He gripped the iron ingot with tongs and placed it on the anvil.
The Forging Hammer lay beside him. As he held the red-hot ingot steady and picked up the hammer, a strangely familiar feeling stirred in his heart.
"This is the first weapon I'll forge as the newly reborn... Tetsu no Sosuke! Now, let's begin!"
After that thoroughly overdramatic declaration, he brought the hammer down with a clang.
[Ding!] [Impurities -1]
"Huh?"
Chapter 2: Frenzied Hammering
"Did I hear that wrong? I could've sworn I heard something."
Tetsu no Sosuke looked around. There was no one in sight. He lived in a fairly remote spot, and few of his friends would come by to play pranks on him.
"Must've heard wrong."
He nodded and focused once more on the ingot in his hands.
Clang!
[Impurities -1]
"Holy shit! No way I misheard it this time!!!"
The sound hadn't come from anywhere around him. It had rung right beside his ear, as though it were a voice inside his head.
He looked at the Forging Hammer in his hand, then at the ingot on the anvil.
He took a deep breath, put all his strength into the swing, and clang!
[Impurities -1]
"It's real!!"
Tetsu no Sosuke was speechless for a moment. "First I can see the progress when I heat an ingot, and now I hear 'Impurities -1' when I strike it. No doubt about it! My Golden Finger is definitely... the Blacksmith System!!!!"
"So I'm destined to be a swordsmith, huh?"
Tetsu no Sosuke looked to the heavens in dismay, then resigned himself to hammering on.
With every strike, he heard the notification: "Impurities -1." But as he kept hammering, it became less consistent.
Now and then, a blow landed without any notification. As time passed, he heard it less and less often.
He also noticed that the ingot in his hands had cooled.
"Is it because the temperature dropped?"
With that thought, he put the ingot back into the furnace.
Once the temperature indicator reached the required mark again, he took it out and resumed hammering.
Things returned to how they had been at first: with every strike, he heard the "Impurities -1" notification.
Before you continue