Chapter 110: The Art Of Forging [III]
Chapter 110: The Art Of Forging [III]
Now, both archers were working side by side.
They had shaped two matched curved strips of deep-earth alloy that would serve as the reinforced central risers and grips for their bows... the metal cores that would eventually be bolted to seasoned ironwood limbs.
"Archers!" Thora called out to them. "You aren’t putting a cutting edge on those bow risers, but you still need an outer jacket of star-iron along the front face! Why?"
"To deflect strikes, Master Thora..." Elara answered immediately, her young face flushed bright red from the heat.
She held up her curved alloy bar with her tongs. "If a monster jumps us and we have to use our bows to parry a sword slash, the star-iron jacket will catch the blade without letting the steel cut into the wooden limbs!"
"Flawless answer, kid!" Thora beamed, giving the junior scout a thumbs-up. "Now get those risers into the fire and start prepping your blue iron!"
Thora moved down the line, stopping in front of Tasmin’s workstation.
The Huntress was dripping in sweat.
Her skin shone under the glowing orange light of the furnaces, and her tight canvas top was completely soaked through but Tasmin’s focus was unwavering.
She had her two matched shortsword cores clamped securely onto her anvil, and she was meticulously lining up thin, precision-cut strips of glowing blue star-iron along the cutting edges.
"How does the alignment look, Thora?" Tasmin asked quietly, not taking her eyes off the metal.
Thora didn’t just lean over the table to look.
The dwarf stepped right up behind the assassin, pressing her bare sweaty shoulder against Tasmin’s back and peering over her arm at the anvil.
"The spacing is dead even," Thora purred as her eyes deliberately wandered down the tight curve of Tasmin’s canvas-clad hips leaning over the iron block. "You’ve got incredible hand-eye coordination, Huntress and your lower-body stance is rock solid. You generate a lot of power from those glutes when you swing."
Tasmin didn’t blush or flinch. She just chuckled softly, tapping a strip of star-iron into place with a small jeweler’s hammer.
"Keep your eyes on the steel, Thora. I’m trying not to burn my fingers."
"I can multitask," the dwarf grinned shamelessly before pulling back and turning her attention to the center of the room.
She walked over to the primary workbench, where Silas, Morwenna, and Eluned were standing.
Sitting on a clean iron tray in the middle of their table were several small, glowing white piles of crushed mineral powder and thin shimmering metallic foil sheets.
It was the newly discovered virgin ore from the underground chamber... the material Thora had proudly named Sil-Graves Silver alloy.
"Alright, commanders," Thora said, her perverted teasing fading as she got down to the metal. "You three aren’t just doing a standard two-layer jacket... If you want those swords to cut through dark magic and resist soul-eating spirits from what I can guess, we have to fold this white silver directly into the Damascus pattern of your blades."
Morwenna crossed her arms, frowning down at the white foil sheets.
The pirate queen looked like she had just survived a shipwreck.
Her wild dark hair was tied back with a rough strip of leather, but sweaty strands were plastered all over her face and neck.
The cropped leather halter top she wore was struggling to contain her heavy breathing as her chest rose and fell in the sweltering heat.
"How do we fold it without losing the temper?" Morwenna asked, her stormy gray eyes locked onto the silver. "If we layer too much raw silver into the steel, won’t it make the blade too soft to hold an edge?"
Morwenna didn’t know much about this stuff, Garrick was the one that was usually crazy about this.
"That’s why we don’t dump it in all at once!" Thora explained, pointing a greasy finger at the stack of metal on Morwenna’s table. "We build a sandwich instead! You take a billet of gray alloy for your core. You lay a plate of blue star-iron on top and bottom then, you sprinkle a thin layer of this Sil-Graves Silver powder between the layers, along with borax crystal flux to clean the impurities out of the joints!"
She raised her hands, mimicking a folding motion.
"You put that five-layer stack into the hearth until it’s glowing white-hot and sweating flux..." Thora instructed. "You bring it to the anvil and you hit it with the heavy hammer until those five layers fuse into one solid brick of steel! Then, you take a hot chisel, cut the brick halfway through the middle, fold it over onto itself like a piece of dough, and hammer it flat again!"
Silas’s eyes widened as he visualized the math.
"One fold turns five layers into ten?"
"Exactly, Boss!" Thora cheered, nodding at him. "You fold it again, you get twenty! Again, forty! Again, eighty! Every time you fold and hammer that steel, the white silver gets stretched and woven through the iron matrix like microscopic threads of spider-silk! You end up with a blade that has a swirling Damascus grain of pure starlight, packed with enough density to shatter a siege shield!"
Eluned practically vibrated with excitement.
The Goddess of Nature had rolled the sleeves of her tight canvas mining shirt all the way up to her shoulders, her pale sweat-slicked skin glowing in the firelight.
Despite complaining all morning about how much she hated manual labor, her competitive ego had completely taken the wheel.
"I will fold my steel one hundred and twenty-eight times," Eluned declared arrogantly, casting a haughty glare across the workbench at Morwenna. "My elven longsword will possess a Damascus weave so fine and pure that it will look like flowing water. It will put your crude sword to total shame, pirate."
Morwenna’s jaw tightened.
A predatory spark ignited in her stormy eyes.
She grabbed her heavy forging tongs and violently clamped them onto her five-layer metal stack.
"One hundred and twenty-eight folds is child’s play, you overgrown weed..." Morwenna snarled, thrusting her metal directly into the roaring white coals of her hearth. "I’m pushing mine to two hundred and fifty-six! I’m going to fold this steel until the grain is harder than kraken bone! Let’s see whose arms give out first!"
"Is that a challenge?!" Eluned shrieked, snatching her own tongs and shoving her billet into the fire right next to Morwenna’s. "I have the endurance of the eternal forests! My arms never tire!"
