Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Okay, first, I need to wait for the right temperature... Before, it was a bright yellow..." Stahl muttered to himself, simply staring into the forge as he did so. After a few minutes, exactly that temperature was reached, and Stahl grabbed the dull blade out of the forge and turned it back into a simple lump of metal to basically ’reset’ everything. And then, he really started trying to get everything started.

"Think about what Gramps always rambled about... Not too strong, just barely strong enough for what you want to do... I need to be quick, but I shouldn’t rush anything... Just concentrate on the metal, and slowly shape it into the clear form you have in your mind..." The young man continued, carefully trying to hold the metal via the tongs in his left hand, while using the hammer in his right hand to carefully change the shape of the metal.

Seeing that Stahl was getting really into it now, the Inkheart Teacher actually did his ’Job’ and corrected some things about Stahl, although not by much. He helped him hold the hammer more efficiently, and made sure that Stahl wasn’t grasping the tongs too tightly and end up leaving an imprint in the metal.

The rest, Stahl had to figure out on his own. Soon, he ended up with a shape similar to the dagger he had before, but much more clearly an actual dagger, with a proper, straight edge that just needed to be ground sharp now. He even made sure to include that thin piece of metal so that he could attach a handle to it later.

But for now, Stahl sat down at the grinding wheels, trying to figure out how to use them. With a confused expression paired with top-notch puppy-eyes, he looked over toward Sky, who soon noticed the young, green-haired man’s expression and sighed loudly.

"There’s a gem in the center of the wheel. Pour your mana inside of it, and it’s going to start spinning. You don’t need a lot, so don’t needlessly waste your mana with it." Sky explained, and Stahl nodded his head with a grin.

"Alright, thanks!" He replied, before doing just what he was told. Although, just before he pressed the metal against the wheel, he noticed something else. He was currently sitting at the finest Grinding Wheel there was, and he was pretty sure he had to start rough and then go finer. So, he sat down at the roughest Grinding Wheel and did just that. He held the blade’s edge against the rough surface, unsure of what to do next. "Wait, Gramps never just holds it against it, he..." Stahl muttered, and then copied motions that he saw his grandfather use sometimes, slowly going against the movement of the Grinding Wheel with the edge, and moving it slightly sideways, repeatedly going over the same areas. And then, it was done, for the most part.

It was actually already quite sharp, so Stahl was pretty satisfied for his first proper creation! Yes, this was absolutely his first creation, the iron he was holding absolutely never had any other shape other than that of an ingot before today!

"And now I’m just missing a handle..." Stahl whispered to himself, slowly stepping up to the equipment that Parc and Rouge made for him to see what the handle was there.

"Is it just leather? Nah, it’s too hard for that... There’s wood underneath, but how do I get it around it?" He asked quietly, before scratching the back of his head. "Do I really need to make a handle for this? It’s not going to go beyong rank 0 at the moment anyway, so it’s not really necessary, now is it? And that would be woodworking, wouldn’t it..?" Stahl muttered to himself, but Sky, who seemed to have overheard all of it, swiftly spoke up and corrected him.

"If you’re doing something just as a small part for another skill, that counts toward the ’other skill’. So if you technically use woodworking to make a wooden handle for a metal item you’re currently making, that counts toward Blacksmithing. If you have the woodworking skill already, it gives a little proficiency, but it’s not enough to learn the woodworking skill. You need to make a fully wooden item for that." Sky explained, and Stahl slowly nodded his head.

"Huh... I see. Thanks!" The young man said with a grin, before just looking at the small blade in his hand. He would only be making these pure metal items, so that he could re-use the metal later again, and so, he saw the blade as finished and saw a notification pop up in front of him.

[Simple Iron Blade]

[Quality - Average][Rank - 0]

[Description] A small iron blade made by a nameless Blacksmith. It doesn’t have a handle, so it cannot be properly used for its purposes, but the edge is sharp enough to cut into things.

[Effect] None

With a loud sigh, Stahl made the notification disappear and then scratched the back of his head. "I guess i’s not too bad for my second try?" He muttered to himself, before just shrugging and placing the metal back into the forge to once more let it heat up to be worked with his hammer. In the meantime, he checked his status and saw that he gained a little bit of proficiency in the blacksmithing skill, and nodded his head in satisfaction.

"Alright, if all of the skills level up at that pace, I should be able to finish Leatherworking in a few hours, and then we can start on the book." Stahl explained to Sky, who just quietly nodded his head without looking up from his book.

And so, Stahl continued to repeatedly work the same metal over and over again into the same shape each time, and finally managed to rank the skill up to one at some point.

"Akatori, Rock-Lizard dude, thanks for your help!" Stahl exclaimed with a grin, before telling the two monsters to deactivate their skills, because he was now done with Blacksmithing and didn’t really require their help anymore.

"Okay, now I just need some cloth... Alright, this should be good enough." Stahl muttered to himself before quickly appraising the pure white, somewhat weirdly shiny piece of cloth he was holding.

[Magic Cloth][Quality - Highest][Rank - 3]

"Magic Cloth..? And it’s a Rank 3 material, so if I use this, then I should probably be able to level up a lot faster, right?" Stahl asked as he turned to Sky, who slowly lifted his head from the book and shook his head. "Nope. You most likely can’t even use it yet. I don’t have the Tailoring skill, but I think that counts as something you learn to use at a later rank. And using materials with ranks higher than your skill’s rank is really, really hard. One rank above is bearable, two ranks above is nearly impossible, and you most likely won’t be able to scratch a material three ranks above your skill’s rank. Well, using it might be possible if you try hard enough, but anything you make will be far, far worse in quality than you could want, if you’re not at the right rank." Sky explained before waving his hand to unsummon the Inkheart Blacksmithing teacher. "Oh, and I don’t have Tailors or Leatherworkers, so you’ll have to deal with that on your own." The Fey-Kin said with a grin, and then swiftly looked back at his book, leaving Stahl to simply sigh loudly.

"Fine, fine... Then I can’t use this yet... Hmm, then what can I use..?" Stahl muttered to himself as he swiftly left the room to look for some fabrics that he would be able to use, before finding something rather unexpected amongst the materials. For some reason, there was a black suit, with a red tie and red handkerchief, as well as a black shirt.

Its whole arm was completely ripped up, so it was really shredded to pieces. "Hmm... Maybe I should try and fix this?" Stahl muttered to himself. He never made anything from scratch, but at the very least, he knew how to somewhat sew things back together. He fixed one of Katy’s stuffed toys once when she accidentally ripped it up.

"Oh, that would be a nice idea as well... There’s some kids on the ship, so they’ll surely be happy to have something to play around with." He told himself before he grabbed the ripped up suit, a big mountain of cotton, and a bunch of cloth similar to jute fabrics in their texture and strength.

"Alright, this should be enough..." Stahl muttered to himself, before making his way back to the workspace and sitting down in front of the simple flat surface that the Rock-Lizard created before leaving at Stahl’s request.

"Okay, now some needles and thread..." He said quietly as he took a look around the room and found just what he was looking for in the corner, before nodding his sead with a grin. "First, I need to figure out what it should look like." Stahl told himself before slowly holding his palm forward and creating a small model of a very simple teddy-bear. And then, using that small mana-figure as a reference, Stahl made some sketches on paper, which he then cut out with a knife he found, to make templates.

The first thing that he then did was cut those parts out. ’Tailoring’, or rather just sewing in this case, was something that was rather easily done at home without needing any extraordinary materials or tools, so Stahl knew somewhat how this worked, if not from doing so a few times himself then just because he saw it in TV or in some random videos online.

After cutting everything out, Stahl then swiftly sewed each surface together in a set of ’Limbs’, meaning that he made two separate arms, two separate legs, the torso, the head, and the ears. And he did that by sewing the parts together inside-out, because that would make it easier to his the sewing-lines.

"Wait, do I need to fill the limbs with cotton now and then sew everything together, or do I need to sew everything together, and THEN fill everything with cotton?" Stahl asked himself before shaking his head in realization. "First sew everything together while it’s inside-out, then flip it back so that the inside is back where it belongs, and then fill it... otherwise I wouldn’t be able to hide the places where I sewed it together well, right..?" He muttered unsure, but simply shrugged. If he did it wrong now, he would do it the right way next time.

Carefully, although he was trying to do it relatively fast to finish this as soon as he could manage, Stahl sewed the different parts together and finished the inside-out teddy-bear, and then he grabbed some of the cloth and bundle it together.

There was still an opening around the ’crotch’ area of the teddy bear, which Stahl then used to flip the teddy around again, and then used to fill the whole thing as tightly with cotton as he could. And after he did so, he swiftly sewed the small hole shut, sewed a small triangle-shape into the head of the teddy as a nose, and then added two buttons as eyes.

"Aaand finished!" Stahl exclaimed with a broad grin, happily reading through the notification telling him that he received the Tailoring Skill, as well as the information about the small teddy bear that he made, which actually ended up with a ’High’ Quality!

"Huh, maybe I’m actually pretty talented at Sewing!" The young man laughed, and Sky looked at him with a wry smile and a frown. "Why, because you managed to make a child’s toy?" He asked, and Stahl simply smiled at the young Fey-Kin boy.

"Yes! Because I managed to get a High Quality without even having the skill beforehand!" Stahl chuckled, before placing the teddy bear to the side again. "And now, I’ll make a few more, and then fix this suit up a little bit..."

"Wait, Suit?" Sky asked surprised, before Stahl looked at him with a frown. "Yeah, why?"

"Because that’s Eisen’s Suit."