After resonating everyone and giving us a basic sketch of the spears we were kicked out of the forge. Apparently finding out about the time crunch and seeing just how many items she was going to have to make sent Sonia into fits of rage (not that those were uncommon for her according to Camden) and we were all banished, told to return only when individually summoned.

Since today had been long and exhausting, we all said our goodnights and headed for bed. The library in the morning, then the Undertrek, our big meeting, then the meeting with Camden followed by our introduction to Sonia, the whole day was packed with excitement and we were all relieved to get some sleep.

Which meant in the morning I was nice and rested and ready to get started on a bit of crafting, with Callie standing by to act as a secondary source of soul strength in case I needed it. I was going to make the training weapons for both my century and hers since she was going to help me out with training. Since it was Sunday and we were still off we had the training yard mostly to ourselves, except a few training nuts supervised by Gabe.

“Alright.” I said excitedly. “You sure you’re willing to help with this? Now that I have the Skill it’ll be a lot less exhausting to craft. If you help me offset the soul weight I can make your century some training weapons too!”

She grinned at me, leaning back against a wall as she watched me send a bunch of my people out to collect rocks. “Someone’s excited about doing more crafting. If you love it so much, why haven’t you been focusing on it more? I know you used to do Enchanting. Why did you end up getting rid of that?”

I shrugged. “At the early ranks we moved up too fast for my own Enchanting to keep up. Using it as a part of my DS Mastery made more sense. Plus our life isn’t exactly conducive to sitting around working on making things.”

“Well, we’ve got nothing but time now.” She giggled. “So you can sit around making stuff all you want.” She gestured to the nearest rock one of the recruits had brought back. “I take it you’re going to make some of the training weapons with your Dust Construction? Do you have the precision to do that?”

I shrugged. “If I don’t I’ll get it. I have the Skill now, so it’ll be way easier. I just need to practice.” I walked over, picked up the rock, and used my Dust Construction Mastery. It dissolved into grains of sand, then reconstituted as I shoved at it with my soul. I pushed as hard as I could, trying my hardest to impose the image of the spear onto the dust.

There was a bang as the air cracked from a rapid change in the volume of the dust, and a small dark item dropped into my hand.

I squinted down as I picked the object up between two fingers. It looked like a toothpick at first glance, but on closer examination… I groaned, and Callie burst out laughing at the sight of what I was holding. “Oh, you’ve got this down.” She cackled. “Tooth decay doesn’t stand a chance against you. None of our soldiers will ever get corn stuck in their teeth again.”

“You’re not funny.” I glowered. “It doesn’t look BAD.” I held up the tiny sharpened dark object. It was a spear. Well, more of a javelin really. Or it would have been, if it hadn’t been about the length of my fucking pinky.

She chuckled, taking it from me. “Guessing you can’t exactly take shortcuts here. Using your soul to impose the image of the weapon?” When I nodded, she smiled softly, handing it back. “Your soul was way too strong for random rock dust. It crushed it down into that shape, but condensed the dust into something much stronger.”

I pinched the tiny tooth spear, and it took me a slight bit of effort to break it. Not MUCH, it was F-rank, but more effort than it would have taken to crush a normal F-ranked rock. If I’d had to guess, this was metal levels of effort.

My next attempt I tried to go lighter, pressing infinitesimally with my Sapphire soul, trying to avoid crushing the rock down too small. Callie snorted in amusement at the result. “Well.” She said with a smirk. “At least it’s pointy…kind of.” The misshapen and only vaguely sticklike object was pretty much the opposite of what I wanted, so I decided to try something new.

“Alright.” I said pensively, ignoring the potential embarrassment in favor of excitement at learning to use my new skill better. “Here, pile a bunch of them up in this circle.” I told my recruits as I traced out a ten foot shape on the ground. My people were just coming back, so they carried the rocks over and stacked them up.

A huge pile of stone quickly filled the circle, and I had everyone stand back. I triggered Pit of Despair to turn them all to a fine dust, then using my Dust Construction, I grabbed hold of it, and CRUSHED it into shape. I triggered Piece of Mind as I did it, allowing my second parallel of thought to address the fine details.

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The compression blew a wave of air that kicked uip a ton of dust, but when I finished, I was holding an intricate dark stone javelin. I spun it effortlessly between my fingers, then tossed it to Callie, who curled it a few times. She gave me a flat look. “You realize no one here is going to be able to lift this except us right?”

