The rise of the pervert primordial - Chapter 761 - 761: The third day of the development trial (part 14)

Seeing the expecting gazes on the eyes of a whole bunch of those cute girls, Aster couldn’t help but softly laugh as he shot down their dreams.

“I won’t be taking one of you as my assistant this time around”, he said which of course made quite a few of them to pout.

“Don’t look so gloomy, that doesn’t mean I don’t any “surprises” for you, in fact I assure you, that you have never seen or heard about something like what I have in store for you”, said Aster with a “mysterious” tone, which indeed improved the mood of those cute girls.

So, now that he had recovered the attention of the public, Aster started with the demonstration on how to make a spear.

“For starters, we’ll be making only “spearheads” out of steel, while the shafts of our spears will be made out of wood, can you tell me why?”, he asked as he looked into the pieces of iron looking for one the size he wanted.

“Availability and quantity of the needed materials, steel might not be scarce thanks to senior brother Aster but there is still a limited amount when compared to wood, we also need to travel way far to get it, but wood is everywhere around the camp”, said a junior disciple from the Silver Anvil.

“Maintenance and repair, if the spearhead has to be repaired, we can take it off and then work on it at the anvil without having the metal shaft in our way, also if the wood shaft breaks, we can just replace it, with a simple set of tools even in the battlefield it’s doable!”, added a girl from the Yellow Anvil in a rush, clearly not wanting others to answer before she could.

Despite how cute the previous was, the one who got Aster’s attention was elder Riley’s disciple, the tall tomboyish girl with short red hair, Blair.

“Shock absorption, the recoil transmitted through wood will be weaker than metal”, she said and almost immediately a senior disciple from the Silver Anvil added.

“Weight, a metal shaft would be significantly heavier than a wood one which would make the user fatigue faster, so a wood shaft is better for prolonged use”.

The previous made Blair turn to see the girl in question, who entered the sect and was taken in by the core elder of the Silver Anvil at the same time as her, it’s worth mention that said elder had left the sect alongside all her direct disciples, except this one girl.

“What, we from the Silver Anvil are not any worse than those of the Yellow Anvil”, said the girl, whose name is Loise.

Seeing the “Why didn’t I say that!” expression on the younger girl’s faces, Aster nodded to his insides, though the youngest and inexperienced blacksmiths all instantly thought of the basic advantages that a wood shaft would have against a metal one for a spear, the senior disciples on the other hand saw through the more advanced reasons.

Naturally the previous was the result Aster wanted to achieve, thanks to the sparring sessions with Agnes, those girls had started to think outside of the spirit blacksmithing “box”, in other words they had put aside runes and instead focused in how to obtain similar results, but with their crafting skills alone, like true mortal blacksmiths who have to prioritize the friendliness of their weapons for their users.

‘Not bad, the younger girls weren’t blind to the advanced reasons, they just thought about it after the basics came to their minds’, thought Aster as he nodded.

“You are completely right and that being the case, I’m pretty sure you’ll know why the spearhead we’ll be creating is a “winged spear” one, right?”, said Aster as he placed the iron on the forge which has been previously lit up by one of the elders at Aster’s request.

A winged spear is just a spear that has lugs resembling the guard of a sword at the base of the blade.

“Because it will be easier to use it to defend ourselves this way”, said a few girls, to which Aster nodded but there was another answer he wanted to get.

“Master Riley said that mortals often call winged spears “Boar Spears” because they are used to hunt dangerous animals, the “wings” prevent the animal from running up the shaft, right?”, mumbled a young girl from the Yellow Anvil, which earned her a reward head pat from Aster.

“Exactly, the first batch of weapons you’ll all be making for your sisters is meant to help in the hunting of carnivore horses, so this small detail will help you keep them safe”, he said.

Aster naturally didn’t mention the bear, because there is no way he’ll be taking those cute junior disciples to hunt that crazy strong thing, in fact even Brenda, Amanda and Violet, in other words the strongest core disciples outside from Aster’s group which now includes Iris, Nerissa and even Lieze, are still in the “maybe” category, depending in the report about how much progress they show in the combat training, he’ll be getting for the next days.

Still, while Aster sure likes to spoil the girls of the sect, it’s not like they are frail and weak greenhouse flowers, after having dealt with the black horses he is sure that the average ones are at a level where they’ll be good “training dummies” for them, as for their leader the former king of herbivores and his direct subordinates, they are reserved for Aster and the others.

While that girl received envious gazes from the others, due to having obtained a reward from their senior brother, Aster walked away and grabbed the piece of now heated iron with the tongs to place it on the scale.

“We’ll start with a piece of iron of roughly one kilogram of weight, of course after hammering it to get rid of the slag and transforming it into the steel we need, it will lose around 20% to 35% of its mass, so the result should be a winged spearhead ranging from 650 grams to 800 grams”.

“As for the other parameters, the length of the blade will be of 40 centimeters, the width will be of 8 centimeters at the base and the thickness of the blade will be of 5 or 6 millimeters”.

