The sound of metal hammering metal grew louder as I approached the smithy. The noise pollution—as well as the actual pollution, with all the smells and smoke that came from the charcoal kilns and the forge and bloomeries—had forced us to relocate to the edge of the village, up coast from where the bulk of the Sheowon lived. It was closer to the bogs, so it was actually an improvement in many ways.
I set my turf shovel down, one of many we had made once we started getting the hang of forging the iron we had learned to extract from the bloodstone. Proper tooling helped a ton, though it had taken quite a lot of trial and error to reach that point.
Peeking inside, I saw Ibriya directing an apprentice striker named Weomik as they worked on something on the anvil. They were too focused on their forging to notice me, but on the other side of the shop, Shappi glanced up from where she was grinding an edge on a masonry chisel. She gave me a quick grin and a wave before refocusing on her work.
A smile came to my face, as it always did when I thought about how far we had come. I slipped back out, not wanting to interrupt them, and headed around back to where my little house lay so I could grab some food.
After our initial success at refining bog iron, it wasn’t long before we could somewhat consistently produce additional blooms and process them down into relatively pure iron ingots. From there, it was a relatively small hop to usable tools, though it took a while before we got a proper process down and produce things of enough quality to really showcase the value of our work.
Turf shovels were a hit, as the Sheowon village had to rely on their Blood to cut enough turf for all their cooking and heating needs. Stone was just not the right material for the job, and digging by hand without a shovel was far too inefficient—even with four hands per Sheowon. The sharpened metal shovel cut almost as clean as Blood, and though it was physically tiring, that was far less of a limitation than that of Blood energy, particularly for younger Sheowon.
The stone carvers loved the hammers, chisels, and other masonry tools for similar reasons. Just like we had needed to, early on in our metalworking, the masons did sometimes use stone tools, but those really only worked on softer stone, and a mishit often resulted in tool breakage. Using Blood was more reliable, despite the inherent limitation. Metal tools resulted in much, much more productive masonry, which was part of how we got our smithy built so fast.
Alongside the smithy was my new house. Thanks to the metal tools, I had finally earned some trust, and with that, a place in the village. Admittedly, that place was slightly outside of the village, but I was still much more accepted these days than when I first arrived. I was even able to walk around without accompaniment, freeing up Ushem, Pliwa, Keo, and Lowar from their duty.
That change was the first time I tried getting back in touch with the administrator, praying to the statue of the All Bonded in the center of the village. My prayers went unanswered. I was a big peeved at being ignored, but apparently I hadn’t yet reached whatever qualification the administrator had set for me to be worth her time. I tried again several times since, whenever I felt like I had made some real progress, but when I was consistently rebuffed, I eventually decided to just focus on my metalwork.
As my ability to refine and forge metal improved, it wasn’t too surprising when a [Smithing] skill appeared in my System. It was another crafting skill like [Carving] and [Sewing], with minor carryover effect to all forms of metalworking. I was glad for it, though wasn’t sure how much use I would actually get from it in this life. Ibriya and Shappi were much more surprised when they achieved the same thing, a short while later.
“We might be the first people ever to get this skill,” Shappi had said in absolute wonder.
It was hard not to chuckle. First in this world, maybe. No doubt the skill was fairly common across the multiverse.
I entered my little home, kicking the muck off my feet before heading over to my hearth to finish the pot of stew that was cooling now that the fire had burned down. It was filled with chopped blood sausage and rich with bone marrow. Both were common in the Sheowon diet.
As I ate, I looked around my small home. My eyes fell on the pickaxe resting by the door to my house, and I felt a familiar worry. Unfortunately, we had a rapidly approaching problem: material shortage.
When we first showed results, the village had been quick to step up. Since no one needed bloodstone but everyone benefited from the tools made from refining it, it wasn’t long before all the collected bloodstone in the village came our way. Even the elders had the bloodstone decorating their hearth removed—replaced quickly by beautiful stonework, thanks in part to the tools we were making—and those were some big chunks of bog iron.
But it wasn’t limitless. We recruited some Sheowon to help us comb the bog for additional bloodstone, and scored quite a bit, but once it was gone, it would take decades for new deposits to form in sufficient quantities to be able to match our current processing rate.
Given that, we forged a few pick heads, using femurs from slaughtered livestock as handle material, so we could start mining in the hopes of finding actual ore deposits.
My first few forays were a bust. I didn’t have any survey information—potential metal deposits had never been something any Sheowon would have bothered to record—and the local region didn’t seem particularly good for finding ore in the first place, given the bogs.
Despite finding a place in the village, arranging a larger expedition was another matter entirely. There weren’t many Sheowon villagers who were keen on taking off into the wilderness for an undetermined length of time, particularly alone with me. They had no motivation to go off to find quarry sites without me, either, though perhaps they would when the bog iron ran out in the future; but iron tools lasted, and the population was stable here, so it could be generations before they really needed more. They had lived quite well without it, after all.
