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The Smithy, the noble district, and the administrative district, each had their own floating platforms that held in the air above the main landmass of Enduring Forge, with each location about equidistant from each other. The three platforms were essentially the points of a triangle above the main city.

Looking up at those three platforms from the streets of the main city was not nearly as claustrophobic as Erick had expected. Being underground wasn’t that bad, either. Having a full squad of five guards in thick black armor escorting him, though? That was claustrophobic.

The second Erick had stepped out of his appointed rooms there was a guide waiting for him. Erick had made no effort to hide his plans to start his visit at the visitor’s center, but still, it was a bit odd to have his needs so perfectly met, and with a private guide, to boot. The guide was disarmingly cheerful and acquiescent, too, which made it a pain to tell the mousy man that his services as a guide were not exactly what Erick wanted; he just wanted some direction. The five guards were… also a lot, but they were not superfluous.

Those soldiers mostly kept the locals from coming right up to Erick and lavishing him with praise, but that didn’t stop the people from trying. Some of them yelled out thanks and tried to get closer, only to have a blackguard gently push them out of the way with their shield. The citizens didn’t seem to mind this, though. They accepted the pushes. Most stepped away before they required a push, though.

And all the while, flowers fell down from second and third floor windows, along with thanks and cheers.

More than one young lady even flashed her boobs at Erick, calling out how much they’d like to personally thank him for his service to the world.

The guide, Jalrock, was extremely embarrassed about it all, and more than once he called out people by their names, to tell them to put their shirts back on.

It’s not like Erick was on any major streets, either.

Parts of the attention were nice, but mostly… It was claustrophobic.

Erick tried to laugh it all off anyway, saying, “Very relaxed atmosphere here. It’s nice!”

And yet…

Too many people looking his way. A bit too bright. A bit too loud.

Jalrock whispered to Erick, “I am so sorry, Savior. This is not normal—” He stared at a woman who threw some panties out of her window, saying, “Tulai! I’ll tell you mother on you!”

The mother in question came out to stand beside her daughter, asking, “Waking me up from my nap. What fool thing is going on— Oh my Bright Gods. Is that the Savior!”

“Yes, mom!” Tulai said, “And those are my panties on the ground beside him.” She waved at Erick. “Yoo hoo!”

The mother’s eyes went wide, but not at her daughter’s actions. The mother leaned out from their shared window, waving as she shouted, “My sister is alive because of you! Thank you!” Then she slapped her daughter on the arm, saying, “Have some respect! He’s got a mana sense so he can see what you’re offering already!”

Erick’s cheeks flushed because, yes, he did have a mana sense. Oh, boy, did he have a mana sense. He almost wanted to shut it off as he walked down this road, to their lunch destination, but he did not.

They seemed to pass a bottleneck not too much further, leaving the crowded street behind, though a few people still trailed after Erick and his entourage. The guards stopped a lot of that following, though.

Soon, they arrived at their target.

Walking into ‘Hothalls Chamber of Spice’ was an unfun experience.

There was some sort of [Airy Spice Ward] in the entrance hall, alongside a sign that said, ‘If you can’t handle the heat, don’t enter the Hothall!’. Erick could practically feel his taste buds bursting into flame with every breath he took. The scent in the air had Nirzir holding back tears, while Poi and Teressa both just held their breaths. Jane relished the scent, though. She breathed deep and smiled wide.

Erick was very tempted to [Dispel] the offending magic.

He did not, though.

Erick ordered a normal meal of rice and steak, with a half-star heat rating, AKA baby slime rating. ‘For the infirm, elderly, and babies of all kinds’. Erick was certainly a baby, yes; this was fine.

Jane enjoyed self-harm in the form of a 12 star entree.

That dish would come out with its own personal spherical [Air Ward] that ensured the poison inside didn’t spread to others, for it certainly would have spread; the rice and sauce and fried chicken swirled some sort of orange and red glow into the protected space. According to the menu, the red glow was a form of poison. [Cleanse] would have knocked the meal down from a 12 star rating (‘for demigods and the dumb’) to a 10 star rating (‘for army generals and archmages’).

No; Erick did not want to try it. He was perfectly happy with his meal for babies.

Jane’s was so strong, a fully-armored waiter had to bring it to the table. That waiter was even dressed up in reflective silver [Conjured Armor], which Erick suspected was exactly the same sort of armor that would prove useful when dealing with steel smelting, or heavy duty Smithing. The restaurant was hamming it up, of course.

But the dish did contain poison.

Jane’s eyes watered as the waiter brought the dish next to her, allowing her to experience the red glow before he set it down in front of her. When Jane just smiled wide, the waiter set down the food like it was a bomb waiting to go off. Jane laughed. Her nose ran. Her face tinted a bit red, but she just smiled, and said, “It’s beautiful.”

Everyone else, by this point, had scooted their chairs away from her. The waiter watched to see if Jane would cower, or persevere. Every nearby person watched. A few new people even showed up to try to get a glimpse of the new challenger of ‘Red Wall’, the name of the dish that now sat in front of Jane.

Even Erick watched, enraptured, as Jane stuck her fork into a bit of red chicken, and pulled it out of the red morass of liquid pain. The rice and the air sparkled as she lifted the bite up, closer to her mouth. Tears already flowed down her face.

Erick broke the silence all around, saying, “Maybe you shouldn’t—”

Jane took the bite.

Silence descended.

Tears flowed. Her face reddened. Her eyes took on a red tint. Even the roots of her hair turned from brown to the barest reddish. That was apparently normal, though. If she ate the whole thing, her whole countenance would turn bright, neon red until the next time she [Cleanse]ed herself. Apparently, the spice that produced this effect was a happy accident from the attempted invention of a beauty product.

Jane swallowed. The roots of her hair turned bright red. Her irises took on a definite red tint.

The watching crowd erupted in cheers. ‘Eat eat eat!’

But then Jalrock started telling people to, “Disperse! Disperse! Even Saviors of Light gotta eat and you all saw your show! Disperse!”

Teressa, meanwhile, lifted up her veil and gave a gleeful grin at Jane, saying, “I bet you can’t finish the whole thing.”

Jane scowled, though the effect was much diminished by her tears and snot. She took a second bite. After a while, she swallowed.

“Are you taking Health damage?” Erick asked, trying not to be too concerned.

Both he and Nirzir were too entranced to eat. Teressa had no such problems. She smiled as she ate. Later, Erick would notice that Poi seemed to specifically eat between Jane’s bites. Perhaps he was second-hand tasting everything that Jane tasted, and it was not a fun experience?

Jane finished off her third bite, then squeaked, “Nothing I can’t handle.”

At the end of lunch, Jane had finished her whole meal, and as people cheered and she shook the hand of the Cook, she got her image captured in a lightpainting by one of the waiters who was good with that. Jane’s hair and eyes were shockingly bright red. Her image joined the rest of the images hanging on the ‘Winner’s Wall’.

As they left the restaurant, having not paid for anything because the owner would not accept payment from the Savior of Light, Erick decided that he could probably try a 1 star meal, the next time.

Jane had joked about trying a 13 star meal from their ‘secret menu’ when she was near the Cook of Hothalls, whereupon the man smiled and said she was now qualified to try that, if she wanted.

They would be going back at least once more.

- - - -

The Black Blade was both the name of the high-class front offices of the Adamantine Smiths, and of an ancient weapon held under heavily enchanted glass in the middle of their main showroom.

Getting to that main showroom usually required going through a few checkpoints, all of them crawling with guards and requiring people to submit to a lot of checks, but Jalrock made those checkpoints trivial.

And now, Erick and his people were here, in the main showroom, looking at blocky black armor and blocky black swords and shields and everything in between. Adamantium armor was not fancy; it was utility made manifest. Form matched function, and nothing else.

Other people spoke with Smiths here and there, while a few more scattered people looked at weapons and otherwise like they were buying expensive cars. It was a pretty apt metaphor, Erick decided, for even the smallest of daggers, weighing in at half a kilogram, cost 25,000 gold. A Poi-sized set of full plate armor looked to cost 1,500,000 gold, and weigh about 30 kilos. A Teressa-sized set of armor would set Erick back nearly 8 million gold, and weigh in at 160 kilos.

Erick realized that he could not buy this entire place all by himself.

For the first time, he had met his financial match.

While that particular revelation was kinda funny, what was not funny was the namesake of this place.

The Black Blade, the sword, was a hunk of dark metal with the blade two meters long, and a handle that was easily large enough for two hands. It would be the perfect sword for an orcol to use in a single hand, but on anyone else, it resembled more a plank of iron, than like a real, usable weapon. And it floated inside a glass cage, just like how a certain person’s weapon also floated when not in use.

Erick recognized the weapon, because he had seen it multiple times by now.

Erick said, “That’s the weapon Goldie uses.”

There were differences, though; subtle, but still there. This was not the exact same weapon the Shade of Assassination used, but it was close.

While Nirzir, Jane, and Teressa, all realized what Erick was saying at about the same time, Poi already knew the deal. He was already worried, though he was doing a great job of hiding it.

There were at least two reasons for this similarity. Either this place had ties to the Shades, or else they were forced to capitulate to Ar’Kendrithyst’s demands like all the other nations of the world. Probably the latter, now that Erick turned the thought over inside his head, inspecting it for paranoia and finding lots.

Now that Erick was here, and having these sorts of thoughts, he wondered, exactly, how much Ar’Kendrithyst had affected Enduring Forge. Probably lots.

Adamantium was black, after all. The Shades loved black. But they also liked opulence. And everything Erick saw before him was blocky and utilitarian, with zero adornment at all save for discrete runes inscribed on the insides of armors, on the backs of shields, and on other hidden locations.

There was a history there, and it was probably much more complicated than Erick could put together in a few seconds of seeing Goldie’s weapon on display in the middle of the main showroom.

Jalrock brought Erick back to the moment, saying, “The Black Blade hasn’t left that case in hundreds of years. We have made copies of the weapon based on that design, though. Perhaps you have seen one of those?”

“… You’re obviously right.” Erick nodded.

Jalrock nodded, then moved right along, saying, “If you have any questions I can start you off on some answers, but they will be surface answers until we can get a— Ah! There they come now.”

A woman and a man rapidly came out of a side hallway and fixed their eyes upon Erick. Recognition. The man held back, but the woman began a much more sedate, professional walk toward Erick now that her prey was in her sight.

Upon reaching Erick the woman introduced herself, and led him to a desk, with her sitting on one side and Erick on the other.

She asked, “Where would you like to begin your order? Anything specific you’re looking for?”

