章 58: Chapter 55: Phosphoric Fang

Shirou brought out the steel with a pair of tongues and began hammering again. Jewelled steel is a high iron steel made from the iron stand that has more concentrated iron when compared to iron ores hence the appearance is like scrap.

Once the steel was flattened and looked like a sheet due to repeated roasting and hammering shirou let it cool down. The cool steel looked like cast iron and its properties are also pretty similar to that of cast iron. Retrieving a small mallet from the side the boy put the plate on the edge of the anvil and broke it down into small pieces the size of thumb.

He put the broken pieces of steel onto the remnant of the plate and then stacked the thumb-sized pieces on the base large piece. Here he took a break and drank water to prepare for the oncoming uphill battle, then brought out a box from the stand containing sealed boxes.

With the opening of the wooded lid, the smell of rotten soil filled the noses of the humans present, inside the box was dark black soil which should rather be called clay than soil. This was the soil from Iskandar's crypt which was saturated which was once evil spirits.

The tuner was responsible for procuring this after he talked with Waver who was struck in greece due to accepting a task from the second owner of the land. After a lot of effort, Melvin somehow got the soil and was in a happy mood for about 2 weeks after that. He claimed that he had some adventure that he didn't describe more about.

The boy diluted the clay by mixing some water in it and then used a ladle to pour the clay over the stack of metals. During forging the jewelled steel is covered by clay to prevent oxidisation as it melts and becomes a uniform piece of steel. After the block melted into a yellow-hot mass that shirou identified by the structural grasp he began hammering again.

Normally in a traditional smithy, 3 people forge the steel. One is the master smith who sets the pace for hammering the steel with a mallet-like hammer and 2 apprentices who follow the rhythm set by their master beat the steel with large sledge hammers. But shirou is following the method taught by Tatsuo, even if the technique is rudimentary it is designed for the magus to use hence appropriate use of reinforcement magecraft can easily compensate for the number of people.

Another problem is that shirou is using his mana to accurately hammer the metal at the spot which is most effective, hence with a combination of accuracy and enhanced strength with magecraft shirou was able to overcome his disadvantage. According to the plan he worked on the metal and folded it, hence purifying it as well as making the evil spirit residue a part of the structure.

Finally, the amount of metal decreased significantly, and the rough texture evened out. The average swordsmith needs about 10kg of this specific steel to make a functional katana, This happens because during the process of tempering and purifying the steel a lot of iron is burnt into iron oxide and falls off alongside the straw ash used to prevent oxidisation.

This time the boy did something different from what he had been doing for the past hours, instead of pouring the dust he opened a vial of blood and poured it on the metal making it sizzle, ignoring the stench of burning blood he hammered on the metal and folded it on itself.

Covering the billet in the black straw ash and iron fillings to prevent iron loss by oxidisation he pushed it into the forge. This action was extremely familiar to Rin as she does a similar process when she stores magical energy in her gems and she was sure that the blood belonged to shirou because of the magical energy given off by shirou and the blood vial is extremely similar.

It was very normal for a normal human to collapse after the intense work and heat shirou had tolerated during this process but what is a magus if not abnormal? The boy has experienced and seen things at such a young age that most adults don't experience in their whole lifetime.

So with determination, willpower and focus alongside self-suggestion magecraft, shirou could easily complete the forging while ignoring his physical condition similar to how the magus killer did in the 4th Grail War. Looking at this scene kiritsugu just clenched his fist but didn't say anything as he felt a combination of guilt, self-loathing, satisfaction, pride and peace.

The budding smith unaware of his spectator`s emotional state focused on his craft with a one-minded focus. Drawing the metal out of the forge he hammered it again but this time instead of folding it, he hammered it from all sides and made it into a cuboidal block of metal.

Letting the red-hot material rest he rummaged through the room and took out a similarly shaped but light-coloured steel block and 2 wooden boxes. The 2 boxes contained the most costly as well as the most morally questionable catalysts shirou has ordered. These are also the things that made kiritsugu concerned about Shirou's mental condition.

He had witnessed or read about it 100s of times, it starts small but magi slowly spiral out of control in their obsession with their magecraft and forgo their morals as well as right and wrong to advance their magecraft. So concerned he had tried to ask about Shirou's views on using magus bone powder and phantasmal blood and bone powder.

Shirou had genuinely replied without a change in expression or any contemplation and said

"Well those people are already dead, and we are buying them from genuine sources rather than the black market."

This level of altruism left kiritsugu with chills, not because he was unfamiliar with it but because he saw himself in it. He had already seen the conclusion to which this road had driven him, he didn't want shirou to follow him to this hell too after talking to some people and contemplating all the information he found a plausible explanation.

The side effects of Shiro's foresight have finally shown itself. There is no power in this world without side effects and the visions have likely detached shirou from the value of life, specifically the value of his life and the life of strangers unrelated to him. Rather than malice, he was suffering from apathy, this left the dying man with the question of how he would handle loss.

Suppressing his worries the magus killer watched his son work the forge. Shirou put both the pieces into the forge again. He kept repeating the process of flattening and folding the steel, he added the magus as well as phantasmal bone dust in between the layers. The bone dust was claimed to be an oni`s by the seller and the father and son thought that it made sense too. As they were in Japan the most abundant phantasmal creatures should be Onis.

Still, it proved that they were unaware of the condition of the moonlit world of the country they live in, but then again the magecraft they practise is of Western origin and it is not related to philosophy magecraft, Houjutsu, Shugendou etc. given the secretive nature of mages they didn't investigate anything about the scene to prevent provoking someone.

Hence shirou didn't know that the oni bone powder that he planned for was the bone powder of a half-blood that had demonized and went on a rampage. So he carried the process unaware.

The steel is folded on itself in the smithing process because this layering spreads the impurities present in the material throughout its body hence making the steel stronger.

This process also has the trait of increasing the directional stress-handling capacity of the blade. So the vertical folding of the material spread the bone powder and other materials added across the length hence making it highly conductive to the magical energy passed through it. By the time shirou was done the 1st-grade jewelled steel was already folded 18 times and the other block of steel made from blade pieces that his origin produced was folded 10 times.

When the young smith judged the materials were at adequate condition he brought forth a v-shaped mould and pulled out the billet made of jewelled steel and hammered it meticulously til it was flat and then put it into the forge again. Once the metal was heated up he pushed it onto the mould and began shaping it along the mould.

(A/N: sorry for the delay guys, my mother broke my laptop on Monday evening so i still haven't been able to write shit.

Then there are the people from Dell. They are like "Sir you have a warranty till October next year but this is the damage we don't cover" Then wtf did you people get us to pay for an extended warranty when you don't even fix stuff?

You make stuff like that the hinges literally come off when you open the laptop and then you say we don't cover wear and tear or accidental damage in warranty. Then what do you cover?

They had the audacity to say "It's a common problem in laptops so don't worry?". Like you are saying the brand is selling shity product and you assure us by saying we scammed you as well as others.

Well, this and the next chapter is all I have left on the pile and I am using my smartphone to upload this now. They said all kinds of stuff and finally said that they needed to replace the panel of the laptop and it would cost about 95 dollars and they needed a week to get the parts.

So the conclusion is this situation is fucked, like my whole life this year. Anyway enough of my brooding, so leave your thoughts about the chapters. Author out!