TS5: Chapter 6 (Patreon)

When the rundown forge appeared in front of Thorn once more, he found himself seeing it with new eyes. This wasn't just the place where a blacksmith had stumbled upon a civilization-altering alloy, but rather, the place where a master had honed his craft. Once again, the ring of the blacksmith's hammer sounded in his ears, but this time, it resonated in his heart as well. As he navigated through the memory, he saw the old blacksmith hammering the metal, and paid close attention to every single one of his movements, studying how his hammer rose and fell until the last strike and the memory shattered.

Instead of progressing, however, without even asking, Eve rewound it, taking him back to the beginning, allowing him to once again watch the hammer rise and fall. The second time through, he paid particular attention to the way the blacksmith guided the energy through his arm and into his hammer, and in the third, watched the man's fingers, how they loosened and tightened on the hammer's handle. Over and over again, he watched the memory pass, fixing every moment, every detail into his memory.

After what must have been a hundred times, he left the memory and took his position over his anvil, carefully lifting his hand, holding his hammer loosely, as the master blacksmith in his memory had done. Breathing out, he closed his eyes and envisioned himself as that blacksmith, carefully bringing his hammer down until it tapped against the chunk of metal held there. He had long since reached the level of grandmaster in his hammering technique, but as he replicated the old man's movements over and over again, he started to sense something else. Striking like this would cause a different sort of vibration in the metal that he worked, and it was through this vibration that he believed the master blacksmith had been able to attune the resonance of each piece of metal before he mixed them.

For hours, he repeated the same simple motion, each time adjusting a single thing as he brought his strike closer and closer to the mysterious hammering technique. Occasionally he would pause, his hammer hanging above his head, as he re-examined the memories once more, picking out new details to apply. In the third hour, he found the trick of adjusting the strength of his fingers at the last moment. In the fourth, he understood how to sense the resonance even before he struck. And when the fifth hour came, his hammer fell, producing a pure ringing sound that filled the great forge. Putting his hammer down, Thorn wiped the sweat from his brow.

"This is an absolutely terrifying technique," he said.

Flying in front of him, Eve shook her finger in his face.

"No, what's terrifying is the fact that you just learned it in five hours. That was likely that Grandmaster Blacksmith's entire life's work, and you just swiped it."

"I had a little bit of help," Thorn said, with a shrug. "And what can I say? I have an aptitude for smithing."

"I'll say," Eve replied, waving her hand, causing a window to pop up in front of Thorn's face. "You just increased your physique, presence, and intellect."

*ding*

[Your body and mind have grown in harmony.]

[Physique +1]

[Presence +1]

[Intellect +1]

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Thorn asked. "I didn't think that was possible. I thought I was capped."

"Well, apparently it's possible for you. You know what this means, right?" Eve asked, a wide smile on her face.

Slowly, Thorn's confusion vanished, and he found himself grinning back.

"Of course I do," he said. "It's time to get to grinding."

Thorn's growth had been slow as he reached the higher tiers, but the fact that learning new smithing techniques and improving his smithing could raise his stats was a welcome surprise. When he had first arrived in the Endless Worlds, Eve had surmised that it was through his smithing that he would be able to raise his tier the quickest. But as he grew in strength, he had been putting it aside in favor of other things. Now, however, with a little bit of time before the puzzle opened, he thought it was a good opportunity to shore up his attributes.

"I wonder what's going to happen," he said, scratching his head, "when I actually do get to the 10th tier. I mean, my stats are already there, which lets me hit like somebody who's in that tier. But from what I understand, when you hit the 10th tier, there's a qualitative change, a multiplier that gets put on your stats."

"That's how I understand it, too," Eve said. "Though truth be told, I don't have any more information than you do, literally. But what it does mean is that we want to raise your stats as high as we possibly can before you hit that tier, as that's going to give you the biggest boost."

"Fair point," Thorn said. "Well, let's get to it."

