Chapter 3976 — A Weapon That Can Evolve
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
To his surprise, Scrap King's expression suddenly turned grave. "Not enough. Far, far from enough—this little bit of material won't do at all!"
"What?" Wei Zhao was momentarily taken aback, thinking to himself, Don't tell me this fellow has really let greed get the better of him at the sight of treasure and started nursing some notion he shouldn't. So many rare wonders of the world, all to upgrade a single plain-steel staff no better than a fire poker—how could that possibly be insufficient? Surely he isn't trying to use this as a pretext to gouge me?
However much of an amateur Wei Zhao might be, he had at least dabbled and tried his hand at the art of artifact-forging, and he understood a thing or two about it.
By his own reckoning, upgrading this plain-steel staff of his should have been well within reach with ordinary materials and a single thousand-year tree crystal. Now, with a ten-thousand-year tree crystal and the primordial pure land thrown in as well, it was absolutely more than enough.
"Brother Lin, let me be frank with you," said Scrap King, his face twisted with bitter regret. "This plain-steel staff of yours is a fine piece at the heaven tier, to be sure, but its quality is hardly anything to boast of. If you use these top-grade materials to upgrade it, then yes, it would be more than enough—and I could guarantee a ten-out-of-ten success rate. But doing so would be a sheer waste of materials the likes of which one might not see again in a lifetime."
Only then did Wei Zhao nod in sudden understanding. Just as Scrap King said, when it came to sheer value, his plain-steel staff could not even begin to compare with the rarity and preciousness of things like the ten-thousand-year tree crystal. It was like outfitting a carriage worth a few tens of thousands with top-grade fittings costing hundreds of thousands, if not millions—to call it a waste was no exaggeration at all.
"Then what's to be done? It wouldn't be right to just set the plain-steel staff aside and not use it at all, would it?" Wei Zhao said, somewhat at a loss.
Using these top-grade materials to upgrade the plain-steel staff would be a waste, yet the staff itself was no ordinary object, and he had poured a great deal of painstaking effort into it. To cast it aside just like that would be a tremendous waste as well. For the moment, he found himself caught in a dilemma.
Scrap King furrowed his brow and pondered for a moment. Then his eyes suddenly lit up, and he exclaimed excitedly, "If it were merely a matter of upgrading the plain-steel staff, then of course it would be a cruel and senseless waste. But what if we went about it a different way and let it evolve—transform utterly, as though reborn? Would that not be the best of both worlds?"
"Evolve?" Wei Zhao was startled by the word and asked in confusion, "How is that different from upgrading?"
"Of course it's different!" Scrap King burst out noisily. "Upgrading a weapon is common enough—there's no real skill to it. Practically any artifact-forger can do it."
"Upgrading a weapon is common?" Wei Zhao was only more bewildered. "But I've heard that ordinary weapons generally can't be upgraded at all—that only by using materials like the thousand-year tree crystal does a weapon even have a chance at upgrading?"
Scrap King smiled and explained patiently, "There's something Brother Lin doesn't know. What you say is both right and wrong—like any other outsider, you've only got half the picture. You may not know this, but the saying that ordinary weapons can't be upgraded actually came from the mouths of artifact-forgers in the first place. Think about it—if they made the matter out to be too easy, how would they ever profit so enormously from it?"
"That's... you artifact-forgers really are a cunning lot," Wei Zhao said, unable to decide whether to laugh or cry, once he had quickly worked out the cause and effect.