Birth Of The Crafts-God

Five days went by, most of which Lucas had in the store. This couldn't be helped as the store was being stalked by some extremists. The good thing was that it didn't matter to Lucas as he was a fan of seclusion.

With no commissions, Lucas had a lot of free time on his hand. At the same time, most of his previous acquaintances and business had begun to cut off contact with him. The Legacy Crafts dealership wasn't the only one who acted this way. Some of the stores Lucas had frequented in the past, especially when sourcing for materials, had sent him an email with an official notice banning him from their buildings.

Businesses weren't the only ones giving Lucas the cold treatment. Harry Reid, the first customer Lucas happened to have had, had even cut off contact with Lucas. Previously, he had been occasionally interacting with Lucas both on- and offline. But ever since the incident started four days ago, Harry had failed to check up on him.

Once again, Lucas wasn't surprised nor bothered by this. Having lived two lives, with one of them adding up to more than five hundred years alone, it was assured that Lucas would learn a lot about the human mind and behaviour. Although hyumans were another species, they descended directly from humans, and had taken a kit from them.

With no one checking up on him, Lucas spent the majority of his time in the work-station or with Melissa. The little girl had no one to call family, and with the situation being as it was, it became difficult to consider getting Melissa enrolled in an academy. In the end, Lucas decided to homeschool her.

As for Kelvin, Lucas had given him a temporary leave until further notice. Since the business wouldn't be getting any customers, there was no need to have Kelvin come to the store. Even without him being physically present in the store, Lucas could still utilise the benefits of the Employee Hire Function.

"Big brother look, I drew a sword."

The eleven year old Melissa smiled as she showed Lucas her drawing.

Being raised by him, it was inevitable that Melissa would take some interest in what Lucas did. Since she barely left the store, she spent the most of her time looking at the vestiges on display and eventually got fascinated by them. Lucas had yet to test her talent for vestige-smithing as he didn't plan to force it on her. But in the end, it seemed like the little girl was showing signs of attraction to the occupation, so it would eventually have to happen.

Apart from teaching her basic knowledge about society, language, and culture, Lucas took Melissa with him to the work-station after she pleaded him to do so four days ago. Since then, she would try to come up with her own designs and show them to Lucas.

The drawing was surprisingly detailed, showing that Melissa had talent in this aspect. Although she had a bit of guidance from Lucas, it had only been four days since then, yet her skills were that of an entry-level artist.

"Hmm. It looks okay, but the design is a bit tacky. You also have to consider the spacing for the runes and also the thickness of the metal." Lucas made some corrections for her.

When it came to vestige-smithing, Lucas always took on a serious face. Even if the student was a five year old, Lucas didn't care and would criticise their work as he sees fit.

Surprisingly, Melissa wasn't the type of child to begin crying upon facing criticism. She would nod when she understood or keep a blank face at Lucas, signalling that she was confused. This would make him try to explain it in a much simpler term for her.

Despite being only eleven years of age and having lived in a settlement where she was treated like a second-class citizen, Melissa was a smart kid who was talented in many aspects.

Whenever Lucas spent time teaching her, he always felt as if he was back in his first life.

Back then, when Yohan was three hundred years old, he had met a little girl who was orphaned. The girl reminded him of himself and one thing led to another, Yohan decided to raise the girl as his daughter as well as his last student. Two hundred years later, she became a Two star Master blacksmith [1]. To be able to reach this rank without the support of a powerful mage guild, a sect or even an empire, was a testament to her skills and also Yohan's teaching ability.

Lucas was confident that if she had one hundred years more of his guidance, it was possible for her to become a five star Master blacksmith; an existence at the cusp of being a Grandmaster. However, that was all in the past now. Although Melissa reminded him of his last student, there was no certainty that Melissa would be as talented as she was.

'It's been five days now. They should be showing up any time soon.' Lucas thought after making some corrections to Melissa's drawing.

From his previous conjectures, Lucas had surmised that the mastermind of this entire conspiracy did so to get their hands on the technology of the store. To do that, they had to bait the vestige-smith behind the store, but without offending the latter.

The reason for this condition was that the vestige-smith was possibly a high ranking Tier 1 Master, and offending such a character was a dumb move. There was also a slight possibility that the backer was a Tier 1 Grandmaster, after all, there had been many Tier 1 Masters, but none had been able to achieve what the Seven Sparks Forge did.

If it were this slim possiblity, it would be the dumbest move for the mastermind to offend them too much. So far, the Seven Sparks Forge couldn't really be said to have suffered much, from the viewpoint of those at the top. Even if the vestige-smith backing the store came out and turned out to be someone they couldn't afford to offend, the mastermind could easily make amends for the losses incurred.

However, five days had gone by and the vestige-smith had yet to show up. Naturally, this would make the mastermind worried.

There could only be a few logical reasons, with one of them being that the vestige-smith simply didn't care much about the store. Based on the fact that he had a human run it and never bothered to make much vestiges or invest much into the store, this seemed like a logical possibility. If that were the case, it would then mean that the SS vestiges would no longer appear in Baylands city-state. That was a loss not even the city-lord could tolerate, and the mastermind would suffer a lot due to it.

Who knows, the next time an SS vestige appears would be in some other city-state, and the city-state would learn from Baylands city-state's mistake and treat the store even better. This would turn both the Baylands city-state and the city-lord into a laughing stock.

With such a possibility in view, the mastermind would have to step out soon enough and reach out to Lucas to make a deal.
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Just as Lucas was thinking this, he heard a knock on the door.