Chapter Eleven: Dream About the Days to Come

Fourth Tower Year 4771, 8.4.3

The Holy Kingdom of Zah’paht Dur

City of Threshis

《It’s going to explode.》

“No, I have it this time.”

《Listen to me. It. is. going. to. explode.》

“Just a bit more. It can take it. Just a little bit… crap.”

The brightly glowing metal flashed and with a loud cracking noise exploded into thousands of molten hot needles firing in every direction.

Even with the protective gear, Marc could feel several of the shards had pierced his skin in several places. He threw down the hammer and tongs and quickly stripped off the helmet and coat so that he could identify and treat his injuries.

《So how many was that? Sixteen attempts? You know that stuff is not cheap right?》

“I thought I had it that time. It should have worked this time.”

“Still working on it?” Patah walked into the foundry and surveyed the bits of smoldering metal stuck into the wall, ceiling, and floor.

“I guess that’s a yes.” The Dwarf Master-smith noted. “You know, if you stop before it explodes it’s a lot kinder on the building,” he gently reached out and cupped Marc’s left ear, which now had a small triangle of flesh missing, “and on your ears.”

“If I stop in the final tempering both the steel and the Mythril will be ruined anyway. What’s the difference?” Marc stewed as he contemplated his failure once again.

“Less fires?” Patah pointed down to Marc’s trousers where a flame on the cuff was starting to grow.

“Shit!” Marc almost reflexively used a stream of water to put out the fire. Instead, he grabbed some sand from a nearby bucket and poured handfuls of it onto his leg until the flame went out.

《Idiot, I told yo-》

“Can you be in any way helpful? This BLACKSMITH skill is defective. Why can’t I use it for anything even remotely difficult?”

Marc was angry and embarrassed, not to mention in quite a lot of pain.

《You know as well as I do how this works. If your ability and experience are lacking, you can mimic the actions. You can even handle many normal tasks well. But what you are trying to do is far beyond a simple task. remember the whole chocolate soufflé disaster?》

“That was not my fault. How was I supposed to account for the fluctuations in the magic stove?” Marc demanded.

“Well, I suppose we should call it a day?” The Master declared.

“Wait. Just one more time. I should have enough Mythril for one mo-“ Marc checked the crucible and realized the explosion had upended the container, spilling molten metal all over the furnace.

“Yeah. Sorry. I’ll clean up and try again tomorrow.”

Patah snorted and examined one of the shards of hot metal still sticking in the wall. He plucked the still sizzling sliver out and held it up to his eyes.

“Too fast. You are trying to infuse the Mana too fast. You need to feel out the proper speed. It’s different every time, but it looks like every time you keep going too fast. First you should try slowing down.” The Master of the Forge said critically.

“But if I go too slow I can’t seal it off properly before it sets…” Marc caught the Dwarf’s expression.

“…which of course you know better than anyone. Thank you for your guidance, Master.” Marc straightened his posture, then bowed respectfully.

《Idiot.》

Patah left Marc to clean up the forge and repair the damage left by his repeated failures. He wondered yet again if this was a mistake. He took the young human in at the request of Ba’eth, his patron, and while he did indeed show a remarkable talent for smithing for a Human, he was still, in fact, a human. He would never be able to master the higher levels of smithing in his short life.

Well, he promised to guide the boy for five years, and he just had one more left to complete his part of the contract.

The dwarf spun the sliver of metal between his fingers and looked again at the fine gold hue that the metal had taken. The boy certainly had talent. It’s a pity he wasn’t born a Dwarf. He might had a chance of becoming a fine smith if he had.

《You better watch it with the magic. He almost saw you use water mana you know.》

“I know, but I was on fire.” Marc channeled his Mana to his hands, then rubbed his injured ear. In a few seconds, the wound had completely closed. He didn’t need to touch it like that technically, but it was easy to focus on directing the Mana when he physically guided it where he wanted to boost his healing.

He looked around the forge and cringed when he realized how much carnage he had caused through his training. That and the cost of the ruined ingot of Mana was going to leave a noticeable dent in his finances for the next month.

