I woke up in the middle of the night. Someone was knocking on the front door. Soon I heard my parents go to the front door to answer.

  “Edith! What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

  “The situation is worsening; the tensions are growing and as far as we managed to find out no one is trying to back down. The worst part is… All the nobles suddenly seem scared for their lives or something and almost all the big households agree to go to war.”

  “How in the nine hells did that happen in just two months? Cato is going to be taken to the academy… With his strength and talent doesn’t that mean he’s bound to fight?”

  “I’m afraid so… But he can’t know… No matter what he can’t stay here. In the academy he’ll be able to learn a lot more. In the upheaval to come he’ll be safer if he can grow and learn more… He can gain supporters and protectors there as well…”

  “If a war happens domain powerhouses will be involved! Bullshit protectors! No one can or will shield him from that sorta old monster. ”

  “It will still take years… After all there were no previous war preparations…”

  “How did it even get to this point? No one in their right mind would blow the news about something that important so much… Even we, some retired nobodies got to know about it… The world is getting crazy!”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m going back. These news are to be kept from Cato, don’t burden him now. He’s smart enough to survive and even profit from this chaos that will come. No need to trouble him.”

  “Understood…”

  ‘Well, shit… Is it that hard to just stay civil and peacefull?’ I asked myself. Edith and my father talked some more but I had lost interest. These were bad news. I was aware of what kind of potential for war I had and was on the radar to be taken since I was three. If they did not think that I was too young back then I’d already have been in the academy…

  What to do… Well I can’t run away from the academy. Too much trouble. Being a captain is not an option, I don’t want to have the burden of others lives in my hands… So I have to strive to become a special unit if it comes down to it. That or somehow avoid the war entirely without making my family into a target for punishing me for desertion… Hm… Stop the war entirely? Could one do it? Could or couldn’t doesn’t matter actually… What matters is whether I will try or not. After all what is the point of asking if it can be done? You can only find out if you try.

  It took a long time for me to fall back asleep. The worries of fighting were real. My strength could barely be considered at the middle of this world, even if I grew more it took a long time for e that was adamant about following a natural path. I was advancing rapidly in terms of jing, qi and shen, their quality constantly improved by the aether. My jing was overlapping with the aether and continuously nourished.

  This in turn strengthened my qi and shen naturally. I still needed to meditate constantly, otherwise I risked becoming an idiot with no focus with all the shen that was forming. Luckily I did a lot of things and expended a lot so the cumulation was manageable. A new vivid dream followed my sleep. Red clouds filling the sky, darkness and smoke all around, the ground was soaked in blood with corpses strewn everywhere. I was wandering on this wasteland where fires billowed, ice was melting, boulders and sharp stones were everywhere…

  In the morning I felt sleepy and the news kept me dispirited. Despite all this I maintained my routine. No point in skipping or giving up. If anything now I had reason to train harder and do my best to learn more and focus during my training. If I was to survive and succeed in turning this situation around then the only option was to work myself to the bone to grow myself as much as possible.

  There isn’t in this world any better medicine for worry than preparation and determination. I now had the means to grow my individual might beyond anything imaginable in my past life so I’d do just that! So what if I have to fight domain level powerhouses. I’ll charge and strike all the same for there is only one path ahead. And that is progress. Time moves forward unforgiving and all the same for everyone. The only thing I could do was to make better use of it.

  I arrived at the smithy again. Fjorn was already there this time. Dark circles were around his eyes signs he didn’t have a good night either. His jaw was clenched, but subtle movements of it. This was something he did whenever he was mad and cursing but had no one to blame next to him. I’m pretty sure he’d smash the head of some of those nobles open to check their brains by the scowl he was wearing. He looked at me and I saw pity in his gaze for a moment.

  He was pitying me. Pitying me for the problems I was going to face unjustly at the hands of some annoying stuck up idiots. But it soon vanished and he seemed more resolute.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “You’re here. Hm… Boy! Considering your performance yesterday I will start teaching you how to mold the metals into tools to use.” I could guess that he received the same news as my father.

  “First off are molds” He said while gesturing towards the space in front of the smelting furnace. “You should be familiar with these… Made by combining half molds obtained by pressing a wooden model in each until it’s half buried in the sand then pulled out. The halves are then stacked carefully and the metal can be poured inside. Why are they used?”

  “They are good for mass production and can produce more detailed shapes that would be quite hard to obtain otherwise. They also usually come with better properties than using other shaping processes as the material is uniform.”

  “That… That is quite a bit more than I expected you to tell me… Then what about downsides?”

