I look over the information from the book. The single page of information creates more questions than it answers. But I didn’t care about any of that. All I cared about, was anything I could learn about this mysterious stat. I read from the book:

‘Soul’ is among the hidden stats. Hidden stats can be unlocked by certain actions or states of being. They provide functionality like any other stat. They also have some interrelation with other stats but are further removed. ]

Most people need decades to unlock even the most basic of hidden stats. For those with knowledge of the path to unlocking a hidden stat, careful consideration is taken. Each subsequent stat is not only harder to acquire, but it also is slightly more difficult to increase.

Any stat points attributed to a hidden ‘stat’ is wasted. Rumors of people putting 100 stat points in the hidden stat have been told, but no test was ever performed for lack of volunteers. Some of the rumors state that after 100 point attribution the stat screen changes and new mechanics unlock. This is a persisting rumor that has sprung from all around the multiverse multiple times.

All hidden stats have standalone effects, such as charisma’s capability of making other people finding you more attractive. It can also modify the effectiveness of other stats. Charisma can not only make someone seem more graceful, but it also makes them more graceful, complementing the dexterity stat. Last, a hidden stat can upgrade a skill. Charisma can, for example, improve a skill relating to dancing. The skill would then be enhanced by charisma, similarly to running benefiting from agility and dexterity.

The soul stat is rarely unlocked. By the time most people achieve the minimum requirements, they already have other hidden stats pushing the requirements up. The more known benefits of the soul stat are the handling of greater amounts of mana, greater precision when using mana, an increase of passive and active mental defenses, improvements in the use of Aether, and increasing the effectiveness of some skills.

All those effects are present without change to the skills. However, some of them will only come into full effect after the skills are upgraded. Each point in a hidden stat is significant and typically much lower than the other stats.

The soul stat greatly helps in working with higher energies, also known as high-tier elements. Space/time and life/death are among high-tier elements.

That answered a lot of my questions. What I don’t know, is how this is considered common knowledge. Could it be this is something I unlocked early, but it is perfectly common amongst higher-level system users? Maybe this is not such secret knowledge.

From what I read it sounds like a good choice for my first hidden stat. I will probably be heavily focusing on my magic, and the commonly known effects are well-matched with my goals. It also explains the amount of mana I can handle and how I can control thinner streams of mana than anyone else.

I go over the part of the text talking about the commonly known benefits of the soul stat. There could be all kinds of hidden gems to my soul stat. Maybe even to control my soul, not that I know what souls are.

I also pay close attention to the mention of Aether. There is only vague offhand mention of Aether in my book, nothing that will give any clue as to how it is supposed to be used. I only know it is something to be treasured, and now that my soul stat improves my control of Aether.

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I get to the smithy and find some a bucket of each of the materials I was hoping for. I take several cups and pour the crushed iron ore along with limestone in it.

Now it is time for us to start making our own metal.

I spend the night observing the metal slowly forming at the bottom of the crucible cups. I take the slag out as well as I can. This is not the method I will be using in the bigger batches, but it gives some familiarity with the process. It also doesn’t waste too much of my time given I only stop for brief periods.

I’m hard at work forging items the rest of the time.

The people who mined this ore are making something great. A kiln would be better than using the forge like this. If it works the resulting metal should also be of higher quality. We are running the forge even hotter. It uses much more firewood, otherwise, we wouldn’t melt the metal.

By the end of the night, I cool the forge and leave with a couple of passable steel ingots. Tired I tell the others to deliver the weapons to the guild and end up sleeping right there.

Without any interest in attending the meeting given how much work I have, I end up skipping the morning meeting entirely and just fire up the forge. The morning is spent mostly making the bands for another 3 ballista and a few bolt tips. Mr. blackwood looks even more twitchy than usual. I can see he is trying his best under the system limitations.

Although twitchy may not be the best descriptor. It’s as if all his actions have a limiter when they are perceived by the system. If he uses a bit too much strength or a hammer strike is going to be too precise, the system ever so slightly adjusts things. With my perception before I could not notice it, but in the last few days, the system’s interference has become evident. There was also that weird vision I had of the system. I wonder what that was about.

At the end of the day, I head to class, today starting only a few minutes after the smithy closes and I grab something to eat in the class. I have a class near the wood kiln. With these many people, I can easily run the dehumidifier constantly.

I talk about how I come up with the design and implemented it. I tried to impart as well as I can the mindset of searching for solutions, instead of giving ready answers. That is probably the most important of anything thing I could teach them.

Meanwhile, I use the mana to keep running the increasing list of things I want to test. We share the results of our tests and I finish heading back to the forge.

Getting there I see five of the other people along with all the new people of the night shift. I see Li Wei already starting to set up the first of the new big smelting cups. They are each about 30 liters in volume with molded groves to try and make less slag be in contact with the melted metal that will accumulate at the bottom.

We put three of these cups inside the forge carefully keeping track of the progress of each of them. This does slow work, but the interruptions are brief. In the end, it is not too big a burden. I take a couple of power naps through the night at times when everyone else is especially crowded around the forge.

