A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

Chapter 282: Chapter 282 - Design

Having failed to discover anything new about the mysterious alloy, and having come to conclusion that there was no way for him to reshape the metal, Erik had decided to move on.

"Eira?" he called out in the empty room. Continue reading at m|v-l'e -NovelBin.net

Soon, the floating minotaur construct appeared, with a slightly relieved expression. 'I really didn't want my medium to be that ugly copper color,' she sighed inwardly.

Having already anticipated what Erik would ask of her, the same colorful array of metal ingots was floating in front of her.

Luckily, Erik had already decided what to pick while waiting for the alloy to heat.

It took him only a few seconds to swap the mysterious but useless ingot for the three metals he had decided on earlier and move on to the next part.

'Still need to go through the designing phase to be sure, but I think these three should do fine,' he thought himself. 'I'll create an alloy from the stormsilver and wintercrystal, while using the aquaferrous for the frame and lining…'

His thoughts quickly sank deeper and deeper into the mechanics of runesmithing and what he wanted to create, but he still managed to give a quick thanks to Eira.

"Thank you, Eira…" said the already distracted Erik. "You can return the other metals to storage. Give me a few hours to get familiar with these metals and the runesmithing technique, and then we can start designing, alright?"

Eira happily nodded, but Erik was already lost in his own world. He walked up to the forge, placed the ingots in the fire, and took out the Frostvolt technique book to start reading while he waited for the ingots to heat up.

Soon, Icy-white sparks danced around his fingers as he practiced the techniques described in the book.

When the ingots were hot enough, Erik grabbed a hammer from the rack of tools next to the forge. 'Time to test the first technique described in that book,' he thought curiously to himself, before the hammer suddenly started glowing a dark blue.

This sight caused him to grin, before quickly taking one of the ingots out of the forge, and starting to hammer it into a different shape. The curious thing, however, was that his actions were not creating any sound. In fact, the hammer didn't seem to be touching the metal at all.

This was because Erik was using the electrical and magnetic components of thundersnow, to create a powerful electromagnetic field around his hammer, allowing him to shape the metal without direct contact. This was great for reducing imperfections in the eventual product, and allowed for enhanced precision during the hammering.

Throughout the next few hours, the smithing hall became a tropical hotbed, interspersed with bursts of cold and flashes of lightning as Erik became familiar with the materials, and tested many of the Frostvolt techniques described in the similarly named book.

Finally, after five hours of nonstop smithing, he put down his hammer and sighed from contentment while stretching his slightly aching muscles. "Aaaah, that feels good…" he mumbled. "It's been too long since I had the opportunity of simply working on shaping metal for a few hours..."

"I'm glad you enjoyed yourself, Master!" a chirpy voice suddenly sounded from the side.

Erik raised his eyebrows in surprise when he finally noticed Emma standing a little behind him. 'Was I really so absorbed in work?' he wondered.

Then he looked at the tray full of tea and food Emma was carrying and smiled. "You're too good to me, Emma. How long have you been waiting there?"

"Not too long!" she answered with a bright smile hanging on her lips.

Erik looked at her with a suspicious gaze, 'Somehow, I doubt that…' he thought to himself. He fully suspected her to be capable of simply having stood there watching him for an hour. Noticing his gaze, Emma playfully pursed her lips, and said nothing.

Unfortunately, since Elora was still in hibernation and thus no help to him here, Erik was forced to simply sigh and let it go.

"Well, I suppose I have no choice but to believe you," he lamented, before taking some food from the tray.

He spend a little time together with Emma as they ate, drank, and talked. Although the talking was mostly Erik regaling Emma with more stories from his time on Söl.

After an hour, Erik finally spoke up. "Alright, Emma. I love you, and this was fun, but we both need to get back to it. The faster you reach second rank, the faster Emily's situation can be stabilized."

Despite her desire to help her sister, Emma also enjoyed her time with Erik, so she could only pout a little. "Alright, Master… but if you don't come to bed tonight, I'll be be back!"

'She almost manages to make that sound like a threat,' Erik chuckled inwardly, before finally shooing Emma out of his workplace.

When she was gone, he once again called out to Eira in the empty hall, "Eira? I'm ready to start talking design now!"

"Finally!" a happily clapping Eira wearing a big smile appeared while holding a large stack of papers. "I've prepared some proposals!"

Erik was a little shocked to see the amount of papers she was carrying, and finally couldn't help but smile. "I like your enthusiasm, Eira, but you do remember the most important thing is feasibility, right? I'm happy to let you weigh in on the design, but in the end it needs to work, not look good, alright?"

"I know, I know," Eira pouted slightly, before smiling again and quickly pushing the papers towards him. "Now don't be a party pooper and just take a look!"

Chuckling, but perfectly willing to indulge her designs and even incorporate some of them, so long as they don't harm the effectiveness of the end result, he grabbed her papers and started looking through them.

Interestingly enough, he was pleasantly surprised by many of her designs. While some were clearly just made in a surge of childlike wonder and imagination, there were many that actually had some merit.

So he turned to Eira with an impressed gaze, "These are pretty good, Eira!"

Naturally, the minotaur construct was quick to puff out her chest in pride, "Of course they are! I made them myself!" she beamed happily.

"Alright, alright, don't get too full of yourself," Erik chuckled. "We still need to actually create the design."

He quickly woke up Elora, who was an important member of the design team as well, and not long after, they were all sitting or standing around a 3D projection of Erik's body.

It was time to create a new armor.