Chapter 2

They stayed in the church for a while, with Frankie answering all of Relic's questions and within a few hours of Relic agreeing to be Frankie’s partner the monster attack ended and Frankie took Relic to the job he had promised. Relic was going to be the apprentice of a blacksmith called Rex.

At first Relic couldn’t wait to work for the blacksmith, but then he started learning all of the conditions. Apparently he only got paid 50 coppers a day and wasn’t even allowed to learn blacksmithing until he got his repair skill to intermediate. He sat their, tempted, thinking that maybe it would be better to just go off on his own and see what his luck could get him. But, before he made a final decision, Frankie had already led him to the blacksmiths and started introducing him.

“Relic this is Rex. You will be working for him 8 hours a day for the next month so I hope you like him.”

“ Rex this is Relic the apprentice I promised you. I hope we can get along now.”

“I’m the apprentice you promised him?”

“I thought you said you were going to bring me someone who was promising. He looks like he hasn’t had to work his entire life.”

“ Of course he is promising you wont find another apprentice this excited about his job in the entire city.”

“Well… he better be. Lets go”

“Ok well then Relic I’ll be back to show you around the city in a few days, that should be enough for you to get accustomed to the job.”

After that strange introduction Relic was led into the Forge. It was darker inside but still far brighter than Relic expected. Some of the light came from the open door but most was from the forges. There were two forges both spilling out the orange light that filled the room. Next he tools, all in a rack on the wall, well polished with a dull gleam glinting off of everyone. Something caught his attention again; it was a few stacks of ingots that seemed as if they were rising out of the packed dirt floor. He was about to go try and figure out what some of the stranger tools were, when Rex interrupted his train of thought.

“17, the first thing you need to know about being my apprentice is that I expect a clean workplace. If I ever see it any way other than it is right now, then you had better hope that shoveling charcoal for the rest of your apprentice ship is to your liking.”

“Yes, sir”

“Ok then 17, might as well get started now”

“Umm sir. Why are you calling me 17?”

“ It’s too annoying to learn each apprentices name so I just call them by their number.”

“So I’m your seventeenth apprentice?”

“ No, no I start over every time I reach 100”

“ You’ve had that many apprentices!?”

“ Yep all the ones without promise always run, in fact Frankie was like that to. Once you sign up the only way to quit is to bring someone who looks like they have more potential than you. I figure that if I keep that up for long enough I’ll eventually end up with a good apprentice.”

“What happens if they just run away?”

“ If you run away without bringing another apprentice that I approve of then no smith in all of Kallomore will sell to you. So if you run you better be good enough to make all your own gear”

After this frightening conversation Relic and Rex began work. The first thing Rex did was teach Relic the identify skill saying.

“Anyone who can’t tell what he is working with might as well stick his hands in the forge now since it would happen anyway if he doesn’t know what he is working with”

Next Rex taught Relic the repair skill saying.

“ If your not able to keep a weapon in top shape then don’t even think about blacksmithing, you shouldn’t even be using a weapon at all.”

With this, Rex began blacksmithing while Relic did the menial duties. His main job was repairing beginners weapons, fixing a handful every time he got back up to full mana. Other than this, he simply did what Rex said. He lugged around Ingots, back bent, struggling to walk despite the deceptively small bars. Every time a customer tracked in mud he cleaned the floors, grumbling, and cursing to himself all the while. This went on for two days until the first time he got to help Rex smith

“17! Get in here. We have a special order. I’m going to need you to work the bellows and shovel the coal.”

“How much should I put in?”

“Fill it as halfway for now.”

While Relic was busy filling the forge Rex went to a shed out back and came back with a few Ingots. Then he went back out and came in with a few more, and then some more until there were nearly 100 Ingots sitting in front of the forge. Looking at the pile he didn’t see any metal he recognized. The largest pile of Ingots was silvery blue, the next largest was a deep red almost like blood. After that, there was only one ingot left, but it was what caught his attention the most. It was only a single Ingot that was, at first glance, midnight black. But as he continued to look, it seemed as if the colors in the ingot were ever changing. The main color of the bar was always still black, but within it he saw blues, and reds, even yellows and he was never able to tell when it changed. He wanted to continue observing it but he knew that if he didn’t get started then Rex would have him clean for the rest of the month.

