Mined Games chapter 8

It took me about three days to finish my arms and back. I put all the gold, silver, and copper that I got into coins, and all those coins into buying myself mana tinged ores. Even so, my progress wasn’t nearly what I’d been hoping it would be. The density of the new crystal was insane, and if I wanted to condense it anytime soon, especially in time to make it to the mage’s tower recruitment, I was going to need some denser mana materials for the condenser.

Which had led me to officially attempt a change in tactic. With my back and shoulders done, I was strong enough to use some serious force, and because of that the mining was going much faster. I still had to man the shop, I’d been putting it off constantly and keeping the place closed way too often, but outside of that, I had begun the process of learning to take advantage of my current biggest asset. I was learning blacksmithing.

Well, sort of. Blacksmithing itself, based on all the books I’d managed to grab on the subject from the local library, was a magical discipline. However, as I’d already noted, using your mana as an Acolyte is a good way to never accomplish anything, so during this phase of the learning process, blacksmith novices focused on an aspect of blacksmithing called Form.

Form, Saturation, and Suitability. The last one was apparently exclusively the purview of Master smiths, and wasn’t really touched upon, but Form and Saturation were important parts of smithing. Saturation, as it sounded like, was mana Saturation, how much mana one could put into the material.

Blacksmiths below Caster rank couldn’t melt mana crystal, so the only alternative was to crystallize their own mana inside the item. In order to do that a hundred percent Saturation must be reached. Once someone reached a hundred percent Saturation, the item would gain a magical attribute, and become a magical tool.

Less than a hundred percent Saturation made an object a mana item, which could be used as a focus, but the less Saturation the harder for it to channel mana. Less than fifty percent was an F-rank mana item, fifty to sixty was E, sixty to seventy was D, seventy to eighty was C, eighty to ninety was B, ninety to ninety nine was A, and a hundred percent was technically S-rank, which was where Form entered the equation.

Form was the physical structure of an item. If an item didn’t have a certain level of Form, it would be stuck as an S-rank mana item, rather than becoming a magic tool. Form decided the compatibility of the item with the mana type used to make it. Most novices managed to get their Form to a decent enough level, but it wasn’t a yes or no concept.

Aside from having a high enough level of Form to allow the creation of a magic tool, form was also ranked in the same way as Saturation. Anything above fifty could form a magic tool, but the higher the Form ranking of an item, the more compatible it is with mana, and the easier it makes it to alter and manipulate spells you’re casting.

Which was why blacksmiths started practicing Form at the apprentice rank. It didn’t require any mana, just time and practice. Granted, that was just the experience and skill, once you started imbuing mana into items as you made them, you would need to learn to read the mana as you imbued it with an image of what type of item you were making, to be able to find the ideal form for whatever your magic tool was supposed to be, but you still needed a foundation of physical skill for that, which was what I was doing now.

So here I was, in the mining company, with several bars of iron, getting ready to try to make my first item. I’d spent several of the last few days while I’d been working on my condensation reading in my down time, and I was pretty clear on the process of blacksmithing, at least as it pertained to normal metal shaping without mana.

The magic forge, based on what I’d managed to suss out about it, was able to act as an actual normal forge, as long as I didn’t activate it. Granted I would be trying out activating it at some point. I didn’t think it would drain my mana without my permission, but if it did I wanted it to do that when I was just starting out, because figuring that out when I was in the tenth circle of Acolyte would be pretty much unbearable.

I’d studied how to do this for quite a while, but I also knew that it was probably going to be a completely fruitless endeavor to start out. This was a complex and nuanced art, and learning it from books wasn’t going to be enough.

To start with I fired up the forge, which was easy enough given the magic forge’s design. Even without activating the magical functions with the strange dark glass display, I was able to turn it on and fire it up easily enough. I also put on the gloves I’d bought for mining, since they were the only ones I had, but should still serve my purpose.

Once it was hot, I started the first step of the process according to the books. Heating. The books were very clear that one needed to make sure to heat the metal evenly to prevent weakening in certain spots once it cooled.

It took longer than expected to get the metal heated, but once it was done, I began the process of drawing. Drawing was when you reduced the circumference of the material by extending the length. Basically I was supposed to turn the short, thick bar into a longer strip of metal to make it easier to work.

I’d decided this time that I was going to try to make a knife. The books were pretty clear that I was going to fuck it up the first time, but I wanted to see where I was without the magic forge before I tried it. Drawing involved two possible methods, forging a point, or forging a taper. I was making a knife so I decided to forge a point.

