An hour and a half later, Lawrence found himself ready to give Forge Craft Online another try.

He finished up his juicy McNannigan (Naturally processed fruit juice!), dumped the can in the trash and went back to his throne in the studio. The chair he found as comfortable as ever, and now that he was rested it made him feel relaxed. He left the fox-themed mules on the ground and crossed his feet on the chair, taking out his printed shirt (Fluff is POWER, Fluff is LOVE) and throwing it away. After psyching himself up, he pressed the unpause button again.

"Where was I now?"

Oh right, the part where he had to craft a sword. He had already gathered the necessary materials hadn't he? Indeed, he was. Brandall was about to tell him what to do next.

"That's a good choice of materials" he said as he looked at Allen's hands. Lawrence felt grateful for the complement, even if it was pre-programmed to do so. "The next thing you have to do is preparing the core of the sword" he pointed at a special press mounted in a wall. "You want to heat it up first, so you can work on it. When the bar looks bright orange, take it out and use the press to harden it. You can use the extra clamps to shape the core however you want, remember though, you're working with metal. You don't want to twist it up too much unless you want it to snap."

Lawrence moved Allen through the workshop and to the furnace, and took a moment to take a good look at it. it was a giant bronze dome, stuffed in the wall with a pipe venting all the smoke through the chimney. There were two cavities on it: one for the fuel (coal) and the other to heat up the metal. Making one of the blacksmith pliers leaned against it, Allen stuffed the rod inside the furnace.

A box popped up, asking the temperature he wanted to heat the core with.

"Wait, I have to do this too?"

He pondered. He hadn't used a forge before. Of course he hadn't! He lived in the twenty-one century. Why would he bother to learn how to use one?

"Let's hope you can change the temperature" he said as he typed a neat 200 degrees in the box...

The rod turned red. Not yet.

"Let's try out four hundred degrees then" he typed that and the rod turned... blue.

"Oops" he erased it and typed 350 next. Alright, pale green. That was better.

"What about 300?" Dark orange. Almost there, 305, 310... He stopped at 315 when the wannabe sword's core acquired a decent incandescent orange tonality.

Allen then took the thing out of the furnace and stuffed it on the press, using a crank to clamp it on its place. A new box popped up, this time asking to draw the shape of the clamps he wanted to shape the core with.

Stolen story; please report.

To tell the truth, Lawrence knew what he wanted from the beginning. A nice S-shaped blade. And so he let know to the computer.

After the pressing process was over, Allen quickly sunk the rod in the smithy's water deposit, hardening it with the quick cooled technique. Or however it was called. All he knew is that the smiths in the real world did that to strengthen the material.

"Good. Now let's move on to the next step. Pick one of the molds here" Brandall pointed out one of the trays in a table, stuffed with molds of all sizes and shapes. It was around the time when yet another box popped up.

"Let's see..."

It read something along the lines of 'design the shape of your blade'.

"Oh, this looks like a fun part."

The game mechanics on this part were complex. You had to draw the desired shape. Several factors were taken into consideration, including the core's shape, the chosen metal's amount, density and properties, forging skill, and so on. It took an hour to figure out how to use these drawing tools. The amount of design freedom they offered was only equaled by the difficulty one had to go through to learn to use them. However, after he was done with it, Lawrence felt very pleased with his newest creation. Or, at the very least, his newest creation's blade mold. As previously stated, it was S-shaped, with the blade slightly thinner than the back, and an arrow-shaped tip that leaned on the back. Not a mastercraft, but he was highly pleased with it.

"You've got it sorted out?" Brandall asked. Allen nodded. "Neat. Now come here." He led Lawrence's avatar to the next working station, one looking slightly like the furnace. The main difference relayed in that there was a third cavity in the top, and a half-pipe trailing down the furnace part. The pipe ended in a workbench with a fixed vice.

"This is the smelter. Here, clamp the cast to the vice." Allen put the mold Lawrence had designed in the work bench. "The next step is easy: you put the soft metal on that hole up, and let it flow to the cast down that pipe. You might want to put the the other half of the cast first."

Oh, Lawrence had forgotten about that! Of course. He made Allen go back to the mold tray, and threw the sylphstone chunk down the smelter.

"Right. Now put the sword's core in that tiny hole between the casts, and tuck the handle in. We're doing this for practice, so take this pre-made handle" Brandall handed him a steel handle with strapped leather. Allen used a hammer to make it fit in the core, then used a couple of leather straps to tight it up. "Wait for it to settle, take it out and put it in that machine over there" he pointed a device too complicated for Lawrence to describe.

Allen did as told, and opened the casts. He took the almost-sword by the handle: It looked just as Lawrence wanted it to, just that the blade didn't have a defined back. He clammed the sword onto the new machine, leaving just the handle out.

"What this does is simple" Brandall hit the machine friendly a couple of times. "The settler reheats the back of the sword and fuses it with the red-hot sturdy material, in this case your chunk of helgun. When the process is done you've gotten yourself a neat sword."

Lawrence stared at his now completed sword through the screen of his computer.

Forge Craft Online was definitively the best game he ever played~

"Chief!" Mika kicked the door open, startling Lawrence to near-death. "There's someone on the door! He say's he wants to see you!"

"Tell him my schedule is currently too tight to fit him in, and book an appointment for~!"

"He says he's your brother!"

Lawrence stopped cold on his tracks processing Mika's words. Slowly, carefully, he turned to see her. She signaled the direction in which the front door was located.

Why was him here? What made him suddenly decide to pay him a visit?

"Open up, beansprout!" a manly voice was heard from outside the house. "Big bro's here to see you!"

"Laurent?"

Well, he'd find out pretty soon.