Eternal Forge: Starting with a SSS Rank talent and a Myth Rank Class

Chapter 37: Chapter 37- The forging of Hammer, Melody of the First Forge.

The fused lump of steel sat on the anvil.

Nine separate materials had been unified into a single mass of metal that pulsed with a faint crimson glow.

One could see the red-silver glow of Starfall iron threaded through the silver sheen of Adamantine which wove between the veins of Ironwood’s dark grains and elemental ore’s shifting hues.

The runes carved for the energy channel had created something akin to a circulatory system.

Leo hadn’t thought this far when he did what he did. He could only admire his own ideas and nod with some satisfaction.

This worked out better than I had imagined.

He picked up the hammer beside the anvil.

It was an ordinary standard hammer made of ash wood, which was provided to all participants. The hammer head was steel which seemed to have been worn smooth after years of use.

It was nothing special, nothing legendary.

He gripped it with his hands, feeling the weight settle in his arms.

It feels familiar.

These smooth, worn out steel and the worn out grip in this hammer shaft reminds me of my Old man’s Smithy in real world.

He couldn’t help but reminisce about the real world smithy and past.

He still remembered being twelve and standing before the anvil for the first time, how his father stood behind him and guided his small hands with his big rough hands.

”Grip it here,” his father would say with patience and care with a hint of strictness in his voice. ”Not too tight. Not too loose. The hammer is an extension of your arm. It should feel like part of yourself.”

The weight of the first strike, the clear ring of the metal, and his father telling him to hit it again and again until his hands blistered and arms grew heavy. Everything was coming back at this moment.

The first item he ever forged was a short dagger. He could still picture his father turning it over and complaining, ”It’s not perfect,” and again comforting him and complimenting ” Not perfect but, it’s honest work.”

His father had always told him that forging tools are sacred. ”They’re used to create, not destroy.”

The one thing his father always told him multiple times, ”A hammer builds. An anvil supports. Tongs hold. Bellows give breath. These are tools of creation. Never use a hammer for killing. It taints the metal. It taints your soul as a blacksmith.”

He hadn’t understood it then. He was twelve, and killing belonged to stories, to distant wars, to places that had nothing to do with a small smithy on a quiet street.

But after arriving in Myth Online, this was one of the reasons he had never used a hammer for killing, even when his class had given him a skill which could deal double the damage when used with a hammer.

The words his father had spoken stayed with him till now.

A forge tool is sacred.

He blinked, and the weight of the hammer in his hands pulled him back to the present — ash wood, worn steel, the anvil waiting in front of him.

He studied the fused bar once more with focus.

[Forge-Sight Activated]

His vision shifted once again and the interior of the metal unfolded before his eyes.

Even though all the metal bars were melted and fused as one after cooling, nine layers could still be seen. It was like layers of earth’s crust containing different beds of rock and soil.

The energy channels formed a lattice through out the metal, thin lines of carved light that connected every material, creating pathways for force and mana to flow. These basic compatibility of runes overlaid in the channels were holding the impossible combination together.

The surface of the metal was still uneven and rough. He still needed to hammer it down to a proper shape and force the molecular structure into alignment.

One wrong angle could separate the layers, while too much force could lead to energy channels breaking apart and too little force and the metal would remain loose, full of micro voids, that would weaken the final form.

This was the disadvantage of carving the runes before forging. But it wasn’t much of a problem for Leo who had forge sight.

Leo exhaled. Rolled his shoulders. Felt the weight of the hammer settle into his palms.

Father used to say the first strike sets the tone for everything that follows.

He raised the hammer.

....

CLANG.

The first strike resounded clear, resonant.

A wave of energy travelled from the point of impact outward through the metal. The energy channel pulsed and absorbed the shock, distributing the force evenly across the entire bar.

Leo felt the vibration travel up from the hammer into his wrist all the way to his shoulder.

It meant the metal was giving enough recoil with the similar force he applied in that strike.

Equal reaction force.

Good. That means the fusion was solid. Leo thought.

He struck again.

CLANG!

Another ripple, another flash of light.

He imbued the hammer with the Eternal fire and then continued striking.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

Each strike landing on the spot, driving the metal downward, compressing it into itself. The metal began to flatten at the center, the edges pushing outward like dough.

”Look at the ripples,” Lady Silva said, adjusting her spectacles. ”Each one carries light. The runes are distributing the impact energy throughout the entire structure.”

Elder Thrain said nothing. His gaze was fixed on Leo’s hands.

Soon Leo found his rhythm. He lost himself in forging. The surrounding sound died off.

The world narrowed.

The royal smithy dissolved at the edges. The judges, the other competitors, the heat of the forges, the smell of hot metal—all of it faded to background noise. What remained was hammer, anvil, metal.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

The hammer rose and fell like a pendulum, mechanical in its consistency.

...

And then something shifted.

A warmth spread from his chest outward—through his arms, into his hands, down the hammer handle.

[Ancestral Cadence Activated]

The rhythm in his mind sharpened. Before, he had been counting—Strike. Pause. Strike. Pause. Now the counting disappeared. The rhythm was simply there, embedded in his muscles, in his bones, in the tendons that flexed and released with each swing.

His perception sharpened. He started to see the metal’s surface in impossible detail which even the Forge-Sight had never shown before. Each grain, each lattice, each ridge was shown within his vision.

The energy channel runes held together under Leo’s precise strikes.

The metal had been flattened, folded, and shaped multiple times already.

