Ren woke up the next morning and quickly showered and got dressed before head down to get breakfast. Ren's limbs felt like they were made of lead and his muscles were sorer than they had ever been in his entire life. It was a struggle to walk let alone do anything else. The meditation during mana Control helped Ren to recover more and by the end of the class he was only a little sore. Ancient languages and Runes was both boring and intriguing, Ren decided to go with a strange language that's similar to both modern elven and modern dwarvish but predates both by at least a thousand year conjuring being the same. Before Ren knew it lunch time came and it was time to meet up with his friends. They look as tired as Ren felt when he woke up but they seemed to enjoy their classes. Ren was curious about how they were able to play so much but didn't think he was close enough to them to warrant and answer. For all he knew they could be in the hospital like him. After lunch was the class Ren was learning to fear.

Blacksmithing.

What should have been a class about making thing out of metal is actually just a cover to allow a demon disguised as a dwarf named Yurbek to torture the poor students that fall prey to his ploy. That's what Ren was feeling anyway as he was chased around the practice by said demon yet again. While today felt a tiny bit easier than before it wasn't enough to make that much of a difference. After the run was more sword practice before Ren dragged himself back to his room and fell asleep. Every day continued like this until, about a month into the term, the long awaited Day had arrived.

Ren arrived at the practice field and began running. It had become a habit and he no longer needed Master Yurbek to chase him. After about an hour Yurbek appeared and called Ren over to the rear workshop by the smelter. He had a large smile on his face.

"How about it lad. Are you ready to start smithing?" He asked

A smile grew on Ren's face and he nodded vigorously.

"Great! You’ll be starting on iron because it's the cheapest. For now you'll just be practicing smelting. The crucible is already heated up and there's a large amount of fuel and iron ore available so feel free to use as much as you want. No one else will be using it. You can do this for as long as you want for the next week." Yurbek said.

"What about my other classes?" Ren asked

"After every month students get a week long break from classes to relax and assimilate what they've learned so if you free for the next week, we can make some uninterrupted progress on teaching smithing. What you say?"

Ren smiled before answering.

"I think that's a great idea."

Yurbek smiled back at Ren.

"Great! Now let’s get that iron smelting."

The two of them spent the next several hours smelting up dozens of iron ingots. Master Yurbek helped Ren in the beginning but Ren did most of the work, not only gaining the [Smelting] skill in the process but also leveling it a few times. They worked through the night and managed to smelt almost half of the massive stockpile of iron ore the school had. In the end they made around 300 iron ingots of varying quality. When they were done they parted to rest for a few hours before starting the process of turning that mountain of iron into useful products.

After sleeping for a few hours Ren went to the dining hall for lunch and got some extra bead a meat to bring with him so he wouldn’t have to waste time getting food. When he reached the workshop Ren found Master Yurbek heating up one of the forges for their use.

“Go grab some of the lowest quality ingots, it doesn’t make sense learning on the high quality stuff.” Master Yurbek told Ren

Ren quickly grabbed a dozen low quality ingots and hurried back to Master Yurbek, eager to start.

“The first thing you have to understand is that there are different styles of smithing. Each race has their own style and even some masters have created their own. For example humans prioritize efficacy and speed over quality most of the time. This makes the style easy to learn and easy to master. Dwarves, on the other hand, feel that if you’re not going to make something to the best of your ability it’s not worth making. This makes the style much harder to learn and master but the quality of the products is vastly superior. The elves think the look of the product is as important as the function and orcs believe function trumps everything else. The beastmen don’t really smith, most of their weapons and armor is made from natural materials and the draconian lost theirs, which is a pity since they used to make some of the best weapons. I’ll be teaching you the human style, if you want to learn other you’ll have to do that yourself.”

As Ren was listening to Yurbek he was surprised to learn that there were different styles. He was under the impression that it was the same throughout the world. Master Yurbek picked up one of the ingots with a pair of ting and placed it in the forge before continuing.

“When forging something the color of the metal is very important. The color will tell you the temperature of the metal. From coolest to hottest the colors are no color, red, orange, yellow, and white. The lowest color you want to work the metal is red-orange, after that you want to put it back in the forge to heat up. The goal of this style is to do this as few time as possible because the more you have to heat it, the longer it takes to make. Usually apprentices start out making nails but I think it’s better to start out with something like a dagger so you get used to the whole process from the beginning.”

Master Yurbek took the now bright yellow ingot out of the forge and moved it to the anvil where he started working on it, talking while doing so.

“The first thing you want to do is create the profile of the blade. I’m going to be making a short, single edge, drop-point knife.” Master Yurbek said as he started shaping the blade, hitting the ingot with strong, precise hammer strikes. “This knife is relatively easy to make since you don’t have to worry about the point to much.” He finished shaping the blade before it cooled down and put it back into the forge. After a few minutes the knife was heated up again and Master Yurbek started working it again. “The next step is to shape the edge. This is done by hitting the edge of the blade with the hammer at an angle. You need to make sure to work both side with the same amount of strikes.” Master Yurbek said, flipping the from one side to the other than putting it back into the forge to heat up for a third time. This time it spent less time in the forge. Only heating up to a moderate red color than putting it in a bed of sand. “This last heating and letting it cool slowly is called annealing and reduces the brittleness of the blade making it a bit more flexible. After this is grinding and polishing and adding a handle.” Master Yurbek finished.

Ren was astounded by the speed at which he made the knife. Ren was thought that smithing took hours, not just a few minutes. Sure it was just a small, simple knife and not some grand sword but the process only took a few minutes from start to finish. At that speed one could turn out dozens of knives a day easily. No wonder Master Yurbek said that the human style emphasized speed. After the knife was done cooling Master Yurbek quickly sharpened and polished the blade. The finished product was a knife a hunter would probably carry. Master Yurbek turned to Ren and asked

“Are you ready to try?”

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Here is a list of knife blade types for those of you who are curious.