Two hours had passed since the crucible test had started. This trial wasn’t like the mine, Brandon had no skills that would help. He was dying. He watched as his health finally started to tick down. 204…203…202. He had sweat enough to have a pool of it under his feet and had slipped on the ceramic floor twice already.
One of the first things Brandon had tried to do was jump up to the rim or climb the walls of the crucible he was in. It took him less than ten minutes to realize he couldn’t get out. Even his increased stats that let him run faster than a normal human and jump higher could not overcome these walls. He had wanted to climb the chains to avoid the heat, but that seemed less than feasible now.
The next idea Brandon had was a much worse one. He considered using the pickaxe which had remained in his inventory to mine through the side or make hand holds for him to climb up, but the whole thing was made of ceramic, if he tried that it would likely shatter, sending him to his doom.
Taking this into consideration, his only option was to wait. For the first while he tried meditation. It helped to stave off the boredom otherwise experienced during his isolated confinement. The meditation was relaxing and much like sleep. Time could pass with him keeping his mind clear. Then he started sweating as it got hotter. He had to stop meditating as he tried to get used to the heat, and it kept getting hotter.
After a bit the bottom of the crucible got so hot that he could no longer sit on the ground and had to stand. Then it got hotter still. At the moment he was hopping from one foot to the other, feeling them burn against the searing ceramic and watching health points disappear slowly. 198… 197… 195. The rate he was losing health was increasing as he felt his skin on other parts of his body being burnt by the extreme air.
Brandon put a point into endurance from his free points hoping it would help. It did. When he put the point into endurance, his maximum health went up by 10 points and the temperature became slightly more bearable. He put his last free point into endurance as well and the difference from two points was definitely noticeable. Brandon still had to hop on the floor to keep his feet from burning, but all of the sweat that had left his body was now beginning to steam.
The added humidity from the steaming sweat just made the experience more miserable, in more ways than one. The smell was bad enough, but the way it made his skin feel sticky and the better conductivity of heat in the more humid environment didn’t help.
Brandon kept thinking to try and find a way out of his situation. He briefly considered using mana to control temperature somehow, maybe slowing the molecules so there was less heat transfer. He tried to feel his mana and use it, but it just dissipated. He could not find any amount of focus to make the mana listen to him. It was too much to keep bouncing from one leg to the other and the pain of the burns was distracting. 152… 148… 144. Brandon tried simply expelling mana from his pores, but it actually made him feel hotter.
He should have known it would. As far as he was concerned, mana was a raw form of energy like electricity. Energy often is transferred in the form of heat. He knew there had to be some way to use mana to pass the trial, to control temperature. After all, if both fire and ice magic exist, it should be possible to change the form of that energy with mana.
Brandon stopped bouncing from foot to foot as his health dropped past the 120s. He couldn’t feel his feet any longer anyway. Brandon tried to think about what temperature was and what mana was. He knew he could somewhat control it with his will, but that was a difficult thing to do. Even his telekinesis had been hard to train and it felt like a very basic way to use mana.
Doing his best to come up with an idea only led to a few possible outcomes. He first let out his mana and tried to feel the air surrounding him then compress it. He was using mana so something was happening but he noticed no changes in the temperature. He was still melting and the clank of chains above his head wasn’t helping his focus.
Once that failed, he tried to use the mana to expel the energy in his body, funneling his mana directly out of him through his hand in a large blast that contained well over a hundred mana aiming out of the crucible. There was no noticeable decrease in temperature from this either.
Brandon was in immense pain as the heat increased. It was like touching a stove and holding your hand there on all sides of his body. His skin was blistering and in places turning black. His hair had all burnt off in the fire as well. The smell was acrid and of burnt meat and hair. Unable to stand it any longer, he finally collapsed and saw his health ticking down into the twenties. Ding!
Brandon felt a surge of energy similar to what happened when he leveled up and the heat was gone. Brandon was able to look down at his body and see his skin repaired, he moved his toes experimentally and they moved. He sighed in relief and collapsed, unconscious.
