"Let's get to work," Dubs repeated, rubbing his hands together with an energy Emrys rarely saw from him. Then, his tone quickly became very serious. So serious that Emrys had a hard time believing it was coming from Dubs. "Kid, I'm telling you right now. If you think it'll be like the other times you helped me, get that out of your head immediately."
"What?" Emrys exclaimed, perplexed.
"What we're about to do isn't just some basic magical weapon. What we're about to forge is a sacred treasure. It's on several other levels of difficulty."
"A sacred treasure?"
He led Emrys toward one of the shelves at the back, the one filled with pieces of metal most densely charged with magical energies, the ones whose structure even Emrys's haki struggled to fully penetrate without dedicating a proper analysis to it.
"Boreal Wyrm's Tear," Dubs announced, lifting a nearly translucent blue ingot, so cold that Emrys felt the temperature drop slightly just by approaching it. "Extracted from frozen corpses at the top of the Howling Peaks. Resistant to cutting, but above all, impossible to break when faced with cold. If you ever run into a demon who wields ice, this should keep you from ending up as an ice cube."
"That sounds ridiculously expensive," Emrys commented, letting his haki glide over the surface of the ingot, impressed despite himself by the density of its internal structure.
"It is. But I've had it for fifteen years, so technically, it's already paid for," Dubs replied with a crooked smile, putting the ingot down before grabbing another one, this one almost liquid black, absorbing the ambient light with an almost disturbing voracity. "That's Abyssal Onyx. Recovered from the depths of a rift that a slightly too reckless miner ended up exploring farther than expected. It absorbs part of the impact of a blow rather than transmitting it directly to whatever is underneath."
"And that reckless miner, is he doing okay?"
"He paid dearly for the ingot. I never asked for the exact price of his mental health," Dubs replied, unfazed.
They continued like this for a long while, Dubs listing the names and properties of each material with a passion Emrys only ever saw from him during these precise moments, when the forge became more than just a job; it became more like an extension of himself. Ashen Wyvern Scale, a golden metal capable of withstanding extreme temperatures. Titan-Nerve Fiber, surprisingly flexible despite its name, which could be woven almost like fabric while retaining extraordinary tensile strength. Fallen Star Dust, a component so rare that Dubs categorically refused to reveal its origin, settling for a vague "I have my sources" before immediately changing the subject.
"Alright. Now that we've got what we need to work, we move on to the really fun part," Dubs announced, carrying an armful of materials to the main workbench, the one equipped with a small separate furnace, apart from the main forge, whose purpose Emrys had never really understood until today.
"What's that furnace for? It looks different from the others."
"My personal furnace. Unlike the one you know, I built this one myself. It doesn't just heat the metal, it also prepares it to receive what will make it a sacred treasure," Dubs explained, lighting the hearth with a precise gesture, a flame of a slightly purplish color immediately rising, quite different from the usual orange flames of the main forge. "Metal heated normally remains metal. Metal heated in this furnace becomes receptive. Ready to accept something other than its own nature."
Emrys felt a spark of curiosity sharpen within him, something telling him that this conversation was about to touch on a subject Dubs had always carefully avoided.
"So you're finally going to reveal your magical power. You know. The one you never wanted to reveal to me."
Dubs paused, his hands suspended above the first piece of Boreal Wyrm's Tear he was about to slide into the furnace.
"Yeah," he finally admitted, without dodging this time, unlike all the previous times the subject had been brought up. "I've never wanted to talk about it before because it never seemed relevant to me. It was my business, not yours. But since we're here, working on it together, I suppose it's worth explaining it properly to you."
He slid the bluish ingot into the furnace, the purplish flame immediately enveloping it without melting it, merely making it glow with a strange, almost pulsating light.
"My power is called Attribution," he began, his eyes fixed on the metal that continued to glow. "I can attribute any object I forge with a special ability comparable to a magical power. This special ability can be anything, even something very far removed from the nature of the forged object. But there's a constraint, and it's a big one."
"Which one?"
"The power of the attributed ability directly depends on the quality of the forged object," Dubs replied, finally removing the ingot from the furnace with a special pair of tongs, the metal continuing to pulse softly even in the open air. "A poorly made, badly forged, poorly balanced object can never receive anything but a weak and almost useless power. It might not even be able to receive a power at all. But a perfectly designed object, forged with all the rigor and patience possible... that's where the ability can become very useful."
Emrys suddenly understood all those years spent watching Dubs work, that methodical slowness, that almost obsessive demand for every detail, every assembly, every finish.
