Chapter 97 Retired

Of course, Dilan had yet to see his opponents, let alone figure out more about them.

The amount of information that was presented to him was minuscule and didn’t give him much to go on.

But he trusted his gut feeling, and what he could sense in order to understand that the issue with hostile Survivors was somewhat complicated.

‘If they have rifles or other types of modern weapons, my body won’t be able to block such bullets…I guess?’

Dilan was not sure about this, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

However, even if he was strong enough as an individual, he was not alone anymore.

There was a group of low-leveled Ascenders. Some of them had not even reached level 1 yet, and a few among them never would.

To them, a single bullet might lead to their death!

‘I have to gather more information!’-.

Tiredness overcame Dilan once again, but he forced himself to stay up a little bit longer.

He emptied his pockets, and the old, half-burned backpack to take a look at the treasures he had collected.

Spreading out everything in front of him, Dilan began inspecting them as multiple Survivors gathered around him to take a look.

“Crystals, ores, Silver scales, more claws and horns…” One of the older women said without much interest before leaving the group of onlookers.

Many were not interested in the things Dilan procured, while others clearly showed their interest.

“It would be great to have a smithy or something like that here…all kinds of armaments could be easily forged that way.”

An older man ignored the others while picking up the various ores and crystals. He seemed to be greatly interested in the raw materials rather than the claws.

After inspecting everything carefully, the older man sighed deeply before another old man patted his shoulder.

“Old Jeff, don’t be like this. You’re already too old to think about starting to forge once again. You retired years ago!!

We ended up in the hospital because we’re old and our body doesn’t support us as it used to in our prime, don’t forget that!”

From the looks of it, the two old men were in their late 70s. But their age was not something Dilan was truly interested in.

Rather, Dilan’s interest was in Old Jeff, who seemed to be a retired blacksmith.

“Even if I’m old, my condition is much better than it had been during the last few years!! You must feel it as well, Gerd!!” Old Jeff retorted in a hoarse voice, while his face turned into a grimace.

The more Essence one absorbed the more energized one felt. That was why Dilan could tell what Old Jeff was talking about.

He presumed that the more Essence old men absorbed, the longer they could live without major health issues. Maybe one’s life expectancy could be increased as well?

But that was not something Dilan knew for sure.

“Mr Jeff, I don’t want to interrupt your discussion, but do you think it will be possible to forge proper weapons with these materials? Or even better armors using the Silver Scales?”

Old Jeff had forgotten about Dilan and he had been just staring at the materials longingly. But he stepped back the moment he heard the young man’s voice.

Even if Dilan was much younger than him, Old Jeff knew that it would be bad to get on his wrong side.

However, upon seeing the faint smile on Dilan’s face and the way his eyes shone with expectation, the old man calmed down quite quickly.

“The Lumina crystals can be turned into lightsticks or something similar to that. As long as Mana or Essence is provided to them they can continue to glow for a very long time. However, to forge armaments, the Tierless Bronze ore called Silver iron is quite good.

On the other hand, the Jadetite is a Tierless Trash ore that is quite good for anything but protective armors! It breaks easily but is razor-sharp. So if a weapon is forged from it, you can use it well, but it will break after colliding with the hide of Tier-1 monsters!”

The more Old Jeff spoke, the bigger the eyes of the people around him got.

Even his old, good friend Gerd couldn’t help but look at Old Jeff for several seconds.

‘How does he know?!’ Dilan just thought in confusion. His first prediction was that Old Jeff had some sort of ability.

But what he didn’t know was that Old Jeff owned not only an active ability called [Material Inspection] but also a passive ability called [Basic Blacksmithing Mastery].

The passive ability was something that was generated when the Primordial Ascension occurred.

His talent and knowledge as a former blacksmith made this possible.

On the other hand, [Material Inspection] was something Old Jeff obtained after bartering the ability crystal he had received by killing his first monster.

Nobody wanted this active ability as it would use up one of two slots. But that was no concern for Old Jeff, whose love for blacksmithing didn’t die down even after he retired due to health problems.

Even if Dilan’s plan was something different, he couldn’t help but look at Old Jeff as if he had luckily spotted an invaluable treasure.

“Do you want to become a blacksmith once again?”

When Old Jeff heard Dilan’s words, his eyes gleamed brightly. But just a moment later he recalled his condition which dampened his spirits.

“Well…yes, but I cannot…”

Dilan just nodded his head before adding,

“I will provide you with some more Essence crystals soon. If your condition improves, and you’re confident of enduring extreme heat and the heavy weight of a forging hammer, you can reconsider it. We don’t have a smithy nearby, either way!”

Saying so, he averted his attention to something else.

Some Survivors were a little bit bothered about Dilan’s earlier comment.

They feared fighting against monsters, but the thought of killing other humans was even worse to them.

But even then, by looking at Pierre, while recalling the memories of the last 10 days it was obvious that they had to change something.

Even the laziest people understood that they could be killed at any moment if they didn’t up their game…and if they understood the given situation, then everything was far more dangerous and complicated than initially thought!