The Big Bang System - Chapter 34

On her way to the smith Angela inspects the progress Lenara is making. It is quite an impressive sight to behold; dozens of workers moving back and forth, carrying large loads of stone and dirt. Parts of the inside of the mountain is already available but the rooms needed have to be carved out and the tunnels only go so far in.

Angela only spends a short period of time marvelling at the work before she moves on, deeper into the tunnel she took before. The noise of metal clashing against metal sounds out as Angela approaches the place in which she last found the blacksmith and, turning the corner she finds that he is once again working on a piece of metal (she wonders if he does anything else).

The dwarf calls out without looking up, surprising Angela with his hearing ability. “So, yer back are ye. Ah hope ye ‘ave some decent strength this time. Come on and give it another try, you ‘aven’t forgotten how tae do it ‘ave ye?”

Nodding her head, Angela rushes forward and begins to pump away at the bellows. The results of her weeks of training shine as she can easily pump the bellow that gave her so much trouble last time. Now she just has to focus on the unique rhythm which, to be fair, is still not an easy task. Overall she manages alright, though it was a far cry from the effect that Duergo had when he did the same job.

Looking over at the man in question Angela sees him give a curt nod before motioning at her to stop. “aye, that’s not bad, ye’ve definitely improved but yer still a ways off the sort of strength an apprentice smith should ‘ave.”

Duergo walks over to the forge and reaches into it with his bare hands, pulling out a white hot metal ingot under Angela’s astonished gaze. “once ye reach my level this much is a given. ye shouldn’t be so surprised with everything, yer face is going tae get stuck in that position.”

He beckons her over before pointing at various points on the metal, talking about how each of the points is a strength or a weakness in the metal. Strengths are useful to find as the are often the central focus of the work while weaknesses are vital to spot as they are the parts most needed to be refined and improved.

Angela sits and nods, absorbing the information like a sponge. The teaching of these strengths and weaknesses goes on for several hours, switching ingot every ten minutes before Duergo finally sits back with a sigh. “Alright, yer turn now. Grab one of them ingots from the forge and tell me about it. Oh, and ye don’t ‘ave tae use yer hands yet, we’ll work on that.”

Grabbing the tongs from beside the forge, Angela chooses a piece at random and brings it to the anvil before she begins to analyse it. “This is a normal piece of iron, it has seven focal points; two strengths and five weaknesses. The strengths are here and here; good places when making a shield. The weaknesses are in these spots, three of which can be refined using hammering while one can be removed through blade washing… i dont know about the last one.”

Duergo nods, though his face remains neutral. “not bad fer a first attempt, ye’ve done alright but ye missed a couple of spots: here and here. As fer that last spot, well, ye can use a technique called metal folding tae fix that one. That’ll be all fer today, go and git some rest, ill teach ye about hammerin’ tomorrow.”

With this he turns around, lighting his pipe before heading further into the tunnel. Angela restrains her curiosity and leaves the forge with a contented expression. While she loves learning Angela also understands that there must be suitable resting periods in between in order to properly absorb the knowledge. This being said, she currently doesn’t have a place to go, what with the giant stone cube making such a racket, next time she will have to create a space far away to produce it.

For now Angela decides to find somewhere on the mountain to stay, pehaps one of the tunnels that isn’t being worked on by Lenara. Of the three tunnel entrances on the mountain, one was taken by the blacksmith and another had workers going in and out 24/7, leaving one final tunnel for Angela to set up camp in, for now at least.

Entering the tunnel, Angela activates the rune she uses as a torch and heads in for twenty meters or so, just to ensure there is no danger while she rests. Seeing that there is nothing but more tunnel Angela nods her head before heading back near the entrance. Setting down the rune beside her, she puts enough power into it for it to last through the night before securing her belongings and making a makeshift bed. It wasn’t comfortable but eventually the need for sleep overcame the discomfort and she drifts off.

Mid way through her sleep Angela is awoken by an odd noise. She scrambles to her feet and grabs her sword and the ‘torch’, holding it out to illuminate the area around her. A dozen pairs of eyes shine in the darkness, gleaming with a cruel intensity.

Though she is startled, Angela quickly comes to her senses, grabbing one of the runes nestled amongst her things: the blast rune. After the last ordeal Angela had realised that there is no such thing as being too prepared and, as such, she had created several of the blast runes used in the kiln and the forge; they heated flesh as easily as they did brick.

I have had a very successful day of procrastinating studying…. at least I managed to get the chapter done, right?