A while later, Brandon opened his eyes, still on the crucible floor and gazing at the door that was standing in the center now. He remembered a system notification just before he passed out, so he brought up his notifications and read what it said:
[You have survived for 3 hours and passed the Trial of the Crucible. Rewards:
Skill: Heat Resistance
Full Restore]
This was why Brandon had felt the rush of energy. His vitality, his health and mana, had been restored. Thank God there was a restore for this trial. I almost died. Wait, God… Is God real? I don’t know any more. With a shaken faith, Brandon decided to not dwell on it for now and deal with the thoughts after he was safe. He checked his skill next.
[Skill: Heat Resistance level 4 (Common)]
[Due to exposure to extreme temperatures over a long period of time, you have developed the skill: Heat Resistance. Heat Resistance (Level 4) will completely protect you from temperatures up to 1000℃ (1832℉). It will help you resist higher temperatures, but only to a small degree and becomes useless above 1250℃ (2282℉). You will still be able to feel the heat you are protected from and you will be able to tell its temperature.]
Level 4? Heat Resistance was now Branodn’s highest level skill. It was not by much though. Mana sight had reached 98% of the way to its next level after using it so much during mining and he was more easily able to see than he had been before. Telekinesis and Arc Slash were also close to leveling and becoming level 3.
Standing, Brandon was conflicted. On the one hand, he was very grateful to have gotten the skill, and its level when he got it was surprising. He figured the extreme training of the dungeon was responsible for the skills quick leveling to 4. The skill would be very useful during blacksmithing. It would not eliminate the need for protection equipment, but it would make it so he was much safer in the case of any accidents. A few more levels and he could probably hold steel as it was red hot in his hand.
That wasn’t all of it though. The damage he had suffered, the pain, the feeling of dying by literally melting to death. That didn’t go away. He didn’t exactly fear fire or heat, in fact most fires wouldn’t harm him much. But he feared feeling that again, very deeply. He was conscious of what happened and his near death, but the pain was what really settled it for him. He never wanted to risk that experience again. It would fade to his subconscious, but he wasn’t sure he would ever get over it entirely. Training the heat resistance skill from here was a terrifying prospect he did not feel ready for but also felt he must do.
Brandon took a step forward and opened the plain door. It looked just like the first and probably the second though he had only seen that one with his mana sight. Brandon stepped through into the blackness of the 3rd trial.
He stepped into a room nearly identical to the first room of the dungeon. No, not quite identical. The ceiling was filled with small round holes, one every couple of inches. On the table was an ingot of metal, about six inches long, an inch and a half tall, and somewhere between three and four inches wide. Ding!
[The Trial of the Magic Forge has begun]
[Fill the Ingot with Mana
Ingot infused: 0/1
Time: 72 hours
Reward: ?
Failure: Impalement]
Brandon glanced nervously at the ceiling, that must be the origin of the impalement. Brandon approached the table and picked up the ingot of metal. He identified it as a [lowest grade magic iron ingot].
Brandon had lots of experience infusing things at this point, but as his life was on the line, he decided to take it seriously and start the infusion process much like the first time he infused his sword. He used his mana sense to feel the mana of the ingot which moves through it in little waves without much harmony. He gently pushed his mana between these waves that were crashing into each other and it filled in the blank holes, creating a place the waves would crash against instead of each other. He slowly spread from one side of the ingot to the other, filling it with mana.
This task was surprisingly much simpler than infusing his swords or needles had been. It also took him less than ten minutes to fill the ingot with his mana and it barely used 130 of his mana to do so. Ding!
[You have infused the ingot and passed the Trial of the Magic Forge. Rewards:
Skill: Infusion]
This time Brandon checked the skill right away.
[Skill: Infusion level 2 (Common)]
[You have learned the intricacies of mana enough to fill objects with your power. This is a beginning step on the mastery of magic and the power it controls. It will be easier to detect the flow of mana in objects and take less mana to fill the objects with your own mana.]
Brandon noticed the skill was level 2 and wasn’t terribly surprised. Unlike the previous 2 trials, this trial felt too simple, it felt like something he had done before and did not have to learn. He was surprised he did not gain the skill during the Beginner Class Dungeon now that he thought about it. I must not have been good enough at it for it to develop into a skill. He thought.
