Chapter 29

I waited until the others had made their way back inside the town before following, taking the time to burn the blood off of myself before re-entering the breached walls. Already there was a man who seemed to be able to manipulate plants coaxing the cut logs into regrowing the broken section, pushing themselves upright with the aid of a few strong citizens. There were a handful of bodies laid side-by-side near the breach, clearly having been mauled by the boars that had broken into the town and rampaged through. I was comforted that at least only a few had fallen; that explained why it had taken the others so long to catch up, busy going after the ones that had broken through. My body ached, but the wounds weren’t very severe, knitting even as I walked. I stayed well clear of the bodies and the few people gathered around them, weeping and mourning; most seemed to just avert their gaze. Clearly, this kind of thing wasn’t uncommon enough to warrant more than individual reactions, everyone moving on with the weariness of those inured to death.

It shocked me that so many had fallen. Only a handful of the boars had gotten in, and those were individually barely a threat to me when I’d first started out. How could they be so bad at defending themselves? Were they too used to being guarded? Weak, I felt a voice whispering in my mind. Pathetic. Blind to the new world and the will of the Merciless Stars. I considered these thoughts for a moment, unsure whether or not they were my own. Was it Marcus’ voice I heard? The Shepherdess? Or perhaps my own?

I sat down near one of the smaller fires, my only company a man and woman sitting opposite me, both so consumed in their thoughts they didn’t react to my presence. I thought back on my old habits; burning my journal of grievances to leave them in the past. The relaxing sensation of watching flames dance. I remembered my fascination with it, my obsession with the way things changed under flame. Watching paper darken and burn. My brief stint with Blacksmithing, seeing the metal mold and shape under my hand, turning from dull black to glossy red, burning bright as the end of a lit cigar. I remembered the feeling of the hammer within my hand, the way it rebounded when it struck the metal. The power of fire to change, to transform. Fire makes malleable what nature made immutable. Fire burns away impurities, a crucible to purge weakness.

I thought of the wand I’d been neglecting, and the staff I’d been using as a walking stick; I thought of the fear and uncertainty that had dogged me into this world. I had trouble remembering who I used to be; the images burning away from my memory, as useless to me as I’d once been to myself. It didn’t matter who I’d been before; what use did this world have for accountants?

I pushed myself to my feet and began to roam the camp once more, my thoughts carrying the sound of hammer striking steel into my mind, drawing my feet toward it.

All at once, I stood before a small, smoky stall butted right up against one of the trees, the thick smoke filtering through the branches above to diffuse itself, dissipating entirely once it overtopped the canopy. Clang, clang, clang. The man before me hammered down on a metal billet with what was clearly a blacksmith’s hammer; I had no idea where he’d gotten such a thing, nor the metal he was working with it. I watched him in silence, the din of his hammer and the thick smoke around him aiding his intense focus in keeping me out of his sight and mind. I watched him for several minutes, seeing the way the metal twisted far too easily into the shape of a sword. Much of it was the man’s skill; every blow seemed precisely placed, every movement smooth and economical. He used a wedge to separate a piece of metal from the end of the billet where it was smoothing out into a handle, setting it aside; even with his expertise, there was no way he had cut it so cleanly.

Finally, I could keep my silence no longer. As he stuck the half-formed billet back into the fire, I stepped forward and cleared my throat. He glanced up at me, not pausing in his motions as he began to pump a small, improvised bellows.

“Hi. I’m David,” I called out to him, taking a couple of steps closer. “I was an Apprentice, once.”

“And?” His response was gruff, curt. He didn’t seem at all winded despite the continuous motion and effort.

“How did you do that?” I gestured to the cut piece of metal still sitting on the forge. “And where did you get the metal?”

“It’s an ability,” he answered me, “granted by being a Blacksmith. Is that all?”

I tilted my head in confusion. “So… Your class is Blacksmith?”

“No,” he answered me after a moment with an irritated grunt. “It is my profession.”

As the fire flared up, I could see the man more clearly. He was shirtless and immensely muscled, no hair visible on his chest, head, or face. His eyebrows barely seemed to be a smudge above his nearly black eyes, squinted in suspicion. Runnels of sweat carved dark trails through the ash and dust covering him, his skin charcoal-dark beneath the coat of soot.

