Chapter 44: The Ancient Art of Mana Forging

  Info: You have Observed the Innovate skill. You may Mimic the skill (1) time. Observe (67) more times to make the skill permanent.

  “Interesting,” I noted. “I can get skill-ups multiple times on the same process.”

  “What was that?” Mr. Yu asked while attempting to uncoil a spring and wrap it around a silver bar.

  I grinned. “I thought it was going to take forever to learn how to Innovate, but I just found out I can get multiple updates each time I watch you complete a different step.”

  “Is that so?” he asked. “Perhaps, letting you watch wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “Hey,” I whined. “You wanted to teach me how to do this, didn’t you?

  He paused what he was doing to give me a long, hard stare. “Sure, fine, watch away, but you had better show progress the next time you make something.”

  Leslie nudged me and whispered in my ear when Mr. Yu got back to work. “What’s he making?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Yu laughed, obviously having overheard. “The key to any good tinkerer is to take that which has no purpose and make it into something that does.”

  “That’s Tinker talk for he has no clue what he’s making,” Miss Drips announced, having appeared out of nowhere as usual.

  “Silence, woman,” Mr. Yu snapped as he forced the coil into place. “I’ll have you know, this is the start of a mana battery. I’m teaching the boy here how to make a power supply for his future inventions.”

  Info: You have Observed the Innovate skill. You may Mimic the skill (1) time. Observe (66) more times to make the skill permanent.

  I whooped as I got another update. Mr. Yu rummaged through his box of junk and came up with a container just big enough for the modified silver bar. Then he threaded some wire through a hole and used tape to seal the whole thing.

  Info: You have Observed the Innovate skill. You may Mimic the skill (1) time. Observe (65) more times to make the skill permanent.

  He handed it to me. “This should hold a charge. My challenge to you is to find something to make with it.”

  Inferior Mana Battery

  Magic Item

  Grade: D

  Condition: 45

  Owner: Yu

  I took the device and turned it over in my hands.

  Mr. Yu smirked. “This one won’t do the work for you. You have to start the infusion manually. You should have experience. You infused an egg, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes,” I mumbled, still examining the battery.

  Analysis: Product Unstable. Combine silver with chromium to fix. For extended capacity, replace silver with Lumencore.

  “Um, you wouldn’t happen to have any chromium or lumencore, would you?” I asked, hoping to make an easy upgrade.

  Mr. Yu laughed. “Don’t ask me. Look through what you have available to you if you want to innovate.”

  While there were plenty of items in the cluttered tinkering kiosk, there weren’t any of the items Analysis suggested. Still, some of them called to me. Not in words, though, which surprised me.

  “This must be the Innovate skill,” I said to myself as I began collecting items.

  “That’s the spirit, boy,” Mr. Yu said as he watched with interest. “Let the materials speak to you. Transform that battery into something new.”

  I cleared a space on the counter and got to work. The battery was just a small piece of the puzzle. A burning desire erupted in me to create something that would benefit from the mana energy. Innately, I knew there were two directions I could go. I wanted to either make something for the orphans back home or for Leslie. Making magic toys for non-magic children was probably forbidden, so I decided to find a way to give Leslie a leg up over the other lackies.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The question was: what did she need? I had an idea, but there was a problem. The battery was way too big for it. I opened the plastic casing that Mr. Yu had just painstakingly sealed and gently lifted the core of the mana battery out.

  Mr. Yu stopped me when I began uncoiling his work. “What are you doing? I said you have to include that in your invention.”

  “And I will,” I explained without stopping. “It’s just too big for what I want to make.”

  He nodded before going back to what he was doing. With the idea fresh in my head, I rummaged through the boxes of parts until I found a pair of old leather gloves.

  I held it up to Leslie. “Do you like fingers, or not?”

  “Fingers?” she asked, looking perplexed.

  “When you draw an arrow,” I explained, demonstrating with one of the gloves. “Do you like your fingertips covered, or not?”

  “Oh,” she said, pausing to think about it. “Uncovered, I think.”

  “Excellent,” I replied, taking out my multitool and cutting the fingers off.

  I’d seen Leslie fight before, and knew she was right-handed. That meant she held the bow with her left hand and drew with her right. For what I had in mind, she needed the special glove on her right hand. Once I had that done, I laced part of the coil around the index and middle fingers of the glove, careful to keep the exposed metal on the outside of the leather to protect her fingers.

  Then I stopped to consider the core. Where would the best place be to put a battery on a glove? As it was, the silver strip was too thick to work into the glove, so I fished around for a better sample. There wasn’t any silver, but I did find something interesting in a small tin behind the counter. It had all sorts of rare metals, which included a shiny powder.

  Chromium

  Crafting Component

  Info: Do not touch with bare skin, inhale, or ingest.

  Heeding the warning, I used the multitool to scoop out a generous amount and placed it in a tin cup. It wasn’t clear how I was supposed to combine the chromium with silver right away. Fortunately, a suggestion popped up.

