“Cheat? How?” Harvey asked, his body tensing as he prepared to defend his valiant attempt at ink refinement.

  “Let me guess, you ground the core into dust so you could add little bits and keep the process under control?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, you can’t do that.” Elena snickered.

  “Why not? John’s guide didn’t say anything about that.”

  “It didn’t say much about ink refinement other than giving the blueprint for the inkwell and a skill to use it. If the System is all about discovering new things, I’m sure it doesn’t want one random guy to become the basis for how an entire newly integrated race refines ink.” Elena explained.

  “You think it’s censoring the books?”

  “Or John is in on it somehow. Either way, you’re going to have to dive in headfirst if you want your ink to be anything better than blood scented with notes of elemental core.” Elena chuckled.

  “And you know this how?” Harvey asked.

  “Because I tried the same thing. It’s intuitive to add as little material as possible until you reach the potency you want. We’re working with limited time and limited resources, so we try to be as efficient as possible.”

  “Exactly.” Harvey interrupted, wanting to cut her off before the inevitable but came out.

  “But, refining this way needs 10 times as much base material to accomplish the same effect.”

  “You actually did the math?” Harvey asked.

  “What? No, I’m guessing. Look, you can either get defensive or let me save you liters of your own blood.”

  “Sorry,” he sighed, “I just hate being called a cheater. It goes against every fiber of my being.”

  And I’ve only got a few F Grade cores. I wanted my warhammer inscribed yesterday, but every batch of ink I mess up means more waiting.

  “You’re willing to kill Gary with self-destructing armor, but the idea of cheating on some magical System test puts you on edge?” She laughed.

  “Hey, all is fair in love and war,” Harvey retorted.

  “Whatever. Think of it this way. To melt iron, your forge has to get sufficiently hot, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Ok, now let’s say you have a limited supply of charcoal, so instead of filling the firepot all the way, you add one piece at a time, only adding another once the first has burned up,” Elena suggested.

  “That wouldn’t work. The heat will dissipate too fast,” Harvey rebuked.

  Elena gave him a knowing look, pointing at the core sand in his hand before moving back to her own workbench. Harvey stared for a moment as it all clicked into place. He didn’t know what all the runes on the inkwell did, but he recognized a few relating to energy containment. It would make sense that the cauldron couldn’t bottle up the energy indefinitely. That’s what his blood was for. The inkwell just kept the myriad concepts contained long enough for his Will to bind them to his blood. Maybe if he had an inkwell tailored to the concepts of an Iron Elemental Core, it would last longer, but his design was meant to be universally applicable.

  “There you go,” Elena laughed, watching clarity return to his eyes. “I’ve just been pouring the failed attempts on the mountain out back. You’ll want a rag and some water to make sure nothing gets left in the pot.”

  “Thanks,” Harvey grumbled, picking up the heavy inkwell before snatching the ribbon of severed robe he’d been using as a rag. He still had a few minutes before he’d need to pour his next batch of steel into the molds for his F Grade armor, so he trundled out into the yard. The cold air stung as chilling wind replaced the stuffy heat of the forge, making him feel like he’d jumped out of a hot tub straight into a pool.

  Reaching the base of the mountain, he found a boulder stained brown with rainbow streaks. The smell reminded him of the apothecary Elena was collecting, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as when those same materials got dried out by the forge.

  I wonder if that’s affecting her inscriptions at all? He realized. He’d have to experiment.

  Grabbing the lip of the cauldron, he heaved forward to send a thick stream of blood splashing onto the stone. He could still see tiny specks of the crystalline core sparkling in the daylight as the viscous liquid crawled down the mountain like monstrous brownie batter. His stomach lurched at the sight, and it took all he had not to wretch as he poured some of his drinking water into the inkwell and out the rest with his rag. Even if it was his own blood and there were gallons of it keeping him alive at all times, he didn’t want it all over his hands.

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  Walking back inside, his skin caught fire again, like jumping back out of the ice-cold pool and into the hot tub.

  “We need an airlock,” he announced.

  “What?” Elena asked.

  “Never mind.”

  Setting the damp inkwell on a table near the forge, he picked up his tongs and poured the steel out of the crucible and into a mold. The cauldron would need to dry out before his next attempt, but the stifling heat would have that done in short order. Unlike his strange blood concoction, his molten steel flowed like a red-hot waterfall, easily flowing through the funnel he’d built into his mold into the channels that would become his new shoulder pauldron.

  Empty once more, he piled it high with as much elemental as he could fit before gingerly returning it to the firepot. The charcoal was running low, so he shoveled in more from his kiln. Realizing now was not the time to be stingy, he piled the fuel high before spending a few minutes pumping the bellows. With the marathon of forging he was about to undergo, he’d need to start his next batch of charcoal sooner than expected.

