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Chapter 776

“So, you know that I can take you on as my slave?”

I still had the Slave Taker ability, so for all intents and purposes, I could make her my slave. Without the tattoo, I could lose her as my slave just as easily. Thankfully, it seemed like there was no Slave Masters in the demon castle, as Carmine was still bound to me.

“You’re not the first Slave Master I’ve ever met.” She responded. “I know they have various methods to get what they want.”

“Then, I suppose we should proceed.”

There were multiple ways that I could amplify her status. I was a supporting character at heart. As much as I liked to wave my sword around and try to be strong, the basic truth was my greatest strength was to support others. Slave Master was just one of the abilities I had. There was also Hero, which often had skills that supported my party. True Hero, incidentally, didn’t concentrate as much on party modifiers and sat mostly in explosive strength and self-sacrifice.

I supposed that was the difference between a Hero and a True Hero. Heroes fought fires, crime, or saved lives in a crisis. They worked in a team for the betterment of man. True Heroes worked alone, giving their lives for the greater good. Either way, if I put her in my party and equipped Hero, I could amplify her skills a bit. Then, there was Harem Master, which allowed me to boost abilities based on their relation to me.

Although I planned to use Hero and have her in my party, I couldn’t guarantee that would be enough. After all, I hadn’t been leveling Hero much until recently, concentrating more on the higher-tier True Hero. As for Harem Master, I wasn’t inclined to add her to my harem. We might be friends, but we weren’t lovers. There was no guarantee on how much it would work, even if we had sex. Plus, without my blessings, Harem Master’s amplification of status wasn’t that much. Slave Master was the only job with a clear correlation.

I lifted my hand and began to use the Slave Taker ability. I wasn’t sure who her slave handler was. Lord Reign did own slaves. I had no doubt he was the one who controlled Raissa. Whether he was a puppet of Lord Aberis at the time, I didn’t know. However, he could have his Slavers control his slaves. Normal people without jobs had limits to the number of slaves they could control at any given time and thus needed to have Slavers. It was also possible that Lord Aberis himself was in control of her, but I doubted that. He’d be too afraid of exposing himself, and someone with God-eye would identify him as her Master instantly, thus defeating his hiding for the last few years.

It didn’t matter though. No matter how strong the person in charge was, they were not on the same plane of existence as the pair of us. I couldn’t even detect my slaves in another world, so it reasoned that Lord Reign’s control over Garnet was minimal at best. The Slave Taker ability worked with ease. I could feel the bond changing from them to me almost instantly. A few moments later, I could feel her bond. It was comforting to have someone nearby again that I could feel. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it when Carmine was taken away.

“Did you suddenly become more attractive?”

“I did not.”

That was probably my Slave Charm Up kicking in. She was the first girl to mention it. It’d be even worse if I had my blessings. I had already gotten over obsessing about the implications of charm. An attractive or charismatic person didn’t worry if women fell in love with them easier than an ugly or socially inept man, so I wouldn’t think too much about charm.

“Alright then, let’s make history.”

Chapter 777

{Garnet has become your slave.}

{Name: Garnet

Class: Smith

Job: Magic Blacksmith (Slave) (LVL 8)

Unlocked Jobs: Commoner (LVL 22), Blacksmith (LVL 65), Basic Magician (LVL 25), Weapon Smith (LVL 2), Armor Smith (LVL 3)

Race: Deep Dwarf}

She had a lot more jobs than I had expected. Of course, being my slave, she could now equip two jobs, so I added Blacksmith to Magic Blacksmith. If I could add a third job, I would add Weapon Smith too. I had a feeling Weapon and Armor Smith were 2nd tier Blacksmith jobs. They might apply to fashioning weapons from other materials too.

For all we knew, Garnet might be good at woodworking as well. However, Magic Blacksmith was fairly low level, and Blacksmith had a fair amount of levels for someone her age. It showed how hard she worked in the forge. Then again, it might be some kind of trait of her species like the high-tier jobs Celeste and Terra automatically had access to.

With those two jobs equipped, along with my status increases, my access to mana replenishing, and White Mage spells, Garnet should be able to achieve what a Master Blacksmith could not. I wondered what his level looked like, but seeing it would probably just depress me. I had to trust that Garnet had something special like the Bandit Hero seemed to think. She was a Deep Dwarf, and she had high resistance to miasma and a unique physique that would allow her to work with this Silvthril.

