Chapter 14: Working Smarter, And Harder
Landar
The next day, I went to work. But I was forced to choose between working with Oswald, and working in the forge because of our trips to the temple for the next few weeks. I chose that day to work in the forge. I had some frustrations I needed to work out, and my new, larger body needed to be put through its paces.
The coals were easy work. I was tall enough now to use the shovel to fill the basket and then dump each load into the feeder. That gave me nearly five minutes between each load that allowed me to rest and recuperate. The work also went a lot faster, and in an hour, the smith was done with his work for the day.
He called me and his apprentice son over when it was done, and I found he had two smaller anvils laid out for us on the other side of the furnace. It was in the sun, but the day wasn’t too hot with light cloud cover.
“Since we finished early today, I wanted you both to work on a small project of your own.” The smith said as he ran a hand over the two sets of small tools he left for me and his son. The son I now realized I was at a height with. I had thought he was much older than me, but now I could tell I was an anomaly for my age.
The smith’s son selected a wind chime, something he wanted to give to his mother as a birthday gift in a month or so. “And you, boy, what is it you want to try your hand at making?”
I looked at the long piece of steel he had provided me, and I ran my hand over it, wondering what exactly I wanted to do with it.
I thought about what problems I was facing in my life. If my sister was in danger, surely as I grew up I would be in similar danger as well. On top of that, I wanted to help my sister out in her current situation. To protect her and keep her safe as little as I could.
That meant a weapon. One I could use.
There were only two close combat weapons I was familiar with back in my army days that weren’t also firearms. The army entrenching tool, which was basically a shovel with an ax head, and a hatchet which my unit had used for all kinds of interesting things both off and on tour in the sandbox.
“An ax might be useful, sir. Particularly if I’m going to be going outside the walls soon to learn to forage with the other kids.” The smith smiled and patted me on the back.
“A wise choice, boy. But difficult to make. Both of you have chosen hard builds. Don’t worry, I’ll be here to ensure the final product is at least useful. Can’t have your first tool you ever make to break on your first attempt to use it. Would be bad for business.”
He took the next two hours teaching us just how to prep the forge, and how to set things up so we could work continuously. Reheating a project from cold once you’ve started working could warp it. The warping wouldn’t ruin the work, but it would take up extra time for us to reshape and reframe the metal then if we just worked on it until the forging part of the project was complete.
“Let’s start with you boy, I’ll work with my son this afternoon. You have places to be, I hear.” I saw his son’s visible relief. The kid had been working since before I had arrived, and must have been exhausted already. He went off to clean the workshop, and then tend the stall as the smith took the long piece of metal and began to work it.
“Once it’s nice and molten, I’ll be using the hammer. You’ll put it in the forge and back to the anvil using these tongues.” He showed me the large metal grippers and handed me thick leather gloves. “Don’t worry, I have two Strong quality healing potions in case of emergency. Haven’t had to use them yet this year.” He squinted at me through shaggy eyebrows as he cleaned his bald head with a rag that came away black as tar. “Don’t make me waste them on you.”
I agreed, and we began working. First, he did the work heating the metal rod and rounding it on top of itself, folding it over and over until it was a single brick of half molten, soft metal. “Alright boy, take the tongues.”
I did so and held it steady on the anvil as he took two hammers to the metal brick. The first was a large hammer that compressed the metal down. Bits of blackened metal still as hot as the rest of it shed off the side. “That’s the impurities being compressed out of it,” he explained when I asked. The second hammer he used to reshape the head, prepping the brick for the next strike.
When the metal started growing dim, the smith removed both hammers and motioned for me to put it back in the fire. I heaved the metal with all my strength into the fire and held it there, resting on the coals until the brick returned to its nearly rosy coloring.
“That’s enough, boy. Bring it back.” I did so, and the process went on again.
By the fourth or fifth return to the fire, the flecks of black that were removed from the metal were tiny compared to what they had been. Then finally, several heavy blows in a row landed and nothing came out of the metal.
