Chapter 49: 48. Wise Craftsman.
1.
A true homecoming in glory.
Carrying countless ores and funds supplied directly by the Imperial Palace.
And, most importantly of all, mana crystals.
We returned to the duke’s territory.
The first thing we did was find a site for the new workshop.
But then—
"...Lionel, couldn’t you just build it inside the estate?"
Dolores called to me with a worried expression.
"Inside the estate?"
"They were already building something large..."
"That was my workshop?!"
The large building that had been going bang, bang for weeks beside my little workshop in one corner of the garden.
I had been wondering what it was.
Apparently, it was my workshop.
"Works for me."
A smelting furnace—the kind we commonly call a blast furnace—
was probably, in most cases, a blast furnace proper.
A thing with a sea of molten metal pooled inside a giant vessel,
where you melted all sorts of things into it.
Someday, I would need to build one too.
But the furnace I had been talking about all this time was not something that enormous.
If you built one of those, it would heat up the entire surrounding area.
Everything nearby would slowly roast, nice and warm.
At night, it would dye even the sky red, and people nearby would not be able to sleep properly.
Did the blacksmith shop in the heart of the Imperial Palace have something like that?
In the first place, even the Imperial Palace’s furnace was not a proper blast furnace.
Of course, I had gotten permission for that as well.
I would need to build one eventually.
What I was going to build was a crucible furnace.
One that melted iron to its limit, turning it liquid so it could be poured into molds and such.
This, too, was undeniably a smelting furnace.
It was not for mass production, but it could actually produce higher-quality material.
Fortunately, this one could be handled well enough inside the workshop.
There would be no heat leaking outside, either.
Though it would be hot as hell inside.
"Then that’s what I’ll do."
That settled the issue of the site easily.
We left the materials piled beside the construction site and entered the estate.
Honestly, I was exhausted right now.
Maybe because I had been constantly draining my mental energy for the past several days—no, the past month and a half—
I wanted nothing more than to rest for a bit.
"Master!"
Ruby, whom I had not seen in a while, had filled out nicely.
No, rather than saying she had gained weight, I should say she was brimming with vitality.
She had skipped magic training for two days, and she was already full of energy?
Then I noticed the sweat soaking the nape of Ruby’s neck.
"...Did you work out?"
"Yeah."
Ruby shrugged.
"It was fun."
"Really?"
She had kneaded my biceps, confirmed that working out really had benefits, and apparently started exercising herself.
"I read twenty pages, then do push-ups. Read some more, then jump rope. It’s fun if you do it like that."
Interval training that alternated between knowledge and physical exercise.
Now that was talent.
I had been too busy with work to exercise.
"It’s good for a mage to have stamina backing them up. Well done, Ruby."
"Hehe."
Dolores stroked Ruby’s hair.
After saying hello, Ruby scampered back toward the drawing room where the exercise equipment was.
Scamper.
I wondered if she was going to become a gym rat at this rate.
Well, being healthier was a good thing.
I stretched, then looked at Dolores and spoke.
"By the way, how long until it’s completed?"
"Hmm... I think it will take a little less than a month."
"I see."
Then I could prepare other things in the meantime.
I needed to revise the blueprints and make the crucibles, too.
I also had to build the crucible furnace itself.
There was no shortage of work to do.
Just not today.
"I’m going to get some sleep."
The time for some sweet, sweet rest had arrived.
2.
Rest, my ass.
Today, once again, I was an old man making pottery.
No, a young man making pottery...
No, not even that. A little brat making pottery.
I spent the entire past month buried in clay.
You might wonder whether a little kid could build a smelting furnace.
But a crucible furnace had a relatively simple process.
It was honestly manageable.
There was another reason I had gone out of my way to get blueprints.
Every single drawing carried its creator’s own circumstances.
Here, the firepower was lacking, so they narrowed the chamber. There, they widened the bottom to clear out ash more often.
Someone else had bad knees, so they lowered its height.
