Kael let the words sink in while he repositioned the bellows.
He didn’t like being lectured, but the dwarf wasn’t wrong. Kael’s whole "I can make anything" phase had only worked because he had a cheat code in his hand. Cheats get you killed when they disappear.
Kael nodded to Andre and proceeded to the next step.
"Shovel the old ash out, then get so fresh coal. There’s a sack round the corner, if it ain’t rotted through yet."
Kael followed the gesture and found the sack. It wasn’t hay, it was coarse burlap, stiff from age, dust caked into the fibers. He lifted it and felt the weight shift like stones inside. Coal. Real coal.
He dragged it closer, crouched, and started clearing the forge. The old ash was thick, greasy in places, like sothing had burned wrong. He scooped it into a bucket along with dead coals, the mix staining the tal with a fine black film.
He half-expected Andre to snap the mont Kael poured too much. Coal ant money, and money ant survival. But the dwarf didn’t say a word.
But even after pouring the whole bag in, Andre didn’t say much.
"Do I get another bag?"
"Do I look like I can afford more coal than that? One’s enough. Now light it proper, and show what yer hands can do."
Kael nodded, and the instinctive solution flashed through his mind: fire rune, done. He even started pulling his gauntlets back toward his hands before he caught himself.
He was here to learn. Not to cheat.
Still, habit won. He slid the gauntlets on anyway, feeling the familiar snugness.
"What’re ye doin’ with that?" Andre asked.
"Getting the fire started," Kael said as he removed the Heft Rune.
He didn’t want a cannon shot, just a spark. He adjusted the runes so only what he needed was active, then aid his palm toward the coal.
And applied the effects of the Fire Rune imdiately onto the fresh coal.
The fire imdiately caught on, and the coal started crackling without a mont’s rest.
The forge blood with sudden orange light. The heat rushed up like an opening mouth. Coal popped sharply as it ignited, the sound crisp and eager. For a split second, Kael felt the childish satisfaction of a shortcut working perfectly.
Then Andre’s glare hit him harder than the heat.
"Nifty trick... but ye burned half the coal doin’ it. Wasteful. Put it out, use yer hands, not yer gear." He said.
Kael exhaled through his nose, annoyed but forced to admit it. The coal had caught too hard, too fast, wasting fuel, eating itself. This wasn’t a campfire. This was controlled heat. Controlled resources.
"Right," Kael said as he unequipped the gauntlets.
The forge’s heat was rising nicely now, so he grabbed tongs from a rack that looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. The tongs were stiff, rusty at the joint, but workable.
He grabbed the iron ingot, then shoved it inside the forge.
He watched the tal soak in the heat, letting ti do what brute force couldn’t. Orange glow crept into the iron, then deepened, then brightened, like blood returning to a dead limb.
He watched Andre glancing at him, and just as Andre was about to speak, Kael pulled out the ingot, checked it, and placed it on the anvil.
He didn’t hesitate. The second it was ready, it was out. The iron hit the anvil with a dull, satisfying thud.
He grabbed a hamr and began hamring.
The first strike rang through the smithy like a bell. The sound was different from Brokk’s hamr; this was an honest impact. The iron moved reluctantly, resisting, then yielding.
Andre opened his mouth to speak, but Kael’s second strike made him quiet.
The third, fourth, and fifth, then he shoved the iron ingot back into the fire, heating it again.
Kael worked in cycles without being told. Heat. Strike. Strike. Strike. Back to the heat before the tal cooled too far and punished him for impatience. He didn’t hamr wildly either; he followed the shape. Flattening where needed. Stretching where needed. Building length gradually instead of trying to force it in one go.
He then went to the bellow and blew them a few tis, just enough for the coals to turn brighter, but not over-burn.
He could feel the air feeding the fire, feel the forge’s temperature respond. It was subtle, but it was there, like steering sothing alive.
"Lad... don’t lie to . Ye forged before, haven’t ye?" Andre asked.
Kael didn’t stop hamring imdiately. He finished the strike, set the piece back into the heat, then finally looked up.
"Forged? Never, watched others do, a lot," Kael was too ashad to tell him of the shaful hours he spent watching old docuntaries trying to get so sleep, and many of them were related to his craft back on Earth, chanical engineering, and a good deal of that stemd from smithing and manual forge work.
He never actively sought to apply it, but he learned from watching just enough to show that he understands, and not that he knows.
"Aye... keep goin’." Andre said.
That was it. No praise. No "good." Just permission to continue. But Kael caught the tiny shift in Andre’s posture, less dismissive now, more focused.
Kael continued hamring the billet until it beca a long sword, rough, hamred a bit more than intended here and there, but usable.
It wasn’t elegant. The edges weren’t true. The taper wasn’t perfect. But it was a blade-shaped object with weight and intent.
A real thing made by his hands, not conjured by system convenience.
"Quench it," Andre said.
And Kael obliged, dipping it in a vat of grimy-looking oil.
The oil stank imdiately, thick and rancid. The blade hissed as it plunged in, steam and oily smoke rising in a quick breath. The temperature shock stiffened the tal, locked in shape, supposedly.
Once he pulled it out, he looked satisfied, until the iron began curving.
It didn’t bend dramatically, just enough to ruin it. A slow, ugly warp, like the blade was mocking his optimism.
"Ye worked it too rough round the edges. Ruined it, this one’s a failure." Andre said as he took away the billet.
Kael’s annoyance flared, but he swallowed it. He didn’t want to argue. Andre was right, this was what learning looked like. Failure you could hold in your hands.
"I think I understand... wait a second," Kael said as he pulled Brokke’s hamr and then began striking at the tal.
The hamr corrected the warp like it never existed. A couple of taps, and the blade straightened, edges smoothing slightly, the form snapping into sothing closer to what Kael had intended.
"That... is how ye use the hamr," Andre said.
Kael paused mid-tap.
Andre wasn’t praising the hamr. He was praising the timing. The restraint.
Kael smiled, realizing the idea behind Brokk’s hamr finally.
What he did with it, was simply patchwork. It was fine at the start, to help with fitting so of the leather, that was proper use of the hamr; you give it an unfinished product that has been worked on, and it finalizes it. That’s the reason his gear beca Epic, because it reached its optimal form.
But the gauntlets, they were created from scratch using the hamr and morphed to their shape, without heat or treatnt.
And that’s what made Andre dislike them so much despite their ’interesting’ use.
It wasn’t that Andre hated innovation. He hated laziness disguised as brilliance. Kael finally got it: Brokk’s hamr wasn’t ant to replace craft. It was ant to complete it.
And if Kael wanted to stop being a guy who survived on miracles, he had to start becoming a guy who could survive even when miracles ran out.
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