"Alright, listen "ere, old-timer. Ye"re obviously a great smith, even if yer skills don"t say so. What do ya say about workin" as one?"

It is possible to change your occupation to Blacksmith. Do you accept?

After the first onslaught of system messages telling Eisen about his successful quest as well as his rewards, Denmir immediately caused another one to appear in front of him before Eisen was even able to comprehend what he read a few seconds beforehand.

He began scratching his beard and closed his eyes in order to think. Did he want to become a blacksmith right off the bat? Sure, it"s something he would probably be doing a lot of in the future, but wouldn"t choosing this as his occupation limit him significantly? After all, he wasn"t just planning to smith around all day, he also wanted to learn tailoring or leatherworking, and when he heard about it through a conversation with the other Originals, he also decided to learn about Alchemy.

And to Eisen, it felt like he wouldn"t be able to fully explore those other areas in this game if he was to choose his occupation to be a Blacksmith right now.

Thus, his choice was clear. "Sorry, Denmir. I will not become a Blacksmith, at least not yet. I first want to find out if there are other things I"m supposed to do before I make such an important choice." He explained, causing Denmir to sigh out loudly as he shook his head.

"I get it, old man. There"re many things for ya to explore. If ye ever decide ye want to be a Blacksmith, after all, ya know where to find me. Now, what do ya want to do?" The Dwarf asked and looked up at the man in front of him, who twisted his head to look around the smithy. "Hmm, if you don"t mind, I would love to try myself at working on some weapons to level the skill up."

Immediately, Denmir nodded and pointed to the other side of the smithy to a smaller, unoccupied forge. "Of course! Go ahead! I"ll come take a look every once in a while at what ye"re makin", and you"re free to ask the apprentices for help as well. The door to the warehouse will be directly next to ya. The stuff ye can use is in the front, the materials in the back are for higher ranks. Right now ye can only really work with normal, base Iron. If ye make something ya wanna keep, pay for the materials, other than that it"s the best idea to melt it in again. That actually also gives ya experience for the skill."

Denmir led Eisen through the smithy to the forge he was talking about and brought him some materials to start off with as well as tools to use. "Now, have fun workin", old-timer." The dwarf laughed and Eisen smirked happily.

After being left alone, he decided to invest the fifteen points from leveling up first, splitting them amongst Strength, Endurance and Agility. He decided to first strengthen his physical stats over his "spiritual" ones like Intelligence or Wisdom, since to him it was most important to get his body to the strength he was used to from real life so that he could work properly.

Then, his status looked like this.

[Eisen]

[Race - Giant-Dwarf Halfling][Occupation - None][Level - 4]

[HP - 180][MP - 140]

[STR - 15][END - 15][AGI - 15][INT - 10][WIS - 11]

[t.i.tles]

-[Original of the Mechanical Arts]

[Skills]

-[A Dwarf"s Hands][Rank - 0][Level - 1]

-[A Giant"s Strength][Rank - 0][Level - 1]

-[Appraisal][Rank - 0][Level - 99]

-[Blacksmithing][Rank - 0][Level - 1]

-[Tool Connection][Rank - 0][Level - 3]

Eisen happily looked through his stats and skills, nodding with a bright smile on his face as he walked over to the bellow behind the forge, slowly starting to pump air into the coals using it. Once the forge was heated up enough to work with, he went around and threw one of the smaller ingots that Denmir prepared into it. Since what he was planning to make was a simple knife, he really only needed one of them, and not even an especially big one. It was better to practice with small items at first before moving onto larger ones. And these would melt down again more easily, so he could restart quicker.

Eisen waited for a few more minutes until the ingot started s.h.i.+ning a bright orange and then grabbed a pair of tongs to pick it up. He carried it over to the nearest anvil and placed it down, always steadily holding the ingot.

He grabbed the hammer lying next to him and began slowly and steadily hammering onto the iron. He could immediately notice a difference to before. His hand movements were far more steady and accurate as when he was working on the greatsword using the sledgehammer, even without using Tool Connection.

The metal dented under Eisen"s impact as he drew it out in length by reducing its thickness.

Every time his hammer connected with the hot metal it got a little bit thinner.

