Getting Rogar water was easy enough. With the porta-forge out of my inventory, I had gobs of room and weight budget to spare, and with Richard no longer on my back, I reached the nearest pond in just a few minutes. The water was perfectly still, and in a jungle, I knew what that meant.

  Not that it mattered for our purposes. Bacteria-ridden water would make mud and clay just as well as fresh water. Although, with my Vigor, I wondered if I could even succumb to illnesses like that anymore.

  I returned to our little mining operation to find Aerion perched on the boulder she’d moved, standing guard like a hawk.

  At least she didn’t make a sour face when she spotted me. Progress, I suppose.

  I dumped the water out at the center of a pit of dirt Philip had created. He took off his gauntlets and got his hands dirty, mixing it up with some dried brush from nearby, before slapping it onto the sides of the brick chimney he’d just assembled.

  At the very bottom of the forge was a metal pipe that would draw in air.

  “While the position of the pipe naturally sucks in air for the furnace, it’s not nearly hot enough on its own,” Philip explained.

  “Got a fire going in there already,” Rogar said, “but we’ll need your help on the bellows to get it hot enough.”

  “Sure thing. Don't need the lava from the first floor?” I said. “It's still as hot as it was when I scooped it.”

  “The opposite,” Rogar said. “The furnace would just cool the lava. It'll just get mixed up with the bloom, reducing purity. Not desirable.”

  “Huh. Makes sense, I suppose.”

  “Also, seeing as how this is Frostsilver we’re dealing with, we’ll need as many of us on the bellows as possible, even with that.”

  The bellows were pretty similar to the ones at Rogar’s forge, and anticipating four physically strong people on hand—really more like six or seven between Aerion and myself—we’d brought four different bellows along. The handles were wood and the bellows leather, so they’d packed down pretty small in my inventory.

  As for attaching them, auxiliary pipes split off from the main intake, where each bellows connected to. We would all pump in a particular order to create a constant blast of air. It reminded me a bit of superchargers on sports cars back on earth. Pretty much the same deal.

  Just months ago, I wouldn’t have known about any of this, and while Rogar and Philip weren’t aware of concepts like vacuums—they just knew that fires needed air—they had still educated me on a whole slew of smithing terms and processes I’d been clueless about.

  “Say, why’s it called Frostsilver?” Richard asked, staring up at the rocks. “Doesn’t strike me as especially cold, here. Quite pleasant, really.”

  “Huh… Good point,” I said, not having questioned the name. I just assumed it was named to be fancy, as most fantasy metals tended to be.

  “Can’t blame you for thinking that way. Thought the same thing myself ‘till I saw the finished product for the first time,” Philip said.

  “Finished product?” Aerion asked.

  “You’ll see when it’s been put through the furnace,” Philip said with a smile. “That comes later, though. Before that, we’ve got to pick up enough ore to meaningfully process.”

  Luckily, the vein Rogar spotted was pretty chunky, and after digging down about a foot, we hit a much purer spot, allowing us to extract fist-sized pieces of ore. While it looked pristinely white to my eyes, Rogar insisted there was all sorts of crud mixed in that we had to melt off.

  After a half-hour of work, we had a large pile of Frostsilver ready to go. Enough to make a dozen small weapons.

  “Alright, I’m loading the materials now,” Philip said, dumping coal through the top of the chimney before adding coke—basically a special type of coal that glommed onto the impurities during the smelting process. The crap, or slag, would separate from the Frostsilver, leaving the pure metal behind. Well, purer, anyway.

  Philip continued to add alternating layers of coal, coke, and ore, until he’d filled the chimney all the way to the top.

  Fueled by the fresh coal, the fire inside burned hotter and hotter.

  “Now, we seal up the entrance,” Rogar said, slapping mud on the U shaped opening at the bottom. When he was done, the only opening into the furnace was the air pipe that stuck out.

  “And now, we work the bellows,” Rogar said, rolling up his sleeve.

  I stopped him before we even started. “Why don’t you let Aerion and me handle this?” I said. “You need us to do this for hours on end, yeah?”

  Rogar nodded. “It is an arduous task, but one I am more than prepared to do. I owe you so much for bringing me here. It’s the least I could do.”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” I said, genuinely surprised to see the blacksmith acting so nice. His character transformation still hadn’t fully sunk in. “But as you both know, Aerion and I are stronger than the average person. A lot stronger. We can work the bellows faster, and believe me, we have a ton of practice working together. We’ll be able to synchronize better than four of us on the bellows.”

  While Philip remained silent, the look of hope and joy on his face was evident. He was strong, sure, but hours on end of pumping your arm would destroy anyone.

  “Alright, then, Greg,” Rogar said. “I swear I will make this up to you, though.”

  I smiled. “Just make me some kickass weapons when we get out, alright? Aerion?”

  “Ready.”

