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It has been about a week since I started my commissions, and I have to say, having access to Dragon Tongue magic significantly reduces production time. Maybe a lot does not do the time I saved any justice, it is more accurate to describe my time savings as a shit load, maybe a fuck load, if I am to exaggerate a little.
It all started with my first commission on my list. I made a mistake and over-hammered a part of the blade, which ruined the fold patterns on the blade after I revealed the Damascus patterns with an acid bath.
Not wanting to redo the whole blade for just one spot, I was thinking of ways to salvage it, and the idea came to me. If Dragon Tongue magic is able to twist reality to my will, maybe I can use it to touch up my mistake.
After a few tries with different words and images in my mind to will my results into existence, i fucked things up even more and was forced to take a break twice from the heavy mana toll of Dragon Tongue magic.
Eventually, I got the technique down to isolating my area of influence solely on the blade I was working on, which was a huge mana saver. Next, instead of willing the results into existence, which worsened the patterns on the blade and required a lot of concentration, I use the word [Soften] while willing the blade into the consistency of a thick starch slurry, while the sword kept its shape. Once the effect took hold, I used a fine needle to guide the contrasting lines into place, and I had to do it fast because the metal would only stay soft while I was feeding the word of power a stream of my mana.
When I was satisfied with the touch-up, I released my hold on [Soften], and within a second or two, the blade regained its hardness, but the touch-up remained intact. To ensure the blade still maintained the same physical properties before the touch-up, I performed a flex and hardness test and found no issues.
After further experimentation, this trick with [Soften] also helps me engrave and shape metal as if I were working on clay. This especially helps when shaping armor, allowing me to pump out full suits of full plate armor in a fraction of the time it takes me to hammer them into shape.
Now all I needed to do to make a chest plate or pauldron was to use some earth magic to create a mold and [Soften] the flattened piece of metal on it. After that, it was just a matter of trimming the excess, punching some holes, and making some minor touch-ups.
The only times I needed to heat the metal were when fusing the metal billet stack and when tempering the shaped weapon or armor. I tried to use [Soften] and a few other Dragon Tongue words of power to fuse a metal billet stack, but it never came out right. It was just something about being heated, beaten, and folded that gave the metal "character" for lack of a better word.
The second application of Dragon Tongue magic that I discovered when messing around was something that I wanted to call "Mime", but no such word existed in the Dragon Tongue lexicon, so I was forced to use two words and ended up with [Copy Effect].
After some testing, I found that while hammering a piece of metal or any other inanimate object for that matter, the result of that blow from the hammer would appear on another inanimate object that I have marked by my will, and I can do it to as many copies as I want, but there are a couple of catches to what I thought was a totally broken production method.
First, the object marked to have the effect replicated on must be of equal shape, size, and orientation, because if I hammer the original in one spot and the marked object does not have any material in that same spot I hit, well… there was nothing in that spot to hit, so nothing happens.
Second, the marked object must have enough clearance to accommodate my movement, because if I lift the piece I am working on, the marked object moves relative to its original position. So if I turn with the piece I'm working on, and the marked object follows and bumps into a shelf or something, the alignment would get messed up. I would then need to spend time and a large amount of my mana to realign the disturbed marked object and recast the two-word spell.
The last catch is pretty simple, and I somewhat expected it. The more marked pieces I work on at the same time, the more mana I draw, drastically reducing how long I can maintain the spell.
I mainly use [Copy Effect] for bulk orders, and if not for the slight differences in the metal billet stack when they are fired and beaten, I have trouble telling one finished piece from another unless I take a close look at the damascus patterns. It is almost like I copied and pasted them.
***
Two weeks later, all the commissions I thought would take me months to a year were complete. And since I told my parents to hold off on accepting commissions, I should have a lot more free time for myself.
But the thing was, my parents didn't know I had finished all the commissions. Mainly because I had no way to explain how I did it, their knowledge of me being capable of instinctive magic was already a big deal to them, and a heavy secret they kept for me. I didn't want to burden them with the implications that their baby boy could do the same as dragons and burn a whole town to the ground with one continuous spell.
What I did instead was use earth magic to build myself a secret basement armory under my workshop. There, I stored all the completed commissions and have been slowly passing them to my parents according to my estimated timeline of when I would have finished them.
I am beginning to find hiding things from them bothersome… I hope I won't have to move out on my own to keep my secrets. I love my home, and soon we'll have proper plumbing once the craftsmen and materials arrive. Maybe the basement armory is not enough… what if I expanded down and built my very own secret lair… yeah… that could work.