Chương 66: Limitless Path Chapter Sixty-Six

"First, explain the process of smelting," Elana commanded. Beth spent a little explaining the various steps that one would go through to smelt raw ore into useable stock. After nodding her approval, Elana then put word to deed and had them go through the whole process, easily accomplished with the equipment available to them.

They weren't able to process mass batches, and if Beth and Blood stumbled upon hundreds or thousands of pounds of ore, it would still be better to go to a smelter, but she now understood and could perform the process herself. During the process, Elana took the time to point out the use of specific flux while smelting an ore. The common flux used in the copper process was a siliceous flux, but other kinds would be used when dealing with other types of metals.

There was also the fact that they were trying to smelt a single metal from ore to bar versus trying to make an alloy, which was its own entire process with its own materials. Elana then took a moment to go over the runes in the equipment, and the basics of inscription was another fascinating topic that Beth could see herself getting lost in. She was taking mental notes as Elana pointed out how the runes were all specific patterns carved in groups, interlinked with certain interconnecting patterns.

The flame rune had a large number of what looked like jagged triangles inscribed together, these being the foundational rune of producing flame. With the smelters not needing to do much more than produce a clean, hot flame of a certain temperature, the runes didn't have to be overly complicated. They were linked together with connector runes, looking almost like small chain drawings, and those were interlinked to a handful of other runes.

One set of chains moved up to the controls, allowing the inscribed buttons to interact with the enchantment. Another set of chains went to a series of circular enchantments spread around the interior of the smelter that contained wavy lines. These, as Elana explained, were temperature sensing enchantments used by the overall enchantment to control the amount of flames and the area they were concentrated in.

Elana also took some time to point out a few runes that looked totally random to Beth but were described as safety measures. If someone opened the smelter door during a run, the enchantment would immediately turn off, as well as snap a very mild air barrier in place. Elana powered the air barrier rune, which looked like a bunch of swirl symbols in a box, with a direct infusion of her mana.

She then had Beth try to reach into the smelter and, much to Beth's surprise, it took her utilizing all of her high Strength stat to be able to shove her arm in.

"A barrier like that wouldn't stop somebody at my Strength that didn't know any better from shoving their arm in," Elana explained.

"But somebody at my Strength likely wouldn't be seriously injured from the huge amount of heat in there. As for somebody exactly like me, I have too much training and knowledge to even try shoving an arm in a smelter at all and if, for some reason, I tried, I would recognize the safety barrier immediately."

"Well, I don't know what your Strength is at, but that barrier is more than enough for me," Beth replied.

"Of course, after having run the process just once with your help, I would never stick my arm in there. That's what the crucible tongs are for." Beth was, of course, referring to a long set of heavy tongs that they had used to lift the crucible out of the forge. The more she did in the forge that afternoon with Elana, the more she found that she needed to learn.

She hadn't known what crucible tongs looked like or how they worked, as the basics book she had read didn't have pictures, and it had only mentioned certain things in passing.

"Now, we're going to move on to what you actually want," said Elana with a wicked smile dancing at the corners of her mouth.

"Uh, I don't like how you're smiling right now," Beth said a little nervously.

"What do you mean, how I'm smiling?" Elana replied, the smile growing wider.

"We're doing exactly what you want, hitting some metal. And the first metal we're going to hit is mana copper, and the first thing we're going to do with it when we hit it is making nails."

"Make…nails?" Beth asked, squinting her eyes at the instructor as she frowned slightly.

"Good, your ears actually work," Elana said.

"We, or more specifically, you, are going to make copper nails. I'll demonstrate the technique, and then you'll make nails." She emphasized when she said 'you' with a glint in her eye, moving over to the forge and anvil as she spoke. She pressed an area on the forge to turn it on, and the equipment immediately started producing a constant, bright yellow flame. She pulled out some round stock from a pile of mana copper materials and set it in the forge.

She set one end of the length of copper in the flame so that about a quarter of the metal rod was in the flame, the rest sticking out to the side of the central part of the forge. She then grabbed a hammer off the rack and set it on the anvil in front of the forge.

"This is two elant round stock," she explained.

