Each day, Elrick went to the goblin mine in the morning, ordered his little band of goblins to help him mine, and then he came back to Slick Willy’s camp with full saddle bags. He pumped the bellows and he smelted the ore. He poured–and polished–the ingots. Old Beardo said he knew the smith Elrick was going to sell to, and that Owen wouldn’t accept dull ingots.

Beardo stopped offering him the refresh potions, so Elrick found another alchemist outside the Imperial mine who was willing to trade him a dozen vials for one bronze ingot. It took him further away from the twenty he needed to give Owen, but he couldn’t mine as much as he needed if he was too sore to move, let alone mine.

His pickaxes started breaking, and he had to buy more. That cost him another ingot. Still, his Mining skill was increasing through the roof. By the third day he had 70.6 skill in Mining, and the increased skill meant he was able to find the richer veins, and increase his overall yield. By the sixth day he had 22 polished bronze ingots. It was time to cash out.

He took the packhorse back into town, and soon he found the Owen the Coppersmith.

His wife was screaming at him.

Elrick pretended not to notice, and he hoped she would stop when she realized he was there, but she just kept going.

“This is your fourth apprentice!” she shrieked. “It’s almost like you don’t want to retire. You–”

Elrick coughed.

She glared daggers at him. He bit his lip.

“Enough!” Owen said, slamming his fist onto the counter. “Let me see what he wants, then we’ll continue this discussion later.”

“I have your ingots, sir,” Elrick said.

“My what?” he asked.

“Twenty ingots for two gold,” Elrick said. “Remember me?”

“Oh,” Owen said, tilting his head. “You look...stronger.”

Elrick looked down at himself. His forearms were veiny. He had the hint of a bicep. He had been mining and working the bellows every single day. Still, on Earth it would be impossible to build muscle so fast. Either the rules of this world just allowed it, or maybe it was the potions he had been drinking.

Elrick pulled out a bronze ingot. His best looking one, which he’d set in a separate pocket. He held it out, and Owen snatched it.

“Hmmm,” he said, squinting at it and analyzing it from every possible angle. His wife sighed and slammed the door as she left the room.

“Well,” Owen said. “It’s not the finest work, and your mold is a joke, but this works. I can give you two gold for twenty like this.”

“I have a counter proposal,” Elrick said. He hadn’t thought this all the way through, but he realized he needed to seize the moment.

“These aren’t worth a copper more!” Owen grunted.

“No, no,” Elrick said. “I’ll take one gold instead of two, but I want you to teach me how to smith.”

Owen laughed. “I don’t have time to teach you to wipe your ass.”

“I know the basics,” Elrick said.

He had 50 skill in Coppersmithing. It was enough to get his foot in the door. He hoped so at least.

Owen shook his head. “I’ll get you your two gold. That’s what we agreed on.”

“Your wife would be happy,” Elrick said. “I’m not as lazy as your old apprentice. Think how fast I got you twenty ingots. With one mold, and using Slick Willy’s forge.”

Owen raised an eyebrow. “So you pumped the bellows while Willy lounged on a tree? How’s Old Beardo doing?”

“He’s doing well, I guess,” Elrick said, knowing he had Owen hooked.

“Alright,” Owen said. “I’ll teach you to cast these ingots into something. I’m not paying you a thing for the ingots, but I’ll give you 50% of whatever you sell from the equipment you make for me. Better quality is going to fetch a higher price, so don’t slack off if you want to make good money!”

“Deal,” Elrick said. It was a much fairer deal than he’d expected–assuming he could craft anything worth selling.

* * *

“I assume you can make a casting mold,” Owen said.

Owen threw down a huge bag of sand and a wooden box with copper hinges.

“Uh,” Elrick said, realizing he did know how. “Yeah.”

His 50 skill must have imparted the knowledge into him. Bronze was cast rather than forged, and the best way to do it was to press an existing weapon into sand, then cover it with more sand, pack it all tight together, and create channels to pour molten bronze into. The mold had to then be opened, the sword removed, and then closed again to pour the bronze into the newly formed weapon-shaped cavity. It sounded easier than raw forging, but so much could go wrong.

“Good,” Owen said, holding up a bronze sword. “This is one of my more popular blades. Make the mold and cast me one of these. Don’t come see me again until you have a finished sword.”

Elrick nodded. “What if I get stuck?”

Owen glared at him. “I want to see what you can do without my help! So don’t bother me until you’re done! Use whatever you need in here, I’m going into town and won’t be back until evening.”

And then he was gone.

Elrick got to work. Owen’s wife came down occasionally, and he did his best to not make eye contact with her.

