Smelting.

After we were done shopping I threw everything into storage and we all ate lunch together, parting ways after. Posy had to get ready for her hunt, and we had our own work to do.

'If I purchased land in the designated zone for adventurers guilds I could get a mirror gate set up straight to the house. It would be nice to save half an hour of traffic getting to the beehive every time I wanted to teleport somewhere… From there I could set up more mirror gates to other locations in the city, creating a hub and buying several other buildings as well. Any good guild would need a smithy, library, restaurant, and… Well I'll think of the rest later. "I wonder how much guild land costs."

I stopped still. 'If I wanted to start a guild… Don't I need people actually willing to join me though?' I looked down at Mochi, clearly curious about why I stopped but still staying silent. 'I would need at least five members to have a solid strike team with one in reserve. And then we could pull off raid-level quests with a fill-in adventurer. Someone like Lola that technically retired but still does stuff.'

I sighed. 'Ok, well, let's assume I have a guild and a guild hall, where would I want to buy land if I was branching out? I could start there and work backward since I'm not all that rich, and just lucked out and made a lump sum.' Mochi slowly tilted her head, tugging on my hand as if asking why I stopped without opening her mouth.

"I'm just trying to figure out where to go next, give me a second." 'Hm… Generally, I would want one piece of land in every district if possible. Rothet is huge though. Although, if that's the case then I should find the cheapest piece of land in the city's third most expensive district, then I can avoid the high prices from the luxury district and the industrial district.'

After deciding I went to a beekeeper in charge of real estate and with their help I found a prime… Adjacent… Piece of land big enough for me to build the kind of house I wanted for only 20 gold… I went ahead and bought it, paying 10 gold upfront instead of in full, and went to check it out before heading back home. 'The land itself was even larger than I wanted, about 2,000 square feet. The reason for its low price was mostly because it wasn't on the main road, and it was also relatively close to the city dungeon, Heaven's Depth. That's technically a good thing for me… But for the general population constant traffic of adventurers even through the night, people sporadically needing emergency medical attention as they warped or otherwise ran out of the dungeon clinging to life, and the possibility of monsters breaking out, all caused the property value of land to drop. Although the solution to that is pretty simple… Just make the walls thicker, oh, and set defensive rune traps around the outside to ward off monsters, but I was going to do that for thieves anyway.'

"This is what you bought…"

"Yup." 'I actually feel pretty good about this.'

"It's just dirt… You already own a bunch of dirt, why buy more of it?"

"This dirt is different… It's special…"

"Special dirt…" She groaned using her magic to make a column. "Nope… It's just normal dirt… Did you get scammed?"

I sighed, trying to figure out how I'd explain it before quickly giving up. "Let's just go home, the others should be back soon, they might be already..."

As I thought, they were back by the time we made it home, not only that but Kesh had already cleaned and repaired my forge, and Tooly had… Cooked… Something… It was a strange stew with undercooked vegetables, fruits for some reason, and a chewy mystery meat. Still, I had eaten worse so I didn't complain. Of course, Mochi didn't either with her halfling stomach, and Kesh, being an orc, just happily ate the meat, although he probably would have liked it just as much if it was raw, so that wasn't saying much.

"Right, shall we get to work?" 'I wish I had an expert smith like Fiesty here helping me… No… I just hope she wakes up soon… If I was a little faster–'

"If your mind is clear then I'll light the forge."

'Right…' I sighed. "Sure, just let me change first…"

When smithing iron and normal metals it was just a matter of not wanting to be too hot, but when smithing with magic it was more important, as certain fabrics would actually catch fire from the sheer heat… I learned that the hard way. While I was at the tower they lent me some gear, but back at home, I had to improvise.

Since I would be making new gear shortly, I went ahead and just butchered one of my old armor sets, turning the mage leather into a pair of shorts and a simple band of leather that I could lace up in the front covering my chest. Ironically, if sparks or slag touched my skin it was easy to protect myself with magic reflexively, but if they got into my clothes they'd burn me before I noticed, not to mention ruin the clothes. So generally wearing less was better. "You a snow Orc right? Will you be alright with the heat?"

He grinned widely as he lit a small flame above his finger before shooting it into the forge.

'Well, if he's a fire mage he better have a higher resistance than I do.' "Let's get to work then, I already separated out the metal, let's start by forging the steal into Damascus, and then adding the mana stones. Just keep the forge hot, I'll make sure the ratio is right." 'I'm glad I added a smelter to the forge but… Will this really hold up? It should… Maybe? Well, it's not like I'm smithing oreachalcum…'

After heating the forge we got to work, admittedly running into a few problems from the forge's low quality. With Kesh's fire magic helping us keep the heat high though, and my earth and metal ensuring we had a proper mixture for the steal without impurities, it all turned out fine, and before long we had the Damascus, from there it was just a matter of adding the right number of mana stones and just like that I had made Vethrian steel ingots of a few varying sizes.

"How are you holding up?"

"Fine…" He grunted. Although I was pretty sure that was his pride talking.

"Alright, let's keep going." We moved on and both of us fell into a heat-induced trance, sweat pouring off of us as soot covered our skin and steam left from our bodies. My eyes started to dry out, but I didn't even notice until I turned away from the fire and realized none of the colors looked quite right anymore. 'It should be fine. It's hot, but my mana is holding up, our pacing has been good.'

Mochi stuck her hand out of the shadow of the house and quickly pulled it back, feeling the heat even from the distance. I took a deep breath in and turned back to the smelter. "Right, come on then, we're almost done!"

He grunted again and we got to work on the last set of ingots, to finish faster we got greedy and made the last set the largest, but overshot a little, making it hard to balance. Still, somehow we managed and got it over with, although I nearly collapsed when we did. 'So… Hot…'

As the ingots cooled I stumbled away from the forge and let myself lay down in the shaded grass next to the house. 'I knew my forge wasn't state of the art or anything… But I never noticed how serious the difference was… That was way harder than it should have been…'

After a few moments, I felt the chill of a wet blanket slap against my skin, the water sizzling and evaporating as it helped absorb the heat from my body. 'That was dangerous… If I ran out of mana and lost my ability to resist heat…' I shuddered thinking about it.

"Are you alive down there?" Kesh asked gruffly.

"I think so," I groaned rolling over and using the cloth to wipe off my face as I sat up.

"It appears the snow Orc can take the heat better than you." He smirked offering me a hand up.

"Pft, whatever. You better be able to, fire mage…"

He laughed as we walked back inside, having already cleaned up the forge and put it out.

After I took a long cold bath, we gathered together and talked about our plans. Tooly and Kesh were going to the howling pass, hunting dire wolves deeper in. They would be gone for a couple of days. In the meantime, I would work on forging my armor and weapons, and Mochi would get started shaping the earth for a new house, making use of the new land I bought. Of course, I didn't feel good about leaving her alone, but she was capable, and it was a good neighborhood, plus I would be there at first to explain how she needed to do things. 'Yeah, this should all work out just fine.'