Starting from Zero

"Who are you? And what do you want?" I asked.

"I’m a proud Chinese warrior, fighting for our land!" He looked at me with all the rage his can muster.

"I don’t remember Chinese fellows being all robbers."

"Because you\'re a traitor to us you Japan dog!!"

He took out a pair of scimitars from behind his back.

"DIE!" He charged.

The knights are still in business though, they all moved to stop him. Two knights that are still far from him threw their lances. Ping! The fat warrior deflected them away with a quick blade flip.

No ordinary people can parry the attack from two level 850 monsters. All the Phantom Knights readied their weapons and became serious.

The leader knight thrust his lance at the warrior. With another swift parry, the mighty knight was pushed back several steps. I heard a sharp noise coming towards me, before I saw an object flying at me again. I raised my claw blades to block but in the next second I remembered my blades were already busted by Red Moon.

Poof. The object stuck into my arm, spilling blood.

"Arrrgh!!"

I pulled it away. It\'s a...lance tip?

The leader knight looked at me in surprise, then at his own lance. Yup, his lance is tipless now. The fat warrior didn\'t parry the attack, he sliced the lance in half!

"Oh my, are you alright?" Rose checked my arm.

"No biggie." I drew my dual swords. "What’s your name? Let\'s have a round."

Now I\'m definitely going to see how strong he really is.

"A traitor like you doesn’t need to know my name! Come if want to die!" He waved his blades and ran towards me again.

What does he mean traitor? I don’t think there’s time to explain though, so I’ll have to fight it.

I ordered the knights to back away and went ahead myself.

His first attack is a direct downward slash. I raised my swords to block the attack but--

With a snap, my swords were completely split, leaving only the handles in my hands! Next, I felt a sting on my chest. There\'s a cross-shaped wound, a big one.

"Sir!" All the knights moved in again to protect me. Yuri and Rose also came to my sides.

I\'m still standing there, speechless, looking at my broken swords. What the fuk just happened? Someone broke my Artifact weapon with just one hit?

The warrior moved again. Since we knew that we can’t block his attacks, the Phantom Knights tried to attack his body instead. He is wielding his blades in extremely fast ways and no one dares to get too close to him.

"Stop! Let me do it." I asked them to back off again. "[Transform]!"

I activated my new skill and became taller. Now I have a pair of new claws.

"Let’s see how many more surprises you can give me!"

I shifted in front his face, when he tried to block my attack again out of instinct. With another jump, I appeared behind him.

"Wolf\'s fang, [Wind Slash]!"

I knocked him away with a double claw swipe, and dashed to where he would land.

"Wolf\'s fang, [Heaven Nigh]!"

I pushed on the ground and kicked him flying upwards. The fat guy flew into a tree. I got ready for the next attack but he never came down.

"Where did he go?"

"He’s on the tree!" A knight answered.

"Maybe he ran away?" Another knight spoke.

"Over there!" Yuri pointed at a tree branch where the warrior is trying to hide.

I jumped to his location but he\'s no longer there.

I looked around all the trees in annoyance. Okay, so you want to hide?

I returned to the ground and broke the tree in half with a claw. Too bad he\'s not here.

"Rosa!"

Since solo will not work, let’s get some helpers then.

Rosa appeared and covered all the nearby trees with his vines. He senses enemies by their movements and vibrations they caused. Apparently the fat guy is not moving so we don’t get anything.

"Lucky, clear the area!"

"On it."

Rosa retracted his vines, while Lucky pulled a tree out of the ground and threw it far away. He repeated this for a while until there\'s no tree around us.

I looked at the empty battlefield. "Where is the asshole??"

"So he did run away." Yuri handed me a leaf. There’s blood on it, someone else’s blood.

"So he’s wounded?"

Rose picked up some more red leaves. "Badly."

Those blades...They were terribly powerful.

"What about your swords?" Rose picked up my broken blades. "You should head to the Lost City. You don’t have any weapon for close combat now. Your lance is too long for close-quarter fights."

"But..." I looked at the wagon with magic shields in it. "I can’t leave you and the stuff behind. Maybe he\'ll come back again. He had helpers too, maybe from a guild or something. What if he brings a hundred people next time?"