"That's why you take so long on every piece," he realized aloud. "It's not just because of perfectionism. It's literally a necessity for your power."
"No, nothing to do with that," Dubs denied. "I simply don't like doing sloppy work. Every time I see a flaw on an object I make, I feel like cutting my veins with a rusty razor."
He pointed toward the still-pulsating ingot between his fingers.
"Besides that, we could do something very interesting with this one."
"Like what?"
Dubs gave him a sideways glance, a mischievous glint passing across his usually closed-off face.
"I don't know."
"Huh? What do you mean you don't know? Aren't you the one who's going to give it the power? Or is there another condition you haven't told me about?"
"No, not exactly. Actually, not at all," Dubs replied. "I never know beforehand what ability I'm going to attach to the object. I find the inspiration during and after the forging. Until now, it hasn't failed even once."
Emrys grumbled at Dubs's frankly hazardous working method, but didn't insist any further, confident in Dubs's judgment and talent.
They got to work for real, Dubs hammering the metal freshly removed from the soul furnace with a precision Emrys had never seen from him before, each hammer blow seeming to follow a precise rhythm, almost musical, very different from the rougher cadence he normally used for his usual orders.
"Hold this for me," Dubs ordered at one point, extending a piece of still-hot metal toward Emrys. "Right there, at that exact angle. Don't move."
Emrys complied, feeling the residual heat of the metal against his fingers protected by thick gloves Dubs had provided him without a word of explanation, while the giant continued hammering the piece from a different angle, the two of them working in silent coordination that became increasingly refined as the hours passed.
"You could have told me I was literally going to participate in the forging," Emrys remarked at a point when his arms were seriously beginning to protest against the prolonged effort.
"And where would the fun be otherwise?" Dubs replied, without slowing his pace. "Besides, it won't hurt you. For your Armament Haki. Holding molten metal without dropping it, without faltering, that's good training. Don't you think?"
Emrys then realized, with a hint of amusement mixed with admiration, that Dubs had probably thought about this detail from the beginning, finding a roundabout way to train him on his most glaring weakness while simultaneously working on the armor itself.
"You're really an old fox, you know that?"
"I prefer 'wise educator,' but I'll take the compliment anyway," Dubs replied, a satisfied smile on his lips, never interrupting the steady rhythm of his hammer.
The hours passed like this, punctuated by the incessant sound of metal being struck, by the acrid and peculiar smell of magical materials heated to temperatures the main forge never reached, by Dubs's occasional explanations about this or that technique, this or that complex assembly that he executed with a dexterity Emrys had never before had the opportunity to observe from such close range.
At one point, Dubs set up a stretched fabric frame, almost like an improvised loom, and began working the Titan-Nerve Fiber with surprising delicacy for such massive hands, interweaving the silver threads with infinite patience, gradually creating something Emrys still couldn't clearly identify, even with his haki pushed to the maximum of his concentration.
"That's for the cloak," Dubs explained, without looking up from his work. "Well, so to speak. It'll be closer to what you projected earlier than an actual piece of fabric, but the idea remains the same."
"Can I see?"
"Not yet," Dubs replied, a categorical tone in his voice that left no room for negotiation. "You'll see the whole thing only when it's finished. That's how I work, and I'm not going to change my habits now."
Emrys sighed, but didn't insist, recognizing in this stubbornness the same rigor that had made Dubs the blacksmith he had become.
The day gradually gave way to night, the natural light filtering through the few cracks in the ceiling of the secret room giving way to the almost exclusive glow of the flames, ordinary and purplish mixed together, which continued to illuminate their work without respite.
"We should stop for today," Emrys suggested, at a point when his eyelids, although useless, were nevertheless beginning to feel heavy with purely mental fatigue.
"You, maybe. I'm going to keep going a little longer," Dubs replied, without losing his concentration. "Go get some rest, kid. We've got several days ahead of us, and I don't intend to rush anything just because you're tired."
Emrys nodded, standing up stiffly, his muscles aching from hours spent holding pieces of metal in sometimes frankly uncomfortable positions.
"Dubs."
"What now."
"Thank you. For all of this."
Dubs didn't answer immediately, his hammer suspended for a moment above the piece he was shaping before he resumed his movement without looking up.
"Go to sleep, kid," he replied simply, but something in the tone of his voice, a warmth barely concealed beneath his usual roughness, was enough for Emrys to understand that the message had been received.
He left the secret room, leaving Dubs alone with his work, the steady sound of the hammer continuing to echo behind him long after he had closed the door.