Golden Artificer c2 (Patreon)

Marcus looked with a small smile at the finished kitchen. The places started to look more liveable now!

Once the kitchen was done, he swiftly began to make his dinner. It had been days since he had eaten more than bread and water. It was time for soup and oven-cooked chicken!

His new cooker worked the same way as his forge. Mana needed to gather before it could start burning. 

It takes time. As the cooker was heating up, Marcus swiftly prepared some veggies and herbs he had bought at the market.

He should have marinated the chicken for longer, but sadly, he was hungry…

‘Wait. No… I can eat soup now and eat chicken tomorrow.’

With a new idea in mind, he swiftly marinated the chicken and set it aside before starting to make the soup.

…

…

…

After dinner was made, the alchemist reborn returned to his work. He needed to improve his house by finishing all the walls, ceiling and the door. On top of that, he needs to reinforce the said doors and the walls.

First, he collected materials from other slum houses. Since they were half destroyed, no one would mind if he fully destroyed them.

The walls shattered with a few slaps of runes, and Marcus took them back to his place. He melts a new piece into an existing one. He was rapidly rebuilding the destroyed stone wall.

He used stones to rebuild the walls, while wood was used to reinforce the house frame and begin preparing to rebuild the roof.

But before that, he rebuilt the doors and installed a basic mana lock. In other words, these doors will only unlock when the runes read his specific mana.

After finishing the walls and the doors, it was time to work on the roof. 

It was the most important part as he will be adding a rain-gathering system to fill up his drinking water reservoirs.

For that, he spent over three days making and experimenting with the fountain water he brought over.

He added a filtering system in the water drains to ensure the water is good.

He will use flowing water itself to power these runes carved in the frames of the water drains and pipes.

Whatever impurities there are, they will be discharged into a separate container, which he can reuse later.

He is an alchemist, so that any materials can be used for alchemy.

With the roof finished, it was time to return to the ‘bread and butter’ of his work.

Marcus went back to the blacksmith district, where the same blacksmith greeted him. The man was pleased that the alchemist-turned-boy would take more of his trash.

Not the man expected the boy to spend a whole day taking all the scraps.

That’s what Marcus did. He now had space at his place. He took over the entire slump district, removing several houses, and now he can start pilling the scraps there.

After taking as much as possible, he returned to his work.

Melting the scraps away, burning the impurities and then storing the metal aside. 

He needs quite a bit of resources as he needs to make door hinges, locks, fresh tools, more weapons and armour.

On top of all of this, he needs to prepare the workbench and start making a proper alchemy setup.

The amount of stuff he needs to create to make himself feel ‘adequate’ is absurd.

So first, he made several cheap moulds and started making shapes with recently refined metal.

First were tools like tongs and proper sharpening tools, followed by hammers, and then hinges for his main doors, including the one he has that looks like it is on its last legs.

With these out of the way, he started to build infrastructure for his artefacts.

The first thing he needs is workbenches like runic carving and measuring, one with a magnifying glass.

The list is quite a big one. Considering he needs to build everything from the ground up.

~~~

A red-haired lady with an eyepatch looked over the weapon before her.

‘Something doesn’t add up.’ 

She inspected the craftsmanship in detail.

“And you saying this was brought to you by a child named Marcus Goldman?”

“Yes.” The blacksmith who bought the sword replied with an honest tone.

She can see his insignia on the blade close to the crossguard.

“...This weapon was created by a magical flame. The impurity content is 0%. It's… pure steel.” The goddess said with an impressed tone.

‘To make such steel the temperature of the fire… who is this child?’

Honestly, she was interested, and she wanted him to join her familia as soon as possible.

“...That’s impressive…”

“Impressive? It's unheard of. I haven’t met a mortal who could do that.” The Goddess said with a raised eyebrow.

The only ones she knows who could do that are gods of the forge like her.

Gulp

The blacksmith seller gulped whe he heard that from his Goddess.

“I will give you 100 thousand for this blade. I want you to give a portion of it to the child who sold it.” 

“T-That much!?” 

“Yes. But first, I want to see if the boy made it. After all, it's a lot of money.” She clarified to him.

‘But even 100 thousand is not enough. There is no other weapon like this in the whole city, if not the whole continent. Considering such purity of steel.’

She could not remember the last time someone made such a simple-looking sword with high-quality metal. After all, many high-class adventures buy more amazing-looking weapons than something simple like this.

“Sure. But how are you intending to meet him?”

“I have my ways. Don’t worry. One thing we Gods have enough is time.” The Goddess smiled as she got some ideas on how to meet a fellow blacksmith.

“As you wish…”

After telling his Goddess how Marcus looked, the blacksmith left the headquarters with a smile.

To think that the sword would cost that much!