He had just got the forge half full when Rex started yelling instructions

“ Get on the bellows and keep pumping until the metal turns cherry red. After that, pump whenever it looks like it’s cooling down”

“Yes sir”

And so that’s what he did. First Rex placed some of the silvery blue ingots on the forge. Once Relic had turned them a nice cherry red He started to beat them out. At first Relic had no idea what Rex was making, but slowly as the day went by he understand. At first he just flattened out a lot of the metal, but that was just the preparations. Relic soon realized that now, the real work was going to begin. First Rex fashioned boots. He made them entirely of the silvery blue metal other than the blood red spike he put on the toe. Next he mixed together strips of the silvery blue metal and the blood red metal before folding them. He folded them hundreds, maybe even thousands of times before turning them into Boots, greaves, and the thigh guards. Relic kept pumping waiting for Rex to throw the next ingot on the forge, but soon he realized Rex had stopped.

“ It’s time to stop for today. If we keep going we will make mistakes, and that’s something you can’t have while making armor.”

“Already? We have only made a few pieces.”

“And just those pieces took us nearly ten hours.”

“That was ten hours?”

“Yep. I’m surprised you didn’t drop dead halfway through. All the other Freedmen that I took as apprentices couldn’t even handle forging for 5 hours. Weaklings the lots of um.”

After this Rex and Relic stopped and had dinner. They had simply roast beef sandwiches on rye with some dark beer for the drink. They had just finished eating, when Frankie showed up. Frankie walked in and announced he had come to pick up Relic, before being tossed, sliding along the cobblestone on his face, and told to come back in around a week when this project was done with.

After that Relic repaired all the weapons that were brought in, cleaned up the worst of the mess, and went to sleep.

The next day was spent on gauntlets and vambraces. Rex woke him up at dawn and they got working. The gauntlets were what they were making next. Relic spent a half hour stoking the forge and then began pumping. Once the forge was hot Rex placed the silvery blue metal on it. This time Rex waited till it was white hot before starting to model it to his liking. He took tiny sections of the metal and set each of them into a tiny plate. After making hundreds of the tiny plates he started to put them together. He layered them, one by one, as careful as a surgeon replacing a heart, until he got what seemed to be completely solid gauntlets. Even though they were almost as flexible as a human hand. The vambraces on the other hand were solid pieces of metal. There were entirely blue expect for a red line that ran down the center of the top of each vambrace.

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After this Rex called a stop again.

Once again they had a simple dinner Relic repaired some weapons, cleaned the shop, and went to sleep.

The next day Rex made the Shoulder guard and the chain mail. The chainmail was entirely blue metal while the shoulder guards had some blue, but were mainly red.

The next day Rex made a plate with equal amounts blue and red. Created with overlapping plates just like the gauntlets.

After that Rex made the helmet. Entirely out of blue metal and all one solid piece, even the visor.

On the next day, Rex and Relic began the sword. Relic heated up the forge and Rex began to work. He placed all of the remaining blue metal and began forging a sword. Rex expected him to make it have shard edges but instead he formed it into a small cylinder with a pointed tip. After that he placed the rest of the blood red metal on to the forge. Once heated, he began to place it around the cylinder of silvery blue metal. He kept hammering the Red metal around the blue until the cylinder could no longer be seen and it looked like a purely red sword.

After this, they stopped for the day. Unlike the normal days, Rex changed his instructions.

“go ahead and go to sleep early today. Tomorrow we are going to put the finishing touches on the sword and you are going to need all the rest you can get. You can save the cleaning and repairing for after we finish.”

“Yes sir”

So, for the first time since becoming Rex’s apprentice, Relic went to sleep without finishing his basic duties.

The next day Relic woke up rested and excited to finish the armor. He leaped out of bed, put his clothes on and ate breakfast before heading down to the forge.

