Contrary to the other instances, Jin was extremely confident that there would be no need for any fixes with this last instance and it would be to the liking of the twin shopkeepers Bai Xin and Bai Wan. This was because he literally had handed them his Weapons and Armoury Instances.
But for the two of them, this became a major headache. Bai Xin and Bai Wan would have prefered to become store owners in title, acting as mere of assistants for Jin. The dungeon supplier, however, had other plans in mind and was more than happy to delegate this task to fully concentrate on his dungeons. Begrudgingly, they were currently trying their best to memorise what items were in which section.
Not to be too cruel, Jin did assign some Red Panda NPCs to them if they had any questions and as workers free of charge (for the rest of December at least). The minor difference between then and now was that Jin had revamped the place a little.
The weapon store now featured a dedicated shooting range, a place where dummy mannequins sacrificed themselves to allow for weapon tests and most importantly private workshop spaces for people like Ren Wei who loved to customise their weapons.
The workshop wasn’t bound to just guns. With Bai Wan taking over as the manager of the store, the Three Headed Bear no longer needed to be the one to sell weapons. Jin asked him to use this freed up time to instruct budding aspirants who wanted to become blacksmiths or at least learn how to keep their weapons sharp.
That way, Jin could get people to take blacksmithing as a professional hobby… and who knows, they might produce decent weapons in the future under the guidance of the Three Headed Bear. Of course, Jin did not expect too many customers to trifle with the Master Blacksmith since his attitude could be at times overbearing. (or most of the time.) But unlike the research into chi potions, this was not a priority. Jin wasn’t in any dire need for some potential breakthroughs in blacksmithing as he already had a damn good weapon on hand.
Usually, the Master Blacksmith would ask the System to collect all the weapons that were not in use and place it in an instance for him, which also worked as a furnace. After which, the Three Headed Bear would pick a weapon up and hammer it in the forge. The thing was, as he picked the particular weapon up, hundreds if not thousands of weapons were invisibly lifted up by an unknown force.
When the Three Headed Bear started banging his hammer on the said weapon, one could see that the weapons that were lifted with an invisible force started to twirl around as if they were the one being reforged in the anvil too. Every turn, every hit gave the weapons a sip of brand new life.
He had dubbed this as the ‘Rain of Hammering Fire’.
Highly effective, this particular Legendary Grade blacksmith technique was only limited by the state a weapon was in. Regardless of dents, chips or blunts, the Rain of Hammering Fire fixed all of these problems, yet what was already broken could not be fixed were eventually reforged in bulk.
The Master Blacksmith claimed that each weapon had an innate soul to it, but whether that soul turned sentient was another issue. According to him the latter was more commonly known as living weapons and the System cited that this particular Earth had seen its fair share of such weapons before. Unsurprisingly they were all made by Master Blacksmiths too.
“The soul of a weapon responds to the Rain of Hammering Fire, for they wish to be cleansed of their own sins. Of not taking responsibility. Of betraying of their master, or just…the lack of maintenance.” The Three Headed Bear said without looking up as he continued to hammer on the weapon before him.
“But sadly, some do not wish to obey, and most do not oblige to any being who happens to find them. They merely wanted to be free and to be more than just a weapon.” The overly large bear shared with a tone of sadness as he placed the heated metal into the water for cooling.
It was the first time the Master Blacksmith had talked to Jin using more than just a few words and grunts. Although the conversation was awkward and came out of nowhere, the dungeon supplier kept quiet, hoping to learn more.
—–
Yet even after a couple of minutes, the sound of the hammer hitting the anvil was all that filled the room. Regardless, that encounter was definitely an improvement as Jin reminisced about it while continuing his inspection of the private workshops and the training hall which he had placed. Because of the nature of dimensional instances and System’s infinite capacity in making them, the workshops instances became something akin to a box.
While Jin did contemplate whether to make the workshop instances as sub instances but realised that, the blacksmith tools and equipment that could be bought and filled their personal workshop up. Hence it was best to put them as instances which could be called out whenever they needed to be used.
Thus the System would pull out the data of the said personal workshop instance and the items within that particular dimension, and someone could immediately use it. It did not take up any physical space and was easy to switch these workshops around for the people who rented them.
Meanwhile, the training hall was similar to a giant forge with tens of multiple anvils and blacksmith equipment, ovens and tools etc. For a fee (be it a single session or multiple sessions), the customers could learn how to fix their weapons and create a weapon of their own.
If the weapon were deemed passable in the Master Blacksmith’s eyes, Jin would allow it to be sold, and the customer could earn the profit after a deduction of 5% for operating fees. That was how the training workshop could be conducted, but the Three Headed Bear had demanded that he would teach at most 10 customers at once, with each session being at least three hours long. (Afterall, he insisted on quality, not quantity when it comes to teaching.)
In addition, he would determine if the customers were worthy enough to learn how to smith. When Jin asked if he could relax the conditions for the moment, the Master Blacksmith shook his head slowly and told Jin not to fuck around. The dungeon supplier was stunned for a moment before laughing bitterly at his opportunistic greed for money.
Jin eventually agreed and started making posters and brochures that would be given out with every purchase of a weapon. “Do you even smith?!” became the tagline on the brochures and Bai Wan liked it very much, considering trying out himself if time allowed it.
Meanwhile, Jin was wondering about the true identity of the Three Headed Bear ever since he had created the brochure. He needed a name to spread the word and not just a mere title of Ultimate Instructor Blacksmith, which people deemed the words to ‘be void of any weight’.
The System did not help him in this regard since it had promised the Master Blacksmith that it would not reveal its true name under any circumstances. Unless the bear introduced himself to Jin, there was no other way to find out.
Nonetheless, without a name to go by, Jin felt it would be hard for the customers to address him, so he personally asked if the Three Headed Bear was okay with a nickname instead. “Vulcan.” The Master Blacksmith answered after some slight deliberation.
“I see… Roman God of Fire otherwise known as the Smith God. Very fitting.” Did the story of Vulcan have some link with the mysteriousness of not revealing his name or was he perhaps indeed a smith that had, in fact, worked for the Gods? Only time could tell.
Either way, Jin was reasonably satisfied with these new changes. He watched Bai Wan do some stocktaking and learn to navigate the weapon store instance under the Red Panda’s supervision as he went over to the Armour Instance.
Just as he had done with the weapon store instance, Jin had also slightly modified the armoury department store theme.
A fashion runway was added to the middle of the department store where there would be a constant (small and varied) promotion on the clothes that were showcased. For this, Jin had decided to use the cosplaying minotaurs, but with a slight twist.
Those minotaurs had to wear the cosmetic inscriptions to turn into pure humans or alternatively pose as cosplayers with horns. It wasn’t too hard given they were already humanoid in shape and figure (though a bit hairy in their normal forms). Still, he insisted that at least a couple of them should use human appearance to showcase that ‘normal’ humans would also look good in the outfits.
As for the ‘storekeeper’, Bai Xin was responsible for creating bi-weekly themes based on the clothes available for sale. Jin didn’t mind if she wanted to rope her younger brother in for a few of the weapons that Jin was selling and encouraged the twins to experiment with the double promotion within the store.
He believed it would create some hype and sales, especially when the storekeepers were to mix and match and sell the weapons and armours as a set.
The cosplaying minotaurs no doubt gave some of their input to Bai Xin when they first met her, hoping to try out certain themes for the future. At the same time, the Bai Twins had never seen so many handsome dudes and beautiful ladies of various colours converging to the dungeon supplier’s store.
The models collectively lied telling them that Jin had hired them at separate occasions for their advice for his own series of inscribed defensive gear. The young woman could not be happier, allowing them to help her and accepting their opinions.
Meanwhile, the cosplaying minotaurs had asked Jin if he could allow them to create their very own cosplay sets. It was a wish of theirs ever since they discovered this miraculous relic called the television and cinemas.
At the very least, they wished to create their very own cosmetic inscription costume. If Jin wanted, they were more than happy to allow him to sell it as defensive gears. (Jin quickly came to regret showing them his world’s definition of cosplaying when he had asked the minotaurs where they had learned how to dress up.)
For now, the Boss told them to attract a large crowd first before he would entertain such thoughts. That alone had made them extremely elated and already provided Bai Xin with a lot of ideas which had accumulated ever since the day they were exposed to Japanese and Chinese animation.
Bai Xin had never seen such enthusiasm and promised her new colleagues that she would do what she could. She revealed herself to the minotaurs as a budding seamstress and her cultivation style of the Weaving Spider that aided her in creating clothes.
At times like this, Jin wished that Zhi Nu hadn’t have taken up the management job at the Adventurer Guild and instead worked with Bai Xin and Vulcan to create even more defensive gears with more modern designs. However, Zhi Nu surprisingly revealed to him that her weaving job was not something she enjoyed particularly, especially when it had been forced upon her ever since she learnt about the needle and thread.
Still, the Weaver Girl was not going to leave Jin in a lurch.
If he ever needed her to help to make a suit of his own, she would drop everything to assist him. She only wished to try and repay the gratitude she held for him in helping Niu Lang to gain a new skill and profession.
