Glenn's nascent curiosity soon shaped into a thrilling excitement as he felt every fiber of his being concentrated on infusing the soul hammer with energy, hitting the glowing iron with all he had. The Smith was deeply concentrated, hitting the hammer twice for each hit Glenn gave, his long hair drenched in sweat and his thin but incredibly powerful arms contracting and expanding. Veins bulged on his forearms, the black hammer hitting the iron with a dull sound, soon followed by another hit from Glenn. The young man couldn't help but feel enraptured in the venture, each strike on the hot metal made him feel slightly more connected with it, as if it would soon become an actual part of himself. He didn't know what he was doing, whether the place he was striking was right, but he kept on striking tirelessly, beads of sweat flying with each of his movements.
The Smith clenched his tongs and grabbed the metal, before throwing it back in the blue flames. Glenn's connection with the metal was suddenly cut off, the shock brutally taking the air out of his lungs. He gasped for air, dropping the soul hammer on the ground as he fell on a knee, his hand gripping his chest with awe.
"What...what's going on?" Glenn heaved as he looked at the Smith, struggling to speak through his clenched teeth. The Smith didn't spare him a glance, his eyes stuck on the fire and the metal it contained, ready to take it out at any moment. Glenn winced as he pushed himself up, finding not only his arms but his whole body strained with pain as if he had just gone through the longest fight. The Smith did something with the furnace, before pointing back the way he brought Glenn in from. The young man shook his head, still unable to understand what, or why he came here to hit iron.
'I doubt it was just for sharing an interesting experience, so why would the Smith pull me so aggressively inside the forge all that to just strike metal without explaining anything to me...? And for what, less than a few minutes? This is super weird' Glenn pondered as he came out of the smithery, his back drenched in sweat and his face covered in soot. Rusty was leaning against the wall of his shop on the other side of the hallway, snoring loudly as he somehow slept standing. Glenn hesitantly looked left and right, before going to poke at the dwarf. Rusty flinched and mumbled a confusing assortment of words as he looked around in confusion, before noticing the young man standing in front of him.
'Uhm, Glenn, you didn't spend just a few minutes in there, though?' Diamanes commented with a curious tone, Glenn frowning in puzzlement.
'...What do you mean? I certainly spent less than an hour in there...'
The dwarf suddenly shook himself awake grabbed Glenn by his pants and pulled him inside his shop, a sign reading "Closed" hanging on the door.
"Wait—What, the Smith first and now you? Can't you all just ask me to follow you instead of towing me wherever you're heading?" Glenn asked with a sarcastic tone, stopping his jeers instantly when he noticed the expression on Rusty's face. The dwarf was in a strange mix between extremely excited and a heart-stopping shock, his eyes wide opened and his face as pale as the moon, but a grin still reaching both of his ears. All in all, quite a strange sight, and even stranger coming from Rusty.
"Alright, alright, everything is fine, it might have just been a demonstration..." Rusty mumbled as he paced around the shop, Glenn sitting on a bench as he waited for the dwarf to tell him whatever he wanted to. Rusty pulled at his hair and glanced at Glenn, who stared back curiously, before sighing loudly. The dwarf dragged a chair in front of Glenn and climbed his way on top of it, making himself comfortable.
"First things first, I'll apologize for the Smith's behavior. He doesn't pull people in his workshop, usually..." Rusty trailed off as he scratched the back of his head. Glenn shrugged and looked at himself in the reflection of one of the metal armors exposed in the Armory.
"Don't, it was quite the fun experience to hammer steel for a few minutes, even though I didn't get the point of it. By the way, I know the other two aren't particularly patient, but where did they go? Oh, crap, I'm covered in sweat and soot...Well, I guess I'll just head back to take a shower when I go back...Mundare." Glenn got rid of all the filth with a flick of his fingers, but still felt as dirty as he was a second ago.
'I think we can call this OCD or something with how obsessed you are with being clean...'
'I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to help it either if you spent more than a month covered in blood and dirt, alright?!?'
Rusty looked at him for a few seconds with wide eyes, before pressing both his hands together.
"Glenn..." He carefully began, "...It's been a little more than twenty-four hours since you've headed into the Smithery. Your friends grew weary from waiting for you, and chose instead to try and test their newly found gear."
The young man remained silent for an instant, struggling to figure out whether the dwarf was serious or not, before chuckling to himself.
"Yeah, sure. Alright, I'm pretty sure there is no time spell in the Smithery, so no, there's no way I spent a day in there. Nice try, though," Glenn jeered, dusting his hands off before yawning loudly.
"Yawnnn, damn..." He rubbed his eyes tiredly, struggling to keep them open, "...I'm exhausted somehow. So, what did you want to tell me?"
Diamanes smacked his lips inside the young man's mind.
'He's right, I had to watch the last twenty-four hours without being able to say a thing as your soul was slowly being taken away from you. It was a very, very long moment for me, by the way," The entity complained, Glenn, realizing that the dwarf couldn't be any more serious.
