“Master Arto, we're back!” Shouted the hopeful, perhaps future blacksmith apprentice, while he and Thrym quickly walked towards the smoking building.

  They smiled at the sight of the grumpy dwarf chasing away the last halforcs after he checked that every single nugget had been carefully brushed until it shone brightly.

  "The Master of Goods has already informed me!" Said the blacksmith crisply, "I will teach you the basics of shadowsteel crafting, and your first task will be to craft a staff! Lorna told me that you killed a windwolf with an ironpine branch and sliced open the belly of a metalbiter with a simple pickaxe?"

  After the boy nodded, the dwarf immediately continued, "Good, you seem to be talented with the staff...The better your weapon becomes, the easier your first fight on Saturday will be! So it's up to you!"

  “I will not disappoint you!” Kilian replied with a fierce fire in his eyes and bowed deeply, “Thank you, Lord Kong!”

  "Now it's your turn!" The master blacksmith murmured, turning to the half-giant, "Every morning, three hours before your shift, someone from the Inner Academy will train you both in staff combat, and every evening, after your shift, you will engage in practice fights! Kilian, no one has ever defeated all three opponents on their first day in the arena... Show me the warrior's will that lies dormant within you and prove to the clan why we should invest our resources in your growth!"

  The two dissimilar brothers bowed their heads as a sign of their readiness, and different thoughts flashed through their minds.

  "I have to seize this opportunity! Otherwise, I'll never become a Qi-Gatherer! My opponents will be considerably older than me! Luckily, I grew quite quickly, otherwise my height might hinder me in battle...how do I best prepare for this?" The little one clenched his fist, while the big one hid his thoughts behind a stoic expression, "I'd much rather fight with a club, and I have to get up earlier a whole week? I hope the time passes quickly...I hate getting up!"

  "Thrym!" The grumpy dwarf continued after one of his famous, world-weary sighs, and the half-giant raised his head in surprise, "As a reward for your courage in the fight against the metalbiters, you may watch the blacksmithing training from Kilian and listen to my lessons! What you take away from it and what you become is up to you! Should Kilian pass his tests and become my apprentice, I will teach you how to forge a weapon of your choice!"

  “Thank you for the second chance!” Thrym finally replied in a trembling voice.

  A long extinguished fire, the will for more in life than working in the mine, for strength and power, caught sparks again, and the half-giant clenched his fist so tightly that his fingernails dug deep into the thick skin strengthened by his giant blood!

  Slowly, a few dark red drops fell to the floor, and he briefly lost himself in the images of his past.

  He remembered all his dreams, which had faded day by day through hard work and had been shattered by countless setbacks since he euphorically entered the Kong Clan for the first time three years ago.

  With tears in his eyes, he cried out to the heavens, "I had resigned myself to dying in the mines as an old man! But even if I learn only a hundredth of what you teach Kilian, I can walk through life with my head held high!"

  “Hahaha!” The dwarf suddenly laughed proudly and with full confidence.

  It was an unfamiliar, strange sound, as if that part of the vocal cords hadn't been used for years, "If you learn even a thousandth of what I know, the clan will never let you go! Hahaha! Now get to work!"

  “I did it!” Murmured a fairy-like figure, hidden in a treetop, softly as it watched the spectacle, wiping a small tear from its beautiful face as the three dissimilar figures disappeared into the smithy, “No one should be all alone, and especially not a kind man like you, Master Arto! Thank you for everything!”

  "Black ore, in its raw state form, is light and brittle, not really suitable for a blacksmith to craft anything of value, yet the refined, finished shadowsteel is hard and heavy! How do we achieve this?" The dwarf began slowly to explain his work, paused briefly, full of tension, and sipped from his flask.

  He continued abruptly, "The art of compression! If you apply enough pressure and master the corresponding folding technique, you can craft powerful weapons and armor from this brittle metal. Furthermore, Qi can flow through the thin, forged layers, allowing a Qi-Master to further strengthen their equipment. For example, if you have an affinity for Earth-Qi, you can enhance your techniques with a staff I crafted and trigger an earthquake with a powerful blow to the ground. A truly good staff also possesses flexibility, allowing you to build more momentum with a strike and preventing it from immediately breaking during a parry. What material would you choose for the core of a staff, Kilian?"

  “It shouldn't be too light so that a struck blow has enough force, and the core must also be flexible and able to transport Qi to utilize the properties of the shadowsteel…” Kilian pondered aloud, paused briefly to consider, and finally said, “An ironpine!”

  "Exactly!" Replied the master blacksmith, pleased with the boy's comprehension, "The Kong Clan's lightest staff consists of an ironpine pole, with a cylinder of single-folded shadowsteel attached to each end. This weapon is used by young children in the clan after they have learned the basics of staff fighting with a pure wooden staff. For young warriors, we go a step further! The wooden core is covered with single-folded steel, allowing for better Qi flow, and the cylinders are made of double-folded metal for greater impact with a strike! Such a weapon weighs quite a bit, but with enough training, it can still be wielded with the sheer physical strength of a normal beastman, and your test is to craft one of those!"

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  Master Arto took two black ore nuggets and threw them into the already crackling fire.

  When they began to glow red, he took them out with pliers and flattened the metal with a quick, targeted blow of his hammer.

  The next moment, he began folding the two plates together with dozens of complicated strokes, and they shrank to their original size of just one plate.

