I was just minding my own business and poring over some of my experiments on paper when mom came barging into the room and threw me out of the house.

“You are already socially isolated due to your training, don’t make it worse by staying at home even in your free time! Go and play with kids your age!”, she said as she slammed the door in my face. Yeah, mom, it is because you want me to socialise and not because the hunting team will be back today with dad.

With nowhere to go, I decided that I would visit Cylix during his apprenticeship. Cylix had recently been plateauing his growth because he could not train further without it affecting his growth and our skill growth has also been plateauing, so he decided to reduce some of the training time to instead go and complete learning blacksmithing. With what I knew of his dad being a blacksmith, he probably wants to learn it so that he could be close to their memory.

I walked through the village and ended up on craftsmen lane, one could easily spot the sole furnace in the village. Unlike carpenters who had their own shops, blacksmiths were forced by the village council to all use a single furnace instead of each shop running their own because of the possible fuel savings and risk reduction for the rest of the village. As I neared the building, I could already feel the massive heat coming from the forge along with the rhythmic sounds of multiple hammers. I saw the grey smoke coming out of the forge but it was spread away due to the slightly higher than normal winds today. As I entered the forge, I was kind of surprised because there were people of almost all genders and ages there.

There were women who were working the bellows and loading the furnace, there were a dozen or so middle-aged men, 3 old men, 4 teenagers and 4 kids my age. Most of the middle-aged men were forging some farm equipment while a few were forging spears and arrowheads, the teenagers meanwhile were making nails. However, the forge, if you can even call it that, did not produce steel or even good iron. It could only be called a forge due to its ability to smelt some iron, but it was definitely more of an oven than a forge to my engineering sensibilities.

While I could fret over all the improvements I could make to this forge, I couldn’t stay here for long as I was not accustomed to this massive amount of heat. I quickly spotted Cylix carrying ores to the furnace in a basket. While I was a bit frustrated that Cylix didn’t seem to be learning blacksmithing just yet, I consoled myself knowing that it was only due to his physical limitations that he could learn actual blacksmithing yet and not due to any workplace discrimination. I was however surprised to find another familiar face among the children and one of my saviours Dray. Looked like he too was aiming to become a blacksmith, good for him. I decided to greet both of them because they were working together.

“Hey, guys!”

“Ah, brother! Why are you here? Did something happen at home?’ Cylix said, well I wouldn’t blame him since I have never come here before it kind of makes me feel guilty for not hanging out more outside of training.

“Hey, Cyclos! How are you now? Is everything okay? I heard from Cylix that you were fine from the bite but you should have at least come and told us about it.”

“No, no nothing happened to me or at home so both of you don’t need to worry. Dray, I am sorry for not meeting you earlier. I have kind of started training to be a hunter already along with being a healer so I don’t have enough time to play with everyone anymore.” I clarified

“Well, it is all good if you are fine anyway. To be honest, I was kind of scared when your mom told me what happened when that snake bit you.”

“Yeah, it was not a good experience, I am just glad that I could come out of the incident unscathed,” I reassured him.

“So, what brings you to the forge brother?” Cylix asked inquisitively

“Well, Mom kicked me out of the house to make me take a break, so I figured I would come to visit you and maybe even visit the other kids.”

“I am going to play after lunch, you both should come along with me, all of us friends can meet again,” Dray said excitedly.

“But I have to work…” Cylix said a bit hesitantly, but I could see it in his eyes that he too wanted to come and play instead.

“You can take today off brother, remember even Nana said that we have to take breaks every now and then.” I persuaded him. He looked a bit put on the spot as he warred internally against his obligations and his enjoyment but finally caved in when I started to persuade him.

“Well, it shouldn’t be a big problem if I play for a while. Well, I will finish up my work here and then we will go and play.”

So, I decided to stay and watch what was happening in the forge while I waited. They seemed to have known assembly line techniques as I could see that the workload was divided in some places, especially like the arrows. After Cylix finished transporting the ore, he and Dray went to a station where there were a lot of arrowheads and arrow shafts and they started assembling them. I could see that they weren't as fast as they could be, but they made up for the speed in their quality of work instead. Which was probably good because in hunting the quality of the weapons may be the difference between life and death. As they continued working, I contemplated the improvements I could make to this workshop.

The first thing I could see was changing the furnace to an open-hearth furnace instead and making steel instead of iron. The other thing I could see was changing the forge location to be near the river instead and make use of hydraulic machinery like water hammers and if they ever figured out how to make stronger steels maybe even make a lathe. But I don’t know how that second Idea will work out considering that the river is a little way out of the village border, something to figure out in the future.

I was pulled out from my contemplation from a nasally grating voice, “Well, well, well, if it isn’t our village’s little genius. Fancy seeing you here!”

I turned around to see who it was that knew so much about me and then slowly I recognised him. This was the guy who asked the blueprints of the wheelbarrow to be free for everyone, now that I looked closer, he wasn’t that old he was probably in his mid-twenties. I smirked a bit internally as I said, “Hi uncle, you are the one from the council! How are you?”