"...But how? I swear, it felt like I spent what, a few minutes in there?" He protested, ending his sentence with another yawn, annoying shaking it out.
Rusty rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully.
"I...Well, of course, you never heard of Soul Smithing, right?" He asked, finding his answer in the young man's confused face.
"The Smith is making you a weapon..." Rusty began explaining, his tone growing grave despite the evident tiredness in his eyes, "...A weapon only you can use, a weapon that will be strong enough by itself to shape into a myth..." The dwarf's eyes gazed into emptiness until he shook himself back to reality.
"Anyway, Soul-Smithing is the most dangerous way to make something as it uses a part of the maker's soul for the creation. In doing so, it will assuredly shape into the best weapon for the one who infused his soul in it, making it essentially the strongest weapon you will be able to use, until you make another with better materials, of course. But, ignoring the restriction of metals and all that, it's a weapon that can grow beside you, becoming stronger at the same time as you do." Rusty shook his head, hiding his face in both of his tiny hands.
"...The Smith wasn't supposed to make another Soul Weapon again ever, but for some reason, he did. This is going to be a mess to explain, but at least you won't have to pay for it... As for how time seems to elapse differently for you, that's just how Soul-Smithing affects a person. You forget your sense of time, only concentrated on hitting the iron again and again until the Smith finally forces you out of the forge..."
Glenn nodded slowly, his eyelids drooping heavily as he listened to the dwarf's explanations. Rusty grunted and slapped the young man across the face, waking him up.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"Don't sleep, I can't have homeless people in the store!"
'...Homeless?'
"Anyway, I need you to listen carefully. The making of a Soul Weapon is separated into three important steps: the first is the Infusing, which you just went through. It's when you infuse the future user's soul inside the weapon, essentially starting the process of making a weapon able to achieve the impossible." Rusty clapped his hands together, the noise making Glenn flinch out of his drowsiness.
"... Yawn, alright, huh, then what are the two next steps?" Glenn asked tiredly, forcing his eyes open despite the exhaustion settling in deeper and deeper. Rusty shook his head slowly at the sight of the sleepy young man, mumbling something about how today's youngsters had no stamina or something, before resuming his explanations.
"The second step is the Balancing, where the metal earns the same affinities as your Mana or your Aura, or both if you're a freak. It's relatively easier since it's just infusing Mana instead of your soul that's done, but it's still extremely important. Finally, the third step is the Synchronization. As the name implies, it's when your soul synchronizes with the weapon, giving it the finishing touches. It's a hard-to-explain process, and quite a magical one, but you'll probably end up in bed for a few weeks when it happens. Soul damage is the most dangerous thing someone can experience, besides a wife, of course..." Glenn was too tired to laugh at the dwarf's joke and was already too busy trying to focus both on the explanations and not letting go of his consciousness.
"...Alright, hmm, if that's fine with you, I'll take a quick nap and come back for...the rest of the explanations, alright...?" Glenn muttered, stumbling up on his feet as he walked to the door like a zombie. Owning a mythical-thing-weapon sounded great, but it didn't sound as great as the comfort of his cozy, king-sized bed at the moment. Even though it was 'only' twenty-four hours of non-stop work, he felt like he hadn't slept in months. The young man could already imagine himself sinking in his bed as he drowsily exited the shop, deaf to any sounds the dwarf was emitting in protestation.
'...Can't see you, can't hear you...' He tiredly thought as he headed for the Dormitory, the hallways empty of the usual people bustling around. He mistakenly entered the Nexus, the sky-opened parc at the center of the Cleaner's Workshop, finding that it was the night from the twin white moons floating in the sky surrounded by a sea of stars. Glenn felt the grass under his boots, and with only a second of hesitation, he let himself collapse on the ground, looking at the sky as he almost instantly fell asleep.
'Well, that has to be a world record for how fast a man can naturally fall asleep...' Diamanes words drifted in Glenn's mind, not even earning a grunt from him.
That night, Glenn slept incredibly well.
----------------------------------------
"...I hate myself," Glenn said, every exposed part of his skin covered with mosquito bites or red, irritated patches, his face puffy. Diamanes couldn't help laughing, his mocking laughter echoing in his host's mind like a painful reminder of how stupid it was to sleep outside at night without a tent or even a sleeping bag. The Dormitory may have been protected by spells and enchantments to guarantee maximum comfort for its occupants, but by contrast, the Nexus had never been designed to be used as an open-air hotel, making the young man's current fate an inevitable one. Put a slab of meat in the open, and find it half-devoured and filled with insect eggs the next day. That's just how life worked.
'Next time this happens, promise me you will force me to head back into my room instead of having to endure this...' Glenn begged the entity in his left hand, making the latter's laughter grow only louder.
'If I could do a screenshot or something to save 'this' for eternity, trust me I would!'