As a senior apprentice, it was his responsibility to clean up the workplace before the younger apprentices came in to work the next morning. By younger, he referred to rank, not age. They were all considerably older than he was, with much more experience as well. Still, thanks to his interface and abilities, Marc had been able to keep just ahead of students who had been studying under the master for decades, while he had only working on smithing for a handful of years.

His ability to leapfrog ahead by using his interface to give him basic understanding and assistance had helped him greatly in the beginning, but as he was nearing the end of his apprenticeship, he was having a surprisingly difficult time mastering the advanced levels. Lack of experience with the lower skills was now coming back to hurt him as his foundation was demonstrably weak.

“Isn’t there anything you can do? You know, to patch up my skills?” Marc started the old argument again.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

《Why would I do that? That doesn’t help me you know. Just the opposite.》

Marc knew Kira was right. While his advancement in skills had been uneven at best, Kira’s interface had continued its advancement at a steady pace ever since he left Clearwater over five years ago.

The constant exposure to new environments and the development of new skills and abilities had finally pushed the interface to level 24. He was eager to find out what would happen if he was given a chance to upgrade the interface at level 25.

It had certainly taken a lot of work to get it this far. It had been over nine years since he had upgraded the interface to level 2, unlocking Kira’s ability to create dynamic holograms. Considering that it only took a year to advance from level one to level two, he understood that the progression would continue to get harder with each new level. He just hoped to reach the next upgrade at 25, rather than 50 or level 100.

Marc had also come to realize that the skills and abilities he was granted by the interface were never meant to be used as a shortcut, but were tools that rewarded him for growing and exploring this world.

Skills gained directly from the interface were simply information rather than experience. He may know how to speak another language or cook a meal, but lacking any practical experience, his results would usually fall short of anyone with even moderate levels of practical experience.

The interface drove him to constantly improve himself. To use his own hands, and to practice in order to truly absorb any new skills. He had stopped using many of the basic skills he had relied on heavily in his first few years like language translation and other proficiency skills, in favor of doing it the old-fashioned way. Practice and study.

The downside was that no matter how much he exercised or trained with weapons or martial arts, he would never build any muscle. His base stats were locked in stone and while he could get significant stat boosts through abilities and skills, they were usually reliant on using up Mana to apply the benefits.

Catch him without any armor or buffs applied and Marc would be exactly the same as when he arrived in the world over a decade ago. It was only through the application of magic that he was able to function as anything more than a child in the world.

Luckily he was able to use Mana better than any being currently alive in this world. While still far from complete, His native talent for collecting, converting, and using the Mana found everywhere in this world allowed Marc to increase his strength and endurance, buff his healing and stamina, and accomplish feats that most could not even dream of until they reached a master level in their Mana affinity.

When Marc learned about craftsmen who could imbue materials with mana-conductive metal, allowing objects to channel mana and boost the bonuses awarded by wielding them, he was understandably intrigued.

This brought him to the city of Threshis, here in the Holy Kingdom of Zah’paht Dur. Famous across the continent for the greatest craftsmen and smiths that could be found.

Perhaps if things had been different, Marc would not have been so willing to leave behind his home in Clearwater. It was indeed hard to leave behind his friends and adopted family. But it was also heartbreaking to stay there. Losing Grenn, a man he had begun to look at like a father, left a scar he had never experienced, even when he lost his real parents; his mother when he was just a child, and his father when he was ripped from his old world and dropped in this new one.

Grenn had been the first person he had met when he had arrived, and had even saved his life that day. There was no one he had ever known before or since whom he admired and respected more. His teachers, Rynan, Meservi, Ba’eth, and now Patah were all more powerful and accomplished in their own way, but Grenn had shown him what a good, honest, and virtuous person was and what strength you can wield that has nothing to do with muscles or magic.

