Chapter 245 - Target: Dark-Gold  

Before Shi Feng started forging the Arclight Shield, he decided to first forge a few Basic Mana Armor Kits to serve as a warm-up.

After God’s Domain evolved, the process of forging grew more complicated, greatly increasing the difficulty of producing an item. Unlike the Advanced Whetstones and Basic Mana Armor Kits, which were still considerably simple to make, items such as weapons and equipment had a much more complex forging procedure.

“It should be about time I give the shield a try.” After Shi Feng produced tens of Basic Mana Armor Kits, he finally retrieved the Silver Ore and Gold Ore needed to forge the Arclight Shield. He had also received the Magic Crystals from Gentle Snow in advance.

Gentle Snow had wanted to obtain the Arclight Shields as soon as possible, so Shi Feng required her to send him the Magic Crystals in advance.

Shi Feng had received a total of 200 Magic Crystals from Gentle Snow. Such an amount was sufficient for 20 attempts to produce the Arclight Shield.

Shi Feng only had a 20% success rate for forging the Arclight Shield. It was the lowest success rate he had ever had since he started forging equipment. However, if any other forger were in his shoes right now, they might not be able to produce even one Arclight Shield out of several hundred sets of materials.

Those conceited Guilds thought that they could easily produce the Arclight Shield after obtaining its Forging Design. However, if Shi Feng had not won the bid for the Forging Design, by the time those Guilds managed to produce a single Arclight Shield, the 50-man Team Dungeons would have long since been conquered.

In order to gain experience, when Shi Feng started his first attempt at forging the Arclight Shield, he went through the process slowly and steadily, carrying out each step to the best of his abilities.

Before he knew it, Shi Feng had spent over 20 minutes producing the first Arclight Shield.

Compared to a normal shield, the Arclight Shield had a crescent-shaped design. The entire shield was colored in silver, and many runic patterns were carved on the shield’s body. Although the shield looked mighty and powerful at first glance, it was still unknown whether it was a failed or successful product.

Shi Feng then chose to generate the shield’s data.

After ten seconds of waiting, the identification process for the shield was completed.

“As expected, it’s a failure,” Shi Feng sighed when he took a look at the shield’s data. Although it was indeed an Arclight Shield, its quality was a rank lower than the original; it was only Secret-Silver rank.

[Arclight Shield] (Shield, Secret-Silver Rank)

Level 15

Equipment Requirement: Strength 90

Defense +330

Block Rate: 31%

Strength +10, Endurance +20

Evasion +3

Additional Passive Skill 1-

Sound of Life: Every attack received will grant user with a stack of Power of Life, increasing maximum HP by 2% and received healing by 1% for 1 minute. Maximum of 10 stacks.

Additional Passive Skill 2-

Refraction: Triggers once every 50 seconds. Becomes immune to one attack.

“From a general point of view, though, it is not a bad result, all the same. At the very least, it is still a Secret-Silver ranked shield. I should be able to sell it for a good price even then.” Shi Feng was relatively satisfied with this failed product. After all, a Secret-Silver ranked shield remained a rare item at this stage of the game.

According to Shi Feng’s knowledge, a majority of the core MTs of second-rate and third-rate Guilds were still using Mysterious-Iron ranked shields. If he sold this failure, he could still earn around 6 to 7 Gold Coins from it.

Although he had failed this time, it was not a complete failure. At the very least, it did not turn out as a scrap item. This partial failure indicated that he must have made a mistake somewhere during the forging process.

“There shouldn’t be any problems with the forging of the main body itself. I must’ve messed up when I was carving the runes on the shield, preventing it from reaching Fine-Gold rank,” Shi Feng concluded after carefully reviewing his actions. According to past experiences, if a problem had truly occurred during the formation of the shield, then the Arclight Shield wouldn’t just fall by a single rank. It wouldn’t even be unusual for the shield to end up being Bronze rank or lower.

Afterward, Shi Feng did not rush to start his second attempt. Instead, he carefully studied the runes he had carved on the Arclight Shield.

The inscription of the runes were mainly done using the Magic Crystals. However, the process of completing these runes was not easy, as Shi Feng did not truly understand their meaning. He could only make blind imitations of the drawings.