“Good, it’s as uniform as we can make it today. Put it back in the fire and I’ll shape it.”
When I put the molten brick back on the anvil, he struck it with two smaller hammers, shaping and molding the metal into the rough shape he wanted. It was about the same size as my fist, perhaps a bit larger. First, he smashed it down to nearly a flat circle, then tapered the edges, removing most of the metal.
I occasionally had to reheat it, but the smith worked quickly, and within the hour the ax head took the rough shape I wanted.
At the end, he took the metal frame and drenched it in briny smelling water, sending plumes of steam into the air. “We’ll sharpen it next time you’re here, after work. Today, I think you have somewhere else to be, boy.” The smith said.
“Thank you. This will truly be helpful.” The smith smiled and motioned towards the door. My father stood there, watching. I didn’t know for how long.
“Come along, Landar, we need to get to the temple.”
***
Three clerics met me and my family at the front gate of the temple. The meanest looking of the three escorted my sister away. Another showed my mother and father away, while the third glared at me standing in the middle of the courtyard.
“You’re filthy,” before I could respond, a light suffused his hands and suddenly a wave of cleaning energy washed over me. A second later, I stood as clean as when I had started the day off. “There, now you won’t pose a risk to, well, everything inside. Come on, kid, follow me.”
I found it much easier to keep up with the cleric in my ‘new’ body. But it was still a chore. For every one of his steps, I had to take two. By the time we arrived at the small library room, I was out of breath, but not completely exhausted. A marked improvement, and an accomplishment I was proud of.
“Do you need any help finding anything?” He asked, and it was then I finally got a good look at him up close. He was younger, maybe in his late teens, early twenties. His fiery red hair and pale skin marked him out as someone with a northerner heritage. Not that it was rare, but it was uncommon compared to the brown-haired, browned eyes, and slightly darker skin tones I was more used to seeing.
“Thank you, cleric.’’ I bowed slightly. “But I think I should be okay. Unless you have something specific you would suggest I study?”
The young cleric hesitated for a moment. “Depends. What do you want to learn? The things in here are all basic manuals, stuff you can find in public libraries in the noble district, or that merchants can purchase with coin. Nothing too impressive, and nothing forbidden or restricted. So I guess it all depends on what you want to learn, kid.” He stared at me for a moment with an intensity that I had come to associate with people trying to discern my foundations of health or relative strength.
“Mother Margaret said my mental and spiritual foundations are pretty good, while my physical condition needed work. I only recently grew to see what you see now. I used to be—” I showed him by holding a hand down about a foot and a half from my head height.
“Oh, you’re the runt—I mean the sick kid. Well, good to see you’re doing better.” He coughed to cover his indiscretion. “If you have both good mental and spiritual foundations, it means you have some mana to throw around. You could always look into cores if you want to become an adventurer one day. Or learn the basics of mana manipulation, if you want to go to the academy. Plenty of spell casters don’t go that route, mind you, but most who get really strong do.”
“What about identification magic, or abilities? Things that can do what Mother Margaret’s little eye glass does?”
The young cleric smirked. “Very few things can do what her glass can kid. That’s the whole point of it. It’s her sacred instrument, given to her by the goddess herself when she was blessed with her office. But yeah, there are other things that can do similar things, though with less accuracy.”
He went to one shelf and pulled out a small book, then placed it in my hands. It was titled “A Basic Primer On Magical Abilities And Skills, Volume 3: For The Edification And Instruction of Young Children.”
“This would have been a noble kid’s textbook, then?” I asked after reading the title. The cleric nodded.
“Yup. A child of the Godsmald house died about a year ago in an accident. His parents donated these to the church. We use them to help educate new recruits, as the collection had a pretty good handle on the basics of most things. From skills, to magic, to fighting, lore, rune writing, and a whole host of other things.”
I was practically drooling by the time he was finished describing the collection. “Has. Has anyone read them all? I asked as I leafed through the book he had handed me.
“Oh, I’m sure someone has. But few have the luxury of time. What little studying gray priests and priestesses can get done, they do focusing heavily on their chosen area of service.”
