58 Forging Crazily

What do you get when you combine the knowledge of man to the instinct of a living hammer! A tool designed for the sole purpose of forging the best items there are. As they say, specialization is key to success. Being a jack of all trades is fun but not as useful as a true master of his craft.

If you guessed how amazing the result is…well you screwed up. In front of us lies an unidentifiable lump of metal. It doesn't look like anything. It doesn't even have a well-defined shape. It is angular at places and round at others.

[Sooo how about we never talk about this to anyone?]

"Deal!"

Yeah, what are we supposed to do with this junk? Try and reforge it maybe?

"What even went wrong? We kept hammering dutifully too..."

He seems disappointed.

[I would say …everything.]

"*sigh* yeah."

It is kinda normal now that I think about it. I am the one that created that spirit in the first place. It would be weird if it possessed knowledge I don't have.

[Don't worry about it. I know the issue.]

"You do?!"

He is hopeful. I pose as an expert and…

[Yes, we know nothing at all about forging!]

"Isn't that really bad?"

[There are two sides to a coin you see…]

"Why are we talking about coins? Aren't we trying to forge a sword?"

[Yes, just listen. There are two ways to view a situation. The pessimist one is that we are unskilled. The optimist one is that it will be easy for us to improve.]

"Oh! That's true!"

My skills as a motivator are off the charts. Damn, I'm proud of myself.

"Let's keep going until we have a 100% success rate!"

[Aye! Wait, no!]

"???"

[Haha, when grinding for XP one needs to be smart!]

"Grinding for XP?"

[See it that way, if we practice forging itself, we will still have trouble with the other parts of the process, right?]

"Can't we figure that out later?"

[Tsk-tsk. That's where you are wrong! We need to be as efficient as possible!]

"So smart!"

[*smug*Obviously! Watch this…]

I go near the forge. I touch it and concentrate. I really wish it could get a spirit. One that would want to carefully deal with the strength of the fire….or the lava. Yeah, this thing is weird. I wish, I really wish it would become sentient… It seems to be working and ….

*thud*

What happened? I was enchanting and….

"You're finally awake!"

Did I fall asleep?

"You scared me! Next time you go unconscious don't leave me with that freak!"

What?

[What do you mean freak?]

"The guy you were touching before you fell asleep. The new helper. It's bad. Real bad."

What the Hell happened? I'm still alive and so is the hammer. Well, I know what I need to do. Time for a damage report. I slowly get up and approach it. The furnace seems to be the exact same as it was before. What changed exactly? I look at my hammer.

[There doesn't seem to be any…]

"FEED ME! FEED ME! FEED ME!"

"*Sigh* see? This is what I've been dealing with! It recently stopped and now it's doing it again!"

How loud! This furnace would make a perfect shonen protagonist, no kidding! The kind that doesn't know what an interior voice is.

[Stop fucking screaming! What do you even want?]

"FEED ME! FEED ME! FEED …."

[OKAY, I GET IT! Now shut up already!]

It keeps going in the background. Screaming and yelling and shouting. Please just stop. I take some ore and I shove it inside.

It finally stops. It makes some weird noises. That's when I see the fiery creature approach and throw some lava inside to increase the temperature.

Wait…these guys can communicate?! How?! This is so surreal. The one that seems the dumbest somehow has better language abilities than me! Wait, no! I know how to insult people in many languages that should count!

[So what now?]

"We just wait…I think?"

[So once it is done we can keep forging, right?]

"Well by then it will probably start screaming again."

[How heavy do you think this thing is?]

"Really heavy, why?"

[*Whisper* We could almost push it in the lava. Then say we don't know where it went.]

"*Whisper* This hammer supports you."

I'm sure he'd be doing a thumbs up if he had hands. Except this idea is kinda dumb on my part. Nature magic can't be used. I think I have reached my limit for creation magic.At least for the day.

What about dispel? I can totally do that! This is great I just need to …. Nope. Actually, it is a bad idea. What if I screw up again and affect other stuff by mistake.

This hammer is weird, but for some reason I kinda like it. It has personality. That furnace, however…

"FEED ME!"

Welp seems it's done eh. Talk about an annoying thing. I drop some ores in there to shut it up. Then I run back to my partner and we get to work. After lots of effort, we finally manage to create… Another abomination. How the hell is this so hard? Seriously?!

[*Sigh*]

"* Sigh*"

No, I can't admit defeat that easily.

[You know when you don't succeed once keep trying!]

"Of course!"

We get to work again. A while later...

[You know, when you don't succeed on the tenth try, keep trying!]

"Of course!"

A while later.

[That…you know when you fail for the hundredth time…you gotta keep going.]

"Maybe."

A while later.

[Fuck this shit! This is impossible!]

"There must be something wrong with that anvil for sure! This hammer calls foul!"

[Hell yeah it is the only explanation!]

"True! True!"

Thus we comfort each other. Around us an uncountable number of metal masses. If anything there is something we can be proud of. That is how constant we are in our craft. No matter where you look at it all looks the same!

Yeah, that's really sad. Not a single trace of improvement all this time. What about the bellowing furnace? At some point, it ...fell asleep? No matter what happened it's out of commission. I really hope for a while.

Still, now we are completely out of raw materials. What about reforging these ones? A furnace is needed, remember? I am not awakening that thing!

Now what?