The rise of the pervert primordial

Listening to the previous, those girls from the blacksmith peak had sparkles appear in their eyes, because it basically meant that their admired senior brother will be focusing his attention on them tomorrow as well.

As if he could read those cute girl’s minds, Aster chuckled to then say.

“After giving you the remaining example lessons, I will be doing my own separate training so you’ll be supervised by the elders from the Blacksmith peak tomorrow”.

Of course that made those girls pout, especially because they saw Aster softly laugh at their cute reactions, and they immediately knew that he was purposedly teasing them.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’ll come back by the end of the day, to help you evaluate your results”, couldn’t help but add Aster as he saw the many pairs of abandoned puppy eyes that were gazing in his direction.

“Hehe~”, having achieved what they wanted, the girls from the blacksmith peak giggled among themselves, while Aster sighed to his insides.

‘To think they would learn Kana’s “trick” after just a few interactions, cunning little girls’, he thought.

“Ahem, back to the lesson, before even getting to the anvil you must know what kind of result you want to achieve, its characteristics, how to make your steel embody said characteristics and the tools you’ll need for that, because once you have started, you’ll have to be on the move”.

“Of course once you get used to this kind of blacksmithing, you’ll be able to change things and adapt while on the go, but for now it will be better if you prepare everything beforehand, also while you’ll be working in pairs, the one assisting won’t partake in any of the hammering, refining and other key aspects until it is their turn to take the main role even if you bought the same manual from the exchange monolith, this is so that your skills can be properly assessed at the end of the day”, said Aster.

With a nod from those girls, Aster then returned to the lesson, the first thing he did was place the though rough, rectangular box shaped piece of metal on the forge, to then grab a ruler and a marker.

“To begin with, let’s talk about the specifics of a dagger, the length of the blade for a functional dagger normally goes from 15 to 30 centimeters, while the hilt is of around 12 centimeters, the thickness goes from 6 to 10 millimeters, the measures you go for are decided by two things, first of all, the user, taller people often are more comfortable with the longer and heavier weapons, while the contrary applies for shorter people”.

“However, I would put more weight on the specific usage that the dagger will be given to determine its size, in this case you’ll all be getting a main weapon, and a dagger to complement it, so I’ll go for one that is more apt for combat rather than to land a killing blow, after all your safety is the utmost priority so the blade will be of 25 centimeters, as for the thickness 8 millimeters will be good, it will be balanced and durable”, said Aster as he made two marks on the ruler with the marker, one at twelve centimeters and another one 25 centimeters after that, the thickness will be worked on at the anvil, since the metal needed to be elongated and flattened first.

Of course, he didn’t miss the amusing sight of those girl’s pretty faces gaining a reddish tone, due to his words, still he feigned ignorance and continued with the lesson by grabbing a sheet of paper to start making a simple draw with a marker on it by using the ruler of course.

“Now that the size has been decided, the design has to be sorted out, what we are looking for is resistance and durability, and since you won’t be using the dagger unless it is strictly needed, then a slightly higher weight won’t be a definite disadvantage in which case a full tang dagger is the way to go”.

“Also, to make the blacksmith’s lives easier and to avoid endangering the structure of the dagger, we won’t be encasing the hilts in wood or other material, because that would mean we’ll need a mechanic way to keep things together, namely bolts, luckily this way we reduce the weight a bit and by adding leather to replace the handles, we can improve the grip on it”.

“Last but not least, though for spirit blacksmithing those things are added mainly for “fanciness”, since formations are used to fulfill those roles, a proper mortal blacksmith forged dagger for combat must have a guard to protect the hand and a knob to prevent it from escaping the hand and also help with balance”, said Aster as he finished his design to then show it to the public.

The result was a simple design, which lacked any of the fancy and elegant traces that one would see in a spirit blacksmithing created dagger, still through the simplicity of the design the girls from the sect could feel how efficient a dagger with such a design will be, it was truly created with the objective to keep its owner safe as its absolute priority.

‘I kind of expected it, but these girls are really something else’, thought Aster, as cultivators and more importantly young misses of decently strong clans, sects and families, from the top ranked middle ranked Stellar Systems, the vast majority of the girls of the sect are used to handle highly detailed spirit treasures.

Even at the Myriad Occupation sect, where such vanity-fulfilling aspects aren’t given priority, it is true that the weapons, treasures and other equipment do take into account the outer aspect as well, in fact not even the mass-produced weapons sold in Aster’s store are exempt from it.

So, while Aster didn’t expect those girls to show clear displease over what should be their first time seeing a design that has zero focus on aesthetics, he did think they would at least question why, but not only that wasn’t the case, but they were legitimately interested in his design.

