Getting Aluminum 4

Spoiler:

Kouma had recently been training a massive amount for the upcoming chuunin exams, and so he was not quite interested in missions as of late, and so he wanted to make sure that he kept going with missions so that he could keep getting materials for his various puppets. This led him back to the administration building to ask yet again for a mission to help that kindly black smith with all of the smelting tasks that he had. This black smith seemed to be more popular as of late, perhaps this was because of the chuunin exams on the horizon, but Kouma would not concern himself with that at the moment, as he had bigger things to worry about. All of this training would be bad for his physical and mental health if he did not take a break every once in a while, so this was something akin to a break to him. This was because he really loved working with his hands, and there were not really any other modifications that he could make on his puppets that would be worth while for the chuunin exams, so he decided to go and have a bit of fun with smelting some metal. He would even get a bit of the metals that he was working on, so this was something that gave him some cash and some material, so hopefully he could buy more material. Kouma took a second and sighed, realizing the amount of money needed to sustain his puppetry was going to be quite extensive. Kouma had to soldier on, however, so he immediately hurried his steps a bit, making it to the black smith quicker so that he could get on with the fun activity of smelting. As he got to the shop, he did not see the black smith outside as he usually did, but this could be for any number of reasons, so he headed over to the front door of the shop, and saw that he was inside talking to the actual shop keeper, because the black smith did not want to deal with people, especially with the haggling of prices and other such nonsense that he did not feel like messing around with. So Kouma simply walked into the black smith’s office and made his presence known to the black smith.

After that, the black smith simply looked over his shoulder at Kouma’s smiling face, before simply nodding at him and giving him the signature grunt of acknowledgement. Kouma then simply walked out of the shop before heading outside where the forge and other equipment were held, and he was going to immediately start the smelting process for the aluminum. First, he walked up to a large crate off to the side that was held inside the store house for most of the time, but when the black smith was actually here, it would be out for him and his apprentices, or shinobi in this case, to utilise. Kouma was quite familiar with the process already, so he walked over and lit a small fire with a flint stone and a small fan that was left out for fanning the flames of the furnace and forge. As the fire grew in size slowly, Kouma watched it until it became self sustaining, and then walked over to the crate with all of the ores in it. There was a fairly large group of ores in here, but Kouma knew what aluminum ore looked like now, and so he simply found a couple and grabbed them. By this time, the black smith had finally come outside after talking with the shop keeper about whatever issue he was having. He came over and sat down, looking through some tools on a bench that was for him only, and watched over Kouma’s work, making sure to critique him whenever he made a mistake. Kouma had been doing this for a while, but he was by no means an experienced veteran, so he made a few mistakes, but thankfully they were minor mistakes such as slightly too much heat for this particular metal when he did not control the flames very well.

He also left a small bit of slag in the aluminum and had to re-melt it and scrape the bit of slag off, so his pay would be slightly docked since he wasted a bit of aluminum. Kouma did not mind this, and neither did the black smith, he simply patiently told Kouma what he was doing wrong, and what to do over again with the new information. Kouma always thanked him after, even though the middle aged man did not seem to like children, and Kouma was still technically a child. He was going to be an adult in a few years, unless he took that mysterious aging pill, which he might have to so that he could better support his mother with an older body. He pushed those sorts of thoughts to the back of his mind, before heading over with the molten aluminum to the casting table, which was a simple metal table that had a groove in it that resembled an ingot that was a reverse space into the table. With a goblet full of molten aluminum in the grasp of his tongs, he carefully poured the glowing white hot liquid into the rectangular mold. Aluminum was not a great conductor of heat, meaning the ingot that was cast became cool in a relatively short time, at least cool enough to handle. Then all it needed was to be pulled out and dipped into a bath of water to fully cool it down and solidify it.

This was completed in fairly short order, and there really was no reason or way that Kouma could fail that part aside from dropping the ingot, but he did not do that, as he was always careful with his surroundings. After he had done this, the process simply needed repeating until he was completed with the mission, which the black smith had set to be five ingots. Kouma bowed to the man and returned to his home with his shiny new aluminum bricks.
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EXIT
WC: 1029
Claiming 2100 ryo for mission and genin
Claiming Aluminum
Using 1000 words on Detached Embodiment, 1000/1875 with 25% discount for A rank

Approved