Volume 10 - Chapter 10 – Jin’s Skill (1/2)
10-10 Jin’s Skill
“Thank you very much. It was helpful.”
Jin thanked Duston.
“Hannah, were you watching? Your grandfather made lots of things just like that.”
“Yep, I saw. It was very different from how onii-chan does it.”
Jin patted Hannah’s head and said,
“Yeah, I on the other hand am not capable of working like that.”
Then he asked Elsa,
“So, what are your thoughts?”
Elsa replied with a slightly flushed face.
“Mm. I came to understand just how kitchen knives and other edged tools like that are normally used are made. It’ll be useful.”
“Right. Also, the final quenching and tempering is very important for iron and steel.”
Jin explained. Of course, Elsa threw back a question.
“What do you mean?”
“You see, steel is a variety of iron, and when it’s heated until it’s the color of a Citran and rapidly cooled down it becomes harder. That’s quenching.”
“Mm.”
“But if you leave it just like that then it’ll be hard and brittle and will soon break. So to make it more tenacious it has to be tempered. That can be done by warming it up to the point that droplets of water spilled on it begin skittering around, then letting it slowly cool down.”
“Mm, I understand.”
“Whether you know this or not has an effect on the quality of the Magi Craft.”
Once Jin had explained that far, Duston came nearby with a grim look on his face.
“H–hey, youngster! Who did you hear that secret from? Normally a master teaches that only when you’ve become qualified, right? Even I was taught it only when I had reached my thirties!”
He seemed to be surprised that Jin who looked like he was less than 20 years old knew this (although Jin was already 21 years old).
“Who, well, my teacher.”
“Your teacher’s generous, or maybe I should say they’re amazing…”
Duston was amazed.
“Hey, onii-chan, show us how you make a kitchen knife too.”
“Mm. I also want to see Jin-nii make one.”
Encouraged by Hannah and Elsa, Jin turned to Duston while smiling strainedly and asked,
“May I use your workshop?”
“Yeah, go ahead and show me how a Magi Craftsman works.”
Duston said and gave his permission.
Jin immediately went to where the iron ingots were.
“[Analyse]. …hmm…”
After confirming the quality of the iron, Jin called Elsa over to teach her.
“Elsa, come over here for a bit. …Listen, to examine the composition of this iron you can use [Analyse], but you won’t be able to understand substances you’re not familiar with. So knowledge is important.”
Jin said and after once again using the [Analyse] magic to confirm the composition for himself, he told Elsa to give it a try.
“Mm. [Analyse].”
It went well on the first try, but,
“…I could somehow tell what was iron. But everything else is a mess and I couldn’t tell what was what at all…”
Elsa said with a frown.
“Haha, that’s natural. Look, [Extraction] copper. [Extraction] silicon. [Extraction] sulfur. [Extraction] phosphorus. ”
Jin used [Extraction] four times on the large ingot. With it, although the amounts were small, copper, silicon, sulfur, and phosphorus were separated from it. They all were in amounts small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, but considering they were impurities it was an amount that couldn’t be disregarded.
“Look, these are the impurities. Each one of them are pure substances, so give a go at using [Analyse] on them.”
“Mm. [Analyse]. …Ah.”
“How is it?”
Elsa looked a little surprised so Jin asked. Elsa blushed and,
“I can kind of recognize copper and sulfur.”
Since they both were materials she was kind of familiar with, even Elsa became able to differentiate between them.
“Alright. Since taking too much time would probably be a bother, let’s stop today’s lesson here. Watch me do the rest.”
“Mm.”
Jin ended lecturing Elsa and resumed making the kitchen knife. Behind him it seemed like Duston’s jaw had become disconnected but he didn’t notice it. At the side, Reiko was proudly throwing out her chest.
“[Separation]. [Forming].”
Jin separated a necessary amount of iron using Craft Magic. With the next magic he changed the shape of the iron in his hand into a kitchen knife.
“Alright, let’s have the shape like this I suppose. I’d want to use [Heat Treatment] next but there’s a bit too little carbon for that, huh.”
Jin had checked it and the carbon content was about 0.5 percent. The amount of carbon was the most important component that determined the hardness when quenching, and for a kitchen knife a carbon content of 0.8~1.2 percent was suitable.
“[Carburising].”
He then decided to draw carbon from the carbon dioxide in the air and mix it with the iron. This magic could only mix the carbon with the surface, so he used the [Homogenize] Craft Magic to make the composition uniform.
He repeated this multiple times until the carbon percentage was one. That was suitable.
“Alright, Elsa, pay attention now. [Heat Treatment].”
Since he did it slowly, Elsa was able to perceive the kitchen knife Jin held instantly heating up, rapidly cooling down, then heating up once more and returning back to the normal temperature, all while observing the flow of the Magic Energy.