Yesterday, I forged something for the first time, and was so exhausted afterwards that I fell asleep right after dinner. But today is a new day, and I'm as energetic as ever. I finish my daily chores and rush to the smithy for the lessons Darius is giving me today, only to be stopped at the door by him.
"Alright Amara, I happened to get a chance to talk to Jasmine this morning, and surprisingly quickly, she agreed to teach you how to use your fire magic. You'll be doing that after dinner every night, where you'd usually have end of day lessons with me. Make sure your blacksmithing work doesn't suffer as a result. Now, let's get to work in the forge." Mr. Darius was rushing me into the forge to do my work for the day.
He showed me how to make steel last night, and now it's time for me to try my hand at it. I follow what I remember him doing, and start heating the crucible full of material. After a while, everything is molten and I pour it into an ingot cast, letting it cool. We won't be able to test it until it has, so we move onto my next lesson.
"Next up after steel, I'm gonna have you make a basic kitchen knife. A good one will last years, but yours probably won't be at that level right off the bat. This is the first time you'll work with a material other than metal in conjunction with the metal in the item, so this is probably going to be your only new lesson for today. Lets get started, this time is steel, the stuff I made last night should be perfect. First we shape it into the blade and tang, then we cut it off at the right length, then, while it's cooling, we work on the handle. Most people will go with wood for the handle on a kitchen knife, so that's what I'm gonna teach you today. After that, we sharpen the actual blade. Follow along, and you'll be doing this yourself later." Mr. Darius got to work making the example knife for me, and I watched intently.
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About an hour has passed, so I'm working on my own knife now, doing everything as I watched. Everything seems to be going well, up until I start making the handle. The wood keeps splitting when I try to put it on the tang, so I take a while to figure out what I was doing wrong. After that, once I'm back to working with metal, everything goes smoothly again. The blade is sharpened to a razor's edge, and the metal is polished like a mirror. I'm proud of what I've made, and from what I can see, Mr. Darius is as well.
Surprisingly, a window popped up after I finished the blade.
Created Item: Kitchen Knife (common) x1
Exp +5
Stolen story; please report.
"You've done well for your first blade, Amara. Now we test it out a bit." Mr. Darius then uses the knife to cut a bunch of stuff, seeing the knife works well on most materials meant to be cut, Mr. Darius and I smile. "Incredibly sharp for your first time. I believe this deserves a reward. From now on, your work is going to be more intense, congratulations."
I sneer at him jokingly, and stick my tongue out. More hands on training is always a good thing. "Well, now that that's done, is it time for magic training?"
"It is about that time. Head home and eat, then meet Jasmine on the east training field." Mr. Darius directs me where I need to go later.
"alright, I'll see you later then Master, have a nice night." I wave back as I leave the smithy.
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"Mama, Papa, I'm starting to learn magic tonight. Ms. Jasmine is teaching me how to use my fire, so I might be a bit late tonight."
"Well, this is surprising. I can't believe Jasmine is actually taking on a student in magic. Last I heard, she'd sworn off teaching after her last student burned themselves too badly." Papa looked serious.
"It is our Amara we're talking about though dear, so I can see why she'd be willing to do so. And this is wonderful news as well. Learning magic is usually a huge deal in the bigger cities. You learning would be a big boost to your reputation outside of your crafting. Congrats on that, sweetie." Mama looked happy for me, as usual these days.
"Alright, let's eat now, I have to go to the training field afterwards to start learning. I can't wait!" I sat at the table after setting it, waiting for the rest of dinner to be put down.
After dinner, I rushed to the field and started looking for Jasmine. She was taller, so I expected not to have trouble with it. I was wrong. It seems like she didn't expect me so soon, so I waited there for around 30 minutes, finally meeting her as she walked into the area.
She was very pretty, but that didn't discourage me from doing what I had to and ending the staring contest we were having. I ran over right away and bowed to her, showing my respect to my newest teacher.
"It's a pleasure to meet you Ms. Jasmine. I hope I meet all your expectations of my skills." I was understandably nervous in front of this woman.
"I've heard a lot about you from a lot of people, little Amara. I also hope you don't let me down. So first thing's first, what do you know about mana and magic?" Ms. Jasmine had a beautiful, melodic voice that put me in a bit of a trance.
I snapped out of it fairly quickly, noting that I needed to keep a look out for pretty girls in the future to keep myself from making a fool of myself.
"Of course, Ms. Jasmine. I'll do my very best to explain what I know. First off, mana is in the air all around us. Second, magic is what happens when we are able to use the system to make things happen using mana." I was eager to impress.
"Correct, but there's more to it than that, which is what I'll be starting with." Ms. Jasmine pulled a chair out of nowhere and sat in it. "This may be a long conversation, so get comfortable, little one."
And I sat down, ready for a lecture.