Reincarnated As A Peasant - Book 1 Chapter 42: A New Life, An Old Legacy

Landar

As the family was cooking and putting the finishing touches on dinner, I found myself absorbed in my work.

The forge fire burned hot as I pushed the billowes as hard as I could. The metal on the antlers was heavily infused with mana, and it would require more than mere flames to make them melt into a usable form.

The forge wasn’t large by any means, with just enough room inside for a small iron anvil, the billows, a sand pit, and a workbench that held all the tools I had painstakingly recreated over the last four years. Largely through trial and error, but also through careful questioning of the dwarven smiths the Farmer had business with from time to time.

His land was rocky, filled with flinty ore of various kinds. It wasn’t high enough quality for most human smiths to touch, but for some reason the dwarves found the stuff useful from time to time. Trading pelts, leather, and tools for it on multiple occasions during the last five years i’d been here.

As soon as the fire was hot enough to where I thought it had a good chance of melting the metal, I grabbed my tongues and shoved the antlers into the burning red hot coals at the small furnaces heart. Then, I stared into the flames watching for the color in the antlers to shift. “Its been a long time.” I said to the crackling coals. “I’ve gotten stronger since then, grown a lot.”

The antlers were reaching a fine orange coloring, and I saw small sparks of multi-colored mana leap off the hottest parts of the fire.

Perfect.

I pulled the antlers out, and lifted the small rune inscribed hammer I had created. It wasn’t heavy, but it was solid. As it landed on the antlers, the bone broke like glass. Turning to ash. While the metal took on a new flattened shape.

As the color began shifting to a darker hue, I shoved the metal back into the coals and reheated it. Then, back onto the small anvil, and more time with the hammer.

Finally, after three or four passes the impurities were gone, and the metal was in the correct shape. A long thin chisel bit. I added some mana into the mixture as I doused it in oil. Allowing the metal to absorb the mana infused minerals.

I then took it to the work bench, and sat at the small stone seat. Then, with my feet moving rhythmically, I got the grindstone moving faster and faster. I brought the would be tool, little more then a general shape at this point, down onto the stone and began shaping it.

Sparks flew everywhere, and the thick gloves I had put on protected my skin from the worst of it. Not that such weak sparks could leave permanent scars on me anymore. Not after so much had happened.

Finally, it was shaped, infused, and ready for the last stage of the work. I slowed the grined stone and retrieved my own set of small chisels. Much like the ones the Smith back home had helped me craft, but these were much better quality given the time and opportunity to refine the design I had had over the last five years.

Lets see, I pulled a small leather booklet from off a shelf and began pursuing my rune designs. I had them in my journal wiki, but I always felt looking at the actual designs somehow more informative.

I had picked up several more runes from the dwarves over the years. Without their knowledge of course. Learning the physical and magical properties of them through small glimpses, and ogling their wears at the yearly market the few times they had set up stalls. I had also almost blown myself and the house up more than once trying to painstakingly recreate each one.

I smiled at the memories, and just how close I had come to killing myself over the years.

Instead of just three or four runes that I had been given by the Woodcutters clan when I was twelve, I now had nearly twenty. I pulled out a small piece of parchment, scraps I had picked up from town here and there as people threw away what they thought couldn’t be used anymore, and began drawing with a white chalk pencil my intended design.

A knock came at the door and I stopped what I was doing and looked up. I found an older woman, medium height with a face and beauty that had long abandoned true youth, and instead embraced a more mature aspect.

“Hello love.”

“Hi Wilma,” I smiled and wiped the sweat from my brow.

“Working hard are we?” I nodded. “Good. Well, I hope you’ve worked up an apatite. The family has made a right feast of it tonight. I even broke out the sweets for the littles. The darlings are beside themselves, and just dying to start digging in. So, when do you think you’ll join us love?”

Her accent was thicker than most others from the area, probably due to her family being one of the more well established.

“Not long now. I have the design, and I’m just about to put it into the metal. Then i’ll be in. Fifteen minutes, at most.”