Honestly, there was no single right answer.
There were only choices tailored to each person’s circumstances.
Even a shitty structure had its own reasons for being that way.
So I spread out the Heirs of Fire blueprints from the textbook,
and tried to steal only the good parts.
Discarding their circumstances and taking only what suited mine.
That was how my furnace came to be. Incidentally, the "furnace" in a space heater uses the same word.
It was a collective term for any container that handled fire.
I would just call it a firebox.
And building only the firebox of the furnace was not enough.
I also had to shape the crucibles that would hold the molten metal with my own hands.
How many had I broken again?
[Sixteen.]
With Yuna supplying the information—
Scrape... scrape...
I completed the final crucible, the vessel that would hold ingots inside the smelting furnace.
"...Ah, I can’t do this twice."
Honestly, I had gotten a little too ambitious with this process.
I had personally involved myself in every part that made up the crucible furnace—the smelting furnace, that is—
the interior, crucibles, anvil, everything.
I never knew having a generous budget could be this terrifying.
Because I could use it, I kept using it.
I ran myself ragged and placed who knew how many custom orders all over the place.
That was how my gigantic workshop had finally gone up yesterday.
A huge mineral warehouse was attached beside it, and the main building was my domain.
And inside it...
"What exactly was the layout inside again, Yuna...?"
[Just a moment.]
Along with the notes Yuna and I had written together—
─────────────────
[Workshop Interior List]
─────────────────
[Crucible Furnace]
└ Melts iron into liquid. It can be poured into molds, and you can do all sorts of things with it while molten.
[Bloomery]
└ Throw ore in and it spits out iron, but you have to hammer the lump it produces.
[Forge]
└ The one I have always used.
[Custom Anvil]
└ Had to be lowered because I’m short. The quality is passable... no, it isn’t. I’m just forcing myself to use it.
[Bellows]
└ A passage that pushes air beneath the firebox. This is seriously the key point.
[Ventilation Shaft]
└ The workshop’s breathing hole. Without it, you die.
[Cooling Tanks: Water / Oil]
└ Separate things that need to harden quickly from things that need to harden slowly.
[Worktable]
└ The place where you inspect completed items and go scrape-clack.
[Crucible Shelf]
└ There are ten decent crucibles. Make more once I use five.
─────────────────
I lay flat on my back in the middle of the completed workshop.
"It’s done!!!"
The ceiling was so high that when I shouted, my voice boomed around the room.
I had not been able to follow through on a single one of my original plans because of this.
Once I focused on one thing, I could not do anything else.
Original plan, first: enchant Dolores’s equipment.
Second: make underwear.
Third: ask her to show me her wearing it.
[Tch.]
...Third: make spare underwear.
"Now I really need to do it."
But there was still one final process remaining.
The workshop was completely finished. It was time to inaugurate it.
The first item for the grand opening was...
"A signboard."
You might wonder what I meant.
『Whenever you establish a workshop of your own, you must hang your mark before its door. That mark is your very name, and your pride in all that you have forged.』
I had wondered what kind of custom that was, but—
『Each time you pass beneath it, it shall become your pride.』
"..."
The instant I read that final sentence, I was tempted.
"Right. I’m a dwarf, after all..."
I had to do what needed doing.
I decided to take part in the tradition.
I got up and picked up the tongs.
An ignition stone.
Until now, all I had to do was toss one in, and once it lit, step on the pedal to blow oxygen in.
That was how I had always handled the forge.
I grabbed a handful of charcoal and spread it thinly beneath the firebox.
Tap.
I dropped an ignition stone that I had struck onto it.
It caught fire in an instant.
Whoosh.
A red glow crawled up the inner walls of the firebox.
And then—
I dumped in the charcoal wholesale.
Enough for the firebox to swallow, enough to bury the place where the crucible would rest.
After some time, the charcoal began to take the flame.
Then—
Creak.
The same thing I had always done.
I stepped onto the pedal and pressed it down.
