A New Kind Of Grind

"Alright, that's all the feedback forms... Thank you! Next, we'll be doing Blacksmith for two hours."

Considering how little teaching we were receiving, and that we were instead simply given a (high quality, I'd admit, but still) book and expected to teach ourselves, I didn't think it appropriate to keep referring to the woman running this workshop as a teacher, but, well, I didn't have that much of a choice, did I?

"Your first project, using Box B1, is to create a pair of cloth gloves. Your second project, using Box B2, is to create a knife. And your third project, using Box B3, is once again to create anything, whether it be something you personally want, or something to impress me. And before we begin, I would like to point something out that may have escaped some of you: Alchemist ties into Blacksmith in more ways than simply creating useful potions that make crafting easier. Indeed, some of you wisely used their final project as an Alchemist to create materials that will come in very handy for a Blacksmith."

Suddenly I wished I had the feedback form back, so I could inform her semi-anonymously that she should've brought up the whole 'Alchemists can produce special materials that are useful for other crafters' thing before we started doing alchemy. Letting us learn the methods on our own is one thing, but not telling us that we can do something that'd be really useful in this context? That's just being a dick.

"With all that established... Begin!"

Naturally, Box B1 did not contain a carefully-measured sample of fabric and a sewing kit. It instead contained a big ol' ball of more-or-less raw wool, several blocks of wood, and a big chunk of iron.

The book informed me, quite cheerfully, that Blacksmith's competency was creating personal equipment, not 'things made of iron.' Personal equipment included clothing, which was made from cloth, and so textile production was a very common task for Blacksmiths- one that they often used copious amounts of magic to skip certain steps of.

I thought carefully, then examined the materials I was given, the tools on my bench, and the notes on my phone. And then I set about hastily building some miniaturized machines. We got to keep what we made in this class, after all, so why not use this opportunity to build shit that I just wanted to have? A little drum carder, a flatbed knitting machine- after all, I could just sew panels of knit fabric together to make a tube, but cutting a knit tube to make flat panels would mean a race against time to sew on seam tape before the whole thing unraveled and fell apart- a sewing machine, and, from a design born of Haruna's ingenuity, a sort of spinning wheel that would first draft carded fiber into consistent roving, and then spin that into thin yarn.

Everything that I could practically make by hand given my time limit, I did- it would be another thing I didn't have to spend magic to shape instantly. Fifteen minutes after I started, I had all of the machines ready, and half of my magic pool gone- I drank a recharge potion, and now I was only down a sixth of my pool; these things only refilled a third of my prodigious pool, it seemed. I spent another five minutes hastily drum-carding the wool- which I had magically washed, right before drinking that potion- and then ten more minutes cranking the power wheel of my rover-spinner to turn all that wool into a big ol' spool of thin yarn- or, perhaps, thick thread.

And then, after a half hour of work spent on something everyone else finished in ten minutes, I zipped through the knitting of more than enough fabric to make a pair of wrist-length gloves in just one minute of moving the knitting carriage back and forth, and then sewed that fabric into a pair of gloves in five minutes, the whole fiber-processing, well, process having taken none of my magic whatsoever, aside from the washing stage- which I could've done by hand if I'd had soap,

but now wasn't the time to be a purist.

I was smug about my creations, and took a few pictures for posterity's sake, before moving onto the next project. Knifemaking.

This one was... pretty simple, really, according to the book. Take this flat bar of iron, heat it up, beat it a little on the anvil to add what little shaping a flat bar of iron needs to become properly knife-like, harden and temper it, and then put a handle on it.

I hummed quietly. On the one hand, it was pretty clear I was expected to make a dagger- which, in this cultural context, meant a knife with a blade between eight and eighteen inches, typically averaging at a foot long. And you know what, I'm not to proud to admit that I liked the idea of a big ol' knife.

But on the other hand, I didn't really know how to use a dagger, and wouldn't really have a use for it beyond hurting people, which I didn't intend to do very frequently. What I really wanted was a utility knife. That new goal in mind, I carefully sketched out some shapes on paper, cut them out, pivoted them to be sure, and began to shape the metal in a far less cool and manly way than with heat and hammer, instead using the slower yet more precise saw and file. I heat treated the blade and sharpened it carefully, before setting it between the handle scales and inserting some short lengths of laboriously-drawn bronze wire into the holes, and peening the ends to lock everything in place.

I tested the mechanism, and grinned. While everyone else was making a dagger, I was making a folding knife, and mine actually stood a decent chance of being used at some point. It had a single blade, about six inches long, although that was not to say it only had just the one cutting edge. The biggest cutting edge was a straight-ground blade, with no curvature whatsoever- while the knife did come to a point, it was the back edge that curved in to meet the front- and, near the handle, a short section of rough serration carefully filed in, for sawing through thin branches or thick ropes. The back edge wasn't completely dull, however; near its base, and carefully designed so it would be very, very unlikely for fingers to slip inside (mostly owing to size) was a hook-like projection, the most protruding part being filed very smooth and round, but blending slowly and smoothly into a sharp blade on the inside of the curve. I wasn't entirely sure what I'd be cutting with that, but I'd had a hook-knife on my boxcutter back home, and it'd come in handy many times, so I reckoned I might as well have it.

