All the players around the world fell silent.

....

They stared at the floating golden announcement in the sky, slowly fading away.

After a while.....

There was a big commotion in the game.

The news went viral on social media and forums.

Everyone was talking about it.

Major guilds started searching frantically and posted their offers, asking the blacksmith mentioned in the world announcement to join their guild.

Every player online guessed that the person mentioned in the global announcement and the server announcement had to be the same one.

However, Leo, who was responsible for the commotion, had no idea about it.

He was still staring dumbly at his notification panels.

[Ding!]

[NEW PASSIVE HAS BEEN UNLOCKED]

[Forge Resonance]

As you have crossed the threshold of rare rank by being the first player in your world to forge a Rare-rank item, your forging sense has been blessed by the world.

Your items have a chance to be upgraded during forging.

[For items below Rare Grade, there is a 50% chance to be upgraded to Rare Grade.]

[For items below Epic Grade, there is a 4% chance to be upgraded to Epic Grade.]

[For items below Legendary Grade, there is a 0.000001% chance to be upgraded to Legendary Grade.]

Leo read the newly unlocked passive.

...Fifty percent. That’s insane.

He had been struggling to earn money, both in the real world and in the game world.

But now he felt like the System was throwing money at him.

Leo stood there in silence holding the patterned sword, doing math in his head.

Fifty percent.

Meaning one item in every two forging sessions would trigger the newly gained passive blessing, upgrading the item to the rare rank at least.

Guaranteed Rare rank within two sessions. Hehe.....

A wide grin rose across Leo’s face.

The epic rank upgrade chances were low, but they were still there.

The upgrade chance for Legendary grade was basically non-existent.

Leo scoffed at the chances of a legendary rank upgrade.

What the fuck is a 0.000001% chance? Heh... how many zeros are even there? It’s as good as not being there at all.

He scrolled through the notifications and checked his newly acquired title.

[Forge Pioneer]

[Tier: Rare (Growth)]

[A title granted to the one who forges his path forward. The first hammer strike always rings the loudest — yours echoes across "THE WORLD". Where others follow worn paths, you raise your hammer and make your own.]

[Effects:]

[Forging Speed +5%]

[Hidden Attribute Chance +2%]

[Growth requirement: Upgrades to Epic Title upon forging the first Epic-grade item.]

Leo read the title twice.

A rare-rank title. Growth type. That’s good. I’m on the right path.

There were other notifications flashing about skill proficiency and attributes, but Leo dismissed the screen for now.

Right now, he was in a great mood for forging.

He still had energy left, and the momentum from forging a rare item was still there.

Now let’s try again with this new title and blessing.

He was about to start another round of forging, but Hugh walked over and picked up the patterned sword, inspecting it in detail.

Hugh was surprised to find that the sword was of Rare quality.

Hugh caressed the blade’s edge and asked with genuine surprise, "Where did you learn to make these?"

Leo looked confused. He still answered, "I come from a family of blacksmiths, so you can say I learned everything I know about forging from my father."

Hugh couldn’t take his eyes off the pattern lines within the sword.

His eyes were practically shining.

"Whoa!! Your father taught you pattern forging?"

Leo had no idea what that was. "Pattern forging? What’s that? My father only taught me to pay attention to the metal and do what the metal wants."

"You don’t know what it is?"

Hugh looked at Leo with some surprise and suspicion, but he just nodded, handed back the sword, and walked away.

Leo got to work with a determined look.

He carefully looked at the list of swords available in the blueprints. His eye caught a large-sized sword which looked simpler than most.

So, he picked a broadsword from the blueprint.

He reached for the ores and heated them.

When the metal was glowing red, he pulled it out and began hammering.

As he hammered, he tried to use the Eternal Flame like before.

But halfway through the hammering process, a sharp "Tink" sounded.

Leo knew something was wrong. He quickly pulled the blade away from the forge and checked it with his Forge-Sight.

He saw a fine hairline crack forming near the tip of the metal sword. He had almost missed it in his excitement.

He took a deep breath, forced himself to calm down, and focused.

No more excitement.

Adjusting the angle and the fire, he widened the tip, and added more ore to fix the crack. He hammered away until it was no longer visible.

He reinforced all the weak points shown by his Forge-Sight.

Finally, he quenched it.

Straightening the edges with a few strikes, he sharpened the blade.

The sword was finally ready.

[Ding!]

[Forging Complete]

[STEEL BROADSWORD]

Quality: Uncommon

Attribute: +3 VIT.

