thomasdarkrose
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Vol. 6 - Captivity - Chapter 15
🕑 Added 2019-10-29 23:06:05 +0000 UTCWeapon Type: Glaive
Rarity: Uncommon
Quality: Excellent
Description: This glaive has been forged from metal mana infused iron and enchanted to take advantage of that fact. When mana is channeled into this glaive the blade will become nearly indestructible with an edge sharp enough to easily slice through iron.
+75 Power (Attack with Glaive only)
+Greatly enhanced durability and sharpness while infused with mana
+Power based on the amount of mana infused
Thomas read over the description and couldn't help but wonder why sometimes the bonus effects listed specific Power values, such as his flaming greatsword, and other times it didn't. He highly doubted that the glaive would gain infinite Power as long as enough mana could be channeled into it. That would just be far too overpowered and break any semblance of balance that AoG might be attempting to have. There was definitely an upper limit of some sort. So why hadn't it been stated? He had no idea and just thinking about it wouldn't help. So he dismissed his thoughts and placed the glaive in the empty weapons rack. Shortly after the two portable stoves joined it.
He looked through the hole in the ceiling of the cave and saw he still had a few hours until the sun would begin to set. With some time on his hands, he decided to get a head start on making some more shrapnel for the next set of grenades. That was one of the longer and more tedious steps in the process. With some assistance from Clad, he went about heating some iron ingots and turning them into bar stock with the extruder. It was simple, boring, and repetitive but it ate up the last few hours before night fell. By the time he was ready to get some sleep, the two ingots had become a pile of long thin square bars piled to one side of the room. They only thing left to do would be to chop them into small cubes. Clad could deal with that tomorrow.
The night passed and the next day it was back to work for Thomas. He looked through his list again and smiled when he saw a request he felt like doing. He wasn't doing them in any particular order, just by whatever he felt like making. The request was for a matched set of weapons. A rapier and a sword breaker. There weren't any particular enchantments requested for the weapons so he decided to do his own thing with them. He glanced over at a particular ingot sitting on the work table and grinned. Now he had an excuse to play with it.
He walked over to the worktable and grabbed the Icebound Platinum ingot and grinned. Now, what would happen if he made the rapier out of this? He ran his fingers over the ingot then sent some of his mana through it. Though he knew what it was from making it, he wanted to experience what it felt like by using his Metallurgy skill on it. The mana transmission through the ingot was shockingly fast and returned to him feeling cold, almost frozen. It was enough to send a shiver down his spine even though it was just a phantom feeling. Platinum seemed like it would be excellent for mana transmission.
He set the Icebound Platinum ingot back down so he could grab an iron ingot and a lump of coal. With a burst of mana and some usage of Transmutation, he created a plain steel ingot with high carbon content. Normally, he wouldn't want to use something like steel for the pirates but he was willing to make an exception for this sword. He placed the steel ingot into the flames and had Clad power the blower. When the ingot was hot he pulled it from the flames and set it on the anvil. There was only a single element worth using if he planned to use the Icebound Platinum. Mana flowed through the tongs gripping the ingot and the hammer in his hand coating them in a cold white aura.
The sound of his hammer smashing into the steel ingot rang out through the room as he pounded the ice mana into the hot metal. He watched the whole process closely with his eyes glowing blue. He found it rather interesting that although he was pouring ice mana into the ingot it didn't cool down any faster. The ice mana even looked rather... comfortable inside of the ingot, if that made any sense. What really surprised him though was that the ice mana clumped together within the ingot and formed shapes that looked remarkably like snowflakes. Metal mana and Fire mana looked pretty chaotic when he used them. Metal mana only took on a uniform appearance once mana was channeled into it whereas Fire mana just became even more chaotic. This was his first time seeing somewhat uniform mana during the creation process.
It didn't take too long for the ingot to flash with a bright white light as he finished creating the ice embryo inside of the steel ingot. The moment he did the ingot instantly cooled to below room temperature as the ice mana within it came to life. Thomas had no expected that and frowned a bit. The naturally cooler ingot might be a bit harder to work with. He recalled how much heat it took for him to smelt the Icebound Platinum ore and expected that the ice steel he'd just made would be equally difficult to work with. If he created an ice embryo inside of a superior material like Origin Steel how difficult would it be to heat? He looked over at the coal forge and wondered if there was a better or more efficient way to work with such metals. None of the books he'd read mentioned it. Well, it didn't matter. If he ran into too much trouble there were plenty of things he could make to replace a coal forge and generate greater heat for working with tougher metals.
He set the ice steel ingot in the flames of the forge along with the Icebound Platinum ingot. Clad went to work like a good little mana battery and began heating the ingots. Thomas planned to forge weld the ingots together then fold them repeatedly. It would also be nice if he could acid etch the metal to give it that Damascus look. He smiled at the thought and watched the ingots closely. Not surprisingly the steel, which has a lower melting point than platinum, was the first to be hot enough to work with. He was forced to use the tongs to pull the steel out of the flames for a bit then stick it back in. All to maintain it's temperature without letting it get too hot. If the steel got too hot it could be damaged.
Once both metals were ready to work with he plucked the platinum out of the fire and set it on the anvil with the steel resting on top. He grabbed a heavy hammer and began pounding away. The ingots immediately began to deform under the heavy blows. Thomas couldn't help but wish he had some Borax, better known as flux. It was often used to keep welds during forge welding from oxidizing to create cleaner forge welds and reduce the chance of having a bad weld. Well, why couldn't he try to get some? As he hammered he called out, "Hey Clad, go tell Mr. Pancake that I'd like some flux so I can work better."