"You sure you don't want to rest first?" Eve asked, but Thorn shook his head. "No. Strike while the iron's hot. No pun intended."

Getting out the materials he would need for his next attempt, he arranged them once more, and took a moment to center himself, his mind filling with the sounds that each metal had made in his memory. Starting with the first one, he began to heat it up, making sure to monitor the temperature with his domain, and pulling it out at exactly the right moment. His hammer fell, producing a crisp ding, but he knew that wasn't the sound he wanted. There was something too soft about it. With a flourish, his hammer fell once more, tuning the sound up slightly. A dozen times his hammer struck until the sound produced matched the exact sound in his memory. Tossing the metal back into the furnace to heat it once again, he turned to Eve.

"Did you get that?"

"Yes," she replied. "You needed 13 strikes, and I've recorded the process. Obviously, the amount of metal you're working with will change the requirement. But now that I understand what we're going for, I can tell you when we've hit the right molecular structure."

"It's amazing to me that the forges of the Empire were able to create so much of this metal," Thorn said, as he looked at the small lump starting glowing bright red in the furnace.

"My guess is that they cheated," Eve said.

"What do you mean by cheated?" Thorn asked.

"Well, the majority of the steps can be undertaken by anybody," Eve replied. "I've been reviewing the footage of the forge after it began to grow in size, and my guess is that they only had the final refinement, tuning, so to speak, done by the master smiths. And in fact, what's even more likely is that they trained specific individual smiths to do each part. After all, while you're tuning each type of metal that we're going to use for the alloy, it wouldn't be that hard to teach one blacksmith how to tune one specific piece of metal. Obviously, you have me, so keeping all of the variables straight is easy. But the real miracle of that grandmaster blacksmith who came up with this whole thing is that he was able to remember how to tune each metal differently."

"That's true," Thorn said, taking the second piece out of the furnace and beginning to strike it.

This one required 14 hits and a trip back to the furnace in the process. But when he was done, he was able to add it directly to the mixture. It was hard work, as each blow required incredibly precise strength. It wasn't enough to simply crush the metal down to drive the impurities out, but rather he needed to leave a specific amount of impurity in the metal to produce the frequency that would allow it to mix harmoniously into the alloy, as one after another, the materials were formed and tossed into the crucible. As Thorn neared the end, his eyes narrowed.

“Eve, I've got a good feeling about this,” he said.

“Oh?” Eve replied, her eyebrows rising. "What does that mean?”

“Let's cast a knife.”

“You want to cast a knife?” Eve asked. “Isn't casting a terrible way to make weapons?”

“Typically, yes,” Thorn said, “though not always. There are some techniques, thanks to mana, that can make casting effective, and it's very good for rapidly producing weapons. But with this metal in particular, there's no way to work it after it's set. You can't even grind it down. So what we need to do is create a mold in the exact shape we want.”

“Ah, good point,” Eve said, scratching her chin. “Well, I can't really help you there, but somehow I don't think you need my help.”

Smiling, Thorn pointed two fingers at the ground, his mental sense creating a blueprint of exactly what he wanted. A moment later, a pillar of stone rose up next to him, a small hole at the very top. Grabbing the crucible with a pair of tongs, Thorn carefully upended it, pouring the molten alloy down into the mold. At the same time, the rock began to vibrate slightly, helping to push any air bubbles out and to the surface. Thorn's focus was absolute, his control meticulous. And just before the mold was filled, he broke off the flow, placing the crucible on the anvil to cool.

“What do we do now?” Eve asked.

“We wait,” Thorn replied. “This part can't be rushed.”

Flying over with a towel for the sweat that beaded Thorn's brow, Eve looked at the form that he had made.

“You realize that if this works, we're going to have all sorts of problems on our hands,” she said, causing Thorn to laugh.

Tossing the cloth onto the table, he took a seat on his stool, eyeing the pillar of stone.

“I do,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “But in that trouble is a whole lot of opportunity as well.”

