Author Artemis
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Chapter 032 - Warhammer
🕑 Added 2025-03-12 20:32:30 +0000 UTCMany aspiring Smith-Enchanter hybrids bring a small bellows into the dungeon with them when they attempt to recreate the Legend of the Smith who Saved the Kingdom. It stands to reason: neither Smiths nor Enchanters have the leatherworking skills needed to break down a monster corpse and produce a bellows in situ. Those who try inevitably fail and find themselves returning to civilization far sooner than planned, either to buy a bellows or embarrassed that they were unable to [Forge] to a satisfactory level over what is closer to a regular fire or weak kiln, rather than the fire of a properly constructed forge.
The popular versions of the Legend are misleading on the Smith’s skills and experience up to this point. They overblow the experience that the Smith obtained with his mentor in his hometown. And they greatly diminish the experience gained while the Smith was enslaved in the mining camp. In his hometown, the Smith worked for a scant few weeks as an apprentice before he was abducted. He was barely allowed to put hammer to metal during that time, and when he was, only under strict supervision. He was never properly taught how to heat metal to the proper temperature, nor the tools necessary to achieve that temperature. Certainly he knew that a proper forge had a bellows, but he did not fully understand how important it was.
This is known from letters the Smith wrote later in life, stored in the University of Leicenester archives.
In addition, the lion’s share of the smithwork that the Smith had actually accomplished up to this point, the point of the construction of his first forge in the dungeon itself, had been done in the slave camp at the request of the slavers.
With some extrapolation, it becomes clear to the well-read researcher that the Smith’s standards for “acceptable” were considerably skewed by the time he began forging within the dungeon. While no self-respecting smith would ever let another person see a piece that [Appraised] as “Quality: Very Low”, the Smith had produced dozens of pieces of that quality by that point in his career and he had even delivered them to the customer. And what is more, the customer was perhaps the most demanding and difficult of all: a slaver who at the time held the power of life and death over the Smith. And yet, perhaps being ignorant of the value and quality of mining equipment and the intricacies of smithing, the customer accepted the pieces as delivered and even ordered more.
It is clear from the historical evidence that the Smith did indeed level his Smith class upon killing the first monster he encountered. The Smith himself wrote of this event on multiple occasions. The only way this is possible is if the Smith had delivered several dozen orders prior to killing the monster, which could only have happened during his time at the slave camp.
Returning to the matter of the forge in the dungeon, by logic and the preponderance of the historical evidence:
It was bad, and the Smith was most likely unaware of how bad it was.
But, whereas contemporary Smith-Enchanter hybrids often give up at this point (or are slaughtered by monsters in the attempt), the Smith had been toughened up by his time in the slave camp and was blissfully ignorant of the atrocious quality of his work and workplace.
Let us now return to the story.
James started by constructing a semi-circle of loose stone and, after several attempts, managed to use mud as a kind of mortar to form a stone and dirt dome over the circle, with a small hole at the top to let smoke out. The initial semi-circle was without mortar, with significant gaps in the stone, to allow air to enter near the base of the fire while heat accumulated inside the dome. After some experimenting, he used stones as places to rest iron being heated in the forge.
Mining coal was so effortless to James, after his experience pulling iron ore out of the tunnel wall with and without his [Mining] skill, that it almost felt like cheating. The coal just fell right out of the seam in chunks of various sizes, which he then broke up into pieces small enough to fit into his new forge. Before he knew it, the ground around him was strewn with more coal than he knew what to do with. Thankfully, with the magic bag, storing it all away was easy and quick.
After this was done, James quickly scanned around the gloomy cavern. Seeing nothing of interest, he returned to his work.
The soft breeze continued.
James’ first creation was a cup. Using the “horn” of his anvil-shaped-object, James managed to create a vaguely cup shaped object that [Appraised] as [Material Identification: Forged Iron]. James was quite a bit less than disappointed with this result as the cup spared him the indignity of pressing his mouth against the wet stone wall and sucking at the moisture to sate his thirst.
Sadly, without a bucket to quench his creation in, he had to wait for it to cool naturally. Realizing he should have started with that, James produced a large bucket that his skill actually recognized as a bucket, albeit with Very Low Quality. With another quick scan of the dimly lit cavern, James ensured the warding stakes were topped up with magic power and then laid down to take a nap, still full from his feast of dried meat earlier.
While sleeping James dreamed of many things. Of his parents’ dismay when they learned of the Classes he had chosen. Of his lessons with Jared, the village smith. Of his initial journey with the bandit who abducted him. Of his first time under the lash of the slaver at the mining camp. Of the time he punched a fellow slave, but after the boy fell down on the ground it was actually the new boy who had been knocked down, and now his ankle was broken. James bent down to help him and all the boy would say was don’t go in the mine don’t go in the mine don’t go in the-
James woke with a start, heart pounding. He looked around, but the cavern was the same as it had been before.
More promisingly, the cup and bucket had cooled by this time. James, feeling parched by this point, quickly filled the cup with the trickle of water from the wall and drank. Sweet, delicious water. Refilling his cup, he finally thought to examine the water more closely.
[Water Identification: Pure Water]
James, satisfied that the water wasn’t foul or contaminated with anything, was mildly happy and continued to drink his fill. Once satisfied, he filled up the large iron bucket with water for quenching, and used iron from the magic bag to forge himself a set of cooking utensils.
In this way, another day passed, and the soft breeze continued to blow.
Now able to satisfy his basic needs for water, food, and shelter, James was ready to focus on security. He constructed a smelter, which took most of a day, and then while it was warming up he quickly mined some brown iron ore. James noticed that brown iron ore was slightly harder to mine than the green iron ore had been, but with his [Mining] skill this hardly slowed him down. What was more interesting, and promising was that the ore was heavy. Exactly what James wanted for his next creation: a war hammer.
The brown iron ore smelted the same as the green and regular iron ore, eventually leaving him with [Brown Iron Ingot]s weighing roughly one and a half times as much as a regular iron ingot. He then re-smelted the ingots to to cast into a mold he had created to produce a roughly rectangular shape for the hammer head, but with one side having a spike for penetration and the other end remaining flat for blunt impacts. Paying close attention and making full use of his [Smelting] skill, James produced a rather pure quantity of molten brown iron ore, and poured it into his mold. Once cooled enough to solidify, he hammered away at it, smoothing out discontinuous edges and trying to maintain the spike as much as possible. Once finished, he quenched the head, nearly breaking his tongs trying to lift the heavy chunk of metal, and affixed it to a haft from one of the broken pick-axes in the magic bag.
[Appraisal]: Warhammer, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 6/6
James was puzzled. Why would the durability of a warhammer, basically just a chunk of iron, be so low?
Click click, skitter skitter, shuffle shuffle
The soft breeze continued to blow.
