Light Bringer: New World[LitRPG, Fantasy, a very crazy idea]

The mall food court hummed with the noisy rush of the midday lunch crowd.

Maria shoved the rest of her second double burger into her mouth in one go, chewed methodically, and took a long pull from her thirty-two-ounce soda cup. Dante sat across from her, sorting his French fries into neat, identical piles on the red plastic tray while scanning the compounding pharmacy’s price catalog on his phone.

”The steel bar won’t cut it,” she said abruptly, swallowing her food with a dry gulp.

Dante looked up from his phone screen. ”The twenty-two-pound bar you spent three years claiming solved ninety percent of the world’s problems?”

”That very one,” she wiped her mouth with a thin paper napkin. ”The bar is great for cracking dog ribs and denting roadside scrap. But if we march into that foundry crawling with ancient machinery, I’ll need three full-force swings just to snap each golem leg. That wears out my arms.”

”And what is your brilliant idea?”

”A sword,” Maria planted both forearms on the laminate table, leaning her broad frame forward. ”Not one of those flimsy toothpicks people use for fencing on TV. I want a wide, thick blade, the long two-handed kind. A heavy chunk of sharpened iron with enough mass to sever steam pistons and cleave armor joints in one swing.”

Dante slipped the phone into his jeans pocket, turning her stat sheet over in his mind.

”A blade that size needs at least five feet of cutting edge to make the most of your wingspan,” he began calculating, slender fingers drumming the plastic tray. ”If forged from standard leaf-spring truck steel, it will weigh close to forty-five pounds. With twenty-six Strength you can hoist and swing it, but the center of gravity on a long blade handles completely differently than a cylindrical rod. Aerodynamic drag on every cut will chew through stamina three times faster.”

”I have twenty-eight Constitution,” she shrugged, crumpling the burger wrapper with one hand. ”If I run low on air, I’ll breathe deeper. Besides, we need armor too.”

”Armor?” Dante frowned.

”You saw the steam that creature vented yesterday on the plain,” she pointed her straw at his chest. ”If a pipe ruptures in our faces inside that foundry, we’ll boil alive before our hands even touch the core. I can take a hit, but I’m not made of lead. And you... well, if a stray cinder lands on that thin shirt of yours, it’ll burn straight to the bone.”

Dante gave a curt nod of agreement. The logic was far too sound to dismiss.

”We won’t find that on Earth,” he said, rising from his chair and grabbing his backpack. ”Cutlery steel here is made to hang on collector walls. Hit a golem’s chassis with it and the blade snaps in half. We’ll have to head back down to the Low Ember market.”

Blacksmith Street in Low Ember was the loudest strip in the entire outpost.

There were no canvas awnings here. Instead, dozens of open-air forges fronted directly onto the slag sidewalk, where steam-driven trip hammers battered glowing blocks of iron without pause. Heat rose from the ground in shimmering waves, thick with the choking stench of burning coal and quenching oil.

Dante walked with his canvas jacket unbuttoned, the sweltering air heavy in his lungs, while Maria surveyed the weapon racks with gleaming eyes.

They stopped before the workshop of an aged demon with sawn-off horns, wearing a heavy rawhide apron and gripping long tongs with soot-blackened, scarred hands.

”Impact or edge?” the smith asked, his raspy voice competing with the scream of a bandsaw at the back of the shop.

”Heavy cleaving,” Maria answered on the spot, stepping forward. ”Straight blade, double-edged, full tang through the pommel. No fancy filigree or brass trim. I want solid iron.”

The blacksmith measured the girl’s height, then glanced at the width of her wrists. He gave a low grunt of approval, turned his back, and vanished toward the rear of the workshop where dozens of unfinished pieces rested on charred wooden trestles.

He returned hauling a massive weapon with both gloved hands, slamming the blade down onto the iron workbench with a crash that set smaller tools jumping.

The weapon was nearly as tall as Dante himself.

It measured over five feet in overall length, a full handspan wide at the base and nearly an inch thick along the central spine. The steel was unpolished, bearing the dark charcoal color of fire-beaten iron with coarse hammer marks running the length of the flat. The tip tapered into a chisel wedge designed to punch through heavy plating, and the extended hilt was wrapped in thick bands of basilisk leather treated with black grease.

There was no ornate crossguard, only a square iron crossbar three fingers wide to keep the hands from slipping onto the edge.

[Item Identified: Legion Surplus Greatsword (Common).]

[Physical Damage: 26 - 34 (Slash / Concussion).]

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[Minimum Requirement: Strength 24.]

[Weight: 18.5 kg.]

[Property: [Breach Mass] - Downward strikes bypass 15% of the natural armor on mechanical or rocky targets.]

Maria seized the hilt with her right hand and pulled.

The forty-pound bar of steel rose from the bench with a clean whoosh. She brought her left hand to the pommel, raised the blade vertically before her face, and threw two tight practice swings through the air.

