"Don't mind me," Tinpot said, his eyes focused on every move Axel made.

  Axel rolled his eyes and pulled the cloth mask he wore over his nose and mouth down. "Tinpot, get your scaled butt over here. Look at this stuff." Lifting a small white-hot ingot cast of divinium out of the forge, he set it on the anvil.

  "Well, if you insist. It doesn't look all that different from gold. How hot do you have it?" When Travis had told him that he'd probably want to see what Axel was working on, Tinpot paused only long enough to ensure his own project was safe before making haste to find Axel.

  "It should be soft, but this one piece is almost half again as hot as adamantine when it becomes workable. Here goes." Selecting his tools—a light hammer, a cutting die, and a nail-header—Axel began hammering the small ingot out.

  The process was slow-going, but he would rather sweat a bit more than screw up the forging of the initial rod. Once the ingot was no longer rectangular but a long, drawn piece of metal, he put the end of it back in the forge to heat. "It's fighting me every step. Trav, could you put one of those mana field things in here? I don't know why, but I feel… I feel it is right." He'd also noticed something moving from him to the metal, and wanted to test if it was what he thought.

  "Sure. Here you go." Travis was unsure why Axel wanted it, but he wasn't going to argue with a smith's intuition. He selected the Blacksmithy and gave it a boost. Two mana trickled out to boost both Axel and Tinpot. "Ah, there's an upgrade for the Blacksmithy. Inferno Forge. It'll need a stupid amount of gold, charcoal, adamantine, and… fifty platinum. Lucky it costs some gold so I can just replace those other costs. We'll need to save some gold because I don't have enough."

  Travis had a small worry about forging a nail of the divinium. The only two names they had for the metal both inspired thoughts of it being touched by the gods; which was the source of his trepidation.

  Feeling relief, like he was no longer drained, Axel chewed on his lip. "How much gold and what does it do?"

  "It doubles the processing output of divinium, mithril, adamantine, iron, and steel. It's five million gold." Travis did his utmost to make the cost sound normal, but deep down he knew five million gold would pay for a lot of other things. "What I'll probably do is get some Blacksmithies built up on the second floor, upgrade one or two of those, and charge the miners to process ore into metals there. That way I can use that gold income to fund our own work."

  Raising an eyebrow at the comment, Axel laughed. "I'll leave that to you. We're going to need a lot more if Fife is going to get her armor any time soon."

  Lifting the rod out of the forge, Axel carried it to his anvil and got to work. The moment his hammer made an impact on the rod, he felt his wisdom pay off in asking for the mana field. Working the metal took a toll on a resource he'd not realized he had before, but was definitely mana. "It's absolutely using mana to work this. When I shaped it into a rod, I felt it was taking something from me."

  "You can really feel that?" Travis asked.

  Moving the now pointed and squared end of the rod onto the cutting die, Axel nodded. "I can see it. Mana sight, remember? If I squint, I can watch the metal sucking it out of my arm every time my hammer hits it."

  "Clever lad." Knowing not to get too close to the work piece, but wanting to help by lending his own eyes, Tinpot watched the small wisps of mana flowing when Axel fit the divinium nail into the nail-header and beat down on the wide end of the hot metal.

  Turning the tool over, Axel tapped it once with his hammer and the nail fell out, tumbled over, and stuck into the floor. He looked down at it, with its tip barely in the stone, and whistled. "There wasn't anything pushing down on that."

  Reaching down and closing his gloved fingers around the nail head, Axel pulled it easily from the stone. Carefully placing it on his anvil, he returned the rest of the rod to the forge and returned to the anvil. "So it's sharp. Do you want to grab some ingots from over there and we'll see how sharp?"

  Tinpot didn't need to be asked twice. Eager to test the material strength of a metal he'd never worked with before, he grabbed iron, steel, mithril, and adamantine ingots and returned to lay them on the adamantine anvil for Axel. "Even adamantine needs a little push behind it to pierce stone. I wonder if we could use this to make tiny pins to use in armor-piercing bullets?"

  Axel was about to say something about wanting to use a literally priceless metal to make bullets, but realized that was an argument for later. "I talked to Lady Astrid about this. The Northerners call it god metal, and she thinks it's the form it takes that matters for what it does. So a nail is meant to drive into something to hold it together.

  "So, I figure, that is why it would pierce the stone floor without any force being applied." Placing the point of the still-hot nail on the iron ingot, Axel was easily able to push it into the ingot by hand. He breathed slowly and fought to pull the nail back out again. It didn't exactly want to be removed, but it did come free. "I would not want to see whatever a bullet made from this would be needed to kill."

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  That brought Tinpot up short. He tilted his head to the side and watched as Axel drove the nail into steel and then mithril with similar ease he'd used on iron.

  When he brought the tip of the nail down on adamantine, however, Axel felt some real resistance. Growling softly, he leaned onto the head of the nail and, in a brief moment, felt that warm wash of mana around him pour down his muscled arms and into the divinium.

  Bearing down on the ingot with the nail, Axel forced it into the adamantine and froze at a new sensation rushing through him. He looked around, unsure what was happening, "Uh Trav?"

  "It was you! Sorry." Travis quickly toned his voice down. "I got a notification that a dungeon creature had gained a new Trait. Something called a Manaflame Theurge?"

