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Royal Road

SomethingOtherThanRain

Blacksmith vs. the System by Dirk Grey

Chapter 24

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"And, that's the last piece," she said as she placed the forge. Thanks to its nature, it had been easy to carry, though how she excused its extraction from the forge building, I didn't know … or care. All I needed was to connect the fire to the building chimney, and that would be enough.

"I'll start working immediately," I said, looking at the pile of dungeon materials. A lot of crystals, and some herbs, but the most attention-grabbing thing was the pieces of a large shell. "Is this from the dungeon creature?" I said.

"Yes. That's the most common enemy. Some kind of distorted bug with a few weak points, that releases some kind of acid spell when dying. It destroys the weapons."

"And, I'm guessing using hammers is not an option."

"No," she replied. "If the shell is broken, the System Store doesn't take the purchase," she said.

"Do you mind if I quickly check something," I said. She nodded, and I touched the object. Thanks to the meditation, I could feel that the shells contained quite a bit of mana in them.

"Good," I said, smiling as I examined it.

"What do you mean, good?" she asked.

"It's good material. High tensile strength, probably stress resistant as well," I said. "Promising for experimentation."

That was patently not true. I was excited because I could use those shells to practice my skills. I didn't feel guilty or felt like I was really cheating them. I could always pay them back by reducing the repair time even further. To their knowledge, it was still around eight minutes.

"Don't expect to have a lot of them," she said. "They are the greatest income source of the dungeon. The System store purchases them without a limit."

"For how much?" I asked.

"Twenty silver coins for now," she said. My eyes widened. That was good money. "Hopefully, it won't drop too much once the number of shells increases."

"The shops do that?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she replied. "They can be difficult to predict. Sometimes, the price drop is permanent, and sometimes it just fluctuates."

"Do you mind if I try something?" I said, curious how the mana would react. I broke a corner, only for a small plume of mana to burst out. However, the pieces still maintained their mana content, That was good news.

"Excellent," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"I have to break them for my experiments," I said. "So, you don't have to bring me the intact ones. Just bring me the damaged ones. The more, the better."

"Do you really need that many samples?" she asked.

"Edison had run more than ten thousand tests before inventing the lightbulb," I replied. It was a gross misrepresentation of the real process, but fibbing the history of technology wasn't the worst thing I had done today.

"Alright, the broken shells should still be near the dungeon. I'll make sure to arrange their delivery. Same with the metals."

"Excellent," I said, not bothering to hide my happiness. Once she disappeared at the end of the stairs, I was alone in the basement. My smile was even bigger as I destroyed a small corner of the shell. Its mana content was far denser … but I noticed something interesting.

The mana from the monsters was a little cloudy. I only noticed that while meditating. Absorbing took almost four times longer, the meditation skill separating some kind of chaff from it. I had no doubt that it would be very inconvenient for a mage, who'd spend a lot of mana fighting.

For me, it was a benefit, as that cloudy effect made the mana stick together longer. When I destroyed a bronze ingot, I was barely able to absorb a tenth. With the shell, I was able to absorb more than half before it dispersed.

[+1 Mana]

Excellent efficiency. "Maybe I'll be able to improve the process even further," I muttered. However, as tempting as it was to start playing around, I decided to delay it until the broken pieces had arrived. I needed to look like I was working.

A tidy workspace was a good first step … a good step that had paid off in an unexpected way. A familiar surge from Mana Forge skill gave me a recipe for a new alloy, which used two of the crystals, the shell, and one of the herbs to be mixed in for some reason.

It also required a lot of mana for every ingot, which meant it couldn't be done in the dead zone efficiently.

"What an interesting coincidence," I muttered. Along with the recipe, came a lot of information. Information that included some kind of anti-corrosion property. It would have helped the profitability of the dungeon immensely.

Too bad I had no plans of revealing my mana forging to them as it touched my secrets.