She tossed it back and I gave it a few swings. It was hard to gauge the weight given my current strength. I could easily lift tons, but considering the relative weight of the normal stuff I could carry around…shit. “I mean, I’m sure SOMEONE can? It’s a few tons, and at F-rank any given Might specialist should have enough strength to lift that, albeit barely.”

“Lift, yes.” She agreed. “Wield, no. These are training weapons, we need people to be able to use them all day.”

I nodded, grimacing. I’d taken a shortcut so I didn’t have to learn to moderate the pressure from my soul and it hadn’t worked out. I needed something lighter, which meant less material, which meant I’d have to do this slow and steady.”

Still, I took a second to flex the spear with both hands until it broke, noting that it had required a bit more effort. This spear was definitely as difficult to break as a piece of F-ranked steel. Because of how much dust there was, I’d created a super dense stone that could stand up to most F-rank damage if I didn’t miss my guess.

It was a fascinating bit of information, and one I would definitely put to use later if I had a chance. Sighing, I tossed aside the broken spear ends, walking over to where my century had continued stacking rocks. A hundred F-rankers carting stones from the nearby forest meant basically a revolving door of stones. I picked up a few decently weighty ones. I actually spotted a few E-rank rocks in the pile, but even if I made something of them no one here could use it. I shot Callie a message to put them aside.

Placing the stones in the circle, I checked to made sure I had enough. Rather than the massive pile I’d had my recruits set up before, this was a few hundred pounds of rock tops.

Triggering Pit of Despair and Piece of Mind, I began. The description Sonia had made was a sketch with a lot of detail, but it was all external stuff. I had to make the shape, but internal construction was just regular materials, no fancy smithing tricks or whatever. Since this was just a training weapon, it had to be quick to make.

Piece of Mind allowed me to carefully work on the task at hand, with one parallel handling the task of creating a mold, and one handling the task of filling it with dust.

Unlike the last time, I had to pay way more attention. Because I didn’t want it to small or heavy, I couldn’t fully condense the dust into its densest state, but I needed it to be denser than the normal rock at least, so it would hold up in combat.

After I shaped it, I triggered Eye of Revelation, scanning the spear to make sure I’d properly configured the material and hadn’t left any weak spots in the construction before I allowed it to resume its stone composition, using Dust Construction to return it to solid form.

It took longer than expected, but I had my second parallel recording every instant, engraving it into my memory so I’d have a perfect recollection of how to repeat this trick.

Letting the spear drop out of the air, I snatched it up, spinning it at high speed in a whirling staff form Willow had taught me back in the Glade. Grinning, I whipped the spear around at top speed and hurled it behind me, right at the space next to Gabe’s head.

I didn’t aim AT his head, obviously, and I whistled as I did it, so my second in command had no problem snatching it from the air as it went by. As a lance user, the big guy also had no problem putting it through a quick spear form of his own, then tossing it up in a whirling display and catching it seamlessly on its way down.

“So?” I called over. “How does it handle? I need to know if it’s too heavy to use for long term training.”

He frowned, spinning it a few more times, passing it hand over hand and snapping it out in a fest test jabs. “It’s…not light.” He admitted. “Short term it’s simple to use long term…possible. Difficult but possible. I’d say it’s an excellent training weapon. The balance is superb.”

I nodded. I could feel the density of the weapon, and see the composition with my Eye of Revelation, it made balancing child’s play, especially with such a detailed design to work from.

Eyeballing how much rock had been in it, I walked over and picked up another four hundred pounds or so of stone. It was nearly weightless with my E-ranked Might. It occurred to me that having slightly higher Impact might make my effective Might slightly higher point for point, given the suppression.

That was a big advantage if it was true, and definitely something to leverage when I could. Setting the stones down, I cracked my neck and triggered my Skills again. The next spear was too light. The one after was top heavy. The one after THAT was brittle because I’d solidified the stone unevenly.

It took another ten of them before I managed a second perfect spear. Once I ironed out the difficulty though, the process became smoother and smoother. Not just faster and easier, but I was able to focus less per spear, which mean my second parallel could be set to the task of creating a second spear.

Two at a time, it only took me a few hours to finish, Callie lending a hand so I didn’t overload my soul with all the work. By the time I finished, a field of dark stone spears were planted point first into the dirt of the training ring.

Callie stepped up next to me, beaming at the massive pile of weapons. “This…” She said with a grin. “This is amazing. I can’t wait to get started on training. Demia said she had something that would work for tomorrow? She sounded almost as excited as I did, which I knew was probably because her own mentor and Demia were friends and she’d be learning the same thing. With a tired smile, I put an arm around her shoulder, answering in her head. Maybe getting ready for this war wasn’t impossible after all.