Either way, he was happy to have the skill. He wondered if it would help him to infuse objects faster instead of just more efficiently too.
Brandon reached his hand out to open the door to go to the next part of the trial but he hesitated. He was down 130 mana. It may not even be a quarter of his current mana, but it would not hurt to go into each room prepared. He hadn’t done so as much as he should have before but he did not want to take any risks. Brandon climbed onto the table and sat cross legged with his hands on his knees. He began to meditate and recover mana slowly.
It was not easy to clear his mind and keep it clear during his meditation. Flashes of his pain during the previous trial, of seeing his flesh bubble and blacken kept popping into his mind. What should have been a relatively short meditation took him much much longer. Even once he had calmed his mind enough to be rid of the thoughts of the crucible, he saw the paw of the Rune Bear coming at him again, he saw himself flying through the air as if in third person until he smashed into the wall.
This part of his vision in his mind startled him enough that he jumped back and actually fell off the table trying to defend himself from a strike that never came. Brandon lay panting a while on the floor. After he had calmed down he began his meditation again. It took a while to get fully into it, thoughts swirling through his mind until it finally calmed.
Brandon meditated a while longer and once he felt his mana was restored, he stood up and walked to the door. He opened the door and stepped through into the blackness once more.
The room in front of him had a few things in it that set it aside from the previous rooms. To his left was a furnace with a large and sturdy metal table with a large hammer on the wall the door had been on before he stepped through. The furnace had multiple doors and vented into the ceiling.
Even the ceiling in this room was different than the others. It looked like a series of vents that he couldn't see into at all. He hoped it would keep him safe from carbon monoxide poisoning.
In front of the furnace, a few feet away from it was a large anvil that was a deep blue, like looking into the depths of the ocean. On it was a smaller hammer than on the large table but with a longer handle relative to the size. Next to it was a pair of tongs. Both shared the same blue color of the anvil. Next to it were 3 barrels full of liquids. He thought he could identify oil and water, but there was a shimmering blue liquid as well.
To his right was a large set of boxes. He couldn't count how many at a glance as well as a short book case with a few books. In the center of the room was that same table but with a book instead of a note or ingot this time. Ding!
[The Trial of Metalworking has begun]
[Create 3 magic iron items of common or higher quality
Ingots Processed: 0/3
Common items: 0/3
Time: 168 hours
Reward: ?
Failure: ?]
At least it doesn't say death. Brandon took stock of the room and decided to start with the book on the table. He pulled out the solitary wooden chair by the table and sat in it. Then he pulled out the book. Looking at the title he laughed gently to himself. [Magic Smithing for Dummies by The System in collaboration with ********]. The author as well as the name were both amusing. He didn't know who's name was marked out but he assumed the system named it based on the name.
Opening the book, it started with an index and then straight into the information. The first of the relevant information was processing ore. He needed to crush the ore into much smaller pieces. Then put it into the crucible. Once the ore was in the crucible, it was put into the bottom of the furnace at the hottest part and charcoal was added to the flames to increase the temperature.
Unlike a normal smith, a magic smith could skip the process of creating blooms. Instead they liquified the metal and infused just the iron with their mana to let impurities rise to the top where they could scrape them off. The book described how they could use mana sense to feel the difference in the stone and various metals based on their mana signature. It cautioned that metal too filled with mana could change properties to be different than the base ore. Low grade iron could be turned into high grade iron with enough mana and ore purity.
It was noted that removing all trace metals can lead to a stronger or weaker iron and that some smiths can create stronger metals than mana smiths. It is recommended to remove these impurities anyway and instead experiment with alloys. All metals can bond together to create alloys with enough precision, mana, and patience. Even fire drake steel and ice copper could create an alloy, though only two smiths had ever accomplished it and both times a sword known through the multiverse was crafted.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
One of the most common alloys early magic smiths create is mana steel. Unlike traditional steel, mana steel is an excellent conductor of mana. It retains many of the properties of steel, including its hardness, flexibility, and ability to retain an edge. It is a superior metal for those who wish to use mana with their weapons when compared to both steel and magic iron. It is an alloy of between 3-7% mythril and 93-97% magic iron. It is unlikely you will work with mana steel before high grade magic iron, and it is recommended to wait until after such a time as you have used such mana dense materials to first work with mythril.
