A familiar bcksmith came out of the lean-to that the people with metal-working csses had set up in the dock area. What was his name?
“Magical girl Alex.” The man looked at the trailer with the tons of the odd ore. “You’ve been busy.”
“Hi, I uh, brought something that could be smelted.” Alex struggled to remember the guy’s name. Surely it wasn’t too hard, something that starts with a . . . B?
“Brin.” The smith offered a knowing smirk, sensing Alex’s plight. “Don’t worry, I’ve been told I’m forgettable. Although. . . “ He patted the ore thoughtfully. “This? This isn’t forgettable.”
Alex let out a relieved ugh, breaking the awkward tension. “Brin, yeah I remember now. We came across this ore while fighting ice demons. I was hoping you’d or someone around here would know what to do.”
Brin grinned widely. “This is not something I’ve worked with before,” he admitted, pulling a chunk of the ore and turning it over in his callused hands. “But we don’t have css skills for nothing.”
“Do you have the stuff here to smelt it?” Alex watched him test the weight in his hand and inspect the serpentine pattern in the ore.
Brin rubbed his chin and set the rock back down. “We can fire up the forge and try. As you can see, the masons helped us throw this pce together rather quickly. There was a crude bloomery before and that was it.”
Alex winced, it was her idea to try to build a bloomery and it didn’t really produce much pig iron, mostly because they didn’t know how to find iron rich rocks. “Yeah, what a poorly executed idea…” The bck-haired girl ughed awkwardly.
Brin shrugged. “You mean to leave it here?”
Alex nodded. “Yes please. If we can get some more resources to work with then I think that would help put us in a better pce for future conflicts.”
“You are right.” Brin pointed at a pile of rusty scrap metal. “We’ve been getting some scrap from pces we can but no one is quite high enough level to make more with less. Back in the county I only had about enough work for one day a week. It was sorta depressing, the fact that we didn’t have much to eat didn’t help either.”
“So things are better here then?” Alex inspected the area, some people were working on anvils and fires kept going with wood and charcoal. “I’ve heard that there is conflict with different groups.”
Brin nodded. “Yeah, though some of that fixed itself.” He pointed north. “The barbarians came and butted heads with their rivals. But they wanted food for their tribes. They went to just take it and leave but the nymphs didn’t like that, said they had to contribute if they took. Someone who could preserve food with a skill would do that enough to fill their wagons, then again repeat and put it back into the storehouse. Others stocked up, then said that they were going to help patrol for demons. They went off into the woods.”
“How does that work?” Alex thought that answer sounded suspicious. “The demons won’t enter the forest undetected because of the nymphs.”
“Maybe they thought they were being sneaky.” Brin shrugged. “They could actually be hunting demons though. How else are people with combat csses supposed to level up nowadays.”
“Not a big expert on foundry work.” Alex looked around, trying to get an eye for the progress in the area. “How long do you think it’ll take to refine the metal?”
“This metal?” Brin gnced at the pile. “Not exactly sure, this is the first time I’ve heard of the paldium stuff. If it is like iron or copper then we could make a bloom in a day then forge it into an ingot the next day.”
“Another thing,” the magical girl apparently shamelessly asked. “How is the armor going along?”
“I got that right here.” The bcksmith led Alex to a dummy that had a shining helmet on it. There was an awful lot of fabric padding under it. “The measurements that I got were a little weird, you pnning to armor someone that is starving? If they are that skinny then just feeding them properly for a while might be prudent.”
Alex inspected the partially completed set of full pte. It glimmered with that silver sheen. “I thought you didn’t have enough iron to make a set of armor?”
“About that.” Brin pointed to a bunch of the rusted scrap that other people were working on. “Everyone’s been pitching in and salvaging what they could from the river. We even got some more nails going to help the carpenters. That one girl has been heading out, teaching people how to swim to salvage stuff to keep the forges going.”
“That’s good.” Alex cpped. “When this is done please put it in Ki’s office. The dimensions are fine.”
“Thanks for letting us advance our csses.” Brin bowed slightly. “Even the carpenters are taking risks making small boats without a shipwright. Hopefully we’ll find a shipwright.”
Alex looked at the pile of rusted parts again. “If anyone can create iron cables that would be a bit of a help. I’ve been using string for some pulleys and that works, but in my original dolls they don’t have any moving parts that aren't metal.”
“I’ll see what we can do.” Brin looked over the stuff in the lean-to, considering possible ways to make metal cable. “I’m guessing you want it really thin.”
Alex nodded. “Thanks, it is not super important. It would just be nice to have a bit of a stockpile in case it is needed.”
Alex bid farewell and made her way down to the waterfront. There, she observed people utilizing saws and other woodworking tools to assemble smaller boats. While she had reservations about their seaworthiness in open water, she recognized the wisdom of having an escape pn in case of an emergency.
After conversing with a few individuals, Alex returned to the adventurer's guild. She informed the skeletal closet dweller about the ice demons, but the skeleton remained motionless and silent. Oh well, the self-destructive plow wielder could use a break. Hopefully he gets some rest and feels better. In a few days she could dress him up like a doll as a princely knight in shining armor. Alex then got changed into the plumbing outfit, and departed once more for the isnd, via the portal pipe in the basement to resume her work on the clockwork toy ship.
