Gi’s week in the forge of The Metal And The Ice was that of ringing ears, Electro-Hammer blasts, level-up messages and close calls of almost slamming his fingers into oblivion. After a day of work on pyramid-shaped engine cores, a different blueprint had fallen on the forge. A blueprint for craftsman tools. Gi had been overjoyed, but then another day passed, and Valpatia came with another blueprint. Gi didn’t have his hopes up. He unraveled a scheme and found it was the guide for a… weapon! Tears of a hench rained down Gi’s face.

With enthusiasm like never before, he laid down the metals on the forge and started collecting his tools. The first weapon, in its entirety, appeared on the forge in half an hour. And in a split second after birth, it was in the pot, bubbling and steaming into glowing sludge.

Valpatia took the tools and metal from Gi’s hands. And taught. She showed techniques to make the steelmeats stronger, to hold back against Electro-Hammer blasts and how not to waste any time.

The master seemed to be regaining her sanity, lost many years ago.

Gi spent days improving, crafting steelmeats that could sell for hundreds--or even thousands--in Realm 224’s markets. He got Valpatia’s approval to keep a few. He earned her trust.

One day, she stood at the workshop’s exit, donning Extensions and massive bags.

“Huh? Where are you going?” he asked, brows furrowed.

“My destination does not matter -- it is the journey that the deceiver looks at! And my journey will bring me here once more in… An hour or five hours!” Valpatia announced, heading out through the exit. “In that time, craft what I ordered!”

Gi did not, never did, and never would, intend to craft what Valpatia ordered while she was gone. No… the fun began! The work on his steelmeats!

Like a mastermind in their tower, he strutted to the blueprint room, dragged his fingers along the shelves of sketches and found a design for an axe. Then, he put it on the table of sketching, adjusted the massive magnifying glass and changed the axe to fit Tenner.

Then, Gi went to the forge, stopping in front of the entrance, ears focusing. He couldn’t hear Valpatia. He went in. The axe came about in half an hour, but of quality that was nowhere close to what Tenner needed to destroy Blackglove.

“Off to the pot!” Gi waved the steelmeat goodbye and it melted into sludge. Valpatia returned soon after.

“Progress?” she asked.

“Lots.” Gi pretended to be working on her weapons.

“Then why does it look like you’re doing nothing?”

“Huh… Maybe you need Eyesight Extensions?”

Valpatia slammed Gi over the top of his head. The next day, she disappeared for the same length. And the day after. And the day after that.

Gi birthed steelmeats for Tenner and a few decoy crafts that made it look like his time was spent well and saved his head from Valpatia’s odd punishments. Gi’s Intelligence and Strength, and Stealth, even, skyrocketed, all gaining between 10 and 14 points, and new perks found their way into his CHEK. [The Craftsman’s Oomph] was a nice physical strength boost for the times when it was most needed. [Fill The Void Between My Metal] lessened the gaps between atoms whenever he struck a steelmeat, evaporating, in an instant, the tool he crafted with.

And the perk would have plenty of use in battle -- Gi grinned at the thought of an enemy shrinking and combusting to death.

With the Stealth skills, he found ways to know when the master of The Metal And The Ice was returning: a little gust of wind blew under the door, the floorboards creaked in the right and the middle, and if Gi was peeking out through the door, he could see shadows dancing along the left. When the signs showed, Gi picked up a decoy, hiding his true work, saving his ass from Valpatia’s punishment for doing what he wanted.

After a while, Gi created a device to tell him. A prototype of a robot. A full, functioning droid. It was an idiot, not self-aware in any way -- Gi could only hope Valpatia would teach him how to make intelligent robots. But an idiot was better than nothing and did the job well enough.

It never failed. And Gi always reacted to its warning in time. Until now.

A red warning screen appeared. He tossed Tenner’s new shoes into the melting pot, slammed a button with his hip. From an invisible crate he’d crafted, a half-finished extra-durable wrench ejected on the forge.

Not a second later, the door slammed open.

“The something is nothing right!” Valpatia ranted, jibbered and jabbered, and ripped the Electro-Hammer from Gi’s grip. “Boy, oh boy, turn off the endless plain of misery and on with the cooling! Tonight we are egg makers. Fate has brought on us the grand quest of being the chicken and the egg and answering the question that has never been asked -- will you handle maximum power?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Gi nodded, letting the words slip past his ears. He’d learnt to tune out Valpatia’s raving. But the last part blasted him to full lucidity.

“Huh?”

“Listen!” Valpatia slapped him.

“I’m listening, I just can’t believe--”

“Tonight we have a special request! It rarely comes. In fact, it is what started my career. Almost… Almost… I earned the most beautiful workshop this land has ever seen by crafting the most beautiful egg this land has ever seen!” Valpatia raised the Electro-Hammer above herself. Gi, covering his head, dodged and danced out of being smitten by the tool. “The blue men came, yes, they came and they took all I had. With the remains, I built this. Now, the egg has come again and if you can craft it as I did in my twilight years, oh boy, you will mold the future like you mold metal under the heat of an Electro-Hammer.”

“It’s some sort of weird contract that paid for the greatest workshop the land has ever seen, but then the Corporation took it all,” Gi whispered to himself, translating Valpatia’s words. ”And now I’m repeating her destiny, doing the same order.”

