Kang! Kang! Kang!

In the smithy inside the inner castle, I swung the hammer without a break.

It was a quiet late evening, but I didn't stop.

— A large amount of mana has been imbued into the sword. A hard, long-lasting blade has been completed.

— Blacksmithing is now Beginner 9.

— To you, who work so ferociously hard: Bakula the blacksmith has paid out mana points of encouragement.

The notices had gotten awfully kind lately.

Alphadak must be on something.

Sometimes the notice voice was so sweet it gave me goosebumps.

Chiiit, chiiik.

I'd tossed my shirt aside, and the sweat dripping off my bare chest onto the red-hot iron turned to steam.

The stronger my physical abilities grew, the more my body changed.

Most physical labor didn't make me sweat anymore.

But when I put mana to work, the sweat poured down like rain.

For the past two weeks, I'd thrown myself into making mana weapons.

That bastard Baron Lubeck, whose face I'd never even seen, kept nagging at me, but there wasn't much I could do.

The only answer was to use the time I'd bought to get stronger.

I slurped down mana stones practically every day.

The stones didn't pack the kick they had at first.

Past a certain point, it seemed, low-grade mana stones didn't do much for me.

Whenever I had a spare moment, I drank mana and summoned the spirits or trained my weapons skills.

In a domain war, plenty of people besides me would get hurt.

"Runs out fast~."

I picked up a mana stone, studied it and smacked my lips.

Sabina, being a mage, had explained it: once mounted, even a low-grade mana stone could keep supplying mana for decades or more.

A certain amount of mana kept leaking out, but she said it was replenished whenever the owner poured mana into it.

But when I slurped one down, it was spent in no time.

I must have been absorbing more than its discharge limit.

According to her, the same thing happened when mages pushed past the limit and drew…