Erick explained, “Two ritual carving weapons for runework, one for me, another for Nirzir Void Song here. A flying sword for my daughter, Jane. A suit of armor to my guard, Poi’s, armor. And a flying shield for my other guard, Teressa; one in her size. If you have any suggestions though, then I am open to them. I haven’t gotten a chance to look over your whole showroom, nor do I know what I am buying, exactly. I only know that you’re the best, and your stuff doesn’t break. That is why I am here.” Erick didn’t want to seem too eager, though, so he digressed, “But honestly, I am not sure why people use metal armor and weapons. It seems like investing in a weapon is asking to get it stolen, or broken. That is what Shades loved to do to all the adventurers who brought that sort of stuff into Ar’Kendrithyst. This was one of the main warnings we gave to people, actually. ‘Don’t trust that anything you take in there will remain under your power’.”

The woman had looked delighted to be near Erick, and to take his order, but she almost shut down at the mention of Shades. Professionalism quickly followed, though; she was both determined to prove the power of the Adamantine Smiths, and to make a sale. She said, “When dealing with out-sized powers, as per your example, then we can give you no guarantees on the security of the weapons we create. But for everything else, from bandits to Decaying hydras, and especially against telekinetic rippers, our weapons and armor —properly used— have proven themselves thousands upon thousands of times over against those sorts of threats. I challenge any mage of the sixth tier or lower to rip away an invested adamantium weapon, or to latch onto the armor made of the same; they will fail, as they have failed many times before. Even [Metalshape] doesn’t work against adamantium, unless the user is an Adamantine Smith.” She said, “And even in such a case, once adamantium sets, even an Adamantine Smith would have trouble reshaping it. If we could do that, then the very adamantium that holds together Enduring Forge would have been snatched away by bandits and rogue Smiths long, long ago.”

Erick gave no indication that he was impressed, but he was. He said, “You’re going to need to go over the properties of adamantium for me. I haven’t had much experience with that, at all. Where does the process of adamantium creation start? Is it an alloy, or a metal unto itself?”

She nodded. “In its untempered form, adamantium is most often found with copper and nickel, but once it is refined, we end up with a solid silver metal with a faint blue tint that is heavier than gold but in this form it is unusable. It is too hard, too brittle, and breaks too easily. It’s also highly toxic—”

Was it Osmium? It sounded like osmium.

“— but through refining, the addition of mana, and many other metals, the main one which is starsteel, untempered adamantium transitions from silver to something darker. Once the adamantium reaches the point of blackness, like a starless, moonless night, then comes pouring and forging. While the untempered metal can wait around for as long as needed, once the process of final smithing begins, it cannot be stopped, or else the adamantium is ruined.”

Not fully osmium, then. Actually a bunch of different metals. Erick had heard of starsteel spoken right alongside celesteel and hellite, but he didn’t know what starsteel actually was. He didn’t know what the other ones were, either. There were a ton of magical metals and Erick didn’t know about any of them, except for maybe Deep Sky Silver. He was pretty sure that one was (somehow) magical silver.

The woman continued, her eyes seeming to get brighter as she got more animated, “But with an adamantium weapon in hand, or armor on your body, and with the casting of magic into that item, you will begin the attunement process. For adamantium items, properly runed, can take in spellwork and you can use your [Force Weapon] through a sword, or your [Conjure Armor] as your adamantium armor, allowing them both the power of the adamantium, and the security of a Force spell in their control!” She realized she was speaking too loudly, and calmed. “It is this capability —and the accompanying runework— that makes adamantium so much better than every other metal out there, for adamantium takes in the spellwork it is provided, and multiplies that spellwork through the capability of unbreakable adamantium.

“Instead of a generalized enchantment that you can keep powered with crushed core dust, or by storing your flying sword near a grand core, you can use your own mana and your own spells to keep our adamantium items empowered.

“We can even work with you if you have specific, standard spells you wish imbued into your weapons or armor. [Flying Sword] is a popular choice and we already have many of those swords available.” The woman said, “In short, adamantium allows anyone to wield what is basically an artifact of their own making, under their own, personal control.”

The woman smiled brightly, knowing she had nailed her speech.

Erick was suitably impressed. He glanced around the room, looking at the weapons and armor in a new light. Then he turned back to the woman. “What about imbuing truly odd spells?”

With full confidence, the woman said, “Adamantium can handle almost any spell that you know of, as long as you have the Ancient Script with you. We can even work with you in the creation process if you wish to enchant a spell of your own into the metal, but this will create an item that only you, or someone with your same spells, could ever use.”

“Ah…” Erick said, “Well that’s slightly disappointing. I do not have the Ancient Script.”

The woman’s confidence did not falter; it grew. She strongly said, “You would need to speak to one of our Rune Smiths about uncovering the Ancient Script of your odd spells, but they can uncover the meanings behind most magic under tier three! If I may ask: What spell were you thinking of?”

“[Gate] is only tier 1, but that’s a ridiculous request. All of my spellwork is nonstandard, actually, so I’ll have to bring this up with Grosgrena or your Rune Smiths later.”

“Ah. Well.” The woman said, “We, for sure, have at least one Smith that knows of whatever standard third tier or lower spells you might wish enchanted into an item; I can promise you that. The entire Lower Catalogue of the Mage’s Guild is known to us, and even some of the higher standardized spells, too. [Weaken Monster]s is known to us, and we create many Standing Stones for the Greensoil Republic with that particular spell. We also know many different reflective spells, as those are an often-requested working.”

Erick almost showed her [Animadversion], but he decided against that.

Erick moved right along, “So what’s the deal with the formation-carving daggers?”

The woman kept right up with him. “A adamantium formation dagger provides excellent mana conductivity for formation-carving rituals and enchantment. Most formation carving tools require elementally or structurally aligned tools to do the job properly; for instance, hellite daggers are best for [Angel Banishing] weapon enchantments, providing a 125% efficiency for mana spent to rune crafted, passing off that strength to the rune itself, enabling the [Angel Banishing] even more power. The same metal would prove very poor at creating protective [Ward]s, though, and likely have an efficiency of less than 40%; you’d spend 100 mana for a basic anti-damage [Ward] but only get 40 points of defense.

“But adamantium is different. One adamantium dagger, properly attuned and aged, will conduct mana into a formation with an 80% to 115% ratio of use-to-loss, allowing you to imbue any spell that you know how to imbue without a strain on your resources. Obviously, adamantium is not the best tool for every job, but if you only have one tool, it is the best tool to have. The strength of variety cannot be underestimated.” She added, “Even so, we have no guarantee on the quality of the runework produced; just on the quality of the tool used to produce the runework.”

Erick understood a lot of that from context clues, but he had no experience with rune crafting.

Erick said, “I’ve used an erasing pen for enchanting, but never a dagger. Is it more or less the same?”

“Slightly different. A pen creates cavities which you then fill with dust and spellwork, but while a dagger does the same, it requires a lot more precision, for there is no easy undoing of the carving you have done. You’re carving magic directly into the history of the target item to be enchanted, after all.”

“Hmm. How does that work? The rune carving process itself.” Erick lifted his eyes toward a side of the room that held a few ritual daggers. They looked more or less like normal daggers, if a bit more blocky than usual. “I don’t see any reservoirs for rads— for cores on those daggers.”

The woman sat a bit straighter, and said, “You generally hold a grand core in one hand and the formation dagger in the other —usually your dominant hand— and thread the power of the core across your Shroud, flavoring mana as it passes through, then you imbue that power into the dagger, as you carve your spellwork into the target. Some people have success channeling their own mana, but this is an abnormal way to enchant, and The Black Blade holds no responsibility for the quality of enchantments produced with our daggers. The only reasons to buy an adamantium dagger as opposed to more specialized, single spellcarving daggers, is that an adamantium dagger will work for practically all carving purposes, and it will carve into almost any surface. Formation daggers made out of deep sky silver are at the other end of the spectrum, being rather terrible for this sort of work.” She added, “But carving into pre-worked adamantium with an adamantium tool is not possible. It takes an Adamantine Smith to be able to reclaim worked adamantium, and even that rarely ever works.”

This woman was incredibly knowledgeable. Not many people spoke so openly about the soul’s use in enchanting. Most books Erick had read on the subject seemed to specifically step around that part of the enchanting process. Erick reevaluated his opinion of the woman; she wasn’t just a vendor, she had to be a highly placed Smith herself. Or maybe she was an enchanter of some skill.

Erick said, “That’s all very informative. Thank you. What’s your name?”

“Verizag, archmage sir.” Verizag asked, “Have you decided on which weapons and armor you’d like?”

“Now that I know what I’m looking at, no.”

Verizag’s face did not betray the sudden worry in her heart. Had she fucked up? No. She hadn’t. She correctly deduced that the problem was with Erick.

Erick said, “You’ve been most helpful, but I had no idea that adamantium weapons and armor were capable of such magical feats. Or that ritual daggers were a way of enchanting that I hadn’t tried yet. All of this throws a few easy plans into chaos. For instance—” He turned back to Teressa. “Do you still want a flying shield? Or do you want something else?”

Teressa reported, “I want a [Flying Spell Reflection Shield]. A good one.”

“That’s one change from the plan.” Huh. Teressa must have made a good reflective magic spell when he wasn’t looking. Erick asked the rest of them, “How about everyone else?”

Nirzir said, “I still want a formation dagger.”

“I changed my mind, too.” Jane said, “I want the most personally secured sword possible. It doesn’t have to fly. Something that could never be taken or broken, if possible. I’m not sure what is necessary to accomplish that, though.”

Teressa added, “I want that, too. In addition.”

Poi said, “[Weightless Armor of Silent Reflections]. Full plate.”

And that was another spell made while Erick wasn’t looking. Good for him, too.

Erick turned back to Verizag, saying, “I don’t want anything right now, but they all know what they want, so let’s work on that. It’s my understanding that the creation of these items will be free, but I’ll be paying for the material and the Smiths’ work. I am not quite sure what that means, exactly. Which part is free?”

Verizag smiled professionally, as she avoided directly answering the question, saying, “A 25,000 gold formation will be priced at 13,500 gold. Mayor Arakag’s deal with you cuts the price of all of these items roughly in half.” Then she reached behind her desk and pulled out a catalogue of spellwork. “Shall we begin with your man’s armor?” She flipped through the alphabetically organized book, landing expertly on a page that was already marked with a tab. “Silent Reflections is a rather standard spell, but…”

Soon, an armorer came out and took Poi’s measurements, while other people worked with Jane and Teressa to finalize their desires into a plan of action. That took them a while. They’d get their personalized items in five days.

Nirzir’s dagger was perhaps the easiest purchase. She walked over to section of the showroom wall that held the five formation daggers currently on offer, and she picked one out. All five of them were of roughly the same blocky shape, but their size varied from between 15 centimeters, to 30. Nirzir picked out the second smallest one at 20 centimeters long. It was a bit large for her hands, but she’d grow into it.

As she held the dagger in her hands like it was an unexpected treasure, Nirzir said, “There’s a 5 year waiting list for this. And yet, here we are.”