‘Well, knowing those two, they made different filters and secretly used them to select some good girls to become the core of the sect at its given time, while also turning a blind eye to some trash entering the sect to cover it up, though a certain someone ended up changing the timing of the purge’, said Lilia from within the mind space, which reminded Aster of the fact that those two godmothers of his, are on the same level as Lilia, as in they are monsters like her.

‘Ahem, it’s not like I directly ordered those guys to leave, it was their forces of origin the ones that called them back, so the fault ultimately can’t be traced back to us’, said Aster, he didn’t think his godmothers would be angry at him, for changing things up a bit, but based on what he has heard about them and the fact that they are Lilia’s friends, they are definitely not normal people.

And he would like to avoid taking a beating from his battle crazed godmother in the name of sparring, or becoming a target for those prank-like side effects of the pills and elixirs from his eccentric alchemist godmother, like it happened to Valentina and Mikaela who was just “collateral damage”, which made Lilia cutely giggle at her son threading carefully when it came to those two.

‘Leaving those two aside, how do you expect those little girls to harbor any negative thoughts about the lesson when it is being personally given to them by their “beloved senior brother”, sometimes I wonder what kind of love elixir did you feed those cuties while I wasn’t looking~’, playfully said Lilia as she changed the subject back to the lesson.

To which Aster bitterly smiled to his insides, perhaps if the one giving the lesson was someone else, they certainly would have questioned a bit more about it, it was still fine, because they did ask him when it came to important aspects, like it happened earlier.

‘This is for the better, it will be worth to see their reactions later’, amusingly thought Aster to then continue where he had left.

“In this case we do have a thermometer which is a huge help, but in general you can use the color that the metal acquires due to the heat to guide yourselves, the ideal range of temperature to work steel is from 800° to 1000°-1100°, which in terms of color is a cherry red to light red/yellowish tone”.

“Be aware that unlike spirit materials, mortal steel is much more susceptible to temperature, if you heat it too much you can burn the steel, and if you work on it while it is too cold cracks and internal imperfections might appear”, he said as he took the piece of steel out of the forge with the tongs and placed it on the anvil to then grab one of the different hammers that were on the working table.

“Now, the functions of the different hammers don’t change from spirit to mortal blacksmithing, and I trust you have done your fair share of forging, so I won’t go too deep into that, however I’ll tell you the most ideal one to work with for the respective weapon you’ll be creating, in this case a cross-pen hammer of around one kilogram with a wood handle is ideal”.

“Not only because this hammer is excellent for drawing out the steel to shape the blade, but because its heaviness is more than enough to move the steel but also light enough so you can swing it for long periods of time without any problem, to prevent hurting your wrist or elbow, make sure that you choose the proper handle width, the tips of your fingers should be able to touch the palm of your hand when gripping your hammer, if you want to you can even adjust it yourselves with a piece of sandpaper”, he said.

Aster had relatively big hands, given his height, so the generic handle that came with the hammers was perfect for him, but those girls and especially the youngest among them will probably need to adjust it to get a much more comfortable grip.

“If we had more time, I would ask Blair to assist me with the tongs, but being honest I’m used to work alone in the anvil, however if you are used to work with someone the rhythm at which you hammer the metal will be incredibly easy for the one assisting you to follow, in your case you’ll have to rely on verbal indications, tomorrow”.

“That doesn’t mean I won’t be needing help, since there will be a lot of work to do with the belt grinder, not to mention that taking the steel to the forge for heating, will be completely left to Blair” said Aster to the short brown-dark red-haired girl who nodded in response to then stand aside, to allow Aster to continue with the lesson.

“The simplest way to give shape by hammer forging for a dagger is making a four-sided taper to then flatten it, the drawing out technique used by the Silver Edge school is the “90° technique”, which basically consists in rotating the piece of metal 90 degrees between hammer blows to elongate it”, said Aster as he placed the piece of steel on the highest part of the horn as close as possible to the face of the anvil.

“Move the leg of the same side of the hand with which you are grabbing the tongs, a step ahead, bent it frontwards a bit while keeping your other leg diagonally straight, grab the hammer near the end of its handle and then raise it all the way to the level of your head, before letting it fall”, said Aster as he started hammering the steel.

Like Aster stated, the temperature combined with his skillful movement made it so the metal was easy to move, in a few minutes he had forged the tip and then started elongating it to form the four-sided taper he mentioned earlier and it was time for the thing to go back to the forge because it had cooled down, but before Aster worked a bit on the flattening process.

“It’s normal for spirit blacksmiths to get engrossed in the hammering process, but remember to always look at the color of your steel, since we are doing mortal blacksmithing”, said Aster as he nodded at Blair who took the roughly shaped four-sided taper and took it to the forge.

“I said that, but I still get a bit too focused in the hammering, which is why I didn’t continue with the explanation through it, the taper you’ll be forming has to be around 1/3 part shorter than the desired finished length of the blade, once we flatten it, it will extend and widen after all, still, we’ll first focus on giving shape to the blade first and leave the tang for later, because this way we can have a better control of the length”, he said.

