Apinsig
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Chapter 253 Homesteading in a fantasy world
🕑 Added 2023-07-04 14:08:02 +0000 UTCGoose had grown to the size of a large dog, but thanks to my increased stature, I could still extend my left arm to let him perch on it. Through our bond, we communicated, and it seemed that Goose wanted to spend more time with me. When I explained that I would be home for a while, he appeared quite pleased.
I had missed him too and found it remarkable how quickly he was growing. It crossed my mind that I should construct a large tower for him at home – a place where he could sleep and survey the land. But that project would have to wait; there was a great deal of work I needed to address first.
Back home, I walked to the sheltering shade of the large oak tree where I could see the graves of my family. A part of me wished they could witness the world around us as it is now. But then, I refocused. I hadn't come here for them, but to seek a quiet place to concentrate. I sat down against the tree, allowing Goose to lay next to me. Then, I took out the dragon core and started to examine it.
The first thing I noticed, which I had expected, was that it wasn’t a monster core. What I hadn’t expected was that it was basically the same core that's currently inside of me. That was interesting on so many levels, but I wasn’t even going to try to figure out why they were similar. The more important thing for me was that there was indeed an elemental seed inside the core.
While taking the seed from a monster core was simple, taking it from a dragon core wasn’t. I didn’t know if it was because of the type of seed or the core itself, but it took many hours to extract the elemental seed of dragon fire. It felt incredibly powerful, but I also felt it would take longer for it to mature.
Before I took the elemental seed, the core was probably worth tens of millions. But now, I felt that the fire element was gone from the core, making it a lot less valuable. Perhaps in the future, I will find it a use, but right now it was time for more improvements.
I was incredibly sad that I couldn’t incorporate stronger flesh into my body, but the dragon bone, claw, scale, and teeth that I had in my possession were something that I could use to make my body stronger.
The scale, while not completely compatible with my subdermal armour, would still make it a lot stronger. Thanks to my upgraded stats and better energy control, it took me only two days to incorporate everything. Goose didn't stay with me for the entire time as he needed to hunt for food, but he did return occasionally, which was quite nice.
After a good night's sleep, I watched as my apprentices made their final preparations for their survival training. Some seemed to be excited while others were scared. It was going to be a hard time for them, but they would need it as next year they would need to start their own homesteads.
I didn’t go with them as I felt it was something they needed to do for themselves from the very beginning. Now, I was alone in my homestead after so long, well not alone as I had Goose and my other animals.
The delivery of the blood came yesterday, so I started by offloading it and taking it to my smithy. Beside the smithy, was a quickly built a shelter for the huge amount of charcoal my apprentices had made. I was once again able to use my right hand, but it was a bit stiff, so bringing all the barrels of blood was good exercise.
When that was done, it was time to start. I started the large forge and placed my largest crucible into it. I then filled it with as much blood as possible. It took quite a lot of heat for the blood to begin to boil and slowly evaporate.
Turns out that dragon's blood was quite resistant to fire, but that actually made things easier as it took a few hours until I needed to add more blood into the crucible. During the downtime, I inspected the unique metals or just napped. It would take a long time until all the blood was gone.
Like this, days went by fast until a week and a half later when I added the last bit of dragon blood there was. The constant napping allowed me to keep going without having proper sleep, but I was going to need to push my body even harder now as I would probably not get an ounce of sleep for the next week.
I started by putting the blower to the maximum speed possible. This burnt a lot of charcoal but it was necessary to get the metal inside to the proper heat needed. There wasn't even enough for a proper two-handed sword that would fit me, but there were a few unique metals that would enhance the metal inside the crucible to an even greater degree, which should bring the amount of metal needed to the correct amount to make a proper greatsword for my stature.
The pure metal inside the crucible already felt incredibly potent, but when I continued to add unique metals while using my material modification ability to remove the unwanted parts, I didn’t know for certain if what I was adding was going to be better but I felt that it was correct so I continued.
When I was done, unfortunately, I knew that I couldn’t sleep. I needed to let the metal inside the crucible cool a bit but I couldn’t let it cool completely otherwise nothing I had was going to be able to heat up the metal once again. I was only going to be able to get one shot at getting this correct.
When the metal was cool enough, I cracked the crucible as it had already reached its limits. The metal piece that fell out was still glowing brightly. It weighed around 7 kilos and I could just see how it wanted to be a weapon.
Picking it up with my tongs, I put it on the anvil and started to hammer it. At first, I was controlling my strength but I wasn’t even leaving a dent in the hot metal. I needed to use more of my strength but even when I was using all of it, it was barely enough. I then started to use my energy to boost myself. This, however, required me to also use my energy to strengthen the anvil and my hammer.
When I finally felt that I could start working properly, I activated my weapon core ability and connected it with the piece of metal. Immediately, my ability notified me that I was successful but I felt that I could make this connection even better if I used a real core as an ingredient.
It appears that any monster core would work but I had the perfect candidate. The dragon core worked perfectly fine but it would have been even stronger if it still had the fire element inside of it. That would have made the weapon fire-oriented and possibly even given it a fire-type ability, but right now it was going to just make the weapon core a lot stronger which I desired more.
The work was incredibly tiring and I actually needed to slow down, otherwise, I would risk running out of energy. Over the next three days, I worked without rest to finish the most beautiful greatsword I had ever seen. The blade itself was 210 centimeters long with the handle being 30 centimeters. I still needed to make a handle for it as currently, it was just metal but I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I fell asleep right there in the smithy next to the finished greatsword.
When I woke up, I took the greatsword and put it on the table, but then rushed out to get something to eat and deal with the animals. The animals didn't require anything special as the barn doors were open and they could eat whenever they wanted, but I still went and checked on them. I then watered everything that needed watering and returned to the smithy. For the next few hours, I spent making a handle for the great sword out of iron oak and dragon leather.
The blade still needed to be sharpened and that would take a long time, but luckily, thanks to my abilities, I was able to get close to where I needed to be with the profile of the blade so I wouldn’t have to spend a month trying to grind the blade into the proper shape and sharpness. I still took a break and made myself a properly hot sauna so I could relax and clean myself before the most mind-numbing job began that I was still going to have to do for at least a week.