He opened the box, which was made of two identically-sized halves of wood connected together with a metal hinge.

Elrick filled the first half of the box with sand, then he meticulously shaved and leveled it off. He took great care to get the layer of sand that would mold against the sword as precise and level as possible. After an hour or so, and only when Elrick was sure it was as good as he could get it, he took the sword and carefully pressed it down–hilt first–into the sand. Once it was down, he pressed harder, getting it to imprint into the sand he had so painstakingly prepared. If he made any mistake here, he’d likely have to dump the whole thing and start from scratch.

When the sword was fully pressed in, he brushed and blew off any excess sand. He carefully sculpted the edges of the sand up to meet the sword and form a clean mold. He dusted the sword with a powder so the other side of the mold wouldn’t stick to it, and then he shut the hinge and began to strain more sand in to create the first layer of the mold’s second half.

Almost two hours in, just as he was finishing the mold, Owen’s wife came down with a tray of food.

“That’s taking you too long,” she said. “Twice as long as it should.”

She crossed her arms.

“I’m still learning,” Elrick said. “If I mess up the mold...it will take four times as long.”

“You only have to be careful with the layers of sand nearest the sword. Just dump the rest in.”

She pointed to the bag of sand. “Dump it!”

Elrick bit his lip and nodded. He dumped the sand, still somewhat carefully, until it nearly filled the top of the mold.

“Take some care to pack it down now. Don’t eat any of this food I’m leaving you until the mold is done!” She said, and stomped off.

He packed it down as carefully–and quickly–as he could. He feared that Owen might come back before he’d even cast any bronze into the mold.

Elrick took in a deep breath as he reached to open the mold. A mistake he’d already made during the first ten minutes could mean the whole thing would just fall apart when he opened it. Or maybe he hadn’t packed it well enough at the very end. Either way, any damage he’d done was already done, so he just opened it.

He exhaled relief as the mold opened clean, the sword had imprinted in the bottom half, and a clean relief was pressed into the top half. He lowered the top half down onto the workbench as gently as possible. With the greatest care possible, he stuck a pinky finger beneath the hilt of the sword and popped it up enough to get more fingers under it without pressing into the sand anymore than he had to. He lifted the sword up ever so gently, then got a finger under the blade. He lifted it up and saw only minimal damage had been done to the mold from lifting the sword.

He placed the sword down onto the workbench, then got to work cleaning up the mold as much as possible, sharpening all the edges and blowing off any excess sand.

Now came the difficult part, and the part that his 50 skill was not quite up to the task of. He had to draw channels for the bronze to flow into. He needed at least one channel for the molten bronze to flow down into. It would cool rapidly as it flowed, and if there were too few channels–or if the single channel were too narrow–he risked that the bronze would harden and clog the channel, preventing the mold from filling out entirely. That would result in an incomplete sword, a ruined mold, and hours of wasted time. He could melt the bronze back down and reclaim the ingot, but it would still be a disaster.

If he made too many channels, the bronze might not distribute properly, and he might end up with two ends of a sword that failed to connect in the middle, or even just three separate pieces of bronze.

In addition to channels for the bronze, he needed a channel for the hot gases to escape out of. If he had one single channel that filled up with molten bronze, the gases might get trapped and bubble up, creating impurities and air pockets in the bronze, ruining the sword.

He took in a deep breath.

“Two channels,” the wife’s voice said.

He looked over his shoulder to see her there. His food was cold and uneaten on the tray.

“One near the hilt, one near the center of the blade.”

“Another for the gas?” Elrick asked.

She shook her head. “Just make both wide enough.”

He nodded, then got to work doing as she said. He used a small bronze knife to carefully cut the channels into the sand. He looked back over his shoulder when he was finished to see what she’d say, but she was gone.

“It has to work,” he whispered.

He lit the forge and started pumping the bellows. This forge was more efficient than Willy’s, and the bellows were larger and easier to work. Or maybe it was mostly just because Elrick was stronger now and had taken a break from daily bellows pumping.

With the forge hot enough, Elrick used tongs to lower the crucible into the fire. He dropped his bronze ingot in. Owen had told him these swords were designed to need exactly one of the five-mina bronze ingots he’d created.

To make bronze, you wanted a 90% copper and 10% tin mixture. The half-mina tin ingots he’d put into the mixture at Willy’s forge had produced bronze ingots. Bronze was much stronger than copper. There was a reason it was called “the bronze age” on Earth rather than “the copper age.” Judging by the focus on bronze in Antium, Elrick had the feeling that iron and steel had yet to be discovered, or maybe the “lower resolution” physics of this world prevented their forging entirely.