  Info: Heat silver to 1763.2F to melt and apply chromium directly. For added characteristics, use celestial fire.

  How was I supposed to do that? I looked around for a while before giving up and asking for help. “Uh, Mr. Yu. Can you help me melt this silver?”

  He walked over and looked at my supplies. “Ah, I think I have an idea what you’re trying to do here. How important is it to you to make a moonchrome core?”

  “Moonchrome?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Were you planning to make some without knowing what it is?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know it had a name. I just want to make a more stable battery for my project.”

  Mr Yu pointed his thumb over his shoulder, further down the aisle. “If you head that way, you’ll find a forge owned by a friend of mine, Mr. Smith. Tell him I sent you, and he’ll melt it for you.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Yu,” I replied before heading off with Leslie in tow.

  She nudged me with her elbow once we were out of earshot. “You don’t have to make me anything. You already did enough with the tunic.”

  “Who else would I make something for?” I shot back, not mentioning my other ideas for the orphans. “Besides, these gloves are going to be swell.”

  She smiled. “I’m sure they will be because you made them.”

  My concern about how a blacksmith could ply his trade in a closed room underground was soon answered when I discovered a massive forge with a shimmering blue field around it. Inside, a gruff man wearing little more than a thick leather apron was hammering away at a blade on his anvil.

  Rusty Smith

  Class: Blacksmith

  Level: 62

  Age: 51

  Weight: 225 Lbs

  Height 6’0

  We stood just outside the barrier, waiting for him to finish.

  Info: You have Observed the Smithing skill. You may Mimic the skill (1) time. Observe (99) more times to make the skill permanent.

  “Be right with you,” he barked. The blue barrier muted his voice and the roar of the forge.

  We watched as he meticulously hammered the blade’s edge. Somewhere along the line, I started to understand his technique.

  “Look, Leslie,” I pointed out. “See what he’s doing there? He’s condensing the steel. And there, he’s directing the grain while hammering out a spot where the metal was warped. I want to try it.”

  “Wha…?” Leslie asked, her mouth agape at my comment.

  “Think you can do better than me, can you?” The smith raised bushy eyebrows at me while looking up from his work for the first time. Without looking back, he dunked the blade in a tub of water, causing it to hiss as it vented steam.

  “No, sir,” I replied. “I was just saying how fascinating what you were doing is. Every stroke of your hammer had purpose.”

  “Oh, now you’re trying to flatter me.” He said, though I couldn’t tell if he was blushing beneath all the soot on his face. “What can I do for you?”

  I fished the silver and chromium out of my bag. “Can you melt this together for us? Oh, and Mr. Yu sent us.”

  He took both from me and gave them a quick once-over. “Moonchrome, eh? Shouldn’t be too difficult. What do you say, one silver, and I’ll even shape the final product for you. What do you want to use it on?”

  I showed him the glove. “I’m inventing a glove to infuse arrows. I’m going to make the moonchrome bar into a mana battery.”

  “Excellent choice,” he said, holding out his hand for payment.

  I took out a silver, realizing that while it was fifty dollars in the real world, it wasn’t all that much in the magic world. He took the money and headed over to the forge, taking out a crucible and placing it directly on top of the flames.

  “First, we melt the silver,” he said, placing the bars in the pot. “We will mix the chromium once that’s done. It’s going to want to oxidise, so I’ll have to use some flux to prevent that. Don’t worry. I’ve done this thousands of times.”

  Info: You have Observed the Alloying skill. You may Mimic the skill (1) time. Observe (99) more times to make the skill permanent.

  I’d never seen metal melt before. The silver became shiny and turned into what I could only describe as a thick goop. I wanted to touch it, but innately, I knew that was a very bad idea. Mr. Smith stirred the molten silver with a graphite ladle and discarded dross as it came to the surface.

  When he was satisfied, he picked up the bowl of chromium powder and said, “This is the part where it gets fun.”

  His hand glowed with the same blue shimmer as the shield around the forge as he slowly sprinkled the chromium powder into the crucible. Every so often, he stopped and stirred the two metals together, constantly skimming off the dross.

  My Mimic skill educated me just enough to be curious. “Why not mix the whole thing at once?”

  “This is where the mixture combusts if you aren’t careful,” he explained. “Chromium is temperamental, and that can cause problems if you mix it in too fast. The key is to do it slowly and do it in a vacuum. The glow you see is my mana. It’s serving two purposes. It creates a vacuum and adds just the right amount of manaflux to deal with oxidation.”

  Info: You have Observed the Alloying skill. You may Mimic the skill (1) time. Observe (98) more times to make the skill permanent.

  Once he mixed the chromium in, he stirred diligently and carefully scooped out the dross, ensuring the final product was pure moonchrome. Then he rummaged through several molds conveniently stacked beside the crucible and selected several about as big as my little finger.

  The blue glow of his mana followed the silver into the molds. He opened a cabinet and placed them inside before turning back to me.

  “So, are you ready to learn the ancient art of mana forging? Chen tells me you’re a quick study.”

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