Chương 43

Smith Ellen Ellen rubbed her hands together and held them out to the small fire that crackled and popped fitfully. She'd put too much green wood in this fire, which left it smoking and hissing, but for just warming her hands it was enough. The forge couldn't handle a proper fire yet—Mason Ellen had been very firm about that fact. Trying to get a real fire going would damage the cracked masonry. So Ellen had settled for getting the others to help clean the flue while she cleaned out the smelter.

It had been a long morning of work in the cold, and even with the crude mittens that the previous Hunter had put together her fingers had been frozen by the time the smelter had been cleared completely. She flexed them a few times in the gentle pulses of warmth from the fire. It wasn't large, but in the middle of winter it was more than enough to send the tingle of re-warmed blood through her digits and into the hands.

It had been a very hard morning of work for all the Ellens, and she had that uncomfortable difference of being cold, yet also parts of her overheated and sweaty. If they were going to do this sort of thing a lot, maybe they should make a nice bathing shed or something. With the stream nearby it wouldn't even be difficult to feed it water without manually filling it, though that would be more initial work to get a diverted flow in there. A little fire pit underneath would heat it up for use in winter even.

Ellen shook her head clear before she designed an entirely new building. That was more for Mason and Carpenter to do, and she was pretty sure she'd failed to think of details that would make it take even longer. Bathing in winter was going to be tough, but they had plenty of water. She'd just have to settle for a scrub in the house, same as always, if she wanted to be clean.

"Whew!" Another Ellen said from behind her. Looking back, Mason Ellen was in the crumbling doorway, also rubbing her hands together. She scooted in beside Ellen to warm her hands, holding them out toward the fire palm-down.

"How is it looking?" Ellen just had to ask.

"I'm about to clean the rust off the anvil, but we only have a few ingots. Without the smelter our supply is pretty limited."

"Mmm." Mason sighed.

"The good news is that the structure is intact and solid. It's built well. I found a few cracks on the outside, but nothing that went all the way through, so they can wait until spring if you wanted to fire it up…" She held up a finger.

"Provided we can find a way to repair the inner lining. I found a few too many cracks there. It's been here for decades unattended, so I guess the weather just got to it in there. Using it like this would be dangerous." Ellen looked up at the stone pillar of the forge's chimney. She was using it as a simple fireplace right now, but it wasn't well-suited for that.

"What about the forge? Can we get it operational by the end of winter? And the smelter? How long are we looking at to fix this?" Mason sighed.

"It's not that simple. Don't you remember when we were rushing to get everything done for the longhouse before winter? That's because of how the mortar sets." She gestured at the chimney.

"If we try this now, it won't set or cure. And even if it does set, we have to be careful if we have warm days. Up here in the mountains that probably won't be a problem during winter at least."

"But you have a way around that, don't you?" Carpenter Ellen entered with a smirk, visible only because she pulled her scarf down. Her breath steamed as she let out a sigh, looking over the ruins of the forge that they'd been using as a workshop. About a third of the building had a crude roof on it already, with a few hooks for hanging meat. Hunter Ellen—Ellen's predecessor—had used the place to clean and prepare her kills before winter had set in.

Using it as a forge would require moving that preparation elsewhere, but there were plenty of options. Mason looked up again, not even bothering to glance at her sister-self.

"If we can keep a gentle fire going long enough, at low heat, it should dry everything out. But that will mean we'll have to watch it for days. Are we ready to commit enough people to do that? And we probably shouldn't even try until we get some kind of roof on here. I'm sure we have enough wood to do the framing and base layer, but weatherproofing without thatch is something I don't know how to do."

"We have a few options for that," Carpenter admitted.

"But most of them don't work in winter, either. If we could get some good shingles and angle the roof, that would be our best bet… but I'm not sure if Pauley has enough in the mill. Maybe for a smaller place like this, but he probably wants to save them for the Treetop expansion. Which means we'd have to make our own, but green wood is terrible for it." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Ellen sighed.

"So I won't be able to use the forge for another two months?"

"I didn't say that," Carpenter replied with a shake of her head. She wrapped the scarf around her mouth and stepped back, looking up at the frame already there.

"If we can get enough hides, we can use them as a temporary weatherproofing. Or maybe if I hit Level 12, I'll get some Ability that helps. I'm still almost thirty thousand away, though. It'd be unlikely I'd get that much that fast unless I do something really big again."

"Of course there is another option." Mason glanced at her sister.

"I've been thinking about it, because that Level 12 is very tempting. I never thought we could get it so soon, but… we can. If we really want." Carpenter hugged herself.

