Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 175: Ch173. Heiress of the Forgotten Forge

Chapter 175: Ch173. Heiress of the Forgotten Forge

Mara leaned back against her workstation, arms crossed, the last thread of her story hanging in the air like smoke.

Jake’s eyes still gleamed. Elise sat on the edge of a crate like it was a throne. Alric leaned forward as if one more sentence would unlock the universe. Riven was trying to play it cool. He had his arms crossed but was definitely listening too hard.

"That’s enough storytime for you, kids." Mara said, her voice dry. "You want your gear fixed, don’t you?"

"Yeah, but-" Jake blinked.

"No buts. You’ve got ears full and heads spinning. That’s all I’m giving you." She stood up, cracking her neck as she stretched. "Come back in three days. If you’re lucky, I won’t slap a surcharge on every dumb question you asked."

Riven opened his mouth, but Mara cut him off before he could say anything.

"Especially you. Out."

They all scrambled, laughter and awkward apologies bouncing off the walls. The door slammed shut behind them, the quiet settling in like the closing of a curtain.

Mara turned.

The forge was hers again.

A familiar thrum rippled through her bones. The runes embedded in the floor began to glow softly, reacting to her [Classpect]. The smell of old iron, ozone, and forgotten magic stirred in the air.

She rolled up her sleeves, revealing the scars and burn lines etched into her skin like old prayers.

"Alright." She muttered. "Let’s begin."

***

The first piece she pulled onto the bench was Elise’s bow.

Cracked wood, frayed string, and the subtle warping from exposure to corrupted mana. She ran her hand over it, her eyes glowing faintly.

[Item: Longbow of Threaded Echoes]

[Condition: Broken]

[Mana Alignment: Chaotic]

[Material Memory: Compromised]

She exhaled, taking a small hammer and a chisel from under her workstation, and after that, she placed both hands on the bow and activated her [Classpect].

[Classpect: Heiress of the Forgotten Forge]

[Story Activation: Heiress of Hephaestus]

The bow lifted off the table slightly, suspended in a gentle field of light. Mara’s mind linked to it, reaching into its past.

She was not just seeing the weapon, but the story it had carried. The moments it had sung, the hands that had pulled it too tight, too often.

She summoned new wood from her stock, dark ash with flecks of starlight ore, and heated it with a flick of her fingers. Runes lit up across the table in response.

She whispered an invocation under her breath. Not a spell, not a skill.

A memory of making.

Her hammer came down in even, rhythmic beats. Not on the bow, but in the air around it, striking strands of essence only she could see. Each impact rewrote a fracture, realigned the grain, rewove the threads.

She replaced the string with something stronger, a filament spun from voidsilk that she had gotten from the [Mouth of the Abyss] after some minor raids, and tempered arc-light, humming softly when plucked.

The bow took shape again. Not just repaired, but reforged.

She set it aside, and next came Riven’s breastplate.

It had been folded in on one side, the inner padding scorched, and one of the mana-conduction veins had completely ruptured. She didn’t sigh, didn’t frown.

Even though the gear was one breath away from crumbling apart, she used that breath to remember it.

Her hand hovered over the plate.

[Item: Vested Iron - Rookie-Grade]

[Condition: Collapsing]

[Soul Thread: Weak]

[Material Memory: Collapsed]

"You’ve seen too much to wear rookie-grade anything, my dear..." She pulled the plating apart with her hands, the metal obedient to her will. Sparks flew as she spread it open like bread dough, revealing the almost dead core.

With a gesture, she summoned molten ingots of lightsteel, a blend she’d made herself months ago and never used, until now.

She heated them with a breath, and steam hissed from the vents, the floor runes pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat.

The hammer fell again. But this time, it sang.

Every strike sent echoes through the forge. Spectral images rose around her, an older man with a crippled leg forging in a cave beneath a mountain, a girl hammering late into the night, a smith shaping a blade by the moonlight.

