Author Artemis
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Chapter 16 - Pecking Order
🕑 Added 2025-01-31 19:13:12 +0000 UTCWith a dull crack, the poor boy fell like a sack of potatoes. He lay there unmoving on the recently cleared dirt floor of the tunnel. The grey-eyed boy swiftly crouched down, confirmed he was still breathing, then stood up and spoke to the rest of the slaves, now all gawking at the spectacle.
“We all do what we’re told, and that’s it. Arguing with me, arguing with Smith, don’t bother. We’re just doing what we gotta do. Like I said, you don’t like what I’m doing, what Smith’s doing? You take that shit to the slavers and see how far it gets you.”
He pointed at the smallest of the slave boys. “Go get some water and wake up this idiot. He’s still got work to do.” The boy gulped, nodded, and scampered off.
Throughout all this James stood there, frozen in shock. He hadn’t meant to knock the boy totally unconscious, just… He didn’t know. What did he mean to do? What was he even doing? This wasn’t what he wanted, that’s for sure.
The grey-eyed boy walked up, clapped him on the shoulder, and whispered in his ear. “Good job, but next time go a little easier.” He paused, taking in James’ shock. “You better freaking not start crying in front of everybody after that, you’ll ruin everything. At least try to look tough.” He clapped him on the shoulder again, harder this time, then turned to the small crowd.
“Get back to cleaning.”
Everyone hopped to with a quickness.
Nobody looked at the Smith after that.
Soon enough the slaves got their tools handed to them. By that point the angry boy from earlier was awake, but dazed and generally out of it. His jaw had started swelling. When he was handed his pick, the slaver stopped him.
“Hmm? What’s this? What’s wrong with your face?”
The boy flinched. “Uh, nothing. I, uh, fell, sir.” He kept his gaze focused on his feet.
“Nah, look at me. Now!”
The boy’s whole body shook and his head snapped up, looking at the slaver’s face. The slaver grabbed the top of his head with his whole hand and moved it around, getting a good look at his jaw. After a dozen seconds he let go.
“You need to watch where you’re going, idiot. Don’t be tripping over your own damn feet. If you all are short on ore today I’m taking it out of your hide, got it?”
The boy’s face paled. “Y-yes sir, got it. We won’t be short, sir.”
“Heh, you better not.” The slaver shot a look at Kev, who showed no reaction, then he turned to James.
“What’re you doing over here, moron? You got tools to fix. Get outta this line and get to work!” His slightly raised voice, not even really a yell, still had the entire line of boys jump like they’d been shocked.
“Y-yes sir!” James stammered before scampering over to his forge. He didn’t see what happened to the rest of the boys after that.
James thought of it as his forge, but it barely qualified if it did at all. At present there was the smelter, which James would defend as at least halfway decent (it wasn’t), the small anvil-shaped object, the hammer, and the “tongs”. Really it was more like a thin bar of Green Iron with widened tips folded over on itself, but it had enough elasticity to open a bit so James hoped it would work. At least it would be proper forging, not just casting with molds and hoping for the best. The actual forge portion was just a small kiln, just enough to trap some heat and get hotter than an open campfire, but not by much. Still, enough to work with regular iron. By reheating an iron ingot after hitting it on the anvil, James would be able to hammer it into a proper shape.
The slaver called Coin came up to James as he was taking stock of his forge. “Oy.”
James jumped, startled, then turned to face the slaver.
“Here, fix these up.” The slaver reached into his bag and pulled out broken shovel heads and pick-axes, sans the wooden handles. James took them in his hands, and then even more appeared in the slavers’ hands, which he placed on the growing pile in James’ arms. In total there was a dozen broken shovels and another dozen broken pick-axes. James noted that he hadn’t seen any shovels until now as he looked at them, and the slaver snorted.
“Turns out you all don’t really need shovels, yeh can just use yer hands, heheh. Saves money not buying replacements.”
James gulped. “Uh, as you say, sir.”
The slaver gave him the stink-eye for a second, deciding if James was being snarky or not, before deciding to just move on. “Get these fixed up asap. Start with doing one of each so I can see how good ye are and if this is even worth the time.”
“Yes sir.” James replied with a nod. The slaver walked off after that, to do whatever slavers did all day when everyone else was mining.
[Smith] Class Skill [Template Memorization] acquired.
Synergy Skills [Design], [Design Memorization], and [Design Copying] acquired.
As James inspected the various broken shovels and pick-axes, thinking about their design, he received several notifications. Now, looking down at the broken examples in front of him, he could see how the tools were supposed to look, and also why they were designed the way they were. The way the shovel was curved and the bladed edge thinned not quite to sharpness, but enough to pierce cleanly through the earth, the way the pick-axe narrowed at the tip of the pick, it all made more sense now.
He felt confident that he could forge the shovels and pick-axes, even without the guidance of a proper Smith like Jared.
Setting aside the least broken examples of a shovel and pick-axe, James used [Material Identification] on the rest.
[Material Identification: Forged Iron]
Satisfied that there was no weird alloys in the mix, James threw the broken tools into the smelter. Eventually the ore was molten, without any slag floating to the top. Using his ingot mold, he created ingots in roughly the shape of the final tool, saving himself some work of actually forging. That said, it was not like he could start forging immediately. The ingots needed to cool at least enough to solidify, and that would take longer than he had left before lunch and returning to the mine.
Since the smelter was already warmed up, James spent the rest of the morning working through the backlog of ore, dreading his return to the mine.
