Smithing!

I immediately got to work, melting the Furze down into a molten liquid using the same method that I'd used during my test. Only I didn't use my [Poisonous Fire] this time, just normal fire, but enhanced with runic power.

I waited for it to have melted down the moved it over a non-enhanced flame to keep it at the same temperature, preventing it from cooling down.

Once I'd made sure that it wouldn't lose its temperature, I got to work of the Dephonix. I smelted that down as well using the same technique, but this time I used my [Lust Flame] as I thought it should help make it a better alloy for fusing two metals together.

My reasoning for this was that lust is something that brings things together, so if I used it to melt the Dephonix, which is typically used to weld things together, it should give it the ability to fuse the properties of Zenite and Furze together in a much smoother manner.

I didn't need much Dephonix so I poured some of it into another crucible while I poured the rest into an ingot mould so that it could be reused later for some other purpose. As for the stuff I was going to use, I left that over the same fire but without the runic empowerment to keep it warm.

Once that was done, I then quickly got the mould for the handle. The thing was that it wasn't designed the way I needed it to be. The way it was shaped didn't allow me to leave a space for the handle to slot into.

I searched around for a better mould but came up empty handed.

'Maybe I could put a few things together and make my own mould? That could work.'

I scavenged around for something that could help me with this and found a rod, I compared it to the size of the rod on the bottom of the dagger and while it was a little bit bigger that was fine because I was going to use the Dephonix to meld them together anyways.

After finding that I found a mould that was cylindrical in shape and large enough to make a handle out of it. I layered both the rod and the mould in a special oil so as to not have them melded together with the molten Furze.

I went over and got the crucible with the Furze in it and quickly brought it over, pouring it into the makeshift mould I'd made. I poured it in slowly so as to not knock over the rod that was currently sitting in the middle of it. As the levels of the molten liquid started to rise, I had to place a hand on top of the rod to keep it stable as the waves from pouring in the molten Furze were starting to stir up the higher it went.

Once I'd poured in everything that was necessary I poured what remained in the crucible into a smaller ingot mould so that it could be reused at a later date.

I waited for the handle to cool off before lifting the outer mould off. I then poured some water over the glowing metal to cool it off. A lot of steam came off of it as a result. When the steam had finished coming off of the handle I was making, I picked it up with a pair of tongs, the rod I used slipped out of it thankfully, and dipped it into water, this time to get the insides.

Now that it had been made, I just needed to make the handle have a proper grip surface. I started by placing it in a vice so that it wouldn't move. Then I got a hammer and some tools used for creating indents in metal. And like that I began to hammer away at the surface of the metal handle.

I made a diamond cross pattern going from top to bottom. I left enough space so that each diamond wouldn't just be pointy spike but actually had a flat surface on it. The groove that I'd made to make the diamond shaped pattern was cut in diagonally, giving it a double chamfered groove.

I repeated this process all the way along the rest of the handle until I reached the place where I started. Now I just had to do the bottom, and for that I just decided to go with a rounded pommel with a circular rounded ring that I carved out for it. It might not be much but it was fine in my opinion.

Lastly to finish it off I took a file and filed the grip lightly to add a little bit of extra coarseness to it. Now that the handle was done, all that was left was to attach it with the blade with the Dephonix.

I placed the handle back in the vice and had it hole-side up as straight as possible. Next, I got the blade and the molten Dephonix and went back to the handle to start the process.

I inserted the blade into the handle and it seemed that the hole was a little too deep but that was fine as it gave me more space to play with and prevent anything wrong from happening. I lifted the blad up so I could begin slowly pouring the Dephonix in. The reason I poured it in slowly was to let it cool off quicker as Dephonix is known to cool off very quickly.

Slowly but surely, it began to fill up and soon reached the top so I stopped pouring it in. I placed the crucible off to the side. I now had to hold the blade perfectly in place for a few minutes and it would be done.

...

...

...

Thankfully nothing went wrong during that time and the metal set properly. I inspected the blade and it too was perfectly aligned with the rest of the dagger. I took it out of the vice and held it in my hands.

It was amazing. The weight was perfectly centred, not something I was aiming for but hey, that just makes it even better. The handle I'd made felt comfortable enough to hold it for a long time and also was easy for me to grip onto and not have it slip out of my hands, not unless my hands were covered in butter.

*WWHHOOO!*

'Ah, lunch already? Well, I did spend a lot of time making sure this went as well as it possibly could've. Time to go get lunch.'

With the whistle signifying lunch, I went off with everyone else to get some food before we all came back to work. I left the dagger I made next to my bag that Cythistia gave to me as a gift so I wouldn't forget about it later.