Although Jas wanted to first return to the old iron mine and see if he could get another brown magic crystal from the first mole monster he had killed, he wisely decided to stop and focus on forging a new war hamr and enchanting it with [Heavy Blow]. While his first war hamr had been devastatingly effective due to its sheer mass, realistically it was too large. The Smith also gave up on attaching it to a wooden shaft. Instead, he would forge it out of one piece, like he had with his first green iron hamr. He had worried when forging that first hamr that it would be fragile and break easily when swung with force, but the trusty hamr had held up well even when he hamred with his full force against the skulls of the downed monsters, so he felt confident that a larger war hamr would also be fine. Well, larger compared to the green iron hamr. He [Designed] his new war hamr to be a little smaller than his original, the better to wield one handed.
He dug out a mold and slted down the old war hamr head, still bloody from where it had lain in the blood of the mole monster. But when he, as was his habit, inspected the molten tal for slag to remove, not that he expected any from slting down forged iron, he found swirls and clumps of brown in the molten tal. Shocked, he inspected the molten tal more closely.
[Material Identification: Molten Brown Iron]
He continued to gaze at it intently. He felt sothing was… incomplete. Like there was more to learn about this oddity.
[Enchanter] Class Skill [Substrate Analysis] acquired.
[Material Identification: Molten Brown Iron, Earth Essence contamination ?/?]
Jas blinked, his eyes dry from staring into the heated, glowing tal. That was new. He recalled Jared and ridox had ntioned undine essence affecting the sword Jared had made.
[Water Identification: Pure Water]
The water trickle on the wall inside his camp was, as far as Jas could tell, uncontaminated with essence.
After checking the cavern, still empty, he walked over to the blood from where he had killed the monster, by this point mostly dry but still damp. He bent over and examined it closely.
[Material Identification: Blood (Earth Essence)]
Having confird his suspicion, Jas quickly returned to the safety of his camp. He was surprised that blood actually registered in his [Material Identification] skill. Normally it only registered things he could use for forging, and ridox had never ntioned using blood as a catalyst for enchanting.
The Smith quickly cast his warhamr and while it was solidifying, he tried slting one of his stored iron ingots. As far as he could tell, it was uncontaminated with any essence. But once he put it in the slter and it lted down-
[Material Identification: Molten Iron, Earth Essence contamination ?/?]
Although the skill was imprecise, perhaps because of his low level in [Substrate Analysis], he could tell it was less contaminated than the brown iron had been.
"Crap." Jas cursed. "Did I just contaminate the entire slter?"
The war hamr now solid enough to move with his tongs, he put it in the forge to keep warm and poured out the molten iron into an ingot mold. He could see the brown swirls, just barely, in the iron ingot.
[Material Identification: Iron Ingot (Earth Essence)]
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Curious, he moved the ingot to his green iron anvil shaped object, and tried hamring it aimlessly, just to see what would happen. Strangely, it was like trying to hamr an ingot of soap. The ingot nearly slipped out from the tongs (also green iron) and skidded around on the surface of the anvil, and his strikes with the hamr required much more focus than normal, even more than he normally required to use his [Hamr Strike] Technique.
And although he could barely catch it, he saw the essence moving around in the iron with each strike, as though repelled by the strikes of the hamr.
For the mont, Jas set the odd contaminated iron ingot aside. He finished up his war hamr, contaminated with earth essence as it was, and although it was more difficult to forge this hamr than anything else he had forged before, he was able to complete it.
[Appraisal: War Hamr, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Earth Essence]
At this point Jas realized that, even though he wanted to [Enchant], he didn't have the finer tools necessary for the etching. Additionally, his investigation and forging had used up most of the day.
He ate a dinner of porridge and a small amount of smoked mole monster at he forced himself to swallow, eyes watering at the awful taste, and slept.
In the morning there were still no monsters in the cavern, and Jas spent so ti working on the slter. He soon realized that if he boiled Pure Water in the slter, it would leech the Earth Essence from the slter and boil off. Eventually, the water stopped registering as contaminated to his skill, and the slter was no longer contaminated.
Feeling accomplished, the Smith spent the rest of the day crafting tools for himself: copies of the delicate tools he had seen Jared and ridox use when they prepared the sword enchantnt he had once witnessed. Once he was finished, he had a small assortnt of picks, chisels, a tal brush (clamped with fur from the mole monster) and even several files of various sizes (the forging of which had been incredibly ti consuming). Worried about the strange interaction between essence and colored iron he had seen the day before, these he forged with regular iron and ensured were uncontaminated.
After a quick lunch of more porridge and another foul piece of monster at (this ti he tried roasting it in the forge, nearly burning it black, but this made the at tougher in exchange for reducing the flavor), he pulled out the war hamr and prepared to apply the [Heavy Blow] template he had morized.
As he moved a small pick to start etching, his hand froze. The swirls of earth essence caught his eye. They didn't look right. He knew he was going to make an Earth enchantnt, so he figured the contamination wouldn't hurt the final enchantnt much, but he didn't want the contamination streaks to be crossing the lines perpendicular. He felt like they should be more aligned with the enchantnt pattern.
The enchantnt pattern itself was a mix of circles and radial lines and squiggles. The Smith, guided by his intuition, decided to work the tal of the hamr a little more. He ward it up in the forge again, hotter and hotter until Jas saw the swirls of earth essence start to move again.
Using a small green iron hamr against the green iron anvil shaped object, the Smith tap tap tapped, less shaping the tal as much as the swirls of earth essence. He guided them, repelled by the green iron, until they coalesced roughly in the center of the head of the hamr, lined up in the center of the circles where he planned to etch the enchantnt pattern.
Quenching the war hamr in the pure water froze the swirls of earth essence in place once again.
Now satisfied, he etched the enchantnt pattern into the top of the war hamr. At first he thought to follow the pattern exactly, but the radial lines had room to extend to the striking faces of the hamr, so he went ahead and did so. Guided again by his intuition, he made these lines just a tad deeper than the radial lines going in other directions, and made those lines more shallow than the rest.
The etching complete, looking remarkably close to the template pattern thanks to Jas' double boost in dexterity, he now turned to his one brown magic crystal. He had prepared a rough approximation of a mortar and pestle using a monster claw to cut the stone roughly to shape, and now used this to grind the stone down to an even powder.
[Material Identification: Earth Crystal Dust (dium)]
"Huh?" Jas muttered, raising an eyebrow. He continued to grind the powder further.
[Material Identification: Earth Crystal Dust (Fine)]
Now he nodded. Setting the mortar with the powder aside, he took his cup and filled it with Pure Water. Then, he dipped a finger in and moved his mana. It felt heavy inside him, almost like barely molten tal. He continued to push, imagining that he was heating it up to make it flow better-
[Enchanter] Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] acquired.
Now flowing slightly better, he pushed his mana into the water, activating his [Aqua Magia] skill. The water flashed brightly and he stopped pushing his mana, and the water faded back to looking like normal water, though it was now nothing like normal water in any other way.
[Material Identification: Aqua Magia]
When he set the cup of Aqua Magia down, Jas found that he was panting and exhausted. He scanned the empty cavern, the habit finally starting to sink in, and took a break. He wasn't sure if he was out of mana or just was tired from a long day of work, but he ate a hefty dinner and ate enough monster at to feel nauseous, but not enough to vomit.
Just barely not enough to vomit.
Feeling queasy, he lay down and slept, falling asleep more easily than he had in a long, long ti.
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