.

Come to think of it, it’s truly inconvenient to verify Master’s identity every single time I want to go into the chamber.

The current mansion had been renovated into an alchemy laboratory and a forging room. The fences in the surroundings had been replaced with walls that were more than two meters tall. The walls with that height had really blocked all sights from the outside world.

Ling had no idea if that would make any difference though. At least he knew that the distance was much closer than going over to the blade-sealing chamber. He could provide maintenance to the other Divine Armaments from time to time now.

Using the key to open up the main gate by the wall of the mansion, Ling kept pushing the dining cart as he walked into the compound of the mansion through the main gate.

Originally, the courtyard of the mansion was elegant. However, currently, the place was turned into a junkyard of some sort as the entire courtyard was filled with metal parts, steel blocks as raw material, and magic materials. Loud noises could also be heard coming from the mansion from time to time. That were the noises made from the alchemy machines that were operating.

After the return from dragon slaying, nothing much had change in the warrior’s life though. Everything went on as usual. Joshua just carried on with his daily trainings, training his knights, handling official work, and designing some strange things with the old dwarf. He also read newspapers now.

That’s right, reading newspapers.

That thing was a new gimmick that only appeared in recent years. Reading newspaper was originally a habit of the halfling society. It was later promoted by the goblins. Newspapers were only recently spread to the Northern Empire and it had quickly become popular among the people of the North. Even the Empire officials themselves started issuing their very own newspaper called ‘Monthly News’.

The black-haired boy remembered that when his master discovered about the existence of this thing, he sighed up for it and said something along the lines of, “Can’t believe it only exist now.”

Currently, Joshua had subscribed to three different newspapers. One was ‘Monthly Investment’ published by the Goblin Association from the West Mountains. The second one would be ‘Monthly News’ published by the Empire Kingdom. The third one would be ‘Caster’s Weekly’ published by the Skypiercing White Tower from the eastern plains. Joshua would read every issue for every newspaper he subscribed to. As for the newspaper from the South, Joshua did not get to read it just because it was too far away from the North. Hence, there was no distribution of newspapers over to the North from that region of the continent. Well, Ling believed that if that were not the case, his master would have subscribed to the newspaper of that region as well.

Speaking of which, why would Master read Caster’s Weekly even though he is not a caster himself?

Lowering his head down as he looked at the black and white newspaper on the dining cart, the young man had that thought flashed across his mind. However, he shook his head right after that and stopped thinking about it. Instead, he focused on pushing the dining cart into the mansion.

Gold-tier warriors had great demand for food. Their food consumption in a single day was ten times the food consumption in a day of an ordinary man. However, even though Joshua could now eat an amount of food that was enough for ordinary people to eat for ten days, he was able to go without anything for a long period of time. From that point of view, it seemed that he had already entered the final stage of Gold tier. His digestive system had assimilated with his energy power.

However, it was already the third day since he and the old dwarf master Moreila set foot into the underground basement to improve the design of the enchanted armor. Regardless of how strong and powerful he turned out to be, regardless of the fact that he did not need to eat or drink, he would still need to eat something out of the habit as a human being.

With that thought on his mind, Ling had arrived at the front door of the forging lab, which was previously the living hall of the mansion.

From there, Ling could already hear the faint voices of the two men discussing something. He pushed the dining cart in his hands as he was ready to enter.

However, right before that, he saw Ying standing at the front of the door.

The silver-haired young girl wore a small apron that a blacksmith’s apprentice would often wear. She also wore a headscarf to prevent her hair from blowing all around. Well, she also had some oil stains on her face. She seemed to be resting at the moment, stretching her back a little at the entrance to the lab.

Unfortunately, her waist did not seem to be curvy.

Although she was not completely flat, her body shape was only enough to suggest that she was a girl.

That thought had flashed across Ling’s mind. Before Ling could even open his mouth to greet his sister with a hello, Ying had already noticed the arrival of her little brother. She blinked her green eyes and looked at the dining cart of the young boy. Then she felt very surprised that she clapped her hands together and said, “Oh yea! It’s already time for a meal!”

“To think about it… It’s been so long already. It’s indeed the time to eat something now.”

Upon hearing the voices coming from the outside, Joshua, Moreila and the projection of No.03 came out of the lab. The warrior and the old dwarf were wearing the same clothing of a blacksmith. Meanwhile, 03 was also trying to fit in by changing her appearance to the same, wearing an outfit of a blacksmith as well. Joshua looked at the dining cart and nodded as if he was having some thoughts in his mind. “Now that I really think about it… I’ve not been eating for at least two to three days from then.”

The two of them are really similar to each other when it comes to common sense. Well, they both lack common sense!

No wonder Joshua picked Ying instead of Ling in the beginning.

The young butler let out a sigh quietly in his heart. After that, he politely arranged the tables and chairs outside the hall. In the meantime, the others went back to the lab to tidy up some of the machinery and equipment in the lab first. After cleaning up little, they came out to eat.

The warm food on the dining cart were placed out onto the table one after another. Ling was not emotionally affected at all even though he was having that sort of thoughts on his mind at the moment. In the beginning, he still had some doubts about the reason why Joshua would pick his sister first. However, it no longer mattered. He was already summoned out from the sealed chamber. So there was nothing more he could require of his master now.

One must know that there was not even one who could endure the weight of wielding two Divine Armaments at the same time over the past 400 years.

Joshua sat at the table and scanned the newspaper that was handed to him.

