Steel Mission Grind [I/O]

Spoiler:

Kouma was having a fairly decent lunch, excited about what he was going to be doing this afternoon, which was smelting more of the metal that he had been doing for the past few days. He was making a fairly decent profit off of all of this in his mind, because the high grade steel that he was getting after he made some in the mining district was great, especially for his weaker puppets. As he was finishing up his meal, he quietly and quickly paid for it, before heading towards the mining district. He was greatly familiar with the layout of the village, or city more like it, when heading towards the slightly secluded mining district that was in the east side of the village, and he soon found himself on the long dirt road that led through a lightly forested area and suddenly opened up into the mining district. This was a place where one could see several plumes of smoke coming from a ways away before dissipating, and the smell of the forges was something that normal people had to take a while to get used to. Kouma was used to it now, as he had done this mission several times for the various black smiths of the city and so he was immune to the smell. His mother often commented about the smell of fire and a bit of sulfur when he came home, but his nose has seemingly gotten used to it.

Kouma quickened his pace into a slight jog, as he was getting more and more excited about going into the mines and trying out the pickaxe technique he had learned from the senior Taichi. He still had his bearings, however, and so he made sure that he got the attention of the foreman before taking a seat in a small rest area that was set up on specific days when they had the shinobi of the village come and help out. The foreman seemed a bit troupled when he saw Kouma’s bright eyed stare, as it seemed to have remind him of the unpleasant exchange between himself and the powerful ninja that came with Kouma last time and gave the foreman a stern talking to. It was more of a threat, but it did not concern Kouma, as something like this would probably not happen again, and the foreman would probably stop yelling at random people in the future because of this. Kouma was informed that there was another shinobi coming to this mission with him, and that was definitely good news, as hge was undure if other people in the village new how to mine or smelt better than he did, and it was great to think of ways to learn from other people, or help them if they wanted to learn from him.

Kouma would give pointers to whoever came, or ask for pointers if there was some sort of expert coming, as Kouma knew how to craft the intricate items that he needed to attach to his puppets, but he was a bit lacking in terms of actual blacksmith knowledge, simply because he did not use weapons much himself. Throwing that to the back of his mind, he went down into the mine that he was designated for, before grabbing the pickaxe, gloves, and the hard had from off the wall rack that was stationed in front of the mine, and heading in. Kouma quickly found his way through the well lit mine, and this time it was fairly shallow in the mountain where Kouma was told to go and start mining. This suited him just fine, as he was really tired last time having to help lug the large cart filled to the brim with iron ore stuck in the stones from deep within the mine, especially because the surface of the floor of the mine was very rocky and bumpy, so it was difficult to pull the cart for more than a couple hundred feet. Kouma was simply swinging away, testing a few pickaxe strokes to see which one was more suited to digging at the iron ore, and it seemed that the other people working there were taking notice, as they asked him a couple times on why he was changing his swing so often.

Kouma told them it was because he was trying to mimic his senior that was here earlier in the week, as he would rip through the mountain wall fairly easily with his swings, and he had learned that the older gentleman was a master of his craft. This made it fairly easy to figure out that Kouma wanted to learn from the man, and that he was trying to emulate a swing that was fluid and practice, but without much practice. Some of the older miners told him to simply try and see what worked best for him, because peoples’ bodies were different, and Kouma agreed, before digging the rest of the ores out in relative silence. He would of course talk to his shinobi friend that was with him if he so chose to, telling him a little bit about his own life, such as that he only had his mother and that he was a puppeteer. Kouma felt a need to be friendly with his fellow shinobi, no matter what their rank was. He was overly respectful to those that were older than he was however, and so this was almost certainly the first thing that Kouma brought up in conversation, which was his age of fifteen years old. Soon, after some chatting or relative silence, depending on what his partner did, there would come the time to haul the cart full of ores out of here and watch it be pulled up on a platform elevator to be thrown into the furnace.

Kouma found this part a bit relaxing, although it was swelteringly hot, as scraping out the slag that the furnace produces was a bit cathartic, how it flowed like honey in the furnace and all of the bits that were not iron were singed and deformed, they would drift to the top and be able to be scraped off. It was their job to ensure that all of the scrap metal and slag were scraped off the top, leaving only a rich golden color that was molten iron inside of the furnace, which would then be poured into the forge. The forge was essentially a large bucket made of even tougher metal that would hold the molten metal for it to be poured. After the pouring, the molten metal would slide down channels and then into grooves that looked like inverted bricks, and this would become the steel ingots. The only thing they had to do now was to add an amount of carbon through coal powder before folding it in to itself, which was another fun activity for Kouma, and he wonder if he should actually learn the art of black smithing. Regardless, he would not really make idle chat during this step, as he did not want to mess it up, and so it would be silent from his end unless his partner wanted to chat, and Kouma would respond in kind.

This was the final step, and although they had folded this metal themselves, they would not be able to receive them as a reward for the mission while they cooled down, so the site would give them their own little ingots to take home as a reward, which was forged earlier in the day and had a chance to cool. Kouma would then bid farewell to his partner that he had met and would head back to the village to potentially grab another mission, or maybe he would go and see his mother and see if she needed help with anything.
EXIT
WC: 1308/1000
Claiming 4100 ryo from mission and rank
Claiming 20 ap from mission
Claiming 26 ap from wc
Claiming high grade steel
Putting 1308 words towards Shogunate 4353/4900 previous words here