A New World, an immersive game experience

Chapter 478 - The Smithing Process

Solvi's frown grew as she realized the hole she had seemingly dug for herself. Sighing, she decided to just be upfront with Eldrian.

"Honestly, this is going to be really hard. Normally, Rank 3 materials are only used for Tier 8 and above. However, with all the money you are willing to spend, we ended up with over half the material being Rank 3."

"That is an insane amount for a Tier 6 weapon, normally Tier 7 weapons will only have 1 piece of Rank 3 material."

"What does that mean?" Eldrian asked, frowning as he worried this might be a problem.

"It means, that, I will have to do my best." Solvi smiled as she took up her strongest hammer, a Tier 8 Adamant hammer she had bought before leaving her home with all her savings at that time.

For a smith, especially dwarven smiths, it was far more profitable to leave home after reaching the height of their abilities. Especially if they didn't reach Tier 8 by the end of their mentorship.

Smiths below Tier 8 are just all too common in the dwarven capital, but in the rest of the world it is extremely rare. Making it possible for those considered failures to have a comfortable life among another race. Even being ranked as the best in the kingdom.

Nodding in reply, Eldrian knew that he couldn't do much other than just observe. So he kept his distance and observed.

She started with the blades, forging the Mythril first as it was the easier metal to forge. Eldrian tried to observe her technique, but sadly he couldn't gain anything from simply observing. His knowledge of blacksmithing was too low.

So, realizing this he planned to follow the mana and try to learn the magic. Using mana sense to try and see how she was channeling her mana and how the environmental mana reacted.

Unfortunately, mana sense couldn't show him both. If he tried to observe the mana surrounding the heated metal, then the surrounding mana in the air would blind him.

Eldrian started trying to control what he could see with mana sense for the first time in a long time.

Like before, way back when he first learned how to split it between Observe, Inspect, Magic-Inspection, and Mana-Examination.? Now, Eldrian wanted to have Mana-Examination be only in regards to the area he was interested in.

Of course, while trying this, he also did his best to observe Solvi in action. Naturally, he was recording all of this.

After forming the Mythril blade with its wing (shape only), Solvi moved on to the back blade.

Forging adamantine was clearly far more difficult. Not only did she increase the heat of the flames by adding more flue and increasing the bellows speed (which were kept blowing through some type of magic), she also increased the mana flow to the hammer massively.

The hammer now appeared like a ball of light to mana sense, and each strike would transfer some of that light to the adamantine.

While the Mythril had taken 2 hours to forge, the adamantine took 6. Wiping the sweat from her brow, Solvi downed a few jugged of water. Eldrian realized just why they were there as she ended up refilling her jug six times.

During the forging process, she had not stopped for a moment. Continually hammering at the metal to get it to form.

Thus far, she had only done basic shaping.

Up till now, Eldrian had mostly been using the Mana-Inspection part of mana sense to observe what was going on. Finally, he managed to also add Mana-Examination while limiting the area the mist covered to only where he was interested.

Cutting the mana in half over the blade and hammer, Eldrian watched as she struck the metal. The hammer now had far less mana, but it seemed to be in some specific shape. As she struck, all the mana was transferred to the blade.

Slowly, after repeated hammering, runes became visible on the blade and when they did the surrounding mana would surge to the rune.

It took another three hours for the front blade to be more or less completed. Solvi then moved on to the wing, carefully adding the Rikolium as a beautiful pattern and rune. The process took another two hours.

Taking another break, Solvi looked at Eldrian and smiled. "Did you manage to learn anything?"

Eldrian smiled back and nodded, "Indeed, you seem to use the hammer as some sort of conduit to transfer mana to the blade as a rune. I don't quite get how it works, but it is quite amazing."

"Oh, you actually managed to realize what I was doing?"

"Of course, I just don't quite understand how you are doing it," Eldrian replied with a smile while hoping she would throw him some crumbs of knowledge.

Even if she didn't, he felt confident this was a basic technique. Especially since they were still right at the start of the forging process.? Solvi laughed as she realized what he was aiming for.

"It is similar to how you cast a spell, you envision the rune. But unlike spells, you don't let it out. Instead, you focus it on your hammer. Inscribing is similar, only there you use an inscriber instead of a hammer."

"I see, thank you for sharing." Eldrian talked a bit more, confirmed that he had to be there at sunrise again tomorrow, and then left.

On his way back he felt a strange pull at his consciousness and received a system prompt.

[Cepahphyr would like you to come to him. Do you wish to teleport? (Cost: 602MP)]

Replying no, Eldrian instead activated the ability himself. A few seconds later Cephaphyr appeared beside him, happily holding some skewers in his hands.

"What do you have there?" Eldrian asked, taking the one Ceph was offering to him.

"Diane said they are called sosaties, though they seem like skewers to me."

"Sometimes things have different names but are the same things. These might just be sosaties, and they might also be skewers." Eldrian replied with a smile, returning to the home he had bought where he found a letter from Vivian.

"Where's Vivian?" Ceph asked after confirming that she was not here and then suspecting the letter was the cause.

"She went to go see her dad. She said she will come back in a week." Eldrian replied, realizing that maybe he should get a maid at least to keep the house clean and make some food for the two.

Luckily, for tonight, Ceph had more than enough sosaties to keep him filled and satisfied.

...

The next day, Eldrian gave Ceph around 50 silver and told him to go have fun. He doubted that Ceph would run into trouble, seeing as it would require at least someone at Tier 5 to give him trouble.

The entire day, Solvi worked on the adamantine back blade. And on the next, she finally started with the shaft.

"I did some research to figure out how best to use the Exousia wood. It seems that it can be transformed through the use of mana crystals. So, I used the last few gold that was left to buy some smaller crystals."

Solvi explained, having slowly started to share more of what she was doing.

AN: A big thanks to everyone who continues to support this on WN.