Chapter 32 : Sato forges

(An : I'm kinda feeling this two character titles. This chapter is susceptible to change.)

After Sato and Fudo had hailed a carriage and got in, they both kept their silence till they were quite some distance away from the Town Hall.

"*sigh* Remind me never to go there again. I haven't had this much stress ever since Conquest." Fudo released a sigh of relief.

"Don't worry; you will soon get used to it." Sato nonchalantly commented.

"..." Fudo twitched his face. Eventually, he kept his cool and asked "So what are we doing next?"

"Next?" Sato contemplated a bit before saying "I plan on practicing blacksmithing a bit before levelling up. I want to get the hang of it here. Later on, I"ll go levelling; probably at Black Grill's cave or somewhere else."

Black Grill's cave was a levelling map that spawned earth type monsters. Infinite Realm has already been online for about 3 or so hours(6 in game hours.). During this time, most of the players had already explored the nearby surroundings of their Towns. As such, they were already aware of almost of all of the low level resource maps and their features, which includes the type of monsters they normally spawn.

"Uh.. Okay. I guess I"ll do the same. Better that than levelling on my own. Who knows whether you might hit it big without me around." Fudo nodded with a light chuckle.

It didn't take them long to arrive at the West district's Sira avenue and stopped right in front of the Blacksmith guild's building since the Alchemy guild was just opposite it.

"Alright. We"ll meet again in the next 4 hours at the West gate."

"Aight." With that, our two heroes…players departed to their various subclass guild building.

Facing the 3 storey building with a 3 metre high arched door once again, Sato walked into the building and met with the receptionist who had guided him earlier. This time, there was no queue so he easily approached her.

"Good afternoon miss Amelia." Sato nicely greeted.

"Oh? Good afternoon sir…Sky-King?" [1]

"Sky-Blade."

"Oh! Sir Sky-Blade. Apologies for getting the name wrong."Amelia hurriedly bowed. 'Please don't get angry. It's not my fault your name is weird.'

"Don't worry yourself about it." Sato kindly smiled.

"Alright. Thank you sir." Amelia replied with a bow. 'I knew it. A cute guy doesn't easily get angry.' She then continued out loudly "May I know your reason for coming sir?"

"I need to practice with the forging rooms. Am I capable of doing so?"

"Yes you can. Actually, anyone is capable of using the basic forging rooms. However, there's a catch. Normally, only official members are allowed free entry, however, Master Owen granted permission to a few of you for free usage but that only last for a week." Amelia answered him.

'I see. So he gave free usage rights to those who accepted the mission. It seems this might be harder than I thought.'

"Alright; just give me any available one." Sato expressed.

"May I know for how long?"

"4 hours tops."

"Alright." Saying so, Amelia left for an office behind her counter. A few seconds later, she came back with a token, somewhat similar to the one Miss Trevale had used earlier.

"This token is for room 107 on the second floor. It's a basic room that is fit with only a simple furnace and mana gathering array formation. There's a time limit to it's usage, which is 4 hours, as you requested. Once your time is up, you will be given a 10 minutes rounding up period. After that, if you don't renew your usage, the faculties available in the room would shut down irrespective of their present state of usage. Do you understand sir?" Amelia said as she handed Sato the key.

"Ok and thanks for the explanations. See you later." Sato collected the key and began to walk away.

" It's my duty and see you later too." Amelia smiled him away. 'Such a nice guy. If he were a little stronger or more successful, I would have gone for him…What are you saying Amelia? Get your head back into your head… or is it back out of the clouds…'

. . . . .

Room 107

'Hmm, the mana here is a little dense though it lacks when compared to a Rare-steel rank chest.'

The basic room 107 was somewhat large. The entire room was filled with a higher concentration mana than the outside. It was furnished to look perfectly like a workshop.

Room 107 had a little bookshelf that held blueprints alongside a table with tools arranged atop it. The was a forge at one corner, an anvil, a vice and a few other equipment. There were two hammers; a regular one and another with runes engraved atop it. The walls of the room had runes engraved on them, that subtly attracted mana in such a way that it wouldn't influence the blacksmith in the midst of his project.

'Alright. Time to get started.'