Then, with an hour left- the artifact that granted us temporary class access also had a digital clock on it, although, it must be noted that my system also told me how much time I had left with the class- I set about my final project:

A set of small, basic machine tools.

See, as much as I liked having the Blacksmith class, I mostly liked it because it let me make things, and I knew for a fact that I could make things without it. I'd still use it to speed up the bootstrapping process inherent to getting a personal workshop set up, but fuck if I was gonna spend my only remaining class slot- which I was pretty sure I could only get more of by finding a very rare drop in a dungeon- on keeping something I could replace with a good lathe.

Not that I'd be stopping at a lathe, of course. Next was the shaper, the mill- really, just a lathe that was shaped different, and swapped the positions of the workpiece and the cutting tool- and a bandsaw. I didn't anticipate the bandsaw being up to snuff for cutting metal, but that was fine by me; I had plenty of ways to cut metal at this point.

I still had time and materials, so I began making a number of non-essential but nice-to-have hand tools, ranging from dial calipers to metal scribes to a good set of files. Alas, I misjudged the timing, and so the Blacksmith class wore off right as I pulled the files out of the forge to quench.

I still quenched 'em anyway. It wasn't like Blacksmith was what let me dip hot iron in oil.

This time, I paid a little more attention to what everyone else had made for their final project; I saw dresses, jewelry, metal statuettes of the crafter- or, in one particularly cute case, the crafter's girlfriend who was sitting right next to her- and, oddly enough, not all that many weapons, with two exceptions.

"Oh my," the proctor said, holding Veronica's sword carefully. "For you to be able to even work this material at your level... And yet, you did not merely

work it, you sculpted it like clay, and produced a masterpiece."

Indeed, the sword itself was inlaid with gold in an intricate pattern of thin wires hammered securely into channels that must've been an absolute bear to carve. Most notably, however, the edge was not pure, unadulterated steel, but in fact pure, unadulterated gold, with the steel seeming to act mainly as a structural scaffold.

"That's not gold, is it?" I asked.

"It is not," Veronica said simply. "This is low-grade Orichalcum, which combines gold's capacity for enchantment with the hardness and toughness of steel. It is quite difficult to work for a blacksmith of my level, but..." She shrugged. "Difficult does not mean impossible, so long as you have enough elbow grease."

"Very, very impressive indeed," the proctor said, handing the sword back to Veronica reverently.

Akane's necklace was significantly less impressive than the sword, but honestly, I did still find it a little impressive. It had a simple, thin chain of copper, but hanging from the middle of the chain were seven narrow, triangular pendants, each constructed from a thin housing of gold wrought carefully around a beautifully cut and polished ruby- the one she'd produced as an Alchemist, in fact. The seventh, central pendant was larger than the others, being twice as long, and somehow, the effect was not a drawing of the eye towards her cleavage- something I knew she would do quite happily, but apparently, not right now.

"...I have no idea what most of these things are," the proctor said as she observed my work. "But if I were to guess from those files that I do recognize, then I'd say you've chosen to build a set of tools you can use even without being a Blacksmith. I applaud your thrift and foresight, but alas, I lack the knowledge of what your chosen tools even are to be suitably impressed."

Oh well. I wasn't going to be taking Blacksmith anyway, so impressing her here wouldn't matter.

"Thanks, Nicky," Akane said.

"It was nothing," Veronica said.

"Hm?" I asked, turning to address my roommate and her friend.

"She didn't use all her orichalcum to make her sword," Akane said. "The rest of it, she gave to me."

"Ahhh," I said quietly, observing the central pendant, whose hue was just slightly off, relative to the other pendants, and seemed to more closely match the edges of Veronica's sword. "Well, damn. I guess I'm not the only one who had this idea."

"Huh?" Akane asked, tilting her head.

"A wheel-lock pistol," the proctor said, as she encountered the other exception to 'nobody made weapons for their final.' "A neat toy, and ordinarily, a nice way to showboat one's facility with mechanics. Alas, two other students have outperformed your mechanical abilities-" Myself and someone who'd made a wristwatch. "-and a third has outperformed your weaponsmithing. It is still fine work, however."

"Hang on, you people have firearms?" I asked quietly.

"Yeah, but they're not all that good," Akane said. "They have to be reloaded after every shot, which takes a few seconds even if you're high-level and really good at it, and the damage doesn't scale up all that well. Plus, the fact they're so complicated makes them expensive to make, so low-levels usually can't afford them. Anyway, what was your idea?"

"Alright, everyone, feedback forms for Blacksmith are now in front of you, please fill them out," the proctor announced.

"Here," I said, handing her two magic recharge potions and the Magic Capacity booster potion. "The green potion boosts Magic Capacity, so save it for when you're ready to enchant that necklace of yours in the final round."

"Roxy I can't-" Akane paused, then shook her head. "Thank you. I'll use it well."

"Theeeere we go," I said, grinning. "Good luck."