The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 675 Bad Translation

chapter 675 bad translation

karl carefully opened the book and looked at the first page. the letters were unfamiliar, but the more that he looked at them, the more sense they made.

he assumed that the system would do all of the translating for him, the way that it did with spoken languages. so he simply waited, and examined the first page until it began to make sense.

it didn't.

at least, not in any meaningful way. but most of the language was based on runic, so karl was slowly able to make out two thirds of what he assumed that it was saying, and then guess at the rest.

"can you read that?" one of the clerics asked as karl flipped to the second page. nôv(el)b\\jnn

"mostly. it's not a language that i would claim to know, and i get the feeling that i am missing a huge amount of context to the words as i read them. but i can follow the descriptions well enough to at least tell what it is talking about.

now, when we get to the technical parts, that may be much more difficult. as i said, i am missing a lot of context, so as i read through the more detailed sections, i'm going to miss even more."

the first few pages were mostly just an introduction, and a crude glossary, as if the writer had assumed there would be no need to flip through the book to find a particular section, and that the reader would simply read it cover to cover until it was memorized.

that might be possible. that was how the mine bosses wanted them to treat the company handbook. but a professional tradesman wouldn't be quite as arrogant, karl assumed.

[for a true dwarven master smith, the quality of their alloys and forging process is the key to everything. but the same cannot be said for a dwarven runemaster. while a runic dwarven weapon will always be a vast improvement on the original, greater relative gains can come from weapons that are further from the peak of perfection.

it was not going to be an easy task, karl realized. instead of using a spell effect as the building blocks of his work, with the strengthening layered over top, the dwarf had used a paragraph - long rant about how humans couldn't tell impurities from rare alloys. then it went on about how they were too frail to stand next to a forge long enough to heat metal for shaping, and too poor to afford oil for tempering.

"what does it all say?" the cleric asked.

"it appears that the dwarf who wrote this was not a particular fan of the other races' crafting. it's an entire rant about how the humans can't make a decent blade, with a strengthening effect tacked on top."

the cleric looked confused by what he meant, so karl went and grabbed a pair of knives from the breakfast cart. it took him the better part of five minutes to write out the runes on the butter knives with a fine tip marker, but the clerics simply remained silent and waited for him to finish before they asked any more questions.

"see this? that's the base metal strengthening rune group. this one is what the book recommended to strengthen a human made blade. i don't know if there is actually any difference in the effects between the two." karl explained, gesturing between the knife with a simple rune on the handle, and the one that was entirely decorated.

the cleric shrugged, then activated the runes with a gentle flow of mana.

"see what it takes to bend them. the kitchen will forgive us a few damaged butter knives." he suggested.

"the second one sure is pretty, though." one of the other clerics noted.

"yes, gorgeous rune work. i can see why they would have done it that way. even if it provided a marginal or negligible increase, it is much more pleasing to look at, and the dwarves were known to be vain about their handiwork."

karl picked up the simple strengthening rune marked blade, and forcibly bent it in his hands.

then he repeated the process as the clerics sighed in regret at the loss.

strangely, the second blade did appear to be significantly stronger, despite not having any other activation runes in the inscription.