The draft sheared by the broad edge cut through the din of the forge with a dull whistle, blasting dust off the workbench in a dry gust.

”Balance point is three fingers above the guard,” she said, testing the pull in her shoulders. ”Just the right amount of heavy.”

”Twelve hundred scrip,” the smith declared, resting dirt-caked knuckles against the bench. ”Forged from salvaged Third Continent railcar armor. Won’t crack even if you bring it down on the spine of a mountain.”

”We’ll take it,” Dante said, the stack of Fourth Continent bank notes already in hand as he counted out the gray bills. ”Now show us protection.”

Selecting the armor took another hour.

Full plate suits were out of the question. The sheer encumbrance would butcher their mobility inside a labyrinthine foundry, and the cost would exceed ten thousand scrip, money they needed to reserve for rapid-recovery Mana reagents.

For Maria, they settled on an iron-riveted brigandine layered over marsh lizard hide. The piece armored her chest and torso down to the waistline, leaving her shoulders and armpits free to maneuver the greatsword. For her legs, simple iron greaves buckled with thick canvas straps shielded her shins and knees against shrapnel.

[Infernal Brigandine Cuirass (Common).]

[Physical Defense: +14.]

[Dexterity Penalty: -1.]

[Weight: 12 kg.]

Dante chose something entirely different.

He picked out a leather jerkin cured in salamander fat, devoid of metal plates across the chest, but reinforced with woven plant fibers along the ribs and spine. The vest was light, under seven pounds, and featured four deep pockets sewn into the flanks where he could stash his conductive chalk cases, sap vials, and Mana crystals without the glass knocking together when sprinting.

[Heat-Resistant Leather Vest (Common).]

[Physical Defense: +5.]

[Fire/Steam Damage Resistance: +15%.]

[Weight: 2.8 kg.]

They paid twenty-four hundred scrip for the entire lot.

The equipment test was conducted on the barren ground behind their subterranean shelter in the Ash Wastes.

The afternoon wind swept purple dust against the volcanic rocks. Maria stood in the center of the gravel, iron brigandine strapped over her gray workout shirt, resting the tip of the greatsword against the dirt.

Across her back, a broad canvas sling held the open-side scabbard of raw hide the smith had thrown into the deal.

Ten paces away, a basalt boulder the size of a fifty-gallon drum served as a target.

”Test the standard strike first without Mana,” Dante called out from a flat stone, a vial of sap and a stick of conductive chalk in hand, eyeing her stance.

Maria drew a steady breath through her nose.

She took two long strides forward, torqued her hips with all twenty-six points of Strength, and whipped the blade in an upward horizontal sweep.

The tip slammed into the volcanic rock.

CRACK.

Black chips of stone sprayed in every direction. The boulder didn’t shatter, but a four-finger-deep trench gouged into the basalt, the recoil ringing through the metal all the way into Maria’s hands.

The girl gave half a step back, her knuckles buzzing from the shockwave.

”Solid,” she remarked, resetting her grip on the leather wrap.

”Now channel [Lead Impact],” Dante instructed, capping the sap vial. ”Pump five Mana straight into the blade through your gloves.”

Maria closed her eyes for half a beat.

Her Mana gauge dropped from thirty to twenty-five.

A matte gray aura welled from her knuckles, raced through the hilt’s leather bindings, and blanketed the five-foot expanse of forged steel. The dark iron gained an opaque film, and the perceived heft of the weapon grew so crushing that the point sank an inch into the packed gravel entirely under its own weight.

She hoisted the blade with a low snarl, raised it high over her right shoulder, and swung down in a diagonal cleave with the full momentum of her iron cuirass and broad frame.

The sound of the impact was not metallic.

It landed like muffled thunder detonating against the dirt.

The blade, charged with [Lead Impact], sheared through the basalt boulder as if it were hardened clay. The stone split into two clean halves that tumbled to the sides, while the sword’s tip dug an eighteen-inch furrow into the black gravel before stopping.

The shockwave kicked up a ring of gray dust that coated Maria’s greaves up to the buckles.

The girl stood breathing through parted lips, brown eyes shining with savage satisfaction as she stared at the severed halves of the boulder before her.

”Now that cleaves,” she said, her voice gravelly from the sudden exertion.

”It cleaves,” Dante said, rising from his seat and brushing stone dust off his new vest. ”You also burned half your stamina in a single blow. Throw four of those in a row without catching your breath and you’ll drop flat on the ground, leaving me to drag your dead weight back to the rift.”

”Four of those blows will bisect any boiler golem in our way, bighead,” she countered, resting the dust-coated greatsword across the iron plate of her cuirass.

She looked toward the blackened horizon where the smoke of the Plain of Iron Souls melted into the purple sky.

Twenty-five days remained on the interface countdown.

”Pack up the chalk, Dante,” she called, turning toward the mouth of their shelter. ”We start our march on the Black Smelter tomorrow morning.”