"But, that doesn't mean I can't try to replicate a weaker version of the effect," I replied. After all, they didn't need a perfect solution, just a workable one. If I could come up with an alloy that didn't require mana, the other blacksmiths could replicate it easily.

It shouldn't be impossible. The System didn't include any such recipe, but it didn't matter. It was just like repairing the edge. The System didn't include any direction that couldn't be defined as perfect.

But, even an imperfect copy wouldn't be easy. I would probably need to start with creating a few ingots to understand the nature of the alloy, not just its final properties, but also the in-between steps.

Then, I need to turn that into a dagger and test it on the dungeon beasts, as well as the other weapons to understand exactly how the corrosion effect impacts the metal, and see if that could be achieved without mana.

Which would be followed by hundreds of attempts as I tried to come up with a stable alloy that didn't shatter immediately and resisted corrosion.

Still, I was hopeful, mostly because I didn't need anything that was close to usable in any other context. It can be brittle enough to shatter after a dozen blows, which would have been unacceptable for any other condition.

But, not here. As long as they could kill four to five beasts without shattering the weapon, it would be profitable.

"Excellent," I muttered even as I continued to tidy the workshop. The best thing, even if their bronze supply was not cut, it would make sense for them to continue funding my experiments. The money I would consume would be nothing compared to their potential benefit.

Even better, once I found a method, I could release multiple versions of the same metal, slightly improving its performance every time.

That trick had been good enough for the academic papers. It would be good enough for this as well.

"If all goes well, I should be able to make enough money to get a position in the research institute."

Bribery was not something I wanted to resort to, but it was better than the alternative. However, I didn't want to hurry up. My previous failure had taught me a good lesson about the importance of emergency funds.

As much as it rankled me to delay my return to the scientific community, I had learned my lesson. "And, it doesn't mean I have to delay my research. I can always pay Rosie to collect some data for me, and focus on exploring the System in the process."

I smiled happily as I got the fire going while I systematically destroyed half of the shell, carefully absorbing the mana that was let out.

[Mana 14/160]

For anyone else, that was not a notable amount of mana. For me, it represented my first opportunity to forge a mana alloy. Not even a full ingot, but barely a piece as big as my thumb.

It was a copper alloy, which was a happy occasion. Copper was one of the easiest metals to process, which was why it had been the first metal humans had used en masse.

Of course, it was also soft and brittle enough to incentivize the first primitive attempts at metallurgy, forcing the ancient people to actually experiment until they discovered bronze, which fueled our first real civilization, an ancient bronze civilization that sprawled across the Mediterranean sea, with the first global web of trade between Egypt, Hittite, Greece, as well as other European and Asian civilizations, all to ensure a steady supply of tin and copper.

Unfortunately, once international trade collapsed, so did those civilizations… The Bronze Age collapse was one of my favorite periods to study as I tried to map the impact of a similar collapse on our civilization.

Three years after the Cataclysm, I was ready to acknowledge the irony…

"Less pondering, more working," I spoke to myself even as I started working on forging a copper mana alloy, following the suggestions from the skill as I melted the copper. The process had been relatively simple. The recipe included two different crystals, both finely ground, one herb, and a coarsely ground shell of the dungeon monster.

Mix the first crystal to molten copper, then burn the herb right underneath and let the crystal absorb the energy it radiated. Let it cool down to a red-hot state before starting to temper the metal and fold a few times, then start to add the coarsely ground monster shells while folding the metal, using the mana to keep the process stable and grow the crystals, keeping the metal merely red hot at the process.

The second crystal was to be mixed with the water, and used to quench the metal once the forging was complete.

A simple process that failed spectacularly, which was not a surprise. Not only did using the recipes from the system not always guarantee success — the level of the user, in particular, impacted the results quite a bit due to benefit from the stats, and skill level played an even bigger role — but also I wasn't following the recipe completely.

