Sweat beaded on the Great Craftsman's back and rolled down the cooling grooves of his Titanium Alloy Spine, rising into a white mist behind him.
But old Afareta paid no attention to any of that.
He merely narrowed one eye and used his iris regulator to filter the heart of the forge's flames into a gentle orange.
In an instant,
the eighty-kilogram Tungsten Steel Hammer became weightless between fingers covered in circuit scars.
Whenever its head kissed the glowing metal,
a shower of sparks carrying Data Stream burst forth amid a booming explosion.
Yet a gray-haired middle-aged man merely sat on a battered sofa not far from the Great Craftsman.
He held a cup of tea that had long since gone cold.
Before long,
the middle-aged man's gaze finally drifted back from the desolate expanse of stars beyond the window to the forge, where sparks flew everywhere.
"Old man,
how much longer are you going to wait?"
Yet upon hearing that, Afareta Si showed no intention of setting down his hammer.
"The ventilation system in this workshop broke down twenty years ago.
I have no idea how familiar I've become with the indigo fumes floating through the air, mixed with the smell of Machine Oil and spat out by six autonomous welding guns.
Sometimes,
wouldn't it be nice to hand everything over?"
But the next second,
the middle-aged man projected a line of data onto the gray wall nearby.
The Holographic Projection flickered in the corner, displaying a major crisis incident.
Mercenary codename: "Red Scorpion." Level 5 Spinal Implant Anti-Armor System. Neural Synapse Accelerator Type III. Most recent kill record: three days ago, when she used a High-Frequency Dagger to pierce the skull of a corporate executive director.
"If you still don't think this is important, old man,
then do