Marc had left Clearwater not long after the battle that had taken Grenn’s life. He spent time with Grenn’s family, especially young Safan, who he now considered to be his godson, though now the boy was likely larger than himself. He stayed to attend the wedding of his best friend Enpii who had married the young Guild worker Mumay. A match that ended up being far more well-paired than he would have predicted. Enpii’s quiet, diligent, and conservative personality was the perfect match for the outgoing, spontaneous, and carefree energy that the young woman exuded. Marc admittedly was a bit jealous, especially considering the knockout beauty the girl had grown into, filling out into a tall and shapely woman, unlike his healthy and muscular adopter sisters Safil and Sateem, who took after their father in most ways including appearance. Still, Marc was truly happy for his friend, who had endured more of his share of difficulties throughout his life. Besides, in relative years, Marc was twice the age of the bride and still looked barely old enough to be her oldest child.

The opportunity to come to Threshis came suddenly. Marc had been spending a lot of time with Meservi, who had taken over the duties of Acting Guild Head while Ba’eth recovered from her injuries, when the Dwarf brought up the possibility one day.

Unfortunately, the only healer strong enough to help Ba’eth after she lost her arm was the Guild Head herself. The damage to her body had weakened her to the point that even her great regenerative abilities had barely been enough to keep her alive and in the end she lost her chance to recover the arm.

In the months following the siege, she had regained much of her vigor and strength, but she admitted that she would never be able to recover enough to retake her seat as the leader of the Guild in Clearwater. She spent the time working with Meservi to prepare for a new Guild Head to be named by the Council of Elders, the highest authority within the Guild.

In the end, Meservi was installed as the new permanent Head of the Clearwater Guild Hall. Torren was appointed the new Adjutant and ever since the two men had been driving each other crazy.

Ba’eth decided to use this opportunity to move back to her home city in the Kingdom and prepare for her retirement closer to her roots. It was then that she approached Marc with an interesting proposal, would he like to join her in Threshis where he could learn from the best craftsmen in the continent?

At first, Marc strongly resisted the idea. He had planned to wait in Clearwater until at least his first teacher, Rynan, returned from her mission in Sobric, He was also loathe to leave Grenn’s family so soon after his loss.

The truth was that people in this world were much more accustomed to loss, and had their own ways of handling grief. Marc spent many days, silently moping through the city, or hiding in the cabin in the woods as he processed the loss. It was Kira who pushed him to break out of his malaise.

He decided to leave Clearwater, accompanying Ba’eth just over a year after the great battle with the Calamity Beast. All signs of the damage done during the attack had long been repaired and no sign of the stampede remained.

He promised Keri and the children that he would be back after his apprenticeship, as Clearwater was his true home. While he prepared to go, he spent as much time as possible with Enpii and Meservi, getting thrown out of numerous drinking halls and entertainment establishments as he burned through a not insignificant amount of his savings from the past few years of work for the Guild.

Finally, he went back to the Witch’s Den. He made sure the supplies were packed for long-term storage, and put everything perishable into his inventory storage. He boarded up the windows and doors to keep animals out as best as he could. Then joined Ba’eth at the docks.

They would travel by riverboat most of the way. This would make the trip quite long, but as much as Marc would have liked to try engaging the services of a Wyvern rider, the cost would have been exorbitant to travel all the way to Threshis by air.

Marc put away the last of the tools and checked the furnace to make sure it was clear and fueled for the night. He was amused how all the menial tasks were the responsibility of the senior apprentices, rather than just dumped on the newest students as was the norm back where he grew up.

This was to maintain a sense of ownership and professional responsibility, he was told, and he had to admit, he had grown to appreciate this system, even as his responsibilities had expanded.

He had grown a lot over these past few years, but he was not willing to leave until he had earned the rank of Expert Smith, a title reserved for those who had learned how to work with the most precious metal in this world, Mythril. In less than five years he had done what took most students more than twenty years to master. But the final step often took even the best smiths half a century.

《If you plan to try again, you know you are going to have to earn some money first. We are out of Mythril again.》

Marc sighed. “Any good jobs at the Guild?”

《There are some escort jobs, but you know how troublesome they get when they see you. There is one interesting job, however.》

“Interesting?” Marc braced himself for the other shoe to drop.

《Well, they have finally opened up the new extension in the Krt’al mines.》

“Krt’al? As in the Krt’al Mythril mines?”

《Yup.》

“Tell me more.”