Verizag said, “There’s a 5 year waiting list for custom products. The waiting list to get into the showroom to see the wares we have currently available is only one year.” She smiled brightly, adding, “But that’s only for people who aren’t Erick Flatt.” She said to him, “If you want a dagger too, in addition to whatever other item you desire, we can certainly accommodate that want.”

Nirzir raised her head to look at Erick.

Erick said, “I might still want a dagger after I talk to Grosgrena and figure out all of my options, but until then, I won’t take more than I need.”

Verizag looked to Erick with a bit more appreciation in her eyes. She gave a small bow.

Of the five of them, only Nirzir and Teressa got what they wanted that day.

Apparently, the Black Blade had an old orcol-sized shield in storage, fit for a Juggernaut, and enchanted exactly how Teressa wanted; [Flying Spell Reflection Shield] was apparently a standard-ish spell. The shield was as tall as Erick, half as wide, and pitch black with zero adornments, save for the runework on the protected backside of the shield. It weighed 65 kilos, but Teressa lifted it as though it weighed a small fraction of that. And then she cast into the shield, as Verizag instructed. Teressa's magic soaked into the dark metal like she had actually enchanted it herself, the entire thing taking on a grey cast that lingered in the runework groves and glinted along the edges. The whole thing seemed to shimmer with a mirror finish when the light hit it right.

Teressa grinned, showing off her lower fangs as she whispered, “It’s beautiful.” She let the shield go, and it hovered there in front of her. At her mental command, the shield moved to her back and held there, waiting for further instructions. Teressa laughed. “It’s great!”

“Yes.” Verizag said, “Adamantium armaments take in spellwork and make it their own, giving the strength of physicality to the ethereal and intangible. Aside from the adamantium shield itself, which is rated to stop a wyrm charge, your [Flying Spell Reflection Shield] should experience a marked increase in stability, magnifying the amount and quality of spellwork you can reflect by a large amount. The baseline increase for your particular shielding spell is anywhere between 2 to 4 tiers, depending on any number of factors. Would you like to test it out before you leave with it? We want you to be satisfied with your purchase.”

“Yes.” Teressa said, “I do want to test it out.”

Erick said, “We’ll be testing them out in private.”

Teressa stood straighter. “Uh. Yes. What he said.”

Verizag smirked, then nodded. “If you’re unhappy with the runework or what it does, bring it back and we can work on a custom shield. We can’t change that one, for it was made how it was made. We can’t even resize it, like how we resize the armors you see on the Elite Guard.” She added, “Almost all of those black armors out there are decades old.”

“Thank you, Verizag.” Erick said, “You’ve been very helpful.”

Verizag bowed deeper, then rose, and said, “Thank you for your patronage, Archmage Flatt. We hope our armaments serve you and your people well. If you ask the Old Smith about your orders for your daughter and your man, I am sure you will be allowed to see them actually get made in the coming days.”

“I might do that.”

- - - -

On the road back toward the nearest Teleport Square, which would get them back to city hall and their rooms in the tower, Jalrock paused in the middle of the street and turned to Erick.

Jalrock said, “Old Smith Grosgrena wishes to know if you’re ‘ready for some learning’, in her words.” He glanced to the people with Erick, adding, “But only you and your man, Poi.”

“Exactly as we already agreed, then.” This place wasn’t nearly as worrying as Songli had been, but Erick still wasn’t willing to go anywhere on his own unless he had to. He turned to his people, saying, “Jane, Nirzir, Teressa. I’ll meet you back at the room later. If this lasts into the night I might switch you, Teressa, out with Poi.”

Teressa said, “Understood.”

The party split.

- - - -

The Smithy was possibly the most protected space in all of Enduring Forge.

City hall was open to anyone who wanted to be there. You could walk down any street of the main city without facing too much scrutiny from the guards, and you could even sneak into the protected and empty evacuation shelter in the middle, though you’d get kicked out pretty damned fast, and you might get a black eye for your trouble. You could even venture down to the bottom level, to see some of the defensive structures and the constant war going on at the cavern’s surface. Erick wasn’t the only tourist visiting Enduring Forge that day, and he saw a lot with his scattered Ophiel.

According to Jalrock, the actual population of Enduring Forge was 110,000 people, while thirty thousand people were visitors, like Erick. Spur had similar ratios, but with at least twice as many people. Erick wasn’t sure how many people had moved to Spur since he had left, but there were certainly more there now than had been there before Last Shadow’s Feast.

But the Smithy was the one fully protected part of Enduring Forge. None of the visitors were allowed past the Teleport Square that sat outside the massive metal edifice that surrounded the Smithy, like it was its own private city. In a lot of ways, it was exactly that. They had their own water systems, their own gardens, and full-scale anti-magic runework that encircled the entire place; a sphere of power that fully encircled almost the entire platform; all except for the spit of land where Erick now stood, atop the only public Teleport Square on the island.

Erick suspected the protective sphere was actually a Domain of some sort.

According to Jalrock, the Smiths brought metals and otherwise into the Smithy through a [Gate], provided to them by some contractor they didn’t talk about. For visitors (which were very rare) and for students and faculty (which usually stayed at the Smithy full time), the only way into the island was the giant door in front of Erick. That door was ten meters tall, and three meters wide. No one stood at that door, protecting it from the outside; that would have been a liability. There were people standing on the other side, though, and they began moving to open the massive thing as Erick stepped closer.

Like a ponderous beast, the gates opened with nary a sound save for the clacking of ratchet mechanisms inside the walls.

Jalrock continued to speak, saying, “[Scry]s from an outside source will not pierce the barrier, so Yggdrasil’s eye will go out, but since you are going inside yourself, your Ophiel shouldn’t experience any such problems—”

Ophiel trilled in recognition of his name.

“—and. Uh! There’s Old Smith Grosgrena.” Jalrock bowed as he stepped away from Erick, saying, “It has been a pleasure. Thank you for your fight against the Dark. I don’t think you understand the boon your actions have brought us, but know that the people of the Underworld know you as our Savior of Lig—”

Grosgrena moved like an ancient shrunken spectre, as she stepped forward. She came to within five meters of her side of the wall, moving a lot faster than Jalrock would have liked, for sure, because Grosgrena called out, “Jalrock! Quit altering his friction!”

“I will leave you now,” Jalrock said, stepping backward, going demure and submissive.

Grosgrena called out to Erick, “Come on, now. I ain’t as young as I used to be, and even if you are super smart this learning is gonna take you a while.”

Erick said, “Thank you for the opportunity to learn, Grosgrena.” As he stepped forward, to cross the barrier that surrounded the Smithy, he sent a ‘Farewell, for now,’ to Yggdrasil, right before the [Scry] eye vanished from his shoulder. Ophiel went temporarily blind, all of his eyes turning milky white before his sight came back, as Erick stepped through the doors, into the Smithy proper.

And the world changed.

From outside, this place looked like a collection of rough buildings and smokestacks and carts of metal.

But from the inside...

A bunch of buildings sat all over the place, while green grass grew in the spaces between those buildings, and nice shade trees provided nice sitting spots on rolling hills here and there. The whole place reminded Erick of college. Sure, there was magic in the air, and heavy duty spellwork locked this place off from the rest of the world, but students of the Smithing arts studied books under those trees, and more than one gaggle of girls way over yonder talked about whatever, like the world outside wasn’t a hellish danger to them all.

Grosgrena let Erick appreciate the view for a moment, before saying, “Not what you expected?”

“It makes sense that you show illusions to the rest of the world.” Erick said, “I did not expect to see what looked like a university.”

“Got to teach the next generation, and not everyone is an Adamantine Smith. A lot of our youngsters prefer the Adamantine Rune Carver path.” The Old Smith started walking forward, and Erick walked beside her. “We even have a few more esoteric Classes in the mix. Adamantine Tailors do a damned fine job of making robes for the magey types out there, while Adamantine Artillerists are what you’d see Down Below ensuring that the bigger monsters never stick their heads into the Cavern. Those explosion junkies shoot [Fireball]s from their adamantine cannons that are large enough that you might call them Super Large Area spells.” She added, “Not technically, though; that’s just the power of adamantium for you.”

The doors to the compound closed behind them with a loud ka-shunk and a rtch-tch-tch-tch.

“The actual smithing of adamantium is done by Adamantium Smiths, though.” Grosgrena said, “The rest of them can move it around a bit, but it takes a Smith to actually work the metal like it deserves to be worked.”

“Verizag at the Black Blade spoke up the stuff quite well.” Erick said, “We still have to test the veracity of some of her claims, but from what I heard, adamantium is truly a miracle metal.”

“It’s alright.” Grosgrena smirked. “It’s what we built our power on, for sure. There might be other metals better suited for specific needs, but adamantium can do everything pretty damn well.” She stopped at a crossroads between two different buildings, while the way ahead passed through an opening in meter high wall, before continuing on to even more buildings. Down that way, Erick saw smoke billowing up from more than a few structures, while here, there was no smoke anywhere; just office-like spaces. Grosgrena said, “Before we begin, I need to tell you a few things. Mainly: Whatever adamantium work you do here likely won’t be repeatable anywhere else; not without either [Duplicate] or an Adamantium Class. It’s like with your Particle Mage Only spells. I heard [Call Lightning] was one of em? Yeah. You understand. Only an Adamantium Class can truly work with adamantium after it’s alloyed and tempered. This is one of the main reasons we’re even agreeing to teach you at all, for even if you got the learning, without the Class, it’s useless.

“But! You’re you, so if you do figure out how to circumvent this reality as we know it, I’d warn you not to go spreading around this knowledge. Make no mistake, for we would never do anything against you. We honor what you did inside Ar’Kendrithyst.” She stared up at Erick, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening as she squinted at him. “It’s the wrought. Adamantium is their Royal Caste, and they tolerate Enduring Forge since we got deals and history with them, but they ruthlessly go after anyone else usurping their strength. Know that the wrought basically allow us to live and sell our weapons because we’re allied against the Dark, and that’s about it.” She stared for a bit longer, gauging whether or not Erick understood.

And he did. Maybe more than Grosgrena did—

Maybe just as much, actually. He shouldn’t go assuming Grosgrena’s history, for she had probably seen a lot in her long life down here in the dark.

But how Erick understood it: The wrought were one of the main forces that marched on the world when a Forgotten Campaign was called by the gods to erase some catastrophic new knowledge from civilization. So far, the only Forgotten Campaign that Erick was absolutely sure about was when the gods erased Atomic Magic from the world. But now, hearing what he was hearing, he thought there might have been a Forgotten Campaign against the easy knowledge of adamantium, too. If adamantium actually gave physical weight to the ethereal, and if it was usable by everyone, and if it was a simple alloy instead of its own metal, and if it required a specific Class to fully use (that part was the biggest giveaway), then yes; there had to have been a Forgotten Campaign against adamantium, too.