The difference was that it had become heavier than before.
There was no helping it.
It seemed I would have to keep using some strength from now on.
Fwoooooosh!
Air was sucked beneath the firebox.
As oxygen passed through the charcoal and opened paths for the fire, the flames grew stronger.
Creak! Creak!
If I stopped here, it would cool down, so I had to keep pedaling.
The difference from the forge I had used until now was—
these flames had nowhere to escape.
With a forge, the front was wide open and half the heat escaped.
But this was trapped in a narrow chamber, with the heat able to rise only upward.
And now—
I filled the crucible with the ingots I had cut beforehand.
I gripped it with the tongs and set it at the center of the firebox.
Clunk.
Then I put the lid on.
Now the heat inside had nowhere to go. It would only keep getting hotter among itself.
How much time passed like that?
[Two hours.]
For two hours, I did nothing but pedal like mad.
[Are you okay, big brother?]
No, I was not okay at all.
Not at all. Absolutely not.
At this point, I thought I understood why they were called the Heirs of Fire.
You literally spent all day in front of fire.
If that did not make you an Heir of Fire, then what did?
"..."
Unable even to speak, I just kept pedaling.
Though the workshop was more spacious and had ventilation installed, it was still insanely hot.
That was simply how smelting furnaces were.
They only did their job after the inside became insanely hot.
Until then, it was just a Lionel smoker.
Drip... drip...
Sweat fell like rain, and I could no longer feel the soles of my feet.
I carefully brought my eye to the small hole I had made in the lid.
If I got too close, my eyebrows would burn off.
"White."
It was so hot inside that it was almost entirely white.
Good.
The temperature was certain.
The question was whether the inside had turned out as I intended.
The white light meant the iron had already surpassed its melting temperature.
And since I had pedaled for two hours, there had been enough time too.
Clunk.
I opened the lid.
From very far away, of course.
"It’s fucking hot."
Even though I stood well back and reached out remotely to open the lid, the heat was overpowering.
After a little time passed, I stepped onto the platform and looked down inside.
A black film covered the top of the crucible holding the ingots.
The remnants of what had burned, floated to the surface, and hardened.
I inserted a rod and gently skimmed it away.
Swipe.
Beneath it—
"..."
there was a gleaming, pure-white liquid.
Iron could become like that.
It could melt that completely.
And the status of the liquid floating before my eyes appeared.
─────────────────
[Molten Red Iron]
[1.4 kg] [Liquid]
─────────────────
[Composition]
[Iron] [99.28%]
[Carbon] [0.61%]
[Sulfur] [0.00%]
[Phosphorus] [0.09%]
[Stone Powder] [0.02%]
─────────────────
[Condition]
[Uniformity] [A]
[Temperature] [Optimal for Pouring]
─────────────────
[Evaluation]
The impurities have been skimmed from the surface, and the material below is uniform.
Now is the optimal time to pour.
─────────────────
I hooked the rod onto the crucible’s handle.
Swipe.
The moment I lifted it, my arm sagged downward.
"..."
Heavy. With the weight of the crucible added in, it was considerably heavy, but—
If I spilled this here, it was really over.
If this touched flesh...
[Don’t think like that ㅠ]
I had no desire to become grilled Lionel, so I held my breath as I climbed down from the platform.
Slide.
Sweat ran down my forehead, but I had no free hand to wipe it away.
"Haa..."
I stood before the rectangular mold I had placed beside me in advance.
I had made the cast in the exact shape of the signboard.
I slowly tilted my wrist.
Pourrrrr...
The white liquid flowed down and spilled into the mold.
Sizzle...
The mold screamed from the heat, but I ignored it and poured in every last drop.
But even after I had poured it all, it was not over.
Because if the crucible cooled down, it would crack straight apart.
I placed the crucible back into the smelting furnace,
covered it with the lid, and let it cool slowly.
Now...
"Wait quickly."
There was no way I could take it out the moment I poured it.