  “The results of casting tend to be more brittle in the case of iron and there is a risk of air pockets. Also, impurities tend to gather at the bottom of the mold… Oh yeah, the mold itself is fragile and this may lead to defects as well. And enchanting-wise or aether flow-wise these won’t carry as much aether as something hand forged and they will be closer to an actual grade 0…”

  “Boy, you really infer well. Yes, indeed it’s difficult for this method to produce artifacts but not impossible. I simply don’t have the required stuff here.” Fjorn looked at me scratching his head… He probably wanted to be able to say more but I answered pretty well and I didn’t think I left much room for correction.

  “But you’re mistaken about one thing! Casted items aren’t necessarily more brittle. Iron ingots are made by casting. It doesn’t matter what purity of iron it is. If you smelt ore to make ingots, you are making it by casting. In other words, these molds are your lifeline.”

  “Aren’t there other ways? I remember that you did something that looked like you were stretching metal right as it was poured out… You used it to make a short sword for one of the hunters…”

  “That is continuous casting, still casting and is essentially the same… Well, the cast is missing and it’s replaced by a circular die so the metal cools faster but that’s about it. You, you’re really paying attention, when’d you even see that?”

  “Uh… Some time ago? I don’t really remember… A, haha, ha… ha…” Really troubling question. I think I’ve heard the others mention it, but I never did see it with my own eyes… Me and my big mouth… Should have thought more before saying that…

  “Any other types of metal pouring or casting?” I ask to divert the attention.

  “What? Aren’t two enough for you?”

  “Enough, they are enough!” I hurriedly say. But internally I disagree. In my past life I also learned about centrifugal casting where the mold was rapidly spun to get the metal to coat the insides of the mold. This was how large tubes or cylindrical pieces were obtained. Not a very hard to picture or understand process, however the mechanism itself was going to be a headache to design if anything.

  “Whatever, I was getting to the continuous casting anyway. I’d have told you ‘bout it without you asking. Today I’ll teach you to make a bar through continuous casting, the normal casting is very straightforward and you’ve seen me do it many times, I doubt you’d have troubles with it.” Fjorn said.

  The day slowly passed with me failing time and time again to get the continuous casting right. This was not earth where a motorized belt or roller table could maintain a fixed uniform speed to drag the metal forward. We had to pull it by hand with steadiness and care. Fjorn also didn’t let me use aether on the metal to ease my job.

  “You gotta know how to do it without aether too before you get into that. You have to understand the flow of the metal not only the flow of aether!”

  This hand drawing of the metal was a very tedious and tiring process. Unfortunately, even with all my calm and practice of stillness I kept failing and the bar was either uneven or breaking ahead of time.

  Acting out of character, Fjorn did not start swearing at me or make a fuss about my failures. He simply patiently had me try again and again. Even with aether to dissipate the heat, the situation was still unbearable. My hands were burning, my lungs felt like gum my nose was stinging and my eyes were so watery I couldn’t see well. But I persisted and through the day got better and better. I was honestly embarrassed. It wasn’t just a small quantity of metal that I was wasting through this. On the contrary it was a lot. And I had to repeat this until Fjorn approved of the result.

  Iron couldn’t be smelted again in the same batch. One because I was still using it to practice. Two, because at each smelting carbon was escaping the mixture. In other words after each smelting the result was closer to pure iron. Not only that but if a material was smelted too many times it would start losing properties… So overall Fjorn would have quite a lot of work cleaning up after me later…

  “Enough for today. You won’t be able to concentrate and will only do worse from here onwards. Go take a rest, no point in wasting metal and time here!”

  “Alright…” I said feeling listless. I quickly placed the tongs I used back in their rack. My hands were hurting, and my palms were numb. I could feel sharp pains go through my hands each time I moved my fingers… This time I definitely went overboard.

  “I’ll be outside.” I told Fjorn and went out of the forge. As soon as I went out I greedily breathed the cleaner, fresh air. It was an experience that one can’t get enough off. The feeling of good air feeling your chest after you struggled breathing.

  I quickly found myself a place to sit. This was so I could meditate to assess the damage to my hands and use aether and jing to hasten the healing. It wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. Soon the numbness and pain went away and I changed my focus. I was now shaping in my head the device for centrifugal pouring.

  We needed a large cylindrical mold, two sets of rollers and a way to keep a high spinning speed. This spin was the problem. The total mass might be too big for the mechanism in the pottery wheel and I had no idea about other engines. Coming up with a steam engine would be too much. I definitely could do it but it would take longer than the time I had left and it would raise too many questions.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the ever-annoying Torsten that couldn’t have managed a worse time to pop up even if a god controlled him.

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