Effects: -5% incoming stagger duration.

[A broadsword that has been through additional refinements and strengthening from its birth. Forged by a novice blacksmith.]

[Soulforge Attunement]

[Self-Repair applied — 1%/min while sheathed.]

Luckily, the sword had gained the self-repair ability thanks to his SSS-rank talent.

The durability will restore itself, so if used properly, this sword can allow a prolonged hunting time.

Leo set the sword aside. It was getting late, so he decided to stop forging for the day.

As he was walking towards Hugh to tell him he was done for the day, Leo’s eyes briefly scanned the bracers subconsciously.

His passive scan was always active, as usual, so it scanned the bracers.

They were Rare grade, but pretty ordinary.

Just as he was about to call out to Hugh, something happened.

A system prompt flashed in his vision.

[#@@##****.....WARNING!!!]

[...#**#....##....Detected unknown weapon Memory!!]

[Origin: .....##//***** ... Cannot be identified....]

[Era: Unclassified...]

[Threat Level: Unclassified.....]

Leo froze, unsure what was happening.

The system prompt changed again.

[WARNING]

[SSS Talent — 3rd Pillar ANCESTOR’S ECHO has been triggered...]

[Forging memory cascade initiated.]

[Source compatibility: 100%.]

[Do not resist.]

Do not resist wha-....

The world froze and dissolved into tiny particles.

Hugh’s forge vanished, and Leo found himself in darkness....

Slowly, a flicker of light appeared, growing bigger and brighter until it flooded his vision and he could no longer keep his eyes open. He tried to block the light with his hands.

Soon, the light receded and he was able to open his eyes, only to find himself in a different place.

A vast, open space that existed outside of time. Within it...

Smiths. Thousands of them.

Forging.

He was amidst thousands of blacksmiths forging across time and space.

He turned slowly, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing.

Blacksmiths from different pantheons across the ages using all kinds of methods belonging to different mythologies.

A Norse woman with braided hair, ash-covered arms, striking her hammer at weird-looking metal. When her hammer met the metal, the sound produced wasn’t a clanging sound. It was music... each blow a note. Metal vibrated with each strike, singing melodies.

Her forging style seemed like watching a musician play an instrument.

Leo was shocked by the sheer level of forging skill on display.

He turned.

A fat Chinese man with a bald head and long beard that reached his chest sat cross-legged on empty air, hovering half a meter above the ground. His anvil floated at his chest height. His hammer strikes seemed like a dancer’s hands striking the metal every now and then.

Leo kept turning.

Then, he came across another unique forger. The blacksmith seemed to have come straight out of an Egyptian tomb from the pyramids. He had a skeleton-like body covered with dark matter. The item he was forging seemed to be too unique for Leo to recognize it. The man chanted some ancient words and the words pressed themselves into the steel like a brand, becoming engraved into the item.

Leo had no idea about this forging method. He moved past him and saw another forger wearing Roman knight’s armor, looking stocky. He was working on bracers, but he used a column to stamp different marks into the metal. The marks had an air of authority. The Roman knight looked like he was fighting a war even as he forged.

This was too high-level forging. Leo had no way of imitating this or learning it, so he could only shake his head and move past the knight.

After going around a few more blacksmiths, Leo came across a Japanese smith.

The man had one blind eye covered with a patch. He was forging bracers, but they had edges and curves like those of a katana. He was the most normal-looking smith Leo had come across so far.

Then he saw another woman from the Indian subcontinent. She worked the bellows while carrying a sleeping child behind her back. She hammered the metal flat, and peacock patterns began to appear out of thin air, merging with the steel. The dirty smoke from the forge avoided her, leaving her and the child untouched.

Leo watched this miraculous scene with awe. The child on the woman’s back opened its eyes and turned towards Leo and met his eyes.

Leo felt a shiver run down his spine for some reason.

He moved past her. The visions kept coming.

A boy from the Mesopotamian era learning a hammer art from an old man, a Korean monk forging a bell, a Malian woman folding steel like it was cloth, a Greek hoplite smith fighting and forging at the same time, and a Siberian shaman hammering spirits and ghosts into the metal.

Thousands of blacksmiths, all forging at once.

Leo stopped trying to understand them and simply watched.

All the techniques layered over one another, and Leo watched on and tried to remember as much as he could — the hand positions, the angle of each strike, breath control, and intent.

Leo had been organizing his thoughts, trying to catalogue the information.

Then.....

All of the visions disappeared.

His surroundings changed once more.

A figure appeared.

Standing in the shadows.

