Chapter 145: Breaking the Mold

Hank frowned and pondered for a long while before finally removing the nearly burned-out cigar from his mouth and exhaling a thick cloud of smoke.

“Can we improve the armor itself?” The pragmatic old veteran still trusted hammers and steel more than anything else.

The moment the discussion touched on his field of expertise, Barton, who was present as technical support, wiped the sweat from his forehead and shook his head helplessly. “My lord, Lord Hank, this is already the limit of what we can achieve. Every single plate in this armor has been folded and forged hundreds of times. The density is extremely high. If we try to make it any thinner or lighter, the defense will drop off a cliff. The loss would outweigh the gain.”

The path of physical forging seemed to have reached its end.

“Then… what about magic?” Little Donnie could not help speaking up. He pointed toward the faintly glowing runes flowing across the armor. “Master Leus, can’t you strengthen the Hurricane Enchantment a little more?”

Leus pushed up the glasses sliding down his nose and gave the same disappointing answer. “Unfortunately, Little Donnie, the Hurricane Enchantment is already an extremely mature and efficient rune. Trying to improve it further on the current foundation would be no different from reinventing the enchantment entirely. The time and effort required would probably exceed what it takes to produce five hundred suits of black armor.”

“What about using multiple runes on a single suit of armor?” Rehanna proposed another idea. “For example, adding a separate rune specifically for weight reduction?”

“That’s only theoretically possible.” Leus spread his hands with a bitter smile. “Every rune possesses its own unique mana circuit. Once two different runes are engraved onto the same object, their circuits are highly likely to tangle and conflict with one another, eventually causing mana blockage and rendering both enchantments useless. What’s worse, those circuit conflicts change depending on the material, shape, and even the exact engraving location on the object. There’s no standard formula to follow. Why do multi-rune armors sell for astronomical prices? Because they’re built entirely on countless failures and absurd luck. Rarity creates value. Besides…”

Leus scratched his head awkwardly.

“I… only know a handful of runes to begin with.”

Nolan nodded. Leus was absolutely right. He knew perfectly well how difficult this problem was.

In the game Glory, engraving the first rune onto equipment had over an eighty percent success rate as long as the materials were complete and the alchemist was sufficiently skilled.

But engraving a second rune caused the success rate to plummet below ten percent.

The third dropped beneath one percent.

And every failure carried the risk of causing irreversible damage to the equipment itself.

It simply was not a viable mass-production method.

Nolan remembered that late in the game, a legendary forged knight armor bearing four runes had once sold at auction for two million gold coins to a wealthy guild. At this point in time, that amount was nearly equivalent to the entire annual tax revenue of Veli Province.

No matter how they looked at it, every road seemed blocked.

The atmosphere in the workshop grew heavy once more.

Looking at the lingering gloom on everyone’s faces, Nolan suddenly gritted his teeth and slapped his thigh. “Screw it!” His voice rang out decisively. “So what if the success rate is low? We’ll try it anyway! Maybe we’ll hit the jackpot and stumble into success through sheer dumb luck!”

Over the following days, Nolan, Leus, Ailindel, and an unwillingly recruited Anna practically lived inside the alchemy workshop around the clock.

Leus knew only a limited number of runes, but that problem did not trouble Ailindel. Thanks to her vast knowledge, this Heavenly Judgment Knight from the War of Heaven knew at least five or six ancient runes capable of reducing weight or increasing speed.

Thus began an exhausting and expensive cycle of trial and error.

The first day: Agility Rune.

A rune capable of making equipment significantly lighter.

The moment Leus carefully completed the final engraving stroke and attempted to guide mana into it, the Hurricane Enchantment and the new Agility Rune lit up simultaneously before erupting into a shrill buzzing noise.

The two fundamentally different mana circuits clashed violently, and with a sharp sizzling sound, the surface of the breastplate was scorched black.

Failure.

The circuit conflict was too severe. The runes were incompatible.

The second day: Swiftshadow Rune.

A rune purely designed to increase speed.

This time, luck was on their side. The engraving succeeded.

But when Little Donnie wore the armor during testing, another problem emerged. The Swiftshadow Rune increased speed, but did nothing to reduce weight.

The result was Little Donnie sprinting at nearly one-hundred-meter dash speed while carrying almost ninety pounds of metal… before smashing straight through the workshop wall.

Fortunately, he survived without injury, but the solution was immediately rejected. It failed to solve the core issues of endurance and control, and the engraving success rate remained pitifully low.

On the third day, Ailindel introduced two even more powerful and far more complicated ancient runes: Favor of the Wind King and Arcane Tide.

Leus studied the diagrams for an entire day and still did not dare make even the first engraving stroke. 

