Elder Cultivator

Chapter 1010

As it turned out, leaving a planet that was chasing you got a bit harder. It was solidly in its ball form now so it couldn’t really smash Durff into anything or crush him from all sides, but it did push him around a lot. Though he supposed regular planets did that too.

Durff got in a lot of thinking about weight and hammers and stuff. Maybe they were special insights, or maybe they were simple things he should have realized a long time ago. Either way, he spent a while wandering around the planet to get back to the half hammer he’d dropped a while ago.

He had come to try to learn more about things, and he was pretty sure he got it now. He picked up his busted hammer. He was going to have to get a new one, but it just had to be a bit tougher. While he wanted it to be heavier, he realized he could accomplish that a different way.

He looked down at the planet, taking a stance and then using the final swing the hammer had in it. He connected, and felt the weight of that connection. The planet flew away from him and he moved away from it at the same time. It would probably take it a while to gain momentum towards him, and he expected to be out of the system before that.

Durff didn’t think he was very good at flying, but he was pretty sure he’d gotten better. It was easy, actually. All he had to do was fall towards wherever he wanted to go. Much less complicated than all the stuff people usually said. He still wasn’t very good at subspace and stuff, so going between systems on his own wouldn’t be great. But there was a ship waiting for him… hopefully. It was supposed to find him, right?

Ah, there it was. Good, he didn’t have to figure out all that complicated stuff on his own. The ship was falling with him, and they ended up going the same speed before he got into it. This was way better than that one time he had gone to train in an empty system and needed to wait a year for a ship to pass through and pick him up. He’d been lucky, too, since a year was pretty short.

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Durff met up with the smith Chikere had recommended, Sadiq. He was pleased to see the man made some decent weapons and not just swords and stuff. Some good hammers and clubs and properly heavy stuff.

Chikere was already there, waiting. She apparently wanted to try that idea with the swords and stuff. Durff didn’t have good metal anyway, as even the scraps of his previous hammer were gone now.

“A hammer,” Durff said.

“What sort of hammer? I can make a maul, warhammer, various sorts of polearms… anything you have a design for or can describe, really.”

“I want a heavy one,” Durff said. “Something I can hold in two hands. Long is good, as long as the handle won’t break when I swing it.”

Chikere dumped several armfuls of swords on the floor. “Here’s some infused metal for you to work with,” she supplied.

Sadiq looked at the pile warily. “Swords into hammers? You’re going to lose most of the essence.”

Durff shrugged.

“It’s just for the material,” Chikere explained. “Besides, it’s still better this way. And he hasn’t found any roving gangs of hammerers,” she gestured to Durff.

“Just some rocks. Were they hammers? Should I have taken all that?” Durff tilted his head.

“Unless they were particularly high in metal content…” Sadiq shrugged. He picked up the numerous weapons with ease, seemingly unconcerned about cutting himself even though he wasn’t using energy to protect his fingers. “I’ll reshape a few of these into a decent weapon. You can watch, if you want, but don’t interrupt unless I ask something.”

“I think you’ll need all of them,” Durff said.

Sadiq raised an eyebrow. “I get that you can probably wield a greatly oversized weapon, but it’s not actually better.”

Durff shook his head. “It doesn’t need to be that big. Just heavy.”

“Dense?” Sadiq asked. Durff nodded. Dense was a good word. The smith’s eyes traced over him. “If I thought you were doing this just to show off your strength… well, I’d actually just let you die when you couldn’t wield it to be honest. But you seem like you know what you’re doing.”

“I think so,” Durff agreed.

Durff thought that smithing involved sticking metal in a big fire until it melted. But Sadiq just tossed the stuff into a big cylinder where it began to float, then slowly spin. It melted without any fire at all. He wanted to ask, but he wasn’t supposed to interrupt.

Sadiq took some sort of stone poker with a hook, stirring up the molten metal as it floated. He still wasn’t using energy, which was weird. Slowly, it began to vaguely resemble a long hammer. Sadiq did something that pulled out some strands of metal, dropping them into a trough of water behind the whole contraption. Bad metal, maybe?

“You don’t mind it being one solid piece, yeah? How’s this looking?”

Durff realized he was allowed to respond. Supposed to. “The handle seems pretty skinny. Won’t it break.”

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“It’s tough metal. I could make it thicker, but it would unbalance the weapon.”

“That’s okay,” Durff said. “I have pretty good balance.”

Sadiq looked over Durff. That was the only thing he’d used energy for so far. “Hmm, I think I get how this might work for you. You’re more of an instinctual sort.” Sadiq paused for a few moments. “Well, I suppose I’m making this for you and not anyone else. Better a weapon that works for its wielder than one that’s made for general purposes.”

He went back to ignoring Durff. A bit more poking around at the glowing lump, and then he yanked it out with his bare hand. That was when he started using energy, and he also started smacking it against a large anvil. Sadiq had a relatively short, stout hammer. Durff could tell it was well made, but it clearly wasn’t a weapon.

