[Ding. Forging successfully completed]

Liam stared at the huge shield lying inconspicuously on the anvil. After spending several hours in the forging room, the first item was finally ready.

[Ding. Dazzling Daybreak Shield]

[Ding. Rating: Rare]

Defense: 250

Block Rate: 10%

Strength: 30

Agility: 30

Intelligence: 30

Passive Skill:? For every attack blocked, there is a chance to deflect the damage back to the attacker

Only a handful of Master forgers were capable of producing rare-grade equipment. On top of that, this rare-grade equipment could be considered a piece of top-tier equipment.

True to its name, the shield's appearance was dazzling with a brilliant luster and its attributes were higher than typical rare-grade equipment. Not to mention it also had an additional skill attached.

Liam had selected this particular forging design for exactly this specific reason, it's extremely useful passive skill that enabled a tank to sometimes redirect the damage taken.

Under Level 50 and even above that, this was already the best equipment average players would be able to get their hands on.

However, looking at this exceptional piece of shield, Liam only had a frown on his face. Though he might be staring at the shield, his thoughts were entirely elsewhere.

He did not even bother to take a look at the stats of the shield and just quietly eyed it, while running through the various steps of the forging process in his mind once again.

"Something was not right. What did I do?"

The last time Liam had forged, the set of metals he had used was completely different from the ones that he was using right now.

When compared to those iron and copper ores, the brilliantly shining shield in front of him contained ores that were at an entirely different level.

Mellinium and Etharium were rare high-grade ores that were impossible to mine in this world.

They could only be obtained as drops from the various elites scattered around the lands, that too at an abysmal drop rate.

More importantly, even if a player managed to somehow obtain these precious ores, refining them and forging them was an entirely different beast altogether.

The difficulty was nothing short of astounding.

However, only these precious metals could be used in forging equipment and weapons higher than the uncommon grade.

If one were to add iron and copper to this mixture, to bring down the difficulty level, then it would also bring down the grade of the final forged item along with it.

Using such unforgiving starting materials, not only did Liam manage to craft the item but he was also not satisfied with it.

If another forger from the blacksmith association comes to learn about this situation, he would personally hunt down Liam and give him a piece of his mind.

Achieving such a feat required talent in forging and more importantly an excellent control of mana. Without it, it was impossible to handle the high-grade mineral ores.

In reality, Liam had dared to start forging with these difficult precious materials without even as much as a warm-up because of all the time he had spent training his mana control.

This was the only thing he had been consistently doing ever since he logged into the game. So it was only natural that such dedicated training showed results.

He was able to handle the unruly high-grade ores and bring them under his control, resulting in the forging of this fine weapon.

However, Liam was truly not satisfied with the item. He looked at the shield, knitting his brows together, and murmured to himself.

"The ratio is off."

"Something is missing."

"There needs to be more equilibrium between the metal and the energy flow."

Making Luna jump up in a scare, he tossed the rare-grade Shield in a corner of the room as if it was no different than trash.

He then took out another set of ores to start the forging process all over again.

This time he also took out something else to add as an additive modifying the formula for the shield on his own.

"This should do it."

For the second time, Liam started repeating all the steps right from the scratch.

Thanks to the higher mana density in the room, he was able to recuperate his condition much faster and he was almost immediately able to start again.

He first used the furnace to melt all the metals to form the primary mixture, but before adding this to the cast of the shield, he added a few stalks of herbs to this amalgam.

Just like when he was forging the crimson blade, he also tweaked the ratio by throwing in these extra ingredients this time as well.

Among all the knowledge he had about the game, his knowledge about herbs was something that could be called his own.

He had spent most of his previous life doing menial tasks like herb picking, taking care and tending to the guild herb farms, and basic tier ingredients preparation for the guild in huge batches.

These were the lowest menial chores that no one would be happy with doing as they yielded no benefit.

However, Liam still managed to get some benefit from doing these chores by studying every little detail about every herb that he came into contact with.

This had been one of his futile attempts to break free from his miserable plight and now finally it was coming to use.

Using this knowledge he had, he somewhat had an idea of what could further help harmonize and what could disintegrate this particular amalgam of metals.

So even if it might result in a couple of failures, Liam still decided to waste that amount of ingredients and follow his intuition.

While he was spending the time for forging, he wanted to give it his all and not do a half-assed job.

He continued to keep his attention on the task, and carefully performed all the tasks one after the other, paying attention to every single detail.

This time his forging speed had increased and he only took a couple of hours to bring the metal to completion but the end product was unexpected… a failure.

"Ok. This needs something more." Liam began to patiently try another set of modifications. He had enough materials for seven attempts so he did not stop just yet.

A couple more hours passed and one more item was finished to completion. However, it was once again a failure.

Liam continued tweaking the components little by little and every time he tried his mana forging technique improved by leaps and bounds.

On his fifth attempt, he finally got the notification for another success.

[Ding. Forging successfully completed]

[Ding. Dazzling Daybreak Shield]

[Ding. Rating: Calculating…]

"Hmmm?" Liam was confused, but the next second he received another notification that cleared all of his doubts.