The steel was back to the proper temperature to continue the forging process in a minute, so Blair removed it from the forge and left it on the anvil so Aster could continue working on it and once he was finished with giving it the length he wanted, Aster proceeded to flatten it.

It’s worth mentioning that trough the process, Aster did start refining the area below the blade, however, he made sure to leave a though small still noticeable “block” of material almost untouched in between the blade and what will be the tang, as well as another block of metal at the end.

“Like I said, we are making a full tang with a guard and a pommel integrated into it, but we’ll first go work in the bevels and here is where we’ll be “cheating” a bit, since instead of forging them, we’ll go to the belt grinder”.

“But before that, a little bit of history, the Silver Edge is the oldest recorded mortal blacksmithing school, which started using the “stock removal” method for weapon crafting, and they were originally criticized because for the blacksmith masters of old days, it was forging method or nothing”, said Aster to then add.

“However, the founder of the Silver Edge found a solution so that those old stuck up old men couldn’t stop her school from growing, she combined forging with stock removal and said it was all for “efficiency”, thus with a proper justification, the method extended and became incredibly popular because it allowed blacksmiths to finish way more works in a shorter period of time, while still maintaining the benefits of forging and the dignity that comes along with it”.

“Interestingly enough, spirit blacksmithing which combines formations, forging and even a bit of alchemy was actually was developed with this method as its base, because the oldest records of it, in the Four Heavenly Quadrants, are still dated a few hundreds of years after the death of the founder of the Silver Edge school, of course you won’t find any of this in the records kept by cultivators”.

“Woah, so the progenitor of Spirit Blacksmithing was actually a woman!”, exclaimed a girl from the Yellow Anvil with sparkles in her eyes, cultivator society is not patriarchal, but strength centered instead.

However, the energy path came to be first and, in most cases, men are naturally physically stronger than women, so the first spirit blacksmiths were all men, then the body path came to existence, but once again most of the original main body path cultivators were men, nowadays there isn’t such a clear distinction, since the body path which allows anyone to gain physical strength has far spread, but most if not all the forefathers of spirit blacksmithing were men.

That doesn’t mean women didn’t contribute and aren’t recognized, since the rune masters that supported and complemented the blacksmiths, were mostly women since the pathfinders in the soul path were female cultivators.

Seeing the cute expressions full of admiration on the faces of those girls, Aster softly laughed as he nodded.

“Yeah, and the “weakness” as old blacksmiths called to the naturally lower capacity for physical tasks that the founder of the Silver Edge school had, was what ultimately drove her to combine both methods, so always remember that while strength is important you should never fall in the “all brawl and no brain” category, otherwise you’ll end up stagnating”, he concluded to then grab a marker.

The previous little lesson of history was both to entertain the public and to let the steel cool down for the next step of the dagger-making process, which was using the marker to paint the sides of the dagger shaped piece of steel, where the edge will be later, as well as using the rule to mark a line right in the middle of the blade, not without using the same ruler to make line right in the middle of the sides as well, it’s worth mentioning that as of current the dagger was 8 something millimeters thick as of current, because Aster had left material to be disposed off during the refining process.

Then using a metal compass adjusted to the exact center of the side of the dagger, he engraved a though shallow noticeable line into the steel.

“Oh, so that’s what the marker was for, thanks to it, the engraved lines are way easier to notice, right senior brother?”, said a girl from the Green Lotus for a change, to which Aster nodded.

“Yes, these are called “plunge lines” and work as a guide for a mortal blacksmith to make bevels, in this case for a dagger, luckily a plunge jig was available in the exchange monolith, or we would have had to make one for safety and easier handling”, said Aster as he grabbed said tool from the working table, which was basically two flat rectangular pieces of metal with screws travelling through them and nuts to adjust the space between each other.

Aster secured the unfinished dagger in between the two metal plaques and carefully adjusted it so that it wouldn’t move, he of course did so on the tang area.

“Blair, please”, said Aster to the brown-dark red-haired girl who started powering the belt grinder in Aster’s stead so that he could completely focus on giving form to the bevels, the girls from the sect were marveled at how Aster’s handsome concentrated face looked while he made sure to evenly grind the sides of the piece of steel which finally started looking like a proper dagger.

Of course, in average the weapons recognized as the strongest are forged, but they require a lot of time to be made and the priority here is to make a ton of usable weapons.

This process which would have taken more time by forge, was done in a matter of minutes, not to mention that it was way easier to do it like this, of course it’s not hard to think why others would think this was a method for lazy people, but the truth is that by combining aspects of both, you get an equally high quality result in a shorter period of time, it’s the epitome of efficiency for mortal blacksmithing.