With that, Sato walked towards the bookshelf and went through the blueprints and books, trying to decide which to use. In the end, he chose 2 blueprints; the first being a blueprint for a short sword and the other for a long sword. The ranks of both blueprints were at the low tier Mortal rank. The reason for Sato choosing them both was because the blueprints available at the bookshelf were only at the Low tier Mortal rank with very few(about 3 or 4) at the Mid tier and also he was more inclined to using swords and they were far more easier to forge.[2]

The materials needed for the blueprint's product were available to Sato, as he had earlier purchased some common and valuable materials from Grynx merchandise. This was one of the criteria he used in choosing a blueprint otherwise, he would have had to be running about looking for to purchase the components needed.

'Hmm. Juggard's Short sword.'

Spreading the first sheet wide open on the table, Sato decided to seriously study it.

Juggard was the name of a blacksmith from a long time ago who was obsessed with his work. He ended up creating a lot of beginner blueprints and books to encourage people into the blacksmithing occupation, resulting to him being one of the forefathers of modern blacksmithing. Despite his death, most of his creations and designs were still being used by the official Blacksmith guild.[3] A good example is the blueprint in Sato's hands.

'Materials needed : Cast Iron, Iron ore, regular flames… Well I have everything so now time to begin. According to Mrs Trevale, blacksmithing is divided into 4 steps; Smelting, Hammering, quenching and tempering. Strong flames are well recommended however, it doesn't always mean a good product. But for what I'm making here, a strong flame should be good.'[4]

'The smelting process is the easiest. I just have to let the metal melt in a crucible and cast the molten form onto a mold. Since I'm just forging a regular weapon, I won't need to use runes neither will I need mana infused but I will still use them to increase my success rate.'

Forging equipment in Infinite Realm are generally divided into mana-infused and regular ones. Regular ones are just the same as in real life; nothing special. On the other hand, mana-infused equipment have a mana gathering array inscribed on them. This makes the equipment to actively gather mana and implant it into the unfinished product, thereby strengthening it and empowering it with special features. Simply put, they function as a simpler and easier-to-use rune.

'Let's begin.'

Sato heated up the furnace a bit and waited till it was at the right temperature before grabbing the ores and stuffing them inside an ordinary crucible, which he then placed into the furnace. When the metal had melted, Sato grabbed a pair of tongs and used it to place a special compound into the molten metal in the forge. The compound was known as Vinrel and it served as a flux for most blacksmiths and was also capable of separating the slag from the metal.[5]

After waiting for a few minutes more, Sato, once more, used the tongs to pull out the crucible filled with molten metal from the furnace. He then poured it onto the cast and dipped the cast it cold water that was made available by an array.(AN : The array makes the water cold. It doesn't make water) The water wasn't just simple water as it was filled with mana from the same array. This granted it better quenching properties thereby hardening the cast metal even more.

Once the metal was cooled to a certain degree, Sato brought it onto an anvil and selected an ordinary hammer which he used to hammer the unfinished product. Once it looked like it had cooled off, he would grab the incomplete creation and heat it in the forge, melting it a bit. Once done, he would bring it back to the anvil and resume hammering the metal.

At times, he would interchangeably use the mana-infused hammer with the ordinary one, thereby strengthening the product and infusing man into it. After he had got the desired shape, Sato trimmed off the excess metals and tempered his work once more in the flames. As he was quenching it for the last time, he heard a ding.

*ding*

[[ System notification :

Juggard's short sword completed.

Analysing product...

Product has failed to reach the required rank ]]

'I failed? Looks like this would be a lot harder than I thought…' Originally, Sato had thought that he was doing well but the System thought otherwise. In Infinite Realm, apart from the normal weapon ranks, there is one more and this one is below Low tier mortal rank. It is known as common rank.

A common rank isn't actually a failed product but it isn't a completed one either. It is more like a creation that was completed but couldn't reach the desired rank. Even though it seems like a failure, it isn't a total one. As such it was given the title 'common rank'. However, this rank isn't officially recognized by the Blacksmith guild and as such, isn't popularized. It is only used by metalsmiths as most of their products are at this rank. A good example would be the regular kitchen knife for cooking and so on.

'It took me an hour plus, to be able to finish this…Looks like Blacksmithing won't be so easy but a week right? This mission isn't so hard.' Sato smiled. Despite failing in producing an officially recognised work, he wasn't bothered but rather impressed at his ability for not failing at his first try.

'Alright. Less than 3 more hours to go. Let's give it a shot.'

AN :

[1] Amelia calls him 'sir' since he is now an apprentice blacksmith while she is a regular receptionist. Logically speaking he is higher than her in authority even though he isn't officially one.

[2] Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel a sword is a weapon that is easier to forge apart from spears. But what do I know? I'm an engineering student not a blacksmith…