Now was the moment of truth. He lifted the crucible full of molten bronze with Owen’s tongs. He thanked all his slaving over the bellows, because he was even now barely strong enough to hold the crucible steady with one gloved hand.

He held it over the hole to the first channel. He’d dug a small funnel shape at the top of the channel to help the bronze pour clean. He dumped, and just when it was half poured, he cut the pour, and as quickly as possible, he moved to the second channel. He dumped the rest into the second channel. The molten bronze reached just over the top of the holes of the channels, and he saw it harden and cool within seconds by peeking through the top of the channel.

Had it worked? He wouldn’t know until he opened the mold, but he had to let it cool more first.

Even though he was too nervous to have an appetite, he forced himself to chow down the cold tray of food. It was salted meat, and fruit that tasted almost like an apple, and a bowl of gruel. Nothing tasted very good, but he wouldn’t complain about free food.

He needed to open the mold. It was Schrödinger’s mold now. There was either a beautiful bronze copy of Owen’s work inside, or a fractured piece of junk that he’d have to melt down again. He wouldn’t know which was inside until he opened it.

He popped the box open, then slapped the sand away with a knife. His heart was tight in his throat the whole time. He couldn’t breathe. He had the sense that Owen’s wife was acting as Owen’s eyes. If he couldn’t even cast a whole sword on his first try, she might tell him to leave, to not bother trying again.

He knocked more chunks of sand away with his knife and tongs, and revealed what his work had yielded him. Staring him down inside the mold was not two separate pieces of bronze. It was not a sword full of air pockets. Nor was it anything else that could easily have gone wrong on his first casting attempt. What looked up at Elrick from within the mold was a sword. It was not polished or sharpened, and it lacked a hilt, but it was most decidedly a real sword. His first sword. All of his work and risk fighting goblins, mining, pumping the bellows, forging with Willy and Ol’ Beardo, all of that hard work and time spent had just been converted into a real sword.

He finally exhaled.

He grabbed the sword with the tongs and quenched it into the water. It let out a very satisfying sizzle, and he pulled it back out, held it up, and just grinned at it like a big idiot.

It didn’t look like much–not yet–but he’d done it.

It was a dull golden color, some of the edge had chunks of bronze that looked like the spindley pieces of egg that spill off the bread when you make french toast in a skillet. He’d have to cut those off and grind them down. The channels had also created two big bars of bronze that poked off the sword. He’d need to saw those off and sand them down as well.

He got the hacksaw out and ground it all down, cutting off the excess chunks–anything that wasn't a sword. He checked the original sword to make sure he was cutting in all the right places, but his mold had done a good enough job that he didn’t need to cut too drastically.

He hammered the bronze. Hammering strengthened the metal, otherwise it would be too soft and easily bend in combat. His arms grew sore, but he was too focused on the task at hand to notice or care.

He sharpened the blade. It took hours, but it felt good to form such an important part of the weapon: The point. Bronze swords weren’t so good at slashing like a samurai sword would be. They were largely “shoving” or thrusting weapons. It was important to form a nice point on the tip more than to try to sharpen the entire edge, as bronze wasn’t quite sturdy enough to support a razor-sharp edge.

Elrick started to polish. He entered an almost trance-like state. If he were doing this with equipment on Earth, he’d have something like a belt sander to start with, then different grades of sandpaper from coarse to fine–but he had none of that. He had to rub sand on by hand. He had to use his own strength and elbow grease. Shit, it felt good.

“Hm,” a voice cut in, breaking him from his trance. “You only finished one sword?”

He looked up and saw Owen. The smith looked down at Elrick’s sword. It wasn’t even finished. He still needed to burn the grip on.

“Lemme see it,” Owen said, reaching for it.

Elrick reluctantly let go of his baby, handing it gently over to Owen, who held it up to the fading light through the window. He squinted and rotated it, examining all angles. Elrick held his breath. What would Owen say? Elrick was proud of his work, but he still feared Owen’s critique.

“Hmm,” Owen grumbled. “This took you all day, huh?”

Elrick nodded.

“Quality is…” he started, then squinted and examined the edge.

“Is?” Elrick mumbled.

“Good enough,” Owen said. “Just not fast enough.”

Elrick forced his expression to stay neutral.

“I want you to make two swords a day,” Owen said. “But don’t skimp on quality at all! This is barely good enough to be sold under my name! We’ll do the grips all at the end. It’s more efficient that way. Just crank out the bronze, boy!”