“Fair point,” Eve said, coming to rest on his shoulder. “And truthfully, the storage rings and bracelets are going to cause you enough trouble that adding a super alloy probably won't make a difference.”

“Exactly,” Thorn said with a shrug. “Which also reminds me, if I can get this right, I should be able to make dimensional rings out of it.”

“Wait, won't that completely solve the problem of them blowing up?” Eve asked.

“'Yep,” Thorn said with a smile. “It will. The metal is stable enough to keep those gates active. It'll be more than stable enough to maintain the dimensional spells. Furthermore, I'm thinking of building myself a suit of armor and a couple of weapons, on top of the dagger, of course.”

“Because, you know, you need to be more overpowered than you are,” Eve said, rolling her eyes.

“Gotta take my advantages where I can,” Thorn said with a laugh. “I have a feeling that things aren't going to be so peaceful in the coming days.”

“Yeah, I have that feeling too,” Eve said.

While they waited for the dagger to cool, Thorn meditated, restoring some of his energy, and then began to sketch out plans for the halberd he wanted to make. His thought was simple, recreating the staff that he already had in this new alloy and putting the halberd blade on the other end of it. The issue was that his staff carried a spirit, and he wasn't sure whether or not that would transfer over. The other option, of course, was to simply create a sleeve for his existing staff, covering it over with a layer of the immortal alloy and adding the halberd to the other end. Then, of course, there was the option of just creating a new weapon and using one in each hand.

Thinking of himself walking around the battlefield with a long staff in one hand and a halberd in the other, Thorn had a chuckle and put the drawings aside. It was time to check out his dagger. With a flick of his finger, the stone pillar crumbled apart, revealing a gleaming black dagger. As long as his forearm, with a handle that fit comfortably in his grasp, Thorn was quite pleased with the weapon. It had considerable weight, which he didn't mind at all, and was close to two and a half inches in width, tapered to a point. But it wasn't actually sharp.

“Is that what I think it is?” Eve asked, flying close to the blade.

“If you mean runes, then yes,” Thorn said, running two fingers along the length of the blade.

As his fingers passed over it, a faint purple glow lit up the edge, as the runes, which had been imprinted there, sprang to life. His mana surged into the blade, projecting a faint line of void energy around the front edge of the dagger.

“Thorn, do you understand just how dangerous this is?” Eve asked. “I mean, if somebody else gets their hands on it.”

Swiping with the dagger through the air, Thorn nodded.

“Sure, but the only way they're going to do that is if I give it to them, or they kill me,” he said. “And I'm certainly not planning on giving these out. But this will lessen the burden on me in battle, and allow me to focus on more important things. Since the dagger will be able to maintain its edge as long as I put mana in, I won't have to maintain the void edge spell. I'm planning on doing the same thing with the halberd.”

“And your enemies thought that you were a pain now,” Eve said, laughing. “Just wait until they face you in your new mech suit.”

“I wasn't planning on going that far,” Thorn said with a chuckle. “Though now that you mention it, maybe it is a good idea. I do have a power source that could probably handle it and some great ideas after working on the Deva's armored suits.”

“It was a joke, Thorn, a joke,” Eve said. “You don't need a mech suit.”

With the dagger a resounding success, Thorn set about preparing the rest of his equipment. Eventually, he settled on reinforcing his staff with bands of immortal iron, and attaching the halberd directly to it. It would function both as a weapon, and as a tool to further his magic. Though he had considered abandoning the staff entirely, it was simply too useful, as it cut down his casting time tremendously, as well as reducing the mana cost of the spell he cast. Furthermore, it made it easier to learn various spells.

However, he was interested in imbuing the spirit that lived inside of it with a new layer of understanding, leveraging both of the two new affinities that he had acquired since creating it. The physical adjustment of the staff was the easy part, as all he needed to do was reform it to hold the halberd blade at the top, as well as lengthen the bottom. The arcanite core that he was using remained untouched, continuing to grant its abilities to him.