Erick’s own experience with Particle Magic checked a lot of those same boxes.

He hoped Particle Magic wouldn’t suffer the same fate.

Erick said, “I understand.”

“I knew you would, soon as I laid it out there. And now that the warning is out of the way:” Grosgrena gestured left, forward, then to the right, asking, “How do you want to start. Academically? Practically? Or do you want to pull apart some metals for me, and for yourself? I got some untempered adamantium if you want to take it apart; see what’s inside.”

Erick instantly said, “Let’s pull apart some metals.”

The wrought probably should scare him more than they did, but whatever! Erick was going to get his knowledge, and he was going to use that knowledge to make the world a nicer place.

And adamantium Gates sounded just about perfect; practically immutable and highly magical, the best combination. He knew there was a Worldly Path reason to come here, and this was that reason.

Grosgrena smiled wide. “Hot damn! Let’s go fuck up some alloys!” With an excited step, the ancient woman practically hopped down the right path, toward a large building without any windows, and without much foot traffic.

- - - -

In a room ten meters to a side and half that in height, Erick and Grosgrena stood beside a table laden with ingots, most of which weighed in at a single kilogram, but some of which were much smaller than that. The majority were silver or grey, but practically all of the smaller ingots were of other colors. Bright orange, mossy green, gold, white, blue. The smallest ingot was the size of one of Erick’s fingernails.

The room itself was solid stone and constructed with magical experiments in mind. A few iron blast shields, each a good two meters square and half a hand thick, rested in an iron holder so they didn’t crush the floor with their weight. They had large bolts on their sides that could slide into holes in the floor, along with foldout triangles to keep them from toppling. If Erick needed to use one or two, there they were.

One such metal plate was already set up to the side, protecting two of Grosgrena’s assistants with their paperwork and various scales. They were two twenty-somethings, one male the other female, on the barest cusp of being not fully human; they were demi of some pink flavor who were both probably the equivalent of grad students. That iron plate was a precaution for them, since they knew a bit about what Erick might be doing to pull apart Grosgrena’s metals.

Poi stood near the grad students, but not with them.

“I don’t need a metal plate.” Erick said, “I can control the heat.”

“If you’re sure, then you’re sure. I certainly don’t need one.” Grosgrena gestured to the table of ingots. “Which one do you want to start with?” She tapped a milky silver-like ingot, saying, “This one is adamantium before the magic. In this form you can treat it like normal iron.” She gestured to the rest, saying, “Iron. Steel. Rustless steel. It’s all in there. Start where you want.”

Erick looked over the smaller ingots, for something caught his eye. One of the small silver ingots was messing up his mana sense—

“Oh. That one’s Extreme Light material.” Erick said, “I can’t work with that one.”

It was probably uranium or maybe thorium. There were only four stable elements past lead and Erick hadn’t made any of those Condensing spells. Perhaps he could make the spells for Bismuth, Thorium, Protactinium, and Uranium, but he didn’t feel like experimenting in that direction.

Let’s not touch the radioactive materials, shall we? Don’t want a repeat of the Atomic Ban incident.

“Dammit.” Grosgrena frowned at the tiny bit of metal, saying, “I suppose you couldn’t either, could you. Meh. Fine. Can’t do shit with that stuff besides throw it in a bomb or in the trash. Trash it is.” She waved a hand and a tiny [Cleanse] drowned the radioactive ingot. The spell took a few seconds to turn the ingot into thick air, so Grosgrena hadn’t use a normal [Cleanse], but soon enough, the radioactive metal was gone.

Erick grabbed what he suspected was a steel bar, saying, “Let’s start with this.” He moved away from the table of ingots.

Grosgrena followed, saying, “Tell me what you’re doing while you do it.”

“Sure.” Erick explained as he began to throw spells into position, “First comes [Particle Vacuum], to clear out the space of any stray particles to ensure a clean working environment. [Particle Vacuum] should come out in the Script in a year. While that spell is warming up— see the mist it expels? Those are particles inside the space. Anyway. I have Ophiel use an [Incandescent Aura]— The base spell for that one should have entered the Script back when Particle Magic became a part of the Open Script months ago.

“And now Ophiel throws a lot of mana into that spell, ramping it up to strength, as I use my lightform to toss the steel into the center where— Yup! [Condense Iron] secures the metal from falling down as I take my lightform away. Now comes the tricky part. I start layering many, many more spells across the space.” Erick took a minute to do this, while he had Ophiels help with their own spells, to cut down on the necessary time it took to erect the working due to the limitations of the Script Second. “And then we put more of these spells down in ever-tightening concentric circles.

“See the basic structure? I’m overlapping 81 different Condense spells, but most of those spells existed outside of that overlap. This arrangement pulls metals away from each other. I made the iron part the largest, and the other ones smaller, because I’m pretty sure this is mostly iron. But I might be wrong.

“And now, with the steel bar sitting in the center, and the whole thing prepared, Ophiel turns up the heat.”

Ophiel trilled in violins as his fiery aura rapidly began melting the metal bar, turning it red hot, then yellow, then into melted white metal. Soon, floating blobs of metal began separating left and right, passing out of constraints of their neighboring Condensing spells, into their own sections of spellwork. And then deeper.

Erick nodded, saying, “And... yup.” He pointed, “That one is [Condense Iron], and this metal bar looks to be mostly iron. This spellwork will last another nine minutes, so I’ll have to renew it now and again to ensure that it all stays working as it should. It only takes about seven minutes to separate the steel into its parts, though, so this should be done long before then.”

Grosgrena had watched, enchanted, but now she spoke up, “I thought Particle Magic couldn’t latch onto individual particles, but this clearly can.” Slightly unsure, and showing the barest amount of fear for the first time, she added, “At least that’s what I heard of the discipline. I could be wrong.”

“You’re not wrong. As of three months ago, Particle Magic still couldn’t affect individual atoms.” Erick said, “Either something changed, which is the far-off possibility. Or —and this is much more likely— this level of control is only possible because of high temperatures and the presence of a pure vacuum altering how the Condense spells operate. Maybe this sort of setup produces an ‘atom soup’-like effect, allowing for precision control, like how [Small Spark] is capable of affecting electrons but electrons are much, much smaller than atoms. Maybe the heat here frees up these atoms so that they move freely, like how electrons move in most metals.”

“Ah.” Grosgrena lost her fear as she stared up at the brightly burning metals. “That might explain it. Spells do weird things when you get enough of them together.”

“Aye; that could be a part of it, too. But I don’t have a real answer as to why this works now.” Erick said, “I might have informed Rozeta how I thought Particle Magic should work, but I did not create many of these spells. I got [Condense Iron] from the tier one [Condense Particle] just like everyone else.”

Grosgrena nodded, her dark eyes seeing only the glowing metal before her. “It’s quite beautiful.” And then she came back down from the beauty, saying, “Complicated as shit, though. How the shit do you know which one up there is iron and which is carbon? That’s too many dammed spells.”

Erick chuckled, then said, “I remember.” He turned his gaze upon the metal particulate here and there, and then to the large ball of glowing iron, saying, “I’ve thought about trying to combine all of these spells into one so I don’t have to set this up every time, but not yet. Not until after I understand more of what’s happening here.”

“Ha! 83 spells combined into one! I suppose if anyone could do it, it’d be an archmage.”

Erick smiled.

Soon, the separation was done. The metal bits had filed out into eleven different Condensing locations. Erick had Ophiel turn off the heat, and then he grabbed the clumps of stuff with his lightform, as he simultaneously filled up the vacuum with hard light. With the space secured, Erick canceled the vacuum and slowly relaxed his light inward, prevented a catastrophic implosion. He told Grosgrena what he was doing as he did it, talking about how dangerous vacuums were to biological life and how much a poorly released vacuum could ruin everything.

And then, the dissection was over and Erick had twelve bits of metal in his light. He set them down with Grosgrena’s assistants, naming them as he did.

“Iron, the largest, of course. Then you got what I think you purposefully put into the steel; carbon, manganese, titanium, nickel, chromium. The copper might be intended? The tin, too, maybe. I don’t know. The silicon is likely unintended, and it got in there with some sand, or something. Sulfur and phosphorus probably aren’t intended? Maybe part of the smelting process? I don’t know. There’s tungsten, and you probably intended that, but I don’t know enough about metallurgy to be sure.” He added, “There was also some air trapped in the steel, but I didn’t hold onto those. Oxygen, nitrogen, stuff like that. All of those escaped the Condensing traps.”

The metals had different names on Veird, and Erick used those names when giving out his list, but inwardly, Erick went with his own names for this sort of stuff. The only metals that he didn’t do that for were for the magical metals, but he’d probably stop doing that as soon as he tore apart the metals sitting on Grosgrena’s table over there. He’d probably still call ‘antirhine’ as ‘antirhine’, though, instead of ‘lead’, or at least when other people were around.

As the assistants silently, quickly weighed the metals like their lives depended on it, or perhaps they just wanted to make a good impression, Grosgrena stared at the outcome of Erick’s work. Wide-eyed, and looking fifty years younger, her heart beat hard and happy. She got a giddy little grin. The Old Smith even sighed, like a woman cracking open the first page of a book she knew she was going to love.

Grosgrena said, “Enduring Forge needs a Particle Mage; I can tell. You wanna stay here? Learn proper metallurgy over a full ten year course? We might could fit all that learning into one year, but certainly no less than that.”

Erick hadn’t been in Enduring Forge long, but it certainly reminded him of Spur. It was a nice place, with a lot of the same type of transient populations, and a lot of the same types of citizenry. A lot more humans, though, but there were certainly all the other types, too. Dragonkin, incani, demi, even shifters and harpies. Goblins instead of orcols, though. Erick still hadn’t seen another orcol in town aside from Teressa. Enduring Forge even seemed to have a pixie population.

No wrought, though.

And here Grosgrena was, giving him a genuine offer to emigrate. Her offer wasn’t made out of a desire for physical power, either, but for the learning and sharing of knowledge. And yet…

Erick said, “Sorry. I’m not moving here. Maybe I’ll give you guys one end of the Gate Network once I figure that out, though I might need your help to make the Gates themselves.”

“That’s good enough for me.” Grosgrena asked her assistants, “What’s the ratios!”

“Shit steel, ma’am,” said the first assistant, the man. “Impurities are too high.”

“That’s correct. That is shit steel.” In what was likely a teaching moment for the assistants, Grosgrena asked the woman weigher, “Why is it shit steel? What’s in there that shouldn’t be?”

“Copper, titanium, tin, silicon, sulfur, phosphorus, tungsten.” The woman added, “Ma’am!”

