215 – Staff

The first thing Saffra noticed upon Lady Vivi ferrying her to Vanguard, since she couldn’t not notice it, was how the common room was under construction. It seemed as if half the Builder’s Guild bustled about inside the spacious area, hurrying from one place to another as they carried wood and tile around or consulted schematics.

And it was spacious now. Vanguard’s common room had once leaned cozy, but with its walls pushed out in preparation for becoming a proper major guild’s central hub, Saffra wasn’t sure she could throw a rock from one end to the other.

The Builder’s Guild had only begun moving furniture out yesterday and already they seemed to be wrapping up the frame of the expansion. Soon they would be handling the decor and fine details. If she had to guess, they would finish with renovations of this central room by tomorrow.

A major reconstruction project completed in two days… it was amazing what the wealthiest guild in the world could make happen. Though she supposed she’d laid eyes on evidence of that already, like most of the city had. The Second Era Stadium dwarfed Vanguard’s current overhaul many times over. By sheer scale, at least. Perhaps not craftsmanship.

She felt weirdly nostalgic at witnessing Vanguard’s common area erased before her eyes. And also a bit silly for that sentimentality. Nostalgia shouldn’t have taken root in such a short time—most guilds would still consider her a greenhorn in their ranks.

Vanguard’s essence had remained, thankfully. The Builder’s Guild hadn’t finished with the common area yet, but she’d seen the remodeled living quarters, and while the rooms there were bigger, nicer, and of a different style, they held the same fundamental charm.

Several of the laborers had looked over upon her and Lady Vivi’s arrival. Saffra could hardly blame them for the double takes. Working on Vanguard’s new guildhall was probably a surreal enough experience—the novelty of seeing the Sorceress in the flesh would be twice as shocking, even if those men and women knew where they were.

“Maybe I should drop [Warp Anchors] in every room just so we can skip the awkward staring,” Lady Vivi said dryly to Saffra, not missing the attention. “Let’s go find Erling. I’m sure he’s in his workshop.”

The woodworker was indeed where anyone would expect. Saffra heard him toiling away through the closed door. The majority of Vanguard’s craftsmen spent most of their waking hours in their respective work areas. Ironically—or understandably?—the newer members, the ones who hadn’t been craftsmen for Vanguard a century ago, seemed even more obsessed with always keeping busy.

Is it more exciting to regain access to the best crafting materials in the world, or to be given it for the first time?

Saffra couldn’t quite decide how she herself would feel about the hypothetical. Couldn’t miss what she’d never had, she supposed, but first experiences did tend to be more memorable.

Lady Vivi rapped her knuckles against the door. The noise inside stopped, and footsteps approached. A moment later, Erling threw the door open.

Saffra had interacted with the man a few times, but only in passing. He was about average height, meaning much taller than her or Lady Vivi, and he wore his brown hair tied back into a loose ponytail. What really stood out feature-wise was his perpetual smile. Saffra had never seen him with anything less than a slight grin, let alone a neutral expression.

Honestly, she found it kind of suspicious. Then again, she found most people she hadn’t met and extensively interacted with suspicious. Only clueless people trusted others by default.

But he was probably alright enough. She couldn’t give him the entire benefit of the doubt, but she knew Vanguard must have done their research into every new member. Smiling all the time was weird, but most people had their quirks.

“Lady Vivisari,” Erling said, expression brightening further. “And Saffra. I think I can guess why you’re here.”

“I hope we aren’t interrupting,” Lady Vivi said.

“Of course not! Come in.”

Saffra looked around with interest as she walked inside. She hadn’t visited Erling’s workshop yet. It was what she would have expected from a woodworker’s domain, except for one distinguishing trait. Carvings littered the space. Shelves, tables, countertops: the wooden figurines huddled on every available surface, hundreds of them total. She suppressed the urge to stare.

I guess it makes sense that a woodworker really likes carving…?

She’d seen some of them floating around the guild, either displayed in the common area or elsewhere, but she hadn’t thought they were being produced in, well, this quantity. How much of his day did he spend making them?

Maybe it was a collection accrued over decades, and he didn’t like throwing them out. Over a long while, they would start piling up.

Still. There were a lot. And that he’d drowned his workspace in them was the part that really caught her off guard.

