For almost two weeks, Rino spent his time as idly as he could. He mined out the mana emitting rocks and mana absorbing rocks to experiment with them and transcribed the dwarven stone plates while finalising his first official language. At the same time, Rino made sure he cashed out every single sleeping moment he could get before the new daily quest. Something told him that the gods would be working him very hard soon.

As promised, Rino told Erika to put Noir's cat statue offering as a priority task for the villagers in Spudville. At the same time, Ubel started crafting more cat god statues to put around other areas, such as in Cypress County, and there was even one in Town Zera by the Genesis Tree.

With so many offering stations, Noir should never have any lack of food upon his return. It didn't matter where he ended up. The villagers would automatically know to give the black cat VVIP treatment with the statues in every village.

The rest of Rino's idle days were spent in joy creating new food, tasting new products and weird combinations that the cooks swore tasted good even if Rino's non-existent tongue disagreed. Nothing much of importance happened.

Ping!

Rino was considering a sixteen-hour sleep marathon when that system notification sound made him check the latest update. For lack of a better word, the last few days were dull, albeit peaceful. The lich wanted to quickly get over this mining phase and possibly metalwork to roam the rest of his vast empire.

Ever since Rino lost his way in the forest after he fell from the waterfall, he wanted to know what kind of terrain lay beyond the mountains. There was a possibility for snow, even if Rino highly doubted he would find it.

===

Daily Quest #28

Objective: Create Blacksmith Workshop

Time Limit: 7 Days

0/1 Stone Forge

0/1 Stone Quenching Basin

0/1 Stone Hammer

0/1 Stone Anvil

0/1 Wooden Tongs

0/1 Ceramic Metal Bar Cast

Tutorial here.

Reward: Alloy Smelting Recipe

Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefully completed.

===

Looking at the materials, Rino wondered why most of the blacksmith's workshop consisted of stone and even wooden tools. Could this setup even be considered a proper blacksmith's workshop? He felt conflicted.

Back in the abandoned mines, Rino saw how grand the smeltery and smithing workshops were. The grand furnace room was more spectacular than his kilns. Rino did not see any automation devices for smithing in the dwarves' smithing room. It was the only thing they were more advanced in than the dwarves. However, everything else that a blacksmith needed, the dwarves were more advanced despite their rusted tools and abandoned workshop.

Rino had little idea what any of those things in his quest list meant or what they did. He didn't feel like reading the tutorial yet. If anything, it might be better to learn from observations.

Thankfully, the stone slabs that Rino transcribed mentioned a few things about how smithing worked. It was a little too specific with strange jargon that Rino ignored in favour of his sanity. He had a basic idea of the sequence of order when it came to smelting and smithing. However, nobody was around to tell Rino the best position to place the equipment so that the smiths in his significantly tinier blacksmithing workshop wouldn't crash into each other while carrying heated and pointy objects.

Sighing deeply, Rino settled onto the chair in his stone cottage with a clatter of bones. Retrieving his fourth sketchpad, Rino scrolled through the tutorial. If there were no explanations of the best layout, the lich had to start reading the tutorial that became useful recently.

Compared to when he first started, the recent tutorials were more informational and told Rino things he needed to know. Could it be that there was a new god in charge of his sacred mission to save this stupid world? Well, whoever it was, Rino had a feeling they could get along better than he did with the previous dumb gods.

Up above, the sibling gods sneezed simultaneously as they cleared the storage room. Ever since Ace and Phil took charge of the administrative matters for the small world, their department started to have some semblance to their previous glory. The offerings were generous, and the number of items they could trade with other departments became more. Ark and Stephanie managed to win their trust back and double their sales despite their rocky start and strained business relationships with other gods and goddesses.

Things were going well for everyone. Ark decided that sometimes old was gold. Phil was a veteran, so leaving Rino and the small world in his hands was probably a good idea if it gave Ark more time to mingle in the social circles of gods and goddesses to sniff out better scraps. Maybe if they did well enough, they did not need to ask for hand-outs and could establish something of their own. Taro beer was something that nobody else had in their seed worlds, and he smelled an opportunity to make divinity from it.

Arranging the items in order based on their uses and understanding from the tutorial, Rino divided the blacksmithing items into three categories.

The fixed category consisted of fixed items such as the forge and anvil. The forge has to be fixed because of the fuel replenishing system, airflow calculations and fireproofing measures. Forges typically come with bellows to fan the flames and control the airflow required for metals to merge harmoniously.

The anvil came much later after the metal was heated into liquid and poured into moulds. Rino did not worry about it for now.

On the other hand, the second category was for items that are optional for movements. They were semi fixtures, and Rino included one that wasn't in his quest for the sake of convenience. The quenching basin or cooling tank was normally placed close to the hearth so that heated metal could easily be cooled off if required. The other thing that Rino thought might be needed was a tool rack and possibly a weapon rack. He did not want to scrabble on the ground to find the right tools while holding a heated metal in his other hand.

The last category was for Rino's tools and knick-knacks in general. Things like tongs, hammers and moulds go into this category. Those were easily replaceable and could be rearranged to fit conveniently in the blacksmith's workshop when Rino figured out where to place the more permanent fixtures.

In Rino's case, he had a waterwheel that allowed him to attach an automated hammer. Hence, the most logical thing was to build around that fixture. The furnace forge built into the end of his stone cottage by the river was also fixed. Thankfully, there wasn't a huge distance between the two, and Rino could place his hammering station bench beneath the automated hammer. 

He thought about the space for a while and decided that the cooling tank and water source could not be too far from the anvil placed close to the forge. However, for the sake of convenience, the lich decided to use water runes for water supply and possibly mana imbued water to fill his quenching basin. The dirtied water would be drained into the dwarven sewage tunnels using magic. That should take care of his waste disposal efficiently.

Now that he had almost everything he needed in the area, Rino measured the space he would have left after fitting all those things in the small blacksmithing hut. The tool racks could not be too long, but thankfully, Rino had some space in height. Tongs and hammers should not be too heavy. Rino could fashion the racks out of wood and stone if necessary. 

As for the moulds, Rino needed some space to lay them out while they cooled. Some moulds were very long and took up too much floor space. Rino wanted to make more than just a bar mould. He wanted to make moulds for weapons, armour pieces, bolts and nuts, maybe even gears. The variety of these moulds was a lot, and Rino flipped to a new page on his sketchpad to list the moulds he wanted.

It took the lich some time to categories the moulds he wanted Ubel to help with. By the time he was done, half a night was gone. There were over sixty basic moulds that Rino wanted and too little space. Even if he built the mould rack vertically, there would not be enough space to store them all.

Rino could build a vertical mould cooling rack, but storage seemed to be the main issue. With only seven days to establish a working model, Rino had a feeling he wouldn't make it in time if he called for a renovation team to extend his blacksmithing workshop now.

Looking towards the window, Rino gazed at the Genesis Tree and gained inspiration.

Spatial magic was mana hungry, and if Rino were to store them in his shadow sack, it would drain his mana at a constant speed. However, if he could create a spatial object using runes recharged by the mana web array, the problem became something that he didn't have to deal with directly.