“And I, I can read all of them?” I asked, again trying not to drool.
He shrugged. “I guess. But that’d take a long time.”
I smirked. “We’ll see about that.”
***
I tore through the book he handed me in about thirty minutes. It was a list of basic mana fueled abilities that really anyone could learn if they had the decent enough foundations for it.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Even a Normal foundation in Spirit would allow someone to be able to use one of these basic abilities pretty regularly. The book held six ability descriptions, and I chose to try them all while in that room.
Dodge was a simple mana fueled leap where the mana suffused your body just enough to give you an extra boost when jumping out of the way. I nearly broke a chair, and a rib, when I suddenly slammed into the empty wall of the room.
Mr. Red Head Cleric guy glared at me, but I ignored him. I had others I wanted to try.
The Scribe ability was pretty simple. Using a bit of mana, you imbue your saliva, or the oil in your skin and write without using ink. The mana would stay and create a slight iridescent glow. Spit didn’t hold the mana very well, and neither did the oil on my finger. But when I did it to ink, it allowed the ink to glow slightly, and go a lot further than it normally would.
My mother wouldn’t be happy I had tested it on my fingers, or by writing numbers on my hand, but I was twelve years old. Kids did strange things.
Then I tried another skill similar to Dodge, where I imbued my ears and other senses with a slight coating of mana along the nerves, making them more sensitive. It was listed as Awareness in the book, and when I did it I felt like I could hear the sound of sand crunching under Mr Redhead mans boots. The lights were a bit brighter, and suddenly my slightly itchy clothing became nearly unbearable. Luckily, it was the work of a thought to turn it off.
The last three skills listed in the book were more difficult. “I’m going to try something. Please don’t freak out.” The young cleric smirked, and I shook my head. Then, I did what the book instructed me to and sent a small trickle of mana through my mind.
I forced myself to feel anger. The book called it ‘blind rage’ but it was hard to just suddenly feel blind rage. Instead, I tapped into my frustration and anger at the fact that my clothing itched like all hell, and my sister was stuck in a terrible situation with no good options.
Then, I let the mana leave through my skin, seeping out like sweat.
I opened my eyes and found myself surrounded by a red haze. “Yes!’’ I yelled, then I looked over at the cleric. His eyes were bloodshot, and I could tell he was fighting to control himself.
“Shut it off, kid!”
It disappeared as quickly as I shut the connection to my mana off. The young red head sighed deeply and closed his eyes, fighting to control his breathing. After a moment, he opened them again, calm and under total control.
“No more skills testing, kid. You almost got yourself smashed.” He hefted the cudgel in his hands for emphasis, and I realized just how close he had probably come to beating me unconscious.
“Good to know. The skill description lied, it said it’d confuse others, not create a Taunt effect.” Frustrated, I opened the book to the page I was looking for and re-read it. There was a note at the bottom of the page that read caution: this ability might cause those around you to attack.
I could have spit. “This is a children’s textbook?” I asked incredulously, and the cleric laughed.
“Nobles kid, they learn to fight early. It’s kind of their main job.”
I grunted and went back to the book. Intimidating Aura is off the table, I thought, frustrated about the near death experience.
The last two abilities were called Mental Note Book and Imbued Strike. I didn’t want to test the strike, not after what had just happened with Intimidating Aura. Even if the book proclaimed it a mainstay of smiths everywhere. I didn’t trust the book’s descriptions, at least not fully.
Instead, I tested out Mental Note Book. This was the last ability listed in the manual, and it was by far the most complex of the six. It took great concentration, and several steps to create.
The first thing I had to do was create a mana ‘construct’. This turned out to be a simple mana based machine, that integrated into my brain at certain points. It was essentially a tiny computer made of mana, that was I was attaching to my brain. It only had a single function: to display text I gave it, and to store that text for later.
In short, it was what it said it was. A mental note book.
