(Chpt. 62) Shaping a new reality (3)

Alice.

(I also recommend reading last chapter in case of being lost... I had to do the same...)

As I was thinking about the effects of low mana I noticed something on the status screen in front of me. The number fluctuated up and down. 

[MP: 6918/34590(+ 50%)]

6918, then it would change to 6920, then back down. It would repeat itself, over and over again. Fluctuating for about two to three mana points. It was weird, I never really noticed something like that. I pondered for a second as I got derailed from my main objective. It did not take me long to realize that I had forgotten about the metal, I had to chop it using my sheer strength. 

I stopped holding it, I noticed my mana stopped fluctuating, I guess it was what Aizen meant by constant drain. I dismissed my status since it was confusing me, I normally closed it out of instinct or habit. I observed the mithril, it gradually began to become pale, it took quite a bit, but I could definitely see a change. 

I waited a few minutes as it gradually lost its color until it eventually became pale white. However, there was something confusing. 

“There are no cracks…” The material had become unblemished, almost as if it had restored itself. My eyes widened in surprise, the material could auto-heal itself! For lack of a better word. I started trembling in excitement, with a gulp I took out my usual tongs and grabbed my hammer once again. 

I had to do this carefully. I grabbed the diamond-shaped stone tablet with my tongs. I lined it up with the anvil and rose my hammer up high, then I froze. What was I doing this? I was just calling for disaster, if I wanted to snap them, I could just use some kind of vise. I just needed to have something that was heavy; hard to move, and solid enough to press the object in between, and then it dawned on me.

“The anvil…” There were two anvils inside the room, how couldn’t I think of that? Was I dumb? Well… Probably… But still! Fenri had been watching me for the entire time as I did weird experiments, he didn’t leave my side for some reason, his eyes were sparkling. Could it be? 

“Want to help?” 

“Woof!” So that was it. 

Alright! “Help me move the other anvil.” 

Fenri just barked again and left my side, before I could even do anything he began brute-force pushing the anvil. I clenched my teeth as I was about to hear some awful rock grinding from the floor, but to my surprise, it was still there but not nearly as bad as I thought it would, now that I thought about it. The floor was incredibly flat. 

Since I saw the anvil wasn’t getting stuck, I decided to not do anything and let Fenri get the anvil next to the original anvil. Now I had two anvils… Ahh… What a dream… Having two anvils, hehe... Wait… What am I even thinking about!?! After letting Fenri push it incredibly close to their flat sides, and horns pointing away from each other. I tried placing the rock in between without moving them. Surprisingly, it slid through without a problem, however, I noticed it grinded itself quite badly, for some reason the rock didn’t get scratched, I thought it was fragile, but I guess it wasn’t that fragile. 

“Regardless… I should do something about it.” With those thoughts I pulled some whatever cloth from my inventory, it was a skirt for some reason. I couldn’t tell what set or whatever it was, honestly… I couldn’t tell which thing was which in my clothes, which just made them more unusable. I liked to wear matching sets, but I couldn’t match things if I didn’t  know what they were. Unfortunate. 

After mourning for my dead clothes, I covered most of the tablet with it and left a single stripe uncovered, which was the thing that was going to get snapped. I had Fenri push the two anvils together to squish the thing in place, it was quite the improvisation but it seemed to hold it in place. I brutely held my hammer like a baseball bat and swung it without that much force. I couldn’t bear to see the thing fly into a wall in case it was weak. 

It made a sound akin to hitting stone iron together and it cleanly broke off, it didn’t fly off into the distance but it almost fell to the ground. Which probably would’ve shattered it, or at least I would like to think that would happen. I was treating the thing as if it was glass anyway. I examined the cut and it came off clean. Seeing this was the correct method I did the same thing for the rest of the diamond. 

Eventually, I was left with about ten stripes of scales. That had about ten scales each, I just eyeballed everything, didn’t even bother to count. It was "close enough" as some engineers would put it. So I had about one-hundred scales, more or less. I grabbed a single stripe and tried snapping a single scale with my finger instead of using the anvil, to my surprise. It also worked. 

I kept snapping it with a pair of tongs and tweezers, I couldn’t really use my hands since it would be suicidal, it made a nice rocky or earth-like sound, I didn’t know how to describe it, I guess it was akin to a rock hitting a wall. It was a nice and pleasant experience, after snapping an entire stripe I noticed I needed somewhere to put all the scales, right now they were sitting on the face of the anvil, but I didn’t really know how long I could keep doing that for, eventually they would pile up and fall to the ground.  

Before I realized Fenri was tapping the side of my feet for something, I looked at him with curiosity and instantly tilted my head. He had a metal bucket! I patted him due to him being so sharp and probably more intelligent than me, but I won’t argue with that, animals are smarter than most people anyway, at least Aizen is. Well, does she even count anymore? Dragon Aizen was smarter than most people, there! 

I kept dumping the scales inside the bucket, snap after snap, every time I dropped one inside it would make a slight metallic clank. The scales kept piling up on the metallic bucket, I couldn’t even see the shiny bottom anymore. I had to make holes in them now. Which made me slightly concerned, I needed water, which I could find with ease. 

