Fantasy World Online II: Second Chance

Day 33-48: Balt

The morning after the party Balt went back to the smithy. As an official apprentice he had the rights to a sleeping bunk and his own work space.
For the following days he kept traveling between the mine and the smithy, transporting in a cart hundreds of ores that he then appraised and smelted.

After the fifth day though he had enough. He we t to his teacher and said he was ready to learn more.

"Is that so? Very well. Come follow me."

The smith led him to the hearth were an iron bar was red hot and said "Do something with it."

So Balt put on his deer skin gloves and his leather apron and used a pinch to handle the bar. He pulled it out of the fire, put in on the anvil and used a hammer to start pounding on it.
He flattened the top until the bar turned orange and put it back into the fire. Once it was back to red he pulled it out and pounded on it again.
He did so until four fifth of the bar was flattened.
Then he started folding the iron, again and again, pounding on it to find and eliminate the impurities.
Then the hits became lighter and more precise. it took out the bumps and gave shape to the iron.
For hours Balt's hammer pounded on the iron and it slowly took the shape of a straight sword.

For the final time Bart plunged the badd in the water . The blade was finished. It was a clumsy piece with uneven edges and bad equilibrium but it was Balt's first piece and he was proud of it.

"Good, now the hilt."

He took a piece of dark wood from a pile and using carving tools cut it into a hilt with notches. He then separated the hilt in two following its length and started cutting our a space the size of the end of the blade.
Using wood glue he enclosed the blade's bottom between the two wood parts and used leather strips to keep it tightly closed.

Balt then put the sword to dry and cool.
The whole process had taken him the rest of the day, the sun was now long set and he realized he was famished. That is when his mentor came in with a lettuce and tomato sandwich.

"Here boy, you need it."

Balt gratefully accepted the food and munched on it like a starving man. The sandwich had little taste but it filled his virtual stomach just fine. Even after finishing eating Balt stayed put to recover his energy faster. As he did he listened to his mentor advises and critics.

"Next time you do a sword like that one try to temperate it a bit more, its purity will get better and its durrability increase."
"Yes sir"
"All in all for a first timer its not a bad sword. i could probably sell it for eighty silver... lots of young mersenaries lately."
"Sir?"
"Hum."
"Can i name it?"
"Name the sword?"
"Its my first sword..."
"Very well! Let me show you how!"

The burly man picked a carving knife and some silver scraps.

"The first thing to do is carve the name in the hilt."

He did so on a piece of stray wood.

"Then you boil the silver... and you use a tiny spatula to paint the carvings using the silver! Voila! This method can be used to inscribe the name of the blade and the brand of its crafter with any kind os metal. I recommend Silver but many use gold."

Balt thought about it, this was his first sword. It was poorly made and was overly simple. after thinking about it he finally decided to use copper for the engraving.

Being careful with the carving knife he engraved the words "Balt Series 1" on one side and "First Straight Sword" on the other.

It took him two hours to finish engraving the swords. When he was finally done he strained himself into walking to his bunk and fell asleep on the bed.
Ten minutes later the automatic log-out occurred and the player known as Balt woke up in his pod.

The next time he logged in he spend some time sharpening the sword on a spinning wheel and shaving then vernishing the hilt to remove any splinters. When he was done a system message appeared.

"Crafting successful!"
"You have crafted a Straight Sword for the first time.
The item is now available in the crafting menu"

The crafting menu was a list off all the items available for crafting by the user. By using the crafting menu to craft an item the probability of succeeding into crafting the item increased but the quality and experience it produced was much lower than the manual crafting.
As a starting smith Balt would normally be tempted to use the crafting menu and system but he was interested in the process of crafting more than in the result so he dismissed the messages and went to his mentor. He wanted to smith more.

His wish was granted in the form of a quest to produce a hundred straight swords made of Bronze. He spent the next two weeks working on it, producing one sword after the other.
As he did his production rate fastened and the quality of his work became better.

By the end of he hundredth sword this was the the result of his work.

"Bronze Straight Sword
Durability: 25/25
A sword produced by a starting smithy. The are put into its crafting make it an acceptable sword.
The edge was carefully sharpened.
Options: Attack +3
Requirements: None"

According to his master's expertise, those swords could be sold from eighty copper for the simple ones to one silver for those with attack bonuses.

Before logging off Balt went on the roof of the smithy and observed the sun set.