189 Everything is Melting

Seeing me walk over, Yue says, "oh Cordelia good timing, we need your help. You saw how the hihi'irokane absorbed the fire when it was placed in the cauldron right? Well, now it's too hot for anyone to pick