~~~

Marcus has forgotten one crucial thing about Medieval times: weapons SUPPOSED to have impurities as forges the blacksmiths use can’t remove all of the impurities.

Unlike his mana one, their flames are simply not hot enough, 

His one uses dense mana to heat up to the point impurities simply melt away.

So what he sold to that blacksmith is considered an Industrial Age weapon in the Medieval Era.

He wanted to keep himself low-key, but he simply couldn’t… A weapon is supposed to be of pure material! It's like being pedantic when it comes to cleaning. Every dust, mark, and everything has to be removed; that's how he is.

So he forgot the crucial detail of metal purity, and now he has a Goddess on the prowl.

Not that he is aware as Marcus continued his work.

Several days passed, and the alchemist-turned-boy used all of his metal.

He forged several steel ingots and is now thinking about his next step.

And that is more resources. He needs to get his hands on those mana crystals dropped by the monsters in the dungeon, and the other material he needs is rubber.

Now, rubber is not easily obtained in the medieval world, but Marcus has a solution: He is going to use his food waste to make it.

It's a quite simple solution; he has alchemy to help with that. Now, what will be harder for him is plastic. But he can walk around plastic if he gets his hands on the raw mana crystals he touched before.

He needs quite a bit of it.

‘I could make crystals of my own. But that would make me waste my mana. Considering I have nothing made yet, wasting high quantities of my mana to make them is not recommended. First, I need to build infrastructure to relax and take my time.’

With a goal placed down, Marcus decided to start making his dungeon diving gear.

Since he studied Kenjutsu while living on Earth for around 70 years, the weapon of choice will be a single-edged sword. But a simple blade is not enough. A rune caster is something he needs as well.

A rune caster is like a wand but only for runes.

Since a hand has five fingers, he will make a rune caster that can do five things. As he is right now, he can’t make anything more complex than that.

A better Rune caster would need to minimise runes and to do that, he needs a magnifying glass—actual glass.

That could wait.

Marcus’ rune casters are usually gloves, but one could make a rune caster from anything, even a weapon… like a sword.

“Yeah…and I think I know what it will be.”

The alchemist swiftly pulled a piece of fabric he bought and started drawing on it with charcoal.

First, he drew his weapon’s blade. It was similar to the sword he sold before. To make it, he needed a mould. He had used altered stone before for a mould, but he was running out of it. Most of the houses around him had been destroyed already, so whatever he left behind was for future expansions, as he knew his small house would be running out of space soon.

“Hmm…”

As he pondered, he quickly realised that he had… a lot of material…

He quickly got up and went outside his house. He swiftly looked around and noticed that the houses had stone foundations.

The alchemist can use that and the ground itself to make the mould. That is important as he will eventually make it several floors below the ground, as going up will make it harder to hide himself if he goes up.

So, instead, he swiftly slapped several runes on the stone foundation and made it break off. Once he had the stone, he swiftly went back to his house and started to use alchemy to change its shape to that of a blade.

As the forge was heating up, Marcus started to draw runes on the fabric. He was thinking about what kind of power to give to the sword.

For now, he can’t make anything amazing as he has no materials, and if he adds too much, the metal will melt from too much mana.

‘A simple sharpening and energy discharge would be perfect for cutting enemies down.’ Marcus swiftly drew several sets of runes on the blade he imagined.

‘For a source of energy, it will be my mana for now. But in future, I could store it in the blade or the hilt.’

He drew more as he imagined the runes would look sharp and right on the sharp end of the blade while the draining ones would be closer to the middle.

After finishing the initial drawing, the forge was already hot enough, so he swiftly went over, started putting metal into the forge, and started his work.

~~~

Hephaestus was walking around the area where Marcus had been spotted before. She asked around if anyone saw a boy she had a drawing of.

“Why do I have to be here?”

A smaller girl with black hair combed into twin tails complained as she joined Hephaestus in this search.

“Because Hestia, I will lower your debt.” The red-haired Goddess said with an eye roll.

“...Still… it's just a human boy…” The fellow Goddess wants to go back to her reading!

“A human boy who can make magical fire and make pure steel. IF he gave you one of those weapons, all of your debt would be paid in a single go.”

When Hestia heard that, she snapped out of her laziness and looked ten times more eager to look for this boy!

“That’s the spirit.”

Hephaestus smiled as she saw how quickly her friend recovered.

They had been walking around for a while but hadn’t found this kid yet. However, that second, the ’Goddess' eyes widened as she saw a familiar kid dressed in rags pass through an area and walk towards the market.

‘Found you!’

The red-haired Goddess grabbed Hestia and started to pull her towards the market.