26. Weapon Crafting

After finishing the mining process, Shiro decided to head back to the small hut for a quick lunch.

Back at the hut, Shiro immediately set about crafting weapons—sword, spear, and staff.

"Hmm, how should I go about this..." he mused.

"Right, the easy way would be manifestation... no, that'd make the mining pointless...

If I'm going with something akin to Earth's methods, it'd be separating the metal, melting it, then forging it solid.

If I'm doing it all with magic, I could generate an alloy from the separated metals, then shape it based on modeling data.

But I'll need to test how the strength differs between shaped and forged results."

"Yeah, let's just make an alloy and shape it first."

First, Shiro considered creating a workspace—his own barrier. He manipulated magic into a sphere about a meter in diameter before him. The image was a barrier where internal properties could be controlled—specifically, zero gravity and vacuum. Only visible light would pass through to the outside.

——『【Barrier Sphere】Level 1 acquired』

"New skill name... never heard that one before," Shiro murmured, pleased.

He then pulled materials from his inventory into the barrier sphere.

Using the inventory’s material decomposition, he separated and measured: iron 8 kg, carbon 0.1 kg, nickel 0.8 kg, chromium 1.8 kg. Since materials could be specified by mass when drawn from the inventory, this method proved convenient.

Once all materials were inside the barrier sphere, Shiro adjusted the temperature within. Using molecular motion manipulation, he raised it to over 2,000 degrees. He paused, realizing how focused it required—then returned to work.

Note: Molecular motion manipulation involves vibrating atoms and molecules themselves—definitely not microwave irradiation!

The barrier sphere glowed crimson-yellow, resembling a miniature sun. Incidentally, it only allowed visible light through—no heat was felt.

Then, as Shiro imagined stirring the interior of the barrier with magical energy,

——『[Psychokinesis] Level 1 acquired』

the system announcement chimed.

“Wait, what? Psychic powers here?”

“Shiro, direct physical interaction via magic is considered an attributeless special spell. Technically, it should be called an attributeless telekinesis skill, but why it’s in katakana remains a mystery…”

“Is that so? Yeah, the naming’s not very fantasy-like, is it…”

As he stirred the material while inspecting its status, the steel formed properly, so he gradually reduced the temperature by manipulating molecular motion.

“Good. Time to break the barrier and start shaping it through smelting and formation.”

Just as Shiro thought that,

“Shiro, if you break the barrier, you’ll need to prepare psychokinesis support—or gravity control. Otherwise, it’ll just fall to the ground,” Mitoka warned.

“Is that right? So that’s the danger. The barrier sphere can hover automatically, but without it, it obeys physical laws, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Wait—can I use gravity control?”

“Not quite. Unlike the gravity flag inside the barrier, that requires divine magic. You can’t use it yet, Shiro.”

“Right. Should’ve practiced divine magic first. For now, I’ll just rely on psychokinesis.”

Shiro broke the barrier and tried to support the stainless steel sphere.

“Whoa—heavy! Even though I’m not touching it, I can feel the weight. Weird. Is my skill level too low?”

Enjoying the sensation, Shiro recalled the next step.

Shiro quickly activated 【Smelting】 and 【Shaping】. First, he forged two tubes—about three centimeters in diameter, 180 centimeters long—meant for spears and staff combat. Their ends were capped with roughly sharpened cones.

The other was a simple sword: eighty centimeters of blade length, seven centimeters wide, with a seventeen-centimeter guard and a twenty-centimeter hilt, its tip shaped into a sharp triangle.

Since he’d mostly be fighting beasts, he didn’t expect these to slice through human armor. The goal was to shape weapons that could hold magic while being used in combat.

After confirming all the material had cooled, he carefully placed the remaining scraps into storage as ingots.

“Ah—crap! Should’ve used mithril!” Shiro exclaimed, once the work was finished.

“Gods, it’s hard not to default to Earth’s logic. Oh well. Next time, mithril.” With that, he repeated the process using mithril, crafting a mithril staff and a mithril sword.