I had to wait patiently for it to cool.
So I—
Thud.
lay flat on the floor.
"..."
The stone floor was warm.
The one good thing was that the hot air was less intense while lying down, I suppose.
I looked up at the ceiling.
Sweat still ran down my temples.
I closed my eyes for a moment, then said—
"Wake me in three hours."
After setting Yuna’s alarm call—
[Wake uuuuup!]
I opened my eyes.
Just kidding.
"It hasn’t only been one minute, right?"
Did time even pass at all?
I could not move my body.
I had pedaled for two hours in a kiln from hell, so it made sense.
"Nngh..."
I braced myself with my arms and pushed myself upright.
My back was soaking wet. I could feel my shirt peeling off the floor where it had stuck.
I hated it so much.
"...Ah."
Only then did I notice the mold.
I staggered toward it.
I held my hand a little distance above it.
It was pleasantly warm.
Not hot enough to burn me—just lukewarm.
Good.
I picked up the Earthborn Hammer.
This mold was single-use.
There was no way to get what was inside out except by breaking it.
Clang!
One strike.
Cracks ran through the clay.
Clang, clang!
Two strikes, then three.
Chunks crumbled away.
And through them, at last—
a rectangular, dark-black lump revealed itself.
"..."
You might ask whether iron was not supposed to be silver.
But that was truly the harm media had done.
Normally, you had to polish the hell out of that black surface before it finally became silver.
The color of iron we knew was after that process had been added.
I brushed away the fragments and lifted it out.
I dusted off more debris with the iron brush I had prepared.
"...I won’t grind it."
I did not particularly want to bring out the iron’s silver color.
It was my first time, so part of me wanted to leave it rough like this.
I picked up a metal file.
It was a flat iron bar, with densely carved teeth covering its surface.
If you pressed it against something and pushed, those teeth scraped away little bits of iron.
Think of it as a fucking huge nail file.
Scrape...
I used the file only to shape it.
After filing down and softening just the corners, it looked more or less like a signboard.
A blackish gray. A bumpy surface.
"Nice."
Now only one thing remained.
I took out a chisel.
Come to think of it, this was my first time doing this.
The things I had made until now had received the Heirs of Fire mark on their own. I had never engraved one myself.
Which made this my first time engraving one by hand.
"I’m a little nervous."
Tap.
I set the tip of the chisel against the signboard.
I lightly struck it with the hammer.
Clang.
Krrrk...
The chisel slid forward, cutting a groove into the signboard.
Unexpectedly, it felt pretty good in my hands.
Like the sensation of striking in little broken beats.
It was not just that everything was a rhythm game. This genuinely felt like a rhythm game.
Clang.
Clang, clang.
A sun insignia gradually came into view.
I moved the chisel while glancing sideways at the picture Yuna had displayed.
It was my mark, supposedly carved into the sky of the eighty-eighth floor.
With the feeling of writing my name for the first time—
Clang.
The final stroke.
I drew an L and stopped.
"Phew..."
I blew away the filings.
Against the blackish background, only the carved portions showed a thin gleam of silver.
"It’s rough."
The surface was bumpy, and the lines were not straight either.
But—
"I like it."
It was the ugliest thing I had made so far, but I liked it.
『Whenever you establish a workshop of your own, you must carve your mark and hang it before it.』
I understood the reason now.
It was not to show anyone else. It was a time to reaffirm my own identity.
Slide.
I picked up the now completely cooled signboard and rose to my feet.
Then I slowly headed outside,
and stood before the workshop door.
Directly above the doorframe, where it would be the first thing you saw when you lifted your head.
"Here."
I took out the four brackets I had prepared ahead of time.
They were iron pieces bent into U-shapes. I intended to hammer them above the door and clamp the signboard between them.
I had no choice, since driving nails through it would break the signboard.
Clang, clang!
I hammered the four brackets into the doorframe.
And between them—
Slide.
Click.
