Chapter 91: The Gauntlet

The Idea wasn’t a soft “maybe” kind of idea.

A click kind of idea, the same way a mechanism locks into place when you finally see the missing piece. His eyes narrowed slightly, his mind already running through heat transfer, binding, the way materials behaved under stress.

He placed the scales on the ground and simply hammered one.

Not with the intention to fit it into the floor, no, but to break it.

It immediately turned into fine powder.

The sound was sharp, brittle, like breaking ceramic. The scale shattered into dust that glittered faintly in the blue light, and Kael paused for half a second to watch it spread.

He then grabbed another one and did the same.

After he did so to about a third of his stash, he swept the powder into a rough pile, careful not to scatter it too far. It clung to his fingertips slightly, like ground glass, and he had to resist the urge to rub his hands clean on his pants.

This wasn’t dirt. This was material.

Then he placed the rune once again on the crowbar and activated it.

The flames shot out and burned, and soon the steel bar turned molten hot to the point that it almost began to melt. The metal didn’t drip, not yet, but it softened, visibly. The dark surface took on a faint glow. The air around it shimmered. Heat rolled off it in waves, enough that even through his layers, he could feel it kiss his skin.

Without hesitatio,n he placed the molten crowbar into the fine powder after removing the rune again and began hammering it.

The goal was to mix in the powder of the scales as much as possible with the molten steel.

He could have simply tried to hammer the powder in without heating the metal, but he felt that it was wrong, an intuitive feeling that he didn’t really understand where it came from but still respected. Like trying to weld cold metal with bare hands. Sure, you could brute force it, but the results would betray you the moment you needed them most.

Hammer after hammer, he continued striking, molding the powder with the metal.

Surprisingly, all the powder seemed to be willing to fuse with the steel. It didn’t resist, didn’t flake away, didn’t behave like grit trapped between layers. It sank into the surface like it belonged there. And though it did follow Kael’s will when he struck with Brokk’s hammer, it felt natural for the two materials to fuse together, as if the hammer wasn’t forcing them, but reminding them they were compatible.

The crowbar’s shape changed as he worked it, losing its identity as a tool and becoming something closer to raw stock. A bar. A base. A blank canvas for something else. Each strike smoothed inconsistencies, pressed the powder deeper, drew impurities out. His arms moved in a steady rhythm, the sound of hammering filling the room like a heartbeat.

And once he was done, he had a single bar of steel that seemed to change color.

It was much darker, and surprisingly warm even after all the heat dissipated, as if the material held onto temperature differently now. Not dangerously, not like a brand, but like a living ember that refused to fully go cold. It felt… stable.

Then the system chimed in, and Kael’s eyes flicked up immediately, wary out of habit.

[Congratulations! You’ve managed to create Heat Resistant Metalloid]

Your proficiency in metallurgy has increased.

+1 Dex

“A metalloid?” Kael was surprised.

He turned the bar in his hands, feeling its weight, its subtle warmth, the way it seemed denser than it should be. If the system called it that, then it wasn’t just metal anymore. It was something else. Something between. Something that could take a concept and hold it without failing.

That basically was the perfect material he needed.

Both a metal that he can forge into what he wants, and the ability for it to be conductive.

His gaze drifted to the glove.

And the plan, the one he’d filed away earlier like a responsible adult pretending he didn’t want to do reckless genius things, surfaced again, clear as daylight.

Not wanting his idea to fade away, he immediately began hammering the steel bar.

Bending, curving, partitioning, and rearranging bits and pieces, each hammer blow seemed to follow his will in creating what he had in mind. The hammer didn’t just strike; it shaped. It listened. It turned intention into form in a way that felt almost unfair.

’Imagination truly is man’s limit,’ he thought as he saw the shape of a hand forming.

Finger segments. A curved palm. A flared wrist guard. A long forearm plate. He worked the metal like it was clay, but the results were crisp, clean. He made joints where joints needed to be, overlapping plates where flexibility mattered. He didn’t want a solid shell that would trap heat. He wanted something that could vent, move, survive.

An hour or more seemed to have gone by.

By now, he was sure that it was already daytime, but the sound of hammering never stopped from where he was. If anything, it grew more confident, less trial-and-error, more deliberate force. He wasn’t guessing anymore. He was building.

The gauntlet was finally finished.

A smooth-surfaced and polished gauntlet. With one socket at the palm section that can perfectly fit a rune. While the gauntlet itself seemed to extend all the way to Kael’s elbow from how much material he had left. It wasn’t a glove. It was a statement. It looked like something a knight would wear if knights lived in a world where magic tried to cook your hand off for daring to use it.

Kael then placed the leather glove, after adding more treated basilisk to the glove, and fitted it inside.

Hammering more of the leather made it stick snugly in the inside of the gauntlet. The lining sealed in place, taking the shape perfectly, cushioning his hand without feeling loose. The inside felt warm but not suffocating, like insulated armor rather than a trap. When he slid his hand in, it fit like it had been made for him, because it had.

And finally, he was done.

Just then a slew of notification popped up, enough to probably make the Rabbit go into another fit of rage.

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