Frostbound
Chapter 312 - Metals

Chris

Alright, Christopher, no more distractions.

I knew returning would be filled with things I needed to see and take care of, and now that we had been back for three weeks, all that needed my attention was finished.

There were a few more meetings about Samuel, but that was all set in stone now. He had his plans updated to account for what we were giving him, and now that his departure was 'sponsored,' a sizable number of people sought to join him that hadn't before. Not enough to balloon out of proportion, but enough that his 'little' expedition wasn't so little anymore.

It was nothing huge, nearly around 200, but he initially wished to start his Village with a few dozen. Now that people knew they were officially getting my help, more came out of the woodwork. We didn't have anyone else ask, but I knew in the coming years, there would be a few.

With Samuel's problem finished, and a few others that had cropped up, along with a few criminals to sentence, I was finally on track to spend my days in the forge.

Young Annabeth's training was altered, and I only saw her once a week. Mitchell didn't wish to continue doing it, and Anna didn't want to continue learning from him. She didn't want to be a Rogue, and Abigail and Jon were okay with letting her drop it from her busy schedule.

Hal was already overlapping what he was teaching slightly, with his woodcraft and stealth lessons anyway. She would miss her lessons in poison, but everyone was fine with that.

Instead, the day was replaced with a day dedicated to Professions. Rotating through them until Anna found something she liked.

Besides the initial snafu, I had learned to rein in my teachings. I had to remember that she was still a child, not someone who was going off to war.

That being said, I still kept things tough. No amount of yelling from Abigail would stop me from doing that. She was obviously displeased, but it was Jonathan who mollified her.

He actually agreed with the way I was doing things, surprisingly enough.

With her husband against her, she lost the wind from her sails and finally acquiesced. Not a full agreement, I doubt I would ever get that, but enough to stand down for now.

But now's not the time for that! Now's the time to craft!

Other than Austin's spear, there were so many new and amazing things I wanted to create. Having my Rune repertoire blown open with all the new ones we bought led to a bit of decision paralysis.

Gabriel was most fascinated with the Spatial Enlargement and Weight Reduction Runes, as he found the chance to make a genuine Bag of Holding exciting.

I agreed with him, but those two Runes were an absolute bitch to engrave and I had yet to be successful, no matter how hard I tried to force it. I knew that with my elemental proclivities, certain Runes would be difficult, but I didn't see the reason why those had to be so damn hard.

Spatial Enlargement was a Spatial Rune, and in the books detailing the Rune, it was clearly stated that learning to Rune and successfully engraving it were insanely difficult. Weight Reduction was a Gravity Rune, which was nearly just as hard.

Too bad that wasn't an exaggeration.

Even the other Runic Enchanters in the city couldn't do it. It said that any with the Rare Space affinity would have an easier time of it, but we only had a select few of those in our entire City, and none of them were enchanters.

Of our entire population of just over 20,000 and climbing, there were roughly a dozen with the Space affinity. Of those dozen, two were still in F-rank and didn't care to push on, leaving 10 possible candidates.

Gabriel tried to get us to force the F-ranks to advance, through incentives like money, new houses, top of the line gear, but they were both old and didn't care for what we were offering.

They were like my Grandmother in a way. They were witness to everything they knew falling apart along with their family's crumbling. They just didn't have it in them to keep up anymore. Sure, their survival instincts came out and they forced their way through the Tutorial, but now that they were here and behind safe walls, they were done.

Their light snuffed out. Some could accept that change, while others... others couldn't.

It was rather sad, but there was nothing I could do about it except use force, and that wasn't something I was going to do. No matter how much Gabriel ranted about the possible advantages of a Displacement Mage or Translocationist.

What his rantings did end up accomplishing, was that most of the Council agreed that we needed our own personal Dimension expert.

They weren't able to move armies around, as that was far above them, but they were able to move a small group of people around. Their idea was to move me around, and that was just as good as an army.

