Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)

Carmen leaned close, her face only an inch from the glowing metal. If she got any closer, even using abilities like Endure Flames and Energy Shielding, she would have been burned. Even with her precautions, her Constitution was only sufficient to prevent lasting injury. It didn’t keep it from being uncomfortable. Though, she didn’t allow herself to acknowledge the subtle pain, instead focusing on the chisel in her hand and the design she’d engraved upon the surface of the metal.

She tapped the end of the chisel with her hammer. Her touch was light, but with her Strength as well as the ethera flowing through the tool, it echoed through the smithy like a gong. Ignoring the sound, she shifted the blade a short distance, then repeated the process. As she did, she pushed her abilities to their absolute limit, forcing as much ethera into the product as possible. Because of the material – volcanic mithril – it drank the energy greedily, absorbing it without issue. It could have taken more. The metal wasn’t the problem. Instead, Carmen herself was the weak link.

But that didn’t bother her. If she was capable of utilizing her material to the fullest extent of its potential, then she would need to find a different ore. That was the thing about improvement – it didn’t happen unless she was reaching for the stars. Other archetypes might progress by killing powerful monsters, but a Tradesman gained levels by pushing her limits.

And Carmen was very good at that. With every completed project, she saw a thousand ways she could have improved the process – and by extension, the final product. Some – like a shift in technique or the use of a more potent fire in the forge – were huge and immediately and noticeably impactful. That was rare, though. In most cases, the improvements were miniscule and barely perceptible, even when she was looking for them. Only when those tiny changes had a chance to pile up were the results apparent.

To others, she knew she seemed a little crazy. Obsessive, even. Like a neuroatypical perfectionist who couldn’t stomach the very notion of good enough. Sure, she’d accepted some inferior results. Most of her commissions were like that. Even though her customers always left happy – anything else would have sent Carmen back to the forge to redo everything – she saw every flaw, both in the final product as well as her process.

But she’d learned to accept those issues as inevitable. She could never achieve perfection, especially when she was constrained by deadlines and the materials provided by her clients.

When she was working on her own projects, though – that was different. She could come much closer, if only because she had the freedom to start over when necessary. So it had been with this particular piece.

She tapped the chisel again, its blade digging into the metal clamped tightly to her anvil. Then, she blinked.

The line she’d just engraved had merged with another, signaling completion.

At first, she didn’t believe it, but that didn’t last more than a second or two. Soon enough, it was replaced by a sense of relief. Then came the exhaustion. Suddenly, she was very aware of her aching shoulders and back, of the way the intense heat had dried her eyes, of the light blistering on her cheeks. She even smelled the scent of burning hair, though when she inspected her braid, she found that only a few strands had been burned from getting too close to her project.

She leaned back, letting herself take in the sight of the whole.

Carmen had saved her primary hammer for the last piece of her toolkit. She had four other hammers of differing sizes, but they had very specific uses. This one was about eight inches long and heavy enough that most normal people couldn’t even lift it. That was due to a combination of the volcanic mithril’s density as well as the sheer volume of ethera she’d shoved into it. If it was less than five-hundred pounds, she would have been extremely surprised. More likely, it weighed closer to a thousand.

Which was just perfect, given her high Strength.

The design of the head was simple enough – just a cross-pein shape without much in the way of ornamentation – but she’d taken great care to ensure that every line was perfectly symmetrical. In the old world, she’d have had difficult convincing people that it hadn’t been machined.

And finally, there was the enchantment. She’d spent hundreds of hours and more money than she wanted to think about researching the perfect combination. Durability was a given, but she also wanted power. The hammer needed to be a conduit for her abilities, and for that, she needed something special.

In the end, she’d settled on four total glyphs: impact, durability, channeling, and heat. She’d spent countless hours marrying them into a singular whole – a design that looked both aesthetically pleasing and allowed those glyphs to work together without losing any of their characteristics. It was both an embellishment and an enchantment rolled into one.

Her other tools used different glyphs. Durability and heat were constants, but each of the other implements had vastly different purposes. For instance, she’d used a control glyph for her tongs. And the anvil had gotten two instances of the durability glyph, as well as one for hardness.

Regardless, the whole process of enchantment had involved far more research and artistry than anything else. But it had all come together in the crafting itself. More than once, she’d forced herself to start over, but now, she had a whole set that maximized the materials’ potential and far exceeded even her lofty expectations.

When she’d begun, she hadn’t dared to hope for such good results.

But now, despite her fatigue, she was almost giddy with excitement. She wanted nothing more than to jump right into her next project. However, she forced herself to step back and take a long, deep breath.

As she did, she took a few moments to appreciate the haft of the hammer. Like all the others, it had come from Elijah’s grove. Ignon, the council’s Woodworker representative, had nearly fallen all over himself for the chance to work with that high-quality stuff. If he’d seen Elijah’s staff – or more importantly, felt the ethera running through it – the goblin might’ve had a seizure in the middle of his shop.

Either way, Ignon had outdone himself with the shaping as well as the runes, and when Carmen had finished the construction, she’d been forced to adjust her own plans for the etching so as to create a more unified whole.

But it was done now.

Reverently, she picked up the hammer and gave it a couple of experimental swings. With its immense weight, it could move a lot of metal in a hurry. With that tool in her hand, she could do a fair impression of a power hammer, though with far more control. It felt like an extension of her arm.

It was, in a single but profound word, perfect.

Finally, she allowed herself to use Blacksmith’s Appraisal: