Spell Adjustment has reached level 9!

  Before I could start smelting metal and banging on anvils, or whatever else it was that blacksmiths did, there was one last issue to handle: air flow.

  My knowledge on building forges was practically nonexistent, but I was under the impression that just burning some coal in a box wouldn’t be enough. I couldn’t recall if it was something I’d ever been taught in school or if it was just a random factoid I’d learned in passing, but I was pretty sure I was supposed to have some bellows. Fires needed a bunch of oxygen to burn hot, and it was my job to supply them with that air.

  Sadly, I wasn’t quite up for building a bellows. I had a vague image in my head of what they looked like -- a sort of air-filled accordion situation that you pumped up and down -- but I had neither the materials nor the know-how to construct something like that. I bet there were simpler and more modern designs, but I didn’t know much more about bellows besides the fact that they existed in the first place.

  But then again, why rely on technology when I had magic?

  Air magic was the obvious solution, though I didn’t have any spells that would work quite right. Gust, the Initiate-tier spell I’d gotten from Archmage Callis, was almost what I needed, but it wasn’t powerful enough. More than that, I wanted to avoid having to cast the spell every few seconds whenever I was working at the forge.

  And thus, Spell Alteration came to the rescue. While I rarely had cause to use the skill, I was theoretically pretty proficient with it. My original boon, God’s Mind, had granted me the powerful ability Understanding which gave me an instinctual sense for how to identify and alter spells. Nearly all of the alterations I’d done had been fairly minor, more for training purposes than anything else. Still, that didn’t mean I wasn’t capable of larger changes.

  To begin, I used one of my oldest spells, Flameploof, as a template. Initially, the spell had summoned a short-lived flame, more of a firestarter than anything else. At the Initiate-rank, though, it had evolved to output a continuous flame.

  A while back, the archmage had shown me how to cast the original version, which meant I was able to compare the old Flameploof to the new. With Spell Insight helping me along, I slowly picked out which sections of the updated spellform were responsible for changing it from a single burst of flames into a continuous flow.

  Annoyingly enough, those sections were very tightly intertwined with a few flame-specific sub-spellforms, which meant I couldn’t directly copy and paste what I was seeing into Gust. Still, Understanding came to the rescue here, turning what should have been days of trial and error or hours of pouring over stuffy old tomes into a few minutes of work.

  From there, all I needed to fix was the maximum amount of mana I could supply to the spell, which I was well-accustomed to by now. After slowly weaving the new spellform outside of my core, I cast it for the first time. With the strength of an industrial leaf blower, a stream of wind flew from my hands, sweeping up a layer of dirt and dust into the air.

  “Nice.” As it wasn’t technically a new spell, it didn’t show up on my character sheet, but my modified gust looked like it would work as my makeshift bellows. With one last bit of alteration, I moved the origin of the spell right in front of the hole I’d made in the side of the forge before switching it off.

  With air taken care of, all that remained was to fire things up. I threw some coal into the bottom of the forge along with a bit of wood to help things catch easier. A dash of smoke began to rise up through the chimney as the dry timber caught fire, and once I recast my bellows spell, the fire leapt upwards as the glow of the coals intensified.

  Wonder how long it’ll take to grab the skill.

  The answer turned out to be not very long at all. As was often the case, the first level wasn’t all that hard to grab.

  I was pretty sure that a lot of blacksmithing had to do softening metal and then banging on it, but that felt needlessly difficult for my first level. Too much finesse. Instead, I tried something simpler.

  A carved stone cup served as my crucible, and a pair of fire daggers conjured by Arcane Armament worked as a shoddy set of tongs. I had no idea how to actually refine ore, so I cheated there too, using some of the pre-refined copper from one of the munchlings’ bodies. Throwing some into my crucible and holding the cup in the intense flames, I was gratified to see it melt in record time.

  The last piece of the puzzle was a mold, which I’d likewise carved from stone. I was looking forward to trying all sorts of fancy magic tricks like casting Move Earth to form complicated three-dimensional molds, but once again, simplicity was the name of the game here. I’d gouged out a simple ring pattern into the rock, which I carefully poured the molten copper into. Even without me casting Chill, it quickly hardened into a rough band.

  You have crafted an item: Copper Ring.

  Quality: Poor

  …

  The system didn’t have anything particularly nice to say about my new creation, but that didn’t matter. After all, I’d finally gained what I was after.

  You have learned a new skill: Smithing

  Not Blacksmithing? The name wasn’t quite what I’d expected, but maybe copper rings didn’t technically count as actual blacksmithing. From what I knew of skills, there were probably similar variants, and the one I’d grabbed likely had a lot to do with my intent. As I hoped to be making all sorts of different metal objects, a generic Smithing skill sounded pretty good, honestly.

  The skill marked me as an official Novice smith, and I was eager to grab a few more levels. Before I could get carried away, though, there was one last thing I wanted to test. Repeating my earlier actions and heating up some copper, I funneled some fire mana into my hands, activating Gloves of the Arcanist. Much as expected, fire proved to be the correct choice.

  New Gloves of the Arcanist variant discovered!

  Forge Fingers

  +5 to Smithing

  While blacksmithing, protects your hands and arms from all fire and heat produced by the forge. Allows you to use your hands as tongs, directly grabbing objects within the forge.

  Grants limited control over the temperature, malleability, and melting point of all metal worked in the forge. Passively refines all metal used, removing small amounts of unwanted impurities. Slightly improves mana conductivity of all creations.

  Well, there goes my need to make actual tongs. Despite the guarantees of the skill, I was hesitant as I slowly poked my hand into the forge. I could feel a gentle, soothing warmth licking at my fingers, but otherwise, I barely noticed the heat at all.

  One final notification popped up, courtesy of my most recently acquired quest.

  Class Trial Quest Updated

  Discover at least 10 different variants of Gloves of the Arcanist - 5/10

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Neat. Now, how hard do we think it would be to make some baking trays?

  Smithing has reached level 3!

  Jewelry Making has reached level 6!

  Despite my original intentions, most of my first few days of smithing were devoted to entirely mundane objects. Naturally, Cooking had a lot to do with that. A top for the grill. Some baking trays. Some silverware that was actually silver.

  In fairness, that last one was still a work in progress. I’d managed some wonky-looking butter knives and even a spoon or two, but my forks were all laughably misshapen. I still hadn’t figured out if it’d be better to cast them with stone molds or if it was better to outright smith them. Neither strategy had yielded great results, but that had more to do with my lack of skill than anything else.

  I didn’t have too great a need for pots and pans now that I had my Gastro-chemist’s Cookware, but I still wanted a nice, heavy cast-iron pan if I could manage it. My first few attempts had all shattered, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing wrong. After temporarily giving up, I shifted to easier cookware, forging a few crude metal spatulas.

  From there, I went back to my roots, returning to one of the first professions I’d learned: Jewelry Making. Every level I had in the skill had been from wooden jewelry, and only now was I diving into actual metals. Rings and bracelets, I quickly discovered, weren’t too hard to cast, though they tended to be fairly crude. Without a good way of polishing them, I struggled to make them smooth and shiny, even when using gold or silver.

  After some trial and error, I was able to make some gold wire by pulling the molten metal through a thin hole. The pliable material was perfect for braiding into all sorts of patterns, and the quality of my work soon went from “needs to be melted back down” to “I could sell this at a flea market.”

  Courtesy of Miner’s Mitts -- and some of the looting we’d done while trapped in the desert crypt -- I had a few gemstones floating around in my storage, but I was committed to leaving those alone until I had a better sense of what I was doing. Even if I could figure out how to properly cut them, I couldn’t give them a base to be worth it.

  I knew there was still a wide world open to me that I’d yet to explore. For one, I hadn’t tried refining any ore on my own, nor had I looked into making alloys. I had the general sense that copper and tin could be combined into bronze, and some sort of process with iron and coal created steel, but that was it. The exact process and percentages were a complete mystery to me, and that was to say nothing about the metals like mithril and adamantium that had no earthen analog.

  Then again, I didn’t have to worry about those, because even with Forge Fingers helping me along, I wasn’t able to melt any of the fantasy metals. In hindsight, I realized I must have gotten remarkably lucky when fighting the Ore Muncher. Either my overloaded fire arrows were much hotter than I realized, or the specific alloy it was made out of had a lower melting point than unalloyed mithril. I’d likely have to find a better fuel source if I wanted to work with the rarer metals.

  All of that, however, could wait. While I’d had a good bit of fun with my cookware and jewelry, those hadn’t been the reason I’d been so intent on building a forge in the first place.

  That distinction went to my Enchanting skill.

  Better yet, the smithing involved was so basic as to barely count.

  The enchanting itself was a pain, although significantly less so now that I had a few more levels of External Intrinsic Mana Manipulation under my belt. While I was fairly certain that there were a bunch of more complex ways to enchant objects, currently, the grand magus was helping me learn a subset that had to do with something called “enchanting matrices.”

  The theory was surprisingly basic. Normally, you cast spells by weaving your mana into a particular shape -- a spellform. Unless you were exceptionally gifted in mana manipulation, that required you to learn a spell through the system and have the system help you weave your mana into the required shape.

  Rather than making you rely on the system, an enchanting matrix was an external aide that essentially did the same thing. If you created a mold in the exact shape of a spellform, then all you had to do was inject your mana into it. The mana would fill up the mold which would shape it into the proper pattern, and the spell would be cast.

  The trouble was making said mold in the first place. Even cantrips were far too complex for me to even think about carving by hand, which left me with a stranger method to create them.

  First, I would form a spell inside my body with the help of the system and Advanced Internal Mana Manipulation. Then, rather than releasing it to cast a spell, I would push it outside of my body with the help of External Intrinsic Mana Manipulation. From there, I’d found that if I focused hard enough, I could partially turn my mana into a physical object, repelling other matter.

  Thus, to create a mold, I’d simply tossed my spell into a box of mud and let it harden, or dipped it into some water before freezing it. When the process was over, I was left with a cube of earth or ice with a hollowed out spellform in the center.

  Neither ice nor earth worked well for the task at hand, though, the first being too crumbly while the second easily cracked and melted.

  Thus, my desire for metal. Repeating the same process that I’d tried before, I took out a box of stone and threw the spellform for Illumination into it, clamping down on my mana to keep it as solid as possible.

  After that, the actual smithing element was laughably simple.

  I melted some iron.

  I poured it into the box.

  I waited for it to cool.

  Voila. Smithing complete.

  As soon as I managed to wedge the iron cube from its casing, the system graded my efforts.

  You have created a new object: Illumination Enchanting Matrix.

  The quality of your crafted object is: Good.

  …

  Enchanting has reached level 7!

  Success! After exclusively crafting Trash or Poor matrices so far, Good was better than I could have hoped for. I channeled some light magic into the matrix, pushing it through until it completely filled the box. As soon as I let the mana go, a soft glow formed in the air.

  You have cast Illumination.

  It wasn’t perfect. Weirdly enough, the matrix drained several times more mana than the simple spell should have required, and I thought I could feel some of it sinking into the iron itself, but for now I wasn’t worried about efficiency.

  The grand magus had left me a lesson plan in the form of a few examples that I was supposed to recreate. Originally, all but the most basic of them were outside my abilities. Now, though, I’d see if I could finally push my enchanting into the Initiate rank. With an effectively infinite supply of metal at hand, all it would take was a bit of practice.

  In a blur of smithing and cooking and enchanting, half of my vacation vanished before I knew it. Day by day, the harrowing ordeal of the spatial region grew more distant, until I was finally able to bring myself to start running my class trials again. It’d probably take another month or two before I had any real desire to train up my Spatial Magic again, but the Overload Armor and Overload Weapon trials were different enough from Arcane Vision’s that a smaller break sufficed.

  Even before I’d entered the spatial region, I’d been close to wrapping both of the trials up. As often seemed to be the case with my Weaponmaster and Armorist trials, they were considerably more straightforward than the Augmenter trials.

  In this case, I was back to the familiar routine of fighting against a bunch of strangely specific enemies for Overload Weapon and running another obstacle course while getting hit with outlandish attacks for Overload Armor.

  Part of each trial focused on conservation, forcing me to use the least amount of mana possible to break past defenses or tank an attack. At other times, more was more, and the best option was to simply flood my armor and weapons to take the guesswork out of my fights.

  Both were tricky to some extent, largely owing to their reliance on my previous class skills -- I was still forced to switch between mana types, weapon types, and armor types, building upon what I’d learned before. Even so, while I knew that neither trial was anywhere near as hard as Arcane Vision’s, it still managed to shock me by just how much.

  Is it because I’m so used to running a harder trial for months on end? Possibly. Although I also hadn’t run either trial since the mental region. I liked to think that my partially healed mind was paying dividends already.

  No matter the reasoning, I found myself breezing through the same trials that I’d made only slow progress on over the course of months. In the span of a single week, I cleared the first, and only shortly thereafter, the second. In both cases, I was rewarded with an aggressive, all-caps message in glowing golden letters.

  CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE COMPLETED A CLASS TRIAL!

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