"Even if you stay you can’t fight him like this." Rose raised a good point.

Yuri came up too. "I agree. Ziri should go get his equipment repaired. Me and Miss Rose will stay and watch. You can leave your knights here if you worry about us. We should have enough to defend ourselves."

"Alright. Just be careful, if things aren\'t well just teleport back to the Lost City. We can always buy those shields and crystals again."

Apart from 9 Phantom Knights, I asked Lucky, Phiona, Tank and Loong\'er to all stay behind, before I went back to the Lost City with the leader knight accompanying me.

I went straight to Clark\'s weapon shop. Thank god he didn’t go to his wife this time.

"Ah, something you need, brother?" Clark dropped his work and came to me.

"Of course." I took out the broken swords and torn gauntlets.

"For the-- Did you go fight a dragon again? What happened this time?"

"I didn’t ask for it." I sighed. "The gauntlets are chewed up by a werewolf, and the swords were sliced by a pair of weird blades. Right, do you know what kind of weapon can break Artifacts like this?"

"A pair of blades?" Clark paused. "Wait a sec."

He ran back to his forge room and brought back a long, slim container. "Something like this?"

He opened the container and revealed the similar weapon.

"Huh you have them? Yes this is it. But he was using finished weapons, not these blades without hilts. He broke my Dragon Fangs swords in one hit!"

"This is my collection when I was still in the demon legion. They\'re called the [God\'s Bane]. I didn’t get to use them so I never gave them hilts."

"Why not? They\'re so powerful! Are there more of these, apart from the four I saw today?"

It’ll be serious trouble if something that can break apart Artifacts are everywhere around the world.

"Don\'t worry, there are only four of them in this world. I didn’t use it because this weapon damages both your enemies and yourself. The blades ignores all defense and crushes anything it contacts with, but that attack power comes with the price of their wielder\'s own life. To put it simple, you damage your opponent using your own HP. You need 8 HP to cause 10 damage to someone else. Few people would choose to win a fight through such dangerous approach."

So that\'s why the fat warrior didn\'t use his blades from the start!

"Okay...Can you fix my armor? And the swords and claw blades?"

He looked at the cross shaped tear on my chest. "This is easy, we just seal it up with some mythril material."

Then he held up the claws. "Hm. The gauntlets are easy to stitch up, and some hammering will fix the claws. The swords though... That will take some effort. Whoever you were fighting with snapped your swords at the exact point where the magic runes were critically connected, that is not my expertise. Unless..."

"What?"

"Unless we can find another weapon with similar rune enchantments, and forge it into your swords. We can more or less return your swords to its original state but it is not guaranteed to be 100% same as before."

"You mean, we need to destroy an Artifact weapon of the same level, to repair my swords?" I already felt hopeless.

"Afraid so." Clark sighed. "There are options though. I can use my [God’s Bane] if that’s ok for you. But I don’t know what will happen. All Artifacts tend to change when you reforge them and no one knows the result beforehand."

"Will it change too much? Like, can we create a bow instead when we\'re forging a sword?"

"I’m not sure. One of the best Artifact masters in Dark Sanctuary once tried to repair a war lance, and acquired a mountain axe in the end. I really can’t tell you what might happen."

"Let\'s just do it. I don’t have a choice anyway. As long as you don’t mind wasting your collection?"

"Oh don’t worry about it." Clark collected the broken blades. "Never planned to use these things, at least I can put them to good use now. Now come in and help me."

"Oh!" I followed him into his workshop.

First, he collected various materials I don’t recognize and threw them into his furnace. The last materials are the broken Dragon Fang swords and his God\'s Bane blades.

"Ziri! Get an energy crystal in there."

"This one?" I tossed a pale-colored crystal into the fire.

"Black bakelite, three blocks."

"Black...bakelite...there."

"Dark jade! Four of them."

"Huh?...Ah, here." I found four black square objects.

This kept going for a while, before Clark asked me to help him press the wind bellow.

"Oh and, give me two units of Chromium."

"What’s that?"

