The Sect Leader System-Chapter 262: Swords!

Benton absolutely loved Kang Lin’s reactions. The twins and the rest of his kids just didn’t have enough knowledge to know how crazy some of the things he provided them were. She, on the other hand, was very aware of the items’ unusual nature and acted accordingly in the most amusing ways.

The look on her face when she realized just how valuable that sword was!

He chuckled. Really, he had no other use for the thing. Sure, he could have gotten a few spirit coins had he sold it, but he was trying to build up a reputation as a master craftsman. High earth grade just didn’t cut it, even if it did have a sharpness array.

Benton chuckled again, that time at his little pun. Then he sighed. Too bad there was no one around to appreciate it.

Anyway, with enough ingots in hand to make twenty-five swords, it was time to get to work. His first step was obviously to create the masterwork versions of the one he’d gifted to Kang Lin. Though he used his Time Aura to speed the process, he actually took things slowly inside the bubble. The key to perfection was to give each task his full attention so as not to make any mistakes.

From the forging to inscribing three arrays to making and attaching the hilts, Benton took his time, sweating over every detail. His patience paid off. At the end of nearly a full subjective day’s worth of work, he had five top heaven grade swords, one for each of the common elements.

Five down, twenty to go.

Even being a Nascent Soul at an equivalent realm of Mind Cultivation didn’t prevent him from getting fatigued after intensely concentrating on something for that long, so he needed a break after he finished. During that time, he thought about the next set of swords.

His first five blades required the wielder to be able to channel similarly aspected qi into the weapon. Which reduced the target audience for each of those swords. He was almost positive, however, that the demand would still be high because there were a lot of cultivators aspected to the five most common elements.

Benton thought a weapon that gave a cultivator the ability to use a rare and powerful element not of their aspect would be even more valuable. The question was how to make that happen.

He was definitely a cheating cheater who cheats, but he didn’t need the System that time. As an actual Formations Master, he possessed more than enough knowledge to design such an array himself.

Thus, his next set of swords would be similar to the first set—possessing arrays for self-repair, sharpness, and amplification of input qi resulting in an attack—but would add another array that converted whatever qi was input into the blade into the type of qi used by the attack.

There was an issue, however. He didn’t mind rival formation experts being able to reverse engineer his first three arrays as they were all common knowledge. That last array, though…

Currently, if a cultivator wanted to use a qi type that didn’t correspond to their aspect, they had limited choices. The easiest and cheapest was a single use talisman. The maker would imbue the device with a qi type and technique, and tearing the talisman would trigger usage of the stored ability.

The other option was something like the bracelet the Water aspected Nascent Soul had used. When its qi was used up, it could be recharged with a spirit coin of the proper aspect. A lot of Benton’s defensive arrays were of that type.

To the best of his knowledge, it was highly unusual, and maybe even actually unheard of, for a device to convert one qi type into another. He definitely didn’t want to spread the array around for two reasons. One, he didn’t want something so potentially powerful being used against his sect. And two, he wanted to keep a monopoly on it to keep the value high.

It was good that he was a master at both Blacksmithing and Formations because the only solution he could think of was to hide the array inside the sword’s core. Which meant inscribing it during an interim stage of the forging process.

Not an easy thing to do but something that was definitely possible. And hopefully, the results would be worth it.

Of course, he doubted those creations would be a cultivator’s primary weapon but rather something they could pull out of their spatial ring at a critical moment to change the circumstances of a fight. Which lowered the value somewhat. His hope was that the combination of the uniqueness of changing the input qi’s type, the swords’ quality, and the power and rarity of the qi elements used would escalate the value to the heights he needed.

It was an easy choice for him to use uncommon sub elements for some of the blades, choosing Force, Ice, Lightning, Magnetism, and Shadow. Each of those could create a powerful attack or an effect that could definitely impact a battle, from the simplicity of a Lightning strike to enveloping the wielder in a veil of Shadow.

If Benton’s guess was right, those five swords would bring in decent returns. But he doubted they’d were special enough to compel auction goers to trade the materials he needed to him.

No, to provide that level of motivation, he needed more oomph. He needed Gravity, Soul, Space, Time, and Void.

The problem was that he wasn’t sure he wanted to release weapons with that kind of power out into the wild. He’d hate it to the depths of his being if one of them were used to hurt one of his sect members.

Stolen story; please report.

Hmm. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ

An idea hit him—a hidden fifth array, one that prevented the sword’s qi attack from activating against anyone who carried a Rising Tide Sect token.

Perfect.

Benton grinned. Obviously, he wouldn’t be advertising that last feature.

The next two and a half subjective days were spent forging those ten swords and resting when necessary. At the end, he was ecstatic with the results as they all turned out perfect as well, leaving him with fifteen swords that all should fetch a pretty darn good price at the auction.

Ten to go.

For half of those, he wanted one-off, really unique effects, but he kind of liked how he had a theme for sets of five going. So what could he do for the next five?

Though he thought the ones he’d already created would be very popular, especially those last five, he was kind of bored with the whole basic setup of channel qi into the blade and have it launch an attack.

There had to be something more creative than that.

Hmm.

