Forty five minutes later, after I finished lunch, I walked into my room stunned at what I learned during lunch. My birthday was yesterday… I didn't even notice! It completely slipped my mind! I was so distracted by my new situation that I forgot my own birthday. Though I really wasn't sure how old I was now… I was going to turn nineteen back home, but the system told me that I was eleven years old here, so am I twelve now? I think about my question for a while before coming to an answer. “Well, when you think about it I have lived for a few months, but I am mentally nineteen and physically twelve… Wow I am messed up…” I said, holding my head in my hands.

I should be at home right now, moving into a new house, celebrating with my family, but instead I am sitting in an orphanage in the body of a twelve year old in a fictional world… “Come on! Pull yourself together! Be a man.” I whispered to myself, standing up and wiping away a tear that was streaking across my face. I pushed my Spirit Energy through the gateway in my soul and watched as it was used to power the structure and opened my eyes to see the door appear in front of me.

I opened the door, walked to the forge and set the gold rings that I had made this morning down on my work table. I had made eleven of the tiny gold bands before I was called for lunch and they were pretty much the same as the first, mostly really good but some areas that looked warped and shifted in odd ways, like the metal slightly melted in places leaving it disfigured.

But these disfigured rings actually helped me with my practice today instead of hindering me. This was because I was practicing smoothing metal out and then carving details and inscriptions into stuff, in this case the gold rings, which were great for starting out as they were weaker than most metals by quite a bit and should be easier to shape and engrave onto.

Because I had quite a lot of rings that needed to be smoothed over before engraving anything, I decided to smooth the rings all out before engraving anything. Not wasting any time, I start heating up the magi-forge and then prepare my tools to start working, rounding hammer, tongs and a selection of gravers for engravings and inscriptions after the smoothing is done.

I also picked up a thinner mandrel and placed it inside the hardy hole on the anvil, where it fit quite snugly, and I picked up a gold ring at random from the selection on the table. I slid the ring into the mandrel and pushed it down a little, just to make sure that I had a good size of mandrel. The gold ring stopped sliding down almost halfway to the bottom of the mandrel and I nodded, it was almost the perfect size.

As soon as I had taken the gold ring off the mandrel, I noticed that the forge was ready, so I grabbed the tongs, grabbed the gold ring I had just tested on the mandrel and placed it in the heat.

Now, because gold is actually quite malleable I don't necessarily have to heat it up, but heating it up makes the gold more malleable and less likely to crack, along with tougher when I put it through the heat treatment, so it is probably best that I go through that, I don't want to have to go through and repair more than I had to originally. Especially because I was really only doing this to work on engravings in the first place.

As soon as the gold turned into a nice golden red color, I knew that it was ready to start. I grabbed the tongs again from beside me and raised them up to pick up the red hot metal. Concentrating now, I carefully took a firm hold on the ring and maneuvered the ring to the top of the mandrel that I had placed in the anvil and lowered it onto the metal cone quickly. Then I dropped it, letting the hot metal slide a little lower down the mandrel.

I quickly and deftly placed the tongs to the side and picked up the rounding hammer. I turned to the rapidly cooling metal and with my hammer in hand I started guiding the metal, working out the deformities and smoothing the metal with ease. My two months of practicing my blacksmithing knowledge was not wasted after all.

A minute later I had finished smoothing out the metal rings and when I placed down my hammer I picked up the tongs once more and gently took the almost fully cooled gold with them and proceeded to drop the ring into the large steel bucket beside the anvil.

This was not an ordinary bucket though as when I had scanned the bucket with my appraisal ability during one of my first practice session, it had told me that it was a “Magic quenching bucket” which confused me a little at first as I had no idea what a magic quenching bucket would do.

When I reviewed the blacksmithing knowledge I was given however, I realized that this bucket would be pretty useful. What my blacksmithing knowledge suggested that the magic bucket could do was firstly, cause a even distribution of heat and cold in the water inside it, causing any metal placed inside cool perfectly evenly which can prevent quenching cracks and deformation, and secondly it suggested that it could also imbue magical properties into the water to help increase the effects of quenching by making the metal harder and more heat resistant.

When I was testing the bucket I found out that only the even distribution of heat was imbued on the bucket however. That is not to say that it is a bad thing, in fact this is great and will improve the quality of my work a lot, but it was slightly disappointing when I found out that it did not imbue magical properties in the metal quenched in it. I could technically make it have that property myself when I get more practice and make my own personal enchanted equipment anyway, so it's good enough to start with at least.

