“I preferred it when you were quieter.”
Orilay’s mild reproof scolded me for my poor sense of timing, and I could consider myself lucky it was just that. Keelhauling was a possibility for repeating unlucky nursery rhymes when working for sixteenth century sailors back on earth. Hopefully they didn’t have something equally unpleasant there.
“Sorry.”
Even from two hundred meters away, I felt intimidated by the direwolves’ superior size. Larger than draft horses, the height of the palisade wall wouldn’t stop them from easily jumping over it. Orilay turned around and waved his arms to the people in the camp below. When they caught sight of him, they at once stopped whatever they were doing and grabbed their weapons. Although Orilay made no audible signal, the entire camp noticed the change in atmosphere and quietly responded as one. It impressed me no ends on the lack of shouting or barking of commands which told of their ability to coordinate as a team. Soon a standoff of wills ensued; men standing on the battlements with bows ready versus direwolves and riders. The monsters knew they were out of the reach of arrows and so stood, unmoving and watching, as if testing the men’s resolve. For what seemed like an eternity, they turned and noiselessly melted back into the forest. Orilay sighed in relief.
“You’d better get some rest while you can. That was a scouting team and no doubt they’ll be reporting our existence if they weren’t already aware of us.”
I had no doubt we would see more of them in the future. Anticipating some trouble with the monsters, that morning our team placed large piles of wood in no-man’s land between the walls and the forest within arrow shot. The purpose became clear as that evening some men shot fire-arrows into the wood piles lighting them up like bonfires which burned for most of the night until first light the next morning. There were no later attacks that night, but our ongoing operations went through some significant changes announced by the foreman in a big open air meeting the following morning.
“Okay settle down men. Thankfully, last night we didn’t have any interactions with the monsters, and we’ll go with the thought that we’re just too much trouble for them to deal with for now. So hopefully they’ll just leave us alone. Having said that, we’re going to start working later in the mornings and stay within quick reach of the camp. No one will go deeper into the forest unless instructed to by me. Two teams will enter the forest; the first team will cut down the hardwoods deeper in and with our horse team drag the timber to a second camp set up by Orilay, the second team will the wood here for processing.”
There was some discussion between the men as they guessed who would be in which team.
“Okay you have your instructions, as usual, find Orilay and he will tell you what teams you will be in.”
Since I wasn’t in one of the external parties, I continued to work with Grenfell. At the workshop he asked me to help him start a large furnace fire before he sat down to talk with me.
“Shane, you know as well as I do that these men stand no chance against monsters like direwolves. But that doesn’t mean we need to just sit here and do nothing about it. I’ve mentioned to you before that I’m a weapon smith and I can help make these men something far better than just swords and arrows.”
He must have seen the confusion on my face because I felt as if I didn’t know where he was going with that speech.
“These men are better off armed with spears that can help distance themselves from an enemy while presenting the greatest threat to a monster. Although axes can be useful in close combat, most of these woodcutters have never raised an axe in anger against a monster. With a monster presenting itself as a target, the woodcutters might be able to deal substantial damage, given enough time. But a direwolf is far too fast and strong for any of these men armed with an axe, sword, or bow. We need to focus on making spears.”
It was a logical proposal from someone who experienced battle before. Spearpoints required far less metal than swords and could fit on any sized wooden pole, an abundantly available resource. The question was where to find the iron and how to make them fast enough. As if sensing my question, Grenfell pre-empted me.
“I have enough iron and bronze from old horseshoes and axes to make each man a spear, but I can only make a maximum of four spearheads a day. The issue is forging them fast enough. I’m only one person and this is where you come in.”
I had a feeling of what was coming next.
“With your skill you can easily transmutate the metal into the required shape.”
“Yes, I can. But you saw what happened after I tried to transmutate just one knife.”
He smiled, no doubt he already expected my complaint.
“Your problem is spending too much energy bringing the metal up to temperature and keeping it there to transmutate the metal.”
