The mood of Vugh Tarim's inhabitants was murderous. The instigators invested heavily in propaganda and their agents moved among their fellow dwarves spreading their vitriol. At the rate things were going, the dwarves wouldn't just secede but attempt to invade Windemere too.
I had to act. I had Alfondric's soul but the dwarven patriarch would not be enough. What could I do to finish this with the least amount of bloodshed? Assassinate the leaders before they staged their coup? They would be quickly replaced by someone else. All this pressure needed a vent to escape before it blew up.
If I wanted the dwarves to stay as part of Windemere, they needed a lesson. I could force it down their throats and earn their grudge, or let them taste their own poison. Let them stage their coup and then taste the drawbacks that came with it. Once they saw it wouldn't be all flowers and rivers of gold, they would recognize the error of their ways.
Or not, and then the rivers of gold would prove to be rivers of blood. Either way, I needed to wait. Bide my time. And spend some quality time with my father.
----------------------------------------
Headmaster Marlowe gave student Haru two weeks of leave to calm my nerves from almost being killed to summon demons. I spent two days helping Helger and Baritono set up and operate their joint smithy in the thirty-seventh layer of the dwarven hold. The stout fellows dug deep in all these centuries. I hoped they didn't awake an ancient evil of fire and doom that required some wizened old wizard to defeat.
Just kidding, there wasn't such a thing nearby. Tuisto's valley nearby guaranteed that these mountains around it were peaceful.
After they were satisfied with my grunt job and work discipline, I was allowed to borrow a hands-me-down anvil from the masters. To a dwarf, their anvil was more personal than their sex life. I checked my item box and I had enough anvils to run a few seasons of Looney Tunes cartoons without repeating them. But I decided to refrain from abusing the item box this life. The ease with which I killed Mirina and my mental excuses were frightening enough now that I reflected on them. I was slipping and turning into something inhuman.
I needed to become Clark Kent, not Bruce Wayne. They both have a civilian and a superhero persona, but the former has the superhero as the alter-ego, while the latter uses its civilian identity as little more than a cover. Just think of it. We know a lot about Clark Kent. What he likes, who he was growing up, his values, and his personality. Bruce Wayne is just a playboy billionaire, and each reboot twists his in-between years as they see fit. It's usually shown in three steps. The Alley murder, Finding the Cave, and then there's adult Batman camping on the gargoyle-infested city. Alfred Pennyworth is more well-rounded than the main character out of his costume.
Enough of that. I had to pay attention to my smithing instruction.
"Here's the ingot you'll be using today, Haru. You'll heat it up, hammer it down to lengthen it, heat it up, fold, heat, hammer again, heat, fold, hammer, heat. Until you can't lift your hammer anymore, you'll hit this ingot like it's a goblin's skull. If it breaks, you'll smelt it, cast, then do it all over again," Helger told me and gave me a wrought iron ingot.
"The trick here is your mindset, Haru. There are several Proficiencies to choose from when you're a smith. You have [Blacksmith], [Weaponsmith], [Armorsmith], and [Metalsmith]. Do you know the difference between them?" Baritono asked.
I nodded. "Yes. it has to do with specialization. [Blacksmith] probably works only with iron and steel. A [Weaponsmith] makes better weapons, same for the [Armorsmith], while the [Metalsmith] seems the most generalist of them all."
"Yes. The System will only let you have one of them as they are too closely related," he continued. "You should keep your mindset fixed on the one you want, otherwise you might lose some progress when you finally assign a proficiency pick to the one you want."
"[Metalsmith] it is. Let's get hammered, I say."
My dwarven joke didn't translate very well.
----------------------------------------
Physical exhaustion was strangely handled by the System. The body would get tired, and if you kept working, you'd take damage and reduced Attribute values. But if you could recover from the damage, one could keep going as the System interpreted healing this damage as removing the exhaustion. I think there was a Stamina or something like that pool that was removed and badly patched.
When Helger came back to check on me, my ingot was half the original size and I kept hammering with the same enthusiasm as when I started.
