After the talk with Trent, you decide to spend most of the day at home. Not knowing how much the trip to the smith would cost you — you forgo your book-buying plans for later.

You take out 300 of the 400 gold you have in the guild.

You get back 299 coins. Apparently, the guild charges a processing fee of one gold per withdrawal for amounts over 200 and a silver for amounts below that.

“Seems fair,” you think to yourself. A silver isn’t a high price to pay for securing one’s savings and a single gold coin is insignificant once an adventurer starts earning hundreds.

You exit the guild to look for Thomas and the others.

Thomas wasn’t at the house so you head to the Hungry Cat and just leave a message with Alice.

You spend the rest of the day walking around — practicing your blindsight and making a mental map of the town.

You spend a few minutes and another four gold having dinner with the rest of the hunters — telling them about the frost wolf situation before excusing yourself due to your early trip.

The night passes quickly as you use the time to further heal the damage to your forearms.

At the crack of dawn, you head to the southern gate and find Trent already waiting.

“Are you ready boy?” he asks as he you approach.

You give a brief nod.

Trent isn’t wearing his metal chestplate or lugging his shield. He has his sword as usual, but you think this journey won’t be as dangerous as you first expected.

You mention the piece of mithril that you found at Bjorn’s house and apologize for forgetting about it. You take it out and hand it to Trent.

“Not a lot,” he says as he appraises the stone. “Maybe Torm can use it later,” he says handing you back the chunk of metal.

The two of you start walking south and after barely an hour — you start to hear the sound of hammering and the rings of metal.

After a few more minutes of walking, Trent gestures at a fairly large building.

“Torm’s.”

You see smoke continually rising from the smithy’s several chimneys and spot a couple of apprentices performing a few tasks outside.

As you near the smithy, one of the apprentices starts to approach you. He stops, seemingly noticing Trent’s familiar figure, and proceeds to enter the smithy.

Soon, a man appears from inside the building. He’s wearing a leather apron so you assume this must be the weaponsmith you’re seeing. He has a fairly strong build and average height. You also note the lingering fluctuations of magic slowly dissipating from his body.

“The boy needs a weapon,” Trent says gesturing to you.

“He knows the price?” Torm asks.

“He has an idea,” Trent answers. “The price would not be a problem.”

“Do you have a weapon in mind…” he starts.

“Caleb,” you finish. “And yes, I have a weapon in mind.”

“Pray tell,” says the smith, his interest piqued.

“I’d like a heavy hammer with a head as wide as a fist, a hook on the other end, and a metal shaft three-feet long. A weapon I can use in one hand or two”

“That’s not an easy weapon to wield boy,” the smith says. “Why not a sword or axe?” he gestures to the axe on your waist.

“Swords and axes can catch on flesh or armor,” you reply.

“There is that,” he nods in understanding.

“200 gold for the forging and materials,” he says. He looks at Trent and adds, “Among other things.”

Trent takes out a familiar book — the one from the summoner. He also hands the smith a piece of broken marble, presumably from the altar.

“The name should be in there,” Trent points out. “The marble is a piece of the altar used to summon it.”

“Come inside,” he ushers the two of you.

You enter the smithy, noting a central forge and two smaller ones for the apprentices. You see one apprentice hammering at a blade of what seems to be the making of a sword.

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The smith moves to one of the many weapon racks in the smithy. He reaches for an axe with a wide crescent blade and a maul of sorts.

“Check the weight,” he says, handing you the axe and stepping back.

You grasp the axe easily and swing it a couple of times.

“Now this one,” he says, taking the axe and handing you the maul.

The maul is considerably heavier and more unwieldy because of the momentum. The shaft is four feet long and clearly made to be used using two hands.

You grab the maul with one hand — gripping the weapon high, a foot from the end of the shaft. You take a few swings of the weapon, showing the smith your ability to control the weight and momentum.

“A hammer it is,” he says, now with a better understanding of your strength.

“I could use a heavier head,” you say. “But the shaft is my main concern. I don’t want a weapon that would break in battle.”

“Give him the rock,” Trent says.

You take out the lump of mithril and hand it to the smith.

“Mithril?” he says. “Not so suited for the weapon you have in mind and definitely not enough — but I can use it to fortify the shaft and maybe coat the hammerhead.”

“This would take more than just a few hours of forging,” the smith says. “You can return in the afternoon or maybe you can teach the kid some forging,” he looks at Trent, “it seems the kid is interested.”

You look at Trent questioningly.

“I know a bit of forging,” he says.

“He knows a bit of everything,” says the smith. “He’s just no master in any of them.”

“Now let me get to work,” he says as he starts gathering materials.

Trent guides you to one of the smaller furnaces. He takes a crudely shaped piece of metal, gesturing at the apprentice.

The apprentice merely nods, too bent on his words to communicate anything more.

Trent wears a glove and shoves half of the piece of metal into the already burning furnace. He waits for the iron to turn red, pulls it out, and lays it out into the anvil.

He then hammers the red hot metal continuously, shoving it back to the furnace once the heat dies down. In less than an hour, part of the piece of metal takes a rod-like form.

You notice small fluctuations of energy every time Trent strikes with the hammer. You turn to Torm and see a denser concentration of energy being driven into the metal.

It seems they’ve incorporated magic into the smithing process.

Trent breaks off the rod-like part of the metal and you can see the early makings of a dagger.

He continues heating and hammering the piece of metal until it forms something of an edge.

You notice the apprentice staring at him with a questioning look — but he soon goes back to his forging.

Satisfied with the edge, Trent shoves the blade end back into the furnace.

The piece of metal once again glows a bright red. He takes the red-hot piece of metal, this time with pliers, and takes off the lid of one of the casks behind the furnace.

He plunges the glowing blade into the cask filled with oil and it starts burning.

“The lid,” he gestures at you.

You grab the lid and put it back in place — stopping the fire.

He repeats the process a couple of times, with you keeping the fire from spreading out.

Throughout this process, you constantly hear the pounding of metal from the central furnace as Torm continuously works on your hammer.

Once the blade cools down, he fixes what would be the tang of the dagger into a vice and he uses a whetstone to smooth out the edge. Once done, he switches to the other side.

The apprentice gestures to the corner and you see an upright grindstone.

You tap Trent’s shoulder, pointing out the grindstone.

He mumbles something under his breath and proceeds to the stone.

It takes him a while to figure out its workings, but soon he sits down and proceeds to turn the stone through a lever with his feet.

The apprentice momentarily pauses his work and approaches Trent.

“The grindstone should be spinning towards you,” he tells Trent. “Spin it towards you before stepping on the lever.”

He then goes back to his work.

Trent does what the apprentice suggests — a slight look of embarrassment on his face.

“What?” he asks, seeing you looking at him. “I’ve never used one of these things before.”

He proceeds to sharpen the dagger’s edge — taking half an hour before he is finally satisfied.

He shows you the unfinished dagger, now only lacking a proper hilt, pommel, and guard.

“Now you try,” he says, giving you another piece of bar-shaped metal, as well as the glove he was using.

You recreate the steps Trent performed in forging the dagger — taking a bit more time because of your inexperience.

The apprentice sometimes looks up from his work and stares at the two of you with a dumbfounded — almost frustrated — look in his eyes.

It takes you three hours to finally finish forging your dagger.

It has an appearance similar to the one Trent made, but it had a different feel.

The apprentice rises from his station, seemingly also done with his work. He approaches Torm but Torm nods before he could even mutter a word.

The apprentice leaves the smithy.

“Time for us to get going too,” Trent says. “Time for lunch.”

“What about Torm?” you ask.

“He won’t stop forging until he’s done,” Trent answers. It might take the whole day to finish that hammer of yours.

The two of you go out and see the three apprentices preparing stew for lunch.

Trent brings out a few slabs of meat from his pack — giving it to the apprentices to either stew or roast.

The apprentices prepare a modest lunch of stew and roast meat. One of them heads into one of the houses and brings out a few bowls and cutlery.

The five of you have lunch amidst the continuous ringing of Torm’s hammering.

“We have pre-casted blades if you want to make daggers,” says the apprentice from the smithy. “Using those uncast pieces of metal makes the whole process a lot harder.”

“The boy has to learn from the basics,” says Trent. Although you feel he’s just making an excuse for his lack of know-how.

“I don’t mind,” you say. “It gives me a feel for the hammering and the heating.”

After lunch, the two of you offer to help the apprentices in clearing up the dishes, pots, and whatnots — but they refuse. The meat probably put us on their good side.

“Forge two more daggers,” Trent says. “I’ll just be outside napping until you and Torm are done.”

He then takes a chair and settles on one of the shadier parts of the smithy.

You enter the smithy and start forging.

Your second dagger still takes three hours to make, but the second one seems to go much faster.

While grinding your second dagger, you hear the final rings of Torm’s hammering as he roughly finishes the forging of your weapon.

“Get out,” he turns to you and says, “this is not for you to see.”

You stop the grindstone and leave your unfinished dagger — noting the gravity in the smith’s voice.

“What exactly is he going to do?” you think as you leave the smithy.