Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 14: Aura

Carmen pressed her foot against the pedal, sending a surge of ethera through the machine and activating the grinder. The attached belt had been made from leather covered by ground dragonstone, creating a fine grit that could grind down the most stubborn of metals.

Not that such a belt was necessary for her current material. It was called True Steel, which was just a fancy name for a high-carbon steel that had been through so many rounds of Refine Material and Ethereal Infusion that it effectively become a new type of metal. Still, it was only Low-Simple, meaning that while it was many times better than Crude-Grade steel, it wasn’t anything truly special.

One thing it did have going for it was its lack of rarity. The mines of Ironshore were predictably littered with ferrite, and it wasn’t that difficult to add some carbon to that ore to create steel. After that, it didn’t take much for the city’s Blacksmiths – all much lower-level than Carmen – to do the necessary work to prepare the resulting ingots.

They weren’t good enough that Carmen trusted them with the final product, but they could handle that much at least. Perhaps in the future, they would progress their classes far enough to work on final products. It was more than just levels they lacked, though. Most of them had been unprepared to choose the class in the first place, meaning that they lacked the foundation to put their abilities to good use.

One day, maybe.

By comparison, Carmen had spent years studying for her doctorate, focusing on ancestral studies. Much of that time had been spent at a forge. Blacksmithing was only a part of a much larger whole, but that experience had given her the foundation that had helped her stay ahead of most other crafters. Was she the best Blacksmith in the world? Probably not. But she felt confident that she was one of the highest levels, and she had the skills to put all that power to work.

She leaned forward, and the moment her current project hit the belt, sparks – both orange and blue – flew into the air. More importantly, the rough and durable belt had no issues grinding the forge scale from the piece. Once that was done, she started in on the fine shaping.

There was only so much one could do with a hammer, and using skills like Shape had a habit of degrading the quality by contaminating the purity of the metal with the wrong flavor of ethera. So, as much as it would’ve been easier to use the ability, it would likely result in a slight decrease in the piece’s power. And considering that the material was already a little deficient, she didn’t want to take that chance.

So, she did it the old-fashioned way, grinding excess metal away and shaping the piece to match her vision. Fortunately, with the high-quality of the dragonstone belt, it didn’t take long before the piece was finished. Mostly, at least. She still needed to sand it, then polish it, and finally, engrave it. But that would wait until all the rest was done.

With that goal in mind, Carmen retrieved another billet from where she’d left it in the forge. It glowed white hot – True Steel needed to be a much higher temperature than its mundane cousin – and she immediately went to work with her summoned hammer. With every blow, she used Ethereal Strike:

Ethereal Strike

Imbue your hammer with ethera, transferring power to heated metal.

The ability was the codified version of what she’d been doing all along, though with the new skill, the results were much better. In addition to flattening the billet into a sheet, each hammer strike sent a surge of energy into the metal. Slowly, her hammer fell, over and over, filling the air with sparks and the ting of metal on metal, giving the billet shape. Once the basic form had been achieved, she once again headed to the grinder, where she finished the process before setting it aside for later.

Over the next few hours, she repeated the process hundreds of times. The rate at which she worked would have been unbelievable back on Earth, but she could have gone even faster if she’d really pushed. Of course, that would have cost her significant ethera, and by the end of the day, she would have been entirely exhausted.

It was better, then, to pace herself. Learning that lesson had been difficult, but very necessary. The last thing she wanted was to burn herself out.

Once she had more than a hundred plates – divided into a few different shapes – she began the quenching process. Heating them in the forge, she waited until they had reached the proper temperature before dunking them into a basin of heated, ethera-infused oil, which was derived from whale blubber. That hardened the plates into a usable form.

After finishing that, she got to work on the hinges and buckles, which she’d already cast from faythium. The end product would have been much better if she’d simply used the Low-Complex metal for the whole project, but there just wasn’t enough of it to satisfy her needs. So, she’d opted to use it as an accent, which would hopefully raise the grade of the end product.

Despite knowing that it would slightly degrade the metal, Carmen used Bond to attach the hinges and buckles to the plates, connecting them. Taking the time to do it manually would have put her well behind schedule. She knew that. But still, she regretted every drop of foreign ethera that made its way into the metal.

Gradually, she pieced everything together until, at last, she received the notification of completion:

Congratulations! You have created a unique item [Lorica Segmentata - Chest]. Overall Grade: Complex (Low) Enchantment Grade: N/A

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It was the expected result, so Carmen didn’t pay much attention to it. Instead, she kept going, carving a series of runes into the inner surface of the largest back plate. The resulting enchantment was intended to increase hardness and durability while giving the piece the ability to self-repair. Doing so would require an injection of ethera – aimed at the appropriate rune – but it would be invaluable for whoever ended up wearing the chest piece.

Next, she used her etching tool to create a series of artful patterns on the front segments. There was no real form to the design – just whorls – but the end result was quite attractive, especially when she inlaid those designs with more faythium. Doing so used almost no material, but she hoped it would be worth it, all the same.

Finally, when she was finished, she used Tradesman’s Appraisal:

Lorica Segmentata (Chest) Segmented chest armor based on the Roman (Earth) design. Primarily made of True Steel, but with Faythium accents. Overall Grade: Complex (Low) Enchantment Grade: D +7 Strength, +7 Dexterity, +7 Constitution Traits: Self-Repair (Minor)

It was a decent result, especially given the quality of the base material. However, Carmen wasn’t really satisfied with making an inferior product. If she’d had her way, she would only ever work with the best materials, taking her time to truly push her craft to the highest level.