“Yup. That’s right. There’s space for titanium in proper steel, though not in the best quality steel.” Grosgrena turned back to Erick. “Let’s pull apart the adamantium.”

Erick huffed a small laugh. “Already? Okay.”

“Yeah yeah.” Grosgrena said, “You proved your system works and I want to see what your magic has to say about our Class-defining metal. Rip that shit apart!”

Erick did so.

The spell took a good while to complete, and when it was over, Erick had a few piles of metal for his troubles. He was rather surprised at the results.

One bar of pre-tempered adamantium came out as 50% platinum, 15% gold, 15% osmium, 10% iridium, 5% nickel, and what had to be a purposeful inclusion of silicon at 4%. The remaining one percent of the metal bar’s weight simply vanished; it had to have been some trace gaseous elements, like nitrogen or oxygen.

Erick said, “So that’s a lot of platinum in your adamantium—” And then he realized something more. He glanced through the eyes of an Ophiel on the roof, looking at the massive chains that held Enduring Forge in the center of its cavern. Beyond those chains, at the cavern wall, were similarly sized ‘staples’ that kept the cavern from shifting. Erick came back, saying, “Oh, wow. That’s a lot of platinum out there. A lot of gold, too.”

Grosgrena’s assistants were silent and worried at Erick’s reaction. But they said nothing.

Grosgrena smiled wide, as she said, “Yup. All of it’s adamantium now, though, which is a might lot better than plain old gold and platinum.”

“Right. Yeah…” Erick had another thought, and decided to voice it, saying, “I wondered why no one used platinum here for currency. Or even in jewelry or whatnot. It’s even more precious here than it was back home, isn’t it? That’s because it’s such a useful magical metal?”

“Oh yes.” Grosgrena spoke without reservation, “Platinum is more than useful, it’s practically essential. Platinum is part of practically every high-grade enchantment, for it can take and multiply every element you imbue into it, becoming a different magical metal in the process. Celesteel, hellite, and starsteel are the three most useful options, but practically any other element can be infused into platinum. Forcesteel is a big one, too, but that’s like making a mop out of silk; you can do it, but for Force magic runes, sticking the runes in rustless steel is good enough. Watersteel. Airsteel. All of them are possible, but all of them are a waste of platinum. Unless you’re enchanting some tier 9 spellwork, of course.”

While all of that was rather interesting, Erick focused on one thing, “Why have ‘steel’ in the name of those when there’s no steel involved, at all?”

“I bet it’s some obfuscation handed down from Oceanside eleven hundred years ago, or some shit like that, and the angels just went along with it. Demons didn’t, though; they went with hell-‘ite’ instead of ‘steel’. But that’s a guess and it don’t matter none to me where the names came from.” Grosgrena shrugged. “I can dig up a historian if you want to know more about that.”

“Maybe some other time. But maybe you know about this one: What about shadowsteel and lightsteel? I’ve never heard of those, but now I’m wondering.”

Grosgrena smiled. “Now I do know about those, and you do too. Adamantite—”

Which was the name Grosgrena gave to osmium, in its base form; had to be.

“—is thrice over shadowsteel and lightsteel and illusionsteel.” She continued, “No steel in any of them, though, and no platinum either. It’s complicated. Stonesteel is actually better known as dauntless jade, but that’s not steel neither; it’s crystal stone. Adding to that confusion, some of the elemental-imbued ‘steel’s actually are a type of steel. Bloodsteel is actually steel.”

Erick paused in thought. “… But adamantium is clearly dark. I haven’t seen a single instance of it being lightsteel at all? And this adamantite—” Osmium. “—isn’t bright white, or dark, or shadowy at all? It’s plain silverish?”

Grosgrena nodded, knowingly. “That’s a complicated story, but it basically melts down to: Melemizargo did that. Platinum used to be able to become shadowsteel and brightsteel and illusionsteel. And then Melemizargo ripped those three away from the rest, fucking with them all and creating adamantite in the process…” She paused, as if deciding how far to go with the story, then she decided that was far enough. “Some of the oldest pieces of untouched adamantium are purest white, though that’s also only what the wrought have told us. Don’t have first hand knowledge of any of that, and it’s all ancient history, anyway.” Grosgrena said, “Enduring Forge has always been black, though. Most people are put off by the black, but it grows on you.”

Erick had a small epiphany. He said, “Practically no one else has this knowledge you just laid out there, or if they do, then it’s not in their published books.” He added, “You’re some of the best enchanters in the world, aren’t you.”

“We’d like to think so.” Grosgrena said, “But we’re only in the top 5 percent, overall. The elites of Oceanside still got everyone beat in generalized study, but not everyone can do what we do when it comes to runework and metals. In that, we’re top half percent, easy. Not including the wrought, of course.”

Erick went, “Huh.”

He was gonna need to learn runework, wasn’t he. Well! Maybe he’d have better luck with this sort of enchanting than with normal enchanting. Casting spells into an item in order to give physicality to a magic seemed a lot nicer than imbuing spellwork into an item that could then only be used a set number of times, like how most of the world enchanted. Seemed nicer than how the Shades enchanted too, by mutilating souls and shoving them into items in order to have those souls cast the assigned magic. Nicer than bloodwork formations, too, like how Xue and Ari enchanted.

… There was probably a lot of relations between bloodwork formations and runework. Eh. Oh well. Missed connections, and all that.

Anyway.

Enduring Forge’s approach to runework seemed rather compatible with Erick’s Undertow line of spells. Pretty darn perfectly compatible, actually. Instead of having [Flying Sword] runes in a sword, and requiring the user to have that spell themselves, Erick could imbue an Undertow effect alongside the [Flying Sword] spell and then anyone could use the flying sword just by, for example, sticking their finger in a slot in the weapon where the [Undertow Drain] was exposed to the outside.

There was probably no way to make ambient mana turn into magic, though.

Erick asked to be sure, “Have you all figured out how to make ambient mana become magic? Any specific funneling systems, or perhaps through a manacycler?”

With a strong voice, Grosgrena said, “Can’t be done, far as I know. Best we can do is rune up adamantium for the end-user to extend and empower their own spellwork. The user still has to have the spellwork, though; we haven’t ever found a way around that.”

Maybe not yet, they haven’t, if Erick’s ideas about Undertow and adamantium turned out to be valid.

“You’re using the illusionsteel part of adamantium to do all of this, aren’t you?” Erick said, “To smudge reality into subjective Reality.”

“Hmm. Somewhat correct. You can put runes on a rock face, if you want. They won’t last long, but it can be done.” Grosgrena said, “Adamantium’s various shadow-illusion-light aspects do allow the metal an unrivaled ability to do what we tell it to do, and with great strength.” She gestured back to the table of ingots, her eyes full of interest. “Let’s continue?”

“Absolutely.” Erick asked, “Got a request for the next one?”

Grosgrena quickly pointed to the bar of pale white metal, about the size of three of Erick’s fingers. To Erick’s mana sense the metal glowed with a pale gold shimmer, but otherwise, it was completely boring to look at. She said, “I got a bet riding on this one. I think it’s a single source metal, but a friend of mine thinks its an alloy.”

“What is it?” Erick asked, stepping to Grosgrena’s side at the table.

“Holyite.” Grosgrena said, “It’s impossible to find as a vein, but you can refine it from certain types of rocks and crystals. Takes a damned lot of steps to do, but the end result takes to divine magic, if you can get it that refined.” She nodded at the Crystal Star on Erick’s chest, saying, “Your Silver Star was likely made out of holyite— before Koyabez changed it, of course. All real Silver Stars are. Almost all Holy-aligned items with any actual godly power behind them are made out of holyite before they gods are asked to anoint them, but even without a god behind it, holyite is still partially divine.” She added, “Any metal can be made into holyite, though, if a god wishes it so.”

“Ahhh.” Erick put a hand on the artifact pinned to his chest as he stared down at the silvery-white ingot. His Star had been about a hundredth of the mass of the ingot when he first got it. Erick only had his mana sense and his original Silver Star both at the same time, for a little bit of time, but he was pretty sure that his original Silver Star had a tiny golden glow. This block of holyite was ten times as bright as his original Silver Star. But compared to the current Crystal Star, which glowed with a radiant gold light when focused upon by a good mana sense, this block of holyite was barely a flickering candle. Erick asked, “This stuff is unaligned?”

“Yup; not dedicated to any gods.” Grosgrena said, “And I want to know what it actually is. Is it an alloy? Or is it an individual particle? I want to know.”

Erick picked up the small ingot, saying, “Time to find out.”

Five minutes later, they had their answer.

“It’s aluminum!” Erick said.

Grosgrena held the sphere in her hands, and stared.

Erick digressed, “And the barest bit of copper and manganese. Mostly aluminum, though.”

Grosgrena’s eyes were wide. She barely paid any attention at all to the two other drops of metal that had come out of the refining process. The aluminum sphere was perfectly shiny, reflecting the world like a mirror. But as moments passed and the sphere was exposed to the air outside of the vacuum, oxidation began on that surface, dulling the sphere. With enough time, Erick was sure that the aluminum would return to its previous silver-white look. It already looked to be regaining its small ‘divine fire’ glow.

While Erick had been pulling apart the metal with high heat, the flickers of Holy surrounding it had faded, and Grosgrena had panicked a bit, but now those nascent flickers of gold began to return to the manasphere, and Grosgrena had relaxed. The glow seemed to have returned even stronger, too, but the sphere was still barely Holy; no gods had descended to actually anoint the metal, as far as Erick could tell.

Grosgrena had yet to speak. She hadn’t even let the aluminum out of her grasp, to let her assistants weigh it.

Erick spoke again, “Looks like purity makes it more holy, I guess?”

He almost said that he knew a few ways to extract aluminum from various sources, but he decided to keep those to himself, for now. Grosgrena was obviously having a moment.

And then the moment was over.

Grosgrena sniffed, blinked, and handed the sphere off to her assistants to let them weigh it. She wiped away a stray tear as she turned and looked up at Erick, saying, “Which number is that? ‘Atomic number’ was it?”

“13.”

“It’s thirteen! Ha! Fuck. I coulda—” Grosgrena asked, “What’s iron’s number?”

“26.”

She nodded, then, tentatively, she asked, “Platinum?”

“78.”

Grosgrena’s face fell. “Ach. Shit.” She scowled. “What’s osmium?”

She asked after adamantite, but Erick was already mentally substituting that one, and he would likely continue to do so going forward. The word ‘adamantium’ had come from his daughter, anyway, when she told him it was the ‘toughest metal in the world, so it must be adamantium!’.

Erick said, “Osmium is 76.”

