After reluctantly agreeing to pay for Charlemagne’s lessons on top of his own, Phatagin sighed.

  “Well, if I must use my precious Shop Points to summon a teacher, then perhaps Charlemagne would be willing to cover our next expense, provided it is of a similar size,” the pangolin added.

  Josephine gasped, putting her hand to her mouth as she adopted a scandalized expression.

  “Oh no, that won’t do! How can a Knight force his Squire to cover his expenses! It would be a huge violation of both the written and unwritten rules of chivalry. Why, Ser Charlemagne, I am downright shocked at your behavior. Do you not believe in the Knight’s Code?”

  “Bawk!” Charlemagne countered, annoyed at the Attendant’s rebuke.

  “Well, expecting your Squire to cover his own expenses at times is reasonable, but that’s no excuse if you plan to benefit from the lesson as well,” the Party’s Attendant pressed. “And taking care of your Squire is part of a Knight’s duty. The rules of the Elite Systemic Events will not allow this, and I must warn you that continued attempts to bully your Squire will affect your reputation and rewards.”

  The rooster, having had much recent experience in suppressing his rage, pushed down the urge to commit violence and thought instead of his future rewards. Then, before he could change his mind, he asked the Squiggles to summon the cheapest attendant capable of teaching anything. For good measure, he also requested that the lesson last for the shortest amount of time possible.

  The loss of the Shop Points made the rooster wince, but he consoled himself by checking his remaining balance, which remained solidly in the 5 digits. There was a short delay before a powerful mana field descended, coalescing into a sharply defined area. Charlemagne couldn’t help but notice that the process was nearly identical to the one that shaped the monsters in the Battle Simulations. But that wasn’t the only thing that was worth noticing. Once the mana field had completed its work and departed, a very familiar-looking figure stood before them.

  It was a chicken-human hybrid, possessing the legs, body, and head of a flightless bird, while its long, thin arms bulged with powerful muscles. Orange feathers of various hues covered its neck and torso but also coated the being’s arms down to the elbow. The skin below the elbows was rough and scaly, but to a lesser extent than the tough, inflexible skin that covered its legs.

  “Ooooh, so here’s mister big spender himself,” the strange creature noted sarcastically as it clapped its hands, which had three fingers as well as opposable thumbs, together. Despite having neither nose nor lips with which to sneer, the new arrival somehow managed to survey the rooster and pangolin with a judgmental expression on its face.

  “Am I to understand that neither of you jokers possess any crafting skills at all? What are you hoping to accomplish here if you couldn’t even be bothered to pick up a hammer and bang it against a couple of rocks back home?”

  Phatagin raised a claw in protest.

  “No, sugar, don’t try to defend yourself, it’ll just make it worse,” Josephine warned. The pangolin’s claw returned to its original position.

  “So either you have finally come to your senses and realized that you can’t possibly compete with your well-geared competitors, or you’ve completely lost your minds and decided that you’re going to become the amazing magical smiths, using your powers to break all the laws of physics and beat dedicated warriors handily through the power of gear. Either way, I pity you.”

  Charlemagne lowered his beak and glared at the feathered smith.

  “Bawk,” he challenged.

  “Hmmpff, I’ll be the judge of that,” the smith snorted. “But first, let’s get names out of the way. I don’t really care to learn them, but I need something to call you beyond ‘Tweedledee and Tweedledum’, if only to make things more efficient.”

  “This is Ser Charlemagne and his Squire, Phatagin,” Josephine noted helpfully. “We don’t have a lot of time before the first event, so there’s not enough time for them to learn more than just the basics.”

  “Well, Ser Charlemagne,” the feathered creature continued with a mock sincerity, “if it’s the basics you want, then I, Balthazan, am the best rooman for the job. I can teach you the fundamentals to blacksmithing, weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, and, if you are especially skilled with mana, artificing.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Phatagin said, “but did you call yourself a ‘rooman’?”

  “Of course I did,” the smith replied. “Because that’s what I am. Why? Is that funny to you, Squire?”

  “Oh perish the thought. I am what is known as a ‘pangolin’, and Charlemagne, or should I rather say Ser Charlemagne, is a ‘rooster’. But I fear, good sir, that we are getting a bit off track. I am quite interested in learning about armorsmithing. After all, my scales are similar to natural armor, and one of my most basic attacks involves colliding with my opponent.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “Bawk,” Charlemagne added.

  “Well, I can certainly handle that. What do you know about the smithing process already?” Balthazan asked, its avian features taking on a surprising amount of joy as it prepared to pass along its knowledge.

  “It appears to me that you heat up metal, and then once it is softened from the heat, you are able to shape it as you will. But one thing has always perplexed me about that, why does metal get soft when it is hot?” the pangolin inquired.

  “Well, we’ll leave the complex bits alone because I don’t have time to give you a scientific answer. The long and short of it is that you need a very hot fire to melt most hard metals, and we use special tools, like these self-blowing bellows here, to ensure that the metal gets hot enough to work with. Now, you might think that getting the metal hot, smacking it into the correct shape, and then waiting for it to cool off was the extent of what goes on, but that’s only the beginning. Once the metal is heated and in the right shape, you have to cool it off. The way that we usually cool pieces of weapons or armor is to dip them into oil so that they don’t cool off too quickly. Once the initial cooling is done, then we temper the piece at a lower temperature.”

