English Novel
Chapter 51: Smithing Magic
Chapter 51: Smithing Magic
Having been liberated from the hard work of refining mithril and adamantite, I spent my days relaxing at home and thinking of what to make with the Elder Treant wood in the workshop.
And then I challenged myself to make mithril-made armor and adamantite-made weapons at Doganbo-san’s place.
「Too slow!」
「No, I came first thing in the morning.」
There has to be a limit to how much this bearded beer barrel-shaped old man can go at his own pace.
At the workshop, Doganbo-san first showed me how to hammer a mithril knife.
Doganbo-san fired up the furnace.
「If it’s ordinary silver, you’d mix things like copper in, but while mithril was originally silver, its properties are already different. You’d know it by its other name, 『Divine Silver』. So, when it comes to mithril, you mix these.」
Doganbo-san took out metal fragments, a red stone, and some kind of powder.
「One is Magic Iron fragments, the red stone is a Salamander’s gallstone, and this powder is pulverized magic stone.」
According to Doganbo-san, for mithril alloy, it doesn’t have to be magic iron specifically, but it must be mithril and a metal with similarly high affinity with magic power. Truthfully, a knife with adamantite would raise its performance, however, mithril alloy has the characteristics of being light and has high affinity to magic power therefore Doganbo-san said that he judged that magic iron would be more suited as the accompaniment. The Salamander’s Gallstone is a material that grants fire attribute to the knife. Powdered magic stone acts as the agent that promotes the mixture of the Salamander’s Gallstone and the Magic iron.
「That said, when that mithril alloy is hammered into a knife and it will become a fire attribute knife, correct?」
「Yeah, if there’s a Bestower, you’d be able to grant fire attribute to the knife even without the Salamander’s Gallstone, however, if you add the attribute to the materials of the knife itself, there will be a large margin between the completed knives.」
I can use bestowal magic so I understand, the number of effects you can use on materials of bestowed weapons and armor fluctuate. In very game-like fashion, weapons and armor have slots that grant special effects, but if you can grant attributes to the materials themselves, you can grant attributes without having to decrease the slots of the completed knife.
Doganbo-san placed the materials into the furnace to heat them up. From there, Doganbo-san heated the furnace more with magic power.
Magic metals need to be charged with magic power. However, by applying only heat, no matter how high the temperature is, alloying is not possible. You need to charge magic power into the hearth to raise its temperature to synthesize the Magic Iron and Salamander’s Gallstone with the mithril.
In the dark workshop lit only by the fires of the furnace, one sweats buckets even by just staying still.
Doganbo-san struck the mithril alloy that has yet to complete blending on the anvil using a mallet. There I hit it with a sledgehammer. I do not know why he is using a mallet but I think I’m learning.[1]
「More, put more magic power into the mallet!」
「Yes!」
Kan! Kan! Kan! Kan!
Repeating it over and over, it turned into a uniform alloy and Doganbo-san enters the shaping process.
It’s strange but Doganbo-san has used barely any Smithing Magic up to this point. Only to correct the shape a bit.
Using his big arm, Doganbo-san charged the mallet and hammered with it.
Completing the shaping process, the object shaped like a knife was once again heated up in the furnace.
「The tempering temperature is this color, remember it!」
Jyuaaaaaaaaaーー!!
Doganbo-san dipped the reddish-orange hot knife into water.
The tempered knife was sharpened through a rough grit, medium grit, then a fine grit whetstone to finish and the final product became a silver knife with a light red tinge.
「After that, add your mark and it’s finished.」
After that, I decided what I would make next.
What I thought to make was a spearhead made of adamantite alloy.
I’ll try the recipe that Doganbo-san had taught me. Since I didn’t have monster materials that could grant attributes, Doganbo-san advised that I make use of magic stones with attributes.
「When high class monster materials are used, the attribute it grants is more effective. For example, when you use a Fire Drake’s fire sack, not only will it be fire attribute, but it would also have Enhanced Attack.」
Another is, when using materials from a monster called Thunderbird, it grants equipment the lightning attribute and Enhanced Agility.
Adamantite by itself is already a superior metal, but alloying it makes its abilities even better. Now then, while Doganbo-san said that it would be easier to practice with a small amount of mithril and magic iron, let’s try out a variety of things here. With alchemy, I can try as many time as I want.
