Blacksmith vs. the System-Chapter 209

“Professor, good news!” Terry greeted me happily the moment I arrived.

“Oh, really,” I said and looked around, watching as about a hundred workers moved around rapidly, building some kind of complicated system of dials and containers. The operation was being led by Liam, who had truly distinguished himself from the rest of the smithing apprentices. “Before we start, I met with Rebecca’s new team.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, looking hesitant. “Since you said I can share the information without restriction, I thought that… And, Rebecca needed the help —”

“Calm down, it’s not an admonishment. I’m here to congratulate you,” I said. “It’s good that you showed initiative. But, where did they come from?”

“Some of them were together with us when you made the offer, but they decided against it. Some of them decided to wait a few days before taking the opportunity to level up. Also, there were several others that hadn’t fought enough to reach level twenty-five, so there was an opportunity there…” he explained, though the last part was a touch hesitant, probably worrying about rewarding people that had not ‘contributed’ to the settlement.

“Good work,” I said instead. I had no intention of trying to regulate some kind of contribution rule, especially when it came to knowledge. “Feel free to share our other discoveries with them as well. The more magic users we have, the better,” I said.

“As you wish, professor,” he said, considerably more relaxed.

“Now, tell me about the experiment,” I said, then paused. “Just the results for now. I can read about the process later,” I said, and caught a slight shift in his attitude. “You took notes during each step like I taught you, right?” I asked.

“Well,” he muttered, looking sheepish. “I haven’t, not yet. I thought that I could put together a report once I finish—”

“Assuming that you can use Wisdom to remember every detail, I assume,” I said. He nodded sheepishly. “That’s not a good way,” I said. “Yes, Wisdom gives near-perfect recall, but that doesn’t mean you’ll remember the significance of every move. It’s a much better habit to continuously take notes, detailing not only the steps but also reasoning the results. And, always keep samples whenever possible. We don’t know when they’ll come in useful.”

“Sorry, professor,” Terry replied sheepishly. “I thought … wrong.”

“No harm done,” I said. “In an ideal world, we would have designed the experiment for weeks and discussed every step before we started the practical side of the work. A few slip-ups like this are to be expected.”

“Still,” he replied, looking conflicted. “I should be better.”

“Then, be more careful next time,” I said, not wanting to waste too much time on apologies. “Now, give me a breakdown of the results, and you can start working on the process later.”

He nodded. “We had some surprising discoveries, professor,” he said as he pointed at the giant metal silo currently under construction. “The biggest being the steam treatment.”

“Go on,” I said.

“It only works for the claws, but several experiments showed that keeping the claws in a closed, high-pressure environment softens it significantly for further processing, all without a notable loss of potency,” he said.

“Significantly?” I asked. “Give me some numbers.”

“It depends on the task,” he said. “For my Tend skill, the results had varied between twenty and thirty-five percent, but the potency loss had been stable.”

“Any drawbacks?” I asked.

“Two,” he said. “Keeping the claws pressured too long could result in an explosion, and once removed, they start degrading slowly. It takes merely twenty minutes for it to turn completely inert once exposed to air.”

“Excellent work,” I said. “Any other methods?”

“Nothing remotely comparable,” he replied.

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“And, did the same thing work for insect shells?”

He shook his head. “No, professor. We tried, but the only thing that it achieved was to destabilize the fragments quickly. If there are any benefits, we weren’t able to see it.”

“Show me some samples from the insect shells first,” I said.

“As you wish, professor,” he said as he led me toward there. On the way, I saw many small, ongoing experiments, including some smiths continuously manipulating the material manually. He brought me to the shelves at the center.

I touched the inert remains of the shells, confirming that the remaining shells were mostly depleted, carrying only a hint of decay concept, long turned impotent. “Your judgment is correct,” I said. “The constant heat and pressure don’t work well with the decay. Now, show me the pressured claws,” I said.

Terry led me to the more crowded part of the experiment, where several workers were doing their best to monitor pressure on various chambers. “I have adapted the suggestions in your notes. Every chamber applies a different level of pressure, heat, and time, with each unique combination having three dedicated canisters,” he said. “Liam, what’s the latest status?”

