The elves led Jake to a stone-lined workshop on the edge of the settlement where the ground was black with soot. There, a thick-set Dwarf named Brog with a beard braided in silver rings looked up from a grindstone.
"Tools?" the dwarf grunted, wiping grease onto a leather apron as he stared at the gold bar Jake placed on a wooden crate. He saw the person in front of him as a soft-handed human boy who looked like he'd never done a day's labor in his life.
The dwarf picked up the gold bar, bit it, and then looked at Jake's pale, clean fingers. "I can sell ye a hammer, a bellows, and a stout anvil, lad. But lookin' at those hands of yours, you'll have skin hangin' in ribbons before you've even forged a tent peg. Why's a wealthy princeling like you wantin' to blister his palms in a smoke-hole?"
Jake looked at the heavy iron hammer on the table. In his mind, the Arcanum System flickered, showing him the Schematic for a Flintlock, but the hammer stayed still. He would have to pick it up. He would have to feel the heat.
"I'm not a prince," Jake said, reaching for the heavy tool. "I'm the guy who's going to change how this world works."
Brog laughed, a deep, gravelly sound. "Right then. If you've the gold, I've the iron. Let's see if you've the spine to match."
(Timeskip)
Jake didn't just feel tired; he felt hollowed out. In the Arcanum game, "Pure Ore" was a sprite in an inventory slot. In the reality of the forge, it was a brutal, hours-long battle against thermodynamics.
Guided by the System's obsessive mental blueprints, Jake had manipulated the heat and carbon levels with a precision that bordered on the supernatural. He didn't have a thermometer, but he knew the exact shade of cherry-red that signaled the metal was ready. He hammered until his vision blurred and his modern hoodie was soaked in a mixture of soot and sweat.
Finally, he quenched the metal slab. The hiss of steam was the last thing he heard before his legs gave out. Jake collapsed onto the dirt floor of the smithy, his chest heaving, his palms a map of broken blisters. He was out cold before his head even hit the dust.
The dwarf smith, Brog, watched the boy fall and let out a short, guttural chuckle. "Stupid whelp," he grumbled, wiping his brow. "Thinks a bit of gold and a fancy way of talkin' makes him a smith. He'll be lucky if that slag of his isn't as brittle as dry glass."
Brog walked over to the cooling vat to retrieve the "failure." He used his tongs to pull out the rectangular bar Jake had been obsessively beating. He intended to toss it into the scrap pile, but as the water drained off, the dwarf froze.
The metal didn't look like iron. It had a dull, silvery sheen that seemed to absorb the light of the forge. Brog brought it to his anvil and struck it with his heavy master-hammer.
Clang.
The sound wasn't the flat thud of common steel. It rang like a cathedral bell, a pure, high note that vibrated through the dwarf's very beard. Brog's laughter died instantly. He grabbed a magnifying lens and peered at the grain of the metal.
"By the Great Anvil..." he whispered, his voice trembling.
It wasn't just iron. It was an alloy of impossible balance. The carbon was distributed with a molecular perfection that even the legendary smiths of Mahakam couldn't achieve without months of folding. This human boy—this "Dh'oine" who looked like he'd never seen a coal fire—had just produced a metal that surpassed the ancestral techniques of the Elder Races.
Brog looked down at the unconscious boy on the floor. Jake looked pathetic—small, dirty, and physically broken by the effort. But in his mind, he carried a logic that defied the world's natural order.
"Wake up, lad," Brog growled, though his voice now held a sliver of terrifying respect. He kicked Jake's boot, not out of malice, but urgency. "Wake up! How did ye do it? How did ye get the temper so even without a mage to steady the heat?"
Jake groaned, his eyes fluttering open to see the dwarf's face inches from his own. The System flickered in his vision:
[ITEM CRAFTED: PURE ORE (QUALITY: MASTERWORK)][SMITHING SKILL INCREASED]
"I told you," Jake croaked, his voice cracking. "I'm an inventor."
Brog held up the silver-grey bar. "Inventor? Lad, if you can make steel like this by hand, the kings of the Northern Realms will go to war just to own your fingers. What do you call this?"
"It's just the start," Jake said, pushing himself up. "It's a foundation."
Jake didn't rest. Despite the exhaustion clinging to his bones, he spent the next forty-eight hours refining that impossible alloy into a weapon. Following the mental blueprints of the Balanced Sword, he shaped a blade that was terrifyingly light yet dense enough to cleave through stone.
When it was finished, the sword had no runes, no glowing enchantments, and no sorcerous "heart." It was simply a masterpiece of geometry and metallurgy.
The test came sooner than expected. A Drowner had wandered too close to the settlement's perimeter, and in the chaos, Jake drew his creation. The blade didn't just cut; it seemed to ignore the monster's oily, toughened hide. Because the sword possessed a high Technological Aptitude, it existed in a state of "Perfect Order." When it struck a creature of "Chaos" (magic), the friction wasn't just physical—it was a fundamental clash of realities. The Drowner didn't just bleed; its very essence seemed to unravel where the steel touched.
"Don't touch it," Jake snapped as an elven sage reached out to inspect the blade. The sword hummed with a subtle, high-frequency vibration. "If someone with a Source or a mage tries to wield this, the feedback will fry their nerves. This is a tool of logic. It hates your magic."