I watched the bubbles rise in droves for the first few seconds but quickly I could see the bubbles petering off and stopping when it was fully cooled. I reached into the magic bucket and drew out the shining gold ring quickly, the water was still really cold. I walked over to the forge and extended my hands momentarily to dry them off and heat them up a bit, before inspecting the gold ring in my hand. The blue screen appeared in front of my face as I activated my ability and as I read it I felt proud, my diligence in training has paid off.

Name: Gold Ring

Grade: Common High

Abilities: None

I had reached Common High with only mortal materials! This was a huge step up from my abilities when making anything even a month ago, where I could only make a common middle grade ring out of a non mortal material, mythril. I looked at my two enchanted rings, seeing all their flaws, bumps and deformations that were the marks of my abilities of me from months ago, then I looked at the gold ring in my hand. It was marginally better made and the gold ring seemed almost perfectly smoothed over, though a little rough than I might see in stores because I did not buffer it or file it down at all.

I wonder if the grade will improve when I engrave it?

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Half an hour later, sweating all over, I pulled out the last ring from the magic quenching bucket, looked at the gold band critically and then appraised it, “Common middle” the blue rectangle declared. I sighed, it seems that I can't consistently make common high grade objects. I placed the gold ring down in one of two piles of gold rings that I knew to be the common middle pile.

The common high ring I had made first was one of the few that were not in the common middle pile, but in a pile with five other rings that were in the common high pile. The ring that I had just placed in the common middle pile was actually my last and so, I got ready to start learning engraving. I walked to my anvil and picked the tongs and the rounding hammer up and away from the metal and back away on the tool rack in their respective places. I had already turned off the magi-forge, so I immediately started on the first step of engraving.

The first step I was going to do this time was place one of the common middle grade rings onto the mandrel, take a pencil from the work table and start drawing what I want to engrave on the gold. What I was planning to make for my first time was actually just a pattern of a thin but tight spiral wrapped around the outside of the ring, instead of anything too complicated.

When I had finished marking the gold ring, I took a thin grave and started running the steel end over the black lines, pressing down as I did so. I watched and maneuvered the steel graver carefully as it started causing small uneven chunks of metal to be extracted from the gold ring, pushing the pattern to be engraved into the gold.

When I had finished roughly fifteen minutes later, the metal burrs I had created fell away with a good shake. I looked at the engraved gold ring critically, the engraving did mostly look ok and portrayed what I wanted, but the depth and thickness of the spiral that I was trying to engrave varied a lot, which made it very uneven and rough. All in all, not very good.

Ah well, I was not expecting to get it right away anyway. Onto the next one then.

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One and a half hours later I had finished practicing my engraving and was looking at what was a common high grade gold ring that I had carved elvish lettering into the band that roughly read “To he that seeks adventure, to them that can see the world, let the truth shine bright and guide your path.”

This was a simple and common elvish phrase to wish someone safe travels and is dramatically shorter than the English version being only five words, it was especially easier to write, if it was not shorter than the English translation then it would have to be way smaller and I doubt that I could make it very legible if I engraved it.

The engraving was not perfect, but I could see some progress from my first try, as the width and depth was not as varied and the script was quite detailed and compact. But will it be enough… ‘Appraisal!’ I thought, activating my appraisal ability and causing the bright blue screen to pop into existence. “Yes!” I shouted happily, I had done it! Reading the words on the screen with joy.

Name: Engraved Gold Ring of Safe Travel

Grade: Uncommon low

Abilities: None

What I had to do previously to achieve this grade was to enchant a non-mortal material ring, but now I had achieved the same grade from a simple engraved gold ring. I am truly learning fast in the art of blacksmithing.

Then a soft sound came from somewhere and the information on the screen slid over like it was in a PowerPoint presentation and new words were shown saying “Congratulations you have earned: 22 Ring Gold from making the Engraved Gold Ring of Safe Travel, check the store for the total amount.”

I smiled at the notification, nothing like seeing your money going up to reward your hard work. I spent a few minutes taking in the moment and then I started appraising my other work. Disappointingly, the ring of Safe Travel was the only ring that had breached into uncommon grade, though I could tell some of the later five were close, but not quite there yet.

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The first three I had made were the exact opposite however and the engravings actually dragged the grade to common low, which meant that those creations were an absolute failure. Also the first ring was not the only one that awarded me some points and I earned a total of one hundred and eighty two. I have enough for a new non-mortal material to work with just for these earnings alone, and now that I think about it I think that I actually have quite a bit more, but I should check first before buying anything…

“System Store.” I say to open the store menu. I watched the blue screen blink for a moment before it changed into the system store home page, allowing me to check my balance. “Two hundred and twelve? Nice! If I am not remembering anything wrong, that is enough for one of almost everything in the store! Hum… I should take a bit to think over what I should get later…” I say after reading my balance. “Well, I should get moving now though. Lots to do.” I decide and straighten up to start cleaning up.