"Or I should say, this is eight-millimeter round stock. Stock, as you should know, is a term used in smithing to refer to ingots, bars, dowels, tubes, and so on that are fully finished from a smelter and ready to be worked.

"What I'm going to do is heat this up until it has a yellow-white color. I'm then going to move it to the anvil, and I'm just going to hold it with my hand at the back where it's out of the fire, but you should pay attention to the size of the piece and the heat applied. You're going to burn yourself learning this trade, and if you don't pay attention, it's going to happen a lot." Elana took one of the three bars of stock she had put in the fire and picked it up by the far end.

She grabbed the hammer off the anvil and set the heated end of the bar against the anvil. She lifted the hammer up to about shoulder height and let it drop on the bar, using her wrist to create a strong, precise blow. She spun the stock after the hit, twisting the rod about a quarter turn before striking it again. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. She continued to hammer the bar, creating a fairly fine point as she struck and spun, struck and spun.

She explained what she was doing as she hammered, "I'm striking the end here while rotating the stock. I'm also very slightly striking away from me while I hit the piece," she pulled the stock back from the far side of the anvil to the near side.

"I want the material to stretch to a point, and I'm not getting that by hitting it dead-on. Once I have the material drawn, I move it back to me to continue shaping. I can also draw it a little more as I shape it near me, and then I can check it." She put the bar back in the fire for a moment and grabbed a device off the rack that was just a handle with a piece of metal at the end.

The metal had a squarish hole, and Elana grabbed the end of the stock outside the fire with her left hand and pushed the heated end through the hole, checking to make sure she had grabbed one of the proper diameter before returning the stock to the fire.

"This is something that, remarkably, is called a nail header. It's a good project for you to do once you've started to get some of the basics down, making your own one of these," Elana explained, putting the rod of stock back in the flame. She then pointed at the anvil, to a section on the back.

"Know what this is?"

"Uh, I think that's called a hard blade…or wait, it's called a hardy?" Beth replied.

"Yes, it's a piece of metal that's in a wedge shape, though usually it's not super sharp. The wedge shape is the more important part, as it's used for shaping a piece or, more often, cutting through a piece. Now watch," Elana commanded. She removed the stock from the fire and worked it for a moment more on the anvil. She then moved the stock over the hardy and set the piece on it, placing the stock so it was against the edge of the hardy about a quarter inch above where she had been hammering.

She then hammered the piece of stock before flipping it over and hammering it again. She repeated this, rolling the stock and hammering until it was almost sheared through. She then bent the greatly narrowed section by holding the bar against the anvil at an angle and tapping the nail portion once. She returned the bar to the fire with the bent 'nail' section pointing tip up, waiting for it to heat again.

She withdrew the stock from the fire a final time when it was nearly white-hot and moved it above the anvil, picking up the nail header with her left hand. While the stock was still glowing, she put the end into the nail header and twisted the bar, separating the small section that was left between the nail and the bar. She then put the stock down quickly and picked up the hammer with her right hand before moving the nail header over a hole in the anvil into which she inserted the nail.

She then hammered the top of the nail sticking up above the nail header, flattening it into a regular nail head. Beth noticed how quickly the nail lost the fiery white color while it was hammered, and how quickly Elana finished flattening the top. Elana picked the nail header up and moved it a little before twisting it, dumping the finished nail on the anvil. She then set the hammer and nail header down on the workbench before grabbing the nail and tossing it into a nearby bucket with a hiss.

"Don't try that before at least Silver level fire or heat resist of some kind," Elana warned Beth.

"Now it's your turn." Beth stepped forward and grabbed the hammer in her right hand, stepping to the side and grabbing one of the other bars in her left hand. She then turned to the anvil and copied Elana's actions from earlier, holding the bar against the anvil and starting to hit it with the hammer. A frown rather quickly formed on her face as she found the seemingly simple action of hammering out the end of the bar into a narrower shape was more difficult than she had first assumed.

"Take time to feel how it feels when you hit the metal," Elana instructed.

"You should try to get a sense for what it feels like when you hit different metals; how they respond to the hammer. Work on trying to feel the difference between just changing the shape of the metal a little and stretching the metal out with a hit." Beth tried to listen to Elana's advice, feeling the sensation as the hammer struck the metal, and what kind of change appeared in the metal from that strike. She worked at the end of the bar, reshaping it as she hammered it on the anvil.

