As I made my way back to the forge, I pondered the contents of the letter I had just received from Wolfram’s sister, and what the implications might be. Looking around myself at North Stone Village, the wide stonework buildings around me spoke of a culture that was used to living in tight quarters – which made sense, since the architectural heritage of my people came from The City, with it’s relatively tightly packed metropolitan style.

The main difference here in the village was that although buildings tended to be built closer together than they would be back on Earth, with groups of four buildings sitting almost back to back in tight little clusters everywhere I looked, there were wide thoroughfares between each group of four houses that all centred around a circular grid that lead to the huge fortress in the heart of the village – the fortress that we would shelter at every time there was a beast attack that was large enough to threaten our safety. The City, on the other hand, was laid out in a square grid, and since beasts couldn’t cross past the walls, there was no need for shelters.

And what Jesvae wanted to talk to me about concerned the very survival of North Stone Village, including all the people who lived in it… except, most likely, for Froggy and any other nobles out here running admin; I’d be willing to bet they would be let through…

Was the Merrik truly ageing, or was it all a big mistake? Not many people had ever met him, let alone spoken with him, but I certainly had – and bloody beasts was that man old! He was spry enough, of course, though with how huge the power gap between us was, it was a little hard to judge. It would be like an ant trying to judge if a car driving by needed maintenance or not… there was just no way to tell, no frame of reference I could use to judge if he was hale and hearty, or at the very doorstep of death itself.

The sound of the forge in action soon woke me from my musings, and I did my best to put thoughts about frosty prophets of doom behind me. Regardless of anything else, I still wanted to spend as much time here as I could, for now, and with the way our Celestial Cultivation Technique worked both Wolfram and I would continue to gain strength as long as we were alive… so we were already headed in the right direction, and there wasn’t all that much we could do to change things on a large scale, as far as I knew.

Carver and the other blacksmiths looked up as I opened the massive outer door of the forge, the one closets to the storeroom that was built to move carts of both ore, as well as finished products, through. I gave the customary salute of greeting as I paused to let the atmosphere wash over me, marveling that a place like this could smell so… invigorating? I didn’t know if that was the right word, but I felt something, especially since my second Tribulation (which I thought of as an awakening of sorts, though a deadly one), and it felt good.

Later that day, Jaws and I stood by my scrap pile as he reached down to pick up a few pieces and examine them. He was silent, as usual, but I knew that his mind was a heck of a lot more active than his mouth… sort of the exact opposite of my mother, actually, not that anyone would ever dare say that to her.

“How many folds did you say, Heller?”

“One thousand folds, I think. I mean, not exactly a thousand, but the folds are supposed to add flexibility and strength.”

Jaws was silent again for a moment as he turned the pieces over in his hand. Numbers and math were not all that advanced in our culture, but being a blacksmith (and the master of our forge), my father had a lot more practice with math than the average person.

“If you fold it three times, how many folds do you have.” Jaws asked me, still looking at the metal in his hands.

I was taken aback by the question… was the answer not three? But no… Jaws would rarely speak without a reason. Then I suddenly had an epiphany, and my eyes widened.

“Oh bloody beast, not three! More, wait, let me think… one fold and you have two, then the second fold you have four, then the third fold you have eight…”

Jaws nodded, “You already have a thousand folds here Heller.” He said, using his thumb to separate the twisted metal, revealing fine sheets of metal that looked like the pages in a book. “But something is missing… maybe if you layer different hardness of metal first, then fold.”

My mouth was hanging open, looking at Jaws in awe as he continued to study the piece of metal he was holding. I had been looking at the term thousand fold entirely the wrong way, but once I thought about the exponential growth of the folds… it was like that game with a piece of paper, where you can apparently never fold a standard piece of paper even eight times, and if a piece of paper was big enough to fold it forty times, the thickness would reach all the way to the moon… or something like that, anyway.

So, to get a thousand folded layers… I would only need to fold the actual metal… about ten times. And if I started off with alternating sheets of metal like Jaws suggested, it would only take a few folds to reach huge numbers of alternating layers…

It would be labor intensive, and my intuition was telling me that doing it properly could take weeks, but when you were putting your life on the line in combat it was well worth it to invest in high quality gear.

“Heller.”

Jaws spoke up suddenly, having pulled apart another chunk of scrap from my pile.

“Yes, father?”

“Do you mind if I use this technique? I have a few ideas…”

I smiled and gave him an enthusiastic affirmative salute, glad we could help each other out. It wasn’t the first time that I had managed to translate ideas from earth to technological gain here on my new world, and ideally it wouldn’t be the last. Our wares were already gaining widespread recognition, and the techniques we used were developing were about to revolutionize metallurgy across our entire civilization.

For quite some time know I had suspected that the methods we are taught in the forge, as well as the symbolism, respect for the fire and the spirits, and the mantras that were used in the morning before work started, all had a reason which was a lot more than empty ritual.

The Cultivation Technique of House Flameward that I had was also full of references to spirits, elementals, and something that they called the Heart of Fire… and while there were no direct correlations between our forging methods and the Cultivation Technique, there was a… I wasn’t sure how to put it… theme maybe? Like a similar flavor to both, in that they called certain things to mind, and both involved certain motions and words that needed to be spoken.

Of course, the effects when practiced were night and day, and that is where the comparison fell apart. When I practiced the Cultivation Technique that I had received as a warrior of House Flameward, I could actually sense the movement in the ambient Qi around me. I wasn’t sure how much that would benefit me yet, but I did know that I was able to stimulate and move energy around me far faster than anyone else I had witnessed cultivate.

In the forge however… I couldn’t really see any Qi movement, not even when Jaws was working. I had a sense that maybe something was happening, but whatever that might be it was far less effective than an actual Cultivation Technique seemed to be – that is, if it was doing anything at all. That said, however, I did notice that when Jaws was working there was something… different… about the feel of the forge than when it was just Carver and the newer blacksmiths at work.

It was also well known that the products created by master smiths who had been working for decades was not only more durable and easier to maintain, but those weapons they forged tended to be much more highly sought after by nobles. It was a commonly accepted fact that weapons and armor made by a master smith would help a Cultivator reach their peak potential, but was it just because of their skill, or was there something more going on?

Definitely something I wanted to keep an eye on, but not something that could directly help me right now… because I had a meeting to attend with Jesvae Spiritwind, although I wasn’t certain if she would show up in person or not. She did seem to be more of a hands-on type of woman though, less likely to delegate tasks that she deemed important, but that was purely conjecture on my part.

After excusing myself from my duties at the Forge, I let Jaws know that I would be home quite late, and that it was cultivation related stuff. He simply answered in the affirmative and went back to whatever he was working on – it looked like another drawing, maybe related to the sword folding stuff we had discussed.

And with that, I was off to see if I could survive another meeting with a noble of House Spiritwind…