The Good Teacher

"What is this spell?" Karmin asked as he inspected the novel diagram scrawled in white.

Guy used the ritual drawing chalk from his teaching supplied to draw a spell on the two working bellows. The school supplied chalk could at best support Tier-1 and a few Tier-2 spells. In order to reach the higher tiers, specialised chalk with spell-specific ingredients would be required. But for augmenting steelmaking, Guy figured these would do.

The spell he was drawing had one simple purpose: to concentrate oxygen flowing through the bellows. It was the best he could do. Steelmaking in the modern age was a highly optimised and complicated process. It wasn't something that any average Joe could recite off the top of their heads. Furthermore, he was just a teacher in his previous life. While he did know some of the mechanisms involved, he couldn't draw up a steelmaking set-up with confidence.

Through general knowledge, Guy knew that in order to increase the purity of steel, they needed to blast in a lot of oxygen into the molten mixture. The gas would oxidise the impurities in the mixture and separate them into slag. However, he couldn't scrounge up a mechanism to infuse oxygen into the blast furnace. Therefore, he resolved to jury-rig the set-up.

Now, when the bellows were operated, when it pulled in air, the ritual ensured that only oxygen was captured. While this wouldn't reduce the effort they'd have to employ in running the bellows, it would greatly reduce the amount of time they'd need to run it. On that note, since Guy was using his modular spellmaking method, he deduced that the mana consumption would be low as well.

Once Guy finished drawing the spells, he took a step back and inspected his handiwork.

"This should improve our work," he muttered.

"How many mana crystals would they need to work?" Karmin asked apprehensively. Although he still had a lot of assets, he didn't want to splurge unnecessarily.

"Not much, I don't think. I can probably run my bellow without crystals," Guy concluded, causing Karmin's eyes to widen in shock.

Just as he was about to probe Guy further, the man snapped his fingers and exclaimed, "Right! Mister Zola, do you happen to have limestone?"

Karmin nodded his head and pointed towards the corner of the room. The material was commonplace in foundries and forges for its ability to treat the raw ore. It would also be used during forging to reduce the formation of flux.

Guy walked over and retrieved the sack of limestone and placed it near the now cold blast furnace.

"Why don't we try it again?" Guy asked.

____

The two got to work immediately. Karmin handled the start-up as usual - feeding the blast furnace a predetermined ratio of coke to iron. He observed the internals until he ascertained that they had reached the melting point.

"Ready," Karmin indicated and started to work his bellow. Unlike before, he now had a stack of crystals next to the bellow and a pedestal placed close to the ritual. The pedestal acted as a battery and would drain any crystals placed in it to power the ritual it was connected to.

As the ritual initiated, the chalk diagram lit up and turned corporeal. Karmin didn't notice any difference in the operation, but he could observe that the temperature within the furnace had risen significantly.

Karmin paced himself this time and rotated his wheel at a steady rate. He observed that Guy would intermittently levitate a handful of limestone dust and pour it through a tap hole near the top of the furnace.

The process continued for around an hour, with Karmin taking a break regularly to massage his aching arms. Every time he took a rest, Karmin would check the number of crystals used. Surprisingly, he had barely run through the first low-grade crystal. He wondered if the ritual was some form of placebo to encourage him...

"It's done!" Guy suddenly exclaimed.

Karmin jumped excitedly in anticipation. He attached a tap at the bottom of the furnace and started to carefully pour out its contents. As he observed the molten liquid drip through, his hands started to jitter in elation.

'We finally did it!'

Even if it was still in a red hot and molten state, Karmin could make out that the metal was far superior this time. He didn't know if he had perfectly replicated Dwarven metal, but whatever this thing was, it was close!

Once the metal cooled down completely, Karmin moved his fingers over the ingots. He caressed the steel in earnest; his mind started to churn as inspiration boiled over

To Guy, Karmin looked possessed! And just like someone consumed by passion, he grasped the ingot of steel with a set of tongs and moved them over to his personal forge.

