After leaving Lugh, Lian went home and heard Pops making a racket in the smithy and grew curious about what he was doing, and more than a little worried that he was trying something big on his own again. She was right that he was doing something big as there were many new items in the smithy.

  “Welcome back Lilliana.”

  Lian was surprised to see the changes to the smithy. While it was always spacious there was now a second table and a complete setup with beginner equipment. The only things over there that weren’t new were her old tools and some materials she had been collecting for her own personal projects.

  “What’s all this?”

  “That is your side of the smithy. From today onwards, you can make and sell your own creations.”

  Lian's face lit up when she heard this. She was looking all over for the oglunite ingot when she heard a thud on the anvil behind her. When she turned, she saw that Pops had placed the oglunite ingot she got from the triplets.

  “First you need to make new tools. Now that you have the system anything you make will be enhanced by it. Your equipment should help you not hold you back. Once you’re done, I’ll teach you your final lessons.”

  Lian was excited until it dawned on her what exactly he said. Final lessons. Some part of her refused to believe there was nothing else to learn from Pops. She was his apprentice and assistant.

  “What final lessons?”

  “Manaurgy. How to imbue your mana and thus any affinity you have into your creations. Also forging beast gear requires a little finesse with your mana.”

  For years she helped Pops forge various things, but she was always told that she wouldn’t understand manaurgy until she could use mana. Yet while she was excited to learn something new, she was also sad that this would be her final lesson. Could she still say that she was his student after learning this?

  She couldn't let her thoughts linger for now. If she wanted to make Pops proud, her first task was to forge a new hammer. Working with oglunite felt surprisingly natural, almost as if the material itself understood her intentions. The entire process went so smoothly that it unsettled her, but she couldn't deny the excellent results.

  When she noticed she had enough oglunite left to make a pair of tongs, assuming she didn’t mess up, she went straight to work.

  Once she was done, she finally looked at both of her creations and was proud of the results. Though when she showed Pops, he didn’t think highly of it.

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  “Listen lass that was living metal. If you know what it wants to be it will make it so.” When he noticed that Lian was feeling down from the lecture he just sighed before patting her on the back. “Still did good though.”

  Lian cheered back up after hearing that as he guided her to his side of the smithy for him to show her how to manipulate mana in the forging process. Pops explained that imbuing affinities is the easier of the two so they would start there.

  Pops had used a simple fire skill to manipulate the flame and imbued the affinity for flame in it. When he pulled it out, she was in awe of it.

  He had only taken an hour and a half to forge it, dismissing it as "so-so." He instructed her to practice at her forge and, until she developed a fire skill, to use powdered mana stones. While the principle was the same—imbuing her mana into the powder as it was tossed into the fire—it lacked refinement.

  Manipulating her mana once the mana stone powder entered the flames proved tricky. Pops guided her through the process, and after a few hours, she succeeded. She discovered that the key was to treat the flame as another medium, harnessing its properties to spread while suppressing its tendency to consume.

  Lian was quite happy with the result as she admired her creation. While there was a slight warp in the blade from the quench it wasn’t anything she couldn’t fix.

  She looked it over and thought to herself maybe she could use lust affinity and not be embarrassed by it.

  “So that’s your affinity.” Pops said as he looked at the dagger and Lian realized she never told him what it was. She felt embarrassed and humiliated about her own affinity. The description of it made her sound like some kind of sexual degenerate.

  “Yeah. The affinity of lust.” She stood there staring at her dagger in silence. It ate away at her until she turned to see Pops’ judging gaze. Instead, she saw him do everything in his power to suppress laughter.

  “It. It’s not funny.” Pops did his best to speak in between his stifled laughter and was failing miserably. “It’s just that you’re as pure as snow Lilliana.”

  Lian's face turned even redder as she smacked him over the head repeatedly. Since both of them were 5’8” this wasn’t too hard. His defeat was swift and without mercy, as he apologized with fervor before fetching various beast materials for the last lesson as an offering.

  While Pops was bringing out the different materials Lian checked the notice her system gave her and was surprised to find out that she had reached level two already.

  While she chalked it up to her apprentice smith title and her new hammer, she was still surprised to see that she had already leveled up. However, she was surprised to see that her metalsmithing skill also leveled up. She couldn’t help but wonder if the XP boost also applied to leveling up the skills themselves.

  For now, she looked at her attributes and decided where to put her newly earned enhancement point. She figured she didn’t need to worry about increasing her health or mana yet. She ended up doing nothing with it for now, thinking it would be better to save up points and see what her options were for her first class at level 10.

  “Now listen Lilliana, the process for forging beast material is similar to what you did earlier. Instead of imbuing your affinity into the material you are using your mana to reinforce the material. When done right it will act like metal, allowing us to hammer it as we please. I find it helpful to imagine giving the material a similar structure to steel.”

  Lian took his advice as gospel, as she made a mental design of her next knife.

  He grabbed the fang of a small wyrm and began to show her how to go about it. Once again, he called the end result a meh and tossed it to the side.

  “Hey Pops, how does the system decide what these are called? Shouldn’t we be able to name our own creations?” Lian inquired out of curiosity. Though she wouldn’t deny that it annoyed her that a name was given to them.

  “The names the system gives them are merely suggestions. Once you own it you can change its name. The system calls this wyrmfang dagger, yet I could rename it dragon slayer. Then once it’s sold the person who owns it can rename it to stabby.”

  On the one hand, Lian liked to hear that it was just ease of use but was still annoyed because the thought that someone could rename an item, she worked hard to make, into a gimmick for their personal amusement bothered her.

  Now that it was her turn, Lian approached the array of materials laid out before her with a mix of curiosity and trepidation. She had no idea which items were valuable, and which might be part of Pops’ cunning tests. After a moment of deliberation, she decided on a large, imposing tooth. It belonged to a saber-fang, a less powerful relative of the fearsome smilodon beasts. Despite its inferior status, the saber-fang’s tooth still held a promise of strength, challenging Lian to make something beautiful out of it.

  “Well, that choice is a statement.” Pops responded as she chose and earned a dirty glare from Lian. As far as she was concerned it was too late in the day to be judgy, especially after he laughed at her affinity.

  Again, he guided her through the process, and it took a couple more hours but she managed to get it right on the first try.

  She felt a swell of pride as she admired her work. This time, even Pops couldn't help but praise her for getting it right on the first try, though he followed up with a handful of critiques. Together, they cleaned up their respective workstations, carefully putting away tools and materials. By the time they finished, the clock had long passed midnight, and both were thoroughly exhausted, ready to collapse into their beds.