Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

As Silas walked over, he noticed Thora reaching up to pull a long iron lever on the wall.

With a loud mechanical screech, a series of wooden louvers built into the high ceiling of the workshop tilted open.

The trapped, boiling sauna steam rushed upward and out of the building, drawn out by the cool afternoon breeze of the Umbral Basin.

The oppressive volcanic temperature inside the room finally began to drop, settling into a tolerable dry warmth.

”Much better,” Eluned sighed, floating up onto a stool by the grinding wheels.

She wiped a layer of coal soot off her pale cheek with a silk handkerchief, looking down at her silver-layered elven longsword with deep pride. ”Now we can work like civilized beings instead of moles.”

”Don’t get comfy, houseplant,” Morwenna rasped, dropping her own two-hundred-and-fifty-six fold naval cutlass onto the bench next to the Goddess with a heavy clack. ”Grinding takes real elbow grease. Let’s see if you can put an edge on that piece of jewelry without ruining the bevel.”

The next hour was dedicated to precision crafting.

The loud ringing of hammers was replaced by the high-pitched screech of spinning stone grinding wheels and the metallic rasp of hand files.

Thora walked from bench to bench, teaching them how to grind their cutting edges down without generating too much friction heat.

”Keep dipping the steel in your water buckets!” Thora warned them as Tasmin pressed one of her shortswords against a spinning stone wheel.

A spray of bright white sparks shot across the table. ”If you press too hard on the grinding wheel, the friction will turn the metal blue! Once steel turns blue on a stone, you just draw the hardness right out of the edge! You have to keep it cool!”

While Tasmin, Elara, and Fenna focused on grinding and polishing their weapons,

Thora walked over to a locked wooden cabinet in the corner of the shop.

She pulled out a wooden tray filled with small, hardened steel chisels, small jeweler’s hammers, and glass jars of acid-etching paste.

She set the tray down in the middle of the assembly table.

”Alright, listen up!” Thora announced, picking up one of the fine steel chisels. ”A weapon forged by your own hands deserves your own personal mark! You don’t leave a custom blade bare! I want everyone to take a chisel or an etching pen and put your own design, your crest, or your runes right onto the metal or the padding!”

This immediately caught everyone’s attention. Even the tired scouts leaned in, eager to personalize their new gear.

Brida grabbed her black deep-earth alloy shield face.

She sat down heavily on a wooden bench, pulled a fine steel engraving needle from the tray, and set to work.

Silas was working on filing the shoulders of his sword tang nearby when he noticed the commander grunting in severe frustration.

Brida was hunched over her shield plate with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she aggressively scratched the sharp needle across the hardened star-iron face.

She was sweating, squinting, and wiping metal dust away every two seconds.

”What are you carving over there, Brida?” Silas asked, walking over with a rag in his hand to check on her progress.

Brida stopped scratching and looked up at him, her face smeared with gray dust.

”I’m trying to carve a fierce, fire-breathing Dragon right across the center boss of the shield, My Lord! Something that looks terrifying when I smash it into a monster’s jaw!”

She proudly tilted the heavy black shield plate up so Silas could see her artwork. Silas stared at the metal.

He didn’t say anything for five seconds... He just stared...

It did not look like a fierce, fire-breathing Dragon.

It looked like a severely bloated, deformed potato with four crooked stick-legs protruding from its bottom, a lumpy triangle for a head, and a squiggly line sticking out of its mouth that was presumably supposed to be fire, but looked remarkably like a dead earthworm.

’That is without a doubt the ugliest thing I have ever seen...’ Silas’s inner gamer thought, fighting a desperate battle to keep his face completely straight. ’If she charges a boss monster with that on her arm, the monster isn’t going to run away in terror. It’s going to die laughing.’

”It has... a lot of raw energy, Brida,” Silas said carefully, choosing his words like a man walking through a minefield. ”Very aggressive line work.”