“Did you need something?” He finally asked me, gruffly, pausing in his exertions as he let the fire steady, his glance checking on the billet as it heated.

“I could help you,” I answered him, gesturing to the fire. “I can control fire.”

“Can you work a bellows? Good and steady?”

“Uh, yeah. I’ve done that before.”

He gestured to the bellows handles, and stepped back.

“I meant I can directly control the fire. I can make it hotter, or cooler, or concentrate it, or…”

He seemed unimpressed, arms crossed over his chest. “Keep the bellows going, steady at this temperature.” He withdrew the half-formed sword with a pair of tongs, and set to work hammering on it once again. I stood by the bellows, waiting for him to need the forge reheated, but he only paused after a few strikes to look at me. “Well? Work the bellows. I’m not letting you heat my steel until I’m certain you won’t burn it.”

With that, he returned to ignoring me and hammering on the blade.

I knelt down, grabbing onto the bellows handles, and nearly stumbled backward as a prompt appeared in front of me.

Quest Gained!

[The Professional]

Choose a profession or have one taught to you.

Reward: Tools appropriate to that profession.

Would you like to learn the Profession, Blacksmithing?

I stared at the twin prompts for several seconds, indecisiveness staying my mind for a handful of seconds. I didn’t know how much use I’d get out of it, but I could always change my mind later. Probably. I accepted the offer, and a trickle of knowledge spilled into my thoughts.

You have gained Profession: Blacksmith.

[The Professional]

Forge your first weapon with the supervision of your Master.

I could tell just by looking at the billet of metal that it had once been a longsword, and was being reforged into one; the materials were Common quality, and the Smith was attempting to upgrade it to Uncommon. I could practically sense the sword within the billet, and saw him hammering the blade back into existence, hands following the template set by the blade it had once been. I sensed the appropriate temperature for the steel, and how to judge the color by eye; as if another flow of information joined the first, spilling from another source, I knew abruptly how to heat the metal directly and how hot would ‘burn’ the steel, rendering the upgrade a failure. I had some basic intuition of how the upgrading worked, and the possible outcomes; from watching this man work, it clearly wasn’t his first blade. I began pumping at the bellows, struggling to keep my pace steady; not for difficulty in moving them, or any trouble maintaining rhythm, but that my body was capable of acting so quickly that I had to slow my movements down to a relative crawl to reach the hold the desired temperature.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

As the metal cooled, the blacksmith seemed to finally need to reheat the blade, turning to watch me work the bellows. I tried not to react to him, pumping away steadily, focusing on the feeling of the fire I couldn’t see until it just felt right. When the steel billet slid into it, it was like two entities merging; I could feel the heat filling the metal, soaking into its’ core, some places softening or hardening in ways that they shouldn’t; a trick of the System, I was certain.

He withdrew the sword and began hammering on it once again, while I kept the bellows running steady.

After nearly two hours, my arms ached more than I’d expected, my superhuman constitution enough to allow me to keep going long past the point a normal human could’ve. He finally took the blade and quenched it into a bucket of oil, the burbling hiss of steam the only hint of the immense heat it was removing. The cut piece had been reshaped into a crossguard, decorated with inhumanly precise and delicate touches until the metal seemed to ripple like water, the light slipping off of it as he inspected it under a torch. He nodded his satisfaction, and then set to sharpening the blade. He used slow, methodical strokes of his whetstone, his slow movements giving me time to consider that he didn’t seem to have any kind of racks or storage for all of the tools he had used. The tongs and hammer were nowhere to be seen, nor was there a sack of coal to draw upon to feed the forge. I began to explore the shop curiously as he worked, the blade firming up and drawing out into an edge far faster than such manual sharpening ever should have. The blacksmith stood up, and moved the whetstone toward his waist. He touched it lightly to the sash he wore, and the stone vanished from sight. He withdrew a small stone and cloth, and a small flask. He trickled a little oil over the blade, and began polishing it steadily.

While he focused on the finishing touches, I turned my gaze inward to call up my information, curious to see what Blacksmith had changed.

