"Do you want the next turn since your Sect was singled out?" Cain asked, and the people in the crowd began to get excited.
They had learned what they thought was the secret to Cain's choice of examples. He was picking the people affected by the last request, which everyone thought was the fairest way to go about it.
"In that case, what would it cost to get a new axe? A big one that can cut hills in half with a single swing and part the ocean for a hundred ters ahead of ? I will pay whatever it costs, or I can trade you for this bag of Mythril Ore and Gems."
That sounded like a pretty amazing weapon, but Cain had no idea how he was going to go about creating it. Maybe he could use wind blades? They would part the waters as well as cut through hills, but if they wanted to cut hills in half and reach a hundred ters with a Wind Blade's width, it was going to have to be a very intricate weapon, most likely at the Spirit Rank at the very minimum.
"That's a steep order. Can we scale it down? Or can we make it scale with the user?"
That Cain could do, a progressive rune that you had to pour monstrous amounts of energy into each ti you used the effect to get the full damage out of the weapon. Without that extra energy, it would just be a very decent Mythic weapon.
"Crushing Mountain is never weak. Only the strong can live in our Sect." The man responded with pride.
So a progressive rune was fine then.
"Alright. Now, this is going to take so ti, so watch closely." Cain began, then dug through his inventory for random items to make into a rune ax.
He had a good stick to make the handle, which was currently a bo staff, but he lacked an ax head.
"Luna, go find a good rock. Big as that guy's head, at least." Cain instructed, and she took off again, but this ti toward the city walls.
"While she hunts for an ax head, we will make the handle. This will be a two-handed weapon suitable for a man of your particular stature. I'm not sure if anyone told your mother, but the child doesn't have to be the size of a mountain to join the Sect.
Or do they?"
The big man laughed and pointed to a Dwarf beside him, who was wearing identical robes and had stone arrowheads braided into his long white beard and faded eyes, showing that age had nearly blinded him before he made it to the Immortal Realm.
Cain took out the staff and reshaped it into the handle for the weapon he was envisioning, a large double-bladed war axe with a stone head. Cain began to narrate the process as he made the handle, then set it aside when Luna ca back with a rock.
She had used her knife to carve rough facial features on it, and it did look a good bit like the big man who had commissioned the weapon, but it also looked suspiciously like she had removed it from the city wall.
That shouldn't be a big deal. They had Earth Elent specialists to repair that sort of damage.
Cain reshaped the ax head, then looked at the disappointed look on the Crushing Mountain Sect Elder's face, and changed it again to make it a perfect replica of a Dwarven Battle Axe, with a hamr on one side and a long spike on top that could be used as a makeshift pickaxe.
That brightened their looks considerably, and Cain began planning where he was going to put all of the runes to make this thing actually work.
He needed Earth Shaping, Durability, Perfect Size, Wind Blade, Sharpness, and Cleave.
The first two could go on the handle. The wind Blade could go on the spike, while Sharpness and Cleaving would need to be repeated on both sides of the blade.
That left him a bit of room though, so he added crushing to the hamr side and began sketching the path in his mind, using Record Keeper's [Precognition] to see hundreds of incidences where he failed to create the weapon before he got it right.
That was the true secret to building a reputation as an infallible Master at your skill. Never let others see all the tis you failed.
Cain set to work now that the pieces were complete, carving the myriad of Runes all over the weapon. In the Runic language, the symbols even took on shapes that represented their nature. Sharpness and Cleave both had hard and angular lines, while the wind blade was an interlinking set of flowing circles, with the small variations being the actual letters.
Cain didn't bother to get into the theory, or the actual alphabet, simply brushing off those questions as not teaching literacy as part of his seminar today, but still, it took him over three hours to finish the weapon.
"And done. It seems that it is ti for soone to go get us lunch. Young Ladies, if you would please." Cain suggested, sending the girls away to fetch food.
They had both been entranced by the process. Luna because she was learning tricks to the craft, and Solara because she had never seen anything as insane as making a Rune Weapon out of scrap stone and a broken staff.
She had seen it twice in a row now, from less than a ter away, with all of her senses focused on his skills, and still, she had no clue how the reshaping process happened.
"I'm on it!" Luna cheered, embracing her role as the day's gopher now that she was sent to go for food.
"That axe, it is incredible." The Elder from the Crushing Mountain Sect whispered with deep reverence in his voice.
"It must be flawed. No cultivator would show their deepest secrets so easily." Soone in the crowd scoffed.
"What makes you think this is a deep secret? It is just another branch of inscription, with a slightly different process to empower the Runes. Every branch of every Sect should have at least a few Inscriptionists, even if they're not particularly good ones. The Sects need them for everyday life and keeping the privacy wards active." Cain tried to explain.
"Like we buy that. Rune Crafting is a lost skill. No way does it actually work as well as you say, and what is with the reshaping of the rock? Are you just an Earth Cultivator who got a few Sects in on your sche?" The man taunted.
Cain saw that the crowd up front, who could actually sense the aura of the weapon and had more clearly seen the process, were starting to get upset and that it was going to lead to violence again, so he decided to try a different tactic.
"If you are certain that the weapon is a dud, you can kindly ask the Crushing Mountain Sect to give you a casual demonstration. If you do, I will happily put your request next in line." Cain suggested.
"Hmph. Bring it on. He's a weakling, to begin with, and that lump of rock will shatter the first ti it hits sothing solid. Co on then, show us all how big of a fraud you are."
"Since he's so weak, there is no need to hold back. You heard the man. He wants to take a casual swing in exchange for the next spot in line." The Dwarven Elder with the arrowheads in his beard commanded his Sect mate.
The big man passed over the bag of ores and gems, then picked up the axe with a smirk, pouring elental energy into the weapon.
The Runes, followed by the entire weapon, began to glow with dull gray and brown energy, and a surge of imnse power flowed over the Lotus Blossom Camp as the Rune Weapon truly ca to life in the hands of a Peak Immortal Cultivator.
Cain could see in his interface that the man was over level 700, more than qualified to break through to the early stages of divinity, should he manage to find a source of inspiration or a Divine Skill that would allow him to awaken.
That did not bode well for his opponent, but only a second later, the surging energy backed down to a much lower level, and the smirking Giant turned his attention from the weapon to the cultivator, who called him a weakling.
"This should be about ten percent power, right? That is more than enough for the likes of you."
He didn't even give the weapon a proper swing or use any skills. He just casually swung the weapon overhand with one arm and let it crash into the other man's shielding.
Layer after layer of defenses shattered, and the ground around him was cracked, while the Cultivator was nearly driven to his knees, barely holding up against the strike.
"Well worth the money. Thank you, Elder Cain." The giant of a man chuckled, then turned and walked off through the crowd to take a spot near the back, where he had been before his Sect was called out.
"Well, you did take his strike. That ans you're up next, assuming you had a request for ?"
That brought so chuckles from the crowd as the man recovered his breath and channeled energy into his body to replace what he had burned while keeping his shield intact. The look of astonishnt in his eyes was proof enough to everyone else that the attack wasn't staged. Had he been only a little weaker or less prepared, he might have died.
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