Smithing Friends

"That was very informative, thank you," I say while reminding myself they were older than me. "I'm antisocial so I haven't done any research on adverse or abstract ways to get somebody's username and such, do you guys have anything?"

The same girl says, "Girl characters have to be careful about public conversations because if someone finds a way to enter the conversation they can go back and check their chat logs for a name."

"The only girls I have talked to is the same one from my tutorial that I'm escorting to the city and you," I say while trying to think of ways I had been found. Did crossing over from the tutorial server to the actual game cause Lana to be possessed by some kind of demon virus in the game? "Yeah I'll just add them and see what they say, screw it. Anybody in or around Sierra city? I have ten sets of basic armor on hand."

IvanaWin and their younger brother, my best friend from school, Go-Croak, were in the city while there were two others in the forestry and a third had gone to the south city of Weyerhauser. I asked them where they were and how to get there before telling them to meet me on the way because I was going to make them do some smithing. They were both only levels eight and six right now.

Twenty minutes later at an intersection I found a female dark elven archer in a simple set of vest and pants starting armor over their Traveler's Outfit. Ivana wore a proper longbow and quiver of arrows on her back and at her belt was a longer than average but still cast in a mold dagger. She probably played a more active role in her smithing lessons.

Beside her was a young but largely built light blue half-orc wearing an oversized wood cutting ax across his back for a weapon alongside a pair of wooden clubs embedded with chitin fragments. He still wore his starting outfit but I was worried just by looking at him. If armor did not auto-size to bodies, his armor costs would be twice my own.

"You're a human?" Ivana asks after they walked up to me in the middle of the intersection I decided to wait at. "It's a fantasy world and you're classless, elves have the best all-round stat builds. Why did you pick human?"

"Why do you have to pick on my character as soon as we meet?" I ask somewhat defensively. "And I picked human because they have the most balanced starting stats and classless ones get one hundred percent movement speed. I'm playing a hardcore character casually, don't question me. Alright, I only have a couple hours left so come with me. How much money do you guys have?"

Following after me as I start taking out pieces of armor from my inventory to pass to them, Ivana says, "We have some, why do you need to know?"

"If you both have fifty gold you can spare for material costs, buy two pounds of arcanite at this smithy," I reply casually. "I'll be using arcanite in our first weapons to see what all colors they come out. If we meet all our needs and save up enough money in time, we might have enough grandfather gold to start our clan after the conversion and our first weapon colors might determine the team colors by an impartial random method. Remember, we can only buy materials and make for ourselves right now."

"Fighting without our combat assistance systems isn't exactly easy," Ivana argues somewhat bitterly while accepting the armor from me. "Sure, I can move around with less lag but aiming a bow isn't exactly easy even when standing still. You two might be able to do stuff like this but I can't quite get it down yet. How many animal skins do you even have?!"

Secretively smirking to myself, I say, "Well, I only have a couple of ferecat hides left, the rest are tree vermin pelts and about forty goblin skins. I was thinking of having contrasting tree vermin accessories and goblin armor, but the visibility on these giant naked mole rats is too high in the dark."

"Money," Go-Croak says simply in his youthfully high but still oddly bass orcish voice.

"That's right, sleeping giant, we'll craft armor and sell it to other players so we can track 'em in the dark," I agree with my usually quiet friend. In reality he was one of those guys people think is big and dumb because he played sports and wrestling for school but he was actually quite the crafty individual.

"I want a positive alignment, though…" he quickly clarifies. "No PVP unless we're defending, remember? Especially once we're a group, we need a good reputation in case people try to bully us."

"That's why you're the leader on paper, big buddy," I reassure him with a barking laugh. "Now, I hope you guys have been exercising. Once we're outside the tutorial, we gain raise our stats outside of leveling!"

Ten minutes later I personally paid for our three anvils for three hours and parted with what remained of most of my gold. After this, though, I would probably be able to make some money. Even if most players had a perk called crafty that made them want to be self-reliant, few people would have Craftier which actually made it beneficial early on.

After my friends brought me the arcanite they paid for, I simply gave them two ten-pound iron ingots and said, "For now, you use your own weapons until they're ready to break and afterward I'll make new ones for you until you get Craftier. Get your stats up, I have big news for everybody once we wake up in a couple hours."

They complained about having to deal with the transitions from unlimited tutorial stamina to real stamina. I never had those issues, I was content to walk and drag out the potential time for confrontations to appear and my fighting was usually over quickly. That AND I had First-Aid to keep me from immobilizing with a general recovery.

While they set to work struggling at the scrappers to break their ingots down to cast bars they would prefer to work with I went to my own scrapper and threw in Fuller Haunting who was down two thirds of its durability already. If I had it repaired by an NPC it would be back at full and I could eventually learn it as a skill myself, but this would be better long-term.

Alongside the sword I threw in two pieces of vanium to make up for the used of half a piece of ridium and then toss in a whole plate of arcanite. Then, doing something I probably should not, I used my twenty-two Strength to somewhat comfortably work the top grinders onto the edge of the second arcanite plate. After carefully forcing a partial turn of the crank enough of the second plate breaks apart that it falls over and I simply remove it from the grinding box.

After putting it away in my player inventory I set to work grinding up the sword into small jagged pieces alongside the rest of the alloying materials. After adding some leather scraps to make up for the loss in carbon, I empty the hopper into a melting pot and head over to the closest furnace.

The others joined me at my furnace and we all worked the a different set of weighted bellows to make a brief blast furnace. Once their basic steel and my 'custom' steel was melted down we took them out and I mixed mine with a long rod until everything moved evenly and glowed with the same heat. Then I poured it into a two-foot bar two inched wide and two inches thick.