It seemed to have a limit of how much it could store, though I wasn’t exactly sure. I knew that I could probably improve on the thing later. I already had several ideas of ways to improve on the concept from when I learned to code in java back in high school. It’s not like I was some computer wiz kid, but my experience with coding made me realize that what I was doing with the construct amounted to learning a new coding language. Very basic, but useful.
Once I learned more, I could do more, I was sure.
For now, though, I sat on the floor, legs crossed over each other as the cleric watched on with interest. I closed my eyes and started with the mental exercise needed to create the construct.
What felt like an eternity later, I opened my eyes and found my vision filled with a small blinking box waiting for me to write something.
I smirked. This might just be the start of something epic. I thought as I wrote short descriptions of each of the abilities I had learned.
Mental Notebook
Abilities - Common
Dodge: Enhance body with mana to allow for short bursts of speed in one direction or another to avoid danger.
Scribe: Infuse a material with mana to provide it with a slight glow and increased permanence.
Awareness: Enhance the body’s natural senses.
Intimidating Aura: A simple taunt ability that can be overcome by those with enough willpower.
Imbued Strike: Imbue a weapon, my hand, or other thing with mana, then shape that mana so it will explode in a specific way. Smiths like to use this to help them shape metal in finer detail, or so they can work with more exotic materials.
I closed the screen and found the room had gotten darker. The cleric had lit several candles as the sun had started to set. Before I could say so much as a thank you, the doors opened and my mother and father, looking haggard and exhausted, walked through.
“Come Landar, let’s head home.” I didn’t protest, as I stood and found my entire body more exhausted than I had felt in at least a couple of days.
***
That night my parents didn’t say much about the process other than that it had been trying. We had a short, cold dinner, and then all retired for bed. The next day my father and I went to work like we always had before. I had to make the same choice, work in the forge, or work with Oswald.
I felt bad for leaving Oswald alone with the accounting but I chose the forge. I had a project and was finally making real progress. The smith had new work for us today, sharpening and treating knives with various types of oil after using the grindstone wheel on them.
There were twenty knives in total, and once I learned the process it went by quickly. But the first two attempts were near disasters and the smith was clearly annoyed from having to save his clients knives from my ignorance.
When I finally got one right he looked at it, grunted, and said “Get back to work. Call me over when you’re done.”
About two hours later, I finished polishing the last knife.
He let me use the grindstone and gave me some of his extra oil. “You learned to do it with knives, but hatchets are a bit trickier. You have to move the blade along with the stone not just side to side, but this way.”
He showed me by applying the oil along where the blade would be, then running the grindstone slowly, and applying the blade of the ax. He showed me several times at slow speed, then had me practice as he corrected my grip. About half an hour later he declared “you’re ready. Get to work.”
He left me to my own devices. To be fair, he had no way of knowing how much trouble I had gotten into in my grand dads old farm shop.
I examined the oil and touched it with my fingers. It had a similar feel to the ink from the other day. I wonder?
I took a tiny dab of the oil and infused it with mana. It glowed a bright yellow for a moment and then died as the trickle of mana dissipated. So it burns brighter, but doesn’t stay as long as when I infuse ink. I examined the remains of my experiment only to realize that the few minerals inside the oil glowed particularly bright, but the oil itself suppressed the light.
“Okay, now that’s interesting.” I whispered, considering my options.
I infused the rest of the oil, rubbed it on the ax blade. I then started kicking the weight wheel at the bottom of the grindstone that gave the stone momentum and speed. It took almost a full minute to get it up to a good clip, then I touched the still glowing ax head to the stone, just as the smith had shown me.
Sparks flew in orange and yellow cascades, far more than I was ready for. I pulled the blade back off the stone and inspected the metal that had touched it. That part of the blade’s edge that had contacted the stone was as keen as I’d ever seen. The rest was untouched, and the oil was practically gone.
What I did with the oil made the metal more malleable, interesting. I thought as I moved more slowly and braced my arms for when the edge touched the stone again.
It was quick, and sparks flew in every direction, but I moved the ax head just as I was shown. About thirty seconds later, I stopped and took a quick look at my work.
