The rise of the pervert primordial - Chapter 764 - 764: The third day of the development trial (part 17)

Back to Aster’s side, before he started working with the bones, he didn’t forget to look at the little wyrm to then say.

“Just like with steel, I suggest you to focus in “preparations” instead of finished products, of course you can remove the bark, split and smooth the wood poles to turn them into shafts since you don’t need to make swords, but I think it will be for the better if you fell a tree from the very beginning by yourself, ah right, don’t forget to keep an eye on the furnace for the batch of iron ore you put earlier”.

“Hissss!”, Espi who was already moving the tools on the work table around with her tail to get used to hold onto them, enthusiastically nodded to then grab the axe with her tail and slide towards a random middle-sized tree, that finished Aster’s intervention with the little wyrm’s second mission.

It’s similar to how Aster asked Espi to process a batch of iron ore from the very beginning, which to be honest it shouldn’t make that much of a difference for Espi’s mission, however it might not be the same for his Galaxy Forging manual, since it specifically stated that each “variation” might result in a completely different result.

So, he wanted to see how will materials that already passed by human hands will compare to those that were processed only by the little wyrm, of course for all this to happen he needs to obtain the reward and also for today he’ll only test it with metals since that’s his priority and what he is interested in, the most.

Leaving that aside, Aster now focused in his own work, the sight of the already perfectly cleaned bones made him softly smile, since he could see the “touch” of the blond motherly roc girl, Sarina.

“Normally you would need to boil the bones to remove the marrow and also clean the remaining tissue, but a certain someone already took care of that tedious task for me, while doing her daily cooking mission”, jokingly said Aster.

Of course, he was referring to the female boar femurs, since those were obtained from the boars that the group has used for food, the ones from the male boars as well as the moose and horse femurs were obtained through trading with the snakes, so the tissue could be removed more easily since they have been drying for quite some time, they still needed to be cleaned though, but Aster was sure that task was given to someone else.

‘Mmm, I do wonder though, if these were uncleaned bones, could the given time for the mission be longer, or maybe the timer wouldn’t start until I reached this point, whichever the case this is for the better, it’s already going to take more time than wood carving as it is after all…’, thought Aster.

For starters, he was going to make a bone sword to test how much time did it take him, but before that Aster wore a mouth mask, gloves as well as safety glasses since he was going to produce way more bone dust as compared to wood one due to the nature of bone working, also bone dust is more dangerous as there is a risk for viral infection, which is an actual issue in their current situation.

Anyway, once he was ready Aster started the imaginary timer in his mind and without rushing but without wasting even a single second, he grabbed one of the female boar femurs as well as a marker.

Once the marrow and other tissues are removed, bones are hollow in the inside, so he had to cut it vertically and use either one of the sides as the rough “billet” to make the blade, unlike with wood, Aster actually needed to add a handle to complete the sword, because the workable area of the femur was only large enough to be turned into the blade of a gladius.

Aster made a guideline using the marker on the side of the femur which was nearly flat to then place the bone in a vice, securing it to the lower extreme, before he started cutting it vertically with the hacksaw.

“Ah damn”, almost immediately Aster ran into a problem, when he was around midway into cutting the femur, the hacksaw got slightly deviated and it created a difference in size for the area that he will need to grind away.

It doesn’t sound like that big of a problem, because it is actually not… when one doesn’t have a time limit, because a different height in the bone meant that Aster would have to put more care or even change the angle when grinding away the material, since he needed a flat “billet” to work with, in other words he just added extra time to this test blade.

Still, he didn’t discard it because he wanted to see how much did it actually affect him, so without stopping he finished cutting the femur in half vertically and now it was easier to remove the extremes of the femur since with a flat surface he could more easily manipulate it on the work table.

Seeing the hacksaw easily cutting through the more voluminous ends of the femur, Aster got an idea for the next try, however for now after having removed those big pieces of extra material at different points as well, because while he wanted the blade to widen towards the base, he needed it to narrow towards the end, so the end extreme was completely removed.

Before moving to the next step, he grabbed another femur and simply cut it in half, but this time horizontally, as this is what he’ll use for the missing parts of the bone gladius.

Next, he grabbed the first femur which he cut vertically and moved to the belt grinder to then start eliminating the lateral extra material first, since there was a difference in height at some point caused by his slip with the hacksaw, he put a bit more of care until everything was removed.

‘Even if it’s manually powered, I have to thank the blue flaming board for the belt grinder, well it’s more of a trap to have such a convenient tool in this case though’, thought Aster as he removed the accumulated dust to then mark the guidelines in order to start roughly shaping the blade with the rasp.

You might wonder why Aster called the it a trap and didn’t just continue working with the belt grinder if by using a mechanical tool, he could just grind away until the end way faster than doing so manually, the problem is that he couldn’t adjust the speed of the belt grinder with just a “click”, with steel it’s not that much of a problem because it takes more strength to grind it away when compared with bone, but a much more precise control is required for the latter.

That being said he could still make use of the belt grinder to quickly narrow the area below the base of the blade, to form the “tang” which he will be using for the handle.

Past that, Aster judged it to be easier for him to do the rough shaping with the rasp and occasional help of a knife here and there, to then finish it with sand paper, which he did, while also making the initial shape for the bevels and the tip with the rasp.

“And now with a finer sand paper…”, mumbled Aster as he polished the bevels and also “sharpened” the edges and the tip, the result was a blade ready to be mounted in a hilt.

Speaking of which, Aster placed the blade on the worktable and then grabbed one of the halves of the femur he had cut earlier, using the belt grinder he eliminated the protruding parts of the knuckle and then further refined it with sand paper.

Lastly with the help of a ruler he made a line mark in the center of the knuckle end of the bone and then used the carving knife to cut said area, creating a rectangular socket.

Then he used the sandpaper to smooth the femur to give it a much friendlier grip for the user’s hand, you can already imagine what Aster planned to do, he was going to stick the blade into this half femur, using it as the handle while the polished knuckle which now had a rough semi-spherical shape, would be the guard, he was missing the pommel, it’s not like this had to be an accurate gladius, he was tasked with making a sword and not all swords have pommels.

Still, he couldn’t just stick the blade and be done with it, the borders of the rectangular socket were rough so if he tried to mount it as it is, he would need to apply force which might make the tang break, and this is one of the reasons as to why Aster prefers integral works forged from a single piece of material, or carved from a single piece of material in this case, but that’s not a choice here.

To prevent the previous, Aster wrapped a thin and fine piece of sandpaper around a stick and used it to smooth the sides of the socket, just enough so that he could mount the blade, without loosening the calculated space to fit it in, then he used a cloth to remove any dust from both the blade and the handle, since he needed both parts to be free of it for the last step.

‘There we go, now for the finishing touch, let’s apply the five-minute epoxy’, thought Aster, this was better for bone working than glue so Aster simply filled half of the hollow handle with it, now, normally he would never only glue a tang into a handle like this, if he were to do this kind of work, he would use rivets as well, but that was not realistic with the time he had, also if he drilled holes into such thin bone there was a high chance that it would crack.

Just as extra care, he also applied a bit of epoxy on the socket and then looked at the imaginary timer.

“Twenty-five minutes…”, you might wonder why Aster didn’t sound happy in the slightest even though he only needed to cut five minutes and the reason is simple, he still needed five minutes for the epoxy to dry, therefore the real finishing time was of thirty minutes.

On the other hand, after waiting five more minutes as he thought how to reduce the processing time, Aster received a nice surprise, this small and honestly not practical sword was actually counted as one for the creation mission.

“The extra length of the handle surely did the trick, it takes time but it basically guarantees that the final result will be counted as a sword”, concluded Aster as he grabbed the primitive gladius-looking sword to then smack it against the rock.

