A few days had passed since Evren started testing spells. Like when he first started using telekinesis, he could only cast a few spells before getting a headache. But the good news was that he seemed to improve faster. His mannequin was now in pieces in the middle of town as a result of testing the ‘explosion’ spell. The intensity of the explosion felt similar to that of a grenade, but fierier. He cast the spell from approximately 50 meters away yet splinters from the mannequin reached him.
‘Boulder’ and ‘avalanche’ were exactly what he thought they would be, but ‘skewer’ was a pleasant surprise. It produced a spear like rock that flew at the target, piercing the wooden mannequin. He had a feeling the spell wouldn’t be as effective against the monsters he fought previously though.
As for the spells in the air category, many of them appeared to be situational at best. ‘Barrier’ might be able to stop or redirect arrows in flight, and ‘squall’ could most likely even deflect an arrow from his super bow. As for ‘blast’ he thought it was too much of a volume of air for the size of the forge and furnace he has currently. As for its uses, he wasn’t sure.
Although he laughed at ‘dust devil’ he found an application for it. It was one of the only spells he could vary according to size, and it would last for as long as he continued to feed magic into it. This he could use in his forge and furnace. If he cast the spell above the flames, it would draw in air and cause the flames to burn much hotter to the point where he almost melted a piece of iron he had been practicing with in the forge.
Right now, though, he was lying on his bed, reading a book. The lantern he found in the first town finally got a use as it was sitting on a small table next to the bed. There was no flame, he had cast ‘light’ on the wick. He found that he could cast ‘light’ anywhere he had a reasonable understanding of the location. He couldn’t cast it at a location from memory, but if he used his sensory field, he could.
The book he was reading is on minerals and metals, and their uses. It did not give the specific way to process the materials, but it did list some of the material’s common properties. For example, the green metal on his bow, “Oh, so that’s mithril. And the dagger is made from adamantium. Ah, and arrowheads too. Hmm, mithril is softer than iron but its magical conductivity is high. I wonder if there’s more to that pattern the bow than just using it as a decoration. Maybe I’ve got to put magic into it or say some magical word or something like that.” He shrugged and read the next section aloud.
“‘Adamantium is a blue metal characteristic of its strong cohesive bonds creating a hard material that is difficult to work with. It boasts a high melting point and common forges are incapable of properly working with adamantium without use of magical enhancement. Magical conductivity tests have proven adamantium to be the lowest capable metal of conduction.’ I see, so that explains why it is so sharp and low maintenance.”
The dagger was currently sitting on the chair with his cloak in the center of the room. Using telekinesis, he pulled it to himself and unsheathed it. As he examined it and turned it over in his hand, he nodded and said, “No runes or fancy decorations, just a ‘stab-until-dead’ type of weapon.” He re-sheathed the dagger and lazily tossed it over to the chair, it missed but he caught it with telekinesis before it hit the ground. He then gently set it on top of the cloak.
“Oh, I wonder if that black metal that I found at the magic shop is in this.” He started flipping through the pages until he stopped at one page near the back. “Here it is, ‘Stygium ore is a black metal with characteristics similar to adamantium, however expresses a repulsion of magical conductivity, thus producing localized feedback of magical currents. Stygium maintains an inactive state when in proximity to non-magical material. When stimulated by magical methods or materials, it produces an effect similar to a repulsive magnetic field.’ Huh, now that’s cool.”
He flipped through the book to the end and then back to the page where he left off, “Nothing on magic stones or cores. Hmm, there was another ingot there, it was…” Evren looked around the room as if seeking the answer, “green? No, that was the mithril. Let’s see, green, black and… was it pink?” As he thumbed through the pages, “Is there a pink metal? Oh, there is, but here it’s called ‘rose’. ‘Celestial bronze.’ Let’s see, softer than mithril, better conductivity, used frequently in magical circuits.”
“I guess it is good news I have an ingot. It’s too bad I have no clue how to make a magical circuit or anything magical for that manner. That last ingot was a sort of clear white.” He flipped through the book to the end, then went back to the beginning and repeated at a slower pace. “That one’s not listed.” He closed the book and rolled over on the bed to look at the floor beside it, where he had other books laying. He set the book down and picked up a few until he found one. It wasn’t a text or manual like the others, but a journal or a series of notes from a man named Von Goreson. He had found the book in the other smithy buried under tools and soot. It recounts the life of a dwarven blacksmith from apprentice through to master smith.
Evren thought the book would be more valuable than how it was maintained. He wasn’t sure if the sort of lessons learned from a dwarven smith would be considered valuable or not, but it was the only book he could find that might help him to smith better. It was a thick book with plenty of loose sheets of paper tucked in. Evren had planned to stay the winter in Plinth as he didn’t want to risk being stuck in a forest full of monsters if snow started falling.
He would begin preparing for the winter by hunting and smoking half the meat he got, drying the other half into jerky. He would have to go around to local farms to see if he can find any wild grown vegetables and exploring a bit into the forest for edible mushrooms. He had found a couple books on crops and wild grown foods that can be found in the area but had as yet not gone through them.
The book started with the basics, definitions of the various terms, names for the variety of tools, and “The proper way to make a fine dwarvish apron.” It then went on the ways to use the tools properly and explained how the color of the metal represents the workable temperature. One of the things the dwarf stressed upon is tool maintenance. It seems dwarves cherish their tools more than their own children.
The journal went on to the creation of tools, how to get the metal to a certain temperature, how to cast it properly, how to… Evren sat up from his wooden bed and stared at the next section in the journal. “How to properly enchant tools for the dwarven blacksmith.” This section described in detail on the steps to take to craft runes, what the runes mean, the proper rune sequence for the tools crafted and activation of runes on the finished product.
Evren would need to modify the forge and the furnace to properly create the tools he needed. Excited, he moved downstairs to the shop and began planning on the rebuild. “I’m pretty sure I saw some mortar in one of the warehouses…” Evren would have to get to work if he wanted to get done by the time winter came around.
