Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story

Thomas couldn't keep a grin off of his face at the contents of his quest. He was sure he could impress Rock, but first, he needed to do his experiments and try to find a way to earn more experience for his blacksmithing skill. Completing Rock's quest with a high rating would be nice but in the long run, completing Hekrin's quest was far more important. With the plan he came up with last night in his mind he walks over to the stack of iron ingots and grabs two.

Using a pair of tongs he stuffs one of the ingots into the coals of the forge and goes to man the bellows. After a few minutes of pumping, Thomas used the tongs to check the color of the ingot. It didn't take him too long to get it to a nice bright orangish-yellow glow. He carried the hot ingot over to the nearby anvil and borrowed the same hammer he'd used the day before. Mustering his strength he lifted the hammer and slammed it down into the ingot over and over again. Every single blow of the hammer moved far more material than he expected. At first, it threw him off, but after a few more blows he started to get used to how easy it was to reshape the ingot with the hammer.

Either because of his increased strength from leveling up Power or assistance from the system, or maybe even both, Thomas was able to hammer one side of the ingot flat and into the bare basic shape of a knife blade. He had to stop at that point to place it back into the coals and reheat the ingot. Once it was back up to temperature Thomas borrowed a tool that looked something like an axe blade. With it, he chopped the ingot in half removing the excess material that he wouldn't need for making just a small knife.

Thomas placed the excess material back into the forge to keep it warm, he would use it for his next experiment. He began to hammer the work-in-progress. Using swift hammer strikes he slowly refined the shape of the blade and drew out the tang for the handle. Thanks to the system and his strength it didn't take him very long to create the rough shape of the dagger he was working on. This was going to be his first experiment, so while he didn't put his utmost efforts into it, he still paid very close attention to the details to make sure nothing would go wrong.

With the rough shape finalized the dagger blade was just about 16cm long with a tang of about 8cm. It was a somewhat small dagger, but again this was just an experiment and he didn't want to spend too much time on it. After the last strike of his hammer Thomas doused the blade into the trough of water to quench it. Once it was quenched he set the blade down to let it air cool until it could be handled by hand.

While the first blade cooling Thomas returned to the forge and began to pump the bellows again to bring what was left of the ingot up to temperature. He'd only used about half of it so he had enough material left to work on a second dagger. As he was working the bellows he had an idea, a set of twin matching daggers meant to be dual wielded! Grinning to himself he retrieved the tongs and plucked the glowing half of ingot out of the coals and began to hammer it out. It didn't take very long for him to hammer it into a very similar shape to the first dagger.

After quenching the second dagger he set it to the side to cool and gingerly tested the temperature of the first dagger. It was still warm to the touch but was cool enough to be handled by hand. Grabbing it, Thomas went to the grinding wheels and began to grind off the excess material to refine the daggers shape and edges. Making his way through the various grits he quickly and efficiently ground the dagger down until it had a somewhat sharp edge and the metal shone. It wasn't razor sharp or polished yet, but it looked rather good.