“Crack!”, naturally unlike the wood swords which basically broke in half, the blade of this one basically exploded in many pieces, not to mention that the handle cracked as well, it only didn’t end up flying all over the place because half of it was filled with epoxy which somewhat kept it together.

And now came the “fun” part, the trial and error in order to reduce the creation time, naturally first Aster tried to make one bone sword without the need of any guidelines, something that was only possible because honestly, he has amazingly good sight even at mortal rank, still this only allowed Aster to reduce around two minutes, which mostly consisted in the time he needed for measuring and marking the guidelines.

‘Eight minutes left huh, what if I discard the whole handle thing, if I could get away with the missing pommel, not all swords have guards, let’s test it’, thought Aster as he destroyed the second bone sword, in case you wonder why he didn’t try this when he made the wood swords, that’s because there was no way he wouldn’t need to make a pommel and a guard for a wood sword, considering that the difficulty was not that high, it was worth a try here though.

But as expected, while he reduced the time for not eight but actually nine minutes, out of which five were needed just for the epoxy to dry, the result didn’t count as a sword.

“Of course, it can’t be that easy…”, said Aster as he tossed the third try aside to then start with the third try, since he couldn’t eliminate having to elaborate two pieces to then stick them together, he had to cut time some other way.

For the fourth try Aster changed the order, instead of working on the blade, he first glued the two pieces together, and then using a vice he secured the blade by its base so that the thing wouldn’t move while he worked on it, also he wrapped the whole handle with a cloth to prevent bone dust from mixing with the epoxy which would reduce its adhesiveness.

It worked, by having the blade and the handle dry while he also used the rasp, knife and sandpaper for the remaining steps, he eliminated the five-minute waiting as a whole, but in exchange since maneuverability was decreased as Aster couldn’t move the sword while the epoxy was drying, meaning that he had to move his body if he wanted to sand in a different angle, he only managed to reduce a minute and a half.

“Twenty-two and a half minutes this time, however I do have to take into account that since I would need to put some distance between each of the three swords so that my movements around each of them won’t overlap, I’ll waste time moving between each sword, let’s round it to a single minute”, said Aster as he sighed.

At least this one did count as a sword so Aster destressed a bit by breaking it against the boulder before taking a couple of minutes to make some adjustments to his plan.

For the fifth try, he followed the process of the fourth one meaning that he worked while the sword was drying, what changed was that he didn’t refine all the blade unlike before, Aster focused only in the bevels and the tip, leaving the center looking a bit rough.

The same applied for the “guard”, he left the protruding parts this time and instead only sanded the part that would come in contact with the user’s hand when wielding the sword to then focus in making the finger contours of the handle, to improve the grip.

The reason for the previous is simple, the guard only needs to block the enemy’s weapon from reaching the hand, so the area that didn’t come in contact with the user’s hand could be left as it is.

“Twenty minutes, drying included… damn”, mumbled Aster, it took him five tries of around half an hour each since he took some minutes to clean the tools and rest in between, so two hours and half just to reach the starting point, now he had to practice working in three of them at the same time and finish them all in a single go, this without any interruptions that lasted more than a few seconds in between, otherwise he’ll fail, so he put hands to work.

In the meantime, we can take a look at the little wyrm’s side, in the past couple of hours she felled a tree by herself, cut it in workable pieces, removed the bark, further cut it in large and short rectangular shapes which could be processed with the help of a wood lathe, that was with half of the tree.

The other half was processed into a pile of arm-sized pallets by Espi since she was reminded of Aster specifically asking Erick and the other guys to make a bunch of those, since they were going to be used for shields.

“Hissss”, with a soft hissing sound, the little wyrm nodded at her finished job and then, slid towards the furnace in order to retrieve the processed iron ore, with that she only needed to work with the already prepared wood poles, which in comparison with all the work she did to fell and prepare the tree, sounded easy.