However, I had absolutely no idea on how to go about making the holes by puncture or whatever other method. At that moment I felt a tap on my shoulder, I turned around with slight panic, it could be anyone. 

“Need help?” It was Aizen. I dropped my shoulders in relief. “What’s with you all the sudden?” 

“I am glad you are okay!” I glued myself onto her, I was genuinely concerned for her even though I was so focused on making the thing, I was making it just for her after all. 

“Seriously, what’s with you all of the sudden… Hey! Stop rubbing your cheek against me! I-It’s not like it was that bad… I am not that weak… or anything…” She turned sheepish all of the sudden, I stopped for a second and looked at her, she had a smile. “Thanks for worrying.” 

I felt my chest become warm, she looked at me. “So, did you need help?”

“A-Ah… yes…” I had forgotten about it. “Could you please help me by pouring water on the scales?” She suddenly became excited and hurriedly nodded. Then I realized, I had no idea where to find water. 

“Hey Fenri, where can I get a bucket?” Aizen asked, Fenri pointed in the direction of a pile of sand, it seemed oddly familiar… Wait a second… That was my sand! The iron! I had forgotten! Well… honestly, it didn’t matter much, but it was still a bit embarrassing that I forgot. 

Aizen followed Fenri to the back and in less than a minute she came with a wooden bucket and water. 

“Wait… Where is the water?” I asked in confusion. Aizen tilted her head. 

“What do you mean? There is literally a well next to the sand…” There was?! I held my head in disappointment. “Well, can’t blame you for now knowing, since its probably your first time in this place.” Yeah… Haha… “By the way, how did you even get into the castle?” 

She suddenly decided to ask. 

“Ah, it was because of the coin you won of the dwarf.” She nodded to my simple explanation. 

“So, how do I pour water the water?” 

“Ah… Just pour a slow and thin stream on the scale as I pierce it.” She nodded. 

"Well, I don't know how that works, but sure." She shrugged. 

“Are you ready?” She nodded again. 

I grabbed a single scale with my tweezers and placed it on the pritchel hole of the anvil, or the utility hole. I nodded to Aizen, she started to pour a slow and thin stream of water on the thing, which honestly was an incredibly bad method of doing this, but improvisation as my fort! I think… I pulled out a thin-pointed chisel, which was basically just a pointy stick, or it could also just be a pritchel, it also probably could’ve been used for self-defense earlier...

I aimed and brutely smashed it in the straightest line possible towards the scale. An ear-piercing metal ring resounded throughout the forge. 

“W-What are you doing!?” Aizen exclaimed in annoyance. I had missed the scale.

“W-well… It’s my first time doing this…” I sheepishly explained. 

“Sigh… I’ll do it, you do the water.” What?

“Can you even do it?” 

She smirked. “Well, even if I can’t, it can only be just as bad as yours.” 

"... Fine..."  

I gave her the chisel-pointy-stick in defeat and took the bucket. She grabbed the scale with the tweezers once again and gave me the signal, I started slowly pouring the water, I could at least do that well. Aizen narrowed her eyes and with killer concentration looked at the scale, her hand blurred and I heard a small clink sound. 

“Done.” 

“W-What?!” I looked at the scale, it was indeed pierced. 

“See? Impressive right?” I tilted my head with slight confusion. “What’s wrong?” She asked seeing my lack of reaction. 

“I mean, it’s impressive, but you pierced the dead-center!” That wasn’t the plan, not at all…

“T-Then what was I supposed to piece?!” 

I sighed. “You need to piece the top of the diamond.” I roughly showed her where I wanted it to be pierced using the now useless scale. She nodded with resolute eyes and went back to work. 

We did it again, and this time I saw her hand. With deft and surgical precision it traveled through the air and pierced the top part of the scale, leaving a nice place for a key-ring to go, or in this case, a perfect place for the scale. She looked at it in satisfaction, I also did. With that out of the way, the piercing process went extremely quick, the water wasn’t really an issue, it even made me wonder if we needed water, to be honest. Aizen was so precise and so strong, it could’ve probably been pierced without it. Well, not like water made piercing easier, it just made it harder to shatter. 

“Whew, that was tiring…” I muttered as I stopped holding the bucket above my head to regulate the stream, it was surprisingly taxing on the hands. 

“It was fun.” Aizen absentmindedly commented. "By the way, why the water?"

"Eh? It's to avoid shattering."

"Em, I don't think that's how it works..." she said with slight regret. "Water doesn't really do anything for it..." She thought for a second. "Unless we were cutting glass I don't think we would need water, and you don't even need water for glass either..." Eh? “Anyway, will you need more help?” She asked with slight curiosity, I nodded with a bit of doubt. I was confused.

“Well, you don’t need to help, but it would be preferable. We will be ever so slightly bending the scales.” She tilted her head and hurried me to explain why I needed help with this. “Well, they need to become black again to be bendable and th⁠—” 

“I will do it.” She interrupted me before I could even finish. 

“Alright… Well, anyway, you can bend them with your hands barely using any force, try to make them just ever-so-slightly bent.” After saying that, I clumsily did the curvature I wanted with my index finger trying to show her. She gave me an awkward nod once she understood. 

“What will you do?” She asked with confusion.

“I will make iron wire.” I firmly stated, she nodded and we both headed to do our things.