Brida looked down at her potato-dragon with her broad shoulders slumping. She tossed the engraving needle onto the bench with a clatter.

”It sucks, Boss. Don’t lie to me,” Brida grumbled, crossing her thick arms over her chest. ”I’m a brawler. I punch things until they stop moving. My hands are too big for this delicate art crap.”

She turned her head, looking down the bench at Eluned, who was currently using a fine brush to apply elegant flowing acid-etched ivy patterns down the fuller of her longsword.

”Hey! Goddess!” Brida called out. ”You’re good with fancy lines and elf art. Come over here and draw a proper dragon on my shield before I ruin this plate completely.”

Eluned looked up from her sword with her green eyes brightening.

The Goddess loved showing off her superior refinement whenever she got the chance.

”Of course, Brida,” Eluned said smoothly, setting her acid brush down and floating off her stool. ”I can easily sketch a majestic, ancient sylvan drake across your shield face. It requires a delicate touch and an understanding of divine proportions—”

”A dragon?” a raspy voice interrupted.

Morwenna stomped over from her grinding wheel, wiping dark oil from her hands with a rag. The pirate queen looked down at Brida’s shield, then sneered at Eluned.

”Why the hell would a commander want an oversized lazy lizard carved onto her shield?” Morwenna mocked. ”Dragons just sit in caves and sleep on piles of old coins until some knight comes along and pokes them in the eye. That’s terrible luck for a frontline warrior.”

Brida frowned, looking at the pirate. ”So what do you suggest, Morwenna?”

”You want a real warrior’s emblem?” Morwenna asked, leaning her hands on the table and grinning fiercely. ”You carve a Kraken... Ten massive, crushing tentacles writhing across the metal, a razor-sharp beak right in the center boss, dragging an entire merchant fleet down into the black abyss. That screams power. That tells whatever you’re hitting that there is no escape once you grab them.”

Brida’s eyes lit up. ”A Kraken? That actually sounds heavy as hell.”

Eluned scoffed loudly, putting her hands on her hips. ”A Kraken is a slimy salt-logged sea pest! A shield should represent noble protection, not a giant squid that eats garbage off the ocean floor!”

”Say that to my face, weed!” Morwenna barked, stepping toward the Goddess.

Before Eluned could summon a vine to smack the pirate, Morwenna stopped, tilted her head, and looked directly over at Silas.

”Wait a second, Captain,” Morwenna said with her stormy gray eyes narrowing in genuine confusion. ”Why are we arguing over random animals anyway? Why don’t we just carve the official territorial emblem on her shield?”

Silas blinked. He stopped wiping his hands with his rag. ”The what?”

”The territorial emblem,” Morwenna repeated, looking at him like he had missed an obvious step. ”The official crest of the Blessed Land. Every major faction, merchant guild, and pirate fleet across the Sovereign Realm has a banner design. A logo you etch into your armor, paint on your sails, and stamp on your coin bags so everyone knows whose territory they’re stepping into. What’s ours?”

The entire workshop went quiet. Brida, Tasmin, Elara, Fenna, and even Thora stopped what they were doing and looked over at their Lord, waiting for the answer.

Silas stood there in silence.

His brain completely stalled.

He thought about all the things he had spent his time on since arriving in this world but he had one hundred percent forgotten to invent a faction logo.

’I am running a military territory and I don’t even have a brand logo?’ Silas realized as a wave of awkward embarrassment washed over him. ’I’m like a guild leader who forgot to design the guild tabards before leading a forty-man raid.’

”I... haven’t settled on the official branding yet,” Silas admitted dryly, clearing his throat and looking away from their expectant stares. ”We’ve been slightly busy surviving boss fights and everything else. I’ll sit down and design the official territorial crest later this week and we’ll vote on it.”

Morwenna smirked, a wicked, highly satisfied gleam in her eye. ”No official crest yet? Say no more.”

Before Eluned could protest or Silas could stop her, the pirate queen snatched the sharp steel engraving needle right off the table.

