Chapter 10 - Wrought Iron
"I don't know hehe!" She flashes them a rue beam of her pearly teeth. "Oh, hoho! Look at the time of the day, time to play with ma goldies! Off we goooo!" There she goes, fluttering her wings in speed toward the third tunnel.
Her pouch of gold was within Aleges and Clux's 3rd Room Tunnel, between the wide 4th Room Tunnel where Mordred and Melantha are currently doing handicrafts, and the 2nd Room Tunnel where the mushroom farm is. The couple's love nest is at 1st Room Tunnel.
A tunnel apart from Clux and Aleges so the couple can enjoy their sweet privacy, and in case Kerleun had made a surprise visit for her goldies they won't be the pair that gets interrupted.
"Attunement to a Giftor or an element." He squinted his eyelids in pondering.
He and his wife have expertise in the field of science about souls, and as past humans who had lived for long, survival smarts have become common sense to their bones.
But when it comes to Root of Power and new profound sorcery or whatever hunga dunga magic this world has to offer. He was ignorant, to say the least, and as inexperienced as their current age in this timeline.
He purses his lips in frustration at the unknown and resumes back to what he can control in his current work. And so he does, with a crude straw basket, he separates the larger chunks of charcoal for smelting while he leaves the bits for supplementing firewood in ordinary fires.
"M'Love, you forgot an important question to ask Kerleun. How will she get her next promotion so she can get another Giftee? Earth powers are pretty handy you know." With her delicate face etched in focus, she dips wild pampas grass into the animal oil she extracted and brushes the animal hide on the wooden drying rack.
There have been various natural means to tan animal leathers using animal oil extracts, salts, and even oak barks. Since they had an abundant harvest of animal carcasses from their daily hunt, she decided to extract oils from the brain and fatty skins.
"Absolutely, but wouldn't it be nice if I had something unique from yours for me to specialize in a different task?" He arranged the ceramic bricks into a tall furnace and tidied up his compact stone hammer next to a compact stone anvil.
Stone tools were brittle compared to iron tools, requiring advanced cutting technologies to shape them into compact equipment without chipping the shape. All credit goes to Melantha that they have such fine compact stone pieces of equipment. If she did not possess such ability to perfectly bend the earth's materials, they would never have considered jumping straight to smelting and casting irons due to time-taxing workloads in building every tool from scratch, not to mention rebuilding their cave abode.
Following the said situation without the Earth's blessing, an efficient way to establish their wealth in this new world was through trading with the nearest town. Alas, they're nonhuman and they currently had no product to sell in value. Mineral ores are valuable no doubt, but without mining equipment and Melantha's power, how can gathering be an effortless endeavor?
Surely they can take risks and pretend to be a mighty member of the Elves, but truth always resurfaces no matter how deep it was buried. Additionally, they had the height of 10-year-olds, emitting fragileness and delicateness that can be easily targeted by any human with a black heart since medieval times.
Once they get proper attire and are more confident in their strength, they can always reconsider in the future about visiting the town.
"That makes sense M'Love! I wish that power could be an efficient energy source." Her excited beam was infectious. "Energy source in this world appears to be above common sense, my brain was aching just thinking the fundamentals of common sense from our previous world was crumbling here."
"Like how a soul can move a lifeless corpse, and a creature can wield unscientific abilities?" He whistles in amusement as he covers the crannies of the furnace with wet clay, leaving a hole at the bottom to fit his wooden blowpipe.
"Exac—"
"Cook time!"
"Food is best!" Clux and Aleges scutter next to Melantha, drowning her following words with their excited bellows as they drag four carcasses of black rabbits, tied on a stick pole with the rabbits' hanging oversized feathered ears.
"Darling, yours." Aleges passes Melantha her familiar wooden cylinder canteen. The usage of the canteen was unbeknownst to the former but she still carried out the latter's task obediently.
"Well done the both of you, deserving not just praises but a meaty meal." She lifts her index finger and four ghastly silver souls squeeze out of the canteen's lid to divide between the couple. "Haha! It's not 'Darling' you silly Aleges, that's for me and my husband Mordred forms of endearment." She pointed at Mordred as if to highlight an important learning.
Inspired by the Dead Raiser's ability, Necro Tempt, with her strong influence over souls it wasn't hard for her to command the ownerless Banshee to be her lackey. Since the soul's size was not proportionate to its body and could take the form of any size due to being in the immaterial state, she had compressed the Banshee on her canteen and commanded it to gather the souls from the hunts of Aleges and Clux.
"Indeed, that is I." Playing along, he flashes the two the smug of a father showing off something grand to his kids.
"You should be calling Clux some sweet names instead of me." She took Aleges and Clux's palms and fastened them together to imitate her and Mordred's way of exhibiting their affection.
"What Call? You?" Aleges pouted quizzically.
"Just by our names is fine, Melantha."
"Melantha, hungry."
She sets aside the hide tanning and prepares the ingredients for her two hungry customers. Like a loving mother's cooking, after skinning and washing the rabbit's meat through a pot of fresh water, she sauteed the Salt Mushroom to lessen the skunkiness of the white meat into the ceramic clay pan.