Gi took the tool from Valpatia’s hands. Abiding by her to order, he cranked the power to the max. Valpatia grinned. She snatched the wrench from atop the forge and headed for the pot. Gi’s eyes widened. He kicked the invisible crate full of decoys out of her way, taking in Valpatia’s suspicious look.

After evaporating the steelmeat, she chucked new parts onto the forge. In Gi’s vision, countless ways of connecting them appeared.

“Maximum power… And I’m crafting an egg of sorts?”

“That’s what all this practice has been for all. So you could craft a fine egg of an egg and I would put the heart into its soul!” Valpatia stepped away from the forge, gesturing for Gi to begin.

“What if I--”

“You trained.”

He had to do it. If he didn’t… Well, Valpatia would do quite a few foul things he was afraid to even think off.

Gi remembered that he had read quite a few books on strange mechanical eggs back in Realm 224. Their purpose wasn’t well known, but they had some of the most spectacular craftings in history.

He visualized the finished egg in his mind. He took a deep, feeling the pulsing of the Electro-Hammer.

He slammed the parts atop the forge. Just before impact, Valpatia’s mechanical hair puffed up. Just after it, Gi’s jaw dropped. He’d stood his ground, his skin had handled the immense heat and the parts had begun to connect. Another deep breath and he put his hands in the neon orange concoction and began to pull wires through with his bare fingers.

It was beautiful. And mechanically calculated by muscle memory. Even wiring, the lunariest thing in the universe invented by those worst affected by moonmadness, seemed easy. At the same time, Valpatia took out blueprints and chips, laying them down in a circle around herself. Gi caught a glimpse of the blueprints. He was dumbfounded.

“What are thy looking at?!” Valpatia slapped Gi. “Back to work! Back to the egg of the deceiver! Like it's fated in the sky, I craft the core and my apprentice crafts the shell… Though the core is a bit more difficult.” She cackled.

Gi thanked the moon for having to make only the shell. Trying to understand the blueprints alone would cause him a week-long headache.

Using all the tricks Gi had learned and ten minutes, he crafted the eggshell.

“Huh, that’s what I can do,” he said, staring at the steelmeat.

“Indeed, glorious, glorious!” Valpatia jibbered; she poked holes into the egg and, part by part, slipped the core inside.“No, glorious you are not! Bad! Ew! The deception of the skies tells me you are you and you are capable of much more.”

“Then let me smooth some edges,” he said, “and make it the best it can be. I know I can do it.”

“No time, no need!” Valpatia snatched the Electro-Hammer. Her elbow bumped the egg. Drops of molten metal splattered. And the egg fell.

Before any panicked hands could catch it, it fell to the floor and melted through into a deep dark hole below.

Valpatia’s eyes widened. A routine of instincts took hold of her. She threw the Electro-Hammer after the egg, holding onto the tool’s wires. She fished around and pulled the tool back up. Her hair puffed up. She growled.

“Do it. Take it out! Your fault it is, the dark hole made by a hot egg you will face!”

“You were the one who dropped it,” Gi muttered. Despite his frustration, he obeyed.

The hole in the floor had widened enough for a few henches to fit. He grabbed the Electro-Hammer and dropped it. The Electro-Hammer clung onto a side of the hole. Holding its wire, he swung down. His hands burned and the smell of burning rubber crept up his nose. The darkness swallowed him. At the very bottom, the egg gleamed.

“Wait… How will I get this out?”

The air heated up and the wires holding him began tearing.

Then, memories of crafting an Extension for Mrs. Rebecca's Grandma flashed in his mind.

“Huh, I don’t need overpowered steelmeats for that anymore,” Gi said to himself, “I got the skills to do it on my own and with this wire.”

Gi began running on the walls in circles. He gained more and more speed. He froze. The wire whipped forth. It wrapped around the egg. Activating [The Craftsman’s Oomph], Gi put the wire around his shoulders and scrammed up the wall. Halfway up, half of the egg melted, his feet slipped. The egg fell. The wire slammed into his skin, tearing open a massive wound. He found something to grip on the side of the hole and clambered up, through the 15 damage-per-second pain.

Blood covering Gi’s neck, he dropped the egg on the forge and unwrapped the wire from around it.

He’d never seen Valpatia’s eyes so demented.

“My believer of mind the fields I do, you were slow!” She hurried out of the room, waving after herself. “Look!”

They stopped at the exit.

“Huh? There’s no one--”

“Exactly, you slow, awful, uncareful shitpipe of a craftsman.” Tools he didn’t know she had slammed him over the head. “The forge is no place for your kind. You slept here. Now, you craft here, too. You live here. You don’t leave this place -- I don’t want to see you ever again!” She dragged him to a dark room overcrowded in old boxes. There was a valley of trash. An even damper, darker corner of the workshop than the tarant room.

At least there was a worn-out crafting table in the middle.

Besides it was a recipe book and a few beginner tools. The type that kids in The Sparks used on their first day.

“No…”

“Good luck. I disown you. Not the tarants, though. They’ll bring everything you need. And sometimes, they even mate here. Craft everything in that book five times and we’ll see about returning to the forge!”