“Ah! Damn it all to shit.” Grosgrena huffed, then she let her worries go, saying, “The most anyone around here has gotten up to is tin, at 50, but they skipped around a lot. No one has been able to get silver or gold, but everyone who’s truly tried has gotten iron at 26, then they skipped 27, but continued on to nickel, copper, and zinc, all in a row at 28, 29, and 30. One or two people have managed to get cobalt at 27, but most don’t even try because failing seems to have compounding effects; nosebleeds first, then eventually face and lung hemorrhages.” She said, “We’ll be able to change up a few things thanks to Particle Magic, but we still need to figure all of that stuff out.” She gestured to the table. “Continue?”

“Yes.”

- - - -

Deep Sky Silver, a lustrous, lightly blue mirror-like silver metal, turned out to be 99.9% silver, but Erick’s spellwork killed the magic inside that metal. That magic had been what turned it into deep sky silver, instead of just normal silver.

As the sphere of silver came out of the heat, it tarnished almost instantly with a sheen of dark rainbows.

Grosgrena said, “Yup. That’s gonna happen a lot. You ruined the magic, but that’s fine. We can put it back in with enough effort. Let’s continue.”

- - - -

Hellite, Celesteel, and Starsteel were each beautiful in their own way. Hellite was ruby pink and warm to the touch. Celesteel had an iridescent sheen to its white, cool surface. Starsteel was a sky full of stars trapped in ingot form.

All of them came out of the furnace as plain platinum, now tarnished and missing less than 1% of their weights, for each had some ‘impurities’ removed. Hellite had a drop of extra copper. Celesteel had a drop of extra titanium. Starsteel had a drop of extra iron.

And with that sort of evidence before him, Erick couldn’t call them ‘impurities’.

Grosgrena said, “Yup. They’re in the exact right measurements, too. It’s part of the imbuing process. We’ll see all of that later.”

- - - -

Bloodsteel was iron, with traces of all the metals normally found in blood. Carbon, mainly. But also sodium, potassium, zinc, calcium, manganese, cobalt, copper, magnesium. Even molybdenum.

Grosgrena said, “Yup. Great for blood magic items. Not much use outside of that. All those impurities make it brittle until you craft it into a Healing Magic item, then those impurities stabilize the intent of the rod of [Greater Treat Wounds], for example, creating something worth twenty times its weight in gold.” She added, “Conservative estimate, obviously.”

- - - -

Rustless steel was stainless steel, but by a different name. It was mostly iron, but also 22% chromium, 4% molybdenum, and 8% nickel, along with another 1% trace metals. Barely any carbon at all, though.

“Yup,” Grosgrena said, “That’s right, too. A lot less carbon in rustless steel. A lot more of a bunch of other shit.”

- - - -

Before Erick knew it, several hours had passed. The sun had set hours ago, and the rent in the roof of the Cavern of Enduring Forge showed stars and a deep night above. Erick had pulled apart a full 43 ingots of metals both magical and not, learning a lot in the process, and coming to a conclusion which he shared with Grosgrena.

“I think imbuing a metal with magic adds a tiny fraction of weight, but not much.” Erick said, “Maybe not anything at all, really? All the missing weights could easily be gasses that escaped the set up.”

Grosgrena said, “We’ve done tests on this stuff. Magic weighs down metals, though it’s only about a gram or two per kilogram of metal. Those tests involve antirhine, though, and we don’t keep that shit around anything that we care about.”

“Oh. Well. Good to know someone has already done the tests.”

Grosgrena nodded. “Gravitysteel is pretty damned hard to weigh correctly, but even that stuff is only about a gram of magic to a kilogram of metal.”

“Huh.”

Grosgrena moved right along, asking, “You want me to set you up with someone else to talk about something, this night? I’m beat, but there’s always someone awake; we don’t keep the same day-night hours that surface dwellers do, so don’t go thinking that you’re keeping someone awake.” She added, “The Forge at night is the best time to learn the practical side of this stuff because barely anyone is in there right now. Want to meet a working Smith?”

Erick grinned, happy to know that the Old Smith even cared about the small stuff, like sleeping schedules—

Poi laughed. And then he cut his laugh short with a small cough, making both the first and second sounds he had made all afternoon.

Erick instantly said to Grosgrena, “I’ll show up tomorrow when I show up, if that’s alright with you. It’s time to check on my people and do something else for a while.”

“Sure enough.” Grosgrena waved, saying, “The way out is the way you came in; don’t try [Teleport]ing or lightstepping through the shield. They got instructions to you let you in and out of the main gate whenever you wish. The Smithy is open to you, but don’t poke around anywhere besides the Campus.” She shrugged. “Or do. I’m sure you’ll end up swamped with people wanting to talk to you, though.”

“Then I’ll take my leave. See you tomorrow.”

Grosgrena nodded.

Erick went to Poi, near the door, and glanced to the table of metals on his way out. Grosgrena’s assistants had carefully labeled everything with weights and identifications. It had only been the work of an afternoon, but it would send ripples throughout the entire Smithing community, for sure. The two of them left the room, and kept going.

Back in the room, Grosgrena went to the table and stared down at the work, her eyes carefully moving from orb to orb.

For a little while, as Erick walked down the hallway to exit the building, he watched through the mana as the Old Smith’s stare firmly locked on the sphere of holyite. The aluminum was inert to the eyes, but to Erick’s mana senses, it started to flicker with the smallest bits of proper divine fire, like a wreath of golden flames, or someone suddenly upping the burner on a gas stove to full. And then that glow faded. Back to ephemeral. Like a bonfire that couldn’t decide if it wanted to light, or not. While it was fully powered, though, it had taken on a mirror finish. Now, it was back to cloudy silver white.

Erick asked Poi, ‘What god do you think wants the holyite?’

‘I have no idea.’ Poi sent, ‘Maybe don’t go releasing the knowledge of easy aluminum to everyone.’

Erick smirked, sending, ‘Why Poi! You must have read my mind! I was just thinking the same thing.’

Poi leveled a glare at Erick.

Erick changed the topic. ‘What do you want for dinner?’

- - - -

Laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, Erick had a few thoughts, mostly brought on by what he had seen with the aluminum. Pure aluminum normally oxidized and formed a hard layer which would prevent further oxidation. This is what Erick had seen with the aluminum (holyite) sphere. But then some divine empowerment happened and the white coating went away, leaving behind a mirror finish. Apparently, under a diving touch, aluminum turned shiny and incorruptible, and looked exactly how Erick’s Silver Star had looked before Koyabez changed it into the Crystal Star.

Erick couldn’t replicate the divine empowerment turning metals shiny…

Or maybe he could? An [Undertow anti-Oxidation] enchantment seemed possible. He could even stuff that onto a shield, or armor, or whatever, as long as he figured out the proper runework for such a spell.

Eminently doable, actually.

But a physical solution to oxidation might be better.

If steel was decent enough for most enchants, but the problem with steel was oxidation destroying long term viability, then perhaps Erick could fix that with galvanization. Galvanizing steel runework seemed cheaper than using rustless steel as the base material, and it was certainly cheaper than using any of the platinum group metals as anchors for enchantments

… But then again, all galvanization did was hide the steel under zinc. Erick would need to ensure a good bond between the zinc and the steel to prevent flaking and destruction, but even if Erick overcame that hurdle, damage to that zinc would destroy the protective coating, and eventually lead to failure. Weapons and armor certainly suffered damage rather regularly.

It was probably better to make an [Undertow anti-Oxidation] runework spell, or something to that effect; something that Erick could attach to any bit of metalwork—

Ah.

[Mend] was already right there, wasn’t it?

… But [Mend] could only do so much, though, since even [Mend] couldn’t fix gradual permanent shifts in an item’s history. Oxidation was one such example of a gradual, permanent shift.

Well. These were all good theories and questions for long-term enchantment viability, weren’t they? If Grosgrena didn’t know the answers to these few questions, then someone over at the Smithy probably would. He would ask her tomorrow.

Eventually Erick’s thoughts wound down, and sleep claimed him. He had been up for almost 48 hours at that point, so he slept rather well.

In the morning, he awoke to Nirzir cooking a nice breakfast. While they ate, he had a nice little conversation with everyone about metals and magic and certain ideas about [Gate] and runework. Erick mostly just talked, while Poi and Teressa ate in relative silence and Jane and Nirzir offered small comments, but they didn’t know much about metalwork, either.

Before he left for the Smithy, he checked in on the grass travelers. Everyone was fine; nothing was on fire. Linxel was fine and Clan Pale Cow was still entertaining guests. After those checkups, Erick swung Ophiel over to the mountain where he Blessed people, and Blessed the single person waiting under the [Undertow Star], by the platform.

Not thirty meters from the platform and still very much under the Star’s influence, there rose a new church to Koyabez. It was small; only about three stories tall. But it was sturdy. Erick checked in with the priests on staff and talked to them for a bit, and then he enabled a few more priests to work under the Star without being subject to its [Luminosity] or Drain.

And then it was time to get back to the Smithy.

- - - -

“… My instinct is to tell you that doesn’t work.” Grosgrena said, “But you might prove me wrong and I don’t need that in my life. So what I will tell you... Is that this ‘galvanization’ process with molten zinc is a novel idea— And you want to use even more chemicals between each step to ensure a good bond? Repeat that all for me, again?”

Erick summarized, “Acid to bare the metal, then a coating of flux to ensure it stays bare, and then a dip in molten zinc which will burn away the flux and ensure a good bond between the zinc and the steel. Zinc will turn white as it oxidizes, but then the oxidation will stop.” Erick said, “There’s more to galvanization than that, but that’s the basic setup. Magic could take the place of many of those steps. [Particle Vacuum], for instance, could ensure a great bond between two cleaned metals, or at least to ensure that the metals stayed clean between the cleaning phases.”

Grosgrena listened, then she nodded, and said, “There’s at least two— Three problems I see right off the pour. Minor issue: you’re not preventing corrosion with any of these steps. The corrosion of the zinc will harm the runework. Any harm to the runework is a problem. Now a little bit of harm is fine, and a little bit of protective wax or oil is also fine, but you’re talking about coating up runes with other metals, and that’s a big shift. Another small concern: you’re just covering up the work you’ve done in the hopes that it won’t break down later and ruin the piece. But the main concern is this:

“We might not stuff core dust or other shit into metals when we carve them up, but we are carving into the very ‘soul’ of the metal when we make a rune. I use the term ‘soul’ loosely, here. Others call it ‘the history of the item’. That difference of style don’t matter much. What does matter is that the direct act of carving into a rune is what makes a rune work. A Master Runesmith can carve the simple Ancient Script words for [Ward] and Light into a block of steel and a [Mend] won’t restore the item to a block; it will always restore the item to its carved self. Furthermore, anyone who cast anything near-enough to a wardlight on the block will be able to use it to anchor their wardlight with uncommon power and duration.

