With everything set up, I left together with Magnar again. I needed coal, a lot of oil or grease, an anvil and iron. The grease was going to be used to quench the product. A lot of books got this wrong. How could you quench iron, that rusted if left in water, with water?

  No, iron was best quenched in grease or oil, especially since it also added a bit more carbon to the surface and made the surface layer that had to be cleaned off anyway more brittle. If one quenched with water, then the quenching would be too sudden and the risks of cracks or unwanted twisting would be high, and, for some reason, the iron quenched in water would also tend to rust faster.

  Copper on the other hand… Copper is a strange one. Quenching actually softened copper… It relaxed the lattice structure and made it softer. The only way to harden copper, was through cold hardening. In other words, continuous hammering. At most… in the past copper blades were sunk into urine. This gave them an outer layer of salts that prevented further oxidation. Who came up with it? I don’t know, but I bet it was some weirdo that only wanted to piss on stuff.

  We passed by a blacksmith shop, and I bought two forging billets, two coal sacks and an old anvil. I picked the two best that the smith had, yet they were still subpar compared to what I, under Fjorn’s continuous training could make. The aether conductance of the billets was low and they weren’t uniform.

  The purchases here alone had cost me nine large coppers and two silvers, had to haggle the price down for the anvil from three silvers... Now I only missed the oil and grease. I needed better grease for the improvised bearings too. As such after the blacksmith, our first stop was the slaughterhouse.

  From there I bought for only two large coppers a big barrel filled with raw suet. A hard fat that formed near the kidneys and had higher melting point. It was perfect for my improvised bearings as a few pieces of this would provide self-lubrication for a long time. A quick trip to the tanners where I bought two leather pieces to make a double lung bellow.

  Next stop was outside the city. Revisiting the slums was not something I could avoid as such, despite my unwillingness. We walked together and left the town. The road barely had traces of the pavement left visible. Mud and strange puddles covered most of it. The stench was as bad as the first time.

  Now however I could see its source. Homeless people, most with missing limbs or other impairments such as scars crossing over their eyes, missing ears or simply a lack of sanity. One such insane person jumped at us. Magnar caught him and pushed him back, making him stumble and fall back first in a puddle.

  There were kids hiding in the even worse side alleys watching us. Plenty had scared faces and missing teeth, their skin filthy and using rags as clothes. Younger ones were even completely naked. ‘This is not an environment for children.’ My hand clenched with this thought. ‘These kids… They are missing nothing; they can all lead a good fair life if only they’d receive some guidance… but it’s not yet time for me to worry about them.’

  I picked up pace using aether to reinforce my legs as I started skipping and jumping from visible stone to visible stone, significantly speeding up. Passing by small shacks and dilapidated buildings, I saw what the mud and puddles were made of… Feces… The people, those that could still be bothered to keep some order to their lives, they threw out the buckets that acted as toilets out into the road.

  Seeing this I was even more determined to avoid stepping on the mud again. Luckily the horrid walk did not take long, unluckily… We had to cross the area again later… For now, however all was fine. Magnar didn’t imitate my skipping style, but his nose did wrinkle seeing women throwing out the window the content of the buckets…

  Throughout our rush, Magnar somehow kept his cheeks tensioned. The skin near his jaw was wrinkled and his nostrils got narrower… This skill… No matter how I tried I couldn’t imitate him. ‘Something specific to beastman, I guess’

  We approached the windmills. This was where the flour used to make the bread of the city was made. This is where the oil used in the city was obtained through grinding and pressing. Hopefully, I’d be able to get it for cheaper from here, or even for free if I were to get some older oil, that went bad. Sure… It would stink, but compared to animal fat or grease taken from the kitchen… This was going to be way better for my needs.

  We circled the area and found a scene that made my blood boil. I quickly rushed and started shouting.

  “Stop! Stooop! Stop pouring out the oil!” my voice sounded out sharp with urgency.

  The man that was emptying the barrels looked up and saw me running. He shook his head and looked back down, ignoring me. ‘What the hell is wrong with this guy?’ I thought as I reinforced myself and pushed off with great speed forward, empowering my legs with aether. ‘That is my quenching oil you’re wasting buffoon!’. In a few seconds I was next to him and raised the barrel on its feet.

  “What the hell are you doing? Do you want me to brea…” His voice got caught in his throat as he saw Magnar behind me. Then his eyes finally registered our uniforms, and he started trembling. “I’m sorry, I did not realize you’re from the Academy!”

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  “I need this oil… How much do you have left? This barrel’s almost empty…” I asked, my shoulders sagging as I felt how easily the barrel tilted. ‘If only I got here faster…’

  “There’s still one more… But this oil’s gone bad. I don’t recommend using it, you may go sick…”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to cook with it, I’ll only use it to quench iron and steel.”

  “Use it to quench? Never heard of such an use…”

  “Of course not, few craftsmen know of this trick. Besides… it just marginally increases success rate. If the smith is bad this won’t help anyway.”

  “So you want both barrels?”

  I fell silent and thought. I shook the barrel I stopped him from emptying. There was less than a quarter left inside. The quenching doesn’t consume much oil anyway… I wondered if there was any need to take it.

