Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3) by John Gold (novel24 TXT) 📕

day, completing jobs for local clients. The shop wasn’t popular among the local players, although the locals all knew how good the owner was. Every evening, when the work was done, the blacksmith and his apprentice hammered away until midnight. Gvalt joined them on occasion, proposing alchemical recipes for new alloys. The metal used to make the mysterious armor could withstand any temperature, and it even regenerated in just a couple of hours after they poured acid on it.

The blacksmith’s only attempt to transmute the metal had ended in disaster when it disintegrated into dust and flew out of a crack in the closed window as a white cloud. The two dwarves were so shocked that they didn’t realize at first that it was trying to get away until there was an explosion on the street and a bunch of ghosts showed up—the armor had its own mental body.

That day, the old crafting quarter had gone up in flames as a result of the attacking evil spirits. Both dwarves concluded that the cloud had its own intelligence unrelated to the spirits, and it wanted to protect the dwarves from the wrath of the spirits it had been holding back.

Isaac only heard this story after a month of experimenting with different alloys. Habald insisted that they start by figuring out what the metal was, only moving on to the forging after that. He paid for the materials; Isaac drew the model.

It took them a year to figure out the side of the upper and lower layers in the armor. All that time, the dwarf brothers tried to find an alloy with analogous properties, though Isaac had his doubts. The problem wasn’t the alloy; it was the spirit. The armor had a soul that made it unique. But did that mean that it was the apex of the smithing art? Could they find a blacksmith prepared to sacrifice his life and soul for his final project?

That was when something dawned on him, and he shared his insight with Habald. The key was the metal, which restored itself and had a soul. No, it wasn’t just enchanted. It was capable of taking on a human’s mental body. In other words, the new material they made had to be capable of both storing spells and allowing mental energy to flow through it.

When Habald heard Isaac’s theory, his expression grew stern and inscrutable. He led his apprentice off to the store room.

“My boy, I’m about to tell you more than a simple blacksmith is supposed to know. What do you know about palirin?”

“It’s an accursed metal only found in the Inferno. Used to make mind weapons, capable of…”

Isaac’s eyes widened, and the dwarf continued.

“Exactly. It can both allow energy to pass through it and contain the soul of a creature. Only masters with enormous mental resistance can use it, as you need high-level blacksmith and crafting skills as well as the recipe for melting the ore down. There are only five blacksmiths in the world capable of working with it. One is in Kongul, another is in Radaam working for the emperor. The others wander the world, keeping their abilities under wraps.”

“Master… But I’ve never even heard of palirin being used to make armor.”

“You’re right—it’s expensive and doesn’t make sense. However, there’s also a secret prohibition from the Academy of Magic that was handed down to all qualified blacksmiths. For example, Archmage Tiberius Sen wears a set of three items made out of palirin. The souls of three giant brothers were used to make them. Confining the souls of relatives in armor is one way to get the set effect, and the archmage had to get special permission from the emperor and the academy’s management board.”

“So, the armor we’re working on was made using an alloy based on palirin. It was enchanted with a bunch of related souls, too? That’s ridiculous! Habald, there are two layers of armor and more than a hundred pieces. The set effect would be lost entirely just due to the sheer number of souls.”

“And there you are, getting to the crux of the matter, my boy.” The old dwarf listened carefully, but he didn’t hear any out-of-place noises. “What do you know about the ultimate art of crafting?”

Isaac was stunned, unsure if he was supposed to conclude that the armor was something like that.

“The ultimate art of crafting is the ability to invest some of your own experience in your creation. The higher the level of the craftsman, the more he can invest.”

The dwarf smiled and scratched his beard.

“What if I were to tell you that isn’t even the top level? Blacksmiths can imbibe their creations with their own soul.”

“Impossible!”

The dwarf strained to hear a noise coming from the workshop.

“Isaac…nothing is impossible. When your blacksmith level hits 250, you can make unique things. At 500, they’re legendary, and at 750, they’re scalable. But when you hit 1000, nothing happens. That’s when it’s for real.”

Habald switched on the artifact he had to make sure nobody else could hear.

“My grandfather was a hermit blacksmith living so deep that his family only visited once every month or two. When he was found dead, there was a smile on his face, and a sword lying next to him…his last work. Next to his workshop, there was a pile of scalable items, but he obviously thought nothing of them. He was crazy, having devoted himself to the art of smithing. Anyway, the people who found his body were stunned to see that, for some reason, he was at Level 0. He’d sacrificed all his experience to create that pile of trinkets, and then he’d sacrificed his soul for his final creation. That sword is now a family heirloom in the royal dwarf family—only my family knows where it came from.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“It’s non-level, and its attributes are derived