I nodded because that was the basics of it.
“What if we worked a little more efficiently?”
Efficiency, there was a word I desperately needed. He suggested firing irons in the furnace to a maximum temperature where they glowed red hot, and then I could start working with it. After a minute of transmutation, we would return the iron to the furnace to bring it back to temperature. That way I could focus energy on the transmutation and not on keeping the material red hot. If we could keep ten irons in the furnace, Grenfell would bring them out one by one on a rotational basis which meant we could maximise the efficiency of my skill. It was an eureka moment for me.
“Uh, Grenfell. As much as I appreciate being able to help you in this way. You did mention to preferably be quiet about these skills, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then wouldn’t it be better if we worked somewhere less visible to the outside world?”
“Yes, yes. Sorry I’m a little bit clumsy when it comes to issues like that. I have an inner partition I put up in times of poor weather, it should suffice for keeping you hidden from all but the most determined eyes.”
Since they placed the blacksmith workshop on the opposite camp wall to the gate, not a lot of traffic came past. The placement happened with purpose because we probably generated the loudest noise and hence placed furthest away from the living and general quarters.
Transmuting the first hot iron I abandoned as an initial failure. Grenfell, not phased in the least, asked me to explain my transmutation process to him.
“When I start the transmutation process on my own, I control what happens when and where. When the metal is already hot, it’s like trying to control a wild horse. The metal wants to do whatever it wants, and I feel like I’m lost in a forest spending too much energy figuring out where to go.”
Grenfell paused to think for a moment then answered me using my terms as reference.
“So, let me get this right. If you knew where in the forest you were at a given time, you would know where to go and what to do, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then first we need to place the metal piece on an anvil that suits the size and shape of the spearhead. That will allow you to sense the boundaries of the spearhead when I put the hot iron down on it.”
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Well, that made sense because when the iron was hot, I couldn’t touch it with my hand to do the transmutation. Instead, I had to touch the colder anvil and sense the hot iron through that, which meant I had a reference.
“Secondly, I’ll use the hammer to hit to the iron starting from the base and heading to the tip. Hopefully, you can sense the direction of the hit and head in that direction?”
It was best to experiment a bit first on much smaller pieces of iron. I found the massive metallic clanging going off near my ear every time Grenfell hit the metal on the anvil, caused my nerves to become frayed so that I couldn’t focus anymore. Once I found a way to plug my ears to muffle the sound, it became easier for me to focus. Closing my eyes, I sensed the hammer’s vibration through the anvil, imaging the direction of the hammer’s compression wave in my mind as it travelled through the metallic mediums
I watched the behaviour of the metallic molecules the instant when the hammer hit the metal. All the molecules temporarily aligned under the compression wave front to the direction of the wave. A fraction of time, when the wave passed, the molecules reacted as if they were in freefall and behaved chaotically. At that specific moment, the molecules were amazingly plastic and easily aligned to my will. When I held the molecules in place as the compression wave passed, the alignment of the molecules set as if in concrete, and only a large application of EE could change it then. But by that time, I achieved what I set out to do.
From Grenfell’s perspective it seemed as if his hammering produced a weird flattening effect on the metal, downstream of where he was hitting. The efficiency gained on my use of EE was immense. The only physical limit to the number of spearheads was Grenfell’s physical prowess. He needed to take more than a few breaks to recover his stamina but even then, he looked amazingly fit for his age, testament to a life’s career of hammering metal.
Eventually I found that by working closer to the area where the hammer hit the metal, the more efficient the use of EE and wider the area I could affect. By the time I was ready for a break, we completed ten spearheads within a couple of hours. My ethereal energy dropped too low for me to continue without risking another blackout. When I checked, something about the EE figure had changed. My EE level now showed, 153/1080. That meant the total base value of 1050 increased by thirty points to 1080. That then confirmed that practicing a skill automatically increased the maximum EE value. I still wasn’t sure if the level of difficulty affected the rate of improvement. I decided to try an experiment. With Grenfell’s permission, I took a small leftover piece of metal and whenever I was sitting idle, I would hold it tight in my hand and slowly manipulate the metal into a sphere without making it hotter than my hand could handle. By constantly practicing that, I wanted to keep increasing my EE level and skills abilities.
