Elves made for fantastic artisans; courtesy of their capacity to communicate with the world. Anything and everything became a subject to a sixth sense, whether living or not. Take a human smith for example, they had to hone their skill to understand which portions of heated metal needed to be struck, whereas an elf was told by the metal. Communication could get weird, you needed to establish your desire for the world to reciprocate, which demanded a certain level of concentration. Overall though?

  The knife-eared folk had a tendency of dominating their craft, if any of them bothered to compete properly in the market they’d be in the service of nobles. Strange that most avoid cities, other than the travellers. Which was all well and good, gave me another advantage in the face of armageddon that I planned to exploit properly. Once I could figure out how to distinguish between the overlapping bullshit making a mess of my brain.

  The demon has been fucking with me, sending metaphors upon metaphors in the form of images and sensations, all while I was trying to beat metal. I raised my hammer, and something that was both a finger and tower crashed into my mind, surrounded by an ocean of liquid gold. The gold traveled up to the tip and…disappeared. Like emptiness and loss and desecration.

  The fish didn’t seem to mind.

  They frolicked around a dancing jester as he traversed the ocean of gold, manifesting a field of blades from the liquid metal that only marked his form. Punishment for any mistakes made manifest in the motions. He passed by a dead woman, floating face up to a sky of purples and greens. An eerie placidity marked her features as the birds—

  I slammed my hammer down on the stake, and I knew immediately that I fucked up from how the object screamed. I raised it to inspect.

  Bent it too far out of shape with too much force.

  I sighed, another one to mark a myriad. Sure, I’d only been making nails, but it was an embarrassment to any self respecting smith. I’m glad father was busy, I couldn’t have borne him as a witness to my failures.

  The demon always communicated its strange worlds at the crucial moments, staying silent for the whole process until just the right opportunity presented itself. I knew the imp was doing it to purposefully to fuck with my flow, and I didn’t appreciate the blatant sabotage. The imp sent a simple metaphor then, just a row of laughing teeth adorning an angular jaw. The little bastard was mocking me. I scowled, but kept working.

  Nails didn’t need to be perfect, but a bend like the one I made made it rather useless. I put it in the furnace to heat for a little while before taking it out and beating it back into shape, slowly this time. Much slower than average. I didn't know if that annoyed me more than the imp sending nothing to interrupt me, making my caution useless.

  Eventually it was fixed, and I placed the stake in a small hole on the back of the anvil before hammering it down and making a proper head for a proper nail.

  I inspected it, turning it over and over with my tongs, then tossed it into a large box of…nails. I had to make a few hundred every day, and that was the fiftieth. I sighed and took a break, pushing a new muscle in my mind.

  Rivers and rivers.

  Flowing through my body, superimposed over veins where an ethereal energy laid. I focused on the walls, and made them just a bit permeable, letting the mana flow into my body with the intention of scouring any fatigue. Honestly, I didn’t need it, I could’ve made another couple before really needing a break.

  I couldn’t really help it though, It was mana, and it was so much weirder than I could’ve imagined. The game didn’t really expand on the energy beyond it being some catch-all resource dumbfucks used to cast spells. But it was so much more than a resource, it was eddies full of naked potential, flowing through the body through channels that mimiked the circulatory system.

  There wasn’t a core, or a mana pool, just an ever flowing river, and the feeling when I let it wash over my body to deal with the fatigue? The best comparison I could think of was coffee, except in every cell all at once and not just my brain. Tired muscles rejuvenated with barely a thought, small scrapes and burns healed with only a bit more focus, and I was granted the ability to increase my strength in perpetuity so long as my body could tolerate the burden alongside the need for mana.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  That last one was a bit of an exaggeration, I couldn’t make myself that much stronger, but I’d only just started.

  And everything I just stated? None of them are spells. Not a single one. Just basic applications of mana if the imp resting in my soul was to be believed. I wasn't sure how much I trusted a demon, but it was consistent enough with the game. What I’d been doing was amorphous control, spells were more…directed? I didn’t know, and I had no intention of outing myself as a witch to the empire to find out. The chances they had something to detect demonic energies was too high to try for the universities.

  I’d prefer not to be burned at the stake, thank you very much.

  So I was presented with the precarious position of needing to train while avoiding any unwanted attention. Hence the smithing! I did that every day, and so long as I pretended to take breaks to catch my breath, none would be the wiser! Gave me a bit of time to mess around, but not much.

  I could've tried to keep myself awake using mana but…well I didn’t want to fuck around with my brain just yet. Eventually, when I got desperate enough.

  Other than that I had nothing, no real plan to face armageddon. I knew there were legendary items somewhere out there, but with no reference to pin down where I was besides being a citizen of the empire? Not a chance I’d find them.

  Only two of the empire’s cities got explored in the game, finding out where I was from some random village in the middle of nowhere? Hilarious.

  The village was just the village.

  It had a name, sure, but only the elder and those visiting bothered to use it. For the residents it was where they were born and where they’d presumably die, why bother with a name to represent your whole world? Which was all fine and dandy, most couldn’t break the chains of generational legacy and go to one of the big cities. My father could’ve, because he was a smith, but why compete with hundreds like him in a settled market when he could be the one servicing that hovel?

  Didn’t make much coin, but living here costed a whole lot of nothing. Taxes being the only real financial constraint. I didn’t like the empire’s flat tax, but it wasn't like we were in the age of calculators and computers where you can designate people into their respective brackets, so the bullshit was just something we’d had to deal with.

  That wasn’t nearly my only complaint for living in what was a poor recreation of the roman empire, but I’d adapted. That fucking Caeser can suck my non-existent left nut for hiking our taxes though. I knew he wasn’t the one who did it, but his magistrates followed by example, and talks of discontent from passerbies had cemented to me that shit was getting bad for everyone.

  I knew it was because Auriel Caeser was planning another conquest war, specifically targeting the female lead's kingdom, but I didn’t know when it’d happen. Once it did I’d have…maybe a year before shit hit the fan? I’d tried to warn people about the End, I really did, but no one listened to me.

  Everyone always did their perfunctory nods when I got going about the future, at least those willing to listen, which was mostly just my family.

  And one very enthusiastic brat.

  “Hello!” exclaimed a boy of soft features and bronzed skin, behind him stood a stern looking girl with a bemused smirk on her face. “What are you doing friendo?”

  “I’m about to hammer this stake into proper shape, unless you’d prefer I hammer your face instead?” I said while wiggling the hammer at him.

  Jiso barked a laugh at my threat. “You would never! My face is too charming for you to ruin with your barbarism.”

  “Fuck off,” I grunted and turned to Uria. “What’s the idiot been up to? Not too much trouble I hope, the fact I haven’t heard any rumours the past few days is concerning.”

  “He’s been perfectly polite,” Uria chuckled. “It really is strange.”

  “Hey!” Jiso said.

  I hummed in contemplation. “Maybe he’s actually achieved sanity? No, such a thing isn’t possible. The gods must just be showing us mercy for once.”

  “I’m right here!”

  “It would need divine intervention, I wonder which one it was,” Uria said, tapping her chin.

  “Perhaps Reudenmire? Or maybe Unadine.”

  “I’m leaning towards Reudenmire,” Uria nodded. “Just makes sense.”

  Jiso sputtered at both of us, turning beet red with embarrassment. Me and Uria gave each other a look before sharing a chuckle, which only tipped him further on the scale of indignation. I waved off the boy, trying to be somewhat polite now that I’d had my fun.

  “It’s just a joke, Jiso. No need to get all red,” I said.

  “I’m not red!” Jiso pouted.

  “You’re very red.” Uria pointed out.

  “I AM NOT RED.”