System Breaker: Surviving Apocalypse with Nine-Tailed Kitsune

[Your comprehension of *Blacksmith* Class has significantly increased!]

’Of course,’ Damon suddenly realised. ’Using metal alone wouldn’t be different from making ordinary items. To create a relic, one needs to weave mana along with steel.’

Wasting no time, Damon opened up his inventory.

Since he spent the better part of the month that he was away from central station, closing F-Rank rifts, he had an abundance of small rift shards, having no use for any of them as his stats were already over the threshold.

[Small Rift Shard]

[Quantity: 11]

[Description: Can be used to raise any stat below 30 by 2 points.]

He summoned all of them at once, making Nyla stare in disbelief.

Although she fought monsters before, she had never closed a rift, so it was her first time seeing a rift shard, let alone elven of them, up close.

"Here," he said, handing the shards to the girl, "Use some of them to raise your mana, then try to make something."

The girl blinked, unsure he was serious, but quickly accepted them.

"You sure, boss?"

Damon gave her a simple nod.

Nyla used four shards to increase her mana, leaving six for what came next.

She approached the furnace, which had a supply of metal rods hanging on the side of it.

Her movements were slow and uneasy, but they also had some form of quiet understanding to them, clearly showing she knew what she was doing.

She took a single metal rod and pushed it inside the furnace, keeping it there until the metal was red-hot.

Nyla’s movements grew more confident with time as she took the metal out and quickly smashed her hammer against it.

It looked like ordinary blacksmithing at first, but then Damon caught a glimpse of something he had not seen before.

She had rift shards lying to her side. At a single glance, they simply lay there, but as he looked more closely, each strike of her hammer seeped faint trails of mana away from the stones, and soon, one of them began to dim, its light vanishing as she continued to strike the metal.

[Your comprehension of *Blacksmith* Class has significantly increased!]

Damon’s understanding of the class grew stronger with each second, but before he could fully comprehend the class, a sudden golden spark blasted from the metal, and two of the rift shards shattered upon the impact of her hammer.

’She’s done it,’ he realised.

The girl’s face lit up with joy as she picked up the relic.

It was a bracelet, which was surprising considering how large her hammer was and how well-made the bracelet looked.

"It grants ten strength!" The girl’s eyes lit up before her smile suddenly dimmed.

"Here, those were your shards," she said hesitantly, handing the item over to Damon, who quickly rejected it.

"No, keep it."

Although +10 strength would’ve been a nice boost, it would mean a lot more to her than it would to him. He needed his allies to get stronger if he hoped to capture the citadel, and this was a great way of bringing them up to speed.

His eyes quickly shifted toward the remaining pile of rift shards.

There were four rift shards left.

"Do you have any mana left?" Damon asked Nyla, who was studying her new item.

"Huh? Oh, I guess?" She replied with a questionable tone before quickly realising what he meant.

"Try to make something larger, using all the shards at once."

Nyla raised a brow, giving it a second of thought before nodding.

She quickly got to work, placing three metal rods in the furnace at once.

But before the metal would even have a chance to heat up, Damon felt a sudden presence appear behind him.

He tried to turn around, but he had no chance before a pair of slender arms wrapped around him from behind.

"What’d I miss?" Kitsune’s voice purred in his ear.

Just as he was about to reply, Kitsune’s eyes lit up, seeing Nyla working on the relic.

"Interesting..." She murmured, quickly realising what was going on.

"Took you a while to get here," Damon said light-heartedly, snapping Kitsune’s gaze away from Nyla, who was now smashing her hammer against the pile of three metal rods.

"My dear," she tightened her grip on him, coiling closer. "It would take you a while to wrestle with me, too," she added playfully.

Damon shook her comment away and turned his gaze back to Nyla, only to notice that all four rift shards were now barely lit and with the next swing of her hammer, a swift burst of golden light exploded from the newly made relic.

’I missed it...’

With Kitsune’s sudden arrival, Damon had taken his eyes off Nyla for a few moments, making him miss the most crucial part and preventing him from increasing his comprehension of the girl’s class.

"Boss! I’ve done it-" Nyla turned toward Damon, raising her new Relic into the air, but as her eyes landed on him, the words died on her lips.

Standing right behind him, she was a woman who looked beautiful beyond reason, her silver-white hair cascading across her slender shoulders as she wrapped both her arms around Damon as if he belonged to her.

"Don’t mind her," Damon quickly cut in, noticing her gaze.

"Oh, okay..." Nyla murmured before shifting her focus back on the relic.

She was holding a pair of metal boots similar to the ones she was now wearing.

"They raise vitality, dexterity and stamina by 5."

Damon nodded.

Although it increases all three stats at once, the increase itself wasn’t great. But remembering it was from only a handful of small rift shards, he couldn’t complain. Besides, it was still a great increase for someone like Nyla, whose level was still low.

The girl wasted no time slipping out of her old leather boots and changing into the new relic.

But just as she pulled on a single metal boot, another person suddenly arrived in the hall, then another.

And over the next few minutes, most of the group had finally arrived, having defeated their own clones.

Everyone but one.