No oil is needed thanks to the clay's nonstick prowess, bringing Melantha's happy humming that mingles with her mouth-watering cooking's aroma.
But one man remains unperturbed as the sizzles of the ball of fire are clamped by his stone tongs. On the anvil, Mordred hammers in the tides of vapors, the scorching iron ore was repeatedly bashed for compaction. This consolidates the extracted iron ore, forge-wielding the voids and squishing out the slags.
On one strike, he has failed to control his strength and totally flatten out the bloom of iron ore like a meat patty. "Was I always this strong?"
He has always attributed his bestial agility as the trait of a goblin, similar to how Aleges and Clux agile climbing and their inhumane accuracy development with bows and arrows, possibly due to their innate agility that improves their balance and control. But strength has always been one of the core weaknesses of the goblins.
Especially when he recalls the specific goblin that can transform into a bipedal wolf, its swiftness has dramatically heightened yet its strength was still a major flaw, the transformed goblin could not even break out of the encirclement of Melantha's summons similar to any animal they hunt for food.
Curiosity-driven, he pokes the scorching iron ore, and high-temperature prickles back his fingertips yet his skin remains healthy green. His jaw was slack in amazement as he proceeded to grab the whole red-hot ball.
There was no occurrence of steam from the burnt skin that he had expected, only the searing pain as if an army of fire ants were stinging his palm, enough for him to drop the ball and hurriedly place it back on the anvil.
His whole palm that made long contact was flushed with crimson. However, the color was slowly returning to normal pale green under his naked eye. "Haha! What an insane fire resistance."
"Any fun discovery M'Love?" She pushes him a ceramic plate full of dark golden brown rabbit meat paired with darkened Salt Mushrooms flakes.
"Way more than fun, Haha! Come're. My soul has remodeled my body above its genetic capabilities. I may have become a super goblin perfect for frontal battles, synergizing well with my Soul Disrupting ability." He cheerfully rains down his wife's cheek with pecks.
"Quite ungood, aren't you putting yourself in a dangerous spot?" Her brows frowns.
"Isn't my wife always got my back? Between us two, I could take all the punch while you watch my ass at the backline with your powers."
A deep sigh escapes from her worried face. She understood that they were no longer in their once peaceful world, but any family member worries for their loved ones who are entering the battleground like during their military service. The same goes for her when she realizes that life and death battles are unavoidable here.
After his meal, he resumes his ancient bloomery method, converting the pile of magnetite iron ores they had collected into primitive wrought iron ingots.
------
On the next day after the day of successful wrought iron ingot production, they prioritized upgrading their current weapons.
Since traditional bows made of wrought iron were detrimental to Clux and Aleges mobility, they had instead made wood carving knives to refine the bow's body with a harder wood material and replace the arrow's tips with sharp wrought iron arrowheads.
"M'Love, I think we should visit the town's armor shop. These designs were displeasing in appearance. No, quite ugly rather." She was inspecting a wrought iron helmet, a straight-up circular full helmet resembling a smooth pumpkin head. Practical in protection yet laughable to parade in any society.
"I could take inspiration from their design since you said the town's guards were adorned in appealing armors." She added.
"Why were you insulting your crafts, Darling? We're not blacksmiths." He crackles in laughs as he grinds the wrought iron claymore into the whetstone between his legs. "Once we're done with making some nice furs and leather clothing to look like a proper town folks, surely we can. We don't want to be attention grabbers of the town in our tribal leaf clothing do we?"
He nods his head in satisfaction with the sharpness of the blade. Upright, he distances himself far from the cave walls and their home's equipment. Wielding the long two-handed sword, he swung it like a twig, creating howling winds with his every slash.
Due to his growing strength, all he had to consider was how destructive his weapon would be. Not only did his soul affect his visage, but so did his physique — a testament to his qualitative change over Melantha's quantitative change of soul power.
Not breaking a sweat, he sheathes the sword in a wrought iron scabbard. "How about you reform them into wrought iron skeletons? Lighter in weight and consumes less resources. When in the future they're equipped in armor, all you need to control is the skeletons underneath."
"M'Love! You're the best!" She cried aloud and piled the helmet and the extra crude wrought iron ingots. Sat upon a tree bark mat, she traced the materials with her fingertips to reshape their molds.
How convenient, no matter how many times he witnessed her blessing of the Earth, it always made his eyes gravitate towards her enchanting ability.
"Good day!"
"From the hunt." Two jolly voices echoed upon their arrival. Who else could they be but Aleges and Clux?
From their daily hunting task for meat, Aleges and Clux have always returned in two batches, the time of hours after they woke up and hours before they slept. He can just say it was their morning and evening routine, but how can he tell if there was nothing but darkness inside their underground home?
When Aleges was untying a fat featherless bird with teeth and bony tails, her squats accentuated her belly's protrudes.
"Clux, starting tomorrow, you and I will be the ones hunting. Let Aleges accompany my wife at home for the safety of your child." He patted his shoulder and proposed.
"Okay, Mordred."
Seems the daily effort of the two had finally bear fruit.
His lips lifted in happiness, anticipating the new family member about to be born soon. During those periods, he could take the week to practice his sword-wielding and let Aleges deliver their child without risks.