"Haru, where's the rest of the ingot? Did you cut it in half?"
I hammered and pointed to a crucible next to the anvil. All the slag and metal burr from the ingot was in there. I also cut some steps from the heating procedure as I could just shove my hand in the forge to put and retrieve the ingot. The tongs went unused but for holding the ingot in place. My squishy meat fingers were a bad choice to do that because I couldn't exert the right amount of pressure.
I also used the [Baker]'s {Temperature Gauge} and [Alchemist]'s {Recycle Leftovers} to cheat a little bit. Such was the power of interdisciplinarity.
"You already hammered this much?"
The glow of the metal dimmed and I put it back in the forge. While it heated up, I collected the burrs and put them in the crucible. Only when my workspace was impeccable I addressed him.
"This is the 67th time I'm reheating the ingot. I think I'm smelting it all by the 80th."
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Let me guess," my father sighed. "You're immune to fire, right?"
"Fire heals me."
He cursed then asked, "Did you earn any proficiency?"
"Twelve points."
"Faster growth?"
"Almost three times."
"I'd be surprised if you gained two points. But you are working twice as fast as the fastest dwarf ever on their first day. So it adds to what it should be."
I bowed, "Thank you, master."
"Now you'll craft a dagger. I'll make one, to show you how to do, then it's your turn."
----------------------------------------
We worked at the underground smithy for another two days, then went even deeper in the bowels of the world to find some ore. Baritono's specialty was mining and prospecting so Helger and I were following him and I did the best to learn all I could. The caverns we delved through were almost free of monsters, the underground Dungeon didn't extend around or near Tuisto's valley.
"Ah, This way," he led us down a natural cave.
Down we went for half an hour. Then he pointed at the cave wall. "Here! Let's dig!"
The two male dwarves and I hacked away at the wall with our picks. With enhanced tools and System-empowered Attributes, things were sort of cartoonish. I also used the item box to reduce the amount of debris but not clean it all entirely. We found a silver vein and mined it in a few hours.
"Damn, I was so sure," Baritono, the master [Miner], cursed.
"Master, what are you looking for?" I asked.
"Truesilver! I can swear that ever since we entered this cave I'm smelling truesilver!"
Damn it.
"Truesilver?"
"Yes, it is a type of magic-imbued silver that is absolutely pure. You don't even smelt it, and truesilver doesn't tarnish," Helger explained while Baritono lamented and sniffed at the cave air.
I told Helger.
"Aye," he nodded at me then flagged Baritono. "Hey, if dwarves found that their mom was made of truesilver, what would they do to her, Baritono?"
The [Miner] laughed but didn't hesitate to answer, "Toss'er in the forge and smelt'er!"
"Yer wife!" He continued.
"Smelt the old and get a younger one!"
They chortled together. Helger looked at me and winked. I had no doubt they would do exactly that. Not that I would smelt or even burn. And maybe the fact he knew that was what saved me from being tossed in the forge and smelted right away.
Scary.
----------------------------------------
After three days of mining, the two dwarves' storage rings were full. Their crappy storage rings. I had to offer Helger an upgrade. I had tons of ore in my item box, the stuff they left behind to favor more valuable ores. During our trip, I used some personal time to go through the rock and strike at some veins Baritono deemed unworthy of the effort. All in all, it was a very profitable trip.
Back at our underground smithy, Baritono started to teach me how to prepare the ore for smelting. We needed to crush the ore and separate the pieces by their density, to smelt them separately. The lighter sand and silt were okay to discard as it was only silicates, any metal would be too heavy to stay with them.
There was an alchemical oil that helped with this separation process. By adjusting its density, you could select what would float on the oil or not.
"Alchemical oil, interesting," I said and sipped the thing. I got a notification telling me I'd learned how to craft it.
"Are you crazy, girl?" Baritono scolded me.
"Probably yes. There's no alcohol in this," I spat. "Worst booze ever."
We three laughed and Baritono got me some good brandy to wash my mouth with.
