The first thing I do when I wake up is check my status.

  Name: Termin Briemen

  Class: Blacksmith lvl 10

  Age: 10

  Titles:

  Skills: sword handling lvl 3; hammer handling lvl 7; fire control lvl 8; basic fire magic lvl 5; quality improvement lvl 1.

  Statistics:

  Strength: 18??Endurance: 17??Agility: 11??Intelligence: 11??Charisma: 6??Luck: 6??Magical capacity: 35??Constitution: 20

  Talents:

  Eyes of the Artisan lvl 4

  Material Virtue lvl 2

  ??????

  While I was controlling the fire, my skills leveled up. Both the control one and my magic. Using fire magic is becoming more natural to me each time, even though it was hard for me to use it at the beginning. My stats haven’t gone up much, but something is something.

  Eyes of the Artisan lvl 4 (Allows the user to see the materials, effects, statistics, and manufacturing methods of any forged object depending on the user’s capability)

  Material Virtue lvl 2 (Grants the user the ability to distinguish useful materials)

  It’s good to be able to see the descriptions of my skills and talents, even if they don’t give me any information I didn’t already know.

  I want to try my new skill. Besides, no matter how eager I am to see the result of my steel, it’s not time to take it out of the mold yet. Before going back to the mansion, I want to have the ingot in my hand to show it to Fred. Judging by the height of the sun, I still have a couple of hours before dinner.

  To test it, I decide to make my signature recipe.

  Nails.

  I take out the mold before lighting the furnace. From what I can see, the steel doesn’t have long left before cooling down, so I leave it out in the open. Maintaining the fire is becoming second nature to me. I barely even have to consciously make the effort to use my magic to increase the temperature.

  Soon I’m heating the tip of an iron rod. When I bring it to the anvil and raise the hammer, something tells me this is the moment to activate my new skill, Quality Improvement.

  I thought it would activate automatically, but apparently it requires conscious effort. I feel my mana circulate through my body until it reaches my hand, and from there it passes into the hammer.

  "Clank! Clank! Clank!"

  Each strike of the hammer throws off sparks and deforms the material. Soon I have the tip of the first nail ready. I cut it and move on to making the head. All of this takes seconds—it comes with getting used to it.

  Even so, it feels a bit faster than usual, though I’m not sure.

  Five nails later I start to feel dizzy. Fatigue spreads through my body and I feel more tired than usual. I decide to finish the nail I’m making and stop.

  Quality Improvement has risen to lvl 2.

  Seven nails and I’ve completely exhausted my magical capacity. I have to sit down on the ground to recover. In just a few minutes I’ve completely drained myself. If I had to use this skill to forge a sword it would take weeks.

  Once I’ve recovered a little from the dizziness, I decide to check the nails. I gather them all and compare them with the ones I had made earlier for the order. They’re practically the same. A bit more durability and slightly straighter tips. To be honest, if I didn’t know they were different, I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  "What’s the point of this skill?" I ask indignantly.

  I was so excited about my first class skill and it turns out to be useless.

  I decide to finish a few more nails before turning off the furnace, although my impatience gets the better of me and a few minutes later I decide to leave it for today and take the ingot out of the mold.

  It’s harder than I initially thought. It’s a bit stuck to the walls of the mold. Luckily it hasn’t fused to them, otherwise I’d have a problem. After struggling with it for a while, I finally manage to make it fall out. It bounces off the floor with a dull sound and I hurry to pick it up.

  I shout with the ingot raised over my head.

  Luckily there’s no one around to hear my shout. It’s finally ready and, at least in appearance, it’s perfect. Well, except for the shape of the ingot—I should work more on my molds. That’s probably why it was so hard to get it out.

  First of all, I wash it with cold water to remove the soot residue I had put in the mold to prevent it from fusing. I admire the surface and run a hand over it. It’s smooth. It feels hard and heavy in my hand. Finally, I dry it to prevent it from rusting.

  "It’s time for Fred to see it."

  And with that, I head to the mansion.

  "Fred! I’ve finally—" I enter my brother’s room shouting when I see he’s not alone. "Ah, Rob, you’ve finally come back."

  I run to my brother and hug him.

  "You’re okay," I state, checking that he doesn’t have any wounds.

  "What did you expect?" my brother asks amused. "Fred was the one who took the worst part of this expedition."

  "And that’s putting it mildly. Next time I run into one of those bears, I’m letting the knights deal with it."

  "If it weren’t for you, that girl wouldn’t have made it," Rob says, placing a hand on Fred’s shoulder. "You did well."

  "Did you finish your project?"

  I don’t pay attention to the change of subject. I’ll try to get them to tell me more later.

  Fred is still in bed and Rob is standing beside him. Both of them look at me with amusement as I approach proudly with my ingot in my hand. Without saying anything, I hand it to Rob, as if that explained everything. He looks at it curiously in his hands.

  "What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?" he asks, confused.

  "Steel," I reply as if that explained everything.

  "Did you finally finish your project?" Fred asks, stretching out his hand to take the ingot.

  "It’s smoother," he says, running his hand over it. "And shinier."

  "Right?" And not only that. "It’s of better quality than the steel we normally use. It should be considerably harder once we quench it. In general, it should be better than any steel I’ve seen so far."

  My brothers look at each other and speak quietly for a moment, too softly for me to hear.

  "How did you make it?" Rob asks.

  "Don’t worry," Fred adds when he sees me hesitate. "We won’t tell anyone. We promise."

  "Normally steel is made by hammering hot iron with charcoal. You do it many times and the charcoal goes into the steel," I begin to explain to my brothers, who listen attentively. "This one is made with a crucible. It’s a container that doesn’t let air in. I commissioned it from a potter."

  "How do you use the crucible?"

  "You simply fill it with iron and powdered charcoal. With the heat, the lid seals and doesn’t let air in. When the furnace heats up, the iron melts and absorbs the charcoal. Then you pour it into a mold." I think for a moment. "Ideally you would let it cool inside the crucible and then break it, but they’re too expensive," I finish my explanation with a shrug.

  "And that’s it? How can it be better than normal steel?"

  "It absorbs the charcoal better." I sigh when I see my brothers still don’t quite understand. "Think of it this way. What mixes better, two powders or two liquids?"

  "I think I understand what you mean."

  Both of them remain thoughtful, staring at the steel.

  "If what you’re saying is true and we could produce it in large quantities, it would be useful for fighting monsters."

  "And it could be good income for the city," Fred adds.

  "The only problem is that it’s a bit slower to produce."

  Rob shakes his head.

  "It seemed too good to be true," Fred says with a smile.

  Rob looks at me as if weighing whether he can trust me or not.

  "We’ll have to discuss it with Father before making a decision. We’ll need more if you want him to take you seriously. Do you think you can have more ready before he comes back?"

  "It depends on how long he takes. I only have one crucible, so I need a couple of days to make one ingot."

  "I don’t think he’ll take less than a week," Fred says. "No matter how fast he wants to come, he wouldn’t miss Lisa’s presentation."

  "Then I could have two more ready."

  Rob looks me in the eyes before speaking.

  "Would you be able to forge a good sword to show him?"

  My heart skips a beat when I hear my brother ask me to forge a sword. It’s what I’ve been wanting to do ever since I started forging. To create a sword so I could venture into the dungeons.

  But then the image of the broken sword comes to my mind.

  "I’m afraid not." The words stick in my throat as I say them. I’m not only giving up on forging the sword—I’m giving up on forging the first sword made with my new steel. "We should ask Aneth. She’ll make a sword worthy of Father seeing it."