Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story

After breakfast the next day, Thomas got to work right away on the completion of all the grenades to use the last of the shrapnel cubes. While he worked, Clad was assigned to grind the mana crystals. Thomas didn't trust him with grinding the Firestone's into powder. Since he'd used less than half of the small cubes the day before, he went ahead and made another thirty shells, pins, and leather bags for the grenades using his Transmutation. It took hardly any time at all as he pumped them out like a factory machine. With his increased mana and the continuously growing rank of his Transmutation ability, the work was quick and easy. Within half an hour he had everything shaped properly. Another thirty minutes later he had a large pile of Firestone Powder.

The only tedious part was carving out the enchantments onto the tops of the pins. He decided to do each enchantment one by one as he assembled the grenades so that he wouldn't accidentally enchant more pins than necessary. When he finished the first grenade he noticed that he gained a single extra point of Magitech Engineering experience compared to previously. A quick look at his Savant ability explained the difference. He honestly hadn't paid too much attention to the experience he'd gained from the grenades yesterday. This showed that Savant had a definite effect on the experience he gained on his skills.

In the end, he managed to create another twenty-seven grenades for the pirates bringing the total to nearly fifty. With so many grenades he doubted that Yorik would have any complaints. With the boring work out of the way, he moved on to something more interesting. His first pirate weapon request. The first one would be a metal mana enhanced polearm based on a glaive. He lit the forge and tossed an iron ingot into it. The pirates still hadn't provided him with any better materials and he wasn't going to ask directly for them. He was already powering them up, no need to power them up too much.

Once the ingot was nice and hot he pulled it out of the forge and went to work. The first step was creating the metal mana embryo within the ingot. The process was the same as always and by the time he was finished, he was happy to notice that he still had plenty of mana to work with. The increase in his Magic attribute clearly had a very positive effect on his work stamina. With the embryo created the next step was easy. He just needed to hammer out the blade of the glaive.

His hammer rang as he beat the metal into shape. Thanks to his Power he was able to work swiftly and the ingot soon turned from a mashed-up hunk into a flattened piece of metal in the rough shape of a glaive blade. In just three heats the rough shape of a 40-centimeter long glaive blade complete with a socket for the handle to be installed in. The design he went with was a long thick blade that could potentially count as a machete blade in some circles. At the moment it looked like a wide single-edged sword with no tang or handle to hold it by. He observed it closely with his 'All Seeing Eyes' and found no issues with the construction of the weapon.

With the hammering done he took it to the grinding wheel and began to true up its edges then grind it into a proper shape. Sparks flew as he powered the grinding wheel with his feet. With his Power, the grinding wheel practically turned into a power sander with a low grit quickly grinding off excess material and bringing out the shine of the iron. He progressed through the various grits until he was nearly done with it. He stopped there. The final grinding would have to be done after the blade was quenched and hardened.

With the grinding done, for now, he brought the blade over to the forge and stuck it into the coals. He glanced over at Clad and gestured to the blower. Without complaining, Clad powered the blower to heat up the glaive's blade. While that was happening, Thomas found a nice piece of wood and began working on it to turn it into the pole that would have the blade attached to it. Polearms were excellent weapons that had reach and versatility. Many heroes in novels and stories would use a spear as their primary weapon for a reason. In his opinion, there weren't really any bad weapons. Just weapons that weren't used in proper situations. That was just a personal opinion though.

With Transmutation creating the handle for the glaive was a piece of cake and took very little effort, just a bit of mana. By the time he was done the glaive's blade was nice and hot. He plucked it out of the forge and quenched it in the trough he'd used for his greatsword. It was more than large enough to accommodate the much smaller blade of the glaive. He pulled the glaive blade out of the oil and it immediately burst into flames. A strong gust fo wind magic was enough to snuff the flames out. He made sure to check it for warping and was happy there was none. He placed the glave blade on the anvil to let it continue to cool down. As it had no tang he couldn't stand it up as he preferred so laying it down was the only choice.

With the blade cooling and the handle completed the only things left were the final grind, attaching the blade to the pole, and enchanting it. Since it would take a few minutes for the blade to cool, Thomas got to work on the next item on the list that he had previously decided to tackle. A portable stove with adjustable temperature. Now that was a new and different challenge! He'd made variable enchantments before, such as his Gravity Hammer, so it's not impossible. He decided to go with a dual burner design based on what he could remember about gas-powered camp stoves. One large burner and one small burner. If he was making it for a real customer he'd even go so far as to design portable mana crystal amalgamation canisters that could be precharged to provide mana to the stove. In this case, they could do it manually for themselves.

This work wouldn't require him to use the forge so he ignored it. His Transmutation was perfect for this kind of work and he put it to good use. He started by reshaping an ingot into a flat sheet of metal a few centimeters thick. Once the sheet was sixty centimeters by thirty centimeters he started forming divets into it. The first one was a few millimeters deep and twenty centimeters wide. This would be the base for the larger burner. The second divet was formed to be twelve centimeters wide. This would be the base of the smaller burner.

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The whole process only took a few moments and very little effort on his part so he moved right on to the next step. Enchanting. He ground up some of the pirate's mana crystals and added some alchemist's oil to make the enchanting medium. He used the fire rune from the enchanting book as a base and started to carve it into the metal at the bottom of the divets. The flames would come from here. The image he chose was extremely simple. The more runes that were powered the higher the heat they would produce. Specifically, he was thinking of 'simmer', 'low', 'medium', and 'high' for the runes. When the runes were completed and connected by a line, he continued the line out of the divet and to the side of it. When someone wanted to use the burner they would just need to touch the line and channel mana into it to activate the runes and produce flames.

Now, here comes the interesting part. Can a single item have two enchantments? He'd never tried to put two enchantments onto a single item before and wasn't sure if he could. Even the books he read didn't mention if it was possible or not, as if it was just some common sense thing that everyone knew. He figured it was worth a try and if it didn't work he would just split the sheet of metal into two and make two separate stoves. No skin off his back either way. He went back to work and started to carve the next set of runes in the second, smaller, divet in the sheet metal.

He ran into no issues when carving the runes for the enchantment. He half expected it to be impossible but it wasn't. The enchantment was carved just like the first one with the four runes to control the temperature. He even used the same mental image and intent. Once all four runes were carved and connected, he drew the same line leading out to the flat surface of the sheet metal. There were still no issues cropping up and that made him smile broadly. If this worked it would open up so many more possibilities for his future endeavors! The only thing left to do was to test it.

He placed his index finger on the line for the larger burner and started to channel mana into it. The burner worked as he expected, the little bit of mana he channeled ignited it and a small flame came out of it. However, the other burner also did the exact same thing. The two enchantments worked as a single enchantment and emitted flames of the same size at the same time. When he channeled more mana both flames grew and when he decreased his mana they shrank. He sighed in disappointment. He was sure he could use this information in some creative ways in the future but for the time being, it meant his experiment was a failure. With no other choice, he used his Transmutation to split the sheet metal into two halves making two stoves out of it. On the bright side, the two enchantments worked independently once they were in two pieces.

He was a little disappointed but it didn't last long as he continued to go about his work. He used more iron to make another two sheets of iron and fold the edges up. They would provide a stable base with the burners on top. He set the burners on the bases and fused them together so that there was no seam using the mixing option for his Transmutation. The burners were now small hallow boxes that would produce flames from their centers but he wasn't finished just yet. As a finishing touch, he formed some iron into bent spikes that he fused in a circle around the burners to act as a grate and support for pots and pans.