“But messing with that carving —in any way— will fuck up the intent that is the runework.” Grosgrena said, “This is why we use incorruptible metals, and why adamantium is the best metal. Though you can still get away with working on steel if you don’t care about longevity. You can get away with a lot if you don’t care about longevity. But we care about that sort of thing.”

Erick had a deep think, then asked, “You mentioned runes on rocks, so what’s going on there? What sort of rocks? Plain granite, or obsidian, or other stone that doesn’t react with anything?”

“Dauntless jade is great for stationary [Ward]s and other stuff like that. Some crystals work well for [Scry]ing and [Reflection]-type spells. You can’t use something like granite, though; it has to be a single type of rock, as unbroken as you can get it, though there are ways to get past that limitation. Couldn’t make flexible armor without being able to get by those limitations, now could we?” Grosgrena said, “But aside from the specific uses of certain rocks in certain ways, and chaining enchantments, metals reign supreme for all uses. You can make a better [Ward] anchor out of adamantium than you could out of a mountain of quartz. You can make a better [Scrying Mirror] out of silver than you can out of glass or crystal. Metals simply have a better hold on themselves than most rocks, and therefore, you can carve away that solidity into useful shapes for magic to hold onto.” Grosgrena said, “Now: That’s the standard speech. But what I believe is the true answer is that the wrought are metals and the Script is anchored to Veird based on the magical anchors provided by the wrought, which are metal. So that’s why we use metals in enchants. This is also possibly why certain metals are better for certain things, and why adamantium is both the king of metals, and the royal caste of wrought.”

“… Oh. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.” He asked, “So are wrought capable of magic beyond the Script?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, adamantium wrought. Does that actually do anything for them? Does being made of metal do anything for any of them, spell-wise?”

“Oh!” Grosgrena said, “Duration and power of spellcraft, but that’s a commonality shared across all wrought. Being literally made of metal does wonders for durability, too.” She waved a hand. “While different types of metal predisposes those types of wrought to various magics, the average wrought is no better or worse at magic than any fleshy sort of person. The only reason most wrought are better at magic than any fleshy-type of person is that wrought are immortal; they have the time to spare making a bad spell or a hundred. Save for a few diseases that they gotta watch out for, they’re going to outlive us all; even the dragons.” Grosgrena stood up from her desk and moved right along, “So where do you want to start today? Practical, or theoretical? Those options come in magical or non-magical flavors, too.”

Erick stood from his seat, saying, “Practical. I want to make metal parts that won’t break due to mechanical stresses. I also want to know how to make better tools for myself, and to know if there are any tools I could be using, but don’t know about.”

Grosgrena said, “Then we’re off to Hammerhall.”

- - - -

The Old Smith walked with Erick through the hallways of Hammerhall, introducing him to various people he would be working with if he so chose. There was Mordog, who had as much muscle as an orcol, but on a human-sized frame. He was the lead weaponsmith of Enduring Forge, and he could turn even the worst bit of steel into a weapon capable of cutting the shell of a dragonturtle. Then there was Idalial, a woman with half as much muscle as Mordog, and yet with twice as much muscle as any other human-sized woman Erick had ever seen. She was the lead armorsmith, and she was currently in an adamantium pour, with five different co-Smiths, so Erick didn’t get to talk to her save for a simple ‘Hello’. He did get to watch as molten black adamantium flowed into the mold for a shoulder piece, though, and that was rather interesting from a mana sense perspective. As the molten black metal cooled, it pulled nearby mana into it, but only for the briefest moments.

And then Idalial ripped the black, still-hot metal out of its mold with her bare hands and got to work inscribing runes into the shoulder piece, working as fast as she could.

Erick moved on from there when it became clear that he could watch this process many times over, if he wished.

His actual trainer for the day was a human male watchmaker by the name of Tharagi. He was rather thin, unlike most of the Smiths Erick had seen, possibly because he wasn’t a Smith; his Class was Adamantium Mage. The man’s workshop doubled as his classroom, where he made precision instruments sized from watches to watchtowers, for some of the most powerful people the world over.

Tharagi readily shook Erick’s hand, saying, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Archmage Flatt. I did some work last year for Spur’s watchtower and I got to see your silver rains for myself. It was an absolutely wondrous sight!”

Erick smiled a bit as he let go of the man’s hand, saying, “It’s a nice watchtower. What did you do there?”

“Replaced some gearing and worked on the timing.” Tharagi said, “Your mayor Silverite replaced the original watchtower with one from us three hundred years ago, and we got contracts to repair it whenever it's needed.” He stepped back, saying, “So I understand you want to learn how to harden gears and all that scrap? How to make metal do actual work, instead of just chop off heads?”

“That’s one way to put it,” Erick said, grinning. “But yeah; that’s it exactly.”

“Then you came to the right place!”

Grosgrena excused herself, saying, “I’ll see you boys later. If you need to find me, Archmage, ask around. I’m always somewhere around here.”

“Thank you, Grosgrena,” Erick said.

Old Smith waved behind her as she walked away.

And then it was just Erick and Tharagi... And Poi, who kept to the side of the room.

Tharagi said, “I might have some students show up later but they can content themselves with watching from the sides of the room, if that’s okay with you.”

“That’s fine. So this is the thing I want to make work properly.” Erick held out a hand and cast a lightward of the torque-sensing differential he had made for the grass travelers. “The gears I made broke due to normal stress and my heat treatments didn’t seem to temper or harden the gears in any significant way.”

Tharagi studied the lightward for several moments, then he asked, “Do you know about the grain structure of metal?”

“Yes. I know about as much as you can read in a book, but I have no actual experience.”

“Ah! Then feel free to interrupt if you have questions— Which you would be allowed to do anyway— Uh.” Tharagi was nervous and hiding it, but with his small hiccup, his mask fell, his words leaving him high and dry. As sweat broke out across his body, Tharagi repeated, “Uh.”

In a calm tone, Erick said, “Please be at ease. I’ll ask questions when I have them, and don’t be afraid to correct me if I have a wrong idea or ten.”

Tharagi gave a nervous chuckle, then said, “Uh. Sure! Yes.”

Erick nodded.

Tharagi began slowly, “Creating metal parts that stand up to high-stress environments is not the same as creating a sword or armor. For gears and sprockets and chains, the primary metal we use is rustless steel, and its abilities and nuances are rather different when compared to normal steel. In addition, we use heat and cold applications in order to…”

Eventually, Tharagi’s nervousness left him and he began to speak with enthusiasm and deep knowledge, and with the skill of a teacher who had been teaching for years. Erick liked the man’s voice, and he liked what he taught, even more, but the man required calm words now and again to ensure that he remained unafraid.

It wasn’t long till Erick made a pair of gears of his own, but he didn’t shape them with [Metalshape], since that ruined the crystalline structure of the metal. Instead, he poured metal into molds, and let it cool naturally, until it was time to quench them in water and then throw them in the freezer. Cold treatment was a new idea to Erick, and apparently it helped stabilize the metal grain of smaller, precision parts. Tharagi swore by cold treatment.

“For the mechanism by which water becomes ice mirrors that which happens to metals when they’re brought to a sufficiently low temperature. And for some metals, especially the non-magnetic versions of rustless steel, they aren’t even capable of heat treatments to harden them; only cold treatments work.”

Erick almost argued that wasn’t how phase changes worked, and how heat treatments should work on all metal, but Tharagi was vastly more knowledgeable about all of this stuff, so Erick went with the flow. And then, after Erick’s second attempt at cold treatment, using a carefully shaped [Frozen Mist Aura], the gears were more solid than before. Erick had to actually work his lightform to break a properly cold-treated gear.

Erick was temporarily speechless, while Tharagi was all smiles to see Erick’s face.

Tharagi had also been quite impressed with [Incandescent Aura] and [Frozen Mist Aura]; both of which worked well for temperature treatments when they were used at sufficiently low power and high skill.

Soon enough, Erick shoved the gears he made onto a metal frame and stress-tested them against each other with his lightform. The frame broke before the gears, eliciting a laugh out of Erick. It was the first time the gears didn’t break before the frame.

“Thank you, Tharagi,” Erick said.

Tharagi smiled softly. “We’ve got lots more to cover, if you’re willing.”

“Of course!”

The conversation, experimentation, and creation, moved on to other gear designs, and of the nuances (and differences of) cold forging, hot forging, cold treatment, tempering, annealing, forging versus casting, and a bunch of other topics Erick had only ever read about in books, or half-remembered from his life back on Earth.

Tharagi knew it all, and in much better depth than Erick.

Eventually, the first brave student entered the room, and took their place at the edge, to watch. That broke the dam, and three more students who had been stuck on the other side of the door, unsure if they wanted to enter, followed the first one in. All four of those students stood to the side of the room to watch as their teacher and the visiting archmage spoke of stuff they had likely gone over long before now.

Erick wasn’t too embarrassed by his lack of knowledge, but he knew exactly how much privileged treatment he was getting. Very few other people could walk into Enduring Forge and get lessons like this, just because they asked for them. Anyone else doing this would probably be laughed out for not knowing the differences between cold forging and hot forging.

Eventually, as had happened with many of Erick’s previous teachers, Erick reached a serviceable level of skill that garnered a familiar comment.

Tharagi stepped back from the functioning differential, his eyes lifting from the myriad of gears and their solid structure, laughing a bit as he said, “That’s graduate-level work, right there. I’ve never seen anyone increase in skill so fast! And those spells —[Incandescent] and [Frozen Mist]— they’re pretty useful, and they don’t ruin the metal like normal Fire spells do! I think I know my next point investment! Ha!”

“Don’t buy them; Remake them.” Erick said, “Aura control for the excitement of particles and aura control for the decrease of excitement of particles, respectively. Easy.” He added, “If you have aura control, that is.”

Tharagi stood straighter. “Then I’ll have to try that.”

One of the girls to the side of the room mouthed at a fellow student, ‘Remake them?’

The fellow student shrugged.

Erick almost clarified his words for those students, but he decided not to. Instead, he said to Tharagi, “Thank you for your help. But if this thing I threw together is actual graduate work, then this is good enough for me, for now. I have many things to learn and little time to spare, so I will take my leave here. Thank you, again.”

Tharagi stood ramrod straight as he proudly said, “Thank you for blessing my classroom with your presence. Thank you for killing Ar’Kendrithyst, and tempering the Dark God.” He said, “There hasn’t been a major attack since Last Shadow’s Feast and— And there usually is. The lower platform almost always is threatened by a monster surge but this time it wasn’t. I don’t know what you did, but you’ve saved a lot of lives. I’m not sure you understand how many people you’ve touched in the Underworld, but… Thank you. If you ever need help with anything else, I am here, willing, and able.” He bowed, deeply.

His students bowed with him.

It was a bit too much for Erick, so he left it at that.

