IM2: Chapter #21 (Patreon)

Tumbling to the ground in the great forge, Thorn sucked in gulps of air, adrenaline coursing through his body. He had, over the course of his lifetime, faced many scary things, but the fiery aura that Aciakko possessed had threatened to crush him, both mentally and physically. If he had been any slower in executing the spell to activate the teleportation circle, he would have ended up as a very large pancake.

“Are you sure that the strata aren't going to collapse?” Thorn asked Eve, still laying on the ground.

“Yes. If my calculations are correct, the shifting in the earth that you saw right before we entered the great forge is the roots and branches of the massive plant that holds up the strata shifting in surprise. As those roots shift, it causes the earth they hold to buckle and jump.”

“Okay, good, because from what Aciakko was saying, Velin might already be here. But if she just arrived it wouldn’t be great if we collapsed the whole world.”

Noticing that Thorn was still laying on the ground, staring up at the ceiling, Eve flew over to hover over him.

“Are you okay? Why are you just laying there?”

“Um, it's just been a really intense few weeks leading up to an even more intense few hours, and, you know, I’m just enjoying lying here. I’ll get up in a moment.”

Chuckling, Eve flew down and landed on Thorn’s forehead. Crouching, she patted him lightly.

“You’ve been doing well, Thorn. It wasn’t easy to survive up until here, but you’ve not only survived, you’ve forged a path that has turned your losses into wins.”

Laying on the cool stone floor, Thorn stared up at the ceiling of the room, basking in the soft light that filled the great forge. The last few weeks had been trying, on both an emotional and physical level, and his troubles were far from being over. He had no doubt that the explosion of the power station had just cemented his enmity with Aciakko, erasing any chance of them working together. Not that there had been any chance of that before. She had tried to kill him, and now wanted to capture him so his secrets could be stripped away for others’ benefit, which put her right at the top of his list of people he would be happy to destroy.

But she wasn’t the only enemy he faced, just the most pressing. Behind her was the Tardoff clan, a behemoth that not only owned its own planet, but controlled warriors capable of climbing the tower. Thorn had not forgotten the anger and hatred that he had seen in the eyes of Elmvina Tardoff Eisenstadt, the Empress of Northern Angoril, when he broke her connection to the world of Angoril. That hatred must have festered into an obsession if Velin’s words were to be believed. Why the Tardoff clan would be looking for him was a mystery to him, but he had no doubt that it wouldn’t be to catch up on old times.

With a groan, Thorn pushed himself up to a sitting position, his eyes running over the delicate carvings that covered the walls, showing the history of the Titans. With a smirk, he realized that some day, all of his adventures would adorn the walls, granting the next Titan a peek into his trials, just as the carvings had given him a peek into the previous Titan generation’s. Getting to his feet, he stretched out his hand and his staff, which had rolled over toward the wall, flew into his grasp.

“What’s the plan?” Eve asked, settling into her place on top of the Codex of the Mountain that adorned the top of the staff.

“The plan is to build up a reserve of destiny while we wait for Velin. Once we have sufficient destiny, we meet up with Akira and Hati, kill Aciakko, join up with Velin, and then figure out how to reverse this curse and get off this world.”

Rubbing her forehead, Eve glanced at Thorn from the corner of her eyes, clearly unimpressed with his planning skills.

“I want to make a comment, but honestly, I can’t think of anything better. I know that you rank up through forging, but according to my projections, it is going to take years for you to make it to the eighth tier just by grinding jobs here in the great forge.”

“Agreed. And I don’t have that kind of time. Now that Velin is on the way, I need to be ready to kill Aciakko before she realizes what sort of connection there is between us.”

“Do you think that she’ll attack Velin?”

“I’m almost sure of it,” Thorn said, striding through the wide hallways toward the forge. “The look in her eyes was desperate and more than a bit crazy.”

Entering the forge, Thorn used Blink to step up onto the large platform at the center of the room and activated the magical forge, pulling up the tower shop interface.



Selecting the forging requests, he started scrolling through the pending requests. There were an uncountable number of them, but with a thought, he began to filter them down, reducing the endless list to a manageable number.

“Filter out requests that do not provide materials. Filter out requests that don’t offer destiny points. Filter out requests for golems or other complex items.”

Responding to his voice, the list continued to shrink until it showed a fairly basic list of weapons, armor, and other accessories that met his specifications. Scanning over the items that remained, Thorn started estimating how much time each would take. According to Aciakko’s words, the Tardoff delegation had either just arrived, or was just about to. However, since the only way onto this world was through the gate in the first strata and there were no Aether Gates to carry people around, it would take the delegation at least two weeks to make their way down to Droukna.

That meant that Thorn had at least two weeks before Velin might arrive, which meant he had two weeks to build up enough destiny points to carry out the plan he was hatching. Taking a deep breath, he looked over the list one final time.



All of the items on the list were simple and were little more than a descriptor and the type of weapon that the person making the request wanted. Though there were not many details, each was accompanied by a brief description of the weapon that the requester desired, giving Thorn just enough information to create them. Reaching out, Thorn tapped on the Shining Sword on the top of the list and read through the basic requirements.

“Two fingers wide, three feet long, with a double edge, a simple cross guard, and pommel with a hole for a tassel. Seems easy enough.”

Lounging on Thorn’s staff, Eve spoke up.

“What about the shining part? Are you going to add an enchantment to make it glow?”

“I was thinking about that, but I think I’ll use my Spirit Forging Technique instead. Alright, it's time to get started.”

“Actually,” Eve interrupted, flying up into the air and waving her hand. “You have something to do first.”

*ding*



Feeling a trickle of energy running through his body, Thorn opened up his status and saw that he had gained five personal milestones. Grinning, he added four points to his Wits, bringing it up to thirty, and then dropped the remaining point in his Resilience to bring it up to twenty six. With the increase in his Wits and Resilience, his Intellect rose to twenty-five, giving him an overall two point increase.

