After the chit-chat session with key personnel of Town Zera, the changes across his town became more significant.

The newcomers were no longer mistreated, and general cohesion increased. The efficiency of production and quantity of offerings went up. Everything was looking great, including the new options for offerings.

The gods must have decided that they were sick of eating raw produce. Hence, they added more offering options with greeted GF credit ratios. These items were also coincidentally highly sought after commodities in Rino’s empire. Taro beer, flour, butter and cheese were some of the new options that paid the highest GF credits, but Rino decided to let his villagers determine what they wanted to offer to the gods. 

It was the nature of the living to be greedy. Everyone wanted the best for themselves, and Rino wondered how many would actually sacrifice their weekly limit of the good stuff for the gods who gave them nothing in return.

Surprisingly, many people did this. Rino wasn’t expecting more than one person to do this, but there were quite a few. In fact, they made a pact to offer premium goods to the statues while sharing the good food with their friends.

Rino knew that Quasimodo and those on the farm might offer their cheese and butter. However, he was not expected for the beer-loving earth gnomes to offer one barrel of beer every week.

After further investigations, Rino heard from the grapevine that the drows and monster rabbits made a pact to give the earth gnomes half of their beer rations because they weren’t allowed to drink on duty. In return, the earth gnomes would help them offer to the statue what they did not drink for ‘collective contribution’.

It was a smart move, and Rino did not hate this kind of collaboration. It benefitted all parties involved, including himself. Some parties benefited more than others, but it could not be considered a terrible deal when all sides were winning. He only wished that this kind of thing happened more when he was still a court magician. Greed was not necessarily bad, and rivalry did not need to be marred by toxic jealousy.

It took a few weeks for things to smoothen out, and Rino did not do much about the newest daily quest received. Surprisingly, the gods were not pressuring him for progress. The deadline was still reflected as “NA”, and Rino decided it was probably time to start investigating what made an artefact an artefact.

Visiting the secret vault, Rino stood a good distance from the four artefacts. These weapons might be low-levelled artefacts crafted by the dwarves before they abandoned the mines, but they were powerful enough to deter Rino from messing around with them.

Compared to mythical or legendary grade weapons, artefacts were considered more powerful than mana-imbued weapons made from rare materials. The one significant difference was their ability to choose their masters and influence the battle’s outcome.

Putting it into a different perspective, fighting with a mythical or legendary grade weapon was like adding more percentage to a warrior’s damage ability based on their skill. However, if a warrior was given an artefact, it would not simply multiply their damage ability. The warrior is also given a new set of skills in battle that do not belong to him. In other words, an artefact could act as a supporting member in a party that is wielded by its user.

There were very few records about artefacts, even in Rino’s previous world. He had no idea how these artefacts were created or how they chose their masters. Some artefacts weren’t made for battle, and others were sealed away because of how many deaths they caused trying to find a worthy master.

Rino read the tutorial provided by the gods. It wasn’t a very useful tutorial about artefact creations. However, it was a good information archive introducing the basics and explaining what artefacts were. Rino read this in the stone plate library and compared it with the dwarven tablets.

After several hours of research and note comparison, Rino concluded that artefacts were indeed living objects instead of mana objects. The difference between living and mana objects was their ability to freely use the mana stored inside them.

Living objects do not produce their own mana. They relied on a source that was usually the mana core of powerful creatures like dragons. From there, they develop a silver of consciousness that could affect their actions, such as casting automatic buffs on their user or even rejecting unworthy users.

In simpler terms, living objects like artefacts possess a soul. It wasn’t a soul born from the condensation of mana over the years like wisps and faes. However, it wasn’t a summoned soul from the afterlife dimension either. It was a created soul using existing mana from a mana emitting source, influenced by the conditions around it.

Artificial souls of living objects ‘choose’ their master in a process called soul resonance. Although there was no proof of Rino’s theory in the dwarven texts or the gods’ tutorial, wavelength and resonance was a theory that Rino came up with in his previous life as the father of alchemy.

Why would certain sounds cause certain reactions in animals? He could only explain that as a conditioned response using frequency. These sounds were also used to relay secret messages because only animals could hear certain sounds that humans could not. The tamers of assassin guilds were masters of this.

In magic, Rino believed resonance existed in the form of mana particles. He used to believe that mana was imbued with elements that would explain why certain people could only use certain elements. However, after Noir’s enlightenment in this world, Rino knew better.

Mana existed in the atmosphere and within any living creature could produce it. The elements were formed based on a person’s natural attunement or a beast’s mana core. They converted mana gathered from the environment into different elemental magic that could be used, channelled through various means.

Some magicians have special attunements that manifest mana differently, giving birth to magicians with special abilities such as time control, physical buffs, bodily transformation and more. 

Of course, the narrow-minded people of his previous world classified them as evil or outcasts because they did not fit into the common brackets of magic branches. They were labelled witch doctors, dark magicians, occultists and even shapeshifters.

If Rino were to think about it from this angle, mana resonance was a method for the living objects to find a compatible owner to siphon mana from them and replenish its depleting mana core. No two individuals had the same mana signature the same way how everyone’s fingerprint was unique. There had to be some sort of compatibility between the user and the artefact before a contract could be formed between master and servant. It was the same reason two very compatible magicians would give birth to a more powerful magician if they had children together.

Hence, to create an artefact, Rino understood that two things must happen. He needed a powerful core to forge the item with as well as a very strong will. The dwarves had intense wills, and they were probably using rare materials that emitted mana within the mines to create low-levelled artefacts.

These artefacts could not be compared to the Crimson Sword forged using a master smith’s blood. The Crimson Sword was a national artefact of the blood elves that must be sealed away because of how many it killed when trying to find a compatible master. The core drank blood to replenish its depleted mana source and could not be destroyed easily as it was created using mithril.

Rino thought about what kind of material and purpose he wanted for the artefact he was tasked to create. Town Zera was a very important base in his empire. He had faith in the barrier he created using the mana web array. Many undead were capable of combat, and the genesis fairies were probably stronger than the sylphs in Noir Province.

What would the people in Town Zera need? Rino could not think of anything. Then, he looked at the four elemental representatives in glass casings. It made the most sense that Rino should add his artefact in the secret vault in the middle of those four low-levelled artefacts. 

With a spear representing air, a two-handed sword representing fire, a battleaxe representing earth and that strange baton-like weapon representing water, Rino thought it was only right to create another weapon to complete this array. These four artefacts had very strong personalities, and Rino could guess the kind of people the dwarves were when they crafted them.

The oppressing atmosphere in this secret vault near the artefacts came from the clashing between opposite elements. Rino did not mind creating an artefact, but he wanted something to harmonise that clash. The artefact he wanted to make must be a peacemaker or an artefact that could suppress the clashing auras of the four weapons.

Thinking about it for some time, Rino figured he might be better off creating an artefact with a different intention from the dwarves. All those low-levelled artefacts felt too aggressive, carrying their hatred for the harvesters within their creations. Rino did not know what they were hoping for, but he knew that he preferred peace to war.

Hence, the familiar sketchpad was retrieved, and Rino started drafting ideas for a guardian artefact instead.