After reading through this portion, Brandon was ready to try making his first ingot. The book had recommended taking 3 to 6 pieces of ore about the size of a fist and crushing them to get enough dust to make an ingot.
Brandon removed 6 pieces from his inventory and put them on the metal table with the large hammer. He picked up the large hammer. It was very heavy. Even with Brandon’s increased strength the hammer felt heavier than sledge hammers he had used before the system. He lifted it in a smooth motion from the table and swung it down onto the first piece of ore. The ore broke into 7 pieces, one of them falling on the floor by his feet.
Brandon bent down and picked up the piece that fell. He could see the brownish red of the iron inside the gray of the rock. He picked up and put the shard back on the table, bringing the hammer down on the collection of 7 this time. It took him quite a few hits to be left with chunks and powder. He picked out as many of the bits of rock as he could, then with the hand held broom and dustpan that was on the table, he swept up the dust and chunks and dumped them in the crucible. He repeated the action again for each of the ores he had placed on the table.
It was monotonous work, and it was also physically exhausting. By the time the crucible was filled with dust and chunks of ore, he was too exhausted to do much besides sit in the chair again. It had taken him fully two hours to crush the ore as described in the book.
Sitting in the chair, panting and slowly gaining enough breath to relax again, he started to actually look at the crates. There were labels on the crates that were not in english but that the translation ability of the system let him read as if it were. There were boxes of jerky, dried vegetables, oil, water, and forge supplies. Charcoal, tools, and the like were plentiful. There was also a sleeping mat in one of the boxes.
Brandon walked over to the jerky box and the water box and opened both of them. He took a piece of jerky out and used the ladle in the water box to take a few sips of water before closing both lids. The lids snapped to the boxes as if they had magnets. He went to the table and sat down and bit into the jerky. The taste was interesting. It was sweet and nutty with the savory flavor of meat in it as well. It tasted of chestnuts and something between beef and pork. It was dry and chewy as one would expect from jerky but the unusual flavor made it more interesting than the usual beef jerky he had back on earth.
Brandon enjoyed the jerky then stood up, went to dust his hands on his pants but recalled once again, he wasn’t wearing any. Brandon looked over to the crates again and looked for one with clothing but didn’t see any. Brandon walked over to the smithing supply crates and opened a few. In one he found ingot molds and pulled them out. Then he kept looking through them and found a set of leather gloves. Putting them on, they covered up to his elbows. He also pulled out a leather apron that would cover his front from the top of his chest to his feet.
Brandon put that on as well and stood up away from the crates. He bent down and picked up the mold, carrying it over to the large table on the end closest to the furnace. After setting down the mold, he realized that he would have a hard time pouring into it where he put it and looked around. The anvil didn’t seem a secure enough place to pour, too high of a chance of pouring it on his feet or sliding. He moved it to the middle of the table instead, giving enough room to be out of danger of burning himself on the furnace as he poured out the ingot. He put three molds out, not knowing how much the crucible would fill.
The molds were made of a material called blue steel. He was able to identify it once he thought to do so. The property he identified of the material was extreme heat resistance. Once he had put the molds down and had the crucible prepared, he grabbed the tongs in one hand and then bent over in front of the furnace, which was already emitting flames. He opened the bottom door of the furnace and revealed the hot white and orange flames that burst through. He felt the heat, but from where he was, his heat resistance protected him.
Once the door was open, he used the tongs to grab the crucible and put it into the heat. Like the book instructed, he went over to the crates and brought one with charcoal over and started putting it in one piece at a time, increasing the temperature. He then sealed the door and waited. While he waited, he went over to the crates and kept looking through them. He found one full of dried vegetables. Inside there was only one that Brandon found familiar. Potatoes. He grabbed the dried potato and held it up. It was definitely a potato but he had never had one dried before and there didn’t appear to be any salt.
