The howls and snarls were getting closer.

The doors to the Pocket Forge slammed into existence behind the smith.

"Questions later, safety from murder wolves now."

The boy scout looked stunned for a moment at the door's appearance, but quickly nodded his ascent. Mary ran over from where she had fallen and began to drag the dire wolf's body through the doors, ever unwilling to lose her profits. The blonde man followed her before Cole joined them inside and banished the doors.

The newcomer looked around in wonder at the room in all its wonder. Wonder and piles of random junk, including a fresh wolf corpse in the corner. Thankfully, the cleaning enchantments worked on smell. The miscellaneous stuff was starting to pile up. Once Mary's Credit limit got higher they would be able to get rid of it faster, but until then the Forge would just have to serve as storage.

"I'm Cole, that's Mary, this is my forge," the smith grunted, "How about you?"

"Jace. Jace Blevard," he replied, "Been stuck in a tree the past few days. I got some magic drone powers and have been taking a look around the forest. Lots of wolves and magic wolves, one big wolf, and a bear that could probably suplex a megalodon. They've been fighting over the forest and some weird crystal not too far from here."

The bear must have been the cause of the earthquake-inducing roar. It was strange that so many of the species prevalent in the forest had just disappeared. There were a good amount of wolves. A single bear if Jace hadn't missed any smaller ones in his search. Cole had seen a few birds earlier, and they seemed to at least have gotten bigger, but they were definitely not as common as they should have been. Anything else was seemingly just gone. Monsters did seem to be perfect killing machines, but had they really purged an entire forest of all other life in just a few days?

And that crystal sounded concerning too. In general, anything being fought over by two massive magic beats sounded concerning. And based on the fact that it was a crystal, mana bullshitery was likely somehow involved.

Right now, they were definitely not ready for a fight. Mary had mana exhaustion and was likely to pass out if she threw even one more of her mind wisps. Cole wasn't to that level yet, but his mana was still low, and even his regeneration had limits. Jace didn't even have a weapon besides his fists. The first two problems just needed to be waited out, but the smith could solve the last one.

"Do you know how to use any weapons?" he asked. "Any rudimentary training in swords, spears, knives, or other sharp things that can be used to stab people you don't like?"

The man tilted his head and thought for a moment, his hand twitching towards his side as if to rest on the handle of some remembered tool. "My dad took me to a shooting range a few times. I'm no crack shot, but give me a good pistol and I can hit the target."

The smith turned contemplative for a moment. He had never forged a gun before, and he hadn't ever planned to. He preferred to make his weapons to be wielded up close. There was a stronger sense of skill to it that way. He had respect for those who used ranged weapons, and their skill could be quite impressive, but he would never consider a fight a true battle unless the combatants could look into the whites of each other's eyes.

And he wouldn't need to forge a gun, not an actual one. The smith could likely just forge a handle onto a metal rod, and then engrave a rune for 'blast' or 'beam'. The forging itself would only be to add a handle and ensure that the mana conductivity was high. Maybe something similar in shape to an escrima stick? Or closer to the design of an actual gun? It would depend on what runes he could find that would fit the job.

"How good are you with mana? High or low capacity, how fast is your regeneration, what affinities do you have, all that?"

Cole knew he was special. If not for the fact that his Class literally had 'Chosen' pasted in front of it, then for his forcefire. Even if his capacity was a little below average, he was recovering mana orders of magnitude faster than Mary was. And despite how useful the mind wisps had been in battle, it was obvious that forcefire was higher on the food chain. Jace would give him another point of reference, likely the inverse of his own capabilities. Portals couldn't be cheap, even at the size of a dinner plate, so a high capacity would be expected.

"I had no idea how to control the normal stuff, I've only gotten space to work. Small portals and very weak telekinesis are the best I can do right now. The first one relies heavily on my Class's vision power, and the second only works at very close range for now. I think my capacity is high? Portals drain it like nothing, but the telekinesis barely makes a dent. It takes me about half a day to go from nearly empty to full. All I've got is space for affinities. Can you even have more than one?"

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Cole had five. And if his intuition was to be believed, conjuration and enchantment were a step above normal affinities. Space and Mind both sounded better than base elements, so both Jace and Mary were probably a step ahead of the competition.

"I've got a few more than that," the smith chuckled, "But though I am good with blades, I've always preferred being in the forge. I'll see about making you a weapon. How does some sort of mana flintlock sound?"