The engraving difficulty was simply too high. At his current level, forcing the attempt would only destroy the entire armor set.

Abandoned.

Thus, their final hope: Levitation Rune.

A rare rune capable of directly affecting the gravity of an object itself, with extraordinary effectiveness.

However, the moment Leus attempted to engrave it, he discovered that mana simply could not penetrate the black armor’s steel.

“The materials are incompatible.”

Leus arrived at the conclusion with exhausted frustration.

“This rune requires a high degree of magical affinity from the material carrying it. Our black armor… frankly speaking, it’s just extremely dense mundane iron. It can’t support such delicate mana circuits.”

Several consecutive days passed without any progress.

The workshop floor became piled with discarded armor parts, which made Anna, the person responsible for finances, increasingly horrified. Thankfully, the materials could at least be melted down and reforged, so the waste was not total.

Night had already fallen.

Even An’an, the golden retriever Vivi had recently adopted, snored peacefully in the courtyard outside, yet the workshop remained brightly lit.

Nolan rubbed his aching temples with tightly furrowed brows as he stared at another ruined breastplate and let out a long sigh. “I think we’ve wandered into a dead end. Relying on luck isn’t a real solution.”

His voice carried deep exhaustion.

“Even if we somehow hit the lottery and discover a workable double-rune combination, a success rate below ten percent still couldn’t support military-scale production. At best, we’d only be able to equip officers like Hank and Rehanna. But if it can’t be scaled up, then the entire concept behind the Black Armored Legion’s special tactics becomes meaningless.”

The others nodded weakly as well. At this point, stubbornness was the only thing keeping them going.

After all, Nolan did not want a few super soldiers. He wanted an invincible steel legion.

Looking at Nolan, Ailindel spoke softly in consolation, “In our era, rune stacking was also an incredibly difficult problem even for the Tyrians. But the effects it produced were absolutely far greater than one plus one. Perhaps…”

Stacking? Holy shit, how did I forget that?!

Nolan slammed both hands onto the table and shot to his feet so suddenly that the half-asleep Leus nearly fell out of his chair in fright.

“That’s it! Stacking! Why are we obsessing over a second rune on the armor itself? We can just stack the effects directly!”

Everyone stared at him blankly for a moment.

Hank frowned. “Nolan, are you too tired? Haven’t we spent the last few days trying exactly that?”

Rehanna and Anna also looked at him with confusion.

But Nolan ignored them entirely. He strode toward a complete suit of black armor and grabbed a scrap of fabric from the nearby experimental materials.

“No, who said every function has to be integrated into the armor itself?”

He draped the cloth dramatically across the armor’s shoulders and gave it a sweeping flourish.

“We can just add a cloak!”

Leus stared blankly at Nolan, so stunned he forgot to straighten his crooked glasses.

Rehanna and Anna exchanged looks. Then both women’s eyes widened simultaneously.

Nolan suddenly wanted to slap himself twice across the face and call himself an idiot.

The solution was so simple. So crude. So direct and effective.

And he had somehow overlooked it completely.

Wasn’t this exactly the kind of thinking he—or rather, players as a whole—excelled at?

When the rules rose one foot higher, players found ways to rise ten.

Whether it was the System or the laws of the world itself, the one thing players never lacked was the bizarre ability to break impossible situations through unconventional thinking.

Use every available resource. Break free from the limitations of existing frameworks. Achieve the objective in the most direct way possible.

The core problem of the new black armor was that weight and defense could not be perfectly balanced. But if the armor’s weight itself could not be changed, why not work directly on the wearer instead?

All they needed was one extra piece of equipment.

A cloak engraved with either the Agility Rune or the Levitation Rune!

Simply reduce the wearer’s total carried weight directly.

The armor remained the armor. The cloak remained the cloak. Two separate pieces of equipment, each carrying its own rune, perfectly bypassing every issue involving circuit conflict and technical limitations.

Wasn’t this just the most common “equipment set” concept in games?!

The oppressive gloom that had hung over the workshop for days vanished instantly. Everyone looked at their lord with amazement, marveling once again at his ability to shatter conventional thinking.

Only Nolan knew how embarrassing this actually was. 

“I’m seriously getting dumber with age. Why the hell was I tunneling myself into a dead end?!” He covered his face, feeling like the past several days had been a complete waste.

Still, his personal embarrassment did nothing to stop his companions from viewing him like some pioneering genius.

Leus violently pushed up his glasses, trembling with excitement. “Right! A cloak! We can make it from magic-pattern spider silk or other highly mana-compatible materials! That solves the material compatibility issue for the Levitation Rune too!”

Rehanna laughed. “As expected of our lord.”

Anna nodded in agreement, and even Ailindel looked at him with approving admiration.

Nolan felt his face burning hot.