Hopping out of the other side of the portal, Alex took some time to speak with Bob and Martha. She let them know the news in the town, that some of the tribal peoples have packed up and left and are wandering around the forest.
“If anything gets too risky.” Bob presented their emergency pn. “We’ll go take shelter in the grotto shrine.”
“Kaide let us know before she had to go to sleep that it’d be a good pce to hide.” Martha added. “Attacking pces where someone can request a css from the gods is inviting divine punishment from that deity.”
“How does that work if someone is a criminal and just hides out in the temple?” Alex thought some of the ways things worked on Terre were a little weird.
“Not sure.” Bob shrugged. “There could be a really long standoff, or they could come in and apprehend the person…perhaps carefully? Try not to damage anything or something like that.”
“Politely ask permission?” Martha joined the specution.
Alex tried not to chuckle. They were just being silly about what could be a fairly dangerous situation.
After saying farewell, Bob gave a final warning. “Winter is just around the corner. Best to finish up and be ready to spend the next few months indoors hunkering down.”
The farming couple pressed Alex to stay for dinner, they had some heartfelt farewells and Alex went back into the walled area filled with portal pipes and a leafless apple tree. A shudder ran through Alex at the thought of being asleep for a whole season. She held the lock of green hair that complemented her long bck hair. It was a bit of a reminder of what could have been.
With a spsh, Alex fell out of the pipe, got dumped into the cold water of the under-construction castle.
With her feather duster in hand, Alex climbed out, dusted herself off, leaving her dry and headed out.
The workers had started on some of the roofing. Still, they cked shingles but there were metal beams set up to create a peaked roof structure. The spires had cone-shaped roofs. She noticed that instead of wooden shingles they put thatch roofing tied to the beams with string. It looked rather rustic, but they could throw it together quickly.
Maybe in the future the roof could be repced with something else. Though how much would 20,000 square feet of roofing tiles weigh? A trailer load of dense ore started to cause the isnd to lose altitude so would that do the same?
Taking a step back inside, Alex saw that there were stairs, walls, several firepces set up and on the top floor an alcove set up with a shrine that had the start of what looked to be to Luna, the pink curtains and various other cute decorations waiting to be pced showed that was the pn.
Alex considered doing some stuff right now, but she was wearing the plumbing outfit, so if the decorations didn’t involve pipes they she should probably get changed first. Also, it was dark out so she should probably head to the carriage, meet up with Fufi and get some sleep.
The next day, Alex woke up, made some tea and breakfast in the carriage and went back to mucking around with tiny clockwork mechanisms for the toy boat she had been plucking away at for some time.
“Good Morning.” Fufi beamed after she had taken her bird bath. “You looked tired yesterday so I decided to let you sleep.”
“I am okay.” Alex gave Fufi a freshly poured cup of tea. “Just a little worried I’m screwing everything up.”
“Don’t worry.” Fufi didn’t miss a beat. “Follow your heart and things will work out.”
Alex wasn’t sure about that. But one step at a time right?
After breakfast, the magical girl went back to the shop and continued mucking with the clockwork mechanisms of the toy boat. She had got everything functional but the boat was a complex beast. One thing could get in the way of another thing. The balloon could be deployed, but if the sails were out then it would get caught depending on the position of the boom. Some of the gearboxes in the hull could get lines caught in them if they were not nicely spooled or had too much sck. Alex had to dust off some of the drawings that she made with her feather duster and start over again for some parts.
Days turned into weeks but with lots of trial and error they finally got the toy to a point where it felt passible. It could be improved, but that was also a trap. Getting something to work also came with the discovery that it can be done better.
Alex’s phone rang out.
[Toymaking has reached level 5]
She scrolled through the app to check her character sheet.
Name: Alex Parker
Css: Magical Girl
Level: 5
Sex: Female
Race: Human
Strength: 11
Constitution: 9
Dexterity: 17
Intelligence: 11
Cuteness: 24
Skills:
Cleaning: 3
Cooking: 2
Dancing: 2
Tailoring: 4
Toymaking: 5
Feats: Empower Doll
Crafting: Force Imbuement
Possess Doll
Spells: Animate DollMagical Girl Transformation
Lesser Grow Pnts
Traits: Mental Resistance: 4
“Finally finished.” Alex proudly patted the toy boat. “And I got a skill increase for toy making. It is now my highest skill.”
“Good Job!” Fufi praised. “Your toys will only get better from here on out.”
“I hope so.” Alex eyed the ship with the set of tiny doll crew like the first toy ship. In fact most of the dolls were salvaged sailor dolls from the ship that they gave to the shipwright at the capital. One of the dolls was taken, she still felt bitter about that and wanted to rescue the doll, but other than that there were more than enough dolls to crew the ship.
Another problem was the size. Alex felt like her skill struggled with things as they got bigger. The toy ship was about 1/10 the size of the clipper ship it was based off of. But the main 3 dolls from the dungeon were merumeru-sized. So Alex was way too big for the ship, and her combat dolls were like toddlers. And the sailor dolls were sized like action figures.