The other issue was what happened if I traveled far enough to encounter other Sheowon villages or people. Without the context provided by coming ashore for the first time, half-starved off the boat and unable to understand the language, I wasn’t sure I could convince other Sheowon about my “missionary” status. I might just come across as a big, ugly person who killed a bunch of people… like how the Sheowon saw me initially, and I had only managed to get through by the skin of my teeth, thanks to the blessing and elders’ understanding.
I asked the elders about being introduced to other Sheowon villages to expand our workable range, and while village leaders did occasionally come together to meet and discuss things, it wasn’t something which happened regularly, and it wouldn’t guarantee that enough other Sheowon wouldn’t decide that I needed to be imprisoned until death for their safety. I was only really safe so long as I stayed in place.
Perhaps by trading the metal tools, that could change. We could also collect historical bloodstone from other villages, in that case, which would delay the inevitable need to mine ore, which would be even more necessary if we were producing tools to trade.
In the end, I set that issue aside as well, at least for the foreseeable future. It wasn’t actually my job to expand metal tool-making to the entire Sheowon people. In fact, I had only taken it upon myself to integrate here, and I had succeeded at that. I was confident that metal tools had enough value that they would spread, over time. Ibriya, Shappi, and I had already started teaching the methods to interested parties like Weomik. At a certain point, it was sure to live on, and some future Sheowon could make the connection between bloodstone and iron ore, once discovered. Similarly, when they started mining, they could figure out the use of coal, as compared to peat charcoal.
So, rather than fight an uphill battle, I got comfortable. The iron would eventually run out, but we were still finding some in the bogs, and there was plenty of bog to explore for now. With the shovels and masonry tools made, there wasn’t that much demand for more, and though we were coming up with new uses for iron—where each success would drive a need to produce enough for the entire village, leading to ebbs and flows in the smithy—I had enough spare material and time to afford myself some luxuries.
I forged some parts for my boat, and rebuilt my rudder. We hadn’t found ways to build a comparable boat with the local resources, but Owawu, the elder who had been fascinated by it, had found people interested in developing their own version of the kayak and canoe made from a bone skeleton and stretched hide. They already had a few prototypes, quite different from the ones we made from mirulu back in my original Uli tribe, but still functional for simple coastal excursions and fishing.
With my bigger, better boat restored, I was able to take it out and do some fishing in deeper waters, though I was careful to keep an eye on the weather. Hauling in some large fish was a good way to further improve my relationship with the Sheowon, as just like humans, the way to a person’s heart was through their stomach.
I couldn’t fish daily, since I was also busy in the smithy, which led to some villagers demanding use of my repaired boat for fishing when I wasn’t using it. Thankfully, Nupeal stepped in, reminding them that it was ultimately a tool for my missionary work for the All-Bonded, and it wasn’t work risking someone foolishly sinking it for what was effectively a luxury item not needed for the village to survive. The elder encouraged them to continue developing their own boats if they were that insistent on fishing deeper waters on their own.
Out in the smithy, the sounds of Ibriya and Weokim hammering away on the anvil stopped. I finished off my stew, set the pot down, and headed back out to see what they had been working on.
“Oh, hey Mali,” Ibriya said when I entered the smithy. “We just finished up a new hammer head.”
Weokim nodded at me, somewhat deferentially; he wasn’t exactly afraid of me, but he wasn’t yet entirely comfortable around me, either. I gave him props for being there and learning how to smith despite that. I nodded back, then looked over the finished item, still wet from the quench.
I wasn’t really that much better of a smith than Ibriya, or Shappi for that matter, since my past life knowledge only extended to how things worked, as opposed to how to do things best. Still, the two of them preferred to run things by me for approval.
“Looks great,” I said, clapping my friend on the shoulder. “Does that mean you’re done with the anvil?”
“Yeah, I’m famished. Come on, Weokim, let’s get something to eat. Shappi, you coming?”
“Sure,” she said, setting down the chisel she was grinding and flashing Ibriya a warm smile. They continued to grow close, but hadn’t made the leap to more than friends yet.
“You want to come, Mali?” Ibriya asked.
“Nah, I just ate. Spent all morning digging and pressing turf,” I said, shooting him a look.
“Ugh. Fine. Weokim and I will get on the kilns after we eat.”
I flashed him a quadruple thumbs-up, and he rolled his eyes, turning to leave. Weokim nodded to me again before turning to follow.
“See you later,” Shappi said, waving. I walked to the door, watching the three of them head back towards the village. When they were out of sight, I turned back to my empty smithy.
For the most part, I had shared every step of this process with Ibriya, and later Shappi, but there was one project I was still keeping quite close to my chest.
It had taken me a while to make the connection, but Uli and Sheowon blood was red, the same as human blood. And blood was red was due to hemoglobin. Specifically, the iron within.
Humans got small amounts of dietary iron from a number of sources, including vegetables. Uli mostly ate raw, bloody meat, and it hadn’t been uncommon to drink small amounts of mirulu blood after a successful hunt. Sheowon cooked their meat, but they regularly made blood pudding and sausage, and boiled the bones into broth full of marrow; both were an important source of iron in their diet.
