Chapter 50
#50. A Vessel for the Heart
As I'd monopolized every resource on every floor I'd passed so far, I had more gold than I knew what to do with.
No matter how much I poured into item enhancement, or how many potions and White Rolls I bought, it was money that would never run dry.
Dark Elf gear was fairly high-end even as shop-bought goods, so the prices were steep, but in the end it was still just 7th-floor equipment.
With the gold I'd saved up, I could buy hundreds of items like this.
“What’s this, what’s this? A human joke? You’re saying you want to buy every weapon in my shop?”
The Dark Elf blacksmith didn't take my words at face value and treated them like some kind of metaphor or joke.
I hadn't expected anyone to take it seriously either. I just said it because it was something I'd wanted to try saying at least once.
But that didn't mean it was a joke. I opened my inventory and pressed the gold drop button.
-Jingle-jingle-jingle!
A massive amount of gold coins poured out like sand. The blacksmith stared at them in a daze.
“You’ve even got a large item box, huh. But, what is this—are all of these really gold coins?”
“Yeah.”
“Has human alchemy advanced to the point where it can churn out gold coins like crazy? Or what, are you some kind of royal?”
The short Dark Elf blacksmith let out a disbelieving chuckle. So, are you selling them or not?
“I was going to pick out a good weapon for you because you looked cute, but the things you do aren’t cute at all. Still, I’ll sell them.”
Grumbling like that, the blacksmith took down the weapons hanging on the wall and laid them out in front of me.
[Ebony Steel Blade]
Attack Power +58 (Slash)
Critical Damage: x 2.5
Durability 850/850
Enhancement Attempts Available: 15
The options were definitely excellent for a shop-bought item. Especially the durability, which was incredibly high, just as I'd hoped.
And while its base stats besides durability weren't anything special, the maximum number of enhancements was a staggering 15.
If I stacked a ton of [Sharp] enhancements on this, its attack power would easily surpass that of most low-level unique weapons.
Incredible.
Even on the Open Community, I'd heard that a warrior on the lower floors fully kitted out in Dark Elf ebony gear wasn't called a 'warrior scrub.'
Of course, if you had enough money to kit out every slot like that, you wouldn't have chosen Warrior in the first place, so it was just a teasing nickname.
Still, there had to be a reason people said that. This thing was basically a whale-only item.
“I’ll buy it all.”
“You’re really buying everything?”
After paying the blacksmith, I tried equipping the [Ebony Steel Blade].
One of the reasons I liked low-level shop gear was its clean, no-frills design.
High-level unique gear tended to have very distinctive looks, which sometimes made it awkward to use.
But this ebony weapon was sleek and refined in its design, and its center of balance felt perfect in my hand.
Just in terms of handling, it was about on par with my favorite simple-design [Steel Straight Sword].
Looks like I really made the right choice picking the Dark Elf faction. I should use this chance to swap all my gear over to Dark Elf-made equipment.
For that, of course, I'd need enhancements too.
“You want me to enhance all these dozens of weapons? Even if I stripped my shop of materials, I still couldn’t do that.”
To the baffled Dark Elf blacksmith, I opened my inventory and dumped out the enhancement materials.
“Geez, looks like my back’s going to give out today.”
The blacksmith sighed and picked up a hammer.
**
Though she grumbled, the blacksmith eventually accepted the materials and moved to the workbench.
I wondered if I'd have to spell out the enhancement options one by one too, but thankfully a system window soon appeared.
The materials used were, of course, maxed to the cap, and the attached option was naturally all-in on [Durability].
“You want to raise durability even more? What, are you planning to dig a mountain out with this thing?”
Since I was replacing the shop-bought set I usually used with this, pouring everything into durability was only natural.
The blacksmith said she didn't understand, but she still enhanced them diligently. Watching her work was pretty fun too.
-Clang! Clang! Clang!
She fed in the materials, worked the bellows and furnace, and kept hammering earnestly with all her strength over the anvil.
You could say she didn't look all that different from any other blacksmith NPC, so you might ask what was so fun about watching that.
But the important thing here was that all Dark Elves had amazing figures. This blacksmith was short, yes, but her bust was by no means small.
Since it's a job where you work in the heat from the furnace, the outfit is pretty light... and every time she hammered away with such focus, well, it bounced.
I was now watching one of the Open Community's legendary meme pics live: [Shortstack Busty Dark Elf's 200% Sincere Hammering].