The point of the swords was to enhance its wielder’s combat power. Was there a way to do that in a more literal sense? In addition to being a sharp, well-made weapon, could one of his blades actually make the cultivator a better fighter? Not in the sense of training but actually better. Stronger. Faster.

Enhanced stats basically.

That would be a cool feature, but how?

Well, as a Formations Master, Benton knew of arrays that could improve a cultivator’s stats. Since they originated from the System, he doubted that anyone else nearby knew of them. Should be a valuable effect.

His first idea was for the cultivator to channel qi into the sword, and in return, the sword would make the cultivator stronger. That seemed … weak. Weakish, anyway.

Ah. In addition to self-repair and sharpness, what if the blade absorbed a portion of an opponent’s attacks and channeled that qi into the array to temporarily boost the cultivator?

Yes. Now that sounded powerful, worthy of opening those stingy auction goer’s pocketbooks.

Benton just had to figure out which stats. Strength was a no brainer, as was Speed. He really wanted five, though. Agility? Dexterity? Intelligence?

Hmm.

Available qi. Yeah. That would actually be easier than the other two. He’d just need formations to absorb qi from an attack, store it, and convert it to a form useable by the wielder. Actually, that last part was a bit complicated as he’d need another array to bond the blade to the wielder’s aspect so that the other array would function properly.

Complicated was okay, though. Complicated meant rare. Rare meant valuable.

The idea of an opponent’s attack adding to the wielder’s qi pool led Benton to his next sword—one that converted qi from the opponent’s attacks into health for the wielder.

Nice.

Benton’s next idea was inspired by asking himself—what is the ultimate stat that could be increased? The answer was simple—cultivation. The ultimate sword would be one that took power from opponents’ attacks to increase the wielder’s cultivation.

But how?

Well, in a way, the formations were really similar to the ones used for increasing the wielder’s available qi. The difference with the new sword would be that the qi output would need to be converted to aspected ambient qi like a qi source would produce instead of like a spirit coin would provide.

Of course, if Benton could do that, he wouldn’t need the qi sources in the first place. Okay, so that one just wasn’t going to work.

Bummer.

He couldn’t think of anything nearly as cool as increased cultivation level and ended up settling for a relatively lame boost to perception. Oh well.

Another day was spent creating those five swords, and during his rest period, he considered his final five, the ones he planned to make as one-offs instead of all being alike in some way.

When Benton thought about weapons that provided a unique benefit, the first thing that came to mind was Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer. Specifically, he liked how the hammer only allowed those who were worthy to use it.

Benton had no idea how to create an array to judge one’s worth, but it was simple enough to develop an array and a process to bind the sword to a cultivator’s soul, making it only useable by that person. Perfect.

For the next one, he really liked the sword he’d made that used qi from attacks to provide healing, but the effect was a bit passive in that it depended on the enemy’s actions. It would be so much cooler if the wielder’s every successful attack stole life or health or qi or something from the opponent and transferred it back to the wielder.

A life steal sword.

Well, it wouldn’t actually steal life as, after a bit of thought, Benton couldn’t quite figure out how to make that work. A healing array was easy, though, and it was fairly simple for a Formations Master to reverse the function of a given array, making the new one take healing from an opponent instead.

Awesome.

For the third of the set, his first idea was mind control, but even if he could figure out how to make that work, the ethical considerations made him pause. Imagine giving an arrogant young master that particular power.

Benton literally shuddered at the thought.

He also didn’t want to give the blade an ability too similar to his Mind Stun as he wanted that technique to remain one of his trump cards. The idea, in general, was good, though, so he ended up having the sword put out a kind of flashbang disruptive blast of light and sound.

The effect wasn’t exactly overpowered, but a distraction at the right time could easily mean the difference between life and death.

For the next one, he hit upon a completely different idea. What if the blade could help its wielder become better at using a sword? He could create a technique of the absolute most basic sword moves and use complex formations to have the blade guide the young cultivators in reproducing those moves correctly.

That one ended up being a pain in the buttocks to figure out the formations. Maybe it wasn’t technically as complex as the Grand Defense Formation, but it was equally as difficult in a different way.

Benton honestly didn’t know if the price he’d get for his teaching sword would be worth the effort, but he did know one thing for sure—he absolutely would create the spear version of the weapon for his sect members. One really good thing, though, was that, now that he’d figured out the formations, reproducing it would be easy, even for different weapons.

For the final sword, he decided the thing his weapons were missing was a lack of lethality. Which, okay, wasn’t something that was a consideration for most people when thinking about swords. But building on the concept of a teaching blade, Benton thought that the functionality to “set phasers on stun” might be an interesting concept.

The arrays weren’t all that difficult to figure out. Basically, it was similar to the second set of swords. Actually, it was almost exactly the Lightning sword but with an added array that allowed the wielder to dial down the intensity of the attack.

Benton spent another subjective day forging the five newest blades, adding the self-repair array to all of them and the sharpness array to all but the last two. All in all, the last set was … a bit lackluster. He liked some of the ideas, but they weren’t nearly as powerful as he’d been hoping to come up with.

Still, between the twenty-five blades and all the greater spirit coins he’d make by the time the auction rolled around, he hoped to have plenty of resources to purchase anything he needed.