  “Yes, I’ll take both, how much for them?”

  “Just give me enough for the barrels… You’re doing me a favor; it takes long to pour out these damned things after the oil thickens and goes bad… It’s seven coppers each… I’d have had to scrub and take off a layer of wood too to make these useable again, that’s why the price is lower.”

  “Ok… Unneeded info there…” While Magnar grabbed the full barrel and put it on his shoulder, similar to the one filled with suet, I took out one large copper and four coppers and handed them to the man. “Here!”

  “Thanks, have a good day!” He took his small cart filled with empty barrels and left.

  We left the place, yet did not hurry. The slums awaited to assault our noses again after all.

  “You keep awfully quiet during these outings for stuff…” I said, feeling it was a bit strange.

  “My father taught us to keep quiet when there’s nothing urgent. Listening is important…”

  “I guess so…”

  We made our way even faster through the slums this time. The guards at the gate threw us some funny glances, but didn’t stop us, even though we were hauling barrels in. ‘Is this simply how it is, are they lazy or is it a privilege due to the uniforms?’ I had no one to ask now, and I needed to hurry back and make something with all that we bought.

  Soon we were back at the tower. I took two planks and made a semicircle hole in each of them. Using a bit of leather, I made a flexible cap for the holes, then fixed it in using nails. I placed the two planks with the caps inwards. I took another board and cut a circular part out of its top.

  Inserting the third plank between the other two I made sure that the caps and the top cut of the third plank are in opposing directions. I added leather strips to the top, on the outer sides of the two planks with caps. A fourth plank with a hole in its center was added to the top.

  I connected the strips of leather on the outer planks to the top plank on opposing sides. The third plank got a two bigger leather pieces. These connected in the middle where a tongue was left. The two pieces were connected to the plank on opposing sides and its ends were nailed to the top board while the tongue was passed through its hole.

  I then used two leather pieces cut at an angle, so that they’d be thicker at the middle to connect the top plank to the middle one and the middle one to the bottom one. At the end I added a handle to the middle plank, while supports connected the upper and lower planks keeping them apart at a distance a bit bigger than the maximum width of the leather.

  This was a double lung bellow, perfect for maintaining burning as it always pushed air out. If you pushed down, the air in the lower chamber would be pushed out through the front as the cap would cover the hole in the lower plank, while air would be sucked in the upper chamber through the capped hole as the cap would fold inward.

  After arranging everything, I brought a bucket of water and started mixing coal in it. I didn’t stop until I got a thick black sludge. I filled the forge with coal, then ignited it. After a bit the side-draft started dragging in all the smoke and the coal started heating up well. I poured over the top the sludge, leaving an oval-shaped hole at the center.

  Yellowish smoke started rising from the sludge that stood over burning coal. Before I could start heating the metal I needed all that smoke to be gone. It was filled with impurities, such as sulfur, the worst enemy of iron.

  I did not just stand there to wait, however. I took one of the billets. These were meant to make swords. I planned to make a dagger, so the billets were too long. I brought the billet to the anvil and grabbed the hammer gifted by Fjorn. I aligned the part I wanted to get off to the edge of the anvil.

  I raised the hammer and brought it down with force. The billet was bent. I repeated the action spinning the billet until the piece I wanted was separated. Meanwhile Magnar was using a double lung bellow I made. After some more waiting the greenish smoke was gone.

  I cracked the hard rim formed by the sludge and pushed a piece to the center. It was now coke, purified carbon, burning cleanly and at high temperatures, perfect for working iron. I brought my billet piece and put it in the fire. After it turned bright red, almost white I took it out and brought it to the anvil.

  I quickly hammered it, each strike carrying outwards flowing aether to create that self-sharpening lattice structure. I did not have a lot of time, after all the iron anvil sucked the heat out of the metal I worked with. I repeated this process six times, folding the metal every second time and pushing aether through it. This resulted in a higher quality billet as the impurities were pushed out and under my aether influx, its conductivity increased.

  After the seventh heating I started shaping the dagger. I beat it to be long then hammered the tip. I used the rounded part of the anvil to obtain a nice hook on the side opposing the cutting edge. I kept hammering and adjusting the shape. Finally, after three hours of work, the blade was complete, or at least its preliminary form was.

  I dipped it in the newly acquired oil. Both mine and Magnar’s noses wrinkled from the smell as the dagger entered the rancid oil. I kept moving it around to keep the quenching as good as possible. After another two hours of grinding the blade was complete, with a mirror-like surface, and an edge so sharp, it cut a wood strip cleanly.

  I heated the thin handle section again. I drilled two holes in it, then I picked the best piece of wood I had and drilled a hole in it. Then I plunged the hot handle right in. This was hot wood binding. It often had superior results to gluing. I finished by hammering two nails in the handle, where the holes in the metal were.

  After more grinding to shape the handle into a comfortable form the dagger was completed. A second to third tier basic artifact. By any accounts this was a high-quality product. Next came finding a buyer, or better yet, someone to take care of selling it and my future works, while I focused on studying and forging.