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“Hello, sir,” Liam greeted me.

“Weren’t you helping Rosie with the flying contraptions? Did it finish?” I asked.

“No, sir. But, she’s busy with her new apprentice, so she sent me here.”

“New apprentice?” I asked, expecting Liam to explain, which was why I was surprised by Terry’s sudden flinch.

“P-professor. It’s Jessica,” Terry said. “But, she said that she had your permission —”

“She has no need to worry,” I said. “She just neglected to inform me,” I said. “I’m guessing it’s about how her skill works,” I said, remembering the way she had been moving between trees.

“Yes. When the head of security mentioned that she had the potential to be a good scout, Jessica volunteered almost immediately.”

“It fits her personality well,” I said. “She’s not the kind of person that can handle inaction well.”

“As long as she feels fulfilled doing it,” Terry said, still worried.

“Rosie is a good teacher, and quite protective of her people. You don’t have to worry too much,” I said before I turned to Liam. “So, you were about to give us a status update.”

“Yes, sir,” Liam said. “For the moment, we’re building a new set of canisters that could handle even higher points of pressure. The natural heat resistance from the metal made from lizard claws is quite useful on the subject.”

“Since the results had been pretty ubiquitous in terms of higher pressure and temperatures making the material more malleable, we want to push it even higher,” Terry jumped in.

“Good initiative,” I said, but as we talked, I noticed Liam looking hesitant, like he had something he wanted to share. “Liam, you look like you want to add something.”

“Well, nothing important,” he said, looking slightly hesitant at being called out.

“Don’t worry about having bad ideas,” I recommended. “It’s a brainstorming session, and at worst, we’ll just move on.”

He paused. “I was thinking about combining heat and movement,” he added. Terry opened his mouth, but Liam continued. “I know the previous attempt ended explosively, but the numbers before the explosion had been promising,” he said. “It can be promising if we built a thicker container, maybe with a better isolating inner wall.”

Terry looked like he was about to cut his suggestion, but a subtle yet reproachful look from me was enough to make him change his attitude. I could have cut him off directly, but I didn’t want to ruin his authority among his peers. I might have not cared about that if we were still back in the classroom, but the constant danger meant that we all had multiple roles.

Undermining his leadership potential would have been a terrible idea.

“Alright, explain to me why you think that it’s a viable path, and I’ll agree to revisit the idea,” Terry said, and I gave him a subtle nod of approval.

“Of course,” Liam said as he pulled a large paper, filled with both drawings and calculations.

Both looked at me, expecting me to take center stage. “Don’t mind me, I don’t have enough information to make a decision either way. You two have to handle it,” I said, listening to their argument even as I memorized the drawing.

It was a clever contraption, which not only had several small parts to control the pressure in the chamber, but also used the steam valve to rotate the centrifuge at the center aggressively.

Ultimately, Terry rejected the device. “No,” he said. “I agree that it’s promising, but its contents have the potential to activate. It means constant supervision is required, and the risk of an accident is too high.” Liam looked ready to argue. “We’ll revisit it three days later, once we exhaust the more basic combinations,” Terry added.

“Fine,” Liam replied, frustrated, but not angry. It was a good resolution, and I approved the conclusion — even though I planned to create one in the dungeon to test it.

It was not paradoxical. Terry’s reasons for canceling the experiment were reasonable, but neither the danger nor the need for fine control was an impediment for me.

“So, the canisters,” Liam responded, giving a more detailed breakdown.

I stayed there for half an hour, letting Terry and Liam give me a summary of everything they tested, from the ideal granular size of the material to the correlation between movement, heat, and malleability.

Running through all those possibilities by myself would have taken weeks of my time even if I worked exclusively on that. “Excellent work,” I said. “Continue working on the subject, but also focus on finding a way to directly forge fire-resistant metal without my assistance,” I said as I looked at Liam and Terry.

Achieving that would be another significant step to free the settlement from my constant assistance.

“As you wish, professor,” Terry said. Liam just nodded, and I went back to the dungeon.

Curious whether Liam’s pressurized centrifuge idea was actually viable.