Each stroke of Sadiq’s weapon reshaped the lump. Sometimes flecks of metal would fall off, though those were always caught and tossed back into the weird floaty furnace or whatever it was. Durff noticed that sometimes, the metal just went away. No, maybe it was squished together with the rest. Denser. He worked quickly, seemingly finishing the head of the weapon before it cooled. Then he flipped just the long handle inside, just the part that was inside the weird contraption heating up and glowing.

Sadiq infused some of the scraps into the melted vaguely handle shape, but he also removed a few more strands of metal. He spun that around a lot as he hammered it on his anvil, a rapid rhythmic thumping as his hammer seemed to jiggle up and down. Durff thought it was fascinating, but his hammering technique wouldn’t do much good in a fight. Not that Duff thought the guy wouldn’t be dangerous, it was just that technique probably wasn’t.

The smith stopped hammering and spun it around, then blew on it to cool it off. Obviously that wasn’t normally enough, but his lungs were like a hurricane. “Hmm, a good start,” he said, holding it up for Durff. “What do you think?”

Durff tilted his head. “It’s not done? It looks pretty done.”

Sadiq chuckled. “It still needs polishing. And you should probably still feel the balance.”

“Does polishing make it better?” Durff asked as he held out his hands, the hammer dropping into them. It was heavy. “This is good. I like it.” He spun it around slowly. “Are you sure it’s not done?”

“If the balance is to your tastes,” Sadiq shrugged. “Polishing it would still make it more even. Slight imperfections like that could throw off techniques.”

“I’m not a smith,” Durff said. “So if you think it’s better. But I like it like this.”

“Tell you what,” Sadiq said. “You use it like that for a while. Let me know if you detect any issues.”

“Okay. Thank you,” Durff bowed. The hammer tried to pull him over, but he didn’t let it. He was pretty heavy himself anyway. “What do I owe you for this?”

“Oh, if I charge commissions for stuff like this you couldn’t afford it,” Sadiq waved his hand. “But I’d be interested in some recordings of you using that.”

“I can show you right now,” Durff said.

“Nah, I mean really using it. In a proper fight, too.”

Durff frowned. “I don’t know if recording equipment would survive.”

“Not the normal stuff. But there’s some good stuff Uzun could set up. If you’re willing, I’ll talk to him and see if he can arrange for that.”

“Okay,” Durff said. “But I’m not good with… technology and stuff.”

“It’s fine,” Sadiq said. “Someone else will deal with that. You just need to give permission.

Durff nodded. “Thanks.”

He wanted to go hit something with his hammer. But… there weren’t really any enemies around. While it seemed like the Scarlet Alliance could be attacked at any time, most of the time they actually weren’t at war. Which was kind of weird, if he was being honest.

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Upon reviewing the possible invasion paths, given the arrangement of various systems about half of them went through the Shining Cooperative. That was only considering stuff that might reach the Lower Realms Alliance, of course. The Adamant Federation and Free Planet Guardians would likely both face some sort of retaliation, and they were close to the border of the realms, but further east than anything the Lower Reams Alliance had.

There was only a relatively thin line starting from Akrys near the border where the Lower Realms Alliance actually had systems. Then there was a cluster of them around the core, and a long arm stretching eastward. It wasn’t quite the path Anton had taken towards Uzun, but that happened to be the majority of independent systems that had ended up joining them.

Some places were unlikely to be attacked. The system that Tenoun’a and Shreen occupied was most likely marked down as successfully exterminated. Without any known resources or other reason to return, they’d probably be left alone. However, they were actually flourishing over the last few centuries and it was possible information about them would have gotten out. They would be ready for an attack, if there was one.

Ekict was a point of concern as they had killed many members of the Twin Soul Sect. Not that there was anything unreasonable about that, but the point was that they had died normally without any damage to their souls. That meant information should be available from them. Of course, everywhere else that had Twin Soul Sect members might have let a few through, except perhaps Ceretos given Everheart’s traps.

Not that the Trigold Cluster would be particularly more lenient to places that had annihilated the Twin Soul Sect without any information getting out- they would just have a harder time making specific preparations for the invasions. Obviously they would be upset about those planets going dark.

Assuming that the Lower Realms Alliance had kept a perfect lockdown on information was foolish, but they did the best they reasonably could. The incident with the lower realms Trigold forces would have revealed more than they wanted, but it would have been worse to leave them attacking the Shining Cooperative and In’istra, among other places.

The Exalted Quadrant was also building up forces along the border for the upcoming shift in the Tides of the World. They were especially concentrated in an area that should be going to the Numerological Compact’s systems, which was unsurprising. That was where they’d taken the most obvious hit. They might have plans to infiltrate other planets, of course.

Nidec was likely also a target given the prevalence of the Hardened Crown Sect and others, which had been convinced to switch sides. Or killed, as necessary. They couldn’t just leave foreign agents in their alliance.

The remaining time continued to shrink, though with over a century remaining the situation could change drastically before the time came.