She leaned over Brida’s black shield plate and set to work with aggressive high-speed intensity.

Scratch! Scratch! Scratch!

Morwenna didn’t use a delicate touch.

She scratched the steel needle deep into the hardened star-iron face, her hand moving with the muscle memory of a woman who had carved her flag into thousands of wooden ship decks over centuries.

Within three minutes, she stepped back and dropped the needle onto the tray.

”There,” Morwenna declared proudly, wiping the metal shavings away with her palm. ”Now that’s a shield.”

Brida leaned forward with her jaw dropping in awe.

Carved cleanly across the entire front face of the black shield was a terrifying, highly detailed Kraken.

Massive, muscular tentacles spiraled outward from the center, wrapping around shattered ship masts and crushed skulls, while a sharp beak dominated the middle boss.

The silver Damascus grain of the metal caught the light inside the scratched lines, making the sea monster look like it was glowing with energy.

”Morwenna... this is incredible,” Brida boomed, running her calloused fingers over the deep grooves. She grinned from ear to ear. ”I love it! It looks like it’s going to eat whoever I bash!”

Eluned floated over, peering at the shield with intense disdain.

She wrinkled her nose. ”It looks like a pile of wet noodles tangled around a broken bucket. You have zero artistic refinement, pirate.”

”It’s better than your potato-dragon!” Morwenna laughed, high-fiving Brida across the table while Eluned huffed and floated back to her own workstation.

With the custom emblems carved and etched, the workshop transitioned into the final, physical assembly of the weapons.

At the heavy vice bench, Tasmin was putting the finishing touches on her matched shortswords.

The Huntress had ground the frost-blue star-iron cutting edges down to a razor-sharp bevel.

Now, she was attaching her retrieval hardware. She took two long coils of blackened steel chain... links she had custom-ordered from Thora’s stockpile and threaded the heavy end-shackles directly through the reinforced steel loops forged into the base of her sword pommels.

Clack.! Snap!

She drove heavy steel rivets through the shackles, locking the chains permanently to the weapons.

Tasmin stepped back from the workbench into the clear center aisle of the Foundry.

She held the right shortsword in her hand, the blackened chain coiled loosely around her left forearm.

She took a breath with her dark eyes focusing on a thick, vertical wooden support beam standing fifteen yards away at the far end of the shop.

Vwoosh!

Tasmin didn’t just throw the sword... she whipped her entire body forward, channeling a sharp burst of energy through her shoulder.

The shortsword screamed through the air like a blue bolt of lightning. The blackened chain uncoiled from her arm with a high-speed metallic rattle.

THWACK!

The heavy frost-blue blade slammed dead center into the oak support beam, burying itself three inches deep into the solid wood with a violent tremor.

Tasmin didn’t run over to retrieve it.

She simply planted her boots, gripped the steel chain with her left hand, and gave it a sharp downward physical jerk.

CLACK!

The pommel loop held firm.

The heavy shortsword was ripped violently out of the timber, spinning backward through the air toward her.

Tasmin calmly raised her right hand and caught the leather-wrapped hilt out of mid-air without blinking, letting the chain coil smoothly back around her arm.

”The weight distribution is flawless, Thora...” Tasmin reported, flipping the blade in her hand with a satisfied smirk. ”The chain doesn’t drag the tip down during flight. I can pin a target at fifteen yards and rip them straight back to my daggers without breaking my stride.”

”That’s what happens when you balance the tang properly!” Thora called back proudly from the strapping station.

Thora was currently helping Brida assemble her Kraken-etched assault shield.

Because Brida wielded the massive two-handed axe, she couldn’t hold a shield handle in her left hand. The shield had to be permanently mounted to her forearm.

Thora had prepared a thick, custom-shaped sleeve of seasoned ironwood, heavily padded on the inside with soft treated void-kraken leather that Morwenna had donated from her old naval wear that Thora was currently working on.

”Hold your arm out, big girl,” Thora instructed.