His hands moved familiarly, stoking the flamed to his required temperature, positioning the anvil, he was utterly involved in the process.

He shoved the ingot into the flame and waited; his eyes trained on the metal observing every minute change in its shade. After a pause, he quickly pulled it out and hammered it.

CLANG!

CLANG!

CLANG!

The cold hammer struck the hot metal rhythmically, sending sparks flying in the process. Following each strike, Karmin would slightly shift and reposition the ingot.

The ingot extended slowly, turning into a flat billet. He then heated the billet and used a set of tools to slice it into equally sized pieces. He then placed the pieces on top of each other, sprinkled limestone on the stack, and sent it back into the forge to weld them together.

He let the stack merge together and repeated the extruding process.

Guy observed Karmin, as he moulded a drab ingot of steel into a magnificent shortsword. Even though it was yet to undergo the finishing touches, Guy could already imagine the wonderful work of craftsmanship in action.

Just a Karmin was about to dip the sword into a water bath to quench it, Guy interrupted him, "WAIT!"

The shout pulled Karmin out of his trance, and he looked at Guy with a hint of confusion and annoyance.

"You shouldn't quench steel in water. I just remembered, do you happen to have oil?" Guy followed up quickly.

Karmin nodded and instructed Guy towards his workshop's storage room.

Guy rushed in and brought over a bucket filled with oil. He placed it near Karmin and conjured a spell to heat the oil to just below boiling point.

"OK, now go ahead and quench it in here," Guy instructed while stepping back.

Karmin did as told and lowered the sword into the bucket. While doing so, he asked, "Why are we using oil?"

Guy scratched his head and spoke, "Ï remembered that it has something to do with the molecular structure and the presence of carbon in the alloy..."

While there was truth in that confession, Guy had lied out of embarrassment. Again, he confessed that he wasn't a metallurgist or a seasoned blacksmith in his old world. Everything he accomplished today was through mixing and matching knowledge he had in his RoK and his mind with the experience Karmin had over his years of work. He hadn't performed anything revolutionary or groundbreaking in terms of technology in this world. He just tweaked things and implemented optimisations to the process. The whole idea of quenching using oil was something Guy recollected from a bunch of videos he watched on a streaming platform. One time, when he was bored, he unknowingly stumbled down a rabbit hole of forging videos where the uploaders created different weapons and trinkets in their backyards. Although it wasn't anything special, Guy found those videos strangely soothing. Karmin's harmonious hammering sort of triggered one of Guy's memories.

Karmin didn't understand anything Guy uttered, but he was knowledgeable enough to make inferences through observation. When he retrieved the metal from the oil bath, he didn't observe any failure points. Quenching was always the worst part of forging, it usually determined whether the attempt was successful - it was a make-or-break step for all blacksmiths. Karmin figured that he could later test out the implications of using hot oil over regular water to quench steel weapons and document them.

He then took a closer look at the sword and brought it over to the grindstone. He familiarly worked the apparatus. However, he quickly found out that he could not stand close to the weapon as it was being sharpened. This new metal seemed to produce a lot of sparks as it was being worked, much more than any other metal he had experience with.

Guy chimed in, "Steel tends to do that. The carbon in the alloy produces sparks as it heats up due to friction."

Karmin nodded and smiled, "This is a good sign! The Dwarven dagger also produced similar sparks the last time I sharpened it!"

With reinvigorated excitement, Karmin commenced sharpening the weapon. After the first run, he moved over to a work table and used another grindstone with a higher grit. He repeated the process until he reached the finishing stone with the highest grit.

One finished, Karmin beheld his work from a distance. At first, he was immensely delighted with his new weapon, but his smile started to fade slowly and expressed a hint of disappointment.

Guy noticed this change and carefully probed, "What's wrong?"

"It's a shame that it doesn't have the same patterns," he replied.

"That's because you can't see it yet. Hold on, I'll show you!" Guy shouted as he rushed back into the storage room, leaving an astounded Karmin behind.