Ultimately, my job would be to do everything she was too busy to do. I could cast Refresh as well as a spell called Focus. Both would be very helpful, especially as the work continued. That ultimately lead to me having to decide which jobs I would need for this. I decided White Mage, Slave Master, True Hero, and Hero. I figured there was no reason to keep the Mimic job equipped. I worried the Karma would flair up the second I lost my karma, but I guess I had the skills and the karma long enough that it no longer affected me, kind of like miasma.

The pair of us finished getting ready while we waited for the Bandit Hero to collect us. I prepared some Waters of Life for Garnet. She glanced at it briefly and then nodded before putting it away. I figured she’d be using a lot of mana. Well, at least, she should remain hydrated.

It was still another hour before someone knocked on the door. In reality, we had gotten very little rest. Garnet ran the method of creating the sword through her head over and over again, her mouth and hands moving as she worked through the motions over and over again silently. Meanwhile, I thought about what we’d do after the sword was finished, and the Bandit Hero realized he wouldn’t be able to use it and be the hero he wanted to be.

We’d need some method of escape, which was rather simple. As soon as we completed it, I’d cast Portal and the pair of us would flee with the sword. I tested to see if I could Portal out of here already, and while the Portal didn’t take us much farther outside the cave because of dungeon interference, it would get us outside the entrance. We’d be able to open a second Portal there and be gone before they even realized we were done with the weapon.

There was a knock on the door, and both of us turned as a nameless bandit opened it up. “It’s time.”

Chapter 778

We walked to the forge they had set up quietly. As promised, it was an underground cavern with a shoot leading up. They had a full furnace already blazing, and my face was slammed with heat as soon as I entered. Garnet seemed completely unphased by the heat, making me wonder if Deep Dwarves were immune to fire as well as miasma. She immediately looked through all of the hammers they had ransacked over the years, which turned out to be a nice rack of about fifteen hammers.

The way she ran her hands over them, picking up one, testing it out, and then putting it back, really showed how meaningful this was for her. I could tell that blacksmithing was something very important to her. In the past when I had talked to her, she had always acted silly and flippant, but when it came to doing her job, I could see that she was all too serious.

“Master, you might want to get an apron on. Get the fire ten degrees hotter.”

Although she had called me Master unexpectedly, she also gave out her words like a command, leaving no question on whether I should complete the task or not. I grabbed an apron and then approached the fire. After five seconds of staring at it, I realized that the support role I had prepared myself for wasn’t the support role that she needed. At the very least, I was very adaptable. I unequipped Hero, and then I equipped Cook instead.

Cook didn’t just give me Fire Control, but it also gave me Temperature Gauge, Create Flame, Combination, and Mixing. In a lot of ways, cooking had a lot in common with blacksmithing. I started to get to work with the flame. It was much hotter than what I used with cooking, but it wasn’t much different in principle.

Garnet had finally selected her apron and hammer and then came up to the anvil, glancing over my shoulder to look at how I was tending the flame. She made a noise of surprise and then nodded.

“I didn’t think Master would be able to do this so well.”

“I’m a man of many skills,” I responded jokingly.

“I’ll say. You’ve been full of surprises. I feel surprisingly good right now. I wasn’t confident that we’d be able to complete this before, but after becoming your slave, a refreshing feeling has flooded through me. I feel strong and capable. I’m starting to understand why so many women wish to be your slave.”

“I’d like to think they like me for my personality,” I responded wryly.

She chuckled. “I did offer you my virginity before, didn’t I? I already saw you as worth my time from the moment I met you on the road outside the Miner’s town all those years ago.”

“For me, it was only months.” I reminded her.

“Either way, I never forgot about our first meeting, and I always wondered why that was the case. I think now, that it was perhaps fated. We were always meant to get together, for this moment.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow.

“With me, this is just a moment of many. We’re working with some legendary metal, but I’ve already come across orichalcum and mithril too. I have a feeling that this won’t be the last item I need forged. You haven’t even compared notes with Terra. She’s a girl in my party. You saw her once.”

“The one with the flat chest?”

“You’re one to say that.”

“What about her?”

“She’s a golem. An artificial creature…”

“Seriously! Is it true!”

“Ah… so close!” I cried as Garnet ended up right up in my face as her eyes excitedly sparkled.

“To be able to create such incredible things, that would be awesome…” She sighed.

I hadn’t thought about it much before now, but a collaboration between those two women might create some pretty incredible things.

“The furnace has reached temperature.” I reminded her as I checked it with my thermal vision.

Her face grew serious once again. “It’s time to begin.”

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