Instead of eating the potato, Brandon grabbed a round and spiky green and blue disk of some kind of dried fruit. He bit into it and his face scrunched up very quickly. It was super sour but it tasted really good. It was as if a lemon had the flavor of a blackberry but much sweeter. Brandon ate the strange fruit then went back to watching the forge. The book said not to open the furnace for an hour, so Brandon sat down and waited.
After about ten minutes of sitting, Brandon got tired of it. He pulled out a couple more pieces of ore and moved to the far end of the table, past where he put the molds and began breaking apart more ores. After the second, about enough time had passed and he opened the door to the furnace. The blast of heat was more intense than before. Brandon took out the crucible using the tongs and set it on the metal table. He began infusing his mana into the liquid, bubbling iron, and he could feel the difference in flow between the slag and the good iron. The mana flowed easily and more quickly through the iron. He was able to use this feeling to help him use his telekinesis to compress the liquid down.
Brandon went to scrape the slag off the top but realized he forgot to grab a tool to do so. “Crap.” He said out loud and dashed back to the crates.
Brandon quickly grabbed out a tool that looked like it was used to scrape out the slag. It was like a paint scraper but with a flat and a round side. He also grabbed a large pan that looked like it could catch the slag so it didn’t end up on the table. He quickly ran back to the table and lifted the crucible which was already cooling up into the pan with the tongs. He also grabbed the scraper and took off about an inch of material that was not iron and hadn’t felt the same to infuse.
Brandon could still feel impurities in the molten metal and was trying to avoid pushing too much mana in, just enough to infuse it. The impurities felt like trace metals and he wasn’t sure what belonged and didn’t, but as the metal was cooling he put it back in the furnace. He waited again and this time when he removed it and tried to compress the iron, just a few impurities rose to the surface. He scraped these off just as he had with the last ones. Then he used the tongs to lift u p the crucible and poured the metal into the first mold till it reached the lip of the ingot infinite then he moved over and poured it into the second, filling about a third of that mold as well.
After the first ingot was in the mold, the book had said to let it rest over night. Brandon decided that meant it was time for him to sleep. It had been a long day and he was tired. He pulled out the sleeping mat and found a blanket underneath it. Taking both he laid the sleeping mat on the floor then got on top of it himself, pulling the blanket over him. He unequipped the gloves, but realizing he didn’t have a pillow, he pulled off the apron and folded it up underneath his head.
It was not much of a bed, but considering his sleeping situation since the world first started ending, it was a king size bed in a fancy hotel in comparison. Brandon took a while to fall asleep and when he did, he still didn’t have a restful night. Despite the comforts of a sleeping mat and a blanket, he was haunted by the day's events. He had almost died multiple times just that day alone. To compound in it, he still could feel the fire in his dreams when he thought about it.
Brandon drifted in and out of sleep for hours, unable to tell what was in his head and not in the beginning. After a while, he was able to find restful sleep, but it still did not last long before another dream interrupted him.
By the time Brandon woke up he was more rested than the previous day but felt tired and sluggish anyway. The first thing he did upon waking up was stretch and go over to his molds. He tried printing out the ingot with his fingers, but that didn’t work so he turned the mold over, intending to bang it on the table, but in doing so, he saw a switch on the back labeled “release” and flipped it. He heard the solid clang of the new ingot hitting the tabletop.
Lifting up his mold, he saw the ingot of mana iron sitting on the table and smiled. He picked it up to identify it.
[Low Magic Iron Ingot]
[An ingot of magic iron processed by an amateur smith, still containing minor amounts of trace metals and a low amount of magic. This metal has the property of mana channels. Mana channels can be formed in the metal during forging to allow for easy mana manipulation.]
Ding! Brandon got a notification as he identified the metal and its property he could see with geology. He checked his quest which had been updated.
[The Trial of Metalworking has begun]
[Create 3 magic iron items of common or higher quality
Ingots Processed: 1/3
Common items: 0/3
Time: 168 hours
Reward: ?
Failure: ?]
Brandon spent the rest of that day processing ore into bars. There were a total of 9 ingot casts in the crates, so he got them all and began breaking the ores needed to fill them. Once he had enough, he put it in the crucible and put it in the fire. He broke apart more ore as the crucible smelted the metal into a liquid form then processed it and poured ingots.
