I need to create the strongest projectile possible, Vivi thought the next morning, when the facets started were just brightening.

It didn’t need to be pretty. It didn’t need to be accurate or practical. It just needed to be dangerous enough to cause harm to an impenetrable wall. Vivi thought she had a good idea on how she’d create something dangerous enough.

We’ll need two crucibles, Vivi said. One for smelting the metals, and the other for the inside-carving process. It’ll be an awkward shape, so it’s easier to pour metal in, instead of dipping the veins in like normal.

“Mm, yes,” Lucius said. “I think that is a good idea.”

Vivi smiled. As usual, Lucius had no idea what they’d been doing for the last few days. Once he got lost, bringing him back to the project was difficult. He seemed invested enough, though, and didn’t complain. They were trying to break levelstone and escape the worst dungeon in the world, after all.

Cael has been working on the emberstones for a while now, Vivi thought. Last night, he had also asked to borrow her forge. Hopefully creating the crucibles wouldn’t take too long.

She stretched during her walk from the village to her workstation. The sound of hammering took her attention, however, and her yawn stopped. She walked to her workstation, where Cael hammered a rough looking clump of something

with Jaenna and two more spirits guarding him from interruptions.

His technique was suboptimal. His feet were in it, and he swung surprisingly confidently, having clearly studied blacksmithing from somewhere, but he lacked practice, and his rhythm was nonexistent. His eyes were focused and full of intent, though. He must have had a vision for what he wanted to create.

Cael spotted her and lifted his head. “Morning. I’m almost done. What do you think?”

He showcased his project with a grin. It looked like one half of a tube, made of some rough white-ish stones. Vivi wouldn’t have known what the material was; it wasn’t a metal and it didn’t look like emberstones at all, but Cael had been working on emberstones for over a week now, so she could only presume that was what he was hammering now.

“What is this?” she asked.

“It’s the first half of a crucible,” Cael said. “Shaping emberstones straight to a crucible would be insane, but I think I have a solution. Take a look at this bit.”

He pointed at the inside of the half-crucible, at the parts that would connect to the other half. “The pores are closed everywhere except here, where the stones still take in ether. That should create a bonding surface. When we have two halves ready, we can press them together and push ether in. The heat should, in theory, make the stones soft enough to bond together. This should be a much easier method to shape these rocks into a crucible. I just need to create the second half now.”

“You worked on this all night?” Vivi asked.

“I got a little invested,” Cael said with a laugh. “And I broke a few pieces. Emberstones are way too brittle for forging. Hopefully this one isn’t cracked inside.”

This might work, Vivi thought. Cael actually had an interesting solution. She knew it was possible to connect two pieces of metal with intense friction, from the heat generated, but with emberstones, connecting the two would be as simple as pushing ether into the stone to generate that heat, and pressing the heated-up stones together. Cael had sanded out the ether intake pores from every part except the parts he wanted to weld together.

“What’s with the look?” Cael asked, amused, while Vivi studied his work.

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“It’s better than whatever I would have come up with,” she said. “I didn’t think you could create something like this.”

“It’s only a crucible,” he said. “One half of a crucible. You’re the one creating a weapon to destroy levelstone.”

“Yes, if the crucibles work, I think I can get it done today. Go get some sleep. I’ll finish the other half.”

“I planned on staying up,” Cael said. “The facets are already rising. Might as well spend the full day.”

He looked energetic enough, still smiling, as if he actually wanted to keep working, instead of just pushing himself through. He must have used ether a lot to keep himself energetic throughout the night.

“We only have one forge,” Vivi said. “You’d just need to watch anyway.”

“So this is a perfect opportunity to learn from the best. I’ll stay.”

She gave him a look. “Fine. I haven’t worked with emberstones either, though. I’ll need to focus.”

Cael agreed to stay silent, and Vivi got started, using the sanded piece of emberstone he’d prepared. Admittedly, Vivi had never thought of hammering emberstones before. She didn’t know their specific melting point, and she wasn’t practiced with the way the material reacted to her hammer.

She was confident in her blacksmithing, of course, but this definitely wasn’t the project she wanted to showcase her best skills to any students. With Cael watching, she felt pressure to do well. Cael had already completed one half of the crucible. Failing now would have been embarrassing.

Practice quickly replaced that pressure, however, and she found that shaping the emberstones wasn’t actually all that difficult. The sweet spot for getting them soft enough to forge was somewhere around 2200 to 2300 kelvin. She had to hit softly to avoid cracking the stones. If anything, the stones were easier to push into shape with her hammer rather than hitting.

Cael watched intently, from the way she stood to the way she hit the metal, but he was also looking at her face a lot.

“This is an odd job,” Vivi said. “If you actually want to learn blacksmithing, you’ll need to watch me forge a sword.”

“You were in the zone for a little bit, weren’t you?” Cael asked.

“You know that term?”

“I enter it all the time,” Cael said. “Art always gets immersive enough to forget the outside world. That’s partly what makes it great. Although, it looks like this job is easy enough that you can be distracted and still complete it perfectly.”

“This isn’t very difficult, yeah,” Vivi said. “I guess I was focused for a little bit, until I figured out how emberstones behave. Working should be easy enough now. I can talk while I work.”

Cael continued watching her, until he said, “Interesting, how the best blacksmith I know is also the cutest girl I’ve met.”

“So you don’t think I’m the best blacksmith you’ve met?”

“Well,” Cael said, “you are the cutest girl, at least.”

Vivi’s rhythm froze, and her eyes snapped to him. She blinked.

Then she snorted, continuing her work. “I take it back, I can’t talk while I work. Not if you try to distract me like that.”

Lucius chuckled in her core, amused. “Is this weakling trying to flirt with you?”

He better not, Vivi thought. I think he’s just messing with us.

She found her eyes wandering away from him for the rest of the session. She completed the second half of the crucible within an hour, and they connected the two pieces together. That turned out to be a simple process. They pushed the two pieces together by hand, and added ether into the pores. The bonding surface glowed orange, and the two pieces melted together. When it cooled, both pieces had bonded together.

The first crucible, to melt the metals in, was completed. All that was left was the second, more oddly shaped, crucible before she could get started with the runesmithing process.

The second crucible took her three hours, using the pieces of emberstone Cael had spent the week preparing. She shaped it into a perfect circle. Or a ball, rather, with a hole in the top to both fit the stalk of the ether root in, and to pour metal through. They used the same strategy of creating two halves, though Vivi didn’t weld them together yet. The hole was too small to fit an intricate network of veins through. They’d need to connect the two halves around the veins.

Finally, the fun bit came next. Vein-shaping.

She just needed a vise first, or something to hold the ether roots in place while she shaped the veins. After thinking about it for a minute, she came up with a rather silly solution.

Ether roots occasionally poked out from the stone, and many of them had their tips pointing upward, some perfectly straight up. The stone around the roots held them firmly against the ground. Was there any need to remove the roots, when they were already perfectly ready for vein-shaping?

Vivi thought not. But she also wouldn’t want to work directly on the ground. She’d need a seat to work at a comfortable height.

So she summoned Dawnpour and cut into the stone next to the root, a simple iron root, submerging herself slightly into the ground. She cut a small seat for herself in the stone, and chuckled at the silliness of her contraption.

Lucius, initiate the root.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep