This adventurer is overly righteous.

The bellows were pulled, the furnace fire roared, and the iron ingots glowed red under the high temperature. Kroya picked them up with tongs and hammered them repeatedly on the anvil. The iron ingots fused under the high temperature and were shaped by the hammering, eventually becoming a standard-shaped sword blank. Kroya put it into a bucket of water to cool it down and complete the quenching. Lejin, who had been watching the whole process, signaled Kroya to stop and take a break.

"You're smarter than I thought."

Because the furnace fire continuously released heat, the blacksmith shop felt like the height of summer, with no trace of the late autumn atmosphere it should have. Both Leijin and Kroya were sweating profusely, wiping their sweat and drinking water while their mouths were also busy.

Although in Leijin's opinion, the sword blank that Kroya had created still had many shortcomings, barely enough to be considered a flawed product in some human blacksmith shops, considering that this was Kroya's first time making one, it actually highlighted Kroya's extremely high talent.

Dwarves are renowned for their forging skills, to the point that everyone assumes the dwarves they encounter possess advanced forging abilities. However, even so, it takes dwarves a considerable amount of time to learn forging; they are simply more skilled and talented at it than humans.

Even dwarves cannot make good tools and weapons without having truly learned forging.

For humans, the threshold for learning forging is even higher. They are much less skilled at forging than dwarves. A human apprentice would need to study under a master for several months to a year in order to forge a usable weapon.

As for someone like Kroya, who only learned some book knowledge and was able to forge a qualified sword blank on his first try, he can definitely be called a genius among dwarves.

Kroya truly lives up to his reputation as someone who has mastered all twenty-three runes; his mind is indeed much smarter than that of the average person.

Leikin thought to himself.

"I heard some sounds while forging," Kroya said, rubbing his arm as he spoke, his expression serious. "The sounds came from the hammer in my hand, from the red-hot iron ingot, from the bellows I was pulling, and from that big furnace..."

This is the effect of [Craftsmanship], which makes Kroya's perception of temperature more accurate, his eyesight more precise, his hands able to control the force of his hammer swings well, and he can hear the sounds of his tools and forging materials while Kroya is forging.

"I followed those voices; they seemed to want to build a good weapon too."

"That's an exaggeration." Lei Jin couldn't help but stroke his large beard. He had never heard of such a thing before, but it was a good thing nonetheless. "If that wasn't your hallucination, it means you have a great talent for forging."

"Why don't you give up being an adventurer and become a blacksmith with me instead?"

Leikin extended a sincere invitation, but Croya declined.

  

After all, the future prospects of becoming a priest are obviously better for Kroya than becoming a blacksmith.

"Alright, let's talk about those adventurers then." After being rejected, Leijin didn't show any anger or frustration. He continued the topic they had discussed at the tavern, "The Adventurers' Guild reports that they found their bodies in a goblin lair."

"I tricked them into going in, and then..." Kroya recounted his experiences over the past month to Lejin, but his description of Logan's situation was vague.

The two had made a contract, so there was no need to hide anything from each other.

"So, what about that heart? By the way, what was the structure of the altar that vampire built? Do you remember it?"

Leikin was only interested in these two things; he was indifferent to the rest of the adventures.

"Let me show you." Kroya always carried a backpack, a habit of adventurers.

However, Kroya did not put the heart in his backpack. It was safely stored in his storage space. Kroya took it out and pretended that he had taken it out of his backpack.

Leikin took it from Croya, examined it carefully, and marveled at it.

"This is a man-made dragon heart."

"A dragon?" Kroya asked.

In Kroya's mind, dragons are extremely powerful creatures, and they can become formidable enemies of heroes in various heroic tales.

In the story that Lejin told Kroya earlier, it was also about a dragon that destroyed the dwarf kingdom.

"Not bad, the guy who made this thing is clever. I bet he killed a lot of inferior dragons and dissected their hearts..."

"Inferior dragon?"

"Alright, I'll try my best to make you understand." Seeing that Kroya looked confused, Leijin had no choice but to explain some conventional concepts to him.

"Even though they are all dragons, their size and strength are different. The evil dragon that destroyed Nibelungen was undoubtedly the most powerful dragon in the world."

"But there are also many weaker dragons, such as the Steel Swamp Dragon that chased you back then; it was also a dragon."

"Although they are very different in appearance and strength, we do not judge whether a monster is a dragon by those things, but by their heart."

The dragon's heart is an extremely important organ, capable of gathering magic from the air, enabling dragons to unleash powerful spells, such as terrifying fire breath.

It is said that initially only true dragons possessed this ability, but as time passed, some monsters also gradually acquired similar abilities under the influence of the dragons' power, only they were inferior and could not compare with true dragons.

Inferior dragons like the Steel Swamp Dragon have an extremely slow rate at which their hearts absorb magic, making it impossible for them to cast any magic. They can only amplify their physical bodies to keep their stamina abundant.

"By using magic, he completely replicated the structure of the inferior dragon heart, allowing that guy to create something with the same effect without understanding how the dragon heart works at all."

Kroya nodded, understanding the general idea; perhaps this was bionics from another world.

"I drew the runes on that altar."

Kroya obtained paper and pen and spent a month in the cave, making a point of noting down the parts of the altar that he could understand, since he had nothing else to do.

Because Kroya had a good grasp of the basic runes, he could barely understand most of the magic inscribed on the altar. However, the core area seemed to be encrypted, making the runes distorted and complicated, which Kroya could not recognize at all.

"Another guy trying to find the Nibelungen."

After thinking for a moment, Leikin finally burst into laughter and said...