Is this really a Game?!

Reign and the others took their materials back as Wolf finished talking with Adrian. The elven smith was sitting on the side and merely relaxing, it seemed that he had decided to stay here and continue working together with Adrian.

The reason for that was quite simple, even though he would continue to work for the queen and still had some more things to create for the elves, he wasn't a Transcendent like Adrian and he had a lot that he could learn from the old blacksmith.

Even though there were differences in the way of making weapons between him and Adrian, that wasn't a bad thing, instead, the smith could learn the things he wasn't good at simply by observing and helping Adrian out.

Adrian wasn't getting the short end of the stick in this deal either, he was a bit interested in how elves dealt with rune engravings and even though the elven smith was a Tier IV fighter that was severely limited here, he was a master blacksmith and his knowledge was quite deep, enough for even Adrian to learn something new.

The two would continue working together and helping each other out, for normal projects there was no need for them to cooperate, but when it came to rank S and higher ranked weapons, even though they could create them alone, it was much easier when working together.

Adrian's main focus when creating items was the materials, with suitable materials he could do anything as his high level in blacksmithing allowed him to get 100% out of any materials he used. Hammering, tempering, clenching, those were the main things he focused on while the rune engravings were more of a bonus than he did.

The elven smith and all the other elven smith focused on the runes a lot more. Even if the materials they had weren't top-notch, they could increase the power of the item they were making with runes.

Runes were said to be the language of mana, by engraving runes on items, one was pretty much engraving mana itself on the item, allowing it to possess greater strength than usual. The whole process that the elves had for engraving was completely different than Adrian who simply used a small chisel and a small pen-like item to do so.

The elves had a whole ritual where they mixed different materials together before fusing them to create a special salve that would go over the item. Each salve was custom-made for the item they were creating and could only be used once.

What the salve did was allow the elves to channel mana to it and move it around before putting it in the pattern they wished to have. The pattern was of course the runes they were going to engrave, the runes themselves being very different from Adrian's as the elves didn't use the crude, simple runes he did in order to simply boost the strength of the item.

Their runes were complex and in some parts were almost invisible. Engraving such complicated runes were not only hard, but it was impossible for Adrian who didn't know any of the more complicated runes.

'Always thought the complex runes were a waste of time, who knew they could actually be so helpful.' Adrian once told himself whilst watching the elven smith do his work.

'Is it 20, or perhaps even more times that he has hammered that one spot down?' The elven smith once thought as he watched Adrian at work, 'To think that the material would go through such strengthening after putting great care in the early phase of creating it.'

The two blacksmiths had a lot that they wanted to learn from the other and so they decided that the best thing to do was simply to work in the same forge. For the items Wolf and the others wanted to get, the two would work together, even though they didn't need to.

"We should be finished either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow," Adrian said as Wolf and the others left the castle ground. They went through the portal before entering another one and walking into the elf territory.

The territory of the elves was still quite the same as before. The elves had everything they needed and if they needed to buy certain things, they would simply go to Reign's territory in order to do so. That left them without needing to build many new facilities which was great since they didn't have that much space in their territory anyways.

Reign's territory was not only bigger but there were more people there and the craftsmen were becoming better and better, offering some good items for the low-level combatants at fair prices.

One could also go and train the facilities or even try their luck and tame monsters in the monster-taming facility that had been upgraded. Since Greenie knew that people were going to start improving their strength and getting to Tier I soon, he used the materials they had received and the S Coins from the territory in order to improve the three facilities, only leaving the auction house the same.

Even Tier I fighters could now go and enjoy the facilities, the stables also had Tier I monsters that could be tamed, making it easy for players that had just hit Tier I to get a powerful companion if they were lucky enough.

More people could be seen walking the streets with armor on and weapons on their waist or on their backs. Some even walked together with the beast they had managed to tame, making others look at them with either a jealous gaze or one of slight disgust as the beast they had was ugly as hell.

Even a red light district opened in Reign's territory while he was in the kingdom of Riplas. Reign thought of what he should do about it, but since nobody was forcing any of the girls or guys to sell themselves, he let it be.

People would always want to have more, those that were too scared to fight would try crafting, building, or even selling their bodies in order to get more money to survive. There had been some incidents in the red light district, but after Greenie personally came and dealt with the incidents in a brutal manner, nobody dared to harm anybody working there.

It wasn't only the players in Reign's territory that would frequent the red light district. Elves would also come and even soldiers from the castle could be seen at times. Since the three territories were in an alliance, they were now able to go there without Reign paying their service, of course without any payment, they wouldn't be able to fight against any danger that might strike the territory, but simply walking through it was allowed.

As Reign and the others made their way towards the giant tree, they came across Aelrinder who was going out with the royal guards. Reign smiled as he was able to feel that the elf had indeed managed to hit Tier I.

"Congratulations on successfully evolving." Aelrinder turned around as he heard the familiar voice.

"Ah, Reign, you guys are here." He said as he greeted them all.

"Thank you, my friend, it truly is something, the evolution," Aelrinder said as he looked at Reign and the others. Even though he was now standing at the same Tier as them, he was still a bit lower-leveled.

"Patrolling?"

"The woods, we're doing more sweeps in order to find the Tainted, they have almost completely disappeared after what had happened back then, they are either afraid of our response, or they are planning something worse, we don't wish to wait and find out though."

"That's great, we came exactly for that, recent events didn't make it possible, but we want to help out with that, we did promise to help you take down their base after all."

"Have you managed to reverse engineer that thing?" Wolf suddenly asked as Aelrinder smirked.

"Mhm."

"Good."

"I agree."

The two men smiled dangerously as the others all watched them with a sigh. The plan that Aelrinder and Wolf had made a long time ago was a simple one, reverse engineer the item that the Tainted had used and use it against them when locating their base.

That way, even if a Transcendent was there, they would simply waste their power to save the base, after which Reign and the others could swoop in and deal with everything. Even if the Transcendent wanted to attack them at that point, it would be impossible since the system would have completely restrained him at that point.

It was a great plan that was pretty much a rip-off from what the Tainted wanted to do. With Reign and the others present though, it would be impossible for the Tainted to destroy or take the item away, making the plan 100% certain to work.

"Well, let's go and look for that base." Reign said as Aelrinder nodded before taking off.

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