There were a few notable changes that day. First, Rex told Relic to put coal all the way up to the top of the forge. Second Rex had added a second bellow. To start Rex put the black ingot on the forge and began pumping with Relic. They pumped for an hour while the ingot slowly heated up until Rex got out his largest hammer and began to work. Rex had only struck the metal 4 or 5 times before yelling

“ If you can’t pump faster that that then we will never finish this sword.”

So, despite the fact that he felt like he was bathing in lava, Relic pumped faster. As he pumped the heat increased until he revised his estimate of the heat to as hot as going through a dragons stomach. He kept these thoughts to himself and kept pumping. This went on for who knows how long, until Rex called a halt. The sword was complete. The sword was blood red with a ring of black winding around it, like a snake strangling its pray, it went all the way to the top of the sword, stopping at the tip as if the point of the blade was its fang.

As soon as Relic saw the completed sword, he got a two pop ups

Ding

For withstanding heat while creating this armor your fire resistance has increase

For participating in the creation of an extremely high level armor the blacksmithing skill has been created

He was shocked at the rewards but he was so tired that he just rinsed off and went to sleep without even eating.

Relic woke up, ready to finally make something on his own. He went straight to the forge but, as soon as he got there, Rex kicked him out. Saying

“Go see what you can learn from the armor I made. Just keep examining it until I tell you to stop. If you bother coming back before that then you will have even more time to observe it.”

Relic, fearing that he would never be able to make anything if Rex didn’t teach him, immediately left to try and learn from the armor. He sat in front of it and tried examining it for a while, but every single piece of the armor was made using techniques that were far to advanced for him to learn anything from. After awhile he gave up and decided that he would just examine the simple stuff. He looked at the armor, and started looking at the simple things that he didn’t understand. The first thing he examined was a vambrace. He picked it up and started looking at the thing that intrigued him was the red strip running down the back of the vambrace. He tried feeling seeing what the difference was with his hands, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t tell any difference between the two. Since he couldn’t decide how to experiment and figure out what they were for, he started thinking about what was different about the top of the vambrace as opposed to the bottom. At first he could only come up with silly things like more people see the top or maybe it stops the sun from getting in your eyes. He came up with a few more similar ideas before thinking

The back of the vambrace is what you would deflect a weapon with if you didn’t have one yourself. With this thought in mind, he started applying it to the rest of the armor.

His next thought was

If the red is better for stopping blades, then why did he use so much of the blue?

And as soon as he said that he remember carrying ingots for Rex when he was doing grunt work. Despite being the same size, the red ingots at least three or four times as much as the blue ones.

After figuring that out he moved onto the black metal on the blade. First he tried feeling it to see if there was a difference, but the only thing he achieved was pricking his finger on the tip. Next he tried slicing some leather with the black part of the sword, but it seemed to slice no better than the red. He had just finished that when Rex called to him.

“Get in here and tell me why I sent you out there 17”

As soon as he got there he started telling Rex everything he figured out.

“ You sent me to observe the armor so I could learn about the different types of metal.”

“And?”

I learned that the blue metal is light and flexible while the red metal is heavy and strong. I still couldn’t figure out what the black metal does though.”

“ You seem to have learned what they do Mithril and God’s blood do well enough.”

“And the black one?”

“ The black one is eclipse. It is hard to work and even harder to find, but if you can get it any weapon made with it will be top class.”

“Why?”

“Because eclipse stops the bodies healing process. Even a tiny prick will keep bleeding until it is treated with medical tools and a high level spell.”

“But I got pricked with it and my finger already stopped bleeding”

“If you already stopped bleeding then you didn’t get cut by eclipse.”

Relic raised his eyebrows at that. He could have sworn that the only part of the blade that cut him was the black tip. He was about to ask Rex if he was sure that there was no other way to heal from it when Rex called out to him again.

“It seems you’ve got a visitor again.”

“You did tell Frankie to come back in around a week.”

“Well I guess you’ve done enough now. Take the rest of today and tomorrow off and let Frankie show you around the city. Then I’ll teach you how to make some swords of your own”

And with that said both Frankie and Relic left the shop, Frankie leading with Relic following closely ready to explore the city.

That’s the end of chapter two

If you see any errors please tell me

If you have any suggestions tell me.

Also I’m still deciding what they should do in the city