After the soon-to-be knife was in appropriate dimensions, Eisen started to thin out the side where the edge would later be to minimize the amount of ground he would need to do.

Once the edge was formed, Eisen turned the knife around and formed a handle by upsetting a small part of the metal. The process of upsetting is to simply widen a piece of metal by shortening another. Thus, by hitting his hammer against edge-part, Eisen was able to form a square handle.

Since the basic knife shape was now done, Eisen began to lightly hammer against the flat sides of the knife to get rid of uneven parts that were caused by his lack of experience with the system.

Sighing out loud, Eisen brought the knife over to the water-tank standing near him and dipped the hot knife into it. Immediately he heard loud hissing as the metal was cooled down instantly.

He took the knife out of the water and brought it back to lay it down on the anvil. After confirming that the metal could now be handled by hand, Eisen grabbed some files to work on finis.h.i.+ng it.

He would have liked to add more steps into it, like tempering the metal afterward, but for right now he would take the filing as a last step and melt the knife back down.

Starting with a rough grit, Eisen evened up the rest of uneven spots that were still left and got onto roughly filing the proper edge onto the knife. Then, with slightly finer gritted files each time, he repeated the same progress until the flat side was completely uniform and the edge sharp enough to cut something. As the last step, for now, he polished the metal at last, finis.h.i.+ng the blade.

[You created a Simple Knife]

[Simple Knife]

[Quality - Average][Rank - 0]

[Description] A simple iron knife created by a smith who knew how to handle his hammer, but due to the minimal grade of the Blacksmithing skill and the steps that have been skipped, the quality lacks to what it should have been.

"d.a.m.n it… This really was not good. I really should have done better…" Frustrated at the low quality of the Knife, Eisen looked at his finished product and frowned as he picked it up. It"s been decades since he made something with such low quality. He stomped over to an unoccupied foundry to melt down the knife and form it into a new ingot.

Once he noticed that Eisen finished his first item, Denmir walked over to ask how his attempt went and looked at the small knife in the old man"s hand. "Hmm, it"s definitely better than what anyone else in this smithy made on their first try. Including me. Don"t be too harsh on yerself, old-timer." Denmir"s words slightly helped with Eisen"s mood, but he was still far from happy. He would continue making knives of similar quality to level up his Blacksmithing skill, and then once Eisen notices a considerable difference to before, he would go all in. He would prove to himself and everyone else that he was still capable of making great things with his two hands.

---

For basically the next five hours, without taking a single break, Eisen continued on making the same knife over and over again. There were small, marginal improvements he could notice the higher his Blacksmith level rose, but the first real difference came when its level reached 100.

Blacksmithing reached Level 100 in Rank 0, upgrading to Rank 1

It is now possible to work with Steel

Due to Ranking-up your Blacksmithing Skill, you gained +1 STR and +1 END

At that time, he first got to know what ranks actually meant. Every time he reached level 100 with a skill, it would rank-up and unlock new abilities or grow in strength. And he would even get stats related to the skill! He figured the same would be the case with items, and managed to confirm it once he made his first Rank 1 Knife. Even though its quality rating was only average, and the highest Rank 0 quality rating he got was perfect, the actual quality of the item was many times greater than what he managed to do before.

It was then that Eisen decided to finish his day of smithing with an actually high-quality knife. Since he was now able to work with steel, and didn"t have to use Iron anymore which was considerably softer than steel, he went and grabbed a small steel ingot from the storage and left the last knife he had molten down as an iron ingot back in the shelves.

He placed the steel ingot into the forge and waited for it to heat up. While the metal"s temperature was growing higher and higher, Eisen grabbed the hammer he was working with all day and used his Tool Connection skill on it. Once he finished this, he grabbed the now orange-glowing ingot out of the forge and placed it on the anvil.

Using his hammer, he first followed the same routine he had been all day. Eisen flattened and lengthened the steel, and was immediately pleasantly surprised when this metal resisted to give in way more than the iron did since this was much more like what he was used to.

He formed the blade to a point in the front and then began upsetting the steel to form a handle. This time, however, it would be the same thickness as the rest of the knife, and not thicker since he was going to add an actual wooden handle at the end of the finis.h.i.+ng process.

