Evren was staring at the ingot of adamantium inside the crucible. He had been trying all day to get it to melt so he could cast it, but he couldn’t get the temperature high enough. He had cast ‘dust devil’ on the chimney to pull more air through. He had tried to cast ‘jet’ directly into the furnace to see if that would raise the temperature. He tried casting ‘heat’ on it to raise its temperature. Yet, none of these methods worked.
He was now sitting on a log, propped up on its end, trying to figure out how he could do this. He couldn’t cast two spells at the same time. He could use telekinesis and magic, but that seemed to be a different system or something along those lines. He had a headache now and was struggling to think of some other way to do it.
He was thinking back to when he was first summoned to this world and he tried pyrokinesis, something his oldest son had a talent for, and started a fire. Since that isn’t part of the same system as magic, he thought that using that method may work, but his skill in pyrokinesis was abysmally low. He wondered which would take longer, becoming proficient enough with pyrokinesis enough to melt the adamantium, or just heating it up and drawing it out the hard way.
The weather had been dismal the last few days. The sun had been hidden by the clouds, and the weather would warm up slightly during the day so that instead of snow, a light mist of rain would fall. At night it would freeze and leave a crusty layer of ice on the snow. He kept his back alley clear of snow and ice by using the ‘jet’ spell, but that did nothing to quench his foul mood.
He had already decided on the sword design, and even the pattern he would use for the scabbard had been transferred to the leather he was going to use. Von’s journal had described how to enchant items, which required the use of specially prepared magic stones. He had found plenty of those in the magic shop, but cutting, polishing, and engraving magic stones was something he was not interested in learning how to do.
He had found a jeweler’s shop in the south end of town in possession of everything needed to prepare the magic stones, including some non-magical examples of proper engraving techniques. The underside of the stone would be engraved with a small magic circle that would accept the magic imbued into the weapon and sustain it. A second stone added to the weapon with the proper engravings could also draw magic from the environment to supply the magic needed.
He was thinking that if he just had one side flat and the other side rounded, he could make do with that, but he wasn’t sure how it would look with his weapon’s design. He would also need to engrave a corresponding magic circle on the blade, but that was something simple he would put on the shoulder of the blade while he was also engraving the name on the blade.
He sighed and rubbed the heels of his hands onto his brows. That’s something for later. I have to see if I can even get a sword shape out of this hunk of metal first. The adamantium in the crucible had cooled down to a deep red color, so he put it back in the furnace and pumped on the bellows. After heating for a while, he checked the ingot and found it needed more heat, so he cast ‘dust devil’ on the chimney to pull in more air. He did this until he got a little fatigued and checked the ingot again.
Evren used a special set of tongs to grab the crucible and bring it over to his anvil. He dropped the adamantium onto the anvil and set the crucible aside. He grabbed his hammer and a different set of tongs and poured magic into the hammer. The mental image he used was a simple one, ‘strong and sharp’. The image he focused on was of an unbreakable sword, with an edge only one atom wide. He knew he probably wouldn’t be able to get it that sharp, but that was what the image he was using.
As he hammered, he felt like the anvil would bend more than the adamantium would, yet he continued on. When the metal got cold, he would put it in the furnace instead of the forge because it would get hotter. He would use ‘dust devil’ to increase the temperature of the forge even more, and when he got mentally fatigued, or a headache from overusing magic, he would take a break with the adamantium staying in the furnace.
He repeated this process until well after it had gotten dark. He filled the furnace with more coal and left the billet in the furnace. He would get something simple to eat and get some rest. In the morning he would have to head to the warehouse to get more coal. Fortunately, he had cleared it of snow previously, but unfortunately, he hadn’t cleared it of the ice that had been forming at night for the last couple of days.
The next morning, he woke and pulled his wagon over to the warehouse to fill it with coal. Along the way he used ‘jet’ in front of him to melt the ice, and when he reached the warehouse, he felt a headache coming. Not wanting to waste anymore time, he loaded up the wagon and pulled it back to his base. When he arrived, he checked the furnace, found it didn’t need any more coal and emptied the wagon into the shed. When he finished, he did his exercises and laps around the town before getting something to eat.
He worked throughout the day, taking breaks when he was out of magic, or needed a rest. At the end of the day, he set the adamantium in the furnace, loaded it with coal and went to bed. This process continued on for weeks before the general shape of a sword could be found. The blade appeared to be longer than it should have been, but he had planned to cut it to length and use the excess for the guard and pommel.
This day Evren took a break from blacksmithing and was found in a shop in the south of town. The shop had been looted and everything valuable had been taken, therefore what was left behind would be worthless, right? Ordinarily Evren would think so, but this was a jeweler’s shop. In the back was a tool that looked like a pottery wheel. The only exception was the stone on top, and the arms of the tool over the stone. The parts were made of bronze, so there was no rust to be found anywhere, just a darkened patina.
To use the tool, he would melt this thick waxy substance and attach the gem to one of the arms above the stone. He would then need to spin the stone using the big wheel under his feet. While the stone was spinning, he would move the arms, so the gem touched the stone, grinding it away slowly until a flat surface was produced. He would then need to adjust the arm, so it ground away a different spot and repeat until the gemstone was faceted.
Evren wasn’t going to go that far though. The gems he had were red and about one cm in diameter and he would just be flattening one side and polishing the other. Once he was finished with that, he would move over to a magical tool called the reducer. He would place the gem in the center, and then position a needle like chisel over it. The pin moved at a reduced ratio of a similar pen sized pin that he could use to trace the outline of what he wanted to be etched on the gemstone. There were also magnifying glasses he could use to see the etching properly.
As he was grinding down the flat edge on the stones, he was tempted to try faceting it, but the stones were a good match for each other, and he didn’t want to make a needless mistake. He thought that if he finished the sword before spring, he could try again with other gemstones he had stored up. He had drawn out both circles he was going to etch on paper. One gem would be getting a circle that would draw magic from the atmosphere and feed it to a specific target. The other gem would be that target and would use the magic it receives to feed to the enchantments on the sword. Since he was just going with two simple enchantments, he didn’t need large elaborate gems.
Once he finished both stones, he moved over to the reducer and set the first gem in place. He set the pen in place at the center of the circle he was going to engrave, and then set the needle chisel in the center of the gem. He fed magic into the pen and picked the point up off the paper. The needle chisel on the gem followed his movements precisely. Now all he had to do was trace the outline of the circle and transfer it to the gem. Once he finished, but before he removed the gem, he checked to make sure the circle was done properly on the gem before replacing it with the other stone he had brough.
When he completed the second stone and checked it, he found he needed to go over one area a second time as it didn’t engrave into the surface properly. After the second time of going over the pattern, the mana gems were ready to be set. Now he just had to finish the sword.