  "I was using mana to force the divinium nail into the adamantine ingot. It—" Looking down at what he'd done, Axel attempted to lift the adamantine ingot with the nail in it from his anvil, but it was firmly attached. "It went into the anvil."

  "Don't just stare at it," Tinpot said. "Pull it back out."

  Hesitating to touch the nail again, Axel felt whatever manaflame was seething inside him. When his gloved hands touched the hot divinium, he felt that energy latch on and grasp the reins of the nature of the metal. Pulling hard, the nail yanked free with a little effort as he willed it to release its grip.

  It hadn't been easy to pull the nail free—it still wanted to remain right where it was pinning two things together—but between his muscles and the flow of mana, he placated it. Holding the nail in his glove, Axel could see a blue glow that seemed to spiral around the divinium nail like a little cyclone of mana. "It almost feels alive." He stared at the nail a little longer and felt, without his guidance, it wanted to be driven into something again. "Trav, I can't melt this nail down."

  That wasn't a surprise to Travis. He knew Axel was an artisan, through and through, and the nail had been the cause of a change for him. Despite the nail being a waste, it was at least the smallest waste that Travis could hope for. "I don't think Fife will complain if you keep your practice nail, but let's not make more practice things. I'll upgrade this Blacksmithy, and we'll get enough of this to make her gear."

  "And I'll need a hammer. That can wait." Axel kept watching the nail. "So, observations. It works similarly to adamantine, perhaps a little softer. Once it has been finished into a shape…" Trailing off, Axel shook his head. "So send Fife in. I'll measure her for a new suit and we'll figure out how much of it will be divinium."

  Mixie had worked up a sweat, but right now she was standing still. "Like this?"

  "Good form, but your footwork is a little off." Hilda knew exactly why the girl's footwork was off. She would never say it to someone so dedicated. It was the right way to do things, after all. "You ride that beast?"

  "Gnasher? Yeah! He's the best flier ever, and the best at beating up pixies. Killed one in a single bite!" Glancing at Hilda, Mixie shifted her feet to match the big woman. "My legs are too short."

  "They will grow. Keep working at it and, even if they are short, you will learn to master them. You may want to use a spear." When Hilda turned toward the weapon racks of the practice field in her fort, a gnoll already had two spears in hand and was reaching toward her with them in offering.

  He had become confusing for her. He had no name, and claimed he needed to perform a deed to attain one, but he worked tirelessly healing the small wounds that weapons training brought that she called him Grodari—healer. Taking the offered spears, she tossed one to Mixie and was pleased to see the goblin swap her sword to her off-hand and grasp the spear—though she staggered at the weight of it.

  With a whole new set of movements to learn, Mixie sheathed her sword with her off-hand and set both hands on the spear as Hilda demonstrated. The first time through the practice routine, she followed Hilda's lead four beats behind the Northern woman. When the moves wrapped back around, she adjusted her pace and worked through two beats behind. The final test was to match Hilda move for move.

  The spear was too heavy for Mixie to move it fast, but the more she got into the rhythm of what seemed like a dance, the more she came to appreciate that the mass of it was accounted for in each sweeping slash or lunge. By the time she was performing in lock step with Hilda, she had learned to trust the motions and keep her footwork close.

  Hilda enjoyed the process of once more training a young warrior—especially one who had already been in combat. She had been a training sergeant before she'd become a captain, and watching as someone learned the power of the old vapnatok, the poses and motions of combat, was a special sight. The girl, she realized, had a keen mind to have picked it up so fast. It was a state involving relaxation and trust, and Mixie had found it early enough that Hilda put her through two more patterns. "You understand?"

  "Huh?" Mixie almost stumbled as she fell out of the zen-like state and stopped the training routine.

  "If you move right, your weapon weighs nothing at all because you keep it constantly in motion that balances it." That Mixie didn't understand the question and couldn't articulate the answer wasn't anything new. Hilda had trained many that replied with "huh".

  "What about something longer?" Mixie asked. "So when I'm riding on Gnasher, I can—"

  "Not for some time. There is a lot of muscle needed for a lance." Hilda's thoughts immediately fell to her training for horseback combat. "You'd be better with throwing javelins or learning to use a bow. Or, perhaps, a gun."

  "Ugh. Mum won't let me have a gun yet. She says it's too dangerous." The look that Mixie saw on Hilda's face stirred a laugh from her. "I know! I ride a wyvern and my brother made me a sword and buckler. A gun would be the least dangerous thing I own!"

  Ruffling Mixie's hair, Hilda nodded toward the entrance of the dungeon. "Then we'll go and ask your mother if you can train with a gun. You'll need to find someone, and when you do, we train together."

  Available at:

  This story is released under the license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, , is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.

  Patreon or fuel my writing on ! Join me on or .

  Canary in the Coal Mine

  Daremo

  shortskirtsandexplosions

  Sirion123

  Vi Watch

  Emtu

  Jeffh4

  Shi

  Istyatur

  Shelbo

  Treascair

  Joseplh

  Seinta

  Nidd

  HarmonySpent

  Purpleninja

  Lab

  Jeffh4

  Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license in addition to all other licenses required by the sites I post to.