Chapter 140: Heart of a Blacksmith

The bulky middle-aged man was firmly standing on the ground with a straightened back, viewing over the students that looked at him expectantly awaiting a task to accomplish.

"Dear students of the 6th affiliated Vanguard school, today are the Artisan exams, and I or rather we assume that not many of you have never forged, brewed, or inscribed anything in your life.

If you have….congrats but that doesn't matter to us. 

The tasks we want to give all of you isn't that difficult… For the blacksmith exam, forge a weapon without completely destroying the ores mana conductivity.

We don't care about the weapons-grade, aesthetics, or anything else. 

The weapon only has to have a certain degree of mana conductivity and shouldn´t crumble under the pressure while cutting the meat of a low-wild beast. There is no time limit but if you want to participate in the other exams, you should not waste too much time, as we only test them today." 

Ending her short speech, Antalia and the runemaster said something else before they went up the stairs to the floor, where their test would be conducted.

Jason sweated under the gaze Antalia threw at him and he felt extremely uncomfortable when he heard a number of loud bangs where the bulky man stood.

Turning around, he could suddenly see all kinds of ores used to craft weapons, while not a single grade-2 ore could be seen.

'What kind of miracle do they want students to do with these high-quality forges?? Most students don´t even know how to operate a forge because the provided knowledge is so shallow...' Jason wondered.

Nevertheless, the ores were worth quite a lot and the students could take whatever piece they wanted.

While the other students rushed forward, Jason activated his mana eyes to conduct a quick inspection of all kinds of ores in front of him.

And unsurprisingly there were many ores with death mana veins inside them, indicating that the ore itself was dead and couldn´t be used for forge weapons that relied on mana conductivity to gain a certain toughness and sharpness.

Smiling lightly, Jason noticed a few students picking the largest pieces of ores they could see and among them were dead ores, causing him to frown lightly.

Sighing deeply, he looked for a familiar ore and when he found something, a small smile emerged on his face.

'Jade-Iron ore!...and a large amount at that'

While some of them were already dead, Jason picked out the best one, before he went back to his designated forge.

Blacksmithing could be divided into many sections and they were as follows.

The first step was only required if one was working with ores and it the step was called 'reduction' , which was used to oxide the ore,  obtaining the pure ingots.

This step wasn´t that difficult, as Jason knew the exact heat Jade-Iron required to heat up. 

Too much heat would cause the mana veins to evaporate and die, while the ore itself would just melt.

A low heat would be totally useless as the oxide wouldn't react with the charcoal within the flame to create carbon dioxide, leaving behind the pure metal.

Jason was quite sensible to heat thanks to his origin flame and he didn´t even need to look at the panel to know how hot it was when he stopped increasing the heat perfectly.

Not more than a few minutes passed before Jason saw the mana veins within the jade iron ore turning slightly yellowish.

Taking out the reduced jade iron ore with reinforced tongs, Jason noticed green sparks within the red heated-up ingot.

Turning towards the hammer press, he used it instead of hammers to form a chunk of Jade Iron because he didn´t want to waste too much energy right off the bat.

Carefully using his feet to activate the hammer press, he used the tongs to slowly form the desired shape of the chunk.

Jason had used an especially large piece of Jade Iron ore because he knew the size would decrease by more than 50% until he had his desired chunk and without using more precious time, he couldn't bear smelting more Jade-Iron ore. 

In the end, it wouldn't even matter what kind of weapon he made, as long as it didn´t break while cutting some meat.

As such Jason would just make a crude dagger and finish his assignment as soon as possible.

Slowly forming the chunk, Jason was eyed from the side because other students thought he was dumb, using a hammer press to make a chunk without damaging the mana veins.

However, these students forgot something important as they would have never thought that Jason did not only save much time but Jade-Iron was rather resilient towards a violent forming of its mana veins compared to other ingots, causing it to be the best material for beginners to use.