He only kept the ingots he had poured whole. At the end of the night he had two ingots made of metal from when he had poured the excess metal into molds from the ore. He put these back in the crucible and started the process of melting them into single ingots. It was more interesting to work with these. The mana flow was only slightly different than when he first processed the magic iron. He could feel his mana in the ore but making it all flow the same direction and have the same density was an interesting challenge. It was clear he had not used the same amount of mana in each of the ingots he had made.
In order to not make an inferior ingot, he spent a lot of time in and out of the heat, correcting the flow of mana in these two batches. It also allowed more impurities to rise to the top which he scraped off again. Once the mana flow through the liquid metal felt uniform in his mana sight and had a uniform density, he began to pour.
The two ingots made through this process completed 9 he had made that day, and he decided it was time to sleep again. The mana use and physical labor had quite worn him out and Brandon fell asleep quickly. He only woke once from a dream this time, his mind more settled than when last he rested, but he was definitely not fully over the events from two days ago. He was able to quickly fall asleep again and woke up more rested than the previous day and feeling much better. He also noticed his mana sight had leveled up to 4 finally.
Brandon went to check his ingots and all 9 had turned out well. He could feel a difference in the final two though. They felt stronger and definitely had more mana in them. He was curious to use them but decided he didn’t want to mess up his best ingots in his first few projects as a smith.
Seeing his ingots were ready, he turned back to the table and settled down to read again. The book described the process of making nails as a first item. He needed to heat up the ingot and take a mana infused blade and the hammer and split it. He would use a splitting knife designed for this purpose. It was not something normal smiths could use but it made for the most precise cuts through materials full of mana.
Once the piece was cut, he would heat it up again and take the hammer and begin pounding it out into a long thin bar. Once that was done he needed to hammer the nail into shape, bringing it to a point and trying to get even slopes on all 4 sides so that the length of the nail was what he desired. He could then take the header, which the nail should slide into and slide it in till it stops and cut the top a short distance above. After that he would reheat the stock and put it back in the header, hitting it with the hammer till it had a flat and thin head on top.
Brandon got started right away. He found the splitting knife and the header from the diagrams in the book and took them over to the anvil. Once he had everything he needed, he started on the process the way it was described. Splitting the material was easy. His mana infused the splitter more easily than anything before and he only had to hit the back of it three times with the hammer to cut through the ingot and get a smaller piece.
He heated it back up in the middle portion of the furnace, using the attached bellows and some charcoal to get the flames up to a high enough temperature. Once the metal was glowing hot enough, Brandon took it out of the flames with the tongs and put it on the anvil. He held it so the longest end was in the air and began hammering it down. It took him a bit of hammering to get it thin enough and long enough to be around the thickness he wanted.
He turned it to the side and began hammering it again but it had cooled enough that he needed to reheat it more, so he put it back in the flames and brought it back to temperature.
Bringing it back to the anvil, he hammered it down again, but doing so made the other side too wide. He was making the bottom wider at the same rate he was making it longer. Brandon sighed and started hitting it a few times and turning it then hitting it a few times and turning it again. It only took a couple minutes to make the stock square. He had cut more material than he thought, it was enough for two nails if he wanted it to be.
Brandon began narrowing the end of the nail and making it even longer as he thinned out the metal. He made a 2 inch long nail and then put the end in the header. He cut off the end and then hammered it into the header to make the head flat. The head ended up having a 1 inch diameter and was too wide. He tossed the still hot nail into one of the molds and started making a second one from the rest of the stock. He was more careful this time when he got to the header and cut it much closer. This time, the nail came out with a proportional head and he was much happier with it.
He smiled when he got a quest update and saw he had made his first and second tool. Grinning at his success, he tossed the nail and the extra scrap into the mold as well and he sat down to read the next chapter on creating knives. It seemed fairly straight forward to him, but he was missing a key component. He didn’t have a grindstone. Brandon got up and decided to check the boxes for one. He still could not find one, though he found a few files, a sharpening stone, and a leather strap. It looked like he would have to start with the files to grind down the material and make an edge.
