Infinite Realm

"Welcome back from your break. I hope you all have finally decided whether you're still willing to continue or not. My blacksmith guild doesn't really like seeing so much resources being wasted in the hands of newbies like yourselves." Kolin appeared on the stage once again as he gave his signature speech.

"How the heck did a rude man like this even become the vice-guild leader of the city's Blacksmith guild. I mean, I know he has the skills but don't they care about their face to give a high position that involves socialising with people to such a terrible character?" A player couldn't hold it in and whispered out his thoughts.

"Sighs, it can't be helped." An NPC who was beside him suddenly sighed.

"The blacksmith guild values skill above all else and the old fogie before us has exactly that. The blacksmiths in the city who could rival him can only be counted with one hand and every one of them is an elder figure in the guild. As elders, they have a lot of resources allocated to them for their research while also having few things to do it be bothered about. Such a strategic position is more valued than the Vice-guild leader where they always have to organise the guild and supervise all activities. Hence, none of the other potential vice-guild leader candidates have any interest in holding the position so the old man easily got it."

"Oh? There's something like that?" 

With the NPC's explanation, the players finally understood while Kolin was still the vice-guild leader despite his seemingly uncivil behaviour.

"Either way, the old man knows when to take things seriously and he knows how to get the job done. It's said that he's only like this to the young ones because one of his students has surpassed him and he's gotten crankier ever since." The NPC added.

'To be so abusive just because a student surpassed him. This old fogie must have some issues.' 

As the conversation held was amidst the stage just a few steps from him, Sato was able to hear everything clearly and couldn't help but shake his head with a sigh.

"The challenge this time around is the last one and honestly, my favourite. You would get to at least see the difference between yourselves and the people you admire to become in this area of expertise." Kolin said.

"In this next stage, just like the previous two, you will have to forge a certain piece of equipment. But unlike the previous two, you only have two shots at doing this and you have 3 hours. A lot of time right?"

Among the contestants, many were skeptical but none were foolish. If the number of tries was reduced by one and the time was increased, it definitely meant that the next blueprint was a tough one to reproduce. 

By reducing the number of tries, the blacksmith guild would conserve resources meaning that the next equipment required high-quality resources which indicated that the equipment they were supposed to produce this time around was not your average one. To further certify this assumption was the fact that the allocated time had increased by an hour. If following the trend of the previous rounds, the time increased by roughly 50% with an increase in difficulty. 

The first round was 1 hour and 30 minutes long with the second round being 2 hours long. Finally, this third round was assigned a whole 3 hours. And with the trend of increasing difficulty, it definitely wasn't going to be easy.

"Eto..." An NPC raised her hand up and attracted the public's focus on her.

The NPC was a young petite girl that seemed like she wasn't any older than 18. For a job that was mostly male-dominated, it was shocking to see a young lady amongst the participants. But what was even more shocking was the girl's ranking. 

"Oh? Aren't you the little one Miya? Ranked 7th right? I approve of your skills, just a bit." Kolin stroked his beard as he softened his tone.

7th place overall, using the last rankings as reference. This was a really high ranking and just from Kolin's tone alone, the girl definitely didn't get this ranking by mere luck.

The young lady, who most players thought would be a weak little girl just because of her shy attitude and lithe physique, was anything but that.

Sato glanced at her arms and noticed that the structure of her muscles wasn't so simple, but far from that. 

Similar to the lithe muscles of athletes, the young girl looked weak on the outside but her arms packed a punch. If comparisons were to be made, her physique was akin to the character Sak*ra from the popular Shonen anime. While her muscles weren't burly, they packed the same power as a muscly adult. This was understandable as the job of a blacksmith required them to have sustainable strength and endurance to keep hammering at their workpiece for long periods. Even if one didn't have any exercise routines before, simply taking on the job of a blacksmith was more than enough of an exercise for the arms.

'She has potential.' Sato thought as he recalled that her ranking was 7th place while she didn't look much older than him; in fact, she was actually younger than he was.

"What do you have to say, young lady?" Kolin asked.

"Ah...I was about to ask, whether if the next equipment is at the practitioner rank?" The girl hesitantly asked.

While it was true that weapons and equipment had a general rank in terms of quality which was the popular Mortal, Rare-Steel, Dark-Silver, Legendary, and so on, with each rank having the subranks Low-tier, Mid-tier and Upper-tier, there was still another form for classification based on the difficulty of production. This was based on the level of the blacksmith needed to at least succeed at producing it with a high success rate. Accordingly, they were Apprentice, Practitioner, Master, and so on. 

When a piece of equipment is said to be at the Master grade, it meant that a Master level blacksmith would be needed to forge it. While a Practitioner can indeed give it a shot, their success rate would be low and it was highly possible that they wouldn't even be able to produce the masterpiece. 

This grade of classification enabled the blacksmith guild to be able to distribute assignments and orders efficiently to the necessary personnel and to also prevent wastage of resources. So if a client needed a work to be done, the blacksmith guild would check the production classification and then call upon the needed personnel to fulfill the task, rather than just handing it out to a random individual. By using this classification method, Master blacksmiths were able to take a break and focus more on their personal research as they would only be called upon to produce a Master grade weapon or equipment, or when the entire hands in the guild were busy with various projects and there was an overflow in orders.

"Hehe. No need to be so anxious so soon. You'll find out soon enough." Kolin grinned.

"But before that, here are the current rankings after the last round.. Feel free to bask in your 'glory' for this moment, and motivate yourself to strive for a higher rank because, for the next round, you will need that motivation."