Chapter 196: Fire and Anvil
Kael let the words sink in while he repositioned the bellows.
He didn’t like being lectured, but the dwarf wasn’t wrong. Kael’s whole "I can make anything" phase had only worked because he had a cheat code in his hand. Cheats get you killed when they disappear.
Kael nodded to Andre and proceeded to the next step.
"Shovel the old ash out, then get some fresh coal. There’s a sack round the corner, if it ain’t rotted through yet."
Kael followed the gesture and found the sack. It wasn’t hay, it was coarse burlap, stiff from age, dust caked into the fibers. He lifted it and felt the weight shift like stones inside. Coal. Real coal.
He dragged it closer, crouched, and started clearing the forge. The old ash was thick, greasy in places, like something had burned wrong. He scooped it into a bucket along with dead coals, the mix staining the metal with a fine black film.
He half-expected Andre to snap the moment Kael poured too much. Coal meant money, and money meant survival. But the dwarf didn’t say a word.
But even after pouring the whole bag in, Andre didn’t say much.
"Do I get another bag?"
"Do I look like I can afford more coal than that? One’s enough. Now light it proper, and show me what yer hands can do."
Kael nodded, and the instinctive solution flashed through his mind: fire rune, done. He even started pulling his gauntlets back toward his hands before he caught himself.
He was here to learn. Not to cheat.
Still, habit won. He slid the gauntlets on anyway, feeling the familiar snugness.
"What’re ye doin’ with that?" Andre asked.
"Getting the fire started," Kael said as he removed the Heft Rune.
He didn’t want a cannon shot, just a spark. He adjusted the runes so only what he needed was active, then aimed his palm toward the coal.
And applied the effects of the Fire Rune immediately onto the fresh coal.
The fire immediately caught on, and the coal started crackling without a moment’s rest.
The forge bloomed with sudden orange light. The heat rushed up like an opening mouth. Coal popped sharply as it ignited, the sound crisp and eager. For a split second, Kael felt the childish satisfaction of a shortcut working perfectly.
Then Andre’s glare hit him harder than the heat.
"Nifty trick... but ye burned half the coal doin’ it. Wasteful. Put it out, use yer hands, not yer gear." He said.
Kael exhaled through his nose, annoyed but forced to admit it. The coal had caught too hard, too fast, wasting fuel, eating itself. This wasn’t a campfire. This was controlled heat. Controlled resources.
"Right," Kael said as he unequipped the gauntlets.
The forge’s heat was rising nicely now, so he grabbed tongs from a rack that looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. The tongs were stiff, rusty at the joint, but workable.
He grabbed the iron ingot, then shoved it inside the forge.
He watched the metal soak in the heat, letting time do what brute force couldn’t. Orange glow crept into the iron, then deepened, then brightened, like blood returning to a dead limb.
He watched Andre glancing at him, and just as Andre was about to speak, Kael pulled out the ingot, checked it, and placed it on the anvil.
He didn’t hesitate. The second it was ready, it was out. The iron hit the anvil with a dull, satisfying thud.
He grabbed a hammer and began hammering.
The first strike rang through the smithy like a bell. The sound was different from Brokk’s hammer; this was an honest impact. The iron moved reluctantly, resisting, then yielding.
Andre opened his mouth to speak, but Kael’s second strike made him quiet.
The third, fourth, and fifth, then he shoved the iron ingot back into the fire, heating it again.
Kael worked in cycles without being told. Heat. Strike. Strike. Strike. Back to the heat before the metal cooled too far and punished him for impatience. He didn’t hammer wildly either; he followed the shape. Flattening where needed. Stretching where needed. Building length gradually instead of trying to force it in one go.
He then went to the bellow and blew them a few times, just enough for the coals to turn brighter, but not over-burn.
He could feel the air feeding the fire, feel the forge’s temperature respond. It was subtle, but it was there, like steering something alive.
"Lad... don’t lie to me. Ye forged before, haven’t ye?" Andre asked.
Kael didn’t stop hammering immediately. He finished the strike, set the piece back into the heat, then finally looked up.
"Forged? Never, watched others do, a lot," Kael was too ashamed to tell him of the shameful hours he spent watching old documentaries trying to get some sleep, and many of them were related to his craft back on Earth, mechanical engineering, and a good deal of that stemmed from smithing and manual forge work.
He never actively sought to apply it, but he learned from watching just enough to show that he understands, and not that he knows.
"Aye... keep goin’." Andre said.
That was it. No praise. No "good." Just permission to continue. But Kael caught the tiny shift in Andre’s posture, less dismissive now, more focused.
Kael continued hammering the billet until it became a long sword, rough, hammered a bit more than intended here and there, but usable.
It wasn’t elegant. The edges weren’t true. The taper wasn’t perfect. But it was a blade-shaped object with weight and intent.
A real thing made by his hands, not conjured by system convenience.
"Quench it," Andre said.
And Kael obliged, dipping it in a vat of grimy-looking oil.
The oil stank immediately, thick and rancid. The blade hissed as it plunged in, steam and oily smoke rising in a quick breath. The temperature shock stiffened the metal, locked in shape, supposedly.
Once he pulled it out, he looked satisfied, until the iron began curving.
It didn’t bend dramatically, just enough to ruin it. A slow, ugly warp, like the blade was mocking his optimism.
"Ye worked it too rough round the edges. Ruined it, this one’s a failure." Andre said as he took away the billet.
Kael’s annoyance flared, but he swallowed it. He didn’t want to argue. Andre was right, this was what learning looked like. Failure you could hold in your hands.
"I think I understand... wait a second," Kael said as he pulled Brokke’s hammer and then began striking at the metal.
The hammer corrected the warp like it never existed. A couple of taps, and the blade straightened, edges smoothing slightly, the form snapping into something closer to what Kael had intended.
"That... is how ye use the hammer," Andre said.
Kael paused mid-tap.
Andre wasn’t praising the hammer. He was praising the timing. The restraint.
Kael smiled, realizing the idea behind Brokk’s hammer finally.
What he did with it, was simply patchwork. It was fine at the start, to help with fitting some of the leather, that was proper use of the hammer; you give it an unfinished product that has been worked on, and it finalizes it. That’s the reason his gear became Epic, because it reached its optimal form.
But the gauntlets, they were created from scratch using the hammer and morphed to their shape, without heat or treatment.
And that’s what made Andre dislike them so much despite their ’interesting’ use.
It wasn’t that Andre hated innovation. He hated laziness disguised as brilliance. Kael finally got it: Brokk’s hammer wasn’t meant to replace craft. It was meant to complete it.
And if Kael wanted to stop being a guy who survived on miracles, he had to start becoming a guy who could survive even when miracles ran out.