“You want all my scrap metal? Hm…” A young dwarf leaned over in his seat, placing a hand on his knee and staring me down. “Who’s forging with it?”
“Haha…” ‘I guess I don’t exactly look like an adventurer now that I’ve got fair skin…’ “That would be me…”
He let out a huff and turned back to the room behind him. “Hey Crank! Grabe some of that junk Barge got recently!”
After a few moments, a large tray was slapped on the counter filled with blood-soaked armor and broken weapons. “This is all the junked steel we have right now, everything else has been melted down already… What are you looking for specifically?”
I started sorting through the gear. “Well… I’m confident I can work with the metal, but I want to try refining Vethrian steel, which means I would need Azure steel as a base right? I’ve only ever worked with Iron on my own, although I worked with Damascus steel for a request while I was learning since I can enchant.”
He folded his arms, still eyeing me, a bit suspiciously. “Let me see you’re card.”
“My…” I took a step back before collecting myself. “Why… Do you want to see that?”
He rolled his eyes. “You haven’t been here before have you miss?”
I sighed, pulling it out. “No, It’s fine… Dwarves only sell to people they trust… You want to make sure I’m actually capable of turning this into something before you give it to me, is that right?”
He smirked, his eyes warming up. “So you do know a thing or two.”
He took my card and read it over carefully examining it. “Ah, so you’re the girl everyone keeps talking about. The ironsmiths have been talking even longer than that though, you certainly aren’t a stranger here. That’s my mistake sorry.” He handed it back and I nervously pocketed it.
‘I’d almost rather they see me naked than my card… I don’t think I’ll ever get over showing it to people…’
“So. Unfortunately, I can’t sell you azure steel just yet, junk or not.”
“Why not…” ‘Why do dwarves have to be so complicated… If he was human the only thing that would matter is whether or not I give him the money…’
“It would be irresponsible of me to let you learn how to refine Vethrian steel before you learn how to make Azure steel. Come inside the forge.” He said gruffly opening up a small knee-high door next to the counter.
‘Oh, so it’s like that then. Free lesson?’
“I will be charging you for this too, I’ll bundle it with the gear.”
‘Ah… Extorsion… Yeah, that sounds more reasonable…’ I sighed. “Mochi, if it gets too hot for you then you can step out alright?” I said softly as she followed behind me and we got to work. She was surprisingly helpful during the process, and I learned quite a bit too.
Steel was a simple alloy, carbon, and iron. Damascus steel was a steel that was imbued with magic during refining, this gave it a specific pattern, as well as made it immune to rust and things like that. Azure steel was different though. It was made from iron, carbon, and mana crystals. Vethrian steel was just that but with magic, the Damascus version of azure steel if you will. The higher the percentage of mana crystals, the brighter the blue and the more it took to enchantments, but this also made it more brittle. And if you used a ratio of higher than 50% mana crystals the armor would become transparent and the magical properties of the mana crystal would all disappear, making it so you couldn’t even try to reforge it.
Of course, like I said I had worked with steel before, and refining was the easiest part of smithing, especially after I learned metal magic. I was a fast learner on top of that, so we were in and out of there in just a few hours. I even impressed the dwarves enough that they gave me a discount… Altogether it only cost… A few gold…
‘Just think about the shiny new weapons!’ I told myself as I parted with even more of my precious money. ‘It’s worth it… I’m not even C rank, so having full Azure steel gear would be unusual, not to mention Vethrian steel. ‘I think most people my rank would usually be traveling with one Vethrian steel weapon. Wealthy mages that are strong enough to reach C rank start wearing Vethrian steel armor because they can have it made light. But monster leather armor is just not as effective until you start hunting C or even B-grade monsters. Before that, it’s hard to find a hide tougher than iron, although leather does take to certain enchantments far better, which can be useful in its own way… But most people don’t have skills or coins to get things enchanted until they are C rank anyway.’ I scratched my head turning back to Mochi. ‘She looks small, but she is pretty tough… Still, I feel like I should give her a set of armor first.’ I rubbed my forehead. ‘What am I even saying… I still don’t even know if she wants to be an adventurer… I’ll need to talk with her tomorrow… Too tired right now.
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“Chika?”
“Woh there!” One of the dwarves said boldly as he grabbed me and steadied me on my feet. “You alright miss?”
“Fine… I’m fine… Just used too much mana too soon…” I coughed, spitting out blood. ‘That’s not good… I let my thoughts wander while I was pouring mana into the steel and didn’t stop…’
I rubbed my eyes as they helped me over to a chair. “Don’t you know your own limits girl?” One grumbled, handing me a mana potion.