"Maybe. I'm not sure we want to go that way though. You have the smelter to work on, I have the roof and more doors, and other things. Maybe we can do it without resorting to that." Ellen wondered if the two realized they were closer to Apprentice and Healer's odd behavior than they realized. Sharing thoughts without actually saying complete sentences or spelling things out, vague looks that communicated more.

Though in this case, she also understood what the option was, since her own sister-self was already in there. The dungeon could rapidly level them up. Of course, Carpenter and Mason were from the original Village Ellen lineage, who hadn't really touched a weapon since that first disastrous attempt at fighting the goblin in the cave. The idea that they'd go into a dungeon and survive was stretching believability. She mulled over the thought, then tugged on her mittens to start scraping the anvil clean.

The fire kept the cold from being quite so debilitating, even if she knew she was going to need some time huddled by the hearth with her sister-self later to properly warm up.

"I don't think you two should try that," Ellen said aloud as she started to press down and scrape through the rust.

"You're basically townspeople now. And there's nothing wrong with that—I'm trying it out, too… but I'm not sure I have the heart to stay with it. I'll want to test what I make in the dungeon. But you two… are you sure you want to try it?" Both of the others were silent for a long moment. Mason touched the wall, while Carpenter just looked from one edge of the half-ruined forge to the other, taking silent measurements. Ellen went back to cleaning the anvil to let them think.

"You have the smelter, I have the forge, like I said." Carpenter Ellen finally spoke aloud. Mason was already nodding, probably coming to the same conclusion.

"That should give us a lot of experience, because it's a different kind of building. Then I can salvage what timber I can, and we can both use that to do something we need to do for Smith here anyway." Ellen looked up, now curious.

"Hmm?" Mason adjusted her scarf as she glanced at Ellen.

"You're going to need ore eventually. I'm not sure how we're going to mine for it yet, but before we figure that out we'll need the mine to be safe. We don't want to lose any more Ellens to an accident like what happened to us." That comment made Ellen flinch. Remembering her own past death—as much as she could—wasn't too bad. She couldn't remember the impact or the slow bleeding out that happened after… only the moments before she'd made her leap.

That was a feeling she missed, but right now two Hunter Classes would be overkill. Mason and Carpenter were descended from Builder, who had branched off of Village Ellen. They were, for lack of a better term… domestic. Ellen kind of envied that part of herself who could relax with such things… but only a little. She'd tasted the thrill of the hunt too many times to completely let go of it. That's why she wasn't going to be a simple Blacksmith here.

"That's a good idea," she said aloud.

"Honestly, I still feel bad about that sometimes. I should have been more careful. It's not like we needed to explore the mine right then, I think I was just trying to show how useful I was."

"We're all useful, Ellen." Carpenter patted her on the shoulder lightly. Using her proper name instead of the label name was a nice touch, and Ellen appreciated it.

"It was an accident," Mason added.

"We were all new at this and excited. I remember being excited when you showed it to us. Me. Otherwise we would have stayed outside." Ellen didn't comment on the pronoun slippage there. She noticed she'd been doing the same thing when talking about her and Hunter Ellen—new or previous—of late. It was getting easier, but she didn't want to think about that. Better to leave it to whichever one picked up a proper Scholar Class. Her predecessor thought about this sort of thing a lot, though. She tended to, as well.

"Thanks, you two. I'll be fine." She huffed loudly.

"If you can really do that sort of thing, and then want something for more experience… maybe get started on a proper bath house. Wouldn't that be nice?" Both the builders laughed in unison, then clapped her on each shoulder.

"We'll think about it," said Mason.

"Sounds like a spring project, though," added Carpenter. The two stepped out of the husk of a building to split apart, Mason heading back to the smelter while Carpenter looked for something to work with. Ellen pondered the behavior for a moment longer, then shook her head. She hoped they found what they were looking for. She'd make them something amazing, if they could. She just needed to practice, first. And get a working forge.

A few more strokes with the wire brush cleaned more rust off the anvil, and then Ellen looked down and considered the thick patch at the far end. Iron didn't rust all the way through—usually—so she was really just rubbing off the top layer until the solid, untarnished metal showed through. It was a laborious process despite the thin coat, and it certainly would take a while to get it all off. Ellen glanced around, then concentrated on the patch of rust.

She channeled mana through it, and swept the brush over the patch with an unpracticed, yet potent blob of the invisible power behind it. The rust exploded outward and upward, caught in an eddy caused by the fire next to her, and billowed into her face to cause a violent, body-wracking sneeze! More practice needed.