Although he did not understand the meaning behind the runes, if he practiced drawing them over and over, it should still yield some positive effect.

Hence, Shi Feng started practicing drawing the runes.

Once... Twice... Ten times...

Every drawing took around four to five minutes to complete. However, as the number of times he practiced increased, he grew more proficient at drawing the runes. The runes he drew now also started resembling the original.

This cost-free way of practicing was much more economical than learning through actual production. Shi Feng naturally wouldn’t mind more practice.

“This should be enough.” Shi Feng looked at the latest rune he drew, feeling extremely satisfied with it. This imitation of his looked practically the same as the rune shown on the Forging Design.

Hence, Shi Feng started his second attempt at producing the Arclight Shield.

This time, the entire forging process of the shield flowed very smoothly. Shi Feng had only spent around 10 minutes to complete the second Arclight Shield. However, his attempt this time ended in complete failure.

Shi Feng’s 20% success rate did not stand on his side this time around.

Following which, Shi Feng consecutively produced ten Arclight Shields. Moreover, with each successive shield he made, the time he spent producing them also decreased. His hands also moved with much more proficiency. Out of the ten Arclight Shields he made, only two barely achieved the passing standard, two ended up as defective products, while the remaining ones were complete failures. As for the two defective shields, one was Mysterious-Iron rank, while the other was Secret-Silver rank.

In general, the results were quite good.

However, Shi Feng was still unsatisfied with the quality of the Arclight Shields.

“Now that I am proficient at making the Arclight Shields, the next step would be increasing its quality. If I can let Cola use a Dark-Gold ranked Arclight Shield, our chances at clearing the Demon’s Castle would become much higher.” Shi Feng decided to take out the Runic Gold, the reward he obtained for his promotion to Advanced Forging Apprentice.

Not only could the Runic Gold increase his success rate by 10%, there was also a small chance for it to increase an item’s rank by one, up to a maximum of Dark-Gold rank.

Unfortunately, Shi Feng only had five of these things, meaning that he only had five chances to produce a Dark-Gold ranked Arclight Shield.

The Runic Gold was a piece of ore that gave off a metallic glow and contained runic energy within it.

After refining the Runic Gold, Shi Feng poured the molten Runic Gold into the Silver-Gold alloy. Immediately, a change occurred in the alloy. The originally bright red alloy turned dark red in color. Moreover, it also started greedily absorbing the energy of the Ice-Blue Devil Flame.

As the amount of energy it absorbed increased, the alloy started emitting many golden runes, slowly forming an array of runes.

Knowing that the fusion was completed, Shi Feng immediately retrieved the scorching hot alloy from the furnace, placed it on the anvil, and started hammering on it. Slowly, the piece of alloy started taking on the shape of an Arclight Shield, and on the shield’s surface, there was even a layer of naturally occurring golden runes. The shield looked incredibly holy.

After hammering for several minutes, Shi Feng finally formed the Arclight Shield. Immediately, he retrieved a black liquid and started drawing the runes on the shield. The black liquid was the liquified product of the Magic Crystals.

Shi Feng concentrated his full attention on each and every stroke, afraid of making even the slightest mistake.

When he completed the final stroke, the naturally occurring golden runes on the shield actually melded together with the runes Shi Feng had drawn. Together, they formed completely new golden runes possessing no resemblance to the black runes found on the previous Arclight Shields Shi Feng made.

“Please be a success!” Shi Feng timidly selected to identify the shield.

Although the Arclight Shield looked absolutely perfect appearance-wise, whether it was a success or a failure still depended on the final data.

One second... Two seconds...

This time, even after 20 seconds had passed, the system was still unable to determine the shield’s exact data. This situation caused Shi Feng to grow slightly nervous.

The longer identification time indicated that even the system itself was hesitant. In the end, is it a success or a failure? Shi Feng had carried out the entire forging procedure perfectly. At the end of the day, however, his success rate was only 30%. Oftentimes, when the identification process took longer than usual, there was a higher chance that the result was a failure.

Finally, after 30 seconds passed, the system returned the identification results.

System: Arclight Guard has been successfully forged. Forging Proficiency increased by 2 points. Obtained 80,000 EXP.