As far as Tabitha was concerned, all she had to do to turn raw ore into usable metal was slap it into a really hot furnace and melt it down.

That was until Joseph introduced her to the concept of roasting ore first.

Under his instructions, the two set up a pile of wood behind the shop outside, placed a stack of raw ores on top of the pile, and then placed more wood on top before lighting it all on fire.

“So… what’s this do?” Tabitha asked him, watching as the fire slowly spread among the logs.

“This roasts the ore,” Joseph answered. “Removes a good amount of impurities. It won’t burn hot enough to melt the ore down, but it will get it hot enough to burn off anything you don’t want on the surface.”

“Does it really matter? What with the system bein’ like a game and all.”

“If you try and smelt it without doing this first, and there are impurities, it’s going to reduce the quality of the metal.”

“Makes sense.”

“Now, this is going to take too long to wait for. It’ll burn for a few hours, and then it’s going to take just as long to cool down. I’ve got ore I’ve already roasted inside. I just wanted to show you this step so you know to do it in the future.”

“Gotcha. Thanks for bein’ such a good teacher.”

“It’s not about being a good teacher, it’s about making sure you don’t make a fool out of me. I don’t want you to go around smithing together garbage products and then telling people I’m the one who taught you. It’d make me look bad.”

“Uh-huh. Alright, old man.”

Joseph kept his head turned away from her as he led her back inside where it was time to learn how to actually smelt ore.

That meant it was time to get the furnace running.

“This is when we learn if you’ve really got what it takes,” Joseph said while dumping a basket of coal into the furnace. “It’s going to get hot in here. Real hot.”

“Dry heat is nothin’,” Tabitha said. “My Gramps was from the South. It got real hot there. And it rained all summer, so it was humid, too. Now, that’s just miserable. Ain’t nobody who should be livin’ in those places. But they still do. Even with hurricanes. Masochists, I tell ya.”

“Hurricanes?”

“Heh. It’d probably sound like some sort of magical disaster or somethin’ to folk here. They’re real big storms that form over the ocean and can even get bigger than small countries, and they have winds powerful enough to blow down weak buildin’s. And if ya live by the coast, they bring a whole lotta flooding with them. Can bring in water more than three times as tall as ya.”

“I’ve heard of storms like that before. Always made me glad we don’t live by an ocean.”

“So, hurricanes exist here too then.”

“Sounds like it, but we call them death storms.”

“Ya know, that’s fair and probably a way better name for ‘em.”

Back to the furnace, Joseph got a fire started and used the nearby bellows to get the flame going even stronger. He then picked up a small, round crucible that looked like it was made out of a black, sandy material. “We’ll put the already roasted ore in this, then put this in the fire. The city blacksmiths have got those fancy furnaces that separate everything for you, but we don’t need those out here.”

“Got it. Ya know, it was almost impossible to find videos of people smeltin’ ore with a blacksmith’s furnace. All the people makin’ videos about it just wanted to make those big, clay furnaces in their backyards to do it.”

Joseph didn’t really understand what she was talking about, so he just shrugged before pointing over to the roasted ores. “Go grab enough of those to fill the crucible with.”

Tabitha did as requested and made sure to use Analyze on some of the ore since she forgot to while she was outside roasting them.

Item Information

Name

Iron Ore

Ore of raw iron.

Rarity

D

Quality

62

Element

Earth

Bonus Tag

[Durable]

Surely enough, it had the Durable tag.

Once Tabitha had a few small chunks of ore, she set them all inside the crucible and looked at the burning furnace.

“Here,” Joseph said, smacking her arm with a pair of thick, leather gloves too large for her. “Put these on so you don’t burn yourself.”

Tabitha looked at the gloves and almost felt like she was about to cry from how happy she was. “I—I actually get to put them on?”

“Something the matter?”

“No! It’s just… heh, a blacksmith has gotta look the part… and if I put these on, I’ll finally be lookin’ the part.”

“They’re just gloves.”

Tabitha sighed and said, “You don’t understand. Anyways.” She set the crucible down and slipped the gloves on. Her smile became too large for her face in the same way that the gloves were too large for her hands. “I started feelin’ a bit tired there, but now I’m pumped up again! Feel like I just woke up and have all the energy in the world!”

“I don’t see how a pair of gloves could do that.”

Tabitha smirked at Joseph before using a nearby pair of tongs to pick the crucible up and place it right in the middle of the furnace’s flames. “Can I use the bellows?”

“Go for it.”

More excited to blow the bellows than anybody Joseph had ever seen or heard of before, Tabitha pumped more and more air into the fire to keep it roaring as hot as she could get it.

The workshop quickly became even hotter than Tabitha thought it would get, her forehead and arms becoming covered in sweat before long, but all that did was make her even more excited. How could she not get excited over all of this? She was actually smelting ore! And then she was going to use the resulting metal to make a product of her own! The only thing that would have made it even better was if she mined the ore herself, but she could always do that later.

For now, she focused on keeping the fire going until the ore within the crucible became a bright, glowing orange.

Joseph then brought a metal mold shaped to produce ingots up and set it and the tongs next to the fire to preheat them. Once that was done, he set the mold down on top of his anvil and handing the tongs back to Tabitha. “Now, carefully pull the crucible out with the tongs, then pour it into the mold here.”

Tabitha nodded and got to work. Joseph might have been worried about her pulling out molten metal given that it was her first time, but Tabitha displayed a professional level of calm and focus as she pulled the crucible out and brought it over to the mold. She then tipped it over so that it would pour the molten metal directly into it while being careful not to dump all of it in at once.

The result was a mold full of molten metal that brought that wide grin back to Tabitha’s face. “Now, ain’t that just the prettiest color there is.”