I was about to call the command ‘Dissolve’ to clean up my mess, but before I did I decided that I wanted to keep the ring of safe travels. I then spent a few seconds breaking the ‘Materialized matter’ mark, by flooding the ring with my Spirit Energy and pushing the resistance away. I even took an extra few seconds to make sure that none of the ring would dematerialize with the other worse creations and my mess.

“Dissolve” I said after making sure that the ring of safe travels was protected, causing my energy reserves to shoot up and the metal burrs on the ground, along with the other gold rings, to vanish into the air. I checked the ring of safe travels, just to make sure that it was fine, and found that it was exactly the same as before.

I walked over to the mandrel that was sticking out of the anvil and picked it up, along with the set of gravers and placed them in their proper spots on the tool shelf.

Blacksmithing practice is officially over for the day. It is time for me to finish my arena!

I walked out of the forge and into the hall, where I paused by the storage room before remembering that I had my material rings in my pocket from before lunch and I continued to the entrance hall, up the ramp and to my arena where I looked around, trying to remember where I had left off and what I still had to do.

After looking around for a second, I remembered that I had just made the general shape of the stands and I still needed to decorate it and add more details to make it seem more Greek architecture with some arches, pillars and patterns carved in the stone. I also needed to make the arena floor and the seats, but I am going to make the details first.

So I take out and put on the material samples for gold and marble and start channeling my Spirit Energy through the ring of creation and the samples, mixing the gold and marble streams of energy and start creating a grand entrance archway between the two sides of the stands.

Over the next two hours, I formed an entrance arch around the stairway to the seats and I materialized decorations, arches, outcropping slabs with engravings and a high roof supported with pillars. Of all the things that I had created with the ring of creation, the roof was by far that hardest, I had to build up pillars while I was on top of them, which meant that I had to jump up for each foot the pillars went up by, like I was pillaring in Minecraft, and then I had to form the roof itself from the walls with me standing on top and walking around it to form the entirety of it.

Of course it was really fun to form it, but I was also kind of afraid to accidentally fall off, or not time my jump correctly, but in the end I finished it without any incidents.

But building this also came with its problems that I noticed when I had finished the last section of the roof. “How am I supposed to get down…” I said a little nervously as I looked at the ground from twenty feet in the air on the marble roof.

I was stuck for a good few minutes, but eventually I decided how to get down. I could have made a ladder or a rope, but no. I decided to do something absolutely stupid, because of course I did.

I spent a few seconds changing my material sample ring to add the polyester sample and then I started forming my way down. It was pretty complex to actually make however so I spent ten minutes to form it, but once I was done I took hold of my creation and jumped off the roof, clutching on for dear life. What I made was a large fluffy foam mattress. Yes, I made a large mattress and jumped off the roof, holding it to my chest as I hoped it would not flip.

When I was about to impact the ground I started questioning my sanity, but it was already too late to do anything so I braced for impact. I felt the impact quite clearly, but it was extremely softened by my four feet thick polyester foam sheet, so I was fine. It was actually really fun to jump off a twenty foot high roof holding onto a mattress if I am being honest with myself. It was terrifying, true, but also surprisingly fun.

Still, I had no desire to repeat that incident anytime soon.

As soon as I had recovered from the fall, which took about ten minutes, I started on the next part of my arena. The lighting and the floor of the arena.

For lighting, it was a simple matter of making a steel torch, like the ones that are along the walls in the main area of the Soul Forge, and add a glob of the Cool Flames into it and repeat for about every five feet on every wall. I actually had plenty of practice doing this when I made the second floor, so it went fast, only about half an hour.

The construction process for the floor was actually easy too all things considered, I just formed a foot of marble mixed with gold like I did for the walls, roof and stands, but I materialized a thick layer of steel on the bottom of the floor, I also added the steel reinforcement to the walls as well, just because I could. Then as soon as the steel reinforcement was materialized, I added the polyester cushioning inside the top layer of the marble floor and a tiny bit above it.

When I walked over the floor, I found that the polyester had another effect that I did not plan for, it made the floor have way more traction and made it way easier to grip and push off the floor than with just the stone and gold. But besides that it worked as intended and cushioned falls as well as being able to take a hit, it was even better than I thought it would be if I am being honest.

So with the general building now done, I need to make the seats. Now, I had planned to make something akin to movie theater seats, but I changed my plan a bit. Now that I was looking at where the seats are supposed to go, I think that they would seem really out of place. Unless, I changed them a bit.