With the ores preprocessed, it was time to smelt. It was best to have a crucible for each ore type, to avoid adding many impurities. Then add the flux, skimming the slag, and making sure the metal came out as pure as possible. He even explained to me how to separate the most common metals. My [Miner] proficiency went up from zero all the way up to thirty-two but they told me to hold back on selecting an Ability yet.
While the two elders snored, I trained [Enchanter]. I was so close to that magical 400 that I could taste it. I crafted more mid-high grade storage rings with dragon scale fragments as the foci.
Four days of smelting and forging saw my proficiencies jump to thirty-seven in [Mining] and thirty-one in [MetalSmith]. We would plan to spend the whole week processing the ore but Baritono wanted to give the truesilver another shot.
Down we went, under the breach once more.
----------------------------------------
Now that I wasn't trying to follow what Baritono was doing so closely and put a spell around me to stop me from smelling like Truesilver, I noticed we were in the underground Dungeon, but it was devoid of the ominous aura the Dungeon normally had. There was no soul fragment soup floating inside the tunnels, gathering magical energy to spawn monsters. It was just a normal tunnel but I believed that if we wandered too far away from Tuisto's valley we would start seeing monsters.
I knew we were going the wrong way when [Cartographer]'s {Map Dungeon} triggered. I still didn't see soul fragments but the energy of the Dungeon was already soaking in the tunnel.
"Let's go back. The Dungeon is that way. We are too far from home," I warned.
"Truesilver! It awaits us!" Baritono shouted, completely out of himself. "I can sense it deep underneath us."
Detecting minerals could be done through several proficiencies. I, a [Cartographer], could {Survey} an area, finding ores in a wide area but it took a whole day to complete as I had to go around the target area gathering evidence and scanning the magical resonance of the minerals. A [Surveyor] had the same Ability, but he could enhance it with other abilities, to reduce the time, increase the area, get better yield, etc. And a [Miner] could find ores instantly but with a shorter range. It was the same {Sense Mineral Vein} I could use but again, enhanced.
Maybe going to the Dungeon was a good thing. I could use some levels, and I still had to find a suitable soul for my plan. The Headmaster was close, only two levels short of what I needed. Two hundred trillion base Exp worth of monsters would fix that but it was too much. It would be easier to dive deeper and get a soul to downgrade to the level I needed.
For truesilver, we delved. I saw the soul fragments minutes before the first monster pack.
> Level 135 Scythe-tentacle fleshsucker leech
>
> HP ~2,000,000
It was as the name said. Two meter long leeches with their slimy bodies, a toothy maw with circular rows of sharp enamel triangles, and two tentacles that ended in bony scythes also two meters long.
"Curses!" Baritono shouted. The blind monsters homed in on his voice.
The two dwarven civilians were underprepared for this monster pack. I had to act and didn't hesitate. I revealed another tail, the Force one as I dashed past the two dwarves and threw a {Force Wall} sealing them behind me.
> Equal Exp Split
>
> Wail of the Banshee
>
> Scythe-tentacle fleshsucker leech is stunned for 3.4 seconds.
>
> Scythe-tentacle fleshsucker leech is stunned for 2.7 seconds.
>
> Scythe-tentacle fleshsucker leech is stunned for 3.1 seconds.
>
> Scythe-tentacle fleshsucker leech is stunned for 2.4 seconds.
"Overcharge Magic! Force Javelin Volley!"
The flimsy leeches exploded in a shower of green goo as the overcharged javelins punctured with the speed of bullets. Their bodies vanished into the item box, leaving only the goo behind.
> For killing level 135 Scythe-tentacle fleshsucker leech (x4) you gained 1.7B Exp (base 1,390,457 x625 fast-learner x0.5 share)
I dropped the barrier
"Eight million Exp?" Helger gasped.
"What the hell are they teaching children at the Academy these days?" Baritono mused.
Baritono found a few grams of truesilver in a small vein a few meters after the leeches. With our priceless treasure secured, we went back to Vugh Tarim.