'...I don't doubt it. Let's get rid of that now that you had your fun...' Glenn sighed and clenched his teeth as he used the C.P.R. spell to get rid of all the mosquito bites and red patches, a pain worse than everything he could have ever endured ringing inside his whole body. The young man almost gave up on the spell, when he thought back to how much of a humiliation if he let the others see him like that. After a few minutes of painful healing, he finally got rid of all traces of the last night's mistake, his mind scarred forever as Diamanes somehow found a way to send him mental images of his face.
'...Is this like sending a magical snapshot? This is so fucking stupid...'
Glenn chose the wisest decision, which was to ignore Diamanes and his taunting and let him tire himself out as he headed off for the Dining Hall. His stomach was grumbling like a beast that had just woken up, and with reason he had skipped quite a few meals between the Soul Smithing and his forced night of rest.
"I'm sure I wouldn't have lost so much time had my mind been clear enough to Meditate instead of falling dead asleep," he grumbled, Diamanes snorting in reply.
'Don't think soul damages are healed so easily. It's already pretty impressive for you to be fine after only a night of rest, usually, this would require maybe a week for a normal person.'
Glenn grinned before wearing an innocent and surprised face.
"Oh, my, are you telling me I'm not a normal person? I always thought I was special, but never would I have thought you'd be the one to tell me such a nice compliment! Thanks, Diamanes! You're abnormal too!"
'...Why did I even bring this up?'
The young man entered the Dining Hall with a wide smile, his grin widening when he noticed he was the first person to come to it. He rushed to the counter while salivating, grabbing a plate of the first thing he could see and heading off to savor his food, when he stopped in wonder. He hurriedly turned back and chose four more plates filled with other kinds of food of all cultures. The waiter behind the counter looked at him with a judgmental gaze, until his eyes drifted over his purple left arm. He hurriedly turned around and rushed into the kitchen, busying himself and doing whatever it took to stay away from Glenn. The latter raised an eyebrow but ultimately chose not to care, picking an empty table to put all of the plates he carried with a smart use of Gravity Manipulation and sitting down at it. He rubbed his hands happily as he began digging into the food, the quality of what was available to him was so incredible it couldn't be described with words.
'...I really can't get enough of the Black-Gold privileges. This is great.'
Glenn's meal went uninterrupted as more and more people entered the Dining Hall with sleepy faces, ordering what most people would for breakfast. After all, this was the first hours of the morning, there wouldn't be many people ordering a full course of meals and swallowing their food like a hungry forest fire, (ignoring Glenn, of course). Of course, like all good things, Glenn's peaceful meal came to a stop when two disgruntled people sat in front of him, one of them placing a long item wrapped in white fabric against the table.
"...What the hell were you up to? We waited three hours for you, you fucking egoist!" Milena shouted at him while not-so-discreetly stealing from his plate a caramelized kebab and nibbling on it. Sahro leaned on his fist, clearly expecting some kind of explanation from his friend. Glenn grimaced and licked his fingers, before wiping his mouth with a paper tissue.
"Well, I was forging. It was cool, don't recommend it though, I collapsed in the middle of the night right inside the Nexus out of exhaustion," Glenn stated as it was just the most common thing to experience. Milena stared for a few seconds, before rubbing the bridge of her nose unhappily. Sahro shrugged, satisfied with the answer as he took one of Glenn's plates for himself and began to dig into it, ignoring his friend's outraged expression.
"So what did you make? I got myself a temporary sword while I wait for the Smith to accept a custom order since apparently, he chose to take care of you first." He asked as he pointed at the mysterious package wrapped in white sheets. Glenn shrugged and randomly stabbed his knife into one of the plates, gobbling whatever he managed to get.
"I don't know, Rusty tried to explain to me what I was doing but I was too tired to concentrate on it. I think it was some kind of soul-related stuff, I'm not exactly sure." Glenn smacked his lips dismissively as he chose to finish whatever stuff was on his plates before Milena and Sahro stole everything there was in there. He wolfed down the food, emptying the four plates at incredible speed, reaching for a steak covered in a divine-looking sauce with hungry eyes. The dismay he felt when the steak was stolen away was nothing compared to the shock he experienced when he realized that it was Javier who took it away, the food would have seemingly disappeared from thin air if it wasn't for the traces of sauce on the Pale Son's lips. The silent hunter wiped his mouth expressionlessly, gazing back at Glenn with a dead pair of glassy eyes
"Hi, Javier..." Glenn said with a disappointed look as he watched the steak travel down the weirdo's throat.
'Somehow, I think he got even stealthier than he already was. Crap, that steak looked really tasty...' The young man shook his head before casting a Mundare on his mouth and fingers to make sure he was completely clean.
"Well team, it was great having my food stolen away from me, but from what I gathered, I have more smithing to do, so I'll see you around..." Glenn stood up from the table without leaving them a chance to reply, turning back with a disapproving gaze, "...Thieves."
With that last word, he headed back to the Armory to meet back with Rusty and hopefully start the second step of Soul Smithing, Balancing.
It was more than time to have a legendary weapon to his name.