I Became A Zompirewolf

As Ashton entered the forge he noticed the forge was much cleaner than the last time.

"Someone has been busy." Ashton smiled while looking around.

"Stop smiling like an idiot and go start a fire," Vulcan ordered while vaguely pointing in the hearth's direction, "Do that and then we'll get down to the basics."

"A fire? It's no biggie." Ashton shrugged and raise his hand.

Since he could generate and manipulate fire on will, Ashton thought the best way to do it was to use the crystal. However, the second Vulcan realised what Ashton was doing, he threw a couple of wooden rods at him.

"Oi! What do you think you're doing, you dumbass  of a disciple!" Vulcan barked, "Your habit of taking shortcuts would one day cut your life short!"

Astaroth sniggered. The old man's attitude was much like his teacher, Seraph's. Even he had forced Astaroth, Lucifer and Beelzebub to do things the primitive way rather than use their abilities or the available technology as a way to value the things they had.

Although he wasn't sure what was going inside Vulcan's head, he was positive whatever Vulcan had planned would only help Ashton in the long run. That being said, he was enjoying every second of Vulcan yelling at Ashton. After all, it was a rare sight to witness something like that.

"You told me to light a fire! So I was about to do that!" Ashton shouted back which ended up in him getting smacked in the head.

"I'm your mentor now! You will treat me with the respect that I may or may not deserve." Vulcan spat before handing him a few sticks, "Pick those up and start a fire from the scratch."

"Wooden sticks... you really want me to light a fire like cavemen used to?"

Ashton was confused about whether Vulcan was being serious or not. Not using abilities was fine, but he should at least allow him to use a lighter or some sort of flint. But the look on Vulcan's face said it all... he was dead serious.

'Aw fuck it! Even if I have to do it with wood, my strength and stamina should be enough to-'

"Oh, and before I forget about it," Vulcan said with a sadistic smile, "Those sticks have been imbued with a special kind of Dwarven magic. Even an A-grader will have a tough time using them as ordinary sticks."

"What-"

"You have six hours to make fire. If you fail, I'll throw you out of the forge myself. Your time starts now."

Ashton wanted to curse the old bastard out loud. But he didn't. Had he done that, the sadist would have added another weird stipulation to turn the difficult task into an impossible one. Like lighting the fire while standing on the head or something.

After picking up the sticks Ashton got to work. Despite being a slave for sixteen years of his life, he did not have to do something like this. Lighting fire using sticks was already difficult, but having no knowledge about it made it even worse for him.

'Hm... wait a minute. I don't need to light a fire by rubbing sticks together... I just have to pretend as if I did it.'

[... Just do some hard work for once in your life.]

'That's a waste of time-'

"Don't even think about using your crystal to light the fire and fool me." Vulcan reminded Ashton while working on something else, "The magic on the sticks would repel flames from any eternal source. It might even cause an explosion."

"Are you a mind reader or something?" The annoyance in Ashton's voice was pretty obvious.

"I don't need to be a mind reader to know what's going inside that thick head of yours. Just do as you are told and then maybe after a couple of centuries you can do as you please in my forge."

"How long do you think humans live for?"

"You're no human. So shut it and get to work if you don't want this to be your last time in this forge." Vulcan reminded Ashton for the last time.

***

Without wasting any time, Ashton got to work. But the task proved to be more troublesome than he had expected. Handling the sticks was proving to be quite tough for him.

Since both the sticks were cylindrical in shape, he was having trouble rubbing them together. No matter what he did, one of the sticks always ended up slipping, making all his efforts go to waste.  An hour passed like that and he had not made any progress.

"Damn it!" Ashton blurted out in frustration and threw the sticks, "Why can't you just be at one place- Wait... this could work!"

His throw had managed to break one of the sticks vertically, revealing a flat surface. Forgetting about his frustrations and disappointment, he once again picked up the sticks and got to work. After firmly grabbing the second stick with both hands, he furiously began rubbing the flat surface of the stick with all his might.

The constant to and fro motion of Ashton's hands, made it seem as if he was rubbing some different kind of wood. But Ashton wasn't thinking about any such thing. Right now, his only focus was on creating a fire.

After ten minutes or so, Ashton realised another mistake of his. Even if he managed to make some ember out of the wood, he would still need something soft and fibrous to turn the ember into a small fire, before lighting up the fireplace.  Simply throwing the ember into the fireplace would let all his efforts go down the drain.

"Um... do you have something soft and inflammable here, that I can use to sustain the fire?" Ashton asked Vulcan.

Vulcan smiled as soon as he heard that question, 'Looks like the kid isn't a complete fool after all...'

He acknowledged Ashton's efforts, but he had no intention of letting Ashton know about it. After all, he would fail as a dwarf if he didn't give his student a hard time.

"Everything you need is in that cabinet," Vulcan replied, "Take what you want from there."

"Got it, thanks!"

Without wasting any time, Ashton ran toward the cabinet and found a handful of cotton just lying around. After grabbing some of it, he immediately got back to rubbing wood-

'Stick! It's a stick!'