Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

The two shortswords were breathtaking.

The star-iron cutting edges had hardened into a brilliant frost-blue color, while the deep-earth alloy spines remained a dark resilient gunmetal gray.

The steel loops forged into the base of the pommels were completely intact, showing zero signs of stress fractures or warping.

”Matched perfection...” Tasmin murmured with a proud smile touching her lips as she carried her smoking blades to the cooling sand.

Next up were Elara and Fenna.

The two scouts brought their glowing red deep-earth alloy bow risers over to the water trough.

Since they weren’t cutting weapons, they only needed a rapid, three-second dip in the cold water to lock the structural springiness of the metal before pulling them out to air-cool.

Hiss! Hiss!

Both alloy risers came out clean, retaining their smooth, aggressive curves without bending an inch out of alignment.

That left only the big three.

The workshop was now thick with black oil smoke, sulfurous vapor, and rising clouds of salted water steam.

The temperature inside the closed Foundry felt like it was approaching boiling point.

Morwenna pushed herself off the brick wall, her legs shaking slightly as she walked to her hearth.

She grabbed her two-hundred-and-fifty-six fold naval cutlass with her heavy tongs.

The blade glowed with a deep crimson light with the swirling silver Damascus grain clearly visible even through the heat.

”Get out of the way, weed,” Morwenna rasped, nudging past Eluned as she marched toward the salted water trough. ”Let a real sailor show you how to temper a blade.”

Morwenna stood over the water.

She raised the heavy cutlass, lining up the aggressive curved spine so it would enter the fluid at a clean, mathematically precise angle.

She thrust the blade deep into the cold saltwater.

KRA-KOOM!

The reaction wasn’t just a hiss of steam.

Because Morwenna had folded a massive concentration of Sil-Graves Silver alloy into her steel, the magical white metal aggressively reacted with the mineral salts in the water.

A shockwave of phantom ocean pressure violently erupted from the trough, blowing a gale of salty wind across the workshop and spraying lukewarm water directly into Morwenna’s sweating face.

The cutlass screamed like a dying kraken under the water, thrashing against Morwenna’s tongs with terrifying force.

The pirate queen gritted her teeth, planting her boots wide and using every ounce of her remaining physical strength to hold the blade dead center in the trough.

The screaming slowly died down as the ocean wind vanished and Morwenna pulled the cutlass out of the water.

The entire room went quiet for a second.

The naval cutlass was absolute peak craftsmanship.

The steel had hardened into a dark stormy ocean-gray, while the two hundred and fifty-six layers of white silver had crystallized along the cutting edge in a brilliant pattern that looked exactly like white-capped ocean waves crashing against a dark cliff face.

”Not a single crack,” Morwenna breathed out, raising the smoking cutlass high.

She turned around, a feral arrogant grin on her soot-stained face as she looked at Eluned. ”Beat that... princess.”

Eluned didn’t say a word.

Her eyes burned with pure divine defiance.

The Goddess walked to her hearth, pulled her own glowing red elven longsword from the coals, and marched directly to the primary oil trough.

She didn’t care about the oil fire or the smoke.

Eluned plunged her double-edged longsword straight into the dark oil.

WOOSH!

A column of orange fire shot toward the ceiling, but as the flames wrapped around Eluned’s blade, they violently turned from orange to a blinding luminous emerald green.

The natural atmospheric magic stored inside her steel actively purified the sulfurous oil vapor on contact, filling the workshop with the sweet refreshing scent of rain and pine forests.

Eluned held the sword steady with two hands with her face illuminated by the green fire. When she pulled the blade out, it was flawless.

The double-edged longsword gleamed with a pristine mirror-bright silver finish, the Damascus weave running down the center fuller pulsing with a green heartbeat.

”Divine perfection,” Eluned declared, holding her smoking sword up and mirroring Morwenna’s arrogant smirk.

Finally, Silas stepped up to his hearth.

He was the last one. Everyone else had successfully quenched their gear without a single failure or shattered blade.

The pressure was entirely on him.

He gripped his tongs with both hands, clamping down firmly on the base of his custom hand-and-a-half Warlord blade.

He pulled the steel from the dying coals.

The sword glowed with a rich and even cherry-red heat from pommel to tip.

The sixty-four layers of folded Sil-Graves Silver shimmered across the flat of the blade like frozen starlight.

He walked over to the primary oil trough.

His forearms were trembling so hard he could physically feel the vibrations running up into his shoulders.

He had been hammering, pulling bellows, and folding steel in a one-hundred-and-fifteen-degree brick oven for over six hours.

’Don’t shake,’ Silas commanded his own hands, gritting his teeth as he held the glowing red blade over the dark oil. ’Keep it straight. If you drop it in crooked right now, it’s going to warp into a banana and you’ll never live it down.’

He braced his elbows against his ribs to lock his arms in place. He lined the tip of the sword up dead center over the trough, making sure the blade was perfectly vertical.

He took one last breath of the hot air and Silas plunged the hand-and-a-half blade straight down into the deep oil.

WOOSH-BOOM!

The explosion of heat was immense.

A massive wall of orange fire erupted from the surface of the oil, washing over Silas’s leather apron and singing the hair on his forearms.

Simultaneously, the intense thermal reaction between his Gold Core, the sixty-four layers of virgin white silver, and the boiling fluid triggered a chemical vaporization.

Thick, blinding, super-heated white steam violently erupted from the trough in every direction.

Within three seconds, the massive cloud of boiling vapor rolled over the sides of the stone trough, expanding rapidly across the brick floor and completely swallowing the entire Warlord Foundry.

The visibility in the room dropped to zero instantly as the workshop was transformed into a pitch-black sauna.

