“Fuck!”

The curse rang through the clearing as the clay tumbled to the ground. Turned out the mold wasn’t as easy to make as he thought. The first attempt was to just wet a bunch of clay and then smoosh it around the breastplate he borrowed. That worked great with one problem: the breastplate was still in the mold.

Removing it destroyed the mold and he had to start over. After a few hours of labor, an hour of meditation, and then another hour of attempts, Chef decided to call it for the day.

The next day didn’t go any better initially, but he eventually got an idea. He could leave the top fully open and then just pull it out when he was done. Then he’d have a shape for the front and back minus the part for the arms. That worked great, except that that was the complicated part.

“Fuuuck! Why is this so hard?!”

He was beyond frustrated at this point, kicking the metal in an attempt to burn off his anger. But unfortunately for Chef, the pain rushing through his leg only amplified his already shit mood.

If humans could do it, then he could. Chef knew this instinctively because humans were stupid and soft while goblins were clever and ruthless. He had to be able to do it.

And so, he kept trying different things to shortcut the process while slowly beginning to realize what he would have to do. It took hours of attempts and calming meditation before he accepted the truth.

“I have to make the mold from scratch.”

The plan was simply: make a clay Chef. It wasn’t even hard. But unfortunately for the flesh and blood Chef, it was incredibly tedious and time consuming.

He spent half the night filling the inside of the bronze breastplate with clay, forming little stumps where the arms would go. In the morning, he skimmed down the clay until it better met his size. After that came the hard part.

He had to figure out how to pool the bronze into this shape without the liquid just running away. Fortunately for him, he’d been using water to test the integrity of his molds each step of the way. Unfortunately for him, they all leaked.

It wasn’t until that night that he finally had a mold that could hold water.

Feeling impatient, Chef stayed up all night making the last thing he needed: proper pouring technology. In this instance, said advanced device was basically just a big ladle, complete with a little indentation for liquid to travel through.

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He melted down the bronze as he had several times before, but this time it was in a proper container. Then, he grabbed the bowl with his bare hands, his use of an oven proving that this was indeed a kitchen related heat source.

Perhaps it was because it was heated through his Kitchen Magic in the first place. Or maybe it was because Chef really did see this as cooking. Regardless, no burns marred his skin as he poured the liquid into his prepared chest mold.

The resemblance to his own torso was uncanny. Obvious muscles, a strong and prominent chest, a complete lack of gut, it truly did represent the goblin ideal. And Chef being the model, there could be no doubts that he met that same standard. Or at least that he would so long as the armor was on.

The mold itself was a layered design. The innermost layer was the torso block, flat and smooth as he could make it. He then slapped that block onto another block of clay around where his waist would be. He then formed the outer layer about half an inch away from that inner layer all the way up to the arms. There he connected the layers, ensuring that he’d have a hole to stick his limbs through. The outer layer then continued up over the shoulders and to the neck where he did the same. He left an opening to pour the metal at each shoulder, which would leave the final design with a bulky shoulder pad look.

His first pour failed the mold, leaking bronze out onto the dirt. Remaking the mold and trying again led to the same outcome but from a different spot.

Another thorough restructuring of the mold led to a fully intact mold filled with bronze. Sadly, the mold had to be broken at least partially to retrieve the metal. In doing so, Chef discovered that it wasn’t half as even as he’d thought, the metal having obvious peaks and valleys despite having just been formed.

By the time he’d remade the mold from scratch for the fourth time, he completely gave up on disguising his physique. It simply took too long to add in the muscles and remove the gut. Even then, it wasn’t until the following morning that he could make something resembling actual bronze armor. He’d spent the entire night on it too, meditating whenever his body got too tired to function.

The armor was on him immediately, Chef much too excited about his new creation to care for the searing heat coming from it. It was at that moment that he recalled some of the advice Fresk had given him on armor wearing. Something about cooking and padding?

Admittedly, the weight wasn’t an issue. As for the cooking, well it just so happened that Chef’s food temperature tolerance was pretty good. But thanks to his best attempts to smooth the transition from chest to stomach, there was a noticeable gap between his chest and the inside of the armor.

Nothing a little extra animal fur couldn’t fix. And if there was anything Chef had extra of, it was animal fur.

Fitting his outfit over the metal turned out to be both easier and harder than he expected. The size wasn’t the issue though; it was the heat. Between its very recent forging and the constant attention from the now risen sun, the bronze was downright sizzling. The furs underneath had the benefit of being in contact with his skin and, well, he was rather sweaty. The furs outside of the armor did not have that luxury.

That was how he, once again, managed to burn his favorite fur clothes. After that, he decided to go sit in the creek for a little bit before going back to his cave and passing out.

He’d need to make some new fur clothes and go visit the townspeople, but that was a problem for future Chef. Just like how his armor was completely untempered and poorly quenched. Future Chef really got the short end of the stick.

But that would come later. For now, Chef got to enjoy a wonderful dream filled with pastries and cheese.