It was hard to disagree with them, and the idea of hastened travel time was hard to pass up. Even with our 'plan' in place, it would be quite a while until someone could rise to a high enough level to accomplish it.

The only downside was that whoever we chose needed to be ironclad. The possibility of betrayal from someone in that position was too high. They could say they were sending me one place and send me somewhere else completely. The opportunity to, in a crisis, completely take me off the board wasn't one I was fond with. If any such person was chosen, there would have to be a long and hard discussion about it and it wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

It helped that they wouldn't become truly useful until they got more powerful. They couldn't even start teleporting themselves until E-rank, let alone someone else. Mid or Late D-rank, depending on how powerful they were, was when we would need to choose, which wasn't for a while yet.

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But now wasn't the time for that, either.

Due to my frustration to carve the Runes, and Gabriel's insistence to study them, I moved on to something different. All the books were still in the process of getting copied and I left the books with him to use for now. I focused on other avenues.

We just received a veritable boatload of information, and not a small portion of it was on smithing and enchanting. Vincent and I had a lot to study after we returned, and I was trying to make the most of it now.

Metal, various metals, all had Runes that they were geared towards. Similar to how Humans had an affinity for certain Runes, so too did metal. It was quite alarming to realize how much we still didn't know.

I had been slapping Runes on metal for over two years now, and I hadn't felt anything off.

I had just been choosing the Metal or Alloy that fit the person's affinity most so that when they used skills through it, their mana didn't find any resistance. Unlike a staff, which was made to amplify the mana that passed through them, the best I could hope for was non-interference.

Without a crystal or beast core as a focus, weapons would never amplify. At least not yet. Not until I became a better enchanter.

Most metals could still hold any enchantment, but some were better at it than others. We mainly used Iron, or its affinity derivative. Cold Iron, Flow Iron, Blaze Iron. It was added to its coal counterpart and eventually made into Steel.

Nearly every weapon Vincent or I forged was a variation of Steel.

Austin's Spear notwithstanding. Maybe using Bronze for his spear was intuition at work? Bronze held Light and Solar enchantments much better than Steel did.

Still, after parsing through the books, I returned to the basics to rework my understanding from the ground up. I even omitted aligned metals so I could focus back on the neutral.

For Hardness and Durability enchantments, Titanium was best, but Steel came in second. Titanium wasn't that easy to find, and not even our Metal Dungeon dropped it regularly. I hoped that some of the metals we got from Jayla would include Titanium, but I wasn't holding out hope.

For Lightness or Weight Reduction, Aluminum was best, but I didn't see how that would help me now. I wasn't going to be making weapons and armor out of Aluminum anytime soon. It just wasn't strong enough, no matter how powerful a Durability Rune you put on it.

Runes amplified what was there, and aluminum didn't have a lot of strength to begin with.

Silver and Gold both excelled at Mana conduction and being used as inlay for Formations.

Copper, ironically enough, excelled with Malleability and Thermal Conduction. Added to Tin, which had similar Ductile properties and Corrosion Resistance, it created Bronze, which held both Heat and Cold Runes pretty well.

Overall, the oddest of all the information I gained was that Pewter was best used for Acid or Poison Runes. They weren't the most resistant to it, as that honor fell to Iridium, but they were most in line with it. I had never even heard of Iridium until reading through the Metallurgical books.

Lastly, of the important Metals, Lead was best known for Mana Capacitance.

Usually, I matched the person's affinity to the Metal and then used whatever Runes I thought best. For Austin, that was Durability, Piercing, and Radiance. I just so happened to luck out that Bronze held the Radiance Rune well.

Steel would have been better in terms of Durability, but Austin was fine giving that up for more power. He usually coated his weapon in mana from skills already, giving it a decent boost in strength as a side effect.

While taking a step back, studying and relearning what I thought I already knew, my Profession took a bit of a hit. A part of me wanted to blaze ahead, pounding out weapon after weapon so that I could evolve, but I knew that wasn't the right way.

If I was going to do it, I needed to do it right. I had no hopes of suddenly becoming a Legendary Smith, but I at least wanted to be good at what I did. Who knew? Maybe if I lived long enough, I could truly become great.

After evolving, I didn't even want to think about how many years I would live. I was already set to live a couple centuries, D-rank would see that grow by three or four times.

I also had to start thinking about which Profession I wished to evolve into. I could probably continue on and stick with Runesmith, but I had to decide if that was best.

Throughout all of E-rank, I hadn't done a whole lot of smithing. I created my own Armor and a few other Weapons for those with the Ice affinity, but I mainly enchanted what Vincent had already made.

Plus the Formations and Wards.

There was the option to diverge and become more specialized in those, rather than keeping to the Smith Enchanter mix. Originally, I hadn't even wanted to become a Smith in the first place, but it felt wrong to give it up now.

I'd already come so far with it. Also, I'd come to enjoy it.

Smithing was pure Creation, while most of enchanting was enhancement or alteration. Not that such a thing was bad, it was just that with all the destruction I took part in, it felt good to create for a change.

The small ease to my conscious wasn't going to stop me from switching, though, if that was what I decided to do.

It would take some thought, and I was in no rush. I wouldn't be gaining my last levels quickly, especially at the pace I was going.

Pure, neutral Iron deformed under my hammer, and I felt the vibrations flow through me.

I'd replaced most of the parts in my forge by now, and it was a far cry from the setup I was working with in the tutorial. My anvil, a hunk of pure, cold-treated Steel, sat upon a slab of Condensed Granite.

The Granite had been infused with Jonathan's Spirit and enchanted to improve its already insane hardness. It was the best I could do to keep the vibrations contained and bouncing back.

Eventually, once I figured out a Levitation Rune or Magnetic Rune, I'd make it hover off the ground to create a completely isolated system, but I still didn't know how to do that yet.

I'd also be able to filter out the interference from my anvil and granite stand, which would let me feel the metal better. Sometimes, I kicked myself for choosing such a difficult way to forge.

The Iron wasn't mixed with any Coal, and it wouldn't be getting any from the fire either. I wanted to work with the pure metal first, before I went ahead and added things.

The final product would suffer, but that wasn't the point. The point was to learn. [Metallurgy] tickled the back of my mind about what could be added to change the Iron's properties, but I ignored it. Instead, I pushed the skill to show me what I was working with.

Most of my Profession Skills were for enchanting, but I still had a few that were for forging.

Maybe I should buy a few. Vincent would be able to tell me which ones were worth it.

My hammer, a much smaller and more manageable one than I usually wielded, slammed down once again. My mind flashed with blood and gore, but I pushed it away.

Inhale.

Exhale

The metal took effort to form. It wasn't cherry red and malleable. I was doing things the hard way, and it was with a certain satisfaction that I forced the metal to my whims with pure, unaided force.

It was similar to fighting, if I thought about it. Heating the metal and making it easier to work with would be like hamstringing an enemy before a duel. Honestly, most of my musings were rather stupid, but it was a thought I smiled at. I knew, intellectually, that heating the metal wasn't actually cheating.

Still, I had to be careful to control my force.

The Iron I chose wasn't high grade and wouldn't withstand my full strength. Hitting it with such force would disintegrate it, and that wasn't what I was going for.

I wasn't thinking about the end shape much, just feeling out how it bent and deformed under my hammer. I throttled my hits and varied how much force I used for varied effects.

Every hit was different from the last. Every hit changed the metal in a different amount and in different ways. Every hit sent different vibrations reverberating through. My focus was on the change, not the shape.

My Endurance was high enough that the hours I had spent didn't tire me like before. By the end, I had seen all I needed to see. There were no upgrades to my Skills, but I felt much more in tune with them than before.

It wasn't until I set the hammer down that I realized what I had made.

It was an axe. A very familiar axe.

I guess I'm thinking about him a lot.