Chapter 372: Masterpiece
"Level requirements," the dwarf said.
Kael stopped with the hammer raised. "What?"
"Keep going."
Kael struck again while Andre adjusted the ingot.
"Good gear has requirements. Some much worse than others."
"I know."
"Level, Stats, Class, craft proficiency, and sometimes race." Andre watched him deliver another blow. "If this turns out better than expected, there's a chance ya won't meet one."
Kael lowered the hammer. "That would be stupid."
"Aye, but the Tower has exceptions." Andre pointed toward him. "Creator rights."
Kael understood immediately. "If I helped make it, then it belongs to my craft."
Andre nodded. "Requirements can be reduced or ignored entirely for someone considered part of the creation."
Kael looked toward the partially formed gauntlet. "And me hitting it a few times counts?"
"No." Andre grinned. "That's why yer doing more than hitting it a few times."
Kael stared at the dwarf as the past day's work took on a different meaning. Andre had him shaping plates, maintaining heat, adjusting individual sections, creating smaller components, cleaning impurities, and assisting with the early placement of the rune channels.
"I'm actually helping make it."
"Aye."
"You planned this."
"Aye. But there comes an issue. Andre took a small pause as if thinking, "This wouldn't work for most Climbers," the dwarf explained.
"Why?"
"They don't know anything." Andre said as he continued working.
"That's harsh."
"It's true." Andre pointed toward the hammer in Kael's hand. "Most people come here, swing that twice, ruin my metal, and then announce they helped. The Tower isn't stupid. It knows when ya put in effort, and when ya try and scam it."
Kael continued hammering. "What about Climbers who actually understand craft?"
"Most of them stop climbing anyway." Andre continued hammering.
"Why?" Kael asked.
Andre gestured around the workshop. "Look at me. I make more coin in a month than half the idiots outside my door earn risking their lives. Why go and spend time, effort and risk one's life to climb. Crafters don't do that."
"That explains the crowd. But that doesn't explain why you're not climbing. Don't you also want to go back."
Andre sighed and looked up, as if reminiscing about something. "Lad, there is a thing you probably don't know. Most craftsmen, or people with jobs like merchants, peddlers, and many more don't gotta clear the tower the same way ya climber hav'ta."
"How do you do it then?" Kael asked.
"We make a contract. With one climbers, if they make it out, we get out alongside them."
"Then who did you make a contract with."
"Yer master. Though the bastard is still stumped."
"Floor 89?" Kael asked.
"A bastard of a floor, not easy for one man, definitely harder for everyone else." He sighed and continued working.
"A good smith doesn't need Floor Fifty." Andre shrugged. "Community Floors are safe, business is steady, and the materials come to us. Not everyone needs to reach the top. And I don't have to b'caus of me contract."
Kael's gaze drifted toward Andre's missing feet. The dwarf noticed, but neither of them said anything.
The crafting continued for three days. By the end of the third, the gauntlets had begun resembling weapons rather than piles of material.
Repeated working had darkened the Malachor Jade. Jade-green remained beneath the surface, but black whorls traveled through it in patterns that looked almost organic. The finger plates had been formed, the joints connected, and the wrist structure completed. Rune channels had been carved through the material, though Andre had not yet finalized them.
Kael was beginning to understand what the dwarf meant when he said forging was more than hammering metal until it became useful. Every part possessed a reason, from the curvature and thickness of each plate to the angle at which one section overlapped another.
On the fourth morning, Kael reached for the hammer. Andre slapped his hand away before he could touch it.
Kael frowned. "What?"
"Yer done."
"I thought they weren't finished." Kael asked.
"They're not." Andre pointed toward the unfinished pieces. "Now comes the part where one mistake ruins three days of work. And I don't got the patience in me to redo this again."
Kael slowly pulled his hand back. "Fair."
"Go bother something else." Andre shooed Kael ways.
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Study." Andre ignored Kael's stare and returned to the gauntlet. "You need better armor anyway."