But that wasn’t what Ironshore needed.

There was a war coming, and the people expected to defend the city from the dark elves needed protection. She couldn’t afford to spend a week or more refining materials and creating something truly extraordinary. Instead, she had to compromise that vision in order to do what was necessary.

So, she set the piece down, then rested her hand on the center plate. That was when she activated her latest ability, gained at level seventy.

Mass Produce

Copy an existing piece to create a template for mass production. Then, expend ethera to duplicate the item. Results will be inferior to the template.

After experimenting with the ability, Carmen had determined that, while it was extremely useful to her current situation, there were significant caveats to its use. First, she could only create three pieces at a time, and even that completely drained her ethera to the point where she could only repeat the process twice each day. It still significantly outpaced the one-a-day rate it would take to replicate the original’s quality.

Second, the copies were a slightly lower overall grade, which meant that the attribute bonuses were significantly reduced. Still, the material maintained most of its protective qualities, which was the most important aspect of any piece of armor.

Third, it wasn’t as if the ability created items out of nothing. She still needed the raw materials, which meant that the other Blacksmiths and Tradesmen working under her were still required to infuse the metals.

Even with those limitations, Mass Produce increased her productivity by a significant degree. With it, she could pump out pieces more than three times as quickly, which more than made up for the decrease in quality.

Once she’d copied the template, she crossed the forge to the pile of ingots with which she’d been provided. That was when she activated the ability once again, and over the next ten minutes, ethera rushed out of her in a wave, enveloped the pile of metals, and slowly formed three identical breastplates. When they were finished, she once again used Tradesman’s Appraisal:

Lorica Segmentata (Chest) – Mass Produced Segmented chest armor based on the Roman (Earth) design. Primarily made of True Steel, but with Faythium accents. Overall Grade: Simple (Peak) Enchantment Grade: E +3 Strength, +3 Dexterity, +3 Constitution Traits: Self-Repair (Minor)

Carmen frowned. She hated the results, even if she knew that using Mass Produce was necessary. The notion of intentionally settling for an inferior product just left a bad taste in her mouth. Even so, she was well aware that the armor was high enough quality that it far exceeded anything the other smiths in the city could create. Some of the tower rewards floating around out there were better, but not by much. And she also knew that the armor was good enough that it could potentially save someone’s life. That had to be enough.

As she waited for her ethera to recover, Carmen let her mind wander, and predictably, it settled on the Great Forge project. More than anything, she wished she could head back to the build site and continue its construction, but impending war meant that construction had to take a back seat. Instead, she’d been tasked with helping to equip the city’s fighters as best she could.

Meanwhile, her son had been dispatched as a messenger – or emissary, really – to Norcastle, with the hopes of establishing a military alliance. Once he was done there, he was supposed to go to Argos. And while she knew he was well-equipped to do that job – especially after befriending that juvenile stag – Carmen couldn’t help but feel incredibly uneasy about sending her son out into the wilderness.

But the new world wasn’t a peaceful one, and if they didn’t contribute to Ironshore’s defense – both in their own ways – the city would likely fall. And given what had happened to those miners, the results of failure wouldn’t be pretty. No – they all had to do their parts, and for Miguel, that meant leveraging his attunement and high attributes to help him traverse the wilderness in relative safety.

Carmen pushed her worries aside.

Mostly.

She was still a mother, after all, and concern for her son’s safety would never be entirely banished. Instead, she could only ignore that persistent worry by focusing on other things. Like the aura her forge had developed.

It was a subtle thing. Barely noticeable, even to her. But as she’d grown in levels, she had become more sensitive to ethera, which gave her some insight into what she was trying to build with the Great Forge. She knew that the grove was nature-attuned, which allowed Elijah, Miguel, and Nerthus to cultivate very efficiently. That knowledge – along with the construction of the temple in Argos – had pushed her to create her own attuned space, birthing the idea for the Great Forge.

No expense had been spared in its construction, both in terms of time and materials, and though the foundation had barely been completed, it already radiated uncommon power. But it didn’t quite feel right. Now that she’d been spending more time in her normal forge, Carmen had begun to understand why.

It wasn’t attuned.

Neither was the ethera in her current location, but it was well on its way. That was something she’d only just begun to understand. Ethera was reactive, and it would adapt itself to its environment. Once, Elijah had told her a story of a battlefield where the entire area had been infected with an aura of conflict. He’d worked tirelessly to cleanse it, succeeding after replacing that atmosphere of conflict with one of nature.

But Carmen remembered the story – or more appropriately, she couldn’t forget the lesson therein. The adaptive nature of ethera meant that it took on the properties of the actions committed in any area.

That was when she realized what she had been missing. The Great Forge was meant to be something akin to a temple of crafting. So, if she wanted it to reach that state, she needed to use it. She’d done so during the building’s construction – as far as it had gone, at least – but she needed to take it further. She needed to move her operation.

It would take some time. And it would be quite a pain, especially when it came time to resume construction, but in the end, she knew it would be worth it. So, without further ado, she used the remaining span of time necessary to regain her ethera to start moving her equipment from one forge to another.

Hopefully, the effort wouldn’t be wasted. After all, if the war against the dark elves went badly, then she would never get the chance to finish the project.

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