Chapter 172: Crafting (1)

Angele realized he was sweating after leaving the old wizard's house. He thought if he declined their offer, the two would try to kill him right away. They had told him everything before he had accepted the mission which was strange.

The light wizards would usually avoid fighting, however, they would still do whatever benefited them the most when necessary.

Angele left Melissa's house and walked down the wooden steps.

The fight he witnessed before entering the house was already finished, but he could still see some broken wood pieces on the ground.

No one came to clean the mess, but it seemed like the situation did not get worse.

Angele walked down the street while taking a look around. There were only several wizards checking different vendors here, the place was much quieter than the entrance of the town.

He turned around and returned to the entrance, deciding to learn the structure of the town first.

The town's size was average, there were about sixty stone houses mixed in with some wooden ones. There were many stores with bronze signs hanging on the top. Angele found potions, gear, and materials stores. None of them were crowded and for some reason, most of the wizards just stayed on the street.

He saw several wizards buying items, but most of them were communicating using the energy particles. Their lips were moving but no sound was coming out of their mouths.

Angele entered a random gear shop. It was dark inside, and a U-shaped counter was in the front. Two wizards were checking the items displayed on the tables.

The owner was a bald old man wearing a pair of glasses. He stood behind the counter, staring at a light wizard beside the table.

"The price is fair. This is a black eagle spiral shell, I paid three tri-colored orchids for it."

The owner was speaking with a low voice, but all the people in the shop could hear him clearly.

The light wizard that was holding the spiral shell did not say anything, he just kept observing it.

The owner took a glance at Angele when he entered the store. Stores here were different from the ones in the mortal world, the owners never greeted the customers.

Angele noticed some energy particle movement on the door. The owner had probably applied some to make the room soundproof, but Angele wondered why he did not want the wizards on the street to hear the conversations in the store.

He walked to one of the tables on the right side and started observing the items on it.

There was a silver metal helmet, leather armor pieces, short sword, hats, and a large black tower shield.

Some of the gear was coated in a white glow; it looked like there was liquid flowing on their surfaces.

Suddenly, Angele found something he was familiar with.

"Hey, can you open that for me?"

He pointed at one of the boxes on the table.

The owner looked annoyed, but he walked over and unlocked the box.

There was a glowing green heart bumping inside, the core of which was filled up with green flames. Angele could still see the lines of vines on its surface.

He grabbed the heart and started observing it.

'Not the heart I know, but it's close. Items like this contain huge amounts of power and are great for making bombs.'

Angele had a plan in mind. He needed to prepare for the exploration of the ruins and something like this would fit his plan perfectly.

The heart in his hand contained higher power than the ones he had obtained from the elephants. Some special modification must have been done to it so the heart would work like a tiny flamethrower.

Angele utilized 90% of the heart's potential with the help of the chip when he was making the bomb. However, without the chip, the best a wizard could do would be around 30%, wasting the rest of the power.

Enchanted items like this could be crafted relatively easily, and the requirements were not high. Even apprentices—with enough knowledge—would be able to make them. The only problem was finding the raw materials.

Angele held the heart in his left hand, its size that of a fist. He could feel the heart still pumping. It was soft and warm.

"How much is this?" Angele questioned.

"One crystal card," the owner responded, "and, the price is final."

"One crystal card?" Angele was surprised. "You mean one black crystal card?"

One black crystal card could be exchanged for 1000 regular magic stones.

"Yeah, are you buying it or not?"

The owner was losing his patience.

Angele felt a bit speechless. It seemed like the owner really did not care about his customers.

"Well, do you have the raw materials? If you do, do you sell them?"

He returned the heart to the box.

"Raw materials?" The owner heard Angele's question and stared at him. "Haha, you want to craft it yourself? Seriously?" The owner sneered. "I have a lot of raw materials. You can try as long as you don't fear the possible explosions."

The other two wizards in the store looked at Angele in surprise. They did not believe he would try to craft the items by himself. They shook their heads and chuckled.

Angele nodded. He knew why the others laughed at him. Enchanted items like the glowing hearts were easy to craft but a certain amount of knowledge was still required. Also, whoever tried to craft the item must proceed with caution, and accurate mentality control was required for that. The results might be completely different based on the crafter's skill.

If the crafter did not proceed with caution, the heart might explode, and even if he escaped the explosion, the enchanted item he acquired would be worthless.

The owner crossed his arms and sneered again. "Well, I warned you already. If the energy leaks, the hearts will explode for sure. If you really want to try it yourself..."

He assumed that the wizard in front of him was not capable of crafting the item.

Angele nodded again. "Where are the raw materials? Can you show them to me?"

"Of course."

The owner walked into the storage room and carried out a large basket. It was a rattan basket full of hearts from various creatures.

Green glowing hearts from the glowing elephants, blue hearts from the frozen elephants, and several black rotten hearts.

Angele recognized most of the raw materials.

"How much is this?"

Angele grabbed one of the hearts from glowing elephants.

"I purchased these materials to make one-time explosives, and they aren't worth that many magic stones. If you really need them, I can offer you a discount. For the whole basket, it'll be..."

The owner smiled.

*********************

Angele walked out of the store with a whole basket of hearts, but he looked a bit disappointed.

There was a piece of black cloth on top of the basket and others would not be able to see what was inside. All the hearts in the basket contained high power and they could be used to craft simple enchanted items. In another word, these raw materials were extremely dangerous.

Although most of them would not explode if Angele threw them to the ground, he might still get hurt.

He purchased this basket with all the magic stones he had, and thus, all the magic stones he had earned by selling the rare materials from Moon Gin Garden were used up.

However, the hearts were worth the price. Angele thought of the first heart bomb he had made using the heart of a glowing elephant.

'About 40 degrees of power... That's almost the same power as my enhanced Lesser Fireball. What if I can successfully make all of them into one-time bombs...'

Angele felt a bit better.

'I need to find a place to stay first.'

He looked at the sky. It was already noon, and several rays of golden sunlight passed through the gray clouds.

The town was small but he still found a hotel. However, he did not have any magic stones left. The owner used some special method to find out how many magic stones Angele was carrying and showed him the price. Angele instantly regretted that he did not use the force field to block the scan spell.

Enchanted items were much more expensive than raw materials. The flamethrower type heart Angele had seen in the store could be used many times, and it could deal at least 18 degrees of damage, the numbers close to the ones Angele made by himself.

He had made two enchanted items with the two glowing elephant's hearts last time. The heart bomb was used on the monsters and the other one was left in Lennon city. However, the raw materials he had purchased this time were much better preserved than the ones he had previously.

Angele had high expectations for this basket of hearts. Most of them contained more than 50 degrees of energy according to Zero's report. Several of them even contained more than 70 degrees of energy, which was a surprise.

However, Angele needed to be even more cautious while crafting this time. Higher energy content came with higher risk. If the energy leaked, the explosion would be fatal.

He held the basket in his hands and walked toward the exit. He had already created the map for the town using the chip, and he could easily find the shortest route.

There was no reason for him to join any organization at the moment after obtaining the formula. However, his mentality had barely increased recently and meditation was not helping. He decided to find another way after finishing the work at the ruins.

He probably would have spent a long time trying to increase his mentality as an apprentice without the Black Lead Potion. Apprentices with talent level 2 usually needed dozens of years to raise their mentality to the next level.