She wove those echoes into the armor, imprinting the shape of a defense not easily broken into it. When she finished, she etched a rune inside the breastplate.

Not for defense, though.

For resolve.

After that was Alric’s sword.

Split nearly to the hilt. A weapon that had died in someone’s hands.

[Item: Iron Branch Blade]

[Condition: Dead]

[Mana Flow: Non-existent]

[Emotional Load: Immeasurable]

Mara narrowed her eyes.

There was grief in the metal, even though it was dead. There was a weight in it that she could feel.

"You really believed this would be enough, huh?" She placed her palm over it.

She didn’t melt it down, she mourned it.

She let it burn in a ceremonial flame, watching it collapse into raw material again, and from that mourning she drew a new design.

She fused stormglass into the blade’s center, giving it a ripple of color that danced with each movement. She reforged the hilt from phoenix bone and tempered steel, wrapping it in leather soaked in memory oil.

Her fingers brushed the blade’s flat edge.

"Next time, don’t hold back."

She whispered a name into the blade, and it whispered back to her, accepting it.

Last came Jake’s chainmail.

He hadn’t said much about it, but she could read the desperation in every broken link. He had fought hard with this, scared even, all the time.

[Item: Guard’s Secondskin - Modified]

[Condition: 54% Integrity]

[Story Weight: Growing]

[Legacy Potential: Emergent]

"Interesting..." Mara smirked.

She didn’t use a hammer for this one, unraveling it by hand.

Link by link, she laid them flat like a story being told backwards, replacing some, and simply reminding the purpose of some others.

When she rebuilt it, she altered the weight distribution, the flexibility, even the enchantment tether. She added a binding rune inside the collar, keyed to Jake’s heartbeat.

The armor would respond faster now, not just when he moved, but when he needed it.

She sat back.

The forge glowed around her, and the golem passed by silently, placing a cold drink on the edge of her bench.

"Thanks, Ore." She murmured.

Outside, it was night already, and she could hear the sounds of battle on the city borders.

Three days would pass like nothing for those kids.

But for her, they would feel like another life lived in her hammer strikes.

***

On the morning of the third day, the bell above the shop door jingled.

Jake stumbled in first, followed by Elise, Alric, Cass, and Riven. They were loud, excited.

Then they saw the weapons and armor waiting on the racks, and the noise died.

Mara stepped out from the shadows, wiping her hands on a cloth, her eyes half-lidded.

"You’re late."

"We’re not!" Jake protested. "It’s literally sunrise!"

"Sunrise was two hours ago."

They stared at the gear, each piece gleaming, not with polish, but with presence. Like something aware, ready.

"Whoa!" Alric breathed.

"That’s mine?" Elise whispered.

Mara didn’t smile, but her voice softened, just a bit.

"Try not to break it this time."

Jake picked up his armor, and his breath caught in his throat.

"It’s lighter. And it... Fits better. How...?"

"Magic, sweat, and a story I’m still writing."

They equipped their gear, almost reverently. The air shimmered faintly around them as the enchantments attuned.

"You didn’t just fix it..." Riven said. "You made it ours."

"That’s the job." Mara shrugged.

"I told you I knew one hell of a craftswoman!" Cass grinned as she looked at them.

"Now get out there. There’s a whole damn world waiting to kill you." She turned back toward the forge.

"Thanks, Mara!" Elise said.

Mara didn’t answer, just raised a hand in a lazy wave.

And as the door closed behind them, she muttered to herself:

"Try not to die, brats. I’m not fixing corpses."

The forge glowed, the runes pulsed, and she stared at the last kid still there.

"What’re you still doing here, Cass?" Mara raised an eyebrow. "I’m not giving you a discount on anything here."

"It’s not- Ah, whatever." Cass sighed. "There’s something I have to ask..."

Mara kept staring at Cass, tilting her head.

"The dungeon we were in... There’s something wrong with it."