Kael looked down at his Journeyman's Leather. It had survived a great deal, probably far more than it should have. Burn marks covered one side, cuts crossed the leather, and several sections had been repaired enough times that he had started forgetting which parts remained original.
The equipment had been excellent when Kael crafted it, but the Lesser Death Knight could probably have cut through it without noticing.
Kael rubbed the leather. "What about plate?"
Andre stopped working and slowly turned toward him. "No."
"What's wrong with plate?"
Andre placed his tool down. "That right there is what happens when someone learns just enough craft to become dangerous."
Kael stared. "How is wanting stronger armor dangerous?"
"Stronger monster, stronger attack, so put thicker metal between it and yer organs." Andre walked toward the back of the workshop. "That sounds reasonable because it is reasonable. It's also limited. That's how low tier craftsmen think."
He rummaged behind his bedding and pulled out a very large book. Dust covered its edges, and the leather binding looked older than Andre. He tossed it across the workshop, forcing Kael to catch it with his left hand.
The weight surprised him. "What's this?"
"Something I meant ta show ya last time."
The cover bore no title. Kael opened it and found diagrams covering the first page: basic metallurgy, smelting, ore identification, temperature bands, and quenching. The next page concerned leatherworking, followed by monster hides, treatment methods, preservation, boot construction, helmets, swords, spears, axes, jewelry, rings, and necklaces.
Kael continued turning pages. "This is insane. This is generational knowledge!"
"Big too," Andre said as he returned to his workbench.
The notes had not been written by one person. Kael recognized the differences immediately. The handwriting changed throughout the book, as did the terminology. Some pages contained corrections added decades or centuries after the original text. Arguments filled the margins, with one smith proposing a technique, another calling him an idiot seventy pages later, and a third recording the results after testing both methods.
Entire generations were having a conversation through paper.
Kael flipped toward the end and found dozens of names, each written in a separate hand. Some had faded almost beyond recognition, while others remained nearly pristine. The final pages were empty.
He searched the list again before realizing what was missing.
"Andre."
The dwarf answered without looking away from his work. "Aye?"
"Where's your name?"
The hammer stopped. Andre remained facing the forge while Kael searched the list once more, but there was no Andre among the dozens of signatures.
Eventually, the dwarf spoke. "Haven't earned it."
Kael frowned. "Earned what?"
"A place." Andre resumed working.
Kael looked down at the book. "What is this?"
"My family." Andre struck the metal once. "My ancestral forging record."
Kael waited as the dwarf continued working.
"Every generation adds what they learn," Andre explained between measured strikes. "New alloys, methods, and mistakes worth warning the next bastard about."
Kael studied the names again. "And everyone signs?"
"No." Andre's voice grew quieter. "You sign when ya make a masterpiece."
Kael stopped turning the pages. "A masterpiece?"
"Not Epic and not Legendary." Andre looked toward him. "Rarity is what the Tower calls the item. Masterpiece is what a smith calls his work."
"That sounds contradictory." Kael said.
Andre tapped one fist against his chest. "An item can have incredible rarity because of what it's made from. That doesn't mean the smith did anything extraordinary with it."
Kael understood. The material and the craftsmanship were separate measures, even if the Tower combined both into the item's final value.
"A masterpiece means ya created something worthy of adding knowledge to the book." Andre's gaze moved toward the empty pages at the end. "There's space waiting for me."
Kael found one blank page and then another. "And the second?"
Andre grunted. "My disciple."
He offered no further explanation, though the empty pages continued beyond those two.
"For whoever comes next," Andre said. "Whoever finds something we didn't."
Kael ran one hand across the old paper and, for once, found no joke worth making.
Andre pointed toward the book without looking up. "Page two hundred twenty-five."
Kael flipped through the volume until he found the page. A diagram of a coat waited there. At first glance, it looked ordinary enough: long, dark, fitted with a high collar, and cut so the hem reached below the knees. It was stylish, admittedly, though Kael saw little else remarkable about it.
He frowned. "This?"
"Read."
Kael obeyed. Then he read the page again, much more slowly.
"What the fuck?"
"That's what you call a masterpiece!" Andre smirked