She returned it to the fire after hammering for a while, definitely not having shaped it as much as Elana had before her first time returning the bar to the fire.

"You make the same mistake a lot of apprentices make," Elana said from the side.

"You're hitting it too hard."

"What do you mean by that? I need to hit it to change its shape, right?" Beth asked with a frown.

"Right, but you should be letting the weight of the hammer falling, with the assistance of gravity, do more of the work. You should focus more on the shaping of what you're hitting," she replied.

"What's your Strength at?"

"Eighty-four," Beth replied calmly. A rather surprised look flashed over Elana's face for a second.

"Eighty-four? At your level, even starting with ten, that means you put on average almost three points a level into Strength. If Baelvyr hasn't told you, let me; don't lop-side your stats like that. You need points in Dexterity and Endurance, and even in Intelligence and Wisdom."

"I have decent points all around right now, though my Intelligence and Wisdom are a little low. I did a silver level Endless Trial with Blood a handful of days ago, and-" Beth started to reply before Elana cut in.

"Don't need all the specifics," she said, holding up a hand.

"Let me just guess that you got elixirs or stat-fruits as a reward?" When Beth nodded, Elana continued, "Good, then that means it's not nearly as bad as I thought. Just keep in mind to not throw everything you have into a single stat; best to put a few points into others here and there. You'll want at least forty or fifty in Intelligence and Wisdom for the first rebirth. But I'm sure Baelvyr has coached you on all that. Now, let's go over your shaping."

They spent some time working on Beth's hammering technique and how to properly shape and draw the metal. Beth's final product was rather lousy, even for a first attempt, but Elana patiently went over everything, including pointing out the difference in their hammer marks that showed how they had hit the metal in different ways or at different times. Afterward, it was time for Beth to grind, Elana assigning her the task of forging another hundred nails, though she didn't have to do it all that very afternoon.

"Elana," she said at one point, drawing the dwarf's attention away from a screen she had been looking at while Beth worked her latest piece.

"How high a skill level do you think I would need to work mana steel? I want to upgrade my current equipment away from copper and sooner would be better."

"Hmm." Elana replied thoughtfully.

"You could do it at the top end of Apprentice, but I wouldn't really try making full pieces of mana steel until you're a Journeyman. It would be quite difficult and time consuming to do, even at Apprentice nine. Then again, it would be a ton of valuable experience, and even a good way to move up to Journeyman. Either way, I would set your minimum goal to get to Blacksmith Apprentice[9] before you try more than simple things like nails and buckles with mana steel."

"Alright, good to know," Beth replied as she finished her current nail, wiping her brow before grabbing a water bottle she had on the bench and finishing it off.

"If I made myself a greatsword of mana steel during our lessons, would I have to pay for that stock. How exactly does that work? I assume some metal is included in the instructions fee."

"Right, it is," Elana replied with a quick nod.

"But that's also why I said to check with me before moving on to anything we haven't done yet. At the end of the day, it's an instructor's approval on what you can use for classes. The only other instructor we have for smithing, apart from Baelvyr, if his level's high enough, would be Tazeen."

"Really?" Beth cut in with some surprise.

"I wouldn't have guessed that he was a smith for some reason. It's a little hard to picture him at an anvil, bashing away with a sledge," She continued, chuckling at the thought of the ever-stoic Tazeen hammering away at a bar of metal, an entirely bland look on his face.

"Yes, he's a very serious person, but an excellent smith. If I'm not ever around for some reason, you can definitely ask him for help. Truthfully, he's probably even more skillful than I am, and that's certainly saying something, coming from a dwarf on the topic of smithing," Elana replied. Beth still couldn't really picture it, Tazeen at a roaring forge, heating metal before hammering it out into shape, but she supposed everyone had multiple talents.

She returned to what she had been doing as she dismissed the thoughts of Tazeen at the forge, resuming working on creating more nails. She focused on feeling the motion of her arm as she hammered, trying to let gravity and a twist of her wrist do more of the work.