The Strongest Gun Magus: I Cast Bullet!-Chapter 61: Smithing the Magical Gold

Even Chili, who was hot like a furnace and breathing fire, squealed worriedly and moved away from the furnace as much as his pen allowed.

This spell could’ve been devastating in a fight if it wasn’t so stationary. The manual explained in detail how this spell was made to use in forging, and how best to do it.

Using tongs with long handles, Reynard picked the lump of magical gold and put it into the furnace, right into the Bound Flame.

The heat of the flame was so strong that his steel tongs grew red-hot just from this motion. Reynard quickly pulled it back and squinted to look at the magical gold.

The Bound Flame made it impossible to see the change in the metal’s temperature. Reynard just held it there and waited, holding his breath in anticipation.

When he felt that enough time had passed—a good half an hour!—Reynard pulled the magical gold out.

It was soft, glowing white, and so hot that Reynard had to keep it at least a step away from himself.

He grinned.

"I can finally smith you! Doesn’t look like smelting you is possible, but just smithing is already great! I will make a gun of all guns from you!"

Reynard had already planned it all through, with a blueprint and measurements. A metal this tough will be able to withstand explosions of massive power. There was enough magical gold to make something of truly huge caliber. A literal hand cannon.

Reynard immediately grabbed his smithing hammer and began working. The magical hold needed flattening and rolling to become a proper gun barrel.

The first strike went well. By the second, the magical gold cooled to orange, and Reynard had to reheat it again.

By the fourth strike, Reynard noticed that after cooling just a little, the metal began going back to its previous shape. Between him bringing down his hammer and putting the metal into the furnace to reheat, he barely made a dent in the golden lump!

"Damn it. So this metal isn’t just extremely tough, it recovers itself? It’s this magic inside..."

Now Reynard looked at the lump with new eyes.

’To make the metal hold this form, it seems that some extremely powerful heat was used... I wonder what happened to the artifact this metal was from. Marien had no idea what this thing could have been. Maybe her grandfather knows, but I’m not going to ask him!’

By this point, Reynard had heard rumors about runaways from the Blue Bismuth School and a bounty for bringing them back alive, but there were no visual descriptions, only names. Reynard wasn’t worried, since he and Marien had kept their names secret very well so far.

He wiped sweat off his forehead and resumed working.

Now the difficulty wasn’t only in reheating the metal after every other strike, it was in doing this as fast as possible! More and more sweat was coming off Reynard from the exertion and the heat.

He wasn’t even a third of the way done until the Bound Flame suddenly fizzled out.

With a gasp, Reynard fell to his knees, almost dropping his hammer on his toe.

"What?.."

His eyes stung with sweat, and he felt absolutely parched and famished. In the background, now that his ears weren’t deafened by the clanging of metal, he heard grunts of Chili.

Reynard stared at his adolescent Forge-Boar in confusion, then looked around.

The workshop had a window, which Reyanard opened for ventilation when smithing. He had started working at noon, but now it was dark outside.

Winter days were short, but still, at least several hours must’ve passed. And Chili was loud because he was hungry.

Reynard’s spell went out because he was too tired to sustain it. And now all his work was slowly being unraveled.

"Shiiiiiiiit." He groaned and stood up. His feet felt wobbly. "Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit."

"Oiiiiiiink!"

"Right. Just a moment, Chili. And remember, you ain’t eating any tasty potatoes without making me some copper in the process, alright?"

With a sigh, Reynard got up and set out to feed Chili and himself.

By now, he had begun training the Forge-Boar in metal smelting. As long as Reynard fed him metal ore and flux, Chili would regurgitate perfect quality lumps of metal later that day.

He wasn’t very used to doing it yet, but adult Forge-Boars could even make metal alloys. And their inner temperature was high enough even for most magical ores Reynard knew about.

As he ate his own snack, Reynard thought about how to proceed with the golden lump. Clearly, with the speed at which the work was going, at least a full day would be necessary to finish the smithing.

It would have taken less time if he hadn’t needed to reheat the metal all the time.

’If I smith the lump while it’s right inside the Bound Flame, I will get a heat stroke before I finish anything. Even a magi’s body isn’t invulnerable to heat. Besides, my hammer will melt. I can use Spirit Armor to protect myself from the heat... But then I won’t have enough mana for the Bound Flame. And what will I smith with? Maybe there’s a harder-to-melt hammer I can buy. A magical one... But heat protection?’

Reynard wondered if there were any potions of that for sale. He would definitely need some life-strengthening ones to sustain him during the forging.

’And with all this, my Bound Flame can still go out or weaken too much because I overexert my aura. What I need, and what will make this all much easier... Is to refine my aura. If I could reach the Final Cycle Albedo... No, just... Fifth or Sixth Cycle would be enough, probably.’

Reynard was in his Second Cycle at the moment. He had the money to buy Earth Mana items, but his refining method was very crude.

However, he was richer now than he was just a few days ago... And with much better connections.

’Let’s see whether Orders of Winter and Snow have any good manuals for Earth Magi!’