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Nevertheless, it was still rather uncommon to use a hammer press to preserve intact and undamaged mana veins, but in front of him stood one, and without wasting too much time he reheated the slightly formed chunk until it was close to the melting point, perfect for him to form it.

Jason repeated this process a few times before a 15 centimeters long, five-centimeter width, and 1-centimeter thick chunk was finally formed.

1 centimeter was perfect for his task and he went directly to the second step.

Heating up the Jade-Iron ingot once again, he placed the end of it on the anvil that stood in front of him, while the other end was gripped by the tongs. 

Taking out a rounding hammer, Jason hammered on the corners of the chunk to slowly form the end of the chunk into the shape of an knifepoint. 

The round side was supposed to be the back while the flat edge would become the cutting edge. 

Reheating and Shaping the jade iron chunk for a few times, Jason had to be careful as the chunk was not especially thick and could easily break, but fortunately, nothing like that happened.

Leaving enough space for the tong to grip the end of the chunk, Jason looked at the piece of Jade-Iron with a satisfying smile.

It looked better than expected and now he had to establish a blade.

Heating up the chunk once again, he repeated rows of small taps with his hammer up the blade to narrow the Jade-Iron.

Working on both sides, Jason prevented it from distorting which was also extremely important to maintain a good balance.

Jason pondered if he should have a distal taper, which meant the blade gets thinner the closer one gets to the tip, but he decided against it because it wasn't necessary for his task.

The small dagger was almost finished and Jason reheated the jade iron chunk once again with sweat pearls forming on his face.

Even though he was resistant to heat, it was still hot and his body wasn´t adjusted to the heat, causing him to sweat heavily.

Looking around, he noticed that his classmates looked like they were dying within the flames as most school uniforms had already ignited, causing the examiner to jump into the fray.

Jason had long since covered himself with a fire-resistant robe and face protection to prevent any kind of accident to occur, even though his fire resistance was superior than the flame in front of him. 

Heating up the grade-1 crilo-oil next to him to 50°C, Jason took out the shaped dagger and adjusted some marginal flaws he didn't like before he cooled down the hot jade iron ingot within the slightly heated up oil in front of him.

Jason heard a sizzling and if he didn't know what he was doing, he would be extremely scared but fortunately, the quenching succeeded.

Water would have also worked but Jason wanted to go sure as rapidly cooling down the hit chunk of Jadeiron within oil prevented cracks to appear while quenching, which could happen using water.

The chances were small but safety sure and after the dagger was cooled down to a certain degree, he took it out to reheat and quench it again before letting it slowly cool down in the air to temper it even more.

Turning off everything, the flame disappeared and Jason turned away from the smithy to the working bench that stood next to him.

Now it was time to sharpen the dagger to a certain extent and he placed the whetstone he found inside the smithy´s drawer into water until he couldn't see any bubbles rising from it anymore, which was the perfect state, before he took it out, laying it on a towel.

Placing the dagger on the whetstone he lifted the back of it by a 20-degree angle, causing the blade to touch the whetstone.

Dragging the heel of the knife down and pressing the knife down to the whetstone, Jason had to completely focus on the blade.

From the heel all the way to the tip in gliding motion going back and forth.

One side then the other side and the only thing he had to worry about, would be keeping the 20-degree angle while maintaining the same amount of pressure on it. 

Once the whetstone dried up slightly, Jason applied some water on it before he finished sharpening it on the rougher side of the whetstone.

Turning around the whetstone he watered the fine side and repeated the same process until Jason thought the knife was sharp enough.

He wasn't completely satisfied with his first product, but it looked better than he expected and if Jason knew that his whole procedure was observed by Shane, he would most likely have tried harder.

Unfortunately, that wasn´t the case but Shane who hid inside the shadow of the building nodded his head in approval, while the Rank-3 Blacksmith noticed Jason walking towards him, with question marks in his eyes before his expression turned into astonishment when he saw the knife in Jason´s hand.

Jason knew that he would pass this exam and he waited for the perplexed blacksmith to finish his examination before he went up to the second floor after he took  back his first produced dagger.

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