By evening I had created fifteen spears, far more than I expected. Grenfell managed to physically manufacture another three on his own. Luckily, there was no expectation for me to perform guard duty that night and I was so tired that I fell into a deep sleep as soon as I lay on my bed. I awoke about three in the dark morning, just staring up at some of the flying insects buzzing around on the canvas tent.
My thoughts mindlessly fell onto the three nondescript rings on my chain, the ones next to the now empty pendant. Since the pendant turned out to be a special item, I wondered if there was any significance to the rings.
“Appraise.”
I didn’t need to say the word appraise, but it helped me focus a bit better. I appraised each ring in turn, and what information was shown to me fascinated me.
Item Name: ?
Class: Skill Ring
Material: Gold 30%, Silver 30%, ?? 40%
EE: 9/150
Attribute: Gas Manipulation Skill
Cost: 15 Large Gold
Item Name: ?
Class: Skill Ring
Material: Gold 30%, Silver 30%, ?? 40%
EE: 5/150
Attribute: Liquid Manipulation Skill
Cost: 15 Large Gold
Item Name: ?
Class: Skill Ring
Material: Gold 30%, Silver 30%, ?? 40%
EE: 7/150
Attribute: Solid Manipulation Skill
Cost: 15 Large Gold
Freaking heck, I realised now by the camp supervisor had such a pained look on his face when he handed the rings over to me. Combined, the rings were over forty-five large gold coins!
An idea occurred to me. I appraised the first knife I made.
Item Name Nemesis.
Class Hunting Knife.
Blade Orichalcum 10%, Iron 88%, Ethereal Metal 2%.
Handle Ivory (Ogre-Tooth), Iron.
EE 100/100.
Strength 150/150.
Attribute None.
Cost 100 Silvers.
I thought as much. Was it the ethereal metal content in the knife which meant I could easily transmutate the knife? I would ask Grenfell more about the strange metal. Returning my thoughts to the rings, I realised each ring’s name held a natural state of existence.
I read enough web novels in the past to know about those skills.
Confused for a moment, I thought those skills didn't sound like the usual fantasy story where earth skill created a rock in the middle of the air or water appeared out of nowhere with a simple command, these skills sounded awfully scientific like.
Yeah, I got the sinking feeling that keeping things simple would be the best way forward for me. After my pendant incident I knew better than to just jump in and blow myself up doing something stupid again.
Come to think of it, some mechanical principles were easy to replicate with skills. A projectile launched from a metal tube only required a significant high pressure behind it to launch it forward. The tube controlled the direction so there was no need to worry about it, and what you had was a simple, but effective, airgun. After I considered it from that perspective, skills seemed a little easier to use.
After hearing that, a world of possibilities opened up before me. Just think about it, with skill transfer ability I could take any of my skills and give them to somebody else, purely by attaching that skill has an attribute on a ring or any other objects that matter. The possibilities were scary because I could also absorb those attributes as my own skills.
Oh my gosh, was all that I could think. I just created two by just doing everyday tasks, what if I tried to do something on purpose just to create a skill? Flashes of memories from anime I watched on earth came flooding into my brain. Everything I had seen was a distinct possibility in that world. I'd have to give it some serious thought as to what skills I would like to create. I wanted to create something like a flashlight, with a practical application.
I appraised myself again. The transmutation and appraisal skills I seemed to have learned on the fly when I first started working with the metal axes and knives. It came naturally to me and I didn’t give it any thought at the time. It wasn’t as if I was trying to learn how to transmute and appraise, I just applied the skills as naturally as drinking water or breathing air.
There was another skill I gained somehow. I hadn’t paid it much attention since I first noticed it listed healing, but just how did I manage that?