Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!-Chapter 574: Internal and External

Alex walked out of the Blacksmith Association with a smile on his face.

A few hours had passed since his interesting interaction with President Kovac, and he had learned about many interesting things.

For one, Darya was long gone from the association now, courtesy of President Kovac seeing to that himself after receiving Alex's 'verdict', throwing her out and stripping her of any status or benefits she had received from working with them during her tenure.

This… put a smile on Alex's face.

He had had enough of people taking advantage of him, trying to sabotage him, or do anything to screw him over.

Long gone were the days where he would show mercy or leniency to people who attempted to pull such bullshit on him.

But disregarding Darya, who he would definitely never have to see again, he had much more important things on his mind.

'President Kovacs turned out to know more than I had expected…'

After Darya was taken care of, Alex had a chance to sit down with President Kovac in his office and have a one on one conversation with him, which proved to be quite… enlightening.

Not only did he learn that people like him, people that were able to forge equipment using their own talents, were quite special in the world of blacksmithing.

In fact, President Kovac himself was one of such people, one of the only few in the entire Blacksmith Association, or the city as a whole, since not every blacksmith chose to associate themselves with the place for various… reasons.

…People like Darya being one of said reasons.

Smiths who used their own talents or abilities to forge weapons were actually quite sought after in the world of awakened. As far as President Kovac had revealed to him, they had a unique designation to them, coined 'Special Blacksmiths'. But the reason people were so willing to seek them out was for one reason.

Their chances of success in forging stronger weapons!

Stronger weapons didn't necessarily mean higher ranked, they actually had more distinction than just that. Special Blacksmiths had a higher probability of creating weapons, or equipment, which were much more attuned to their user.

In fact, Alex himself was a perfect example of such attunement between an awakened and their weapon.

He and Virtue's Edge worked quite well together after all, and with his unique Phoenix Flames being further boosted by Virtue's Edge's attunement to the fire element, his strength as a whole was higher than if he wielded a much more… mundane weapon.

It wasn't just a case of 1 + 1 = 2 either. Using the same metaphor, the resulting value would be greater than the sum of both parts.

1 + 1 = 3, for example.

Or, even 4… or 5, in some extremely rare cases.

So, while a weapon may seem mundane in one person's hands, in another's it might be able to show its full potential.

Of course, this was only with weapons that had such attunements, after all.

Knowing this, it would quickly become clear why Special Blacksmiths, who had a much higher success rate in crafting such equipment, were so much more valued than normal Blacksmits, who had to use forges with mundane flames to craft their equipment.

'Hmm… I wonder if it goes deeper than that? Special Blacksmiths are people who simply use their own power to forge a weapon, rather than an external one. External… I wonder if the distinction between external power and internal power has anything to do with it?'

Alex mused inwardly.

'If that is the case, then wouldn't that mean that the resulting weapon or equipment could be of even higher quality, the fewer external means the smith in charge of crafting it used?'

Alex suspected that might be the case, but his conversation with President Kovac didn't run deep enough to gleam such information out of the old man. Perhaps he would learn more about it if he delved deeper into smithing in the future.

But perhaps there was a good reason President Kovac didn't reveal such information to Alex. While it was good to have a teacher in smithing, a large part of the profession was focused around learning the ropes themselves.

In fact, if one were to really delve into it… perhaps even this had something to do with the internal external debate.

Moving on from that though, Alex thought back to the more crucial information he was trying to discern from President Kovac – in fact being the very reason he had visited the Blacksmith association, and even decided to try his hand at blacksmithing in the firs place.

The location of Mikhail's forge, or any information related to it.

And while he had unfortunately not managed to learn anything specific about the location, he did find out some information thanks to President Kovac that could lead him to it.

"Hmm… Matters related to Mikhail are tightly guarded by the higher ups of the Blacksmith Association. Information such as this, if it exists at all, would only be found in the headquarters. And they wouldn't be giving it out to just anyone who asks… otherwise what would be the point of guarding it so tightly? Though, I don't know the exact reason why it is so tightly guarded, I just know for a fact that it is."

This was what President Kovac had said to him regarding Mikhail.

And naturally, hearing such a thing, Alex immediately asked for the location of the headquarters from Mikhail. As the President of this city's branch, he was the most likely person in the entire city to find it out.

Just as Alex had expected, he did.

It turned out to be in a place called Eternal Forge city, which caused Alex to raise his brows upon first hearing it, but it didn't manage to come as much of a shock to him after a few seconds had passed.

For a place that housed the headquarters of the Blacksmith Association of the entire Primordial Expanse, or at least the regions that were known, it didn't surprise him that the city's name was related to forging.