Even a legendary blacksmith wouldn’t dare to brag like this. Oscar hesitated. Ignoring her boasting, the offer seemed entirely one-sided in his favor, and he was naturally cautious of gifts that came too easily.
"Why me?" Oscar asked plainly. "There are plenty of established Two-Star and Three-Star Hosts in the city."
"Because you have real potential," Iris replied without hesitation. "And as for the quality of my work, do not look down on me just because I am young. I may only be an Epic-rank blacksmith right now, but I am already on the fast track to becoming a Legendary-tier grandmaster."
Seeing the subtle disbelief on Oscar’s face, Iris smiled mysteriously.
She stood up from her desk and walked toward the back wall of her office. She tapped a hidden mana sensor behind a wooden frame, and a silent mechanism clicked open.
A heavy steel door slid back smoothly, revealing a secluded, heavily reinforced underground chamber.
"Follow me," Iris said.
Oscar followed her down a brief flight of stone stairs into the hidden room. The air inside the chamber was cold and rich with dense mana vibrations.
In the center of the room, mounted on a glowing metal pedestal, sat a half-constructed bow.
The moment Oscar laid eyes on the weapon, his breath caught firmly in his throat.
Even though it was only half-finished, the bow radiated an aura so immensely powerful and heavy that it felt as if an invisible mountain were pressing down on the entire room.
The dark wood of the bow frame was etched with glowing silver runes that pulsated like a living heart, emitting subtle shockwaves of pure kinetic force into the surrounding air.
It was an overwhelming level of pressure, far surpassing anything Oscar had ever encountered, including the dagger of Vincious Miller.
Iris watched his reaction with a satisfied smile. "Impressive, isn’t it?"
"What rank is that?" Oscar managed to ask, his eyes locked onto the half-built weapon.
"That frame is being built to reach Legendary status," Iris explained, walking over to a heavy iron drawer situated beneath the pedestal. "It takes years to gather materials capable of holding that level of energy structure. But while the bow is still incomplete, its paired accessory is already finished."
She unlocked the drawer with a small silver key and pulled out a long, sleek object wrapped in dark protective cloth.
She laid it out on a low wooden table and pulled the cloth back.
Resting on the table was a finished quiver.
Unlike the half-constructed bow, the quiver was fully completed and polished to perfection.
It was crafted from dark, metallic leather that shimmered with a subtle deep crimson sheen under the room’s mana lamps.
The outer surface was lined with intricate, razor-sharp metallic scales, and three embedded gem sockets ran along its outer spine, glowing with a soft, steady red light.
The aura coming off the quiver was refined and completely stable.
It did not emit aggressive pressure like the unfinished bow, but instead gave off a profound sense of absolute precision and heavy mass.
Oscar stepped closer, staring at the exquisite craftsmanship of the quiver.
"This quiver belongs to the same set as the bow," Iris said softly, her voice filled with pride as she looked at her creation.
"It possesses two built-in passive traits: Auto-Replenishment and Tattoo. Auto-Replenishment allows you to replenish arrows by feeding it with monster cores. The quality and number of arrows depend on the rank of cores. A single core can craft a minimum of twenty arrows."
She watched the expression on his face with satisfaction as she continued, "Tattoo allows you to plant the quiver under your forearm. Once it is planted, even a Four-Star Host can’t sense it."
Oscar swallowed hard. He had a total of twenty-one Feral cores with him now, stored inside the Spatial Pouch the director had gifted him.
In the future, as he began hunting, monster cores would be no issue for him.
For a marksman like him, a quiver that produces endless arrows was a priceless treasure.
He looked up from the quiver and met Iris’s eyes. "Where did you even get the raw materials to forge something of this tier?"
Iris smiled, her sharp eyes flashing with a dark, intense light.
"I gathered the core materials myself three years ago," Iris said slowly, leaning against the wooden table. "I made these two from the rumored drops of an Apocalypse-class monster..."
Oscar’s eyes widened in sheer shock.
"What?"
Iris flailed her arms. "I am joking, haha!"
It was evident from her face that she did not want to continue this topic, and Oscar did not push any further. He knew when to drop a line of questioning to keep a conversation moving.
"Since you are showing this to me, I am not naive enough to think this is just a quick tour, right?" he asked, tilting his head toward the crimson scale quiver.
"Yes," Iris replied plainly.
"Then I am also not naive enough to think you are showing this without any hidden intentions, right?" Oscar asked straightforwardly, catching her completely off guard.
She stared at his face for a few seconds. The silence hung heavy in the underground chamber before she suddenly broke out into a warm laugh.
"You are surprisingly sharp for your age," she said, shaking her head.
"We look similar in age, you know," Oscar shrugged lightly. She looked to be in her late twenties, but no woman ever disliked a subtle compliment about her youth, especially when coming from a good-looking guy with confidence.
"Ah, a sweet tongue," she giggled, leaning her hip against the side of the wooden table. "Now, as for your question, do you know what the single most important skill of a blacksmith is?"
"Smithing?" Oscar offered.
"Pfft. That is second," Iris said, waving her hand. "The first and most vital skill of a blacksmith is perception. It is the ability to spot a diamond buried beneath piles of plain mud. It is the vision to immediately perceive the structural weak points of a material, as well as its highest potential strengths, just by looking at its grain."
She paused, letting the heavy silence return to the room.
"And that perception does not simply stop at raw metals," her gaze on him intensified, locking onto his eyes with an alarming level of sharp focus.
"I studied the combat footage of your fight at the Central Plaza. I studied it far more deeply than anyone else in this city would have thought to. Your absolute aim and your movement speed are completely unmatched for a Level 20 Host. But would you believe me if I told you that is not what truly impressed me?"
Oscar stayed silent and waited for her to continue, keeping his expression completely calm.
"It is the tiny pause between every single fire," Iris said slowly.
"It is a fraction of a second pause, barely noticeable to anyone, but I can see it clearly when I break down the frame rate. Something strange happens in that exact pause. Something that allows your simple arrows to completely pierce through the heavy physical defense of a Feral Minotaur."
Oscar felt a subtle trace of cold sweat forming behind his neck.
She was talking about the exact moment he had used Ban on the monster.
’Fuck...’