Even Chili, who was hot like a furnace and breathing fire, squealed worriedly and moved away from the furnace as much as his pen allowed.
This spell could’ve been devastating in a fight if it wasn’t so stationary. The manual explained in detail how this spell was made to use in forging, and how best to do it.
Using tongs with long handles, Reynard picked the lump of magical gold and put it into the furnace, right into the Bound Fla.
The heat of the fla was so strong that his steel tongs grew red-hot just from this motion. Reynard quickly pulled it back and squinted to look at the magical gold.
The Bound Fla made it impossible to see the change in the tal’s temperature. Reynard just held it there and waited, holding his breath in anticipation.
When he felt that enough ti had passed—a good half an hour!—Reynard pulled the magical gold out.
It was soft, glowing white, and so hot that Reynard had to keep it at least a step away from himself.
He grinned.
"I can finally smith you! Doesn’t look like slting you is possible, but just smithing is already great! I will make a gun of all guns from you!"
Reynard had already planned it all through, with a blueprint and asurents. A tal this tough will be able to withstand explosions of massive power. There was enough magical gold to make sothing of truly huge caliber. A literal hand cannon.
Reynard imdiately grabbed his smithing hamr and began working. The magical hold needed flattening and rolling to beco a proper gun barrel.
The first strike went well. By the second, the magical gold cooled to orange, and Reynard had to reheat it again.
By the fourth strike, Reynard noticed that after cooling just a little, the tal began going back to its previous shape. Between him bringing down his hamr and putting the tal into the furnace to reheat, he barely made a dent in the golden lump!
"Damn it. So this tal isn’t just extrely tough, it recovers itself? It’s this magic inside..."
Now Reynard looked at the lump with new eyes.
’To make the tal hold this form, it seems that so extrely powerful heat was used... I wonder what happened to the artifact this tal was from. Marien had no idea what this thing could have been. Maybe her grandfather knows, but I’m not going to ask him!’
By this point, Reynard had heard rumors about runaways from the Blue Bismuth School and a bounty for bringing them back alive, but there were no visual descriptions, only nas. Reynard wasn’t worried, since he and Marien had kept their nas secret very well so far.
He wiped sweat off his forehead and resud working.
Now the difficulty wasn’t only in reheating the tal after every other strike, it was in doing this as fast as possible! More and more sweat was coming off Reynard from the exertion and the heat.
He wasn’t even a third of the way done until the Bound Fla suddenly fizzled out.
With a gasp, Reynard fell to his knees, almost dropping his hamr on his toe.
"What?.."
His eyes stung with sweat, and he felt absolutely parched and famished. In the background, now that his ears weren’t deafened by the clanging of tal, he heard grunts of Chili.
Reynard stared at his adolescent Forge-Boar in confusion, then looked around.
The workshop had a window, which Reyanard opened for ventilation when smithing. He had started working at noon, but now it was dark outside.
Winter days were short, but still, at least several hours must’ve passed. And Chili was loud because he was hungry.
Reynard’s spell went out because he was too tired to sustain it. And now all his work was slowly being unraveled.
"Shiiiiiiiit." He groaned and stood up. His feet felt wobbly. "Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit."
"Oiiiiiiink!"
"Right. Just a mont, Chili. And rember, you ain’t eating any tasty potatoes without making so copper in the process, alright?"
With a sigh, Reynard got up and set out to feed Chili and himself.
By now, he had begun training the Forge-Boar in tal slting. As long as Reynard fed him tal ore and flux, Chili would regurgitate perfect quality lumps of tal later that day.
He wasn’t very used to doing it yet, but adult Forge-Boars could even make tal alloys. And their inner temperature was high enough even for most magical ores Reynard knew about.
As he ate his own snack, Reynard thought about how to proceed with the golden lump. Clearly, with the speed at which the work was going, at least a full day would be necessary to finish the smithing.
It would have taken less ti if he hadn’t needed to reheat the tal all the ti.
’If I smith the lump while it’s right inside the Bound Fla, I will get a heat stroke before I finish anything. Even a magi’s body isn’t invulnerable to heat. Besides, my hamr will lt. I can use Spirit Armor to protect myself from the heat... But then I won’t have enough mana for the Bound Fla. And what will I smith with? Maybe there’s a harder-to-lt hamr I can buy. A magical one... But heat protection?’
Reynard wondered if there were any potions of that for sale. He would definitely need so life-strengthening ones to sustain him during the forging.
’And with all this, my Bound Fla can still go out or weaken too much because I overexert my aura. What I need, and what will make this all much easier... Is to refine my aura. If I could reach the Final Cycle Albedo... No, just... Fifth or Sixth Cycle would be enough, probably.’
Reynard was in his Second Cycle at the mont. He had the money to buy Earth Mana items, but his refining thod was very crude.
However, he was richer now than he was just a few days ago... And with much better connections.
’Let’s see whether Orders of Winter and Snow have any good manuals for Earth Magi!’
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