The full recipe required me to make one standard-sized ingot, and I didn't have the mana to do it. Adapting it to a smaller piece was not a trivial process, as it changed many important details, from the speed the metal cooled to the folding patterns.

But, that failure meant nothing as I started taking notes, incomprehensible to anyone but me.

I was already in love with my new working space.

Royal Road

SomethingOtherThanRain

Blacksmith vs. the System by Dirk Grey

Chapter 25

Report

"You look tired," was Eleanor's first words when she visited me the next morning, pushing a huge cart that was taller than her with ease. It weighed at least three tons, but stats were useful for more than just fighting.

"I want to make sure I don't disappoint you," I said, which was once again not exactly the truth. However, keeping the supervisor unaware of the intricacies of the experiment budget was never a bad idea.

I was simply lost in the excitement of experimentation. The man from the solitary shell only allowed me to make two more attempts, and only with smaller pieces. Both had been abject failures, but they provided enough data for me to gather some clues.

I had enough of the first blue crystal and the herb to start experimenting. It wasn't enough to even get close to success. For now, anything that managed to stabilize was roughly as strong as a sandcastle, but I wasn't after the end result.

No, I needed to understand the process of crystallization and the shape of macrostructures. That was only the first step before I could start the real experimentation. Too bad I lacked the necessary background, and relied on a knowledge base that was cobbled together.

"Good. I hope they will be useful," she said as she pulled the cover of the cart, and showed that it had not only contained all types of metals but also piles and piles of broken shells. "Would that be enough?"

"Not even close, but it will be good enough to start," I said, not willing to turn down my only mana source. She looked surprised. "I can try to ration them, but using them excessively would allow me to process them faster. Since they are garbage, what's the harm."

She frowned. "Bringing them here might be suspicious," she admitted.

"You're the commander. I'm sure you can find a good reason," I said, already touching them to test their mana content. A slight frown appeared on my face as I noticed some of them had much less mana than the others. The smaller they were, or the dirtier they looked, the more mana they had lost.

I realized why the System shop only bought the undamaged ones. The moment they shattered, they started to leak mana.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"No, it's just that the older ones look like they have decayed somewhat. The fresh ones would work better," I replied.

"Should I not bother with the old ones?"

"No, the more, the better," I said. "Maybe there's some benefit to using decayed ones." It might even be the truth. Using organic materials for alloy making was not exactly a topic that science had covered. Even if someone explored it, it was probably nothing more than a niche field.

How I wished I still had the internet.

Once she was done with the delivery, I expected her to leave, but I noticed that she was still waiting with a smirk on her face. "What's going on?" I asked.

"I have another delivery," she said as she threw me a backpack. I opened it, only for my eyes to widen. It was filled with papers. Mostly magazines, with several journals mixed in. I pulled out the first journal, flicking it with excitement that I had never shown before the Cataclysm.

Most scientific articles were boring, derivative articles that merely introduced a fraction of new knowledge while they pandered pointlessly, only minutely different from a hundred other articles I could find with a quick query.

But, with that option gone, every article represented the crystallization of human ingenuity, with ideas I could never come up with on my own.

I flipped the first article, reading the abstract out loud. "A two-dimensional mathematical model for a process of solidification of a binary alloy in the presence of an electric field as a free boundary problem."

"So, useless?" Eleanor asked. I turned to look at her, and she flinched and took a step back. I took a deep breath, realizing that I might have got … a tad angry. "Not useless?"

"Of course not," I said.

"But, there's no electricity anymore. It doesn't work with mana, even in the dead zones."

What she had said was true. During the first year of the Cataclysm, there had been a lot of attempts to restart technology. Three main targets were steam, gunpowder, and electricity.

Among the three, electricity had been the one that had been abandoned first, for a very simple reason: Mana didn't get along well with electricity. Once they mixed in, the results were unpredictable. Sometimes, it fizzled and melted, sometimes it exploded. I didn't know if anyone properly completed those experiments in mana dead zones, but considering monsters let out mana when they died, I didn't know how much it would have mattered.