I hammered down on the end, slowly trying to make a sharp point, and as I did I considered the other smithing techniques I’d learned. Curving was lengthening on one side to create a curve in the metal, since I wasn’t making a scimitar, that wasn’t going to be necessary. Neither was chasing, which was curving in three dimensions and was often used for things like embossing on a smaller scale.Flanging was curving just the edges, and was extremely important in making blades, and was a huge part of this project.

I focused on my task, pouring every ounce of skill and intelligence and drive into the project. I followed all of the directions I’d read in the books, and spent nearly an hour pounding the metal before deciding to quench it. I knew there were more steps with tempering and everything, but this was my first project, and I didn’t want to overdo it.

Dunking the still glowing metal in the trough of oil attached to the magic forge, I pulled it out smugly, sure I’d managed to create something pretty impressive for my first attempt at blacksmithing…and winced.

The ‘knife’ I made wasn’t particularly knife shaped. It was more like a thin stick with slightly curved edges and a pointy-ish end. I stowed it in my inventory, curious how the description would appear for the first thing I’d ever made.

Metal rod (1)- A rod of metal beaten with a hammer, possible blunt weapon.

I glared at the window. Damn inventory, judging me. I sighed and turned back to the magic forge. I decided to double check all the possible controls before using it, since once again, I didn’t want to drain my mana and impede my progress.

It took me a few tries to find anything, but eventually I came upon a small compartment like the one on the condenser. Staring at it, I realized that the magic forge was a magic forge not because it was USED for forging magical items, but because it was a forge made to create with magic.

Fishing out a single mana mana tinged ore, I slipped it into the compartment, then tapped the black display. When I did, a simple question came up, asking me to decide which mode to use. There were a few of them, and the one that specifically caught my eye was the tutorial option.

While I might not know how all of this worked, I did know what a tutor was. They taught you things, so tutorial seemed like a good idea. I hit the display, and the magic forge hummed to life again, but this time it wasn’t just the actual heating aspects of it. The whole forge began to softly glow as it used the mana tinged ore I’d inserted to power…whatever was happening.

Welcome to the Royston Magic Forge training simulator! Follow the steps as laid out to learn the ancient art of blacksmithing!

I was taken aback by being addressed directly by the same kinds of windows that showed me what was in my inventory, but that sounded promising, so I did what it said. It told me to heat the forge again, which I did easily enough, then it told me to grab a bar of iron with the tongs and walked me through heating the metal.

To learn magic smithing, you have to learn how to hammer! Follow the arrows and hit the spots as they light up. Make sure to perform the actions exactly as demonstrated, or you might end up with a poor result!

Before my eyes, a strange illusion appeared. A sort of framework that told me details about the metal, and was surrounded by arrows that indicated certain points on the bar, specifically ones that I needed to hit, as well as indicating how far to swing from and in what direction. It was…pretty amazing.

Following the arrow, I brought the hammer down on one of the spots. The arrow vanished as I struck, but I felt a sort of…buzz, along my arm, telling me that I’d hit too hard. I tried softer on the next one, but the arrow only partially vanished, becoming translucent but not fading away completely.

Despite only having arrows to work with, if I paid attention I could sort of feel what was going on. I knew where to hit and how hard, though there was still plenty to learn here. I followed the directions, doing as the arrows bid me, and over time, I got closer and closer to making something usable.

There was no mana being imbued here (though that was one of the options I could activate) so there was no ideal form. The tutorial had picked a simple iron dagger as my testing item, and that was fine with me. I hammered as it instructed, turned when it told me to, and slowly, a dagger began to take shape.

As I went on, the tutorial would purposefully give me tests. Skipping steps and letting me figure out what to do, and I knew that even if I did this a hundred times there would be aspects of it I could still learn from. I didn’t care. I’d repeat it as often as needed. I was learning, and at a frankly astonishing rate. If I needed a few dozen more tries I was fine.

By the time I finished, I glanced over the knife with pride. It wasn’t pretty. The tutorial had instructed me perfectly, but I hadn’t performed those instructions perfectly. I needed work, but that didn’t matter. This would put me on the road to becoming a blacksmith. Turning off the forge I stumbled out into the shop and into the back, where I slumped onto a cot. Once more thing to add to the list of what I needed to accomplish. Maybe that was why I couldn’t stop smiling.