Chapter 607: The Borrowed Furnace

Ferra led the expedition through the foundry gates and stopped the apprentice convoy when scorched scrap fell across their path.

Behind her, two sturdy apprentice smiths carried tool chests suspended between pine carrying poles, their faces flushed from the intense ambient heat.

The central smelting hall opened before them like a cavernous tomb, choked with clinker mounds and blackened slag.

Above the main smelting floor, a labyrinth of suspended walkways and copper conduits connected three towering cupola furnaces.

Ferra knelt beside the nearest floor fitting, running a calloused thumb across the weld seam of a bypass coupling.

"Look at this sloppy amateur slag," the forgemistress spat, pointing her round-nosed hammer at the pitted joint.

"They tried to duplicate my harmonic grounding network, but they used brittle scrap and cold welds!"

"Will the foundation hold if they fire the main blast, Mistress?" the senior apprentice asked nervously, wiping sweat from his nose.

"It will blow like an overcooked boiler if they exceed three atmospheres," she answered bluntly, adjusting her leather apron.

"Which means we need to cut their fuel feeds before that madman incinerates the entire mountainside."

A harsh, metallic voice echoed from the elevated control gallery, vibrating through the overhead rafters with distorted dissonance.

"You are too late, forgemistress!" Keldan sneered from behind an armored observation slit high above the smelting vats.

"The Choral Incarnation granted me the true song of living ore... your outdated mountain craft is obsolete!"

The rogue artisan slammed an emergency lever, igniting the main pre-heaters with an ear-splitting roar of combustion.

Superheated steam erupted from floor vents across the central aisle, forcing the two apprentices to leap behind a brick baffle.

Jets of pressurized white vapor hissed through the catwalks, turning the floor into an impassable maze of blistering thermal barriers.

An overhead crane arm swung wildly through the haze, its bladed scrap tongs snapping shut like the jaws of a mechanical beast.

"Boran, Torve, take the service trench!" Ferra barked, pointing her hammer toward an open drainage conduit.

"Close the secondary fuel valves at station four, and do not poke your heads out until the draft dies!"

"Understood, Mistress!" the apprentices yelled in unison, scrambling into the low trench with their pipe wrenches ready.

Ferra turned back toward the perimeter archway, where Hajin stood guard against external reinforcements while holding the perimeter line.

The summoner extended his right hand, channeling a pure golden resonance frequency through the signet link connecting their soul bonds.

The test tone pulsed through the air, settling temporarily into the crystal socket embedded in the head of her hammer.

"Take the tone!" the young lord called out, keeping his footing firm against the trembling ground.

"Let us see if their counterfeit circuits can withstand a true harmonic strike!"

Ferra gripped the hickory haft with both hands, lunging across the catwalk as two winged tools hovered behind her shoulders.

She brought her hammer down upon an exposed conduit junction, striking the counterfeit socket with concussive force.

The golden frequency discharged through the metal in a blinding flash of solar radiance, shattering the brittle bypass coupling to pieces.

The hostile choral feedback shrieked as its connection ruptured, spewing blue sparks across the catwalk like angry hornets.

However, the violent recoil traveled straight up the hammer haft, scorching her palms and forcing her to drop into a crouch.

"Damn it all!" she hissed, blowing on her blistered palms as the borrowed tone sputtered and died within the crystal.

Her hammer head remained inert and unresponsive, unable to retain the foreign vibration without burning through its own core.

’A borrowed frequency tears counterfeit sockets apart, but my own hammer cannot hold it without an answering circuit of its own!’

Up in the observation gallery, Keldan saw the shattered coupling and let out a frantic, panicked curse.

"You will not ruin my grand creation!" the corrupted artisan screamed, throwing a secondary switch on the control console.

A massive set of reinforced plates dropped from the ceiling with a deafening crash, sealing the furnace jacket completely.

The interlocking blast shutters locked into place, trapping the central furnace pressure inside a reinforced thermal containment shell.

Ferra rolled beneath the descending plates just in time, tumbling into a narrow maintenance pocket beneath the main hearth.

The air inside the maintenance pocket was surprisingly cool, fed by an intake vent connecting directly to the outer canyon.

She pulled herself up against an upright stanchion, wiping soot from her eyelashes as the machinery overhead whined down.

The sudden closure of the blast shutters choked Keldan’s draft, exhausting his stored pressure and forcing the furnace into a dormant cycle.

Through the observation grate, she could hear the rogue smith frantically pumping manual bellows to rebuild his combustion head.

"He needs at least ten hours to reheat those crucibles and rebuild pressure," Ferra deduced, a fierce grin touching her soot-stained lips.

"Which gives me a clean repair window to rebuild my own circuit before we finish this tomorrow dawn."

She pushed open the low service hatch behind the stanchion, stepping out onto the canyon ledge where Hajin waited with the apprentices.

"Did you find what you needed?" the summoner asked, offering her a clean canteen of cool spring water.

"I found out why a borrowed song does not work," the smith answered, taking a long, satisfying gulp before wiping her chin.

"You cannot fight living metal with someone else’s rhythm... the hammer has to forge its own answer!"

"Can you build that answer tonight?" he inquired, looking into her fierce, determined eyes.

"Give me eight hours, two charcoal hearths, and enough scrap copper to rewire my hammer head," she growled with absolute confidence.

"Tomorrow morning, I am going to crack that furnace wide open and smash his counterfeit song into scrap!"

The party retreated to the sheltered canyon camp, setting up their portable anvils while twilight settled over the jagged peaks.

Boran and Torve stacked dry hardwood blocks around the portable hearth, pumping the leather bellows until cherry coals glowed bright.

Ferra untied her leather apron, spreading out spools of high-conductivity wire and specialized tempering chisels across a flat boulder.

"Watch closely, lads," she told her apprentices, holding up the dismounted hammer head in the firelight.

"Tonight you learn how an artisan tunes steel to speak its own truth, instead of echoing another person’s voice."

Boran nodded eagerly, holding the copper coils in place while Torve tightened the retaining pins with small pliers.

"We will have the coils braided and secured within two hours, Mistress," Torve promised, his eyes shining with pride.

Hajin walked over from the supply crates, handing skewers of hot roast beef and hot flatbread to the hardworking smiths.

"Eat while the hearth is hot," the summoner advised with an approving smile, taking a seat beside the coals.

"You need solid nourishment if you plan to swing that hammer through an entire fortified foundry tomorrow."

"We will eat, and then we will finish this weapon," Ferra declared with a hearty chuckle, tearing into the seasoned beef.

Through the celestial broadcast channel, thousands of viewers showered the stream with excited cheers and encouraging donations.

[ Seoul_Tactician: "Ferra holding her ground against superheated steam like an absolute boss!" ]

[ StarlightScholar: "A true master artisan understands that you cannot borrow another person’s power forever!" ]

[ IronVanguard: "Tomorrow dawn is going to be legendary, drop all your credits for the dragon-blood smith!" ]

"Keep the perimeter stakes outside her hammer line," Hajin reminded the guards.

Hajin sat beside the perimeter watchfire, carving clean pine stakes while the steady clink of her hammer echoed into the starry night.