The ax head was sharp along the blade’s edge, but the edge wasn’t as straight as it should be. At some places it was thick, at other places it was thinner.
“Is this your work, boy?” The smith asked, taking the ax head from my hands. He had stayed behind, watching me from just a few feet away while I worked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Got my son working on cutting the pieces out with a stencil and chisel. Left him to come see what you’re up to. You did good for your first try at an ax. But the blade isn’t as uniform as it should be. That takes a steady hand. Something that comes with time and practice. This will serve you well for about a month and then the blade will have chips and cracks in it so bad it’ll be unusable.”
I sighed. “What can I do to fix it, sir?”
“Sir is it?” The smith smiled down at me before kneeling and running his finger along the edges. “I see what you did here. You added some mana to the oil, right?” I nodded. “Thought you might do that. Happens with those who can use it. Me and the boy don’t have mana, you see, but I’ve seen it enough in merchant boys who want to learn a trade, or in the higher class craftsmen who work with nobles that I know the signs.”
He touched the oil off the rag I had used to apply it and rubbed it between his fingers. “You infused the minerals. Interesting choice.” He kneeled there, considering the blade and the oil on his fingers in quiet contemplation for a few moments.
“Why sir?” he looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there. “Why is it interesting? I was just experimenting, sir. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
He smiled a broad, knowing smile. “Boys, always getting into trouble. Infusing the minerals softens the metal for a short time. But once the oil dries, and the minerals are left behind coating and protecting the ax blade, it hardens them. Making the blade stronger. Usually not by much, but every little bit helps.”
He lifted the ax head to show me, grabbed a metal tool and chipped a small fragment off the blade where it was thin and uneven. Then he tried to do it where it was thicker and the tool itself bent slightly instead.
“What you did strengthens it, but it’s not invincible. I use oil I buy from a hedge witch on the guard’s weapons like your father’s spear head. Not that he ever uses the damn thing. It gives them a bit of an edge against some bandits and monsters they sometimes face. But its low quality oil. She infuses the oil itself, you see, not the minerals. Her work helps the weapons hold an edge better, but it doesn’t harden the metal itself. Just gives it a better protective coating than regular oil.”
“You know, I’m not really interested in becoming a smith. Not professionally, anyway. Oh, don’t get me wrong sir, you and your son do amazing work and the profession is honorable. I am more than grateful for your efforts and lessons. But—”
“But it’s not the calling of your heart.” He said, smiling and nodding. “Tell you what. You give me six vials of this oil to use every week.” he pulled up a small vial of oil that was about the size of my palm. “And I’ll fix this blade and then make you another weapon of your choice when you grow older. Everyone with authority needs a weapon, and I have a feeling that the son of a Guard Captain who can use mana without burning up is going to be going places.”
It was a deal, and it only took the smith thirty seconds on the grind wheel to fix my mistake. When he handed me the ax head, it was shining as if it had just come off the factory floor.
“Next we need a wood haft. We can get one from the pile of scrap over there.’’ He pointed to the pile of scrap and cast off wood chips that my father regularly took from before it was burned by the smith for fuel. “But this fine of an ax head I would hate to waste on trash wood.” The smith scratched his beard in thought.
“I’ll keep my eyes open for something better. I’ll try to bring something tomorrow,” I said, and the smith clapped me on the back.
“Good lad. Now, about them vials.”
I had him show me the oil the hedge witch infused, and I tested whether I could reinfuse them to have both properties. After some experimenting, I found that I could. But it took a lot out of me. I could infuse regular oil by the bucket much easier than augmenting already infused oil.
When I told the smith this, he told me he didn’t need buckets full. Just the vials he had ordered from the witch. So I finished infusing the one vial for the day. It nearly emptied me. I had to rest after that. I still helped clean the shop, and I’d still help the smith do his daily work. But he agreed to do other simple projects, teach me about the process, and provide me basic materials free of charge as long as I provided the vials.
I thanked him, and by the time I was done, my father had arrived.
It was time for some more reading.