The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 312

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Ronan had no idea what he was doing when it came to crafting items. He had made a few basic weapons from the sea monster parts he’d acquired during that particular scenario of the nightmare difficulty tutorial, but they had been a far cry from even the weapons he received from the endless treasury. If he was talking about making himself gear that was worthy of being branded and made permanent, then he doubted he would reach a high enough proficiency in crafting and forging in a hundred iterations to do that. However, he wasn’t sure he needed perfection just yet.

A great first step would be getting to a level where he could work with a variety of materials in order to craft himself gear that was good enough in every single iteration, regardless of what materials he received from the monsters he defeated in the first couple of stages. He felt that was something he could get to in maybe a few dozen iterations, rather than a few hundred.

The first thing he had to do was obliterate some pathetically weak goblins. It had been a long, long time since Ronan was in the normal difficulty tutorial. The first goblin turned into mist the moment his fist struck it. The same couldn’t quite be said for the rest of the goblins.

Meeting up with Keith, Dana, Terry, and Jackson again was grounding. He felt weird around them, being so far removed from their experience. For the four of them it was the first time the integration had happened, but he had lived over a hundred lives since his first integration. He enjoyed fighting through the tutorial with them, but it was difficult to talk normally. He struggled having to fight while holding himself back, but he managed it.

In the end, once he had ensured that they all survived the tutorial, defeating Magriz’al with ease, Ronan parted ways with Keith once they were back on their homeworld. He found a random abandoned building and made himself a shelter of sorts. That actually earned him a few points in survival mastery. He wondered why he’d never earned it before but most of the time he’d not put effort into building a base of sorts but just slept out in the tower with Keith. Hyper Perfectionist lowering the threshold to earn it was likely a big influencing factor, too.

In any case, he ignored it once he had a bed and some minor comforts set up. What came next was more important. Ronan scoured the city for all the metal scraps he could find. He wanted all the material he could get his hands on. Until that moment his crafting had been limited to just manipulating organic material, which could work if he had high enough quality monster hides to make into armour, but at that point he didn’t. No, Ronan wanted to teach himself how to make some proper weapons, and then figure out how to turn his ‘Enchant -’ skills into effective empowerment for said weapons. To begin with, he needed to build a forge from memory. Given that he had never had any practical experience with blacksmithing or working with metal in any way, that was a challenge.

The closest Ronan had come to making a sword, apart from conjuring one with his mana, was watching forged in fire on metflix. That is to say, he’d been a thousand miles away from being anything remotely resembling a blacksmith.

And while he did not have the luxury of a proper teacher, what he did have was a portable forge that was equipped to the gills. If he couldn’t figure out how to at least make a passable weapon, then he was a failure. Just to remind himself how it worked, he pulled out the unassuming metal hammer, looking over the symbols carved all across its surface, and read the description that accompanied it.

Survivalist’s Portable Forge (Epic)

First invented by a person stranded on a planet where everything was trying to kill them, the survivalist’s portable forge is the go-to solution for all-in-one crafting on the move. The spatial enchantments allow the portable forge to store an anvil, quenching bucket with chosen fluid, a working forge with mana-powered bellows, and any other items that fall under the scope of crafting, provided the storage limit of the enchantment is not exceeded. The portable forge itself is a usable blacksmith’s hammer that is enchanted to take the form of any crafting tool that it has been fed by the user. The Survivalist’s Portable Forge can be upgraded in rarity by upgrading or replacing the equipment it contains.

Alright, let’s figure this baby out. Ronan placed the hammer down and made a link to it with his mana and his mind. The way it worked was a little trippy, but he had figured it out before he branded it just to be sure it was exactly the type of item he wanted to keep permanently.

Once he pumped in enough mana, the hammer began to glow, all of the inscriptions that covered its metallic head and wooden shaft lighting up with a vibrant glow. Then the room he was in shifted. One moment it was a dusty abandoned building in the middle of London, and the next he was standing in a medieval-style brick room. There was a large forge, with magical bellows to fuel the flames, as well as an anvil, quenching bucket, and a litany of tools lying around. Many seemed worn out, but a few were in serviceable condition. Not to mention the portable forge itself, which still sat on the same spot on the floor. Ronan picked it up, but he remained inside the room. The hammer could turn into any tool that it had ‘consumed’ in the past, making it a valuable piece of equipment for any crafter.

To begin with, he needed to learn how to actually forge metal. Ronan decided to start with something extremely basic. Before he even made his first weapon, he would make some ingots out of the scrap metal he had collected from the sector. Of course, he had to try and figure out what metals were what, as he knew that randomly mixing them would lead to him making a mess of things. After all, he wanted metal that could be used for weapons, not random mixes of minerals.

Unfortunately for Ronan, he was a lot, lot worse at forging than he was at fighting. Worse than he’d been in his first iteration, which was saying something, because he’d not exactly been that skilled. He’d almost died to a level 2 lesser goblin.

He had a metal bucket that he put a bunch of metal scraps inside, all of which he had guessed were iron of some sort, or at least mostly iron. They melted at slightly different rates, which he suspected was due to the differing impurities in each chunk of metal. The end result was a bucket of molten metal with some stuff floating on the top. That had been his first problem.

Ronan knew he was supposed to remove the floating impurities, but he had no idea how to do it. In the end he used the hammer and turned it into a metal rod that he used to fish the flakes out, but that didn’t really work well. He spilled most of them on the ground, and even stepped on one of the molten flecks at one point, burning the crap out of the sole of his foot after it melted the bottom of his shoe.

After some struggle, he did eventually figure that part out, but the step that followed somehow became even more problematic. While trying to pour the molten metal into an ingot mould, the bucket suddenly cracked and broke in half, spilling the burning liquid onto his foot. That was an agony he had not experienced before and didn’t wish to go through ever again.

Worse, his healing spells were far from advanced enough to regrow a foot, which left him in a pretty awful situation. He doubted he would be able to get much further in that iteration, but that didn’t mean there was nothing else to gain from the failure. Ronan spent a while figuring out what had gone wrong with the bucket and eventually came to the conclusion that it was something to do with either the rate it cooled it or the size of the bucket. In any case, in the next iteration he knew what to avoid. So it was that Ronan’s first attempt at learning how to forge ended in suicide. Hopefully the next mistake I make doesn’t require a restart…

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