Usually, there is the core, shell, and edge which have carbon content of 0.3% – 0.8% and the core is soft, the shell is hard, and the edge is a little softer than the shell.
Verifying that hardness actually varies on the carbon content, I get that the properties of iron are completely different. Next, I tried transmuting titanium, tungsten carbide, and cobalt.
While appraising their details with Appraisal EX, I researched for an adamantite alloy recipe. It seems that although it’ll become somewhat heavy, tungsten is the right choice. Changing the carbon content of tungsten, cobalt, and titanium each by several percent while transmuting, I probed into the balance between hardness and toughness.
Eventually, I’d make a shell with high hardness and average toughness, an edge with average hardness and toughness, and a core with average hardness but with high toughness. Though I present it as average, if we were to say that those were in adamantite alloy, I think the alloy made would be in a different dimension from mithril alloy or magic steel.[2]
「Alright!」
Psyching myself up, I piled the three types of alloys. While using the Smithing magic, Craft, Earth magic, and Alchemy, I imagined that the types of alloy fusing. The completed form is a bamboo leaf shaped blade of an oomiyari. I’ll remake the spears that Sophia and Maria used with adamantite alloy.
To finish it, I imagined tempering it. Placing it on the ground, I imagined altering the speed it cooled, converting the degree of hardening until the metallographic structure changed.
Despite this being made only with Smithing magic, a hamon is visible on the blade.[3]
I carefully examined the 60cm oomiyari blade.
The blade has a black blade characteristic to adamantite alloy with a distorted clover hamon line on the surface.[4] There doesn’t seem to be a problem when I appraised it.
「W-what is that?!」
「Eh? It’s a spearhead.」
I hadn’t noticed in my concentration, but Doganbo-san drew closer to me, wide-eyed.
「Hey Takumi, Smithing magic is only used to the degree of correcting shapes. From shaping to tempering, and sharpening to top it off, that Smithing magic you used to make the spearhead is preposterous and going too far. What’s with that spearhead? Apart from the pattern on the blade, I can see that it’s obviously a sharp blade.」
I explained to Doganbo-san that I combined adamantite with tungsten, cobalt, and a little bit of titanium, then altered the carbon content while stacking the three kinds of alloys, making one spearhead.
「Honestly speaking, I have absolutely no idea what tungsten and cobalt are, but by altering the hardness of the core and the edge, you were trying to balance the weapon’s sharpness and strength.」
Doganbo-san was still mumbling, but since my prototype had more or less been successful, I’ll see if I grant an attribute to the materials of this alloy.
I took out one magic stone from my Item Box, grasped it, and charged Ice attribute magic power into it. Confirming that the magic stone had turned dark blue, I used 『Pulverization』 to turn the magic stone into powder.
「Alright, now 『Synthesis』.」
The black adamantite alloy-made blade turned bluish black. I could see that the hamon portion where the black is faint is especially blue.
I grasped the core part, pouring magic power into it, enveloping the spearhead with ice attribute magic power.
Lastly, I applied 『Strong Slash』, 『Self Repair』, and 『Strong Thrust』 enchantments, and the adamantite alloy-made spearhead is complete.
I made a handle from Elder Treant Wood, a silvery-white cross-guard made of mithril alloy, and an adamantite alloy-made butt end.
・Ice Spear 【Ice Bringer】
An adamantite alloy-made spear created by an excellent magic blacksmithing alchemist. Endowed with the Ice attribute. By passing magic power through it, the spearhead will be clad in Ice attribute magic.
『Enhanced Ice Attribute』 『Ice Attribute Resistance』 『Strong Slash』『Self Repair』 『Strong Thrust』
Rarity: National Treasure
By the time I looked with Appraisal EX, it already had a name.
「I can go home now, right?」
Doganbo-san didn’t respond. As he grumbled, it seems he had stepped into my world.
Since I’ll be fine at my own workshop, I’ve decided to go home now.
***
Footnotes:
- For the people who want to see the mallet and sledge hammer thing that Takumi and Doganbo are doing. Video
- Hardness, Toughness and Strength in metal explained by definition because in normal English, these words are usually interchanged. Definition
- In swordsmithing, hamon (刃文 hamon) (from Japanese, literally “blade pattern”) is a visual effect created on the blade by the hardening process. Source: Wikipedia.
- Example of a clover hamon here. More types of hamon here
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