When he got rather far down the hallway, away from Tharagi’s room, the man collapsed against a chair, barely supporting himself as he sighed in relief, a few brief tears escaping from his eyes. He got over that feeling fast as he waved off the students who rushed to him, saying that he was fine. And then he went right to Erick’s differential to manhandle it in ways that he would not when Erick was around.

It didn’t break under Tharagi’s stresses, either. The man started mumbling about the elegance and the strength of the piece, and how he couldn’t believe the growth displayed right in front of him. Tharagi didn’t fully believe the story of Last Shadow’s Feast until that moment when he couldn’t break Erick’s differential, but now… Now he believed.

- - - -

Erick found Grosgrena at the entrance to Hammerhall, for she was waiting for him to show. It was not hard to notice that Erick had minders here and there, in the form of the normal guards that were stationed on the walls of the Smithy, and by the entrances and the ends of every major hallway. They all reported to a central source, for sure.

For all the homey-feeling of this place, it was a high security area.

But none of that bothered Erick.

“Ready for something else?” the Old Smith asked.

“You have good teachers, Grosgrena.” Erick asked, “Know of someone to teach me the basics of runecarving?”

“I sure do.” Grosgrena said, “Darabella is one of the best Rune Smiths to come out of the Smithy in ten years. I let her know yesterday that you’d be asking after her sometime soon, so she’s all in a tizzy with worry and excitement. If you can stand her eccentricities, then you’ll learn a lot.” She added, “But it will be difficult.”

Erick chuckled. “Sounds fine to me.”

“If she doesn’t work out, then we got others.”

- - - -

In a different part of the practical half of the Smithy sat a lone, square mage tower three stories in height and about 20 meters to a side. The building itself was not too notable, except that it had no windows. The only notable part of it was a bunch of machinery that came out of the top floor and connected to the ground, like a frozen waterfall of gears and axles. It was covered in stone to hide all of that intricacy, of course, so it appeared more like a bulge in the building than what it truly was. When that machinery hit the ground, it extended out to the visually impressive part of the building: the curtain wall. The wall was plain stone, about about a meter tall, but it was absolutely laced with gears and machinery, in order to connect the building to a series of seven turrets placed equally around the building, atop the wall. The turrets were five meters tall, with each holding its own sphere of adamantium a half-meter across. Each sphere was absolutely laced with inscriptions of all kinds. [Cleanse] featured prominently among them, but also [Telekinesis] and [Ward], though if Erick’s reading was correct, there were also inscriptions for every single basic tier spell and skill.

Those orbs sat upon the machinery, which was connected to the building, which, as far as Erick was able to tell…

He guessed, “The machines rotate the spheres, somehow, for some reason?”

Grosgrena said, “They’re of Darabella’s own design. When they’re imbued with magic they solidify the ambient mana making it easier for her to inscribe adamantium and other metals with functioning runes with the spells she wants to inscribe. I’m sure she’ll tell you about it if you ask her.”

“Of her own design?” Erick asked, “Then they’re not necessary to inscribe runes?”

“Also correct. But she does pretty well with them, and they’ve proven their worth. As has Darabella herself.”

Grosgrena cast a furrowed glance at the dark orbs. She was holding back some sort of scathing commentary, for sure.

Erick ignored that.

The Old Smith led the way up a small set of stairs that arched over the short curtain wall. Together, they came to the front door of Darabella’s workshop. There were no guards here, but there were guards standing on the roof, looking down at them for a brief moment, before returning to duty. Grosgrena touched the five centimeter thick metal doors with a flash of magic that soaked into the metal, which then opened the doors. A security measure? Yes. Some runes for [Telekinesis] and [Ward] flashed briefly inside, as some mechanisms had swiftly unlatched and others had provided the tension to open the door.

It was a fine security measure to prevent general snooping, but nothing that would stop a determined attacker... Which was rather normal, as far as locks on doors went.

The first floor was well lit, and split up into a few different rooms. In this first room, there were a few scattered weapons and armor and otherwise, each packed up in wooden crates on the right side, each clearly labeled for outgoing shipment. Only one of those items was adamantium; a short sword. The other rooms on the first floor were working spaces with a few people chipping away at various metals to create runic inscriptions. None of them were working on adamantium. They did a lot more here than just adamantium.

To the left of the entrance sat a man behind a counter.

The man hopped up, calling out, “Old Smith! Welcome!” And then he took in Erick, and Ophiel upon Erick’s shoulder. His eyes went wide. “Archmage Flatt. Welcome— Ah. It’s happening right now, then.”

“It is.” Grosgrena asked, “What’s she up to?”

“Darabella is currently working with students. It’s safe to interrupt.”

Erick could already see through the entire place.

On the second floor were individual rooms, much like the first, but all of them were simply set up for carving, with no actual carving being done. The second floor seemed primed for adamantium work, though, with various adamantium tools locked inside small vaults here and there.

The third floor was surely the primary enchanting room meant for special enchantments, for in the center of that space was a large, white stone table which was connected to the machinery that controlled the orbs outside, upon the wall. A black sword sat upon that white table, with the stone physically holding onto the blade and the hilt, looking like someone had stretched and stuck that stone like taffy to hold onto the weapon. This space also seemed to be the central teaching room.

A woman stood by the white stone table. She had to be Darabella, for she held a wooden knife in her hand and poked at the black sword while she spoke excitedly to the three students standing on the other side of the table, listening to her speak.

Darabella was a medium-tall woman of thick black hair and light brown skin, with bright brown eyes and a clear voice. She didn’t seem to notice that Erick and Grosgrena had arrived, or else she was just that engrossed in her lesson. Probably the latter, if she was as good as Grosgrena had said; she had to have a mana sense, for sure.

Grosgrena led the way up the stairs to the third floor. Erick followed. As they reached the landing and entered the main room, Darabella glanced their way, her eyes going wide. She instantly gave a little ‘Yip!’ and her wooden knife fell from her grasp to clatter upon the ground. Her students suddenly whipped around to see what was happening, and they, too, went wide-eyed.

Darabella cut off her lesson there, saying, “Ah hem! Uh! Students! We have a guest today— We have a private lesson today with Archmage Erick Flatt. Uh.” She whispered to them, “See you tomorrow.”

As Grosgrena and Erick stepped to the side of the stairwell, the students rapidly nodded and bowed and generally tried to move fast to get away, but one of them started to say something to Darabella and she waved him off with a ‘tsk tsk!’ and the kid got the message. Soon, the third floor was empty of students.

Erick called them students, and they were, but they were also all in their 20s, at least, and probably at the top of their field. More and more, Erick was becoming of the opinion that achieving certain levels of magic required less in the way of talent, and more in the way of knowing the right people and making the right connections. Brains helped, but they were not strictly necessary.

Grosgrena stepped forward, introducing Erick and Darabella to each other, saying, “Archmage Erick Flatt. Adamantium Rune Smith Darabella. She does about half of the adamantium runework that comes out of the Black Blade. She’ll likely be the one to inscribe your orders. Darabella, this is Archmage Flatt.”

Erick said, “Nice to meet you, Darabella.”

Darabella stumbled over her words, saying, “Nice to meet you too, uh, Erick— I mean! Archmage.” She looked down at the ground, at the wooden knife she had dropped. She nudged the knife under the table with the side of her foot, putting the instrument out of direct sight as she asked, “Uh. So what’s going to happen now?”

Grosgrena barely kept the frown off of her face as she stared at Darabella, calmly saying, “You’re going to instruct the Archmage in what he wishes to learn. Your primarily instruction will be on runecraft, but anything else he might wish to understand about our ways, you will tell him.”

“Of course!” Darabella paused. “… Everything?”

“Yes.” Grosgrena said, “We went over this once already. Yes.”

“Okay okay!” Darabella said, “I’m just making sure! Everyone is always changing their minds or doing some political thing behind my back, and I needed to be sure. You know he’s going to ask about how the building enchants work and I’m going to tell him and no one is allowed to get mad at me later, okay?”

Grosgrena probably had a lot of security issues with Darabella, didn’t she?

But that wasn’t Erick’s problem.

He couldn’t help but smile a bit at the ‘no one is allowed to get mad at me later’, though.

Grosgrena did not sigh, but she wanted to. “I’m sure if you tell him even the basics of runecraft then he’ll figure out all the rest on his own. That’s all it took you, after all.” There was a lot more to that story that she wasn’t saying, but Grosgrena left it there as she turned to Erick, saying, “Good luck. We’ve got lots more teachers for you to go through after Darabella, but she is the best.”

The Old Smith took her leave.

Erick turned to Darabella, asking, “So you carve into the history of an item, to produce magical anchors?”

Darabella’s eyes brightened. “Yes! That’s exactly it! Not many people understand this first point! Oh! This is going to be fun.” She smiled wide, saying, “Now let’s—” She held out her empty hand, trying to point at the sword on the table with a knife that wasn’t there. “Oh. Dammit. I lost another knife.” She began touching the top of the white stone table, as if her knife would suddenly appear. She paused. She turned to Erick, stared for a moment like deer in headlights, then she walked to the side of the room toward a cabinet, saying, “I seem to have misplaced my teaching knife. I can’t really use normal knives when teaching because I’m very good at cutting— Ah ha!” She slammed the cabinet shut then opened a very obvious drawer labeled ‘EXTRA KNIVES HERE!!!’. Twirling a new wooden knife in her hand, she asked, “How much runecarving have you done before?”

Erick took a second to look around the room. There were four discarded wooden knives hiding here and there. Under the stone table, in the bottom drawer of a desk, behind a crate that looked to be shipping out soon, and stuck in the dirt of a potted plant in the corner of the room. All of those knives were rather well used, and all the knives in the knife drawer were similarly well used. Someone probably came by after Darabella was done for the day and plucked them from their hiding spots, to stick in the drawer of extra knives. Maybe she even did it herself.

Erick answered her, “I discovered your discipline yesterday. So: none at all.”

“… I can work with that. How much enchanting?”

“Enough to know I’m terrible at it.”

Darabella narrowed her eyes as her fear vanished. She pointed with her knife, starting, “You have brought me a difficult—” And then she realized who she was pointing a knife at, and she almost fumbled the knife to the ground again. She caught it before it fell all the way, then she tried to casually continue, “—A difficult case.”

Erick smiled. “I have; yes.”

“Enchanting Spell?”

“Failed, so no.”

“Good. Enchanting spells are terrible. Do you have a knife?”

“Nope. Almost got one at your Black Blade shop, but decided against it.”

“What is your goal here?”

“To create anchors for a Gate Network.”

Erick didn’t know that he had a reason for coming to Enduring Forge until he was here and he heard what adamantium was capable of doing. This was his Worldly Path, for sure.

After a moment, Darabella said, “A single goal seems doable. I’ve been working on a Teleport Square design to improve the range on that spell, so maybe we can help each other.”

Erick smiled happily. “I hope we can.”