  “Bawk,” the rooster observed.

  “It sounds easy, Ser Charlemagne, but I assure you that it is anything but. Allow me to demonstrate.”

  Balthazan moved around the forge, grabbing odds and ends with an ease that was deceptive, as neither the rooster nor the pangolin had any idea what the purpose of any given item was. Without any wasted steps, the smith soon stood next to the enormous furnace, where several already prepared ingots of metal glowed with a fierce heat. Taking a pair of tongs, the smith rapidly transferred it to one of the anvils. Balthazan then grabbed a smithing hammer and got to work, narrating between each strike.

  “As you can see here, these steel ingots are already prepared. You’ll be better off as beginners purchasing your materials in a ready format. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can work on smelting your own ore and making your own ingots.”

  “Is making steel ingots difficult? How do I find steel rocks?” Phatagin asked as the ingot rapidly deformed into a curved, thin sheet of metal under the powerful strikes of the master smith.

  “Hahahaha,” the rooman roared with laughter. “Steel rocks!”

  “It ain’t nice to mock others just because they aren’t as experienced as you are, Balthazan,” Josephine frowned. “Just explain to them about the Prospecting, Mining, and Smelting Skills.”

  “As the little lady says, there are whole professions out there devoted to finding, digging out, and processing the raw rocks that turn into metals like steel, or whatever passes for steel in your universe. Basically, any sort of hard substance that you dig out of the surface on which you live will do. Why, in one universe I know of, these enormous living spheres travel from star to star, and every piece of technology, including the metal that tools, weapons, and armor are made of, grows as a sort of boil on the skin of these spheres. I would give anything to travel there and see what I could fashion out of the dead husk of one of those spheres. Probably would be valuable enough that I could pay off this…wait, what were we talking about?”

  “Prospecting,” Phatagin helpfully supplied.

  “Prospecting, right. So, there’s a whole job out there just for finding good concentrations of the materials that people want to dig out of the ground, or space rock, or wherever. Then there are miners, who actually go and get the materials out of the ground. Usually the metals, or metal-like materials, aren’t really that pure, and we call the base material ‘ore’. Now, there’s a whole process called ‘smelting’ that involves melting the ore and removing the impurities. Sometimes during the ‘smelting’ process you also want to add other materials, and there are various techniques to accomplish this. But that’s too advanced for the basics. So, here we are, banging out an ingot into a sheet. Do you want to have a go at it now, Squire Phatagin?”

  “Yes, I would,” the pangolin replied, his black eyes flashing with interest. He took the hammer and slammed it onto the anvil haphazardly a few times. The hits appeared to do nothing at all to the metal sheet that had been rapidly taking shape under Balthazan’s ministrations.

  “What are you…huh, that’s odd. No force actually transferred from the hammer into the metal. It hasn’t changed one bit. Ah, clever lad. You’ve got something like Kinetic Reserve, don’t you? Well, don’t get too crazy with it.”

  The pangolin heeded the smith’s advice, unleashing all the stored power on his next swing. It connected solidly in the middle of the anvil, forming a deep dent in the metal plate.

  “Well, a fine first effort. Did you get the Skill?” Balthazan asked.

  “Great success!” Phatagin cried as he lifted up the hammer. “I have received the Skill. Now what?”

  “Hmmm, well, how about you now, Ser Charlemagne, what do you say about taking a swing at this here anvil?” the smith suggested. “I think we can modify a hammer to work with your wings…”

  “Bawk!” the rooster interjected as he sidled up to the still red-hot piece of metal sitting on the anvil. There was a short pause as Charlemagne stared intensely down at his target before the ambient temperature in the room began to spike.

  “Is it just me, or is it suddenly hot in here,” Josephine demanded.

  “No, it’s hot,” Balthazan confirmed. “And I think it’s coming from Ser Charlemagne…”

  The rooster gave no indication that he had heard the exchange. His gaze was fixed squarely on the metal, as if attempting to stare the inanimate object down until it submitted itself to him. His body heat rose, as Inferno’s Embrace activated in earnest for the first time.

  “All right, let’s give the lad some room,” the rooman announced, pushing Josephine away from the now positively scorching rooster.

  “Oh, I see,” Phatagin muttered to himself as he slowly backed away to join the others.

  “What is it?” Josephine asked, half-curious, half-concerned.

  “Charlemagne is somehow forcing the mana within the metal to align with his own internal mana structure. Not only that, but his own mana is starting to infuse into both the anvil and the metal sheet. Hopefully that is something that he’s doing on purpose.”

  “He’s only level 49!” Josephine objected. “He’s going to hurt himself if he does something stupid, like try to use his beak as a hammer!”

  “He’ll certainly break his beak off before he cracks that anvil,” Balthazan asserted with confidence. “Those are meant to take the strikes of experienced master smiths.”

  At that moment, Charlemagne burst into flames. The metal sheet on the anvil’s temperature spiked as well, moving from cherry red to somewhere between yellow and white. Then Charlemagne struck, and the entire room shook.