Her eyes landed on one perched on a shelf, and, squinting, she realized it depicted Mae’s form. With Jasper’s and Derrick’s next to it.

She couldn’t stop herself from wrinkling her nose. Did that mean there would be one of her somewhere, too? She tried scouting it out, but didn’t have much success.

Once the surprise passed, she found herself increasingly impressed with the craftsmanship. They captured the likeness of their subjects with perfect accuracy—she almost couldn’t believe the level of detail. The variance was incredible too. Animals, people, objects, buildings, even whole scenes and landscapes. Apparently this man could bring anything to life in the medium of wood.

“You can have one, if you want,” Erling said, a faintly amused note tinging his voice. “If you can’t tell, I’m running out of space. Or rather, I did a while ago. You’d be doing me a favor.”

“Oh. Uh.” Saffra scrambled to put her head on straight. Honestly, she was a little weirded out by the clear obsession on display. But not excessively so. Again, most people were oddballs once you got to know them, and that went double for those at the pinnacle of something.

Rather than voicing any of those thoughts, she of course went with something more neutral. “They’re really well done.”

Erling seemed pleased to hear that, but he also seemed pleased by everything. She hadn’t made up her mind about him and his suspiciously endless cheer, either. He’s a bit more of an oddball than the rest, she thought.

“I appreciate you saying so, young miss! But that’s not what you’re here for, so let’s get to that.”

He walked over to his workbench, leaned around the corner, and grabbed a staff.

Before [Inspecting] it, Saffra admired the weapon’s physical form. It was a slender span of gray wood with a fine grain. Along its length ran a thin black line from bottom to top. At the crown rested a fat gem—voidglass, she realized a moment delayed. It had been carved into a squarish, faceted shape to imitate a jewel, so she hadn’t recognized it immediately.

“What kind of wood is it?” she asked, focusing on a more mundane detail.

“Heartwood from a very old silverelm.” Erling handed the staff to her, and she took it with a slight hesitation. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Saffra said after studying it more closely herself. The texture of the weapon was wonderfully smooth under her palms; she ran her hands up and down it out of instinct, like she might have with a silken cushion. “But what’s a silverelm? Never heard of those.”

She was hardly a tree expert, but wood mattered to mages—both wands and staves were crafted from timber. She’d seen a few created from metal or stranger materials, but that was rare. Even Lady Vivi’s staff had been carved from some variety of wood.

“They’re only found in the lands of the immortals, so I’m not surprised,” Erling said. “I believe the Guildmaster mentioned they’re common there, but I’ve never laid eyes on any of that material myself, not until recently.”

“Easy to acquire,” Lady Vivi clarified. “Maybe not common.”

“Ah, I see. I misunderstood.”

Saffra suppressed a snort, not shocked there’d been a miscommunication. When you can bounce around the continent with warps, fly ten times faster than the Convoy, and use high-tier divination and tracking spells, of course everything’s ‘easy to acquire.’

I wonder how rare it actually is, then? she thought.

“Why’d you put a chunk of voidglass at the top?” Saffra asked, peering at the crowning piece. “Is it activated?”

“Sure is,” Erling told her. “Fascinating stuff.” A thin wafer of some metal appeared in his hand, and he placed it on the workbench. “Try it out.”

Saffra blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Give it a tap.” He rapped the wafer himself, fingernails clicking against the metal.

Saffra hesitated. The voidglass had been carved into the shape of a gemstone, and honestly, the material already looked delicate and valuable—she didn’t want to break it.

But obviously the alien substance was tough. Likely more so than the rest of the staff. She shrugged the first instinct off and did as she’d been told. She thunked the crystal against the steel item.

The wafer shattered with nearly no resistance—then the gemstone carried farther downward and slammed into the wooden surface of the table itself.

Which cracked viciously as well.

Horror dawned on Saffra’s face, given how she’d split a woodworker’s workbench nearly in half—her guildmate’s no less—but of course the man only burst out laughing. “I meant a lighter touch, but that’s my fault. You see what I mean now.”

Saffra started stammering out an apology, but Lady Vivi was already waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. The splintered wood sealed back into its original shape, and the piece of furniture stopped sagging. Saffra’s words cut off.

Right… really not a big deal when the Sorceress is around.

“It’s also additional storage, should you for some reason need it,” Lady Vivi said, clearly finding Saffra’s reaction amusing. At least her mentor continued as if nothing had happened. “The black strip on its side is linked to the gem at the top.”

Saffra refocused; she traced a finger along the slick band that ran up and down the gray wood. She’d been wondering whether the accent was for aesthetics or not. Her eyes landed on the gemstone again, then back on the desk and the split steel wafer.

“Almost feels like cheating,” she admitted.

“It’s not a truly void-activated weapon like my swords are,” Lady Vivi said. “It’s just empowered. The System accepted it and gave it a level, so by the rules of the tournament, it’s fully allowed. Plenty of people have unique or rare items; you’re hardly the only person.”

Saffra nodded slowly. Not every item was permitted into the arena, of course. Predominantly, the organizers had banned consumables like potions with a higher ranking than one’s personal level. If the tournament had actually been a free-for-all, rules-wise, then all Saffra would need to win was a few scrolls from Lady Vivi. Or the phoenix-summoning artifact.

I guess if the System says it’s appropriate for my level, there’s not a more objective opinion to get. Not even Lady Vivi’s.

Besides, while the voidglass gemstone would be useful in some scenarios, being pressed into melee combat would mean the fight wasn’t going great to begin with. Mages wanted to stay at range. The jewel would be ornamental most of the time, not some huge advantage.

“[Voidfusing] is the more intriguing part, honestly,” Lady Vivi said. “Have you [Inspected] the staff yet? I’m guessing you haven’t.”

She shook her head, then finally appraised the item the System way. Taking these things one at a time kept her brain from overheating.

Indeed, at the bottom of a mind-boggling inspection panel, she found an enchantment labeled [Voidfusing].

“Improves the efficiency with which your spells can mix void energy with other elemental energies. Not usable in your current state, of course,” Lady Vivi said, “given that you don’t have a spell like that yet, but remarkable for what it is, don’t you think?”

“Duh.” Saffra had been fascinated enough by the implications that she’d given an answer like she might have to Isabella. “I-I mean, yes, Lady Vivi. It is.” She’d gotten more casual around her mentor in recent weeks, but ‘duh’ was too much, even if Lady Vivi herself clearly didn’t care. “Would a multi-type spell be easier to learn than one that uses only void energy?”

Fusing multiple elements into one spell was hardly unheard of, but it did tend to be tricky design-wise. Would using less of the alien energy offset the difficulty of fusing it with another element? She had no idea.

“Both easier and harder in different ways,” Lady Vivi replied. A slight smirk pulled onto her lips, nearly invisible as always. “But I’m sure you’re looking forward to learning, for example, a void lightning bolt, so I thought you’d be excited.”

It… did sound appealing. But the option her mentor had chosen was surely too high tier. At her current level, she doubted she could learn even a normal [Lightning Bolt].

She mused over the possibilities for a few moments, fantasizing about fireballs mixed with crackling black-purple energy.

I really don’t deserve stuff like this, she thought, eyes running across the staff in her hands.

At the roundabout reminder, she twitched and looked up at Erling. “Oh, and thank you, Master Erling.”

He winked. “I should be thanking you. Even Vanguard’s craftsmen can’t bring out the good stuff on a whim.”

Saffra winced at the reminder that the staff was made from ‘the good stuff.’ Sure, it had to be low-level materials given what it was, but still obscenely rare.And besides, everything was ‘low-tier’ to Lady Vivi.

“You absolutely can use whatever you please,” Lady Vivi told Erling. “Just let me know what needs replenishing afterward. There’s only a few resources in the vault that need to be rationed. Phoenix blood and its ilk.”

Erling smiled and said, “Of course, Guildmaster.”

Saffra narrowed her eyes. She doubted Lady Vivi picked up on it, but she was pretty sure Erling’s reply had been placating. He didn’t intend to change his habits.

Perhaps the guild's craftsmen had come to an agreement to not bother Lady Vivi with such requests. The woman could be too accommodating, and she had more important things to be doing than flying around and collecting a bunch of random crafting materials.

Saffra internally sighed. Or making a level-four-hundred apprentice a new set of gear. She couldn’t quite get over that, no matter Lady Vivi’s excuses.

They chatted about the staff for a bit longer before Lady Vivi said to Erling, “We’ll get out of your hair. Thanks again for helping me.”

“Anytime, Guildmaster.”