Chapter 116: Chapter 116: The Baron
Finn grabbed the piece of red-hot piece of iron with the tongs and placed it onto the broad anvil.
George was the one with the hammer. He used all his strength to slam the hammer onto the piece of iron repeatedly.
The noise of metal clashing filled the entire garrison. It was so loud that a few soldiers heard it all the way from the garrison.
"Master Finn is really hard at work..."
The soldiers didn’t disturb the workshop and continued with their business.
By hammering the iron over and over, George condensed it, removing any pockets or hidden holes inside the piece of metal. Additionally, this process also removed the impurities inside the iron, producing an even better steel than before.
This was a time-consuming and body-quenching task. George was able to do it non-stop because he had done it all his life. If it was an ordinary person, they would lose all their breath after a few swings.
Finn was also important. Holding the tongs might seem simple but a single distraction could cause an entire disruption to the process. Finn was not that kind of amateur. He stayed concentrated at all times.
And when the piece of iron was cooling down, Finn quickly slotted it inside the forge to heat it up again. George used this precious time to breathe and recover his stamina.
They went at it for an entire night. When dawn came, the piece of iron was shaped into a long low-quality iron bar.
To make this into a sword, further refinement and craftsmanship were needed.
Finn and George all sat down on their chairs and gasped for air after the ordeal. Their heads were filled with uncountable beads of sweat.
It wasn’t just because they were old. It’s because this piece of iron was much harder than what they had been dealing with all their life.
That was why they didn’t even stop all night.
They had figured out the piece of iron in their hands was something special. And they couldn’t sleep without seeing its true potential.
The long iron bar cooled down, losing its bright red color and settling on the dark grey of the unpolished steel.
George stood up and grabbed the best sword in the workshop.
"Time for the truth." George looked over to Finn.
Finn nodded. "I hope it won’t disappoint us. I have seen many hard steel broken when faced with a tiny bit of pressure."
Hardness wasn’t durability. Durability was the ability to withstand damage without breaking. Durability needed hardness, toughness and flexibility altogether.
A steel with extreme hardness would be so brittle that it would break at a first heavy contact with another object. Finn and George had experienced first hand the hardness of this ’blood iron’.
But what they cared about was its durability.
Finn placed the piece of iron onto a horizontal sword stand, securing its position. Then he backed away.
"Be my guest."
George stepped forward. He flexed all of his upper body’s muscle and executed a downward swing onto the iron bar.
"CLANG!"
Jude Fisher, the Baron of Scalize, wasn’t born into nobility. He came from a long line of fishermen that roamed the endless Vast Sea, the largest sea at the East of Eldoria.
No one lived on the Eastern Coast. At least, not permanently. The Eastern Coast had to face waves of unexpected tsunamis every year. These tsunamis killed every living thing on land and washed the filth away from the earth.
After each tsunami, rare fishes that you could only find in the deepest depth of the Vast Sea were everywhere on the Eastern Coast. These fishes were the most sought after delicacy in the entire Eldoria Kingdom.
People rushed to the Eastern Coast after every tsunami to collect as many fishes as they could then sell them to the nobles.
However, when the people arrived, most fishes would have gone bad because days have passed.
Then there were the Fishers. A brave family of fishermen decided to stay on the Vast Sea when the tsunami hit, so that when it went away, they would be the first to collect those rare fishes.
People thought they were crazy. People thought that all the Fishers would die. But no, the Fishers survived and they made thousands of coins. It had set the foundation for the enormous wealth that Jude Fisher had fought with all his life to get.
Fate seemed to have favored Jude even more. He was awoken as a witch. Or more precisely, a male witch, which was also called a wicca.
His power grew quickly and he was the most powerful witch in the Scalize region.
Scalize was a busy trading town in a secluded corner of the Eldoria Kingdom. Jude was powerful, but only in this small area.
He didn’t even reach the second rank of a witch yet and was stuck on witchling for years. But he was the most powerful witchling, much more powerful than the likes of Nora, witches who were just starting to mess with their power.
But everything had a price. That price had befell upon Jude.
He didn’t have any sleep last night. The big belly Baron put on some clothes and went out for a jog in the open courtyard of the garrison.
It was there that he heard the sound of metalworks coming from Finn’s workshop.
"Argh. That old fool was still at it. I told him to get some rest."
Jude’s head was hurting again. He chugged a flask of wine down his throat, hoping it would numb his unexplainable pain.
He approached Finn’s workshop and tried to take a look inside to see what the blacksmiths were doing.
They had closed the window and the front door wasn’t open.
"What are these blacksmiths doing?" Jude suspects the pair might be planning something bad. The last few days caused Jude to not be able to trust anyone.
Jude called upon the power of Magic, the force that he had abandoned for such a long time, and directed it into his eyes.
A minor spell like this shouldn’t affect him much so Jude was assured. His eyes lit up a faint gray color and he was able to see inside of the workshop.
George raised the sword and swung it onto the iron bar.
The strongest sword of Finn’s workshop snapped in two and with that a sharp "CLANG" sound filled the area.
Jude Fisher had seen everything.