This is one of the advantages that a spear has over a sword as an initial weapon, two or even three of them can be produced with the amount of steel that a single sword would need, depending on how experienced the blacksmithing forging them is.

Aster of course took the girl’s inexperience into account, which is why he was giving them a whole kilogram as the base for their spearheads.

“Mm!”, the girls from the sect nodded as they wrote down what Aster said, they had notebooks and pencils ready since they were allowed to take notes to use since Aster had said that he would leave after showing them how to make the spearhead, as he had his own training to deal with.

Continuous “clinking” sounds echoed as Aster hammered the iron to process it into a flat rectangular shape, the resonant and sharp sound made the girls observing the process smile, because they recognized the “sound” of steel, meaning that they had repeated their success at processing the iron ore into steel, without Aster’s supervision.

It didn’t take Aster even twenty minutes to finish preparing the flat rectangular steel plaque, from which he was going to depart for the demonstration, that being said he didn’t forget to mention.

“You’ll be working in pairs, so, the first one will process the steel into the initial shape and the second one will forge the spearhead, this way you can take turns and train in both aspects”.

There was another reason for this, while Aster was sure he could finish a spear in less than an hour, including putting the shaft into the socket and even sharpening it, this without taking into account the quenching and tempering which can’t be shortener of course, it’s obvious that the girls from the sect would take more time, at least they’ll need two hours in average, the faster ones might be able to cut from ten to twenty minutes to that time, if they worked alone.

However, in pairs they’ll be able to reduce that time to an hour and twenty minutes as the average and an hour for the faster ones, which is enough as they’ll only be making spears for the whole day.

The reason being that they are the best weapon for hunting and they take the shortest amount of time to be forged, also the girls from the blacksmith peak can receive help from the other disciples in making the shafts, since there no special skills needed for that, even Erick with his brutish methods can do it.

“Okay, now we start with the fun part, for starters we’ll form the socket and for that let’s first measure up to a third part of the whole length of our steel plaque, then we’ll heat up that part”, said Aster as he used a ruler to find the exact area he mentioned to then put the steel on the forge so that the heat would concentrate where he needed it, the result was that only that spot of the steel plaque turned bright orange.

“Now, using the horn of the anvil and our hammer we’ll make this area take the form of an hourglass in preparation to create the conical socket for the spearhead to be mounted, be sure to not thin it out, because we’ll draw material from that part to create the “wings” of our spear”, said Aster as he placed one of the lateral sides of the metal plaque against the horn of the anvil to then start hammering it.

The wings or lungs on the spearhead can be created by drawing out material near the socket, or by welding separate pieces of steel, however Aster didn’t want to increase the difficulty unnecessarily, so the first option was for the best, the result should be an integral piece which already includes the wings without the need to make those cute girls have a headache by wondering whether they managed to properly weld a foreign piece into the original one, or not.

“It’s normal for our material to distort and twist while it takes the hourglass shape I mentioned, you just need to place it on the flat area of the anvil and then hammer it straight, just repeat both steps until you get the desired shape with a symmetrical aspect while also being decently flat and straight”, said Aster as he reduced the strength with which he hit with his hammer for the finishing touches on the “dents” he had created at a third part of the steel plaque.

The previous without forgetting to draw out material at both sides where the “hourglass” started, since that’s what will be turned into the wings later.

“Next is to heat up the whole part below where the “hourglass” starts, we’ll make it take the shape of a flat fish tail to then turn it into a conical socket”, said Aster as he placed on the first third of the plaque on the forge, to let it heat up so that he could shape it as he wanted.

The ones observing are also blacksmiths so there were some basics shared even between spirit and mortal ones that Aster didn’t need to explain, for example the fact that since the desired shape is that of a “fish tail” which can be curled in an easier way to take a conical shape, they have to work the metal from the center towards them and towards the end of the metal plaque just like how a fish tail widens towards its end.

“Mmm, senior brother did it using the same hammer, but I guess we’ll have to use a heavier one to move more metal at the start and then change to a smaller one”, mumbled a girl from the yellow anvil to which the vast majority nodded.

Aster’s hammering skills are amazingly good, in part because of practice and in part because his incredible control over his physical strength, he can use a normal hammer to produce the same effect as a heavy one and vise-versa, of course this is only for demonstration, to be efficient Aster will use different hammers depending on the situation, but those girls can extrapolate such details by themselves at this point.

Only when he first explained things yesterday at the moment of forging the dagger, did he go into such detail, but now those cute girl’s minds have warmed up enough, of course they are free to ask any doubts they have, but it’s important for them to take off by themselves, Aster is there to guide them not to babysit them after all.

“With the plaque in the current form we can start with the initial curving, you can use the horn of the anvil to guide yourself”, said Aster as he placed the metal plaque on the anvil to then start hammering it.

To be honest, there are extra options one could buy for the anvil like mandrels for example, which could be used for this as well, but it was better for those girls to learn with the basics and then they could shorten the process with other tools later on, for example for the arrowheads a small mandrel will do the trick.

Anyway, after a few hits of his hammer, Aster had made the initial curving he mentioned and now he placed it on the flat part of the anvil.