The fused bar was shrinking, getting compressed. The nine materials were being forced closer together, their molecular structures aligning under the precise hammer blows from Leo.

He kept hammering with the rhythm.

Soon he entered the trance, and strange forging phenomena started to manifest.

[Ancestor’s Echo has been triggered.]

All of a sudden, his precise mechanical hammer strikes became smooth and well-trained. His hammering rhythm changed. Before, it was like watching a rookie genius forging. Now Leo seemed to have been through thousands of forgings across the ages—his strikes looked like those of a bona fide blacksmith.

His hammering rhythm kept changing. Soon the hammering sound produced felt like musical notes. Each strike producing melodies.

Master Kael stood up. He couldn’t understand other forging methods, but this musical forging—he had seen it once, in an ancient tomb, in a vision about the Pre-Pantheon Era. A technique used by the first blacksmiths, when forge-craft was not just labor, but art.

”How is that possible?” Master Kael’s shaky voice immediately attracted the other judges.

”What happened, Master Kael?” Lady Silva asked.

”Im... Impossible. That... That’s a Pre-Pantheon technique. The Melody of the First Forge. Created by the Legendary Blacksmith, goddess of the melodies. I thought it was only legend.”

The legend of the goddess of Melody the legendary Blacksmith has been passed down for ages, so almost all the people in Asgard knew of her.

Hearing him speak, all of the judges stood up in shock.

”What?? How is that possible..??” Their eyes wide in shock.

Even the participants were being drawn by the melodies.

Kai paused his own work, hammer hovering mid-swing. He turned toward Leo’s station, brow furrowed. ”What is he—”

Lyra set down her tongs. Her elven senses picked up the energy shift first—the rhythmic pulse emanating from Leo’s anvil, growing stronger with each strike.

Vex stopped hammering his blade. The sound from Leo’s station was pulling his attention away, like a drumbeat in a silent room.

Gandalf was the last to stop. He had been hammering his own piece—a massive chunk of dwarven steel, shaped by brute force and tradition. But the sound from Leo’s station broke through his concentration. A rhythm. Perfect. Unwavering.

Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.

”What in the ancestors’ name...” Gandalf muttered.

...

As they watched with awe, the rhythm once again changed, and now his hammer seemed to be floating, each strike soft.

The rhythm kept changing.

The judges couldn’t keep up with the changing rhythm anymore.

As the judges watched, they seemed to have entered an enlightened state, their knowledge of blacksmithing and level of blacksmithing nearly breaking through to the next level.

But just as they wanted to keep watching Leo forge, Leo’s hammering rhythm slowed down. He was back to his original rhythm.

They felt pity; they could not see more of those techniques.

Although the rhythm slowed down, it still remained precise and controlled.

Each strike shaped and guided the metal to its final form.

It had already taken shape. It was no longer just a fused lump of metal. It was rectangular, thick, dense, and with the proportion of a hammer head.

The previously differentiable 9 layers were no more. All nine materials had been compressed to the point they were indistinguishable even with his Forge-Sight.

Leo checked the metal once more.

No cracks. No voids. No impurities.

The fusion was complete at the molecular level—nine materials behaving as one. The energy channel runes glowed beneath the surface, a network of light that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

The hammer head was finally completed.

Leo stepped back. Sweat dripped from his chin onto the hot metal, hissing into steam. His arms trembled—not from exhaustion, but from the residual vibration of hammer strikes still echoing through his bones. The forge hammer in his hand was warm to the touch, its handle darkened with sweat.

He set it down.

The hammer head sat on the anvil. Rectangular. Dense. Heavy with the combined weight of nine high purity materials compressed into a form no larger than a man’s fist. Its surface was smooth, compressed, the metal grain aligned so perfectly that light reflected off it in clean, unbroken lines.

Forge-Sight confirmed what his eyes suggested.

[Forging Complete: Hammer Head]

[Quality: Flawless]

[Materials Fused: 9/9]

[Energy Channels: Active]

.....

Leo reached for the Asgardian Ironwood handle that lay on the workbench. It was a rod of dark, dense material—mahogany in appearance but steel in weight, its grain running the full length of the handle in unbroken lines.

This was the Asgardian Ironwood that had the property of metal. A part of this wood had already been melted into liquid metal and combined into the hammer head.

He quickly inscribed the similar Energy channel runes into the wooden shaft.

Leo turned the hammer head on its side. The connection point was a narrow channel he’d shaped during the final strikes—a slot, barely visible, cut into the base of the rectangle at precisely the right angle. He’d designed it during the fusion, knowing the Ironwood would need to seat flush against the Starfall Iron’s base.

He slid the handle into the slot. The fit was perfect.

The moment the wood touched metal, the energy channels activated. Golden light pulsed along the connection point, flowing from the hammer head into the handle, from the handle into the hammer head. The runes he’d carved on each material found each other, linked, synchronized.

The runes in the hammer head and shaft were connected. Then Leo heated the Asgardian wood and hammer head at their junction. Both melted and fused together once more. Now it was a single entity. Not a separate piece of hammer head and shaft but a single entity combined.

[Ding!]

[Handle Attached: Asgardian Ironwood]

[Energy Channel Sync: 100%]

[Connection Integrity: Flawless]

Leo gripped the completed hammer with both hands and lifted.

The hammer was heavy but well balanced.

Now it was finally time to carve the runes from the stele.

Leo had a bunch of ideas to carve the runes. He would use his mind’s dimensional space to visualize before carving.