I spent 33 days making metal ingots. When it comes to making the metal itself, I'm no match for Katarko. I don't actually have much practical skill with smelting and handling metal, and have been mostly working from theory. It's clear from just looking at them that my ingots aren't quite as good as his. That's fine though, my intent isn't to necessarily make the highest quality ingots I can, although it would be nice. No, my intent is to get a new trait or magic based on all this smelting I'm doing.
I've only paused working on smelting because the weather has taken a turn for the worse, to the degree that everyone who is in the village has taken shelter inside. It's been raining heavily, and the wind has gotten pretty severe. Thankfully, it isn't quite as bad as the last major storm we had, but I am still a little concerned about the construction crew. I hope they made it back to the inn that I advised Zeb to build safely. The craggy terrain they're working in could be quite dangerous in this weather.
I'm also keeping ready for any cleanup or emergencies that might occur. I've filled my backpack with a few basic necessities to use if I need them, or someone else needs them. I'm just hoping that the storm stays only at about this level.
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The storm continued for two more days before it cleared, and everyone in the village had some repairs to make of one kind or another. I had to spend three days repairing the mesh at the artificial tide pool, as portions had been damaged by debris being thrown by the ocean into it. The fishergoblins were left to clean the tide pools themselves of all the debris that had settled into the bay area due to the storm. I then had to inspect the dam, as debris had built up there as well. That took three days, as I had to have goblins help haul all the debris out from the reservoir as the level slowly dropped. Thankfully, since all the valves were in the open position, none of them seemed damaged.
The construction crew was uninjured, but they're still in the process of fixing damage to the road. Not only did debris pile up, but some of the work in the craggy part of the island got covered in a minor mudslide. Overall though, I'm just glad it wasn't a repeat of the last huge storm we had a few years back. The sewer system seemed to manage all the rainwater, which is good. In retrospect, I wish I had braved the storm to check the sewer outlet to see how much of it's capacity was being used during the heavy rainfall.
One of the biggest losses was that the salt evaporation ponds all refilled with water due to the rain and likely some of the wave crashes, which means that a bunch of the salt harvests have been delayed. It's unfortunate, because we only have a few months of the year during summer where salt production is really productive, and as we enter fall, and rains become more frequent, it's unlikely we'll make much more this year.
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I helped with repair jobs through the village occasionally while spending the remainder of the time smelting more of the metal into ingots. The storm did have one small benefit, there have been drastically more shells washing up to shore since the storm passed by, which means I've been able to work for longer than I initially thought I would be able to. Since resuming smelting, I've been making ingots for another 19 days, and I've used up around fifteen percent of all the charcoal we've been stockpiling.
I make three ingots most days, and each ingot weighs about twenty pounds. In total, we have 151 of these ingots, which means we have about one and a half tons of the metal available to use or trade. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much the only one here who works with metal, and I'm practically a novice. Not that I haven't been getting better. The ingots from when I started are noticeably worse than the ones I make now based on the quality of the metal itself. I'm still quite a ways away from being able to forge the intricate mechanisms that I need for some of the projects that I'd like to complete in the future.
However, I did tick over another level a few days ago, putting me to 98. Honestly, it's probably time to just bite the bullet and hit level cap. If fifty plus days of smelting metal wasn't enough to gain something related to it, then I don't know if anything will be.
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I cut down trees just outside the village in order to level up. Unfortunately, due to the technique we use to cut trees down, it took twelve days to get to this point.
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Level: 100
HP: 3239/3239
MP: 1594/1594
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance
Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike
It's only midday, but I'm feeling tired, probably due to whatever our equivalent is of leveling sickness, so I'm going to see what I have available and go to sleep early.
Available Traits:
Improved Endurance: Increases the amount of strenuous activity you can do at one time.
Heightened Strength: Greatly increases muscle mass and by extension, strength.
Thermal Hands: Spell. Variable Cost. Allows thermal manipulation of objects held in hands and extremely high heat resistance during use. Cost per second scales exponentially with thermal gradient maintained.
Available Species:
Ogre
This is a tough choice. On one hand, I talked about how I might want to evolve again. Ogre seems to be a path for that. However, I did get something related to smelting, possibly. I'm actually very intrigued by Thermal Hands. I'm not sure just how much mana it will end up taking, but given I can spend an incredible amount of mana by utilizing giant crystals, I think it's worth it just to see how far I can take that spell.
I pick thermal hands, and let the darkness overwhelm me...
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I was out for a day and a half, but when I awoke, I immediately noticed a change in my hands. I've noticed minor changes to my body before when I picked traits and prestiged, but this is a little more extreme than previously.
My hands, and a portion of my forearms, have gone from somewhat scaled with fur to jet black scales with peaks on the back of each scale. The underside of my hands also have changed to become seemingly calloused.
After I check to make sure I can still manipulate objects similar to normally, I check my stats.
Level: 0
HP: 1244/1244
MP: 882/882
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance
Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands
Its always a little saddening to see my HP and MP pools drop every time I prestige, but I've gotten used to it. I think of it kind of like molting for shelled animals at this point.
Similar to most other abilities, I have a general sense of how thermal hands will work intuitively. I basically just activate it, and I can mentally choose to heat, cool, or maintain the temperature of something currently contacting the rough pads on my hands. With that in mind, I decide to test it out on the larger copper coins. I know I probably shouldn't deface the currency that I made, but on the other hand, it's a convenient size for this test.
Copper is highly conductive to heat and has a fairly low thermal capacity, meaning I should be able to manipulate it's temperature fairly easily. I hold the coin with my hand open, facing upright, so I can observe what happens. First, I activate thermal hands, and just maintain temperature.
Surprisingly to me, I only lose two points of mana for the five seconds or so I hold the temperature. Next, I'm going to try heating the coin. As I do so, I barely feel any difference in my hand, and initially, I don't notice anything other than my mana draining. At first, the mana drains nearly as slowly as before, but by ten seconds in, I'm draining three mana per second.
Then suddenly, I'm startled, and drop the coin. I heard a high pitched noise from my hand. Looking at the coin, I can see heat waves in the air rising from the coin. I'm down about forty mana, so I wait a little bit for the coin to cool somewhat before I continue. I pick up the coin again, and start heating it, this time, I'm holding my hand up slightly more to observe my entire hand as well as the coin.
Again, as the temperature climbs, and the amount of mana I'm using increases, I hear a high pitched noise. This time, I don't drop the coin, and keep observing as my mana depletes faster and faster. The noise gets louder, and the pitch lowers, and then I see it. From the peaks on the scales, steam. The peaks seem to be getting a little wider, and steam is escaping from them. Interesting. I push the temperature of the coin higher and higher, until it takes on a slight glow due to heat. At this point, I'm down about half my mana pool. Rather than cooling the coin with magic, I merely place it on the stone floor of the building before turning off Thermal Hands, and wait for it to cool.
I double check my own status. No missing health, about half my mana used up. I don't feel dehydrated either, but maybe I didn't actually lose any water, or if I did, it was minimal. Steam does take about 1000 times the volume of water, so even though I was ejecting it, it may have actually been very little water at all.
Rather than wait for the coin to cool, I pull out a second coin, and try using thermal hands to cool the coin. Keeping a close eye on the scales on my hand and forearm. This time, as the temperature drops, the peaks open much quicker, but they don't seem to release any steam. I put my free hand underneath, and I can feel air moving. Interesting. I leave the second coin on the stone floor here as well. My mana is nearly depleted, so I'll take this opportunity to go to the bathhouse while I think about what I should focus on next, as well as what uses I have for thermal hands.