The gunpowder and steam had been abandoned for simpler, logistical reasons.

Ironically, the reason gunpowder had been ignored was the reverse of the process it had led to its adaptation. During the fifteenth century, gunpowder weapons were less powerful and less accurate than the bow and arrow, yet it had been adapted because training an archer took years, it required immense strength, and making arrows was much slower than making small metal balls.

The exact opposite was true for our circumstances. With the System, a decent archer required mere days to turn into a marksman that could comfortably compete in the Olympics, the physical strength came from leveling up, and ammunition could be simply purchased from System shops, and reused for a long time.

That had been true the first few days, and it was even truer now. At this point, where people could heal from a lot of wounds, gunpowder weapons simply lacked the necessary stopping power.

The steam engine, on the other hand, could have been technically useful, but a simpler fact stopped it. While steam and fire weren't as volatile as electricity when interacting with mana, it was still enough to make the idea of a steam engine made of ordinary metal useless.

The alloys that the blacksmiths could forge could be useful, but that meant a radical increase in cost. A steam engine had to be large to be useful, which meant at least five tons of metal. A ridiculous amount, considering a sword required less than four pounds, and the ingots the System sold were usually between one and two pounds.

A steam engine took enough metal to arm a whole town. Hardly an acceptable tradeoff, particularly since anyone with high strength could match the power of a steam engine.

It was for a reason our old technology had been abandoned, which I was more than alright with. It was how technology worked.

What truly rankled me was abandoning the process of science with it.

I took a deep breath, suppressing my desire to deliver a long explanation. "It doesn't matter if electricity doesn't work. We can't use the process described in the articles in any case. They are not exactly manufacturing plans. I need them to give me ideas to try."

"And, it'll work?"

"It worked to drop the repair time to eight minutes," I said, ignoring the temptation to inform her that I had already reduced it even more. No, that part could wait. I needed it in case my other experiments failed. "But, as I said, I can't promise results, not until I can find a proper direction."

She looked unconvinced, but after a while, she shrugged. "You're, the expert, professor," she said before turning and walking away.

I could see that she was trying to annoy me by tackling that last part, but I didn't care. I was more interested in going through all the books. Not all of them were about material sciences, but related topics. Mechanics, control systems, thermodynamics… None of them were particularly useful for a blacksmith, but I was still happy about their presence.

More information was not something I would turn my nose to. Just because they weren't immediately needed didn't make them useless.

My first real disappointment was about the condition of the material. Not all books were intact. Some of them were half-burned, while the others were missing pages, moldy, or dirty enough to make reading a chore.

It was clear that whoever had them treated them as garbage. "What a disappointing loss," I muttered even as I carefully went through every book and journal, categorizing the information they contained.

Once that was done, I started reading the first article, a summary of the performance of two different industrial casting processes of aluminum with regard to their final tensile strength.

The actual conclusion part of the article was useless. First, I didn't work with aluminum, and even if I did, I was hardly at a point of caring which of the two methods would be more useful, when both processes were optimized to create several tons of metal for every batch, for plants that probably created a thousand tons each day.

The sense of scale between our old and new world was worlds apart.

I read it carefully, because the article went quite a bit in detail about the merits of various types of water cooling, and, in the process, went into a lot of detail on how hydrogen bubbles could damage the integrity of the metal, and how a certain combination of iron salts could be used as a solution. The process was roughly similar to the impact of the second crystal.

By comparing the information provided in the article with what was provided by the System, my mind was churning a lot of new ideas.

Before even finishing the article, I had six experimental setups I wanted to try, and that was merely the first article.

"We're going to have a lot of fun," I said as I looked at the rest of the books. Mathematical sociology might be my one true love … but sometimes, there was no harm in straying.

Not when I could feel another revolutionary development ahead of me.

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