Looking at it, I find there is no other choice. We will need to build a new forge. With my inscriptions skills, we could even make an air blower similar to the one in this forge.

During my work, I use yesterday’s steel and make a couple of items, but only half of them end up with stats and they also feel more fragile. I don’t mind too much the inferior quality.

Given the negligible cost in copper coins and we that could scale it up easily, the whole endeavor is very good. I imagine the village becoming a major exporter of steel. The biggest cost, for now, was transportation. Given the distance, we are probably paying less than a copper for enough ore and lime to make each ingot of metal.

And the best part is that all this money would be going in the hands of people who would be buying our wares. Some would be given to the village, but that could not be avoided. It is not viable to make everything, as long as we made the food and Items, most of the money would be coming back to our hands.

We get a mold to pour the metal into neat little ingots. We end up with 50 ingots. That’s over 2 silver. We let it sit to cool down, I send a few messages and head to sleep. My body is tired and I feel I could sleep for a whole 5 hours, but I know I won’t do that.

I’m the first in the forge the next day and again I skip the meeting. The others update me as usual. We make a few attempts to use the steel we made. It is still not up to standards of steel used by the smithy, but it’s much better compared to my first batch. Observing this, Mr. Blackwood looks pensive.

“So, what could we do to make this better. Forging with this metal, a fifth of our items are not recognized by the system.”

He takes one ingot of each batch.

“Right now, you only need more time and experience. You already managed to avoid the troubles this first few ingots had. Only a few words of wisdom would not be enough to improve the steel meaningfully.”

“Ok.

With a pensive face, I let my mind go. We are so new to this situation; we will need to get a minimum level of proficiency before anything he would tell us would be helpful. We simply are ignorant of our own ignorance.

With my muscles taught and a determined look, I keep hammering away. By now I mostly make an Item before he stops in and gives a few strikes to finish it. It takes me longer, but a few of my Items are +1. I let the system assistance guide my movements and with each strike, I learn another small facet to this craft. This will take a long time but it will be worth it.

As the day goes by, any chance I get, I’m thinking about the smelter we will be building. I have a rough idea of what I want and a design for an air blower. It will probably be inefficient, but even if it takes 100 mana per hour, it is fine.

I’m thinking of a way to preheat the input air. Maybe even heat the whole smelter. We could make it with a double layer of insulation. While we can’t get coal to be infused, this would be a good way to increase the maximum temperature. The only problem is fuel consumption. By the end of the day, I start to set up the next batch of ore to be smelted.

Leaving the others to manage the smelting cups, I put to paper what was on my mind the entire day. Finally, I can see the shape I imagined forming properly. As each line is drawn, I manage to free my mind a little and I end up with a reasonable sketch for the smelter. After over an hour, I head to the guild so they can direct me to the people in charge of mining and processing the ores.

I find them in the same sector of the paper mill. What greets me is a big operation. Baskets full of ore stacked. Several fires to dry the ore and stones to crush everything into powder.

I see one person carrying the baskets on his shoulders. By their size, I guess them to be around 80 pounds each. If they came from the mine so many miles away that would mean only 4 or 5 trips a day. Perhaps in the future, we would process everything there. That should make the whole thing cheaper. We would only need the trees from nearby and the transportation costs would be much cheaper.

“So you think this would be our best bet? It looks more complicated than what we were expecting.” Says a short and stocky fellow. We can’t seem to leave the stereotypes alone. We pick the closest thing of a dwarf we had around and put him in charge of the mining operations.

“I get that this put a crimp on some of the plans. But I believe that we need a smelter of this type. As long as we don’t have coal infused wood will have to do. This is our best bet for higher temperatures.”

“But can’t just infuse more mana in a piece of wood?”

“I will do further testing on that, but I believe we are hitting the point of diminishing returns. With this new design everything working out we could increase it up to a 50% higher temperature. The fuel consumption would be around double to triple the current one.”

“We can’t do that just increasing the mana infused?”

“If we do that the mana required would be about ten times more. In this scenario, we would have to also have to design a different forge. The burn rate is also linked to the mana input if you try…Never mind. Enough said on that. I don’t know how to do it another away. 10 to 20 % increase, I can do another way. For 50% this is the only realistic choice.”

“I guess we will just have to fork over more money to the potter.”

“How much is he charging?”

“He charged 2 silver to do little more than supervise the construction. The problem is for something this hot we would need to have a very good build with no fault in it. If we try to cheap out, the first time we fire it up, cracks would form all over.”

Looking over at the cracks on a few experiments they run, I imagine what they were missing. They probably dried correctly.

“I see you guys have experience with that.”

“Yeah, that was a disaster. At lower temperatures, we could figure out how to make a small kiln with no problem. But that is not what we need, is it Nash?”

“No, it isn’t. Could we learn his techniques? Doesn’t he have apprentices?”

“No apprentices, he didn’t accept anyone. About his techniques, we are hoping to find out how he keeps it from cracking. For all we know, it’s something simple.”

“Maybe, I will be going back to work now. Too much to do.

“Far too much.”