Harassing Thief Girl

Mebett coming over while riding Kkun the Mechanical Dragon certainly surprised Bizon and Gurre at first, but as expected, they got used to it pretty quickly . Bizon especially liked the idea of a Dragon Maiden daughter with her own dragon because it meant she, “Already has a good enough dowry for her wedding . ”
The citizens of Warren loved Pi-tan in his cute miniature form, so after being shown a new one with a slightly more metallic sheen, they weren’t going to say anything against it . At most, “A light brown was added to the Jewelry Box,” there was just a simple recognition of the facts .

Of course, the most excited for this new Mechanical Dragon were the members of the Workshop Guild, Flint included .
When Claire and Pi-tan had brought in that lightly shining material nearly a meter in area a few days ago, let alone knowing what it was, n.o.body at the guild could even tell whether it was a rock or a metal . What they could tell was that it much lighter than it looked, yet it was harder than steel . While being worked on it had an amazing elasticity and rigidness to it, and no amount of cutting, whacking, or shaving produced any changes to the material at all . Even when the blacksmiths got Claire’s permission and threw it in the furnace, there were no changes . The same was true for when they gave it an acid wash and used a grinding agent as well .

“Claire, could you give us the answer soon . ”

Flint just couldn’t figure out what the material was . No, there was one possibility that did come to mind, but he had brushed it off as impossible .
And so Claire decided to give the other guild members a small hint to help them along .

“This is a scale from the Land Dragon he molted off . Well, do you get it now?”

“No way, this is the raw material for Dark Mithril!?”

“Correct! As expected!”

Claire responded with a smile, confirming that the answer Flint had given, the one he had dismissed as impossible, was in fact the right one .
But in response, the other guild members were left speechless . After a moment had pa.s.sed, Flint asked Claire with a trembling voice .

“But, you can’t process Dark Mithril . What are you going to do with it?”

“We~ll . That’s where I come in!”

On Claire’s behalf, Pi-tan let out a proud voice from on top of Claire’s head .

“When you’re turning a lump of iron into a sword, you have to melt it with heat, temper the edge with a large hammer, shape the mold with a gavel, and then finish cooking . ”

Seeing everyone nodding, Pi-tan was satisfied with the serious expressions on all of the listening guild members .

“So for Dark Mithril, while you can’t melt it, you can soften the raw materials by altering the flow of magic through it . No training required after that . The softened material can be easily cut apart or stretched, so you’d shape it to your needs here . The key here is that your raw materials should be about half the size of what it is you want to make . ”

“Why is that?” one of the members of Claire’s Carpenters raised his hand .

“Leave all questions to the end . Now when you go to harden the Dark Mithril raw materials, that will take a much stronger magical flow then what you were using before . Nearly eight times what you were using before which will cause the materials to absorb a large amount of the magic, and it will end up about twice as large in both width and length . This is one of the big reasons why Dark Mithril weapons are so light despite their size . It’s also important to know that you can’t alter the flow of magic in Dark Mithril again after it’s already been hardened once, so trying to adjust its size or put on any finishing touches afterwards will be impossible . Everyone get it?”

The Workshop Guild members were starting to get excited after hearing Pi-tan’s story, especially the younger members of Claire’s Carpenters who looked like they were about ready to jump at the scale she had brought in .
However Flint alone was standing back, his arms crossed and a frown on his face .

“I understand the method . However, altering magic flow isn’t as easy as you make it sound . ”

Flint’s point was natural . Although magic flow is the foundation of sorcery, it’s a mechanism that isn’t fully understood . Current day magicians have devised methods to use spells based on records that have survived since days long past, so it’d be accurate to say current day sorcery is derived off of older sorcery which initially examined the flow of magic . Most people know almost nothing about the fundamentals of how magic flows .
And so once again from on top of Claire’s head, Pi-tan puffed out his chest in pride .

“Well actually, my entire body is made of magic . So I have to alter the flow of magic just in order to move . Understand?”

They didn’t .

“Um, so for me altering the flow of magic comes naturally . So as a test, let me run a little through this and break off a small piece .

Jumping off of Claire’s head and taking his human form, Pi-tan grabbed one edge of the molted off Land Dragon scale with both hands .

“All right”

Pi-tan whispered to himself, and the l.u.s.ter in the Land Dragon scale began to fade .

“Go ahead and hit right along the edge there . ”

With Pi-tan’s permission Flint struck the material, and to his surprise, it felt as soft as if he were working with pure gold .

