An unusual date

That isn’t to say she had absolutely nothing she could teach as if that was true she wouldn’t be the goddess of the forge. Instead of a standard type set of information she instead could teach me principles and concepts that normally only the highest of craftsmen could pull off as it involved an almost reversed level of smithing. What I meant by that is that traditional smithing and creation work involved working materials from the outside in while at the highest levels this has been pushed to such an extreme the smith can do the reverse by striking the inside by striking the outside.-

Like I said, really fucking high level stuff. Well it was supposed to be but the way my technique worked was in a way both vastly superior and inferior to the traditional method of crafting stuff. It was superior in that right from the offset I can work on both the internal and external parts of any material I get my hands on. This meant that those high level stuffs were something I could in theory do right out the gate. That was unfortunately also where my technique became vastly inferior to the standard method.-

See the standard method built up both skill and knowledge at equal and balanced rates making it close to a ladder as far as progression went, one step up at a time. My technique however made my progression all sorts of unstable as I had the added detriment of having to more or less reinvent the wheel at every turn as the traditional method wasn’t going to work for me. I could have the entire knowledge base of say Tsubaki who was the only smith in the world almost on par with Hephaestus herself and capable of forging growth weapons and STILL not be even close to her in my creations.-

Anyways what this meant was that besides conceptual knowledge that I could try to adapt to my own work I couldn’t use literally anything else Hephaestus had to teach. Once we left the tower Hephaestus lead me through the city towards the massive gladiatorial arena that served as the Ganesha familias home and entertainment grounds. The place was naturally massive and had a stylized elephants head sculpture with it’s mouth open to serve as the entrance.-

From this entrance a large muscular tan god with shoulder length brown shaggy hair and a red elephant mask with yellow glass over the eyes covering the top part of his face was standing. His clothes were a red clay colored half robe and white pants that puffed out and were tucked under his ankle bindings and combat sandals.

“I AM GANESHA! Welcome to my grandest of homes! We have a most extraordinary show for you today as we had the luck of capturing an infant dragon!” the god said loudly with a dramatic flexing pose.

I chuckled at that as he genuinely seemed like the over the top personality all the rumors painted him as. It was hard not to also notice that not only was his soul completely spotless of sin but somehow shined just as dramatically as his welcome did. Don’t ask me how the fuck that works as it stumped me too. Best I could come up with was that he was so in touch with his truest self that his soul was perfectly in sync with his actions. I suppose that made sense considering who Ganesha was according mythology back on earth. He was a god who pretty much represented the go getter attitude, a god of the people really.-

“Really Ganesha? an Infant dragon? I’m surprised no one tried to kill it for the drops.” Hephaestus said with a smile.

“There were attempts but they were all foiled by the might of my familia!” he said boisterously.

“This is my date for the day, Alex, Captain of the Hestia familia.” she said introducing me.

“I AM GANESHA! Welcome Alex of the Hestia familia! Hephaestus tells me that you have not seen one of my familia’s taming shows and that struck me flabbergasted! You must tell me what has compelled you to never seek them out and witness their glory?” he questioned loudly.

I shrugged “I usually focus on my work or on improving my familia or power. I have no life to be blunt.” I said frankly.

“UNACCEPTABLE! I, GANESHA! Shall ensure that this show be grand enough to make up for all the ones you have missed! So says I, GANESHA!” he vows loudly.

I just gave Hephaestus a look and she shrugged with a helpless look “Yeah he’s always this intense.” she said.

The dramatic god lead the way to the private booth of the arena that was usually reserved for the likes of Freya or Loki’s familia if they wanted to watch a taming show. Once we were seated people brought in a veritable feast of roasted meats, vegetables and fresh fruit and wine.

“One must be properly nourished when watching a spectacle! So says I, GANESHA!” the god said with a bright smile and yet another pose.

To my surprise Hephaestus didn’t seem surprised or bothered by this impromptu meal at all and helped herself to some herb roasted boar. I just decided to roll with it and ripped off a whole leg of the same boar and took cut off a bit of it to test the flavor. –

It was pretty good to be honest, a mix of earthy flavors and a slight heat that left the tongue pleasantly tingling after the meat was swallowed. It was missing a little something though and I casually grabbed a lemon from the fruits and used my technique to liquify the insides before squeezing them out onto the meat. I took another bite and smiled as the sourness was exactly what was needed to create a wonderful clash of flavors. Both Hephaestus and Ganesha looked interested by this and replicated what I did with a lemon of their own.-

“What a flavor profile! The sourness strikes fiercely at first but soon is soothed by the herbs before the heat of the paprika leaves the whole mouth tingling! I love it!” Ganesha says with a wide smile.

I shrugged “It’s better on a strongly flavored fish than on boar like this.” I said honestly.

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