As a person who grew up in the era of information explosion where published information was rapidly increasing, Joshua’s brain did not get the chance to rest at all. In his ordinary days, he would be pondering on how to improve his own strength. At other times, he would be dealing with official affairs in his territory. In short, he was attempting his best not to feel bored. In the original world that he came from, he could just play some games during his free time. Once he was bored playing games, he could go to the forums. If he got bored of that as well, he could just jog around his house for hundreds of rounds just to prevent himself from getting bored.

However, he could no longer do that now. Although the technology currently did not really fall too far behind, and this was not a real medieval period or whatsoever, the popularization of magic would still take a long time before magic became essential to the world. The basic development of the infrastructure was moving good because he had supernatural abilities. However, the development of the civilization was falling behind a little though. Well, for one, his strength was growing a little too fast now. Even if he went sprinting a few hundred laps around the city, he would not even feel even the tiniest bit of exhaustion, let alone feeling that he had trained himself.

However, with newspapers invented and published all around the world—it turned out to be a good thing.

Reading a newspaper during free time was indeed a good way to relax and slow down the pace. At the same time, reading newspapers was also a great way to prevent people from getting bored. Although that habit of his had his friends called him an old man from the older centuries in his previous life, why would Joshua care about how people would look at him then? In fact, the news in the magical world were quite fascinating and interesting.

At this moment, he was reading Caster’s Weekly published by the East.

There were countless kingdoms in the Eastern Plains. But the major forces were the various magic academies. The largest force was the largest gathering point of the mages known to be the Skypiercing White Tower. Their status was equal to the status of the Empire Kingdom. Their supreme leader was in fact a Legendary-tier mage. His identity was similar to the identity of the Empire Kingdom’s emperor when it came to diplomacy. The news that they published on their newspapers were mainly related to magic and supernatural phenomenon.

For instant, Joshua was reading about this—on the island of the eastern seas, a new mage academy was established. After being appraised by the Heaven-Pierced White Sky Tower, the academy had directly made it into top ten in the world.

That was actually a big news! Although this comprehensive ranking only ranked among all mage organizations, what sort of monsters would each of them be if they could make it into the top ten, right? So there was no doubt that the Skypiercing White Tower was number one among all. The Council of Seven would be the next in place, followed by the Imperial Royal Mages Guild, Far-South Legislature Academy and many other large-scale mage associations. In regard of strength, each of these organizations would be stronger than a small kingdom. So when an academy made it into the top ten among those ‘monstrous’ organizations, Joshua could actually imagine how those mages would feel when they were revealed to this news.

However, it seemed that this organization did not appear in his past life. But that was not surprising at all. The warrior knew very well that the game and reality had undergone a great deal of changes now. It would be possible that some Legendary-Tier mages who had been hiding in plain sight had suddenly found his passion to establish a new academy. Maybe it was this sort of person who built the academy with the air of his own students.

That was not something impossible anyway. In the future, such phenomenon would increase even more in numbers.

Once again shifting his gaze onto the newspaper in front of him, Joshua continued reading the remaining news that he had yet to read.

The following news were not worth noting though. They were just news about the discovery of some ancient relics somewhere deep in the Dark Forest and also the increasing number of marine beasts in the South. Anyone who wanted to sail out into the sea should take note of that and be extra careful out there.

Originally, Joshua was looking forward seeing his story about him slaying dragons on the newspapers. However, it seemed that the news had yet to spread overseas. Meanwhile, Monthly News published by his own kingdom had just started publishing and distributing newspapers not long ago. Hence, it seemed that they had yet to get the chance to publish the news about Joshua.

Lunch hour had unknowingly passed. Joshua, Moreila and 03 continued to coop themselves in the laboratory as they continued to improve the design on the enchanted armor.

The main structure of the enchanted armor was made up of numerous runic armor. Each runic armor piece had a part of the full functionality of the entire enchanted armor. So once all of the runic armor pieces were assembled altogether, they would form numerous complete magic circles. Compare to the effort required to engrave a complete magic circle, engraving a single rune did not require too much skills in order to get it done. As long as one had the magic level of a Magic Apprentice, that person would be able to get it done. The most important aspect in this would be precision. Meanwhile, compared to the magic energy that was extremely hard to increase, this was not too high of a requirement one must have in order to do it. That would also be one of the reason the enchanted armor could be mass-produced in the future.

However, what Joshua and Moreila did was not the kind of armor that could be mass-produced though. They were designing the armor specifically for individuals.

Although the current design was still rough, with 03’s assistance, their technical content in this small workshop was definitely beyond any other technical content in this era.

*****

After many days of experimentation, their project had come to an end for the moment. Even a Gold-tier warrior could not think day and night without sleep at all.

Joshua had also temporarily returned to the liege’s mansion. He was prepared to take some time off for the moment.

However, Black still remained in a state of evolution of its bloodline, as it was hibernating in the stable.

After Joshua had observed it for a while, he felt that something was not right.

Could it be true that everything was linked to him? Could Black actually obtain Experience Points through the system then? Or else it would not make any sense. In the beginning, Black was only a Level 15 Elite-grade warhorse, which had dragon blood coursing through every single vein in its body. Yet now, Black had become a Level 29 Excellent-grade half-dragon being.

Resting his thought upon that, he furrowed his brow as he squatted down to the ground. Then he reached his hand out and gently touched Black’s head.

“You’re not a Fire Dragon. You’re not going to be huge strange bird as well. There are numerous draconic beasts that play with fire. However, only very few that could actually match the characteristics of its bloodline.”

So, where did Black’s bloodline originate from then?