Even a simple increase of a few points brought a substantial change and Thorn could feel his mind continuing to grow clearer and sharper with every point he invested into his Intellect. Chuckling, he accepted the forging request for the sword and felt a shimmer in the air as the material that was being offered for the job appeared next to the forge.

“What’s so funny?” Eve asked, watching as Thorn picked up the gleaming silver ingot.

“Ah, I was just thinking that it's a bit amusing that I am pursuing a mental path when I have a body like this. I mean, looking at me, you’d think that I’d be perfecting the art of punching things, but instead, I took up weaving.”

A slight smile slipped across Eve’s face and she nodded in agreement.

“It is a bit amusing, but there will be time for increasing your other stats. Speaking of which, what is the reward for making this sword?”

“One destiny point and milestones.”

“Not bad,” Eve said, her eyes practically glowing. “Coming back here was absolutely the right idea.”

Commanding his nanites to coat his hands to give him the equivalent of heat-proof gloves, Thorn could only agree as he put the silver ingot into the forge to begin heating it up. Once the metal was the right color, he drew it out of the magical forge and placed it down on the anvil. Bringing his hammer down, he felt a sense of comfort radiating through his chest as the clang echoed in the large room. It was as if he had suddenly returned home, causing all of the stress, worry, and frustrations of the last few weeks to melt away.

Using powerful strokes, Thorn began to draw out the ingot, transforming it into a long rod that would form the blade. With each hammer blow, Thorn felt like he was not just reforming the metal, but reforming himself. He had not realized just how frayed his nerves had become since his lethal encounter with Aciakko had thrown his world into turmoil, but now, hammering away at a lump of metal, he could feel his mind starting to calm down. Putting the ingot back into the flames to get it to the proper temperature again, Thorn reflected on his situation.

Though he was still at a disadvantage, he had been able to return to his home base, and that alone took a substantial amount of pressure off of him. The great forge was completely safe, and with his lich totem, he could theoretically live here indefinitely. His main consideration, then, was making sure that once Velin showed up, he could help her access the forge as well. As for Hati and Akira, both of them seemed to be having a grand time in the lower strata. Besides, Thorn was getting the feeling that Hati could more than take care of himself. Hati had always been a quiet one but recently, Thorn suspected that the mysteries surrounding the god beast went much deeper than he previously expected.

Over the next few hours, Thorn continued to shape the metal ingot into a long thin blade, soon falling into a meditative state of sorts as he found a rhythm. When he was done, he had a thin, gleaming blade with a long tang that curled at the end to form a pommel. With the blade shaped, it was time to sharpen it, and then add the cross guard and handle. The sword Thorn created was similar to a Chinese longsword from earth, though the center of the blade was a bit thicker to add strength to it.

It took him a total of eight hours to take the lump of metal that had appeared next to the forge and transform it into a gleaming sword, but even after he had sharpened the blade to a razor edge, he was still not done. The request had been for a shining sword, and as bright and well polished as this sword was, it still wasn’t up to Thorn’s standard. Holding the sword horizontally in front of him, Thorn got ready for the next, and final step. Spirit Forging.

The image he fixed in his mind was that of a white lotus, emerging from the muddy water of a lake, unstained by the impurity and dirt it grew in. Nothing should stick to the blade, no dirt, no blood, not even light. Everything should be reflected away, creating a shining blade that could not be tarnished. Once the image of what he wanted was firmly locked in his mind, Thorn stepped up to the anvil once again, surrounding the silver blade with his mental sense.

*ting*

Steady strokes drove the image that Thorn held into the blade, infusing it into the very metal that formed the blade. The work was simple but even more difficult than creating the blade in the first place and it wasn’t until a full ten hours passed that Thorn finally let out a turbid breath and lowered his hammer. He wasn’t sure how he knew that the process was complete, but somehow, he was sure of it. Hanging up his hammer, he looked at the sword he had just created, his eyes tracing its sharp edge.

The silver of the blade had taken on an almost ethereal quality and a shimmering whiteness had been added to it, reminiscent of the lotus that Thorn had imagined when he started the spirit forging process. Struck by a sudden inspiration, Thorn pulled a stool over and sat down by the anvil. Fixing the sword in place, he began to carve on the cross guard, carefully creating a simple three layered lotus. Hidden on the underside of the carving he etched out tiny runes to form the basis of a totem, and after repeating the carving on the opposite side, he picked up his staff and began to channel mana into the sword. Watching with some interest, Eve quickly worked out what the enchantment would do and let out a long sigh, causing Thorn to look up.

“Thorn, that is an amazing weapon, but do you realize that it has already been twenty-four hours since you started? You are here to farm destiny, not pour all of your effort into making a single masterpiece.”

With a sheepish smile, Thorn lifted the sword and activated the totem he had carved onto it, causing a brilliant white light to expand from the sword’s cross guard. Shaped like the simple lotus on the handle, it grew until it surrounded Thorn, completely isolating him from the rest of the world. Sensing the thick energy that poured out of the shining blade, Thorn couldn’t help but smile widely. He was proud of this sword, but at the end of the day, Eve was right. He was here to power up, not idle his time away pouring his heart and soul into each item he made.

Deactivating the totem, Thorn stood up and walked over to the forge, opening up the forging request and submitting the sword. After writing a short description, he watched it vanish and felt a stream of energy rush into his body. Checking his status, he saw that he had gained one destiny point and two milestones. Selecting the next forging request, a request for a vicious axe, Thorn turned to Eve who was glaring at him with narrowed eyes. Erasing the smile from his face, Thorn nodded at her.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take this seriously and power through them.”