Or sounded easy until the little wyrm committed a similar mistake as with the hammering back at the first mission, she used too much force on the wood lathe and ended up making the shaft too thin.

“Hissss!”, however a sharp light then shone on Espi’s eyes, as she was reminded of another weapon which used shafts of a thinner and smaller size, arrows, it sounds simple but from the point of view of a spirit beast, turning a mistake into something useful is an incredible demonstration of wisdom.

Using the saw, Espi cut the shaft in three pieces to then further reduce each one of them, as a result three shafts perfectly prepared to have feathers and arrowheads mounted in them, appeared in front of the little wyrm.

Also, with the now gained experience with the wood lather that Espi had, she proceeded to immediately process a much thicker and larger staff, one that could be used for a spear.

“Hisssss~”, another message appeared for the little wyrm to see, she had triggered the next mission, which meant that she also finished the wood focused one, the time was shorter than what she expected, but that is probably because she processed a tree from the very beginning, otherwise she would have needed to make a whole lot of staffs instead, the second mission wasn’t from the point of view of a blacksmith unlike the first one after all.

That being said, Espi didn’t outright leave to accept the next mission, “enduring” the urge to claim her reward and accept the next mission, the little wyrm instead focused in making more staffs since she knew that Aster always used a few for testing, she put helping Aster over her own wishes, which was rather cute and it also made the lynx smile.

Guardian had seen how happy Espi was when she achieved her goal with metal working, so this indeed surprised her a bit.

…

Let’s take a small skip in time to a few hours later, and we find a little wyrm who was actually working with a different material, not without having left two piles of shafts for spears and arrows back at the wood working table.

Espi was now at her third mission, and for this one she had caught up with Aster as she was working with animal byproducts, namely she was using a boar tusk, but the funny part is that she wasn’t making “billets” nor going as far as Aster had to with the bones, she was carving the tusk for decorative purposes.

What’s more, the little wyrm was making scales on it, so it was going to be a dragon-themed carved boar tusk, apparently the third mission was “easier” than the previous ones, another thing in which she matched with Aster, who was sure he was going to have an easy time at the forge when compared with the whole bone working thing.

Speaking of which, only now Aster was finishing the last round after having used the extra set of male boar femurs and finishing the three swords in exactly sixty-three minutes.

“Done!”, Aster placed the last sword on the working table and after a fraction of a second, he saw the counter for mission show the number “3/3” and he let out a sigh.

It was nearly 2 pm, it took him a whole six hours to make three bone swords, he would have finished two steel swords with heat tempering and all, in that amount of time, so of course Aster felt like cursing.

‘Look at that little girl, nor having to worry about time limits and all, ah, this is discrimination’, jokingly thought Aster as he gazed at the little wyrm who was happily using a knife to work in her decorative carved tusk.

“Looks like you are better at bone working than me”, said Aster as he approached Espi, looking at the tusk up-close the thing had some intricately carved scales and the little wyrm was now working in making a snake head towards the base of the tusk.

“Hissss~”, the answer of the little wyrm was actually quite interesting for Aster.

‘She has an easier time with bones, tusks, horns and the like because she has been in contact with them quite a lot of times’, thought Aster.

Of course, Espi meant it as in when she lived in the wild, she ate her prey even to the bones, only after joining Aster did, she got to enjoy properly butchered and cooked meat after all.

On the other hand, it was interesting that such experience ended up helping her with this kind of activity, perhaps having an idea of the textures, toughness and similar aspects of the materials was the reason behind the previous.

“Now, now, let’s go have lunch with the others, you smug little girl”, said Aster as he saw the “praise me” gaze in the little wyrm’s face.

“Hissss!”, of course Espi complained since she got “scolded” instead of complimented, but she also moved really fast to guide the way outside of the isolated training area, because she is a little glutton, naturally she didn’t forget to call Guardian to join them as well.