Elevation of Mana Chapter 62 Irons in the Fire

I finally washed off my face, tired, exhausted, but satisfied.  It had taken months of work, but my testing was finally done, for now. The final bar of steel was tested, and placed in the small rack sectioned for it a hidden compartment in my floor.

There had been a number of problems, all of which overlapped in the first few batches, but slowly I'd worked them out to the degree that I was currently happy with.  My steel wasn't near as good as some of the modern alloys, but for where I was and the materials and knowledge I had I felt it held up well.

A big part of the problem had been gas, particularly oxygen and carbon-dioxide.  It had taken an embarrassingly long time for that to occur to me as well.  The presence of those gases, in the right amounts and at the right times could cause success or disaster, and getting them where I needed them was no easy feat, but we'd managed.

I moved a block of stone over the secret compartment, which would soon have to be expanded.  Perhaps an underground lab, or workshop where I could go privately would soon be in the mix.  Building something like that would be a pain, but it would be well worth the time invested if it worked well.

For the moment though I'd other projects to work on, and so I turned to my current headache.  Laid out across part of my workshop were various plants, all of which had been washed and beaten, washed again, boiled, in both lye and soap, and were now laying out.  Some were clear failures, some were still potential successes, the most likely of those a form of coconut which lived on some of the nearby seashores.

Leather was the current choice for clothing, and one I doubted would be replaced any time soon, but there were places where cloth was just needed.  I knew about as much about it as I had smithing, and would be handing it off far, far sooner, but I needed a sort of proof of concept first.

“Hey boss, you here?” came a call from my door.

“Yes Chien, come in,” I replied.

“More secret projects?” he asked as he looked over the drying fibers.

“Trying to recreate something I saw once.  Never done it before so it's not working as well as I'd like.  This one I'll teach someone else just as soon as I get it working,” I replied.

“Don't like it?”

“Not in the least, and it's very time intensive.  That's for later though, how did soap go down?” I asked.

He chuckled.  “Better than I thought it would boss.  I showed it to some of the girls down on the flower street and they're losing their minds over it.  If you showed up with a few blocks of that nice-smelling one you made you'd have your pick for a night.”

“I could do that anyway,” I replied.  “Though introducing hygiene to the world is worth the effort.”

“Don't know what that is boss,” Chien admitted.

“Being clean, like, very clean.  Not the 'I soaked in the ocean for a moment three days ago.' clean.”

“Whatever you say boss,” he said with a shrug.

“On another note, I saw some pottery in the market the other day.  Your payment.”  I pulled a small bag off of a nearby shelf and tossed it to him, what I owed for his work.

“Nice!” he said weighing it.  “Got to admit though, their work looks garbage next to yours.”  He looked over at a few of my newer pieces as they dried in the corner.

“Perhaps, but that isn't the point.”

“The point is to spread it,” he said with a sigh, repeating what I'd told him a horrid number of times.

“Glad to see you're finally getting it,” I said with a sarcastic smirk.

“No, no I don't get it at all, but you pay well, and I'm learning things that will make me rich one day.” He thought for a moment.  “What'll happen when people make things better than you?” he asked.

“First, I'll celebrate, since that means that not only have they learned what I'm teaching, but they've improved on what I know.  Then I'll move to something else.”

“Some of your ideas are weird though, like that lime stuff.  Works good as white paint, which is cool and all, but not really anything else,” he complained.

“Ah, that is setting the stage,” I remarked.

“Huh?” the boy replied, clearly confused.

“Getting ready for bigger things to come.”

“Oh, you mean 'readying for the hunt'?” he asked.

“Yeah, that too.  Lime is used in a number of things.  So is lye for that matter, but those will come later.”

“So what does this mess become?” he inquired, poking a few of the drying fibers.

“Something like leather, but not,” I replied.  “Thing is that they're all kind of rough and shorter than I'd like.  I need something like long and soft hairs, but no animals around here really have those.”

“... mom told me about something called a 'catch-beast' from back where she came from,” he admitted.  “If what she said was right those might work.”

I could have hugged the kid, this was the kind of thing I kept him around for, things about the area I didn't know... wait.  “Are they from around here?” I asked.

“Two days north is where her village was.  So I guess they're close.”  I could have hugged the kid, that was exactly what I kept him around for, local stuff.

“Tell me about them then,” I requested.

“Sure, she said the hunters would practice on them.  They've got fire, like you and me.  They're fast and hard to catch, and nobody really hunts them for food since they don't have much meat and taste bad.  They've got this really long hair though, and if you can get close and grab some it comes right away.  The beast runs off and you can try again later.  Kind of a challenge for young men and those who want to show how good they are.”

“Explains why I've never seen their hides in the market.  Two days north you said?”

“Wait, are you actually planning on going for those things?” he asked.

“Of course, I need a good source of fibers and to know if they'll work I'll have to at least take a look at one.  Maybe I'll even catch one myself, little bit of the hair to experiment with.”

“Listen Justin, I know you're smart and all, but are you any good of a hunter?  They're supposed to be really hard to catch.”

“I'll manage,” I answered.  If all else failed I could just use magic, I was pretty good at magic.  “Have to clean up the house a little bit first...”

Finishing up the current batch of pottery and the run of fiber attempts would have to happen first, but after that... Even if it failed maybe I could felt some of the things I'd already found, felt was a cloth right?  That seemed reasonably possible.  I rubbed my hands together and began to get to work.

“You've got that look in your eye again,” Chien said as I turned and began going over things again.  I barely registered it when he grumbled, “Guess I'll head off then, see you later boss.”