Brandon began the forging process like he did for the nails by cutting off material. He took a third of the remaining ingot to make his knife with. It may be too much, but he figured it was better to use more material than less. He first beat the metal into a rough bar shape and made it thin enough that he could see himself using it as a chef knife. He then beat the bottom of the bar out into an elongated shape that was lined up with the back of the knife. He kept the handle flat but let it get thicker than the blade. He didn’t make a tang because there was no handle material he could use here; it would be pure magic iron.
Brandon then shaped the blade to his desired chef knife shape. Alternating between heating it and beating it over and over until he was able to get a good point and a nice curve to it from the front. The blade was mostly straight but the front end curved up to meet the back to form a point. Once he shaped it, he heated the blade again and used the files infused with mana to shape the blade to what he wanted. He didn’t sharpen it yet, just took it from a mostly flat blade to having a gradual slope to the edge.
Once he was done with that he heated it up much hotter this time, almost white hot, and he pulled it out and following the instructions in the book quenched the blade in the water. When the blade went into the water, it hissed and bubbles came off the metal and to the surface. Some steam even rose out but not much else happened. After that, he brought it up to a hot but not truly hot temperature again and let it cool naturally to temper it. He would have to do mana tempering at the end but he wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
The blade was around 11 inches long and the handle was a little longer than that, so he took the splitter and in one strike, removed half of the handle. He then ground down the edges of the handle with the files to make it rounder and smoother so it was more of an oval than a rectangle. Finally, he took out the sharpening stone and began to sharpen the blade on it. It had a nice 15 degree slope to place the blade along that snappet to the block on either side that would allow him to get a perfect angle for his edge. It did not take long to finish sharpening the knife and take the leather strap and get off the burr.
Once he was ready, with its razor edge, he brought it over to the barrel of the glowing blue fluid. This was a natural resource of condensed mana water. It was retrieved for magic smiths, alchemists, enchanters, and similar crafts. It could be made but the purer mana of nature created a better product. Brandon held the blade by the handle and pushed his mana into it using infusion. The goal was to create channels of mana through the blade and allow it to take in and hold more mana. The saturation of the mana water helped it to pull in outside mana which clashed with Brandon’s mana and the warring energies hardened these mana channels and made it so they could hold even more. The channels had to flow with the material and fill the material fully to make a passable piece.
Mana water splashed around Brandon’s hand as he tempered the blade with his mana. The energies roiled inside the blade and around it, like turbulent flow on the wings of an aircraft. Brandon could feel how the natural mana wanted to expand and fill as much space as possible while his was pushing it out of the way to create channels then allowing it back in through those same channels, strengthening them. For a simple material like magic iron, it was not too difficult. He was sure someone with level one senses and infusion could do it.
Brandon pulled out the knife and noticed the shiny, silvery blade now had a slight blue tint to it. He had succeeded in his tempering. His chef’s knife could now hold a lot more mana.
[Magic Chef Knife (Common)]
+3 slashing damage
+3 piercing damage
Durability:500/500
Magic Edge: Mana can be used to temporarily increase cutting power
Magic Beast Dissector: This knife can cut through any parts of a dead magic beast with ease
Brandon was happy with his knife, but he was happier seeing he had passed the trial. Ding!
[The Trial of Metalworking has been completed]
[Create 3 magic iron items of common or higher quality
Ingots Processed: 3/3
Common items: 3/3
Time: 168 hours
Reward: Profession Change: Magic Smith]
You have enough crafting experience that you will receive an extra level in your profession
[Profession Change: Magic Smith Lvl. 2 (Rare)]
[Magic Smith]
Stats/level
Strength: +3
Dexterity: +3
Stamina: +2
Endurance: +2
Magic Power: +6
Free Stats: + 3
The large increase in his stats felt great. It was more than when gaining two levels in his class. He saw two new level indicators on his status screen, one for profession, and one for overall level. His overall level was now 11, but he had two levels in profession.
He was still smiling when a new window popped up in his vision and he felt the telltale signs of teleportation: the tugging in his gut, the world fading away, the pull as if on his soul not his body. He barely had time to read [Final Challenge Initiating] before the world went black.