It was especially important for Uli and Sheowon to get dietary iron given their supernatural Blood use, for the same reason a human would need extra iron after bleeding a lot. What I didn’t know was if there was any relationship between supernatural Blood use and iron, in general.
Once I started thinking about it, I couldn’t fully shake the thought, not when I was surrounded by iron every day. I vaguely recalled that the amount of iron actually present in blood was tiny, even if you added up all the iron in an entire body. And there was every chance that iron had nothing to do with how Uli or Sheowon used their Blood, since that was, by metaversal definition, supernatural.
But what if?
I already knew I couldn’t just magically control iron—at least, not in this life. I tried. [Blood Control] didn’t react at all to the iron around me. I also knew from past experience that once you released [Blood Control], if the blood you were controlling wasn’t in you, it disconnected, after a fashion. Once it disconnected, it didn’t seem possible to take control of it again. That was reminiscent of Argadian spell-casting, at least the kind done without intentional continuous control, which required higher Will and was a higher level skill. One which I had only achieved so easily thanks to [Mana Manipulation].
But [Mana Manipulation] also allowed me to extend into external mana circuits. This world didn’t have mana circuits, but there had to be something inside my blood that allowed me to control it. At least, that was my hypothesis. If it wasn’t present in naturally formed bog iron, perhaps I could somehow add that control mechanism to it.
Despite it being a half-baked theory—and a stretch, if I was being honest—I couldn’t help but get get curious. That was why I was working on an experiment.
The first step was setting aside the bog iron for my project. I had done that, in small doses as to not arouse suspicion, until I had enough to make a bloom. Before I did that, I filled a clay pot with the iron, then slit open a vein, filling the pot with intentional [Blood Control] and forcing as much energy as I could into it. Then I healed up with [Blood Restoration] and allowed the iron to soak.
I ran the bloomery overnight, when no one else was around, with my blood-soaked bog iron, forming a decent sized bloom. I consolidated it and quenched it in another pot of my blood; there was every chance that the tiny amount of iron in my blood had run off with the slag, but hopefully quenching it in my blood with intention would restore whatever nebulous connection I was trying to make with the metal.
That was the previous night. I had gone to sleep after that, awakening to my friends and coworkers hard at work, so I left them to do some busy work until I could get the forge to myself. They had only left for lunch, but that could take a while with the walk, and I was impatient.
Uncovering a pot, tucked away in the corner of the smithy, revealed the coagulated dark red content which was starting to smell. I grabbed a pair of tongs and reached in, pulling out the clump of iron and tossing it into the still-hot forge. I pumped the bellows a few times, then buried the bloom in the coals, letting it heat while I took the pot outside to dump the nasty old blood and rinse it out, so I could replenish it with fresh blood to quench the iron as I worked it again today.
Not long after that, I was hammering away at the anvil, working the rough iron down into shape, then extruding and folding it to refine it. It was a decent sized piece of material, when I was done. Enough to make an impressive sword.
Making a sword was a dumb idea, though. I loved swords, but I had attempted to practice my swordplay with a carved bone and having more than one arm on the same side of my body made it largely too impractical to pursue. Ruling that out, a spear was a viable option, but the metal would only go towards the spear head, which would separate me from the metal by the haft. Also, while bone hafts worked, they weren’t exactly ideal. No, I wanted something fully in-hand.
Daggers, then. With this much material, I could probably make one for each of my hands. Whether or not this experiment worked, arming myself with iron daggers would put me ahead of a potential enemy. My Sheowon life was fairly peaceful, but one day, I needed to return to the Uli, and reshape our tribal culture. That wouldn’t be easy, and though the Sheowon’s beliefs were inherently peaceful, it simply might not be possible without a fight.
Despite coming to that decision, I still bled into the pot and quenched the ingot, covering it back up and tucking it away. I would wait until tonight, after Ibriya, Shappi, and Weokim left for the night, so they didn’t catch me mid-project. We had forged some knives already, for food preparation, so I wasn’t opposed to them seeing the daggers, but I didn’t want to explain the blood quenching unless it actually worked. I had an image to maintain.
*
Late that night, after finishing the fourth dagger, I looked over my work.
They were still a bit rough, bare tangs without handles, and the blades needed some grinding, but they were forged.
I took all four into hands, anticipation building. At each stage, I had attempted to pour my energy into this iron, making myself a part of it, and in turn hoping it would be a part of me.
Taking a deep breath, I started with [Blood Augmentation], extending my energy into the blades.
I jabbed forward with each, attempting to focus a [Blood-Empowered Blow] into the strikes.
Channeling [Blood Control], I willed them to move under my command.
“…Well, that was a bust,” I grumbled, putting the daggers down on the anvil. I felt a small blush come to my cheeks as the belated embarrassment of thinking I could control magic, blood-soaked blades caught up with me. After all my previous successes, I might have got a little too carried away.
At least they still worked perfectly well as regular daggers, and beyond that, no one would be the wiser.