“It’s hard when you keep breaking them…” I grumbled back, gulping it down as fast as I could and closing my eyes. ‘It doesn’t seem like it’s actually that bad, the blood is from lesions in my throat, not my lungs. My mana circuits are still normal, I just overused them… It’s my body that’s messed up…Too many possible reasons for that.’ I opened my eyes again and took a deep breath. “I think I’m fine now thanks…”
“Right, that’s three silver for the mana potion.”
‘Freaking dwarves…’ I growled handing over the money and throwing the junked gear into storage along with materials I would need before heading out. ‘I got blood on my shirt too… I should wash it off before it stains…’ “Let’s go home early today…”
“Uh… Boss!”
‘What’s that about?’ I held my head, tuning them out while I rested and made sure I fully recovered. It felt like several minutes passed until my body cooled down and my mana stabilized again. After I started thinking straight I prayed for healing, and that fixed the lingering pain from the cuts.
“Are you feeling better now?” Mochi asked.
“Yeah… But what’s going on… Is there still a commotion?”
“Apparently when you spat blood in the steel while it was being refined it messed it up somehow.”
‘Sparks… Are they going to charge me for that too?’
The dwarf that was teaching me slowly approached and knelt down in front of me. “Are you doing better miss?”
‘Here it comes…’ “Yeah… How much do I owe you…”
“Nothing miss. A-actually we’re incredibly grateful, it may have been an accident, but you created a whole new type of metal, and we can’t figure out how to reproduce it.” He stood up and crossed his arms, seeing that I was feeling alright again. “When your blood mixed with the metal and it cooled, it turned red, not blue. We are still testing it, but it seems to have very similar properties, but its overall performance is slightly higher, although not by any noticeable amount.”
‘Red Vethrian steel…’ I leaned back in the chair. “Why can’t you reproduce it?”
“Well, it’s not so simple you see. At first, we thought blood was the key, so we tried micing out blood with the steel, but it came out the same. So, then we thought, ah, well maybe it has to be human blood, so we tried that too, but again nothing.”
“Where did you get human blood from…”
“I know a guy.”
“You what? Like you know a guy that gave you some of his, or you know a guy that can get some…”
“That’s not important.”
“It kind of is!”
He shrugged it off. “The important thing is that it still failed… Can we have some of your blood by chance? If you give us a small vial we will give you all the red Vethrian steal we don’t need for research, which is most of it. People will think we're selling snake oil if we try and turn it into gear anyway. At least before proper testing.”
“Just a vial?” I asked slowly. ‘I mean… That sounds like a really good deal, those smelters make a lot at one time, so even if I only get half that’s more than enough for me to consider it…’
“Right, just fill this up, and I’ll heal you with a miracle as well.” He pulled out a beeker the size of a large coffee cup and my eyes went wide.
“You call that a vial? Do I even have that much blood?”
He raised an eyebrow looking at the beeker intently before glancing back at me. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
‘Right…’
“How about this, I’ll give you back all the money you spent on this junked gear too.”
‘How valuable is this? No… He’s a dwarf, it's more likely he’s caught up in the moment and just sees something new and shiny…’ “Still… That’s like… Will I even survive bleeding that much? I’m not a very large human… And I’m a girl too so…”
He rolled his eyes. “If you're that nervous about it… Here.” He quickly switched out the beaker for one that was half its size. “This amount will definitely be fine, although you should still be careful standing up afterward.”
‘It’s literally half the size… The other one would have killed me for sure!’
“But, you only get the red ingots for this much, not the refund. Half the blood, half the deal.”
“Ugh, fine…” I groaned pulling a knife and slashing my arm. ‘This doesn’t feel like black magic at all…’
As the beaker filled all the way to the brim and even overflowed he finally put it aside, someone else taking it away immediately as he folded his hands and kept his word, healing me with a prayer to Black Stone The patron saint of molten earth and artistic metal shaping. The divine power was far hotter than Plutias and left a faint spiraling brand for a few seconds before the heat vanished all at once and not even a scar remained.
“We thank you for your business.” He smiled happily as he walked away, the other carting out the 8 piercing red ingots ‘The answer should be obvious no? My blood was imbued with magic to resist the heat, it melded with the magic in the mana stones due to said heat.’ I looked up at them. ‘Well… I guess I don’t know that for sure…’ I sighed, throwing the ingots in storage. ‘That’s enough for a set of armor AND a couple of weapons… Even if this stuff is slightly worse than Vethrian steel it’s worth it for sure.’