Wilma frowned. She was expecting me to put the work project aside and come in now, as was proper. She was just being polite about it.

“It’s important, I promise.”

Her eyebrows went up. “And this important piece of metal work couldn’t have waited until after dinner?”

My stomach betrayed me and growled like an angry beast.

“Uh, well, yes ma’am. If I’m going to join Farmer tomorrow on his trip, then I need to get to bed right after dinner. Which leaves no time for this. I promise. Fifteen minutes, and no more.”

She nodded, clearly displeased then left me to my work.

I quickly drew the design onto the metal with the chaulk. Outlining where i’d be leaving the design. It was a simple one, but if I wanted it to be as easy to use as I did, it had to be perfect.

The first strike rang like a bell, and the world seemed to resonate with the strike of my rune inscribed hammer on the specialized chisel I had made years ago. I poured as much mana into the strike, and the metal I was working as I thought the substance could handle. Then, I shifted the chisel, and hit it again.

Again and again reality seemed to warp around the place where the chisel met the metal every time the hammer came down. It was a potent, if somewhat localized effect. Very powerful, over a very small space. I had to wait until the aftereffects of the distortion dissipated before I could move the chisel and begin the next part of the design. Every strike required more waiting, more patience, more time.

Finally, I rang the bell one last time and the chisel carved a small divot into the magically infused copper finishing the design.

I lifted the finished product and examined my work. “Perfect, now. For the finishing touch.”

I moved over to a small pot of tin I had left heating in the furnace as it died. The tin was molten and the coals while cooling, were still hot enough to keep it so. The runes inscribed in the iron cast helped it resist the heat of the furnace by transferring it with greater efficiency to the metal it held inside.

Smiling at the memory of a thousand broken prototypes and a very angry Wilma when I had used her kitchen pots as test subjects, I retrieved the Tin. I used a thin heat resistant rod I had made a few months ago to transfer the tin directly into the design, and clean away excess.

When that was finished, it was one last pass on the grind stone to smooth out the design, a quick polish with mana infused oil, and finally the work was finished.

I pulled a lever by the furnace that vented the heat directly into the ground behind the forge. If anyone was standing there, all they’d feel would be their shoes warming up by a few degrees for a few seconds. But the design had saved me from nearly killing myself over a dozen times over during my experimentation using the same basic heat transfer runes as the cast iron pot I had created did. Simply shunting the excess energy away into another medium.

Finding a clean rag, I wiped the excess oil away as I left the forge, and headed towards the house. The moment I was outside I felt several sets of eyes on me. I tried to dodge, but half a dozen buckets of cold water splashed over me before I could so much as activate my Dash ability.

The kids giggled as they ran for all they were worth towards the house. “Momma said you smelled, and that we should give you a bath.” Aribell said with a beaming smile. She was the only one not to run, being too young to really understand the mischief the others had talked her into participating in.

Sighing, I nodded. “Thank you for your help Aribell.”

“You’re welcome!” She cheerily led me back towards the house, and the smell of an intoxicating feast.

***

The feast was, chaotic. To say the least. When you put nearly twenty people in a single room, eating at two long tables, all wanting to talk at the same time, and all wanting to hear the news from town, or the story of the day’s hunt at the same time? Loud would be considered an adequate, if lackluster descriptor.

Eventually Farmer got everyone’s attention and even the little kids squirmed a bit quieter so they could hear their family patriarch speak.

“The boy and me will be going to the capital for a few days,” he said over a mug of watered down ale. A rare luxury out here in the middle of nowhere. Some of the kids began complaining, asking or demanding to go but he raised a hand and brought it down on the table with a hard thump. Silencing the dissent. “I won’t be haven no belly aching or gain saying! Not in my house! Now, the boy and me will be leaving tomorrow morning, bright and early just as I said. We’ll be traveling in rough weather, over broken road. Its dangerous, and treacherous, and I aint haven none of you little ones along. Understand me?”

Heads nodded all along the childrens table, and I saw smiles from the mothers and fathers in the room. They all knew Farmer was all bark and very little bite. The smile he gave the room when they finally settled down reassured them all he was proud of all of them.