  I could probably get away with waiting until tomorrow… Ugh, don’t get lazy, Harvey.

  Might as well get it done now. Shovelling all the excess into a crate, he picked up his axe and stepped back into the cold. There was so much to do, and so little time to do it! Trudging up the mountainside toward the nearest tree, he got chopping.

  Gathering enough wood to fill his kiln was child's play with 149 Strength and a Slipsack, but it still took a few hours to strip all the bark, branches, and leaves away since he was constantly forced to stop and attend to his steel. Add in dissecting more elementals, and by the time his kiln was burning through the densest wood he could find, it was time for Elena to head back to Gary’s for dinner.

  He hated to admit it, but getting work done was always a little easier after she left. Even if she never really talked about it, he could feel her stress rising as she prepared to walk back into the lion’s den every night. Now that his own aura was F Grade, it was much easier to read the emotion leaking through her own. It was like trying to focus while she was constantly whispering just loud enough for him to notice, but quiet enough that he could never understand what she was saying.

  Harvey enjoyed her company, but couldn’t complete his weapon without absolute focus. He’d even asked Julian and Hannah to sleep somewhere else for the next few nights, and they were more than happy to oblige after hearing he’d be running the forge around the clock for the next few days. They’d spent their afternoon in the mine, helping set up defenses and gathering supplies for the rotating contingent that would be hunting down there full-time. They knew to grab him if the situation got out of hand, but agreed that arming Veils End should be his top priority until the quest ended.

  Having talked to everyone he needed to during a quick dinner around the fire, he returned to his blissfully empty forge. He was exhausted, his shoulders slumping as the door clicked shut behind him, but there was no time to waste. Looking at the quest timer, he had almost exactly a week to progress as fast as possible. He couldn’t be sure how the System decided which outpost was strongest, but he’d do whatever he could to help Veils End succeed.

  First, he poured another crucible of steel into the mold for his new breastplate, then began melting another batch. Using Artificer’s Eyes to survey the pieces of his helmet and pauldrons cooling in their molds, he realized they were cooling too fast. All he wanted to do was skip to inscribing his hammer, but other things just kept getting in the way. Grabbing a hammer and chisel, he broke the pieces out of their molds and held them over the coals. The steel needed to be reheated before he could pound out the seams and ensure there weren’t any faultlines that would crack in combat.

  Once a pauldron was hot enough, he hammered away until the metal was sturdy, stable, and in one, solid piece. By the time he set it to temper, the crucible needed carbon. The second the carbon was infused, the helmet was getting too cool.

  Harvey fell into a vicious cycle of melting steel, making molds, pouring steel, cracking molds, reheating, hammering, tempering, and quenching.

  He needed help.

  An assistant, a robot… something. The problem was that nobody else in Veils End had a blacksmithing profession, so spending time helping him would only hurt their own levelling speed. A one-man plate armor factory might have worked alright back when forging the iron armor sets was the only thing he had to work on, but trying to carve out time for inscribing was just too much to juggle. He wanted to work on his weapon, but he needed to make the most of the massive batch of charcoal he’d thrown into the firepot.

  Just forge until the fuel burns down, and then you can take another stab at the ink before bed. He promised himself.

  Resigned to the fact that this burden was his to carry alone, he pushed the inkwell out of his mind and got to work. Moving by lamplight and the blazing inferno of his forge, he cut, carved, and hammered until his hands went numb. His eyes glazed over as he fell into the brutal rhythm of blacksmithing, only the steady flow of System notifications keeping him pushing forward.

  A new creation has been made | Steel Helmet | Essence Gained

  A new creation has been made | Steel Breastplate | Essence Gained

  …

  Your profession, Runeforged Artificer, has reached Level 27. +8 Endurance, +10 Strength, +4 Dexterity, +12 Willpower, +8 Free Points

  Your profession, Runeforged Artificer, has reached Level 28. +8 Endurance, +10 Strength, +4 Dexterity, +12 Willpower, +8 Free Points

  Your race, Veilstrider, has reached Level 27. +2 to all stats

  By the time only cinders and ash remained in the firepot, he’d completed his entire armor set, gained two profession levels, and another Race level, giving him 16 free points to add to his growing Willpower. Points he would need when he contended with an entire F Grade core all at once.

  Retrieving the gem from a gaping hole in the chest of an elemental lying on a workbench, he moved to take a seat before his inkwell. His body was tired, but his mind was raring to finally take a second shot at his ink. His hands trembled as he brought the sharpened chisel to his palm. A blade would hurt less, but he didn’t have one. That was ok… his anticipation helped him ignore the jagged edge carving into his palm as he watched the first drops of blood fall into the cauldron.