"Both of you get to work then!" Thora yelled, clapping her hands together. "The clock is ticking and the coals are burning! Move the steel!"
The Foundry exploded into a deafening symphony of violence and hard labor.
Silas grabbed his own five-layer stack... deep-earth alloy in the center, blue star-iron on the top and bottom, and a generous coating of white Sil-Graves Silver powder and borax flux sandwiched between every piece.
He clamped his tongs around the bundle and shoved it deep into the white-hot belly of the primary furnace.
’I need to focus...’
Silas didn’t just stand there and wait. He reached up, grabbed the heavy leather chain of the overhead bellows and threw his entire body weight into pulling it down.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
The bellows groaned, pumping massive blasts of air into the coals.
The flames shot upward, turning from a bright orange to a blinding eye-searing white heat that made the air around the furnace warp and ripple.
The intense wave hit Silas right in the face, drying the sweat on his skin instantly and making his lungs ache with every breath.
He watched his metal stack through the flame.
Within minutes, the gray iron and blue ore began to glow with a brilliant translucent heat.
The borax flux melted into a liquid glass, bubbling and sweating out of the joints as it ate away the oxygen and scale trapped between the layers.
"It’s at welding heat, My Lord!" Thora called out from across the room, where she was supervising Tasmin’s shortswords. "Pull it out and set the weld! Hit it fast before the metal chills!"
Silas yanked the chain one last time, dropped it, and gripped his tongs with two hands.
He pulled the glowing white-hot block of steel out of the fire, spun around, and slammed it flat onto the center of his anvil.
Liquid borax flux sprayed across the iron block like shooting stars.
He grabbed his heavy forging hammer with his right hand. He didn’t think about anything else.
Silas just focused on the exact rhythm Thora had demonstrated earlier, setting his boots shoulder-width apart and letting his hips drive the motion.
CLANG!
The heavy hammer slammed into the glowing steel.
The impact sent a massive shockwave straight up his arm, rattling his elbow joint and echoing through his jaw.
A shower of brilliant yellow sparks violently exploded across the workshop, bouncing harmlessly off his heavy leather apron.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Silas hammered with everything he had without using his Gold core mana.
He struck the center of the block, then shifted his aim inch by inch down the length of the metal, forcing the five distinct layers of alloy, iron, and white silver to physically crush together and fuse into a single unified bar of steel.
The effort was staggering.
His heart hammered against his ribs with his breath coming in ragged gasps.
Sweat poured down his face, running off his nose and splashing directly onto the hot steel of the anvil, where it instantly hissed and evaporated into steam.
"Good weld!" Morwenna shouted from the anvil right next to him.
The pirate queen was working like a possessed demon.
Her hammer blurred in the firelight as she aggressively pounded her own glowing billet into submission.
She had already welded her layers together and was currently holding a heavy red-hot chisel against the center of her steel bar with her tongs.
"Hit the chisel, Captain!" Morwenna yelled over the ringing metal, holding her tool steady. "Help me score the fold!"
Silas didn’t hesitate.
He dropped his own cooling bar back into the furnace to reheat, stepped over to Morwenna’s anvil, and brought his heavy hammer down directly onto the striking head of her chisel.
CRACK!
The wedge of the chisel bit deep into the glowing steel, slicing cleanly halfway through the center of the bar.
"Got it!" Morwenna grunted.
She tossed the chisel aside, grabbed the end of the cut bar with her tongs, and violently bent the glowing steel over onto itself, doubling the layers from five to ten.
’I didn’t know Forging could be so much fun... the hell, why was Garrick keeping it all to himself?’
She slammed it back into the fire, her chest heaving as she wiped soot from her forehead with her forearm.
"That’s fold one! Only seven more to go to hit two hundred and fifty-six layers!"
Right on the other side of Silas’s station, Eluned was refusing to be outdone.
The Goddess of Nature wasn’t asking for help.
She had summoned a thick, highly compressed vine of seasoned ironwood to wrap around the handle of her forging hammer, using her nature magic to artificially boost her swing velocity without burning out her physical muscles.
CLANG-BANG! CLANG-BANG!
Eluned’s hammer struck her silver-layered steel with blinding speed.
She scored her own billet, folded it over with a flick of her wrist, and thrust it back into the hearth with a triumphant arrogant smirk directed straight at the pirate.
"I am already starting my second fold, trench-rat!" Eluned taunted loudly over the roaring flames. "Your crude pirate muscles are significantly slower than divine efficiency!"
"You’re cheating with your damn weeds!" Morwenna roared back, grabbing her bellows chain and pumping her fire so hard the embers flew across the room. "I’m using pure strength! Let’s see your magic help you when your mana runs out in the fourth fold!"
"Both of you shut your mouths and watch your heat!" Thora yelled, walking between their stations with a canteen of water in her hand.
The dwarf wasn’t hammering right now... she was actively patrolling the floor, checking everyone’s welds and shamelessly taking advantage of the sauna-like conditions she had engineered.
Thora stopped right behind Morwenna, taking a long unhurried swig from her canteen as she watched the pirate queen bend over her anvil to inspect her steel.
The tight canvas mining trousers were stretched to their absolute limit against Morwenna’s thick quads and hamstrings.
"Lord have mercy," Thora muttered under her breath, fanning her face with her greasy hand. "Lady Morwenna, the structural density of your lower back is a mechanical wonder... You generate significantly more torque from those hips than a siege engine."
Morwenna glared over her shoulder, her face flushed red from the furnace heat. "Eyes on the steel, dwarf, before I use this hot tongs to clamp your nose."
"I’m just admiring good craftsmanship," Thora grinned unrepentantly.
With hips like that, her Mother must have been a Goddess.