As soon as I came up with a rough design in my head, I started to work. I walked to the stands, took off the ring of creation and removed the material samples, selecting new ones for the seats. I looked between my different samples and I selected a few different ones, the red velvet for the cushioning, marble for the main seat and gold for accenting the design and adding inlays for some decoration.

I attached the material samples to the ring of creation and I started channeling my Spirit Energy through the ring of creation and the marble and the gold attachments, moving and controlling the spirit energy into the shape I wanted.

I shaped the chair that I slowly made to slightly resemble a throne, and gave the command to materialize the Spirit Energy. As the seat was created in front of me, I started inspecting my design carefully. “Hum…” I said thinking aloud “Well, there is plenty of room for improvement. What if I add this…” I spoke as I started channeling my Spirit Energy once again, this time to add some more details and decoration to the marble throne.

I spent close to ten minutes just making a good design for my seats, but eventually I finished designing it and added the red velvet, polyester stuffed cushioning to the seat that closely resembles a cross between a throne and a movie theater seat because of the design of the armrests and the cup holders built into the seats.

With the addition of the velvet padding, it actually looked really nice to sit on along with just plain cool with the red, like what the king would sit on in his castle. I could also see hints of Greek architecture in it too, in the gold accented pediment design in the headrest and the thicker layers of marble creating a strong base, outlined gold patterns on each section of the base. That could just be me though, it’s not like I have anyone else’s opinion…

“Well, I think that this is cool, so let's use it.” I concluded my thoughts out loud, before starting to work on all the other ones that I need to make.

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An hour and a half later, I was done. I had finished building the last seat and I was looking up at the imposing stands and the rows of seats that closely resembled thrones from the center of the arena proudly.

This was probably the best thing I had ever made. I had done 3D designing quite a lot in my past life, along with making a few small live action films, and I have designed a whole bunch of cool buildings, but seeing something that I had made and designed myself brought to life, filled me with a deep sense of satisfaction.

Then I heard a beep and a blue screen popped into existence from a small blue point that appeared in front of me. I got a notification from the system…

I looked at the rectangle curiously and read the message with a growing grin, it read “Passive ability: ‘Builder Lv1’ unlocked.” “Nice!” I exclaimed, unlocking a passive ability is never a bad thing and it seems to really help a lot with what is in its ability range. The prime example of this is my ‘Blacksmithing’ passive ability, which even at level one I can feel it practically guide my hand, make it more steady, accurate and it also seems to make metal easier to work with over all.

Then the system makes another louder noise which alerts me to another notification. I looked up surprised at the screen and read the new notification which says “Passive ability: ‘Architect Lv1’ unlocked.” I look at the screen and my smile starts to grow even farther, two new abilities in one day! “This is great! These abilities should really come in handy when I am upgrading or adding to the Soul Forge! Let's check what exactly they do first though, before coming to any conclusions. Status!” I say, causing the screen to blink once more and turn into the status page.

Statistics

Passive Abilities

Skills

Active Quests

Name: Ardika Ekia

Physical age: 12 years old

Birthdate: August 12

Gender: Male

Race: Human/God hybrid

Adaptation

Adaptive system

Perfect Recollection

Ring Maker Lv5

Speed reading Lv1:

Increases mental speed for processing information read, also increasing reading speed.

Builder Lv1:

Increases mental and physical abilities in the process of construction.

Architect Lv1:

Increases mental ability to plan three dimensional structures and guides the brain to see what can be improved upon in structures when built.

Appraisal

Soul Forge Lv1

(No active quests)

“These abilities sound a lot like what I thought they would be, but the Architect passive is surprising… ‘Increases mental ability to plan three dimensional structures’ sounds like it could eventually let me design 3D models in my brain and it also ‘guides the brain to see what can be improved upon in structures when built’ sounds interesting… so it points out weaknesses in structures, or does it point out what could be improved to make it look better? Honestly it makes it sound like it is both…” I said, looking through my two new abilities.

“Well, looks like building time is over for today.” I concluded sadly, I had quite a lot of fun building today. “Actually, what time is it? Maybe there is still time to get started on removing the mark on the building…” I say somewhat hopeful and I start walking out of the newly built arena and out into the desolate second floor, with a singular rectangle of four feet thick polyester sitting on the floor nearby.

I laughed to myself as I saw it, it’s the ‘mattress’ I used to fall off the roof. I walked up to it and dragged it away from the arena, over six feet away to be precise, and I dissolved it, filling my Spirit Energy reserves. I continued to walk out of the soul forge and back into my room until I could see my alarm clock.

“Wow, lucky I chose to come out when I did…” I whispered as I saw that the time was seven o'clock exactly. We must have been called to supper already. Well, let's go eat.