Chapter 37 Fish in The Pond (1/2)

The next day, I woke up very excited and went straight to the blacksmith's workshop. Grond was already there working on his ingot. I needed to wait for him to leave. He had the same pattern of behaviour everyday. He would create one ingot, then take a break and leave for a while. In the time he was absent, I would create couple of moulds for my daggers. I didn't want anyone to know what I was doing, so I would store the moulds in my house instead of the workshop.

At about 9.30am, Grond left the workshop and I went straight to the table with soft clay to create my moulds. It would be possible to create a weapon with a mould that has an imprint on one side only but that was not what I wanted. I wanted the dagger to be perfect and therefore I had to create a closed mould. It wasn't difficult to do so, I just had to create two halves of the mould separately and then connect it together before baking it.

I made a thick square from the soft clay and pressed the dagger inside. I then took the measures of that square and created another one with the same dimensions and pressed that on top of the other mould with the dagger inside.

I now had a closed mould that would perfectly define curves and edges of my dagger. Of course I had to get the wooden dagger out before sealing the mould and baking it. It was not really a problem as long as the mould was not sealed. I opened it and carefully retrieved the dagger. I also made a small hole in the mould through which I would pour molten purified steel.

With all of that done, I sealed the mould and baked it. It would have to slowly bake for about 10 minutes and therefore I had time to start another one. It took me about 3 minutes to create a mould and each mould would bake for 10 minutes so I only could make 3 moulds in the time that Grond was absent.

After a bit more than 20 minutes I had my 3 moulds. I took them back to my house and stored them in a corner where no one would notice them easily. When I returned to the workshop, Grond was already there doing his ingot. He was a bit surprised that I was not in when he returned but didn't ask about anything. He probably thought I took a break as well.

I finished my 2nd ingot and then had some lunch. After that I dd my 3rd ingot and again finished around 12.30pm. Grond was no longer surprised that I finished earlier and although he might be slow he wasn't that stupid to not notice that I took shorter breaks than him.

I went out to train my skills as usual and catch some fishes. This time I wanted to study them, not eat them. I had to create a net to be able to catch more of them at once. It would also save me some time compared to using a rod. At the river, I could see schools of fishes swimming around. It was spring, a season of new life so fishes went out and were more energetic. I set my net in a place where the fishes with the ability to absorb light were and waited for some to get close.

I didn't have to wait long and that was due to my behaviour analysis. I applied that training to anything that moved now, whenever it was a fish or a human. I caught 3 fishes and looked at each in great details. I saw nothing out of ordinary, so I decided to cut them open. Maybe there is something different inside and it is not the scales.

When I opened the fishes one by one, I compared what was inside between the fishes I caught. I could see no obvious differences, even though I check very thoroughly. Maybe I caught ones that didn't possess this ability. I wasn't discouraged though and decided to roast the fishes and eat them. I didn't want to waste food for no apparent reason.

I set up my net again before I ate so that I would be able to catch them sooner. I ate the fishes which were not big and went to check on my net. The were again couple of fishes swimming around. After a while I pulled the net and got out 4 fishes this time.

I checked them and could find nothing out of ordinary. I didn't cut them open because I didn't want to waste fishes and I couldn't just eat all the fishes in the river. I released the fishes back into the water and had a sudden idea. I already learned how to throw weapons and therefore fishing with the old style dagger I had on me would not be that difficult, if I use skills from the art of stealth.