Once Mark was done with the second step, he moved on to the third step of the forging process.
Ping. Ping. Ding.
The reshaping process for his sword took minimal work due to the nature of the metals he was using for it. They hardly changed their shape when heated to high temperatures and Mark just had to make minor adjustments. This step also required him to check for any cracks that could have formed that would require ore dust to repair. He had never found any on his sword but if he started the fourth step with even a tiny crack, he could ruin the entire sword so he systematically checked every time just to be sure.
Even though this sword remained near perfect from the beginning, Mark performed the sub-steps nearly religiously.
Ding. Ding. Dink.
While he tended to the substeps with an almost religious fervor, he lost himself in the ping of his hammer on metal. He devoted his very soul into the process like it was the most important thing in the world. He had done this part countless times, and yet he did it as if it was the first time every time.
Once he was done with the third step, it was time to move on to the fourth step.
He still had daylight but when the forge was going it didn't even matter much. The sun was nearing the peaks of the mountains though so he knew he still had less than half a dozen hours before it was time to close shop.
More than enough time for his purposes today.
His newly refined metals were waiting for him near the anvil and he placed the sword back in the forge. The sword needed to be heated up before the specific parts of the sword were removed to add the new metals to it.
He looked over at the metals he had prepared in advance as he thought about his next steps out loud as he tended to do when he was alone at the forge.
"I have a very small purple hue along with some green hue metal that I want to try out today. Good thing the ratio I need for my best alloy is 3 green to 1 purple. He then placed the metals he would need during the refining process into a combination crucible and set them in the par of the forge that would melt them relatively quickly."
He then looked at the sword that was still heating up to its best temperature and casually flipped it to ensure it was heated up evenly again.
"The sword is even more of a red color than a grey color this time. I really wonder what that grey ore was. I never found more of it but the lightweight nature of it with its uncanny sturdiness made me think of a sword."
The way he was taught to add new metals to old metals was to vaporize the old metals in a spiderweb pattern to the extent that he wanted to exchange the metals. That or to make room in the same pattern with a special etching tool. He did not really understand why it was done that way until he learned the final part of the inheritance. The purpose of restructuring the crystal lattice was twofold. One part was to mix the metals in an alloy that would normally be done in the crucible with a catalyst but that was impossible to do once the object was cast without re-melting it. The restructuring process ignored common sense and allowed the blacksmith to make the alloy regardless. The second reason was to compress the metal which would change the density of the metal or alloy.
There were several reasons to change the density of the metals, and for the sword is was so that when the edge was created it would be just as difficult to sharpen to the extent needed as it would be to sharpen it. For this reason, Mark had already decided to make the sword a bit bigger than he needed it to be in order to make a dense edge that would not need much maintenance.
Once the sword had finished heating up, he placed it on the anvil and checked the crucible to make sure the metals would be ready to be added when he had finished his etching process. After seeing that the metals were already melted and combining with the aid of the catalyst, he grabbed his etching tool and a smaller hammer that would allow him to make the spiderweb pattern he needed.
The way he decided on making the pattern was to do it to both sides with an inverted pattern that would allow him to do half the regular pattern on each side. The half pattern on each side would be exactly the same just inverted so that the symmetry of each pattern would match up to the empty parts of the opposite side. This way, the full pattern would be realized in a way that would cause resonance between the two sides when he was on the fifth step.
Mark did not need to use chalk to make sure the pattern was perfect as he was already wholly focused on this task. In his eyes was only the sword and with each placement of the etching tool he first waited for the approval of the sword before he made an indentation. He worked his way up the blade from the bottom where the grip would be all the way to the tip that would eventually be condensed to a sharp point.
Each part of the pattern was done meticulously and the final overall pattern for each side had no imperfections. The bottom and the middle areas had less indentations as the alloy would not be as rich in those areas. Mark had a limited amount of purple ore so he could not make the same same alloy at every point.
His decision to make the sword stronger at the edges was approved by the sword itself, as far as Mark could tell by instinctually listening to the aura of the unfinished sword.
In the end, Mark needed no partner as he was never working alone when he was forging.