It fit together perfectly.
I took several steps back and looked up at it.
On a blackish iron plate, there was a sun whose carved lines alone remained silver, with a lattice below it.
"..."
My workshop.
[Congratulations, big brother.]
"Thank you."
It truly was my workshop alone.
The first workshop had felt like I was entering a place someone else had made for me.
But this time, from the design to the layout, I had overseen everything.
The feeling that it was truly my own workshop was much stronger.
By then, the day had deepened into night.
"Let’s go sleep."
Feeling proud, I patted the signboard a couple of times before heading back inside.
Pat, pat.
Then—
Ding.
Something appeared before my eyes.
─────────────────
[Formal Blacksmith L, Lionel’s Workshop] [★★★☆☆]
[Heirs of Fire]
─────────────────
[Crucible Furnace] [★★★★☆]
[Bloomery] [★★★☆☆]
[Forge] [★☆☆☆☆]
[A human-made object. Replacement required in the future.]
[Custom Anvil] [★☆☆☆☆]
[A human-made object. Replacement required in the future.]
[Bellows] [★★★☆☆]
─────────────────
"...?"
I paused as I stared at what floated in midair.
Along with a scathing evaluation of my workshop’s layout,
it accurately pointed out those human-made things I deeply loathed and had been deliberately overlooking.
That made me feel a little satisfied inside, but also bewildered.
[A mark has been hung before the workshop door.]
[Thus, this place has been recognized as a workplace of the Heirs.]
[★★★☆☆] [An Heir of Fire establishes his own ground.]
[Title Acquired ─ [Master of the Forge]]
[Reward]
A reward?
A reward for what?
This was my second achievement after crafting two-star equipment.
As I stared into the air, wondering what the reward was—
Boom!
With the sound of the smelting furnace lid exploding inside the workshop—
Fwoooooosh!!
Flames surged high.
"What the fuck?!"
The flames began to engulf the entire workshop interior.
I tried to get out, but red light seeped from the cracks in the stone floor beneath my feet,
then climbed up the walls.
Whoosh, fwoosh.
"W-What is this?!"
The ground was collapsing, and the flames rushed at me.
I reflexively turned toward the door, but—
Thud.
The door shut.
Then flames rose before it, flowing up and down along the doorframe.
The exit was blocked.
"Yuna!"
[I-I don’t know what this is...! The coordinates are... wrong...]
This was the first time I had heard her say she did not know.
"What about the coordinates? What’s wrong with them?!"
[Big brother.]
[I can’t get your coordinates.]
A shocking statement.
This was driving me crazy.
The flames rose to the ceiling, and the whole workshop sank beneath a wave of fire.
I could not keep my eyes open, so I covered my face with my arms.
It was not hot.
That was even stranger.
Fwoooosh!
As I covered my eyes and desperately curled up,
the fire slowly... began to die down.
What had climbed the walls settled back down,
and slowly seeped back into the cracks in the floor.
"..."
I slowly lowered my arms.
It was the workshop.
My smelting furnace, the human-made anvil I honestly wanted to throw out, the human-made forge I honestly wanted to throw out.
I was back in my workshop.
"...What the hell was that...?"
Then—
Step.
I heard footsteps behind me.
"Mama?!"
So it was Dolores who had saved me after all.
I had collapsed to the ground, but slowly turned my head.
"...?"
Contrary to what I had expected,
a man stood there.
He was about my height.
But he had a thick, bushy beard and an extremely cantankerous face.
His shoulders were at least twice as broad as mine, and his forearms were as thick as three of my thighs stacked together.
And most decisively, he held
a hammer in his hand.
"..."
Then—
Ding.
[Reward]
Along with the reward notification for completing the achievement—
"Heir of Fire!!!!"
The man’s eyes blazed red.
[Encounter with a Previous Wise Craftsman]
"What in the world are you doing!!!"
I—
"...Pardon?"
I...
came face-to-face with a dwarf ancestor.
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