  “Pressure and folding technique!” Repeated the dwarf seriously, “This is one time folded shadowsteel. If you fold two of these plates together again, you get the next level, and even if you melt them down again, they would remain folded shadowsteel, as the metal's internal structures have already been irreversibly altered! The required material, the strength, and the difficulty of the folding increase exponentially with each step! Kilian, today you will begin practicing your hammer technique and forge all the black ore into thin plates! Once you've done this a thousand times and they're the right size and thickness, we'll begin with learning the folding technique!”

  The first nugget flew into the glowing furnace, and the boy, already sweating from the heat of the forge, began to form a bumpy slab with clumsy blows between anvil and hammer.

  The master's one effortlessly delivered blow gave way to countless unsuccessful attempts by the budding apprentice, while Lord Arto, repeatedly sipping from his monkey wine while alternating between nodding and shaking his head, quietly watched him.

  The first wavy forging attempt was reheated and worked on twenty more times until the critical dwarf was partly satisfied with the result, and Kilian was allowed to throw the next nugget into the embers.

  The first afternoon flew by, and a few hours later, Kilian quickly devoured his dinner and fell into his bed with his arms throbbing with fatigue and calluses crusted with blood, only to be jolted awake in what seemed to be the next moment by a grinning Thrym.

  “So, did you sleep well?" He asked gleefully, thinking back to his ruined body when he had to spend hours doing work for Master Arto without learning anything about blacksmithing, and quickly added, "The trainer from the Inner Academy will be here soon! Get ready!"

  With a growling stomach, Kilian sat at a small table outside the dormitory and stuffed his mouth with bread thickly spread with butter, spicy smoked bacon, and a handful of vegetables.

  His body, worn out by hard work, was crying out for energy, and his stomach seemed to have turned into a black hole.

  Fortunately, through working at the blacksmith, his diet of eating grains and dried fruit had changed into something more varied.

  Every morning, there was now a piece of meat so that the student's growing muscles were supplied with sufficient protein and his body could convert the thick layer of fat into energy.

  A few reddish rays of the weak morning sun fought their way relentlessly through the fog that almost always lay in the valley between the mine and the forge.

  Washing down a big piece of bread that stuck in his throat with a sip of water, the boy felt a dense accumulation of Qi approaching.

  As long as he didn't do any work that was too physically or mentally demanding, he could feel the flowing energies around him for most of the day, and he slowly tried to extend this ability to increasingly complex activities.

  From a mixture of thick fog and Qi clouds, the arrogant-looking gatekeeper of the Inner Academy stepped before the two miners.

  "So I'm supposed to teach you both something?" He asked, eyeing the young warriors disparagingly, "If Master Arto wouldn't repair my weapon for free, I would never waste my time like this! Come with me!"

  They hurriedly followed the olive green-clad Qi-Master as he led them to an open clearing in the middle of the forest on the way to the Inner Academy.

  "No one will see us here! I have a reputation to lose!" He finally said, moving a finger with a thick metallic ring on it, and two ironpine staffs, encrusted with simply folded shadow steel, appeared before his new students.

  A much more massive staff now lay on his shoulder, and the weight of which drove the warrior's feet deep into the mossy forest floor, yet he moved as if he felt nothing of it.

  “Follow my movements!” He growled, holding his weapon stretched forward with both hands bent at his sides, “This is a basic stance from which you can quickly switch between attack and defense.”

  The next moment, he performed several quick blows and skillful parries, and it looked like he was splitting the rays of the morning sun with each blow.

  Kilian watched him with big eyes, trying to memorize every movement and analyze the flow of Qi behind them.

  After several minutes, the arrogant guard stood still again and barked, “Now it’s your turn!”

  The two dissimilar brothers assumed the basic stance, took a deep breath, and began to twirl the heavy sticks around.

  It only took a few seconds before the half-giant hit himself with full force on the back of his head, followed by a loud curse.

  “I've never liked the staff!” Cried Thrym, rubbing the bump on his skull, “Is there no one in the clan who fights with a club?”

  “Club?” Asked the Qi-Master, astonished.

  His ring flashed again, and in front of the halfgiant appeared a huge, spiked club.

  “Show me what you're made of!” Shouted the arrogant man, brandishing a metal club, and rushed at the astonished miner.

  He immediately dropped the staff, grabbed the other weapon lying on the ground, and parried the teacher's first attack.

  Sparks shot out in all directions as the two weapons clashed again and again, and after a short while, the Qi-Master began to roar with laughter.

  After a heated exchange, he looked at the half-giant who was now lying in the dirt beneath his feet and grinned, "I'm Cayden! Weapons master of the Inner Academy and the clan's only mace user! Hahaha! At least so far! You have talent!"

  "And not only you!" He added quickly, before Thrym could respond, and his experienced eyes followed Kilian's every movement, "I'm spanking your ass here, and meanwhile the little one is repeating exactly every move I showed him! His focus is incredible! Okay, I'll teach you, even if Arto doesn't fix my beloved club! Hahaha!"

  So began the four most hellish, but also most fulfilling days of Kilian's life so far, on a Tuesday.

  Each day started with intensive exercises in staff fighting, which trained his flexibility and reaction, continued with the mine, where his sharp senses ensured him an ever-increasing yield, off to the smithy, where he slowly but surely learned the fine art of folding techniques, and ended with bruises when his staff met the swiftly wielded club of his big brother.

  He slept soundly at night, and every meal, where he ate for four people at once, repaired and strengthened his battered body bit by bit.

  “I am ready!” Kilian answered Thrym's questioning look and set off on Saturday morning, after a hearty breakfast and a soothing bath, with a self-forged, double-folded staff towards the Inner Academy to fight for his future!