While the bar cooled I did some quick math in my head before taking out half of the remaining eight plain iron ingots in my inventory, I simply drop them into a large melting pot and leave the pot in the furnace as I left with my current sword bar to the forge where the other two were already heating up their bars. After a moment of some more math, I go over to where Agar was measuring and organizing metal plates.

"How much would it cost to pay someone to assist me?" I ask curiously. "Do you guys offer that or should I find somebody else? I only need them for one sword, the other ones I'm making I can do myself."

"Unlike renting the equipment, I can't discount that one for you," Agar replies without ever looking away from his work. "You can ask any of the apprentices who are sitting to assist you for fifteen gold an hour but anyone on their feet is either working for me or someone else."

That honestly was not too bad, especially for a younger apprentice to be making fifteen gold an hour in a time setting where they MIGHT be getting paid fifteen a day. "Thank you, once again," I say briefly, turning to walk away toward the closest rest area. "Which one of you three doesn't mind working for me for an hour or two?" I ask when I stop in front of three sitting guys around my age wearing leather aprons and canvas uniforms.

One of them abruptly stands up and says, "I'll work."

This NPC looked even younger than I did with a smooth but vaguely fuzzy face where I had a healthy amount of reddish stubble for my age. I was six feet and two inches tall and he was several inches shorter than me but he had quite a few more pounds on him with a head of curly blond hair and a bright blue pair of eyes. He looked about the size where he could be making weapons already.

Taking fifteen coins from my inventory, I had them to the guy and say, "Come on, then, since it's by the hour I'll be working you for all your worth. For now, go work a bellows on that furnace until I yell for help."

"Yes, sir," the apprentice says briefly after a quick count of the coins before hurrying away with his hand in his pocket. This kid had a good work ethic so I naturally had a good impression of him as I went back to the forge well with the others.

Making this version of the fuller sword was not much easier despite the rise in my Strength, probably due to fact that I was using a different, heavier, and stronger alloy. However, after calling the apprentice back and forth a few times the melting pot filled four more molds with bars ready to heat and hammer. Then I got to use the apprentice full-time.

As it turned out, once I started cycling from one bar to the next in sequence I found the limits of my stamina. Using an eight-pound hammer with a Strength and Endurance of twenty-two, I could hammer about thirty times with either arm before I was forced to stop and gasp for breath. I had only gotten through two-and-a-half bars in sequence with those numbers.

Resting between cycles took about two minutes in which three and then two swords were not in the fire and heating up. This made the process take all that much more time but after a few breaks I received a pleasant surprise.

[Endurance raised by 1]

[Strength raised by 1]

Using Firs-Aid to prolong my efforts into a full cycle, it only took two cycles before I got my next raise in stats and my personal sword was complete. Not much was different besides being two thirds of an inch thick in the center and half an inch thick at the edges of the outer flats. However, the name had changed to match its new coal color.

[Crafted: Blackened Fuller Haunting]

[+100 Blacksmithing XP]

[Blacksmithing Leveled x2]

[+30XP]

Not only did it now do twenty-eight damage with a third more durability than before but the phantom damage from the Geist skill had risen to sixty-five percent of my true damage. On top of this, there was a perk added to the sword called Channeling that made the sword 'steal power' from undead entities. The perk did not seem to affect its damage or anything, but it was certainly interesting.

More than satisfied with my new sword and the envy with which the apprentice appraised it, I set back to work on the remaining four basic fuller swords. These weapons were much easier to shape since they were technically softer and my body ran out of energy a little slower than before. Luckily, before the final cycle I received yet another increase to my stats.

"If you were in the market for a unique weapon of sorts, how much would you pay for this?" I ask the apprentice once all of the swords were done with tempering and we set to work binding a leather grip around their long tangs.

"Yours, sir?" The apprentice asks with a grin without looking away from the carbon-steel fuller sword that he was working on. "That Geist alone is worth a hundred gold, the richer alloy version of your sword would be around one hundred and fifty if the balance comes out alright. For one of these regular swords? If not for the specialized tempering, I would say they were only worth fifty but the different tempering grades give them a good quality so you could go as high as one hundred with them."

"Do you want one?" I ask curiously, knowing the guy obviously wanted a sword from the way he watched others handling the ones they made.

"Haven't got the money for one," he says quickly, probably used to being offered swords for cheap. "As much as I would like one, I don't need one and I have more important things to spend my coin on."

He sounded like a smart and responsible kid who probably had some troubles at home he did his best to help with. "Did I ask if you wanted to buy one?" I ask rhetorically with a shrug while finishing the leather wrapping on my own sword by trimming and tucking the excess. "No, my younger friend, I asked if you wanted one. I'll probably be in and out of this smithy at night so if you're going to be around I'll give you that sword in your lap for four hours of future service. If Agar is okay with that, of course."

The boy did not answer quickly. Just sat there watching me dip the wrapped handle of the sword in a pot of boiling water sitting on the side of the forge well to harden and swell the leather around itself for about four seconds. Just a little more than long enough for the water to thoroughly cover into the pound's worth of thick goblin hide binding.

Finally, he nods one firm time as if to himself and says, "Alright, I'll accept your deal. My name is Canley, by the way," he adds while holding out his hand.

"Life Hack, but call me Hack," I reply while shaking his hand in kind. "Now, since that sword is yours, make sure you balance it correctly. Last thing I want is for a new friend is to hurt himself training with a poor quality weapon."

[Barter Leveled]

[+10XP]

[You have raised your affinity with Canley the public smithy apprentice. Current Affinity: 65%, +15% from neutral]

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