“It’s not quite on the level of pure gold, but you should still be able to mold it easily . And with a chunk this big, I think you should be able to do quite a lot with it . ”

Claire pulled out a blueprint as Pi-tan spoke . It was the drawing for a dragon-shaped golem .

“I don’t know how well a Dark Mithril golem is going to stretch, so we should try building some mini Mogemoge-kuns first . Then we can tackle the real project . ”

Claire’s Carpenters stared at the blueprints as if they were some valuable stolen art . And then all eyes moved to Claire .

“Claire, let us help too . ”

“Of course everyone! Let’s do our best until it’s built!”

Claire had enthusiasm enough for all the rest of her carpenters .

After producing a couple of mini Mogemoge-kuns, the guild members were able to find out just how extraordinary expansion/contraction ratio is for a golems made with Dark Mithril .

So when creating a golem using normal metal, the expansion ratio of 8, with your base model shrinking in half after becoming a golem, and then having a finished product twice as big as your base once activated . In other words, a golem made from some kind of metal like iron would have its doll become four times as longer and four times as tall once activated . So for example with a general Gorgon Golem, the base metal would be a meter long . Once it is turned into a golem, it would turn into its little figurine doll form which would be half its original size at 50 centimeters long . But then once that figurine is activated, you’d have a cow golem standing 2 meters long .
However the expansion ratio for the Mogemoge-kuns made with Dark Mithril ended up being 1000 . So in other words if your base materials were 10 centimeters long, then the completed golem figurine would end up being a single centimeter long, and the activated golem would be a full meter .

Thus the dimensions for the Mechanical Dragon were able to be determined . Claire decided to have the finished figurine sit at a tiny 3 centimeters while the finished product would stand 3 meters tall .

For the record, the ‘mini’ Mogemoge-kun they made to test out the Dark Mithril wasn’t very mini anymore, so it was donated to the Workshop Guild as “TS-kun No . 3 Premium”

And so the “Mechanized Dragon Shaped Golem-kun Made from Big, Hard, and Shiny Dark Mithril” was able to come into existence through all the efforts of the Warren Workshop Guild .
However, Claire didn’t give the guild this new technique {Create Dragon Golem} like she had done with Mogemoge-kun . That was because the required mp for this spell far exceeded what almost any human would ever be able to have . It took 40 mp to make this golem, and it would have been impossible for her to have made this without the 30 bonus mp she got from her Awakening Ring and Spirit Ring .

“Claire, couldn’t you sell this {Create Dragon Golem} as a new spell?”

In a certain sense, Claire managed to work her way around Flint’s question .

“This, wouldn’t be possible without Pi-tan’s help . ”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right . It’s hard to imagine a bunch of these out in the world anyway . ”

Flint showed a convinced smile .

“Rather than that, it’s everyone’s bonus round!”

The bonus round was when all the members of the Workshop Guild would get to use whatever was leftover from the Land Dragon scale after after it had been punched full of holes for the Mechanized Dragon Golem to build whatever they wanted . Pi-tan had agreed to help them with altering the magic flow, so each member got to decide for themselves what it is they would build . After pondering and discussing things among themselves, they decided to go with a making some mallets and a couple kanna knives . There had never been any Dark Mithril carpenter tools before .
After the last tool had been hardened and finished, the leader of Claire’s Carpenters brought up one last thing for Pi-tan to finish .

“We wanted to give this to Claire and Pi-tan . This holds the feelings of everyone here . ”

What Pi-tan received was a delicately crafted ring with a black diamond inset . The members who worked on this had clearly put in a lot of time and care to make sure the gem would fit into the finished product .

“A Dragon Maiden is a dragon’s thing right?”

One of the younger members of Claire Carpenters asked a question making it clear why they were giving this to Pi-tan rather than Claire herself .

“Claire doesn’t belong to me . But, I’ll be sure to give this to her on your behalf . ”

Pi-tan gave everyone a wink while making sure that Claire hadn’t noticed what they were doing away from her yet .
Once the material had all been worked through and everything cleaned up, everyone gathered around to watch as Pi-tan slid their ring onto Claire’s finger .
The Workshop Guild guildhall was filled with the cheers of its members .

For the people of the Workshop Guild, rather than any kind of battle G.o.ddess(valkyria), that figure of Claire holding the ring on her finger close with cheeks bright red in embarra.s.sment was much closer to that of a blacksmith G.o.ddess .