His face turned dark when I called him uncle but he knew he couldn’t do anything to a six-year-old child, so he kept his anger in check as he continued, “Thank you for asking, I am fine. So, what are you doing these days? Have you made anything new?”

So, he wants to steal my inventions huh? It would’ve worked too on another six-year-old, but you have underestimated me, nameless uncle.

“Oh, I haven’t been doing much recently. I forgot to introduce myself, my name is Cyclos, my father is Roc from the hunting team.”

“Roc? Which Roc? Captain Roc of the hunting team?”

“Yeah, don’t you know my mom? I thought you would know my dad too.”

As if, I know mom doesn’t broadcast about her and dad’s relationship as people start feeling a bit scared for visiting due to him being the hunting team captain. It wasn’t like Dad ever misused his power but people are naturally afraid of people with power over them. It may be physical power or political power and my dad had both. Anyway, my mention of my dad seemed to do the trick as the guy turned increasingly pale before he stutteringly replied.

“Ah, I-I didn’t know about your dad. P-please thank him for protecting the village.”

By this point the dude was already nervous as heck as he already had sweat streaming down on his forehead, and then the funniest thing happened. The guy was obviously standing in the way of some firewood that was being used for the furnace so when one of the women that came to pick up more firewood tapped him on his shoulder he was startled and jumped so high that when he landed, he tripped and fell into the pile of firewood. I rushed to him and helped him up and said, “Are you okay uncle? Did you get hurt? We can always take you to my mom. She will be happy to help you.”

“N-No, no thanks, I am fine. A-ah I have some work to do, I will have to talk with you later.” he said as he started scurrying away. I couldn’t help but poke a last bit of fun as I called out to him.

“But Uncle you still didn’t tell me your name!” and that was it, he had clearly heard him as he started walking much faster as he pretended that he didn’t hear anything. At least he helped my boredom a bit. I turned to see how far Cylix and Dray were along and was glad to see they were already cleaning up. They both came up to me and said,” We are all done here, just let us inform the master and we will go to the grounds.”

They took me to one of the three old men in the forge, “Teacher, we have finished our work for this shift and would like to take the rest of the day off.”

The man looked at me and queried, “Going out to play, eh?”

Cylix and Dray immediately got flustered as they tried justifying themselves before the old man stopped them with his palm and said, “It is good that you are playing. Even if you are an apprentice, you are still kids at the end of the day, if you stopped enjoying life because of what I taught you I would never be able to forgive myself.”

He then turned towards me as he said, “What about you lad? Who are you?”

“Oh, I am Cyclos, son of Healer Caera and Hunter Roc and brother of Cylix. I am also the one that invented the wheelbarrow with the help of Cylix here.”

I don’t know why but I felt the distinct urge to boast in front of this old guy. He immediately raised his eyebrows in surprise as he said, “So you are the one that survived without any damage after being bitten by the green nightmare viper. You have quite a will boy.”

“Thanks, I guess, though I would rather not be remembered as the kid that survived being bitten by the green nightmare viper, I have bigger ambitions than that.”

The old man immediately chuckled as he said, “Well, you look like a fun kid, come to me if you need any help in the future.”

Well, if he is saying that, maybe I can use him as a run by for my ideas of the forge, since he is the one offering, I don’t need to feel guilty. “You have a deal old man, don’t regret it in the future. By the way my name is Cyclos. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you Cyclos, my name is Shum.”

“Nice to meet you too, but I am afraid we have to get going. We are getting late for our appointment with our friends on the ground. See you later.”

The whole time Shum and I were talking, Cylix and Dray were watching us with distinct horror on their faces. I guess that old man Shum is someone important for them to behave like that. As soon as I said we were leaving, they both snapped out of their stupor as they bowed to the old man as they said in Unison.

“I am sorry teacher, please don’t think bad of Cyclos, he isn’t a bad person. He is generally very polite but I don’t know what happened to him today.”

The old man just waved his hands as he said, “Don’t worry, I know what happened here, you kids don’t need to worry about it.”

Cylix and Dray were still hesitant, clearly not believing the old man’s words but I stopped them from further drama by dragging them both out of the forge. As we started walking towards the grounds both of them seemed to recover from the experience as they both started lecturing me.

“Do you know who teacher Shum is? He is the teacher of all the blacksmiths of the forge. Even the other two friends of teacher Shum learned a lot of techniques from him.”

“Yeah, yeah, he is a super respected person. He is also the one that invented the assembly method so that we can make arrows and spears fast enough that we can start making farming tools. “

“I heard he improved the design of a pre-apocalypse plough.” and so on they continued talking about how he was the genius blacksmith that rediscovered a lot of blacksmithing techniques in the village.

Thankfully, they eventually petered out their lecture the closer we got to the grounds