  The bellows pipes had two on each side, so I grabbed one with each hand, and across from me, Aerion did the same.

  It only took a minute or so to fall into a rhythm. The pumping action wasn’t hard, once you got the hang of it. I’d had hours and hours practicing on Rogar’s forges, and Aerion, well, she was a quick study, as usual.

  Our continuous up-down motion sucked air in and forced it into the furnace, sending it up the chimney, hotter and hotter.

  Manual labor like this didn’t even faze me at this point, so I quickly grew bored and zoned out, my arms pumping like mad in tandem with Aerion’s.

  Well, maybe not quite in tandem. If I wasn’t mistaken, Aerion was slowly upping the pace as she glared daggers at me. Seriously… we’d just made up. What was her problem?

  I, of course, reciprocated. Not doing so would throw off the timing.

  I barely heard Philip's astonished remarks about how hot we were getting the furnace.

  Our little competition continued until our arms blurred, and I wondered if the bellows would break from the stress.

  It was only when Rogar shouted for us to slow down that Aerion seemed to come back to her senses.

  “You nearly went and made the furnace too hot!” Rogar said, looking incredulous. “Never in my dreams did I think anyone could move a bellows that fast.”

  “Oh, uh… Sorry about that,” I said. “We’ll be careful from now on. Won’t we, Aerion?”

  Aerion hung her head. “Yes. We will. My apologies.”

  “It’s yer loss if you mangle the ore,” Rogar said with a shrug, and we returned to bellows pumping.

  Aerion kept a sane pace this time, which I matched, but her glares didn’t get any better. I ignored her.

  Time droned on, and eventually, the task was done. Thanks to our rather aggressive pumping, it’d only taken a couple of hours to melt everything down.

  My arms were only mildly sore after, though because my current Vigor and Dominion caps were lower than the max I’d earned, those didn’t go up. I made a note to Initialize my Silk clothing the instant Rocky’s consumption decreased a bit more. I figured another day or so and I’d have enough.

  After disconnecting the bellows from the pipe, Philip took my pickaxe and bashed in the clay at the bottom of the furnace that he’d covered up prior to the burn.

  Philip raked out the contents, causing white-hot pieces of molten rock and ore to come tumbling out.

  Using some black art I couldn’t understand, Philip and Rogar picked out various pieces of glowing rocks, throwing others away.

  “Looks like we got a decent bloom,” Rogar said, looking satisfied and relieved.

  “I admit, it all just looks like hot rocks to me,” Richard said, speaking what was on my mind.

  Rogar grunted. “Takes some years to learn what to spot. Now, let’s pound this into an ingot before it cools.”

  The one thing I couldn’t bring was an anvil, so Rogar and Philip hammered the bloom—the purified ore—on a large flat rock, flattening it and shaping it into a rough rectangle, periodically pounding other, smaller pieces into the bigger one to merge them. In the process, loads of impurities flaked off, and by the time they were done, only about half of the original size remained, despite them adding at least a half-dozen smaller ore pieces.

  In the end, what they got was about enough material to forge a shortsword out of, though as Rogar had said earlier, anything we forged now would be purely to let us carry the thing out of the Trial.

  The furnace retained an absurd amount of heat, and it proved all Rogar needed to heat the ingot back up to forging temperatures once it cooled.

  Richard, Aerion, and I watched as the experts worked their magic, pounding the thing into the shape of a blade.

  Their constant hammering attracted some of the local denizens, forcing Aerion, Richard, and me to kill or chase them away. They kept coming, though, and each time, they brought more of their friends.

  “How long you reckon we can hold them off?” Richard asked.

  “That last wave was pretty big,” I said. “Any more, and we might have to bail. It’s not us I’m worried about.” I thumbed at Rogar and Philip. “It’s them.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. “How’s it going back there?”

  As if on cue, Rogar wiped his brow and set down his hammer. “It’s done!”

  All three of us turned to stare at Rogar’s finished work.

  “It’s beautiful,” Aerion said in a hushed voice. I had to agree.

  It was only after they’d spent an hour pounding out impurities that the material’s name began to make sense.

  The blade of the sword was covered in a perfectly geometrical pattern of sparkles… Like snowflakes, embedded into the steel. I’d never seen anything like it.

  “Think this oughta be good enough,” Rogar said. “Dunno, though. Never done this before. Can’t know until we leave the Trial.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You’re saying delving smiths don’t know if their creations will be snatched away until they leave? Isn’t that kinda terrible?”

  Rogar shrugged. “It’s the only way.”

  Actually… Maybe it wasn’t.

  I put my hand on the blade.

  Initialize Froststeel Shortsword [Rare]? Initialization Cost: 24 Essence. Current Essence: 346/370

  “Yep,” I said, dismissing the notification. “We’re good.”

  My words were drowned out by shrieks from the forest. The next wave was close. Very close.

  “What do you say we get the hell out of here?”