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Long story short, Amiko’s medicine cost less than the chi enhancers that were supposed to help open my blocked chakras. So before I go off onto that tangent, Amiko got her medicine and so far as I know is still alive in the Isles.

It turns out that there are seven of these in the human form; my form was close enough to human to also have seven of these; not all of them were fully developed. Worse, by opening the sixth chakram, the one in my forehead (remember the pineal gland, oddly at the same location as the third eye?), I had caused blockages in the others. So sayeth the experts; my System didn’t detect any such problems.

But my focus was on the Flavian, particularly smashing the handle with a hammer until it broke open, and breaking the blade into pieces small enough to put into a stone bucket aside some finger bars of grey metal I have never successfully identified, which in turn went into the forge.

“This is a bellows.” Jian Shui told me. I managed not to roll my eyes, which was good, as he rapidly educated me on how it was properly used. “No faster than this. You understand?”

“I think so.” I said.

“Good. You do that for four hours, I’ll be working on other things until then.”

And he meant it. No faster, no slower. I had to focus at first, but eventually fell into a meditative state. I know I’m supposed to talk about my chakram or my inner harmony or some other nonsense about that time. The truth – there was me, and my breathing, and my heartbeats, and the rhythmic moving up and down of the bellows handle.

None of this protected me from the sore muscles, aching back, or any of the rest. Any tales of me eating two family meals worth of chicken fried rice and washing it down with an entire pitcher of tea come from one of those two days.

.....

That evening, the molten glob that my sword had become was poured into a pottery lined groove in a table.

“Now,” he said, “we both get to sleep for two hours. No more.”

“How do we possibly...?”

“My wife owns an hourglass. She will see that I do not oversleep; I will see that you do not.”

Fool that I was, I tapped the core of the metal, to see whether I would get Metal or Fire mana from it. Turns out, you can get either, but not both. Knowing that extracting the essence of metal from it might weaken the resulting sword, I pulled out Fire.

“Hurry! Hurry!” he urged, while I was still setting my System to live a day without sleep. We urgently smashed the pottery with hammers, and he thrust the steel bar into the forge.

“Quickly. As fast on the bellows as you can.” He said, while piling coal on top and around the bar. “I am terribly sorry, the bar should not have cooled so quickly.”

“I am certain it is not your fault.” I said.

“It is kind of you to say so, but you are the one who is going to have to work on that bellows. Blow air as though you were trying to set the forge itself on fire! Quickly, quickly!”

I worked to exhaustion.

“Don’t stop now! Your sword has saved your life! It needs you! Get up off the floor.”

“My stamina is limited by my health. I regret that I am wounded.”

He cursed, but took a turn on the bellows. “This is something you should have told me earlier.” He said.

“I am sorry that I did not.” I said. “But I am getting enough food, and I should heal a bit.”

He frowned at me. “Your healing will at most be a point a day. This is hard, laborious work; most warriors are surprised at the effort of personalizing a weapon. Ay-yah, but if it were not for the sake of my daughter, I would cast you out into the street now. The risk to your blade has increased.”

After half an hour, there was enough heat in the blade for him to remove the bar from the forge with a pair of tongs. I would keep the fire, again at a constant temperature, while he worked into the night. He would strike it a number of times, then place it back into the forge to restore the red glow.

Before he slept again, he had spread the bar out and put the first fold into the blade.

Throughout the next day, his mood gradually improved as Heart’s Defender took shape. He would quench the blade, heat it, and quench it again. Between the second and third quenches, he held a stone device on either side of the blade, striking it with a hammer to emplace the Daurian rune of representing protection into the blade near the tang, the part of the blade that would go inside the hilt.

“You will need to sharpen the blade yourself,” He said, “but the basic rune should take magic readily.”

“Should I try to infuse it now?” I asked.

“Fool! Wait until the blade is completed and sharpened, and THEN let the protection magic render it harder to work with. DO NOTHING before I tell you to.”

That third and final quenching took place just at dusk, a time fortuitous for transformations. He allowed me to select the parts that would make up the guard and hilt of the sword, and then threatened to kill me rather than let me risk ruining anything.

“You should go and bathe, and change into clothes that smell of something other than charcoal.”

I stumbled out into the lengthening shadows, to find an entirely different pair of guards there, eager to escort me back home.

I dimly remember getting a clean set of clothes, bathing in water that changed color when I entered it, and having to bathe in a second tub in order to truly feel clean. Those who needed the tub I had ruined had some choice words, and little interest in my apologies.

I fell asleep in my full outdoor clothes, woke to have the maido pronounce them unserviceable, and rush me into another set of clothes just in time to visit Jian Shui, and run off with my newly reforged blade to the citadel, having neither breakfast nor lunch.

Jian Shui explained that he had added too much steel to the blade, and it was between the length of a proper indoor or outdoor sword. “I’m not certain it is properly any kind of sword that I have ever made before.” He lamented, as he handed it over to me, in a wooden sheathe coated in black laquer.

The blade was plain, but functional. In spite of his complaints, the beginnings of the edge were there. It would take a bladesmith some time to grind it to a true sharpness, but the majority of the work had been done. There were no ripples and only the most shallow of fullers at the back of the blade, but the curve was even, and the runes clear on both sides of the blade.

At first, the blade resisted the Protection mana. This is a little-known phenomenon, that I myself didn’t know. Having never held magic before, the Protection magic worked to protect the blade- from itself.

A novice would have crammed more mana at it, potentially ruining the blade. Under the guidance of Jian Shui, I reminded the blade of our shared history, of its deeds and name, all the while circulating the mana like I was cultivating it through the blade.

Long story short, I missed my chance to speak to the admiral directly. Dang it! I wanted to rage, but couldn’t actually bring forth enough fire to care. Besides, I had an idea that I should have had at any point in the weeks prior.

“Who else might I be able to get an appointment with?” I asked the bureaucrat. “Might my wife and I meet with the (I had to use the Manoran word) curator of the admiral’s trophy room?”

“The guanzhang? Why would you need her?”

“Even if we are not allowed to see the exhibits themselves, we can at least hear stories about the items therein.”

A subtle smile began forming at the edges of the bureaucrat’s mouth, which should have been my first indicator that something was wrong. “Why, whomever said that you could not be allowed access to the trophy room? I’m certain so long as your guards make certain you disturb nothing, it could be arranged.”

“I find myself again in your debt. Let me consult my merchant and find another gift worthy...”

He waved a hand in dismissal. “Nonsense, nonsense. We may not have been able to grant your deepest desire, but at least let those of us serving in the administration provide this much for you before you must leave us.”

Oh. So, it was probably a trap of some kind, one I was probably expected to avoid.

“Yes, please and thank you. Let me fetch my wife, and we shall be here shortly after dinner.”

“Before dusk.” He said.

“Before dusk.”