'Til Kingdom Comes - The Banished Prince Vol 4: The System

Mithril Forging Hammer

Friday, 25th November 1442

"Mummy, will Daddy be alright? He had been with Granpa Jack for about an hour already and all we saw after we send him the ale, he was only tasked to pump the bellows of the furnace and the furnace, even though we could see it glowing, but it was not up to the standards that Grandpa Jack wanted."

HRH JR highlighted to his mummy when he joined her at the town square after he and his sister had given me and Old Jack the table ale for the former and the stronger ale for the latter.

It seemed that their Daddy had to be stationed at Old Jack's place for some time before I had reached a kind of standard of pumping the bellows of the furnace.

"Yes, Daddy would be alright. Do you know that he had gone through so much than us before when he stayed back at our settlement and had to tend to the vegetable farms and also the tendrils of the plants?"

"The rest of us would bring back the banana raw fruits and then we would cut the stalks and leaves down to make our plates and then the trunks after it had been cut and peeled part by part, it would make those shelters for the young tendrils and be done on his arms and knees to tend to every single one of them."

"Before we do not have a water delivery system and he drew the water from the river and floods the whole planting lane one by one."

"He had the tenacity to start and finish his work without much complains, well... Almost until we were put together and then married off as a young couple...!"

Heather was telling the past tale of mine to the children and I would definitely chuckle at them that the works in the fields would be much easier than toiling in the blacksmith right now.

The works in the blacksmith were something like working as minions for the minions amidst the molten lava pool...

It was airless and the heat that emanates from the bellows and also the furnace made the workshop even hotter than a normal sauna room.

I was sweating buckets and I had soaked my gambeson and frankly speaking, I might have lost a few pints of liquid from my body already...!

"Mummy... Mummy... So if once Daddy began to work on a project, he would not leave the place until he had made some significant progress or totally finishes up the project, am I right?"

HRH Amy inquired as she too was intrigued by how I would be able to start and end a project up to my own satisfactory progress and results.

Before they were able to speak like an adult, the children used to see how I had toiled over the books to ensure they we have the right number of records against our database.

I can't recall which project it was but I used to concentrate on those books for the whole 3 days and 3 nights without a test and once I had completed the task I could simply sleep for the next 3 days without waking up...!

That's the time when we need to concentrate on some of the paper works when we used to be staying back at the domain where basically we are living together with our profession and also had to shoulder a lot of responsibilities.

Right now, it's easy peasy since most of our paperwork is autonomous.

=*=

Right after I had pumped the bellows for another half an hour, Old Jack told me to stop and stand up and began to observe him how he would be handling the hammers in the blacksmith.

He went over to the furnace and used a tong to pick the heated piece of iron ore and threw it on the anvil.

Before he started to hammer the hot iron ore on the anvil, I asked him about the heavy strike and perfect strike.

"Oh... It seems you had some recollection of blacksmithing, eh? Alright, listen carefully. A heavy strike is when you used any kind of hammer and you strike at the iron ore."

"The only difference is that you used your momentum to raise and swing the hammer and uses the weight of the hammer to hammer it down and forces the impurities out. It is like this, for example... "

Old Jack raised his fist and hammer down into his open palm and let it stay there instead of bouncing the fist around. Each time he pounded his palm, he let it stay there.

"You get what I mean? As for the perfect strike, you will know when you hit the iron ote and instead of the 'CLANG' sounds, you will hear a very distinctive 'TINK'."

"That's a perfect strike for you. I will show you an example for a few times and all you need to do is to copy what I do, alright?"

The theory sounds so darn easy as if my children can also pick up a hammer and start practising hammering something like a piece of a nail into a piece of wood...!

Old Jack took up his stance before the anvil and he used the hammerhead to adjust the iron ore that was red hot in the centre of the anvil and raised his hammer.

I saw that he had a breathing rhythm as he raised the hammer and brought it down in the red piece of iron ore and I could see the fiery sparks that came after the strike like fireworks. If my children were there, I think they might be cheering everyone the sparks flew...!

There was a loud CLANG as the hammer was brought down heavily on the piece of red hot iron ore. The hammer that Old Jack used was the 30 pounder one and it was one of the heaviest that I had seen in my life...! A 30 pounder hammer had a rather long handle and the way Old Jack manipulated the hammer was like a piece of toy to him.

The piece of red hot iron ore that was being hammered on the anvil stayed almost on its spot and if it does move, it would not be wandering away from it much. After a few times of swinging the hammer down like a pickaxe, Old Jack gestured me to hammer the next.

"Use two hands to handle it. Its just a 10 pounder hammer and it's just like child's play. Once you are used to it, you can use one hand instead."

"Concentrate hammering the piece in the centre. This piece is already slightly flattened, you would need to strike to remove the impurities and the sparks are the impurities that had been extricated from it."

I held the hammer in one hand because the 10-pound hammer had a rather short handle and wielding it in two hands would make it looks rather awkward, don't you think so?

The first few hammering did make the CLANG sounds and the red hot iron ore moved about on the anvil. "Don't worry, it happens like that in the next few... Ahem, hundreds of times."