Cloaked.

The figure held a hammer in one hand, an unfinished sword in the other.

A fire materialized in front of him — gold in color.

Leo felt a familiar resonance from the flame.

The figure raised his hammer and was about to bring it down.

But the figure paused mid-swing.

As if noticing Leo, the figure turned to Leo.

The figure’s golden eyes met Leo’s eyes directly — across centuries, civilizations, across time and space itself, reaching beyond the boundary of the living and the dead.

Leo felt a shiver run through his spine. Just as the immense pressure became overwhelming, the vision shattered.

Leo gasped, covered in sweat.

His vision was flooded with notifications from the system.

He was in Hugh’s forge. The fire was still burning. The anvil was still in front of him.

Before he saw the visions, when he was about to call out to Hugh, he was wiping his hands with a rag — and he was still wiping.

No time had passed.

It meant, in an instant, Leo had experienced all of those visions.

His hands were shaking.

The images lingered in his mind. He dismissed the notifications.

Leo stood there for three seconds, then he felt something move in him.

He turned back towards the forge.

There was a feeling that he could now forge the steel bracers.

He straightaway collected the ores and started working the bellows.

He didn’t overthink the shape and blueprint. He had none anyway. He simply relied on his memory and the feel of the metal in his fingers.

Experience passed down to him from thousands of blacksmiths. He let his heart lead the way and the metal guide itself.

The hammer strikes felt different now.

Klang!

Kaang! Kaang!!

His stance unconsciously shifted from one form to another, as if he was mimicking the Roman knight at one instance and the Chinese smith in the next.

He was going through all kinds of motions.

His hands were moving with techniques he had never known.

The Eternal Flame flowed through every strike, merging with the metal, and Forge-Sight was showing new scenes to him, guiding his hands.

The gold veins — the mark of the Eternal Flame — could be seen in the bracers now.

The bracers were slowly taking shape.

Peacock patterns manifested in the air and merged into the steel.

Dark matter flickered into existence at the edges of the steel and was absorbed into the steel.

He was in a trance again with no sense of time passing.

Clang!

Kang! Kang!!

After the final round of hammering, he plunged them into the trough. The water lit up in gold for a second.

But it soon faded like it was an illusion.

Leo felt that as soon as he completed the bracers, the foreign experience and techniques slipped away. He was back to his usual self.

The bracers were completed. They were still warm. Leo turned and nearly jumped — Hugh’s huge face was right next to his, which gave him quite a jump scare.

Holy Shit, why are you so close...?

It turned out that Hugh had been closely watching everything right beside him.

Leo asked, "How long did I take?"

Hugh replied with a shaky voice, "A.... a couple of hours, I...think. It’s getting dark outside."

[Ding!]

[Forging complete]

[FORGEHEART BRACERS]

Quality: Uncommon (Growth) — Soulbound

DEFENSE: 12

+3 STR | +2 VIT

Forging Stamina Cost -5%

[Unique Attribute — Echo of a Thousand Hands]

Shaped by the collective memory of smiths across every era. Each forging session has a 10% chance to unlock a latent ancestral technique. The bracers attune to the wearer’s soul. Once bound, they cannot be worn by another.

[Growth: Forge 10 items to unlock first upgrade.]

[This item can exceed its tier.]

[Skill Slots: Can copy one compatible skill (passive or active) from any pantheon, as it has witnessed the forging arts of every era.]

[Soulbound to: Leo Stone]

["Forged from the echoes of a thousand smiths across the ages and pantheons. The gold in the steel remembers every strike, every breath."]

Leo equipped the bracers. They had automatically become soulbound to him, so no blood refinement was necessary. They felt perfect. They settled into his forearms like they had always been there.

Hugh, who was standing beside him, wore an expression of fear....

"Y.. Youu..."

He pointed at Leo with a shaking finger. "Were you..... were you possessed by the ghosts of smithing emperor or something?"

Leo had previously failed to notice the fear in Hugh’s face, but now he finally saw it.

He carefully asked, "Why do you say so?"

Hugh calmed down. He released a breath of air.

Scratching his cheek beard, he continued. "Your eyes looked like that of a dead fish. I called you many times, but you didn’t answer."

Leo looked at Hugh and thought.

Well, it can’t be helped if he saw me "A newbie" suddenly showing off high-level forging skills.

Hugh sighed. "Don’t worry, lad."

Leo nodded and finally had a chance to check the notifications.

[BONUS XP — FIRST FORGE-BONDED ITEM CREATED +40 XP]