Under the surface of the oil, Silas’s sword fought him like a wild animal.

The steel vibrated violently in his tongs, rattling his bones and threatening to twist out of his grip as the fifteen-hundred-degree metal underwent massive crystalline contraction.

The metal groaned... a deep sound that made Silas’s heart stop for a second as he waited for the dreaded pop of shattering steel.

He didn’t let go.

He clamped his hands down harder, forcing his exhausted muscles to hold the blade dead straight in the boiling oil, refusing to let the internal stress warp the spine.

Five seconds passed in the blinding steam... Then ten... Then twenty...

The violent vibrations in his tongs slowly faded away. The deep, groaning mechanical strain inside the metal ceased and the oil stopped bubbling.

Silas stood frozen in the pitch-black steam of the Foundry with his hands locked tightly around his tongs, his chest heaving as the thick sauna vapor washed over his soaked clothes.

Under the dark fluid of the trough, his steel had gone completely quiet.

It held.

”Pull it up, Boss!” Thora’s voice echoed through the fog. ”Don’t let it sit in the sludge all afternoon! Let’s see if you made a sword or a metal banana!”

Silas braced his boots against the slippery brick floor and pulled his arms up.

The heavy hand-and-a-half blade emerged from the oil, dripping with dark fluid.

Even through the dense, swirling steam, Silas could see the outline of the weapon.

The glowing red heat of the forge was completely gone, replaced by a dark storm-cloud gray finish.

He walked over to his anvil, setting the hot blade down onto the cold iron block.

He grabbed a metal scraper and quickly pushed the burnt oil residue off the flat of the steel.

The sixty-four layers of folded Sil-Graves Silver alloy caught the dim light of the furnace fires.

The white Damascus pattern wasn’t just sitting on the surface... it was deeply embedded into the metal, running down the entire length of the blade like frozen lightning bolts trapped inside a dark mirror.

”Not a single crack,” Silas muttered, wiping sweat out of his eyes with his forearm.

A long, shuddering breath of pure relief escaped his chest. ”The spine is dead straight.”

All around the workshop, the sound of heavy forging hammers dropping to the floor echoed through the steam.

Clack! Thud! Clack!

The girls were officially done with the heavy lifting.

They had spent over six hours standing in front of roaring brick hearths, pounding stubborn metal into submission, and fighting the punishing heat of the closed forge.

Now that the quenching phase was over, their physical stamina was completely drained.

Everyone could understand what Thora faced on a daily...

”I’m dropping my tool,” Brida groaned from the far wall.

The sound of her thirty-pound hammer hitting the brick floor was like a small earthquake. ”If I swing that piece of iron one more time, my shoulders are going to detach from my ribcage.”

”My hands are stuck in a permanent grip,” Fenna complained, leaning her back against her workbench. ”I don’t think I can unloose my fingers from these tongs without a crowbar.”

The sauna steam generated by Silas’s quench was still rolling thick through the room, turning the air into a heavy humid soup.

Thora, however, was in heaven.

The dwarven blacksmith strolled through the white fog like a goblin patrolling a swamp.

She had her welding goggles hanging loosely around her neck, a greasy rag in her hand, and her eyes wide open as she shamelessly inspected her apprentices.

Because the steam was so thick and hot, the skin-tight canvas mining outfits Clara the tailor had engineered were now completely glued to everyone’s bodies.

The thick fabric was saturated with sweat, oil vapor, and sweat, highlighting every single muscle and curve in high definition.

”Look at this humidity!” Thora cheered, taking a deep breath of the sulfur-scented fog as she walked past Brida’s station. ”This is traditional deep-mountain skin exfoliation! You girls are getting a full spa treatment with your weapons training!”

She stopped right behind Tasmin, who was currently leaning over a wooden bucket of water to splash her sweating face.

”Incredible endurance, Tasmin...” Thora purred. ”You stood over that salted water trough without flinching once. Your back muscles are really popping under that wet top. It’s a very solid definition.”

Tasmin didn’t even turn around.

She just reached back with a wet hand and pushed the dwarf’s face away by her nose. ”Go inspect the iron, Thora. Leave my back alone.”

”I’m inspecting the overall structural integrity of the entire room!” Thora laughed unrepentantly, ducking away before Tasmin could flick water at her.

She trotted over to Silas’s anvil, leaning her hip against the iron block as she looked down at his finished blade.

She ran her calloused thumb along the cooled flat of the steel, feeling the slight raised texture of the Damascus silver weave.

”You did good, Boss,” Thora said, her perverted teasing fading for a second as she gave him a nod of genuine professional respect. ”That’s a clean quench. You kept your hands steady when the oil popped. A lot of first-timers panic when the fireball hits their apron and drop the blade right to the bottom of the trough.”

”I was too tired to panic,” Silas admitted dryly, leaning his lower back against his workbench and stretching his arms over his head until his spine popped with a series of loud cracks. ”What’s next? Are we done?”

”Done?” Thora snorted, slapping the flat of his sword with her palm. ”Boss, you’ve got a sharp piece of metal sitting on an anvil. You don’t have a weapon yet! You don’t have a grip, you don’t have a guard, and your edges are still rough from the hammer!”

She spun around, clapping her greasy hands together to cut through the groans of the tired girls.

”Alright, Girls! Off the floor!” Thora barked, pointing her hammer toward the side wall of the workshop. ”The hearth fires are banked! We are moving to step four: assembly, grinding, and custom fittings! Grab your blades and head to the finishing benches!”

Reluctantly, the girls dragged themselves away from their resting spots.

They picked up their quenched steel plates, blades, and bow risers and moved toward the long wooden assembly tables lining the cooler side of the Foundry.