Old Jack reassured me but the last 3 words do not give me any good assurance at all...! Goddammit...! A few hundred times just to hammer it perfectly so it won't move about on the anvil?

The red hot iron ore was moving around the surface of the anvil and Old Jack had me to move the piece back to the centre. He does not let me use the tong to hold the red hot iron ore in place but then only uses the tong to adjust its position before hammering.

There must be a way for the tong to be of another use, innit?

"Time out, Old Jack...!" I called out and checked my information system panel and was surprised that after dozens of times in hammering the iron ore, I am still at Level 0 and the counter was only 8/1000...!

"WWHHAATT...?!" I hammered for close up to more than 30 times and I only registered 8 in my system? What the fark is this? A way to actually make me suffer, innit?!"

I screamed inwardly as I picked up the hammer and then started to swing it and bring it down on the iron ote forcefully...! I was angered and I need to channel my anger somewhere and I find that if I channel my anger this way, I felt more relieved...!

YES... I FELT FARKING RELIEF...!

I had copied the same stance and Old Jack had also corrected the way I held the hammer and brought it down so how come does the system only record it as only 8 strikes out of 1000 was registered as heavy strikes?

"This is the difficulties faced by all blacksmiths in their professions, Audemars. There is no shortcut to success and if you want to use the mithril pieces, you better start here or be in the realm where you can spend up to 9 hours there, equivalent to 3 hours here in the real world."

"AARRGGHH...!!!" I raised the hammer high and I drove the hammerhead down to the piece of iron ore that had been flattened out after dozens of time I had been hammering since about 15 minutes ago.

*TINK*

*TINK*

*TINK*

I did not realise of the sound the hammer made when it was pounded on the iron ore but the look of surprise was on Old Jack as I had subconsciously made perfect strikes on the iron ore piece that was literally dancing around on the anvil.

"Keep it going, Audemars. One perfect strike is equivalent to 3 heavy strikes. All you need is a little bit of drive and determination and you could do it...!"

Ceres was basically driving me up the wall and giving me its own kind of encouragement and when I heard it was mentioned to me about the perfect strike, I did not believe it at first and pushed it at the back of my mind as I raised the hammer high in the air and hitting the red hot iron ore on the anvil.

It was when I heard the distinctive TINK sound that made me realise that it was the perfect strike that Ceres and Old Jack had mentioned.

It seemed that what I had learnt from my past predecessors had really resurfaced once again...!

Before long, the red hot iron ore was reduced to just a small piece of an iron ingot or pig iron after many successive hammering or forging.

Sparks flew every time the hammer made contact with the red hot iron ore on the anvil and this helped to reduce the impurities.

After I had hammered about 100 times as what Old Jack had usually done, the hammer that had been wielding slipped off and fell to the floor when Old Jack finally asked me to stop.

"It's enough now. You had struck 100 times and you had reduced the iron ore to be an iron ingot." Old Jack picked up the piece of iron ingot that had been pounded from a fist-sized iron ore earlier with a tong and threw it into a bucket of water.

*SPLASH*

*SIZZLE*

*BRAAAAPPPPP*

The piece of iron ingot splashed into the bucket of water before it sizzled and lastly sounded like a wet fart...! After some time, Old Jack dipped his hands in the bucket of water and picked up the piece and held the still-warm piece of the iron ingot.

He laughed aloud and then he threw the piece of ingot at me and I caught it with my hands and felt surprised at his actions...!

"You know what, my boy? You had made an almost perfect piece of an iron ingot with a purity of 97% or more...! Look at its sheen and the smoothness...! It is even better than what I could do even...! Hahaha...!"

Old Jack was laughing and at the same time, he pulled a stool and sat on it. He sat there and stared at me as if he had never known me at all.

Furthermore, it was my first time I was manipulating a hammer and had stayed at the blacksmith area for more than 2 hours and quietly pumping the bellows and then hammering the iron ore into an iron ingot...!

"Well, my boy. You could attend to your mithril piece when it comes. I have not seen it but I heard they it was lighter and stronger than steel so basically what you did here with the iron piece was just the tip of the iceberg."

'If you need 100 times to hammer the piece of iron ore, I think you would need to hammer the steel ones 200 to 250 times and the mithril ore for up to 300 to 500 times...!"

I blinked hard at Old Jack when I heard they I have to swing the hammer up to 300 times or more before I could extract a good piece of mithril piece from the ore.

"That's right Audemars, as the grade of metal goes higher, your ability to hammer and forge them increases. You would need to upgrade your level of competency so that by then you would be able to forge those mithril ores into mithril ingots then to plates."

"Let me give you a tip. You would need an obsidian chisel to chip out obsidian pieces right? So if you want to forge mithril ore, you should know what you need, am I right?"

I was dumbfounded when I heard about the process and I got what Ceres was hinting to me. All I would need is to inquire from Doc would be a mithril forging hammer...! Hahaha...!

=*=

Dear friends, if you spot any errors, please leave your comments in the paragraphs or the chapter section. Thank you for the POWERSTONES and God Bless.