“Once the initial curving is done, you just need to continue curling it up, since we are making it a conical shape, work on it from top to end so that the thing narrows the higher it goes”, said Aster as he hammered the curved sides of the meal plaque.

The more he did so, the more the conical shape he mentioned formed, until the sides which originally were opposite to each other, met at the center and here Aster took a second to add.

“There is no need to make the two ends fuse into one perfectly, just make sure to not leave a big gap and everything will be fine, we’ll make small holes and use rivets to mechanically keep the whole thing together, of course a bit of special glue can be added as well”, said Aster as he used a pencil shaped chisel to make perfect holes at specific spots on the socket where the rivets will go through to secure it onto the shaft.

Now since the metal had moved when making the cone, Aster used the edge of the flat side of the anvil to adjust it, the symmetry did matter because the blade should follow the straight central line of the shaft so that the one using it doesn’t have to adjust anything when thrusting or slashing it.

“The wings are easy to make, just extend and flatten the material we previously left near the base of the blade, don’t make then thin nor too long, they should be short and thick so that the enemy won’t be able to break them easily, they are meant to be used to block after all”, said Aster.

The design of the wings was quite basic, they looked like half triangles with a flat tip, it only took Aster a couple of minutes to finish them and now only shaping the blade remained.

“For the blade, we’ll go for a leaf shaped one, heat the part of the remaining material which will be used for the blade and then just hammer the edges to make it thinner and longer, don’t lose track of the thickness and the length, so you can calculate where do you want the tip of the spear to be placed”, said Aster as he put the steel in the forge to then hammer it.

Compared to the multiple steps needed to make the socket, just giving shape to the blade was easy, Aster simply hit towards the end to narrow it the further he went until he reached the 40 centimeters mark, he had made on the anvil to not lose sight of the desired length for the blade he wanted and that was it.

“And now, the first of the finishing processes, quenching, just like with the dagger we’ll use oil to harden the spearhead”, said Aster as he grabbed the thing from the base with a pair of tongs to then submerge it vertically into the container with oil.

There was a momentary flame burst which didn’t surprise anyone and then after a moment Aster took out the spearhead to then pass a file through its surface to see if it had properly hardened.

“Perfect”, said Aster as he saw how the file slid without getting stuck, which meant that the thing had hardened without any problem.

“The tempering process is also the same, it has to be done immediately after quenching it and in two sessions of an hour each while letting it cool in between at room temperature, after that you just need to sharpen and polish it with the belt grinder and a file, if you have doubts about that part, there is one of you who has a finished product to use as reference”, said Aster as he gazed at Blair who had the dagger he forged and handed to her to finish as her reward for acting as his assistant.

“Don’t worry about the shafts for the spears, I gave the measures to Angela and she assigned people to make them so when you need them just ask, I’ll check on your works before dinner and of course a small reward will be given to the one with the highest quality spear, good luck”, jokingly said Aster as he left leaving behind a bunch of fired up cute blacksmiths.

On his way towards the secluded area which he had asked the receptionist girl to prepare for him beforehand, Aster saw Kana teaching the other girls how to interact with the horses, while she rode on Ember, the little girl was sure having a blast.

‘Speaking of having a blast, I can almost hear the “fiery” interrogation Agnes is being put through right now, luckily I told miss Valentina to not scold her too much and that I will answer her questions myself later’, thought Aster.

Valentina is only asking about the whole date thing to her younger cousin right now, well, Agnes also has to tell her about all the mess they had left by using William’s authority, as for his relation to the Drage family which is probably the most shocking part, Aster wanted to personally inform of it to the purple lightning princess.

He has seen enough of her to know that she is trustable, well, to begin with both Agnes and Lilia herself vouched for Valentina, but Aster wanted to get to know her a bit more.

‘I can’t wait to see the face that little girl will put when you tell her, darling~’, said Lilia, she surely enjoyed the whole situation, as if it was an entrée for the time when meeting his godmothers, which for sure wouldn’t expect him to be a Drage and more specifically Lilia’s son, came.

While not knowing whether he should laugh or cry, Aster saw Guardian leaving the area where Kana was with the horses and the other disciples to come his way.

“Grrrr”, apparently the lynx wanted to see his own separate training, and this was an important thing, because so far Guardian hasn’t accepted to properly join the group, she was tagging along to deal with the problems that the territory she watches over, is facing.

“So, she wants to see how I fare when compared to the ones leading the groups of participants, from back then”, said Aster.

“Hssss!”, to which the little wyrm who was half-translating for him, nodded.

“Sure, but just as a warning there will be a lot of noise produced when I’m training”, said Aster as he pointed at the lynx’s ears, he was going to train in both the “Galaxy Forging” and the “Absolute” manuals he has, leaving the movement type for later since he doesn’t urgently need to improve in that area.

Not to mention that he’ll use a little trick to help the little wyrm with her own manual at the same time.

What he needs right now is stronger attack power and weapons capable of handling said power, with that, dealing with the former king of herbivores should be a piece of cake.