And Aster is sure that with this they are definitely stepping out of the norm, because any other person that knows about mortal blacksmithing, under the circumstances they currently are, will go for pure stock removal method, even if more material is wasted that way, because of the short time they have and the need for weapons to defend themselves, that is if they even manage to obtain ore of course.

After giving the dagger, a quick inspection to make sure that the bevels were symmetrical, Aster passed it Blair who put it in the forge, for it to reach the proper temperature.

“Now, we just need to work on the guard, tang and the pommel, we’ll conclude the process after the heat treatment”, said Aster as Blair returned the dagger to the anvil, he first hammered the “block” he had left below the blade area to expand and elongate it, then using a chisel he removed some of the material and started giving shape to the guard.

It was a simple guard which consisted in two lateral flat pieces but decently thick pieces of steel, which Aster bent upwards and to the side giving them the form of a slash (/), because this way if they blocked a sharp object with it, it would be easier to force it backwards by sliding the blade through the length of the guard, thus fulfilling the role of keeping the hands of their users safe.

The tang was simple, Aster used the horn of the anvil to curve the extremes of the tang so that more material will be left in the middle, and the last step was simply to flatten the mass of steel at the end to make the pommel, this way it would be easier for the one using it to hold onto it, of course it had to be polished later but the basic shape was finished.

“And now it’s time for the step that will decide whether what we made is a dagger or just a chunk of useless steel, the heat treatment which consist in three steps, first is normalizing which is basically heating the steel and letting it cool down in still air, for our steel which has a balanced carbon content, the temperature for this step is between 750° to 950° more or less, and this process has to be repeated three times”

“This part of the heat treatment will refine the structure of our steel and remove the internal stress that built up due to the forging process, we’ll go with a temperature of 900° for this step”, said Aster, the whole normalizing process took around half an hour, since they had to wait for the steel to cool on its own each time.

Also, by this point everyone had finished their dinner, though those little gluttons were still snacking on pieces of fruit while they watched the last part of the show.

“The second step is hardening, which again requires heating the steel, however this time at a lower temperature from 800° to 870° is the ideal, we’ll go with 830° for balance since that has been our focus through the whole process”, jokingly said Aster as he walked towards a large barrel, while the steel was in the forge.

“Unlike normalizing, for hardening we have to cool down the steel with a medium, which can be water, brine or oil, depending on the type of steel we are working with, the preferred medium varies, we’ll go with oil since it cools the slowest among those three allowing a more controlled quench that will prevent cracks and warps from forming”.

“For this step, grab the dagger with the tip down and simply submerge it into the oil, don’t angle the blade or it will warp”, said Aster as he grabbed the dagger with the tongs and did as he explained, a short-lived burst of flames accompanied by some smoke was the result of it, which created a nice visual spectacle for the public, safety measures were in place so no one was worried that an accident might happen.

The steel cooled in less than a minute so Aster removed it from the oil barrel and after inspecting it, he smiled, the thing was perfectly straight, there were no deformations caused by the quenching process, however there was still something he needed to confirm.

“To confirm if the steel properly hardened, we use a file, if the file slides then the steel hardened if it gets stuck, then it is not hard and we’ll have to repeat the process, however we have to be careful because the edge might get decarburized in which case we’ll have to grind it and try again and if it doesn’t work even after that, then our steel may not have enough carbon to harden”, he said as she slid the file through the dagger.

Needless to say, but the thing easily moved all the way from the start of the end, so the steel had perfectly hardened.

“As of current, our dagger has become really hard, but like I said before that it’s not necessarily good, because it also becomes brittle and that’s what the last step of the heat treatment, tempering, is for”.

“Since we are going for a balanced amount of hardness and toughness, we’ll go with a temperature of 200°, the tempering has to be done immediately after the quenching and it consists in heating it for two hours, in two periods of one hour while letting the dagger cool down at room temperature in between”, said Aster to then look at Blair.

“This dagger will be given to Blair as a reward for making the charcoal that was used for it, and as payment for assisting me in this lesson, but in exchange she’ll have to take care of the tempering today and the finishing details tomorrow”, he said to which the girls from the sect pouted, obviously jealous of their fellow disciple.

That being said and while even the cool-headed Blair couldn’t help but smile at the unexpected gift she was receiving, the girls that knew why the usually lazy Alice worked like crazy, all gave Aster an accusing gaze, he simply wanted to hand over the responsibility to someone else, so that he could go play around, not like anyone could say something against it, he had more than earned it, considering how much effort he has put into developing the camp.

It was just the method that made it seem as if he was mainly doing it for the sake of motivating the disciples to put in more effort, instead of it being mainly for “personal” reasons what made those girls sigh to their insides.

‘I see, so this is the “no ill intent but strangely annoying” the others were talking about’, thought Lieze as she took a bite of an apple.