“It is,” Joseph said in agreement. “Never get tired of seeing it.”

“So, now what?”

“We wait for it to cool a bit. Then we’ll flip the mold upside down and hammer the bottom of it to knock the bar out.”

“What’s this mold made of anyways?”

“Steel. I got it from the city.”

“Ooh. Nice. By the by. Shouldn’t nails be on that list of easy things I can make?”

“They are easy. In fact, it’s one of the first things you teach somebody how to make if they’re new to blacksmithing.”

“Then how come I’m not making any nails?”

Joseph walked away, picked up a large, heavy barrel, and brought it over to Tabitha to set it down in front of her. Surely enough, it was filled to the brim with nails. “Because I’ve got too many already. They’re not often needed, so I’ve got a surplus and have no intention of adding more to it. Also, once you’ve got the Blacksmith path, you’ll be able to get the Metal Infusion skill. It’ll let you add other materials in with the ore to create infused metal.”

“Wild guess here, but that means it’ll inherit the other material’s tags?”

“One of them, potentially. You only get a twenty percent chance of it working at the first rank. Get it to rank five and it’ll be a hundred percent chance, and then you can get the Advanced Metal Infusion skill which lets you add up to three different materials to get a tag each from them.”

“Nice. What are your ranks at?”

“My Metal Infusion skill is only at rank two.”

“Seriously?”

“I decided when I was younger that ranking it up wasn’t worth the annoyance. It took fifty successful infusions just to go from rank one to two. Starting with only a twenty percent chance of it working… not to mention it takes Expertise Points which you’ve only got a limited amount of per day. Took me months just to get that second rank. Going to rank three would take another hundred successful infusions. Decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation.”

“Makes sense. I guess when it comes to skills like that, you’re really expected to spend your life grindin’ at them. Not somethin’ ya can just rank up to max in a day. Well, give me a month and I bet I’ll be able to max it out.”

“A month? Are you out of your mind? Did that branch do some damage to your brain?”

“Heh. I know what I’m about, old man. Listen, back in my younger years, I could spend thirty hours straight fueled by nothing but the dew, hot chips, some cups of ramen, and sheer determination to grind in MMOs. And that was a lot more monotonous and borin’ than this. The only thing that’ll be able to hold me back is my body.”

“And Expertise Points.”

“That’s EP on the status card, right?”

Joseph nodded.

“Then it looks like Dexterity pumps that up, so all I’ve got to do is continue pumpin’ Dexterity up. Also, if there are potions that can restore health… I reckon there are potions that can restore EP, too.”

“There are, but good luck finding ones that don’t make you spit them out. They taste like rotten milk that has started to grow fuzzy mold, and they have the texture of it, too. Chunks of it, even. At least, the ones Hanne make always do.”

“Then I’ll just have to make my own that taste better. And if I can’t, I’ll just have to deal with chunky, rotten milk potions.”

Joseph shook his head. “You’re insane. But I like that. Now, flip the mold over. The ingot should be cool enough now.”

Looking down at the mold, the molten metal no longer glowed orange and instead took on a more solid, dark appearance, albeit with some bumps and holes in the surface. The mold was hot, but not hot enough to hurt through the gloves, so Tabitha flipped it over and picked up the hammer to pound it against the upturned bottom of the mold.

That pushed the ingot out and onto the anvil.

“Now, use the tongs to put it in that barrel of water over there,” Joseph said, pointing to the other side of the furnace where the barrel was waiting.

Tabitha nodded and did as instructed once more, taking the ingot over to the barrel and dipping it in. The water around the ingot immediately began to sizzle and boil, but it only lasted for a few seconds as the volume of water helped to cool things down by outlasting the temperature of the ingot.

A couple of minutes later and she had an ingot that was cool enough for her to hold with the gloves.

“Now, if you really want it to look nice and shiny, you’ll have to file it and grind it,” Joseph explained.

“Well, it ain’t done until it’s shinin’ as far as I’m concerned!” Tabitha said before taking it over to the grindstone. She was determined to have a stereotypical, smooth, shiny ingot. So, she got to grinding.

By the time that Tabitha was done grinding the ingot, she was left with a relatively smooth, shiny bar of iron. There were a couple of dips in it, but that was alright. They were only really noticeable up close.

More importantly.

Item Information

Name

Iron Ingot

Smelted iron molded into the shape of an ingot.

Rarity

D

Quality

57

Element

Earth

Bonus Tag

[Durable]

“Huh, so it did lose some quality. I guess that’s from any remainin’ impurities?” Tabitha asked.

“That’s right,” Joseph said. “It’s almost impossible to maintain the pre-smelting quality. The Pure Smelt skill will fix that once you get it, though.”

“And how do I get that one?”

“You’ve got to smelt ten ores without losing more than five quality. Should be easy for you to get as long as you roast the ore first.”

“Then that’s one down, nine to go!”

“You have to do it with the Blacksmith path set as your primary path or it won’t count.”

“Oh. Darn. Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult to get. Do the higher ranks of it increase quality or somethin’?”

“You’ve got it.”

“Heh. Sounds like it’s goin’ to be a lotta fun playin’ around with this system. Skills to increase the quality of metal while infusin’ it with other tags, combinin’ that with alchemy, then I reckon I can also incorporate some of the other paths. Like leatherworking for grips which’ll give their own buffs to items… ah, I’m gettin’ all excited again! Alright! Time to go through that list ya gave me until my arms fall off!”

And so, Tabitha got to work once more.

Meanwhile, Joseph pulled out a pipe to smoke while letting her go through his list of orders for the villagers.