Name: David Miller

Path: Arcane Power

Race: Human (F)

Class: Flameheart Sorcerer (5 Will, 5 Wis, 5 Free)

Profession: Blacksmith (4 Str, 3 Pres, 3 Int)

Level: 20 ( )

STRENGTH : 34 (+5%)

DEXTERITY : 44 (+5%)

FORTITUDE : 50 (+5%)

VITALITY : 57 (+5%)

CUNNING : 27 (+5%)

PRESENCE : 28+10 (+5%)

WISDOM : 120+5 (+10%)

INTELLIGENCE : 36+15 (+5%)

WILLPOWER : 120+15 (+10%)

Points to Distribute: 0

TITLES:

[Grand Fated] +10 to all attributes.

[First Blood] +5 to all attributes.

[Dungeon Delver] +2 to all attributes.

[Focused Pursuits] +5% to your two highest attributes.

[Sprinter] +5% to all attributes.

SKILLS:

Fire Manipulation (Adept), Unarmored Defense (Adept), Heat Adaptation (Initiate), Heart of Flame (Adept), Flameheart’s Hunger (Basic), Crystalflame (Initiate),

PROFESSION SKILLS:

Sense Metal (Initiate), Recover Materials (Initiate), Forging (Initiate), Forgesense (Initiate)

The skills caught my eye, and I called up more information about them with a thought, peering over them curiously.

Sense Metal (Initiate): Allows you to sense metal and metallic objects nearby, as well as identify details and information about them at a glance. Effectiveness scales slightly with Wisdom.

I glanced over at the sword laying across the blacksmith’s palms curiously, and information hovered at the edge of my awareness. Longsword of Striking (Uncommon.) This blade’s edge has been well-honed and -tempered, and will keep its’ edge far better than a more common example of the blade.

I stared at it thoughtfully for several seconds, head tilting as I grasped the information it was giving me. I’d never seen that kind of detailed information before, and found I could call up at will things like its’ carbon composition and durability.

Recover Materials (Initiate): Allows you to return a metallic item to its’ base materials for reuse. Some materials are lost unless Reforging the item. Your Intelligence will slightly impact the amount of materials lost.

This one must be the ‘ability’ the Blacksmith had mentioned, allowing him to turn the longsword back into raw materials and ‘Reforge’ it.

Forging (Initiate): Allows you to use heat, pressure, force, and other tools to alter objects comprised primarily of metal or metal-like materials. When used in conjunction with Recover Materials, you may disassemble and Reforge an item, attempting to alter its’ properties. Effectiveness scales slightly with Willpower.

This was the one actually in use, the Blacksmith’s willpower imprinting the desired shape on the steel and then hammering the shape out of it, rather than having to painstakingly form the metal itself. Having seen the ability in action, it was nothing less than magic; there was no other way a sword could be forged from billet to blade in an hour.

Forgesense (Initiate): Born of a combination of Fire Manipulation and Sense Metal, Forgesense allows you to sense the changes going on within metal during forging or Reforging, as well as understand and exert slight control over the process. Effectiveness scales slightly with Presence.

This one seemed a unique fusion of my abilities, the knowledge from both combining to give me greater insight than I would otherwise have; insight I wasn’t sure even the Blacksmith himself had. He sat the blade down atop the anvil, admiring it for a handful of seconds before wrapping it in a cloth, and placing it aside. “Alright. Now it’s asking you to forge a blade, right?”

I nodded in response. “It says to craft a weapon under my master’s supervision.”

The Blacksmith nodded slowly, and then gestured to the anvil. “Show me.”

I was about to protest, but the words died on my lips. I had no doubt that he’d be every bit as intractable now as he had been then; instead I reached down to my sash, shocked to find an entire new space within it. An anvil, basic forge, a bucket of oil for tempering, and various stones and flasks awaited. As did a handful of forearm-length billets of iron, and a single hammer, already looking well-worn, the smooth wood sliding into my palm as if it was my own hand that had worn the surface smooth with use.

“Show me what you can do, David,” the Blacksmith told me. He leaned back, arms crossed in front of him, eyes narrowed in silent judgment.