The question received a sounding yes, and Cole got to work.

He used the forge to melt down a display axe. It was mundane steel, although high quality in nature. He still had nowhere near enough experience with deep steel to conjure it, although he was closing in on a quarter of the way there. And this wouldn't have to be anything fancy, just easy to hold and with a good rune.

Compared to deep steel, the mundane material was a joke. The smith almost had to restart after he nearly sunk his hammer halfway through the metal in a single strike. His Rank increase had apparently been a bit stronger than he had realized. He had been forging with deep steel and fighter dire wolves after the power boost, so the difference hadn't been as apparent. But tested against mana-less materials, he had more than enough strength.

A rod of steel was hammered out, about a foot long and an inch in diameter. He twisted it in on itself for structure a few times, the previously strenuous task barely a challenge. He wasn't in the realm of superhuman strength quite yet, but he was about as close as you could get without going over. Once he had finished that, he turned one end of the rod slightly down and hammered it into an oval, creating the slanted handle flintlocks were recognized for.

The bottom of the handle was rolled towards the front of the weapon until it created something in between the pommel of a sword and the scroll of a fiddle. A few notches were carved into the side of the weapon to change its look from metal rod to at least slightly recognizable as a gun. The end that would have the rune on it was flanged at the edges, hopefully preventing the rune from being damaged if a fight turned out too up close and personal.

And for the functionality of the weapon, Cole trudged over to his engraving table. Mary was scrolling through her Market screens, searching for alchemy equipment. The set she had her eyes on had gotten bought, so now she was looking for a new victi-haggling partner. Jace had passed out in the corner after stuffing himself with conjured bread. Apparently, there wasn't much food halfway up magic trees, and a handful of berries every few hours only got you so far.

The smith considered what he should use for the rune. There were a multitude of options that would fit what Jace wanted to do. Before the man passed out, they had talked about how their group was planning on fighting. Cole was obviously the frontline, and once he got enough mana metals to make good armor he could be the tank. He could make armor out of mundane metals or spend days in the forge waiting for Mary to have the Credits to buy better materials, but he wanted to get the wolf out of the way first. Jace had described the massive life mana crystal in more detail, and the smith wanted to see if he could create armor that healed him as he fought.

Mary would focus on creating and exploiting distractions. Her mind mana had either paralyzed an enemy or made them lose control of their body so far. She wanted to go further down the route of weakening enemies and then taking advantage when they were vulnerable. Once Cole managed to make her a mind catalyst for her spear, those capabilities would skyrocket.

Jace wanted to use his portals predominantly. Apparently, although distance did affect the mana cost quite a bit, the largest factor to the portals was size. He didn't have the mana control for it yet, but the man theorized that once he could get the size of his portals down to about that of a coin, the cost would be negligible. He wanted to have an arsenal of ranged mana weapons and either create portals in front of the barrels to attack enemies when he wasn't even close to them or use portals to reposition himself if he was taking a more active role in the fight.

Overall, they fit the stereotypical 'party of adventurers' ideal quite well. A tank, a rogue, and a mage. Or a spellsword, because Jace would be focusing on equipment. Spellgun? Ranged magic user.

Because Jace would be using portals to deliver the shots, the rune used didn't necessarily need to be long-range. The smith could just engrave the rune for 'fire' or 'wind' and let the Overseer send flames and gusts at the enemies. But that would lack a certain...flair. And flames were Cole's thing.

Eventually, he decided on a simple rune. 'Boom'. It wouldn't create a fiery explosion, but one of mana. The illustrations in the book that described the rune showed it as a blue shimmer in the air, distorting and twisting whatever it touched as the targets were forced to ingest far more mana than they had the capacity for. It would saturate the flesh with magic, damaging the body and preventing other magic from passing through that part of the body, weakening the passive strength enhancements that bodily mana flow provided.

The rune was made up of seven concentric circles, with a jagged and uneven six-pointed star in the middle. It was harder to engrave than the other runes Cole had used due to how meandering and random the lines of the star were. But he got it done, and just in time for Jace to wake up.

His mana was back to full, as was Mary's. Jace was all set and muttering excitedly to himself about his new 'boomstick'. They had all taken part in a meal of conjured bread and water, and the weapons had been checked over for signs of wear, with no defects found.

It was time to go hunting.