Since I can’t understand what\'s he’s referring to, he came to look for the material himself.

"Ziri? Did you put in the dark jade I asked?"

"Dark jade? Yeah, what’s wrong?"

"Why are they still here? I only brought four."

"But I found four dark--Oh crap, Did I put the wrong stuff?" I panicked.

Clark checked the remaining stock.

"Is this what you added?"

"That’s not dark jade?" I pointed at the black object.

"No." He held up another half-transparent crystal. "The dark jade is here, what you found is magnet metal!"

"God. Did I mess it up? Oh! Let\'s put this in there too. We don’t want to miss anything."

I grabbed the remaining three dark jade blocks and threw them into the furnace.

"No--"

When Clark failed to stop me, he grabbed my hand and pulled me to the outside.

"You fool! We can\'t heat up dark jade and magnet together!"

"Why?"

Shoosh! A silver plate grazed past my face and threw itself into the furnace.

"That’s why!!"

All sorts of objects in the store began to levitate and rush towards the burning furnace, as if it is the center of gravity! At first they were only small ones like plates and forks. But heavier ones soon followed, such as armors and weapons. I’m pretty sure I saw Clark\'s forging hammer waltzing in.

It didn’t take long before the whole room in empty of any metal object! Shite. There’s at least a ton of stuff in there now. I don’t want to get myself a giant metal bulge as a weapon!

It\'s not finished yet. The windows broke, random things entered the store and headed to the furnace. I carefully poked my head outside to see what’s going on.

From the mass graveyard\'s direction, countless broken and shattered weapons formed up a metallic river stream in the air which is now flowing into the store!

I don\'t know about my weapon but I\'m sure Clark’s house is not going to hold such a mess!

Instead of running away, we soon noticed that the furnace is not getting filled up as we expected. Trash and junk are still going in, but it\'s like they just disappeared inside it.

When the crisis finally stopped, me and Clark slowly approached the furnace and--

Ka-crack! The furnace shattered into pieces.

Damn it. I’m too quick to raise troubles.

While Clark looked at me with teary eyes, I fished around the remains of the furnace for my poor weapon. Weird. So many weapons and other things were in here, at least I should pull out something! But no, I found nothing--oh wait.

Finally, I pulled out a red, long object from the bottom of the scraps. It\'s still hot, a long blade, with exaggerating designs. But it\'s beautiful.

"Aha! My sword!" I feel like hugging it if not for that it’s still burning hot.

Clark didn’t say anything. He’s still sulking in front of his broken furnace.

"Don’t worry brother, I’ll help you get a new one. Even a better one."

"This thing\'s not cheap you know!"

"Let me worry about the money!" I handed him a million crystal pieces. "Is this enough?"

"What the-- Did you go rob a city bank or something?"

...I didn’t rob anyone but, I can’t say the money came clean either. Heh heh.

"Now you can get a new furnace, help me chill up my sword!"

"Oh!" Clark jumped up, and scratched his head. "I don’t have any tools for that!"

"Oh shoot. Someone around here sells them?"

"I\'ll get the backup tool from the basement. Wait here."

While he finishes up my sword, I searched around the furnace again. They were originally dual swords, added with tons of materials, maybe there’s something else down there.

As I thought, I pulled out another identical sword.

I didn\'t stop searching, just in case. And I continued until I found another SIX of them.

What happened? So I have 8 swords now?

It’s not over yet. With a final pull, I grabbed another single-handed sword, albeit longer than all the others, out of the trash pile. This one is different from the 8 identical swords, both longer and more decorative.

Clark already finished with the first sword. When he looked towards me he dropped his hammer on the ground.

"What\'s going on here??"

"I don’t know! Let\'s just get them done."

"...I\'ll do it."

He carried all the swords to his platform and began his work, while I turned back to the trash pile.

...I don\'t know how to describe my feeling, as I found something else!

"A dagger?"

The short blade suggests that it is definitely a dagger. With the same practice, I found a total of 5 of them. In addition, there are three unknown triangular objects, and another two dagger-like blades about which I\'m sure they’re not daggers.

I can’t tell what they are before Clark cools them up though.