“All right, this batch is done too. Take them.”
The blacksmith finished the enhancements at a much faster pace than ordinary NPCs and handed the weapons over one by one.
“What are you planning to do with a whole pile of weapons that are only sturdy? I can’t even imagine.”
“Because sturdy weapons are good.”
“Aren’t they a little too sturdy? And why do you need dozens of them?”
I was too lazy to explain and almost brushed it off, but then I worried my NPC affinity might go down, so I gave her a decent explanation.
Weapons that were too strong got in the way of honing my skills, and since I needed to handle multiple weapons at once, I needed several spares.
Then the blacksmith set down one of the finished weapons and asked, still looking puzzled.
“Just how badly do you abuse your weapons that you need to carry that many spares?”
“I’m pretty strong, so they break easily when I fight.”
“Oh, is that so? If you’re strong, would weapons really break that easily? Come on, show me the gear you usually use.”
The blacksmith gave off the air of an old village elder. I showed her the weapons without thinking much of it.
Both the shop-bought set I used all the time, and the fully geared set I took out from time to time.
Looking at my equipment, the blacksmith went 'hmm' and 'tsk tsk,' then put on a deliberately stern face.
“Human, this isn’t the weapon’s fault—it’s your fault.”
And then she started lecturing me out of nowhere.
**
Come to think of it, Dark Elves were a very long-lived race, just like elves in other works of fiction.
Humans may live to a hundred at most, but for elves that's still only the prime of youth.
Maybe because of that, the short Dark Elf blacksmith scolded me in a very old-timer-like tone.
“Honestly, if you die, the broken weapons will come out to greet you and curse you right to your face. After all this, how could you blame me?”
Just by looking at the nicks in the blades, she said it was obvious to her as a blacksmith how roughly I'd been using them.
The blacksmith went on and on, saying only beasts use weapons like this, and asking just when humans had become so uncivilized.
Most of my combat techniques besides throwing came from Lizardmen, so using them like a beast was actually pretty normal.
“Anyway, I can’t just leave this alone. Even if only because I’d hate to see the weapons I gave you go to waste, I’m going to butt in.”
After saying that, the blacksmith went into the forge and came back out with a single sheet of paper.
She was scribbling on it with a pen, but it was in Dark Elf script, so I couldn't read a thing.
“Go find a guy named Rizmel and show him this letter. If you say Erwen sent you, he’ll know right away.”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s my relative. He’s still young, but his swordsmanship is first-rate. If he sees this letter, he’ll teach you swordsmanship earnestly.”
I widened my eyes. Swordsmanship training—that was one of the reasons I’d chosen the Dark Elf faction, wasn’t it?
Among the many NPCs in the Tower of Trials, there are some who, under the name of training, teach skills in exchange for money.
And according to the community, the Dark Elf faction has one such NPC too.
The problem was the affinity requirement and the complicated quest you normally had to clear before you could get training, so what was this supposed to mean?
Could it really be that I'd be able to skip all of it and learn swordsmanship right away?
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not forcing you. Instead, if you come back after learning properly, I’ll give you a reward.”
Perhaps she'd taken my dazed expression as a sign of displeasure, because the blacksmith cleared her throat and started talking on her own.
And as if in response, a blue quest window popped up before my eyes.
[Erwen’s Interference - Swordsmanship Training]
Description: Blacksmith Erwen is a busybody.
Even toward a cute human guest she hadn’t seen in a long time, her busybody nature was still going strong. That would be you.
She has decided to arrange swordsmanship training for you and prepare a small gift to motivate you.
[Quest Objectives]
1. Complete Rizmel’s Basic Training Stage 3.
2. Complete Rizmel’s Advanced Training Stage 3 (Optional).
3. Complete Rizmel’s Selection Test (Optional).
4. Win a sparring match against Rizmel (Optional).
It was a quest with an unusually large number of optional objectives, reminiscent of the shepherd girl’s quest.
I didn’t know what this Rizmel training or test was, but it was clear they’d be a huge help to me.
And she was even giving me a separate reward for clearing it, so no matter how lousy the reward might be, I welcomed it.
“I recently got some pretty good ingots in, so I’ll make you a sword that suits you perfectly. How about it?”
I opened the Open Community and searched by keyword for a shitpost I'd seen before.
[Dark Elf << If they’re busty older-sister types with hearts as wide as their busts, huge upvote lol]
And I immediately hit the upvote.
Dark Elves really are the best race.