Like a good minion, Clad scampered off to do as he was asked. He was still gone when the ingots grew too cold to continue to hammer so Thomas powered the blower himself. He was really enjoying his increased mana pool since it meant fewer breaks. Then again, he wasn't really using all that much mana at the moment. Only creating the ice embryo had taken a fair amount. Once the, now much larger, ingot was hot enough he went back to hammering it out. As the height and width of the ingot decreased its length increased. This was a necessary step if he wanted to fold it. Given that he wasn't working with purified materials there was the added bonus of the folding process actually doing what it was intended to do instead of being superficial.
Clad returned while Thomas was in the middle of cutting the metal and folding it back on itself. He watched Thomas work and honestly felt like it was a blessing. He'd gotten the blacksmithing skill a while ago hoping to make nifty weapons and armor but found his talent in the field was a bit lacking. Watching Thomas work inspired him to try to learn more about the field and become a real blacksmith. Thomas made the work look easy but with his brief experience, Clad knew it was anything but easy. Just how many hundreds or thousands of hours did Thomas work to get to the point he was at now?
Unaware of Clad's musings, Thomas continued his work of folding and forge welding the two ice-based metals together. The platinum proved to be a little difficult to work with and didn't seem to appreciate being forced to weld together with the inferior steel. Still, Thomas was far more stubborn than the platinum and forced the two metals to combine. Over the course of several heats, he repeatedly folded the two metals together for a total of ten times creating more than two thousand layers of steel and platinum. He could have folded it more but the more he did the thinner the layers would become until it would be hard to visually distinguish them from one another.
With the two metals folded into so many layers, the ingot was heating in a more uniform fashion and making his life a little easier. He heated the ingot once more so that he could cut it completely in half. A rapier was a long thing sword that didn't use nearly as much metal as a regular longsword. In fact, even after cutting the ingot in half he was certain he still had too much material to work with. After all, half of two ingots fused together was still a full ingot. He'd simply cut off the excess material and use it to create the cup hilt, quillions, and knuckle guard. He wasn't going to take the time and effort to make something fancy so the cup hilt would be a simple hemisphere that rested above the quillions, or cross guard if preferred. The knuckle guard would come down from the quillions to the bottom of the hilt just above the pommel.
With the material cut in half, he began hammering on it to draw out its length. Rapiers had long thin blades and were known as more of a fencing sword with thrusting being the main way of dealing damage. They could be sharpened and used as a single-edged sword as well. His hammer rang out as he worked the metal slowly lengthening and thinning the material. Rapiers were designed to be light and fast so he intended to stick with that. He was really curious about how it would turn out with everything ice-based. He needed to think of a good enchantment for it.
Slowly the block of metal transformed into the beginnings of a long and thin sword blade. While hammering the edges of the sword he did his best to keep the centerline in the center. He also used the back of the cross peen hammer to hammer a small fuller into the blade that only extended for approximately sixteen centimeters. The fuller would give the base of the blade a little more rigidity while not increasing the weight of the sword. The tip of the blade was hammered out to be slightly longer to allow for better piercing. Overall the blade was still rough but the image of a rapier was becoming stronger with every blow of his hammer.
Eventually, he couldn't work on the blade of the rapier with his hammer anymore. The rest would need to be done on grinding wheels. Rapiers didn't need long handles, just enough space for a single hand to grip it. That being the case he hammered out the shoulders of the tang and drew the tang out to just over ten centimeters long. The handle itself would only be about six centimeters long but he needed the tang to be longer for the pommel and to have enough material to peen the pommel on tightly. There was a large amount of excess material left over once all the hammering was done. Thomas simply cut the material off.
He lifted the thin blade and looked it over checking it to make sure he hadn't warped it with his hammer blows. As he was looking it over he also noted that its weight was a bit more than he expected. A finished rapier usually only weighted around one and a half kilograms. Just the blade he was holding in his hand felt like it weighted closer to two kilograms. He took it over to the grinding wheel and hoped grinding some of the material off would help reduce the weight. Then again he was working with a fantasy metal so it was possible that the weight would remain higher than he expected.
Grinding the rapier into a more uniform and cleaner shape was a much nicer experience than the previous weapons he'd worked on. His flaming greatsword was so massive and bulky while the glaive blade was so wide. In comparison to them, the rapier blade felt like a toothpick. It was so easy to grind that when it got closer to completion, Thomas felt like he wouldn't mind if it just took a little bit longer. His wish didn't come true as he came to a stop. The cold metal of the blade glimmered under the sunlight in the cave and gave off a deadly feeling even though he hadn't sharpened the blade completely yet.
With the grinding done he carried the rapier blade over to the forge once more and placed it inside. Without even being asked, Clad powered the blower. Thomas gave Clad a nod of appreciation and then focused on the blade. Since it was now much thinner than when it was a block of metal it didn't take nearly as long to heat up. Thomas plucked the glowing orange blade from the flames and dunked it into the large oil trough in the middle of the workroom. Thomas tried to ignore the sound of hissing oil and listen for any distinctive metallic 'ting' sounds that would indicate an issue with the welds. Fortunately, there were no such sounds. When he pulled the blade from the oil it burst into flames. Before he could conjure up some wind to snuff out the flames they disappeared all on their own.
When quenching a blade it's only to be expected that the blade would come out covered in oil and soot. The blade Thomas now held in his tongs was pretty much the complete opposite of that. The rapier blade, which had looked like plain silvery metal previously, was now a pristine white. The white was as pure as freshly fallen snow and gave the blade a cold but elegant feeling. Seeing the odd sight in front of himself only one thought sprung to his mind and immediately came out of his mouth.
"What the fuck?"
Comments
Sam4005
6 cm is really small lol
Dax
Nooo, dont make pirate weapons with the cool new metal! Also, 6cm is barely enough of a handle for a toddler to hold.