Eisen continued and instead of making the knife thinner at the part of the edge, kept the whole piece of metal completely uniform in thickness.

Now, the shape of the knife was finished and Eisen laid the knife down to led it air-cool. During the making of the other knives, he noticed that hot metal air-cooled down much quicker than it usually did in real life. It would mostly stay the same heat when you"re handling it, but if you lay it down it would be cool enough to handle barehanded in about 20 to 30 minutes.

Taking that time, Eisen took his first real break of the day and ate something. While Denmir commended him for being so committed to getting better, he also told Eisen that it"s not a good idea to not take care of yourself, since a healthy blacksmith leads to a healthy weapon. Whatever that meant.

After the blade air-cooled, Eisen got to the first filing. He took the knife and roughly evened it up, even though that was not really necessary anymore, and made sure that the Knife"s outer appearance was as good as it could be.

Then, he went back to the forge and heated the blade up once more until it was glowing and then brought it to the tub of water to cool it back down. Although, he only held the part that would become the edge into the water. The reason for this is that this would make the edge harder while leaving the back flexible, and this generally helps with the durability of a blade.

He set the overall still-hot blade down on his anvil and grabbed a few bricks, building a small box, that was only big enough for the knife to fit into, onto the ground. He then took a shovel and put some of the lower-temperature coals into it. Eisen then placed the knife into the box, on another brick so that it wouldn"t directly touch the coals, and covered the top of it so that it would continue to be at a heat of about 150°C for a while and not lose too much heat.

This was done so that Eisen could temper the blade, making it significantly harder and more durable in the end.

After about two hours, Eisen would be able to get the tempered blade out of the box, so that he would only need the last finis.h.i.+ng touches. Taking that time, he went over to a different part of the workshop where some of the apprentices were working on wooden handles for the weapons they forged that day.

Since he already measured the exact size he would need the handle to be to fit, Eisen grabbed a piece of wood, a material he didn"t recognize, and decided to make a handle out of it.

The wood was a dark color and relatively hard. From what he could tell, it would probably end up looking amazing once properly shaped.

Eisen began carving the wood into proper shape so that it would sit nicely in his hand when the knife was finished, and then cut it into two halves so that he could place them over the bare metal later.

After confirming that the two pieces fit nicely together, he carved out a small part of the wooden halves" center so that they would snugly fit.

Since it only took him an hour to do this, Eisen spent the last hour talking to Denmir about different methods of forging that are best for different kinds of weapons and materials. Eisen was specifically interested in higher rank materials that he saw in the warehouse before.

Once the last hour was over, Eisen removed the top of the brick-box and removed the tempered blade with his tongs. He waited until the blade could be hand-held again and then went to the other part of the workshop again and got to attaching his handle. While he was talking to Denmir, he also asked about the strength of the glue, and since it seemed to be a special glue made of a mixture of different naturally-adhesive plants, Denmir advised Eisen to only use a small amount since that was all that was necessary.

Thus, Eisen put a little bit of the glue on each of the wooden halves and placed them around the metal-handle. He bound both halves together with a few strings while the glue dried, and after a few minutes, it was ready to be finished.

At last, Eisen began to sharpen the knife with multiple sharp files until the edge was sharp enough to already cut things, but Eisen still took it to the last step and finally sharpened the knife with a whetstone.

When he looked at the final notification, Eisen grinned broadly at what he just made.

[You created a High-Quality Knife]

[High-Quality Knife]

[Quality - Perfect][Rank - 2]

[Description] An extremely high-Quality Steel Knife created by the Blacksmith Eisen. Due to his great abilities, he overcame the limitations of the Blacksmithing skill and reached a higher rank than normally possible, and even then perfected it.

[Effect]+5 AGI, +2 STR

[For creating an item of overwhelming quality, you gain +1 STR and +1 END]

[You overcame the limits of your skills. Limitbreaker t.i.tle gained]

[t.i.tle - Limitbreaker]

[Description] By Breaking the limits of your skills, you showed the world what you are

[Effect] +1 to all basic stats