“Good. Now, i’m told that our little Landar has cooked up another of his little metal work gadgets. Is that right boy?” He looked at me, and I smiled.

“Yes sir.”

“Well, don’t hold us in suspense. What did you make this time?”

“And how long will it last?” asked one of the teenage children. The jibe elicited snickers from almost everyone, including most of the adults. I smiled myself. I had after all had many failures in my early rune carving days on the farm. Over heating pots, pans that shattered rather then hardened, knives with a perpetually dull edge rather then a sharp one, and so on.

But with each experiment I had kept the finished products for myself. Now that I was leaving, and probably wouldn’t be returning if things went according to plan, I felt it was the perfect time to leave the working trinkets to those that could use them.

I stood, and pulled the small cloth aside revealing my latest work. It was a long blade, with a hook on one end. The family wooed and awed at it, as it was a bright and polished brass color thanks to the minerals and mana I had inlaid it with.

“That is a beautiful cooking knife,” Wilma said, as I handed it over. “But will it hold up long? My last one was good steel and it only lasted me three years.”

I smirked and turned the blade over, revealing the delicately cut runes inlaid with tin that was polished to an almost silver like shine. “She’ll hold an edge for a long while. You’ll probably be able to gift her to your great grand daughters and sons one day.”

Wilma was greatful clearly, but the skeptical look she gave me only made the reality of the situation that much better. “Looks like dwarven work. But pretty symbols don’t mean spit if it wasn’t done with dwarven skill.”

She wasn’t being mean, this was a lesson. Weather to me, or to her other kids I wasn’t sure. But from her tone she was still skeptical. “More than one scoundrel copied their pretty designs, and they didn’t work half as well as plane steel. You have to watch out for hucksters.” She met my eyes then. “Not that I think you’re one of those louts. Thank you for the gift boy. It means a lot, even if it won’t last too long.”

I couldn’t help but smile as I handed over the blade, and pressed my thumb against the central rune. That little pressure created enough static energy to activate the rune, and pull the natural reserves of mana that the deer antlers held to the surface.

The blade glowed a slight white in the candle and fire light.

“Oh, boy. This . . . what does it do?” Everyone, including the adults clamored for a better view of the kitchen utensil. “This glow I mean?”

“When active it sharpens the edge all on its own. Now, it needs a bit of energy from say, the sun and other natural elements to recharge. But once a day you just press this button, and it’ll sharpen and repair itself of any minor nicks or bends.” Everyone was enthralled by it. “Press this other design when the first is active, and the blade heats up.” I put my finger on the lower rune and suddenly the very cutting edge of the blade visibly heated to a faintly brighter color. “Perfect for cutting bread for breakfast. This you can do for about five minutes a day.”

Wilma’s expression shifted from confused, to awestruck, to mildly annoyed, and then finally some realization hit her and tears filled her eyes. She gook the blade and walked it into the kitchen. While she was gone the other family members all asked me questions and if I could make them something similar, or some variation on the item.

When she returned, she pulled me into a hug and whispered into my ear. “Thank you boy. But this better not be the last time I see you.”

My heart swelled, and the pain of my decision hit me like a ton of bricks. She didn’t know what I was doing, or why. But she had clearly put enough together to know I wasn’t planning on coming back soon. For a moment, I almost reconsidered.

Perhaps going peacefully, letting the Farmer introduce me as an eligible bachelor, and embracing the true purpose of the trip would be enough. Perhaps, I could finally fully embrace the new life I had built out here in the middle of nowhere with this hard working family.

But the memory of my mother and father fighting desperately to keep the blue knight and his goons from getting to me, of them sacrificing themselves for my sake was seared into my mind. The thought of Tabitha, and her inevitable fate and the injustice of it had my rage simmering even here.

I remembered the bag I had hidden in my workshop, filled with what I hoped would be the instruments of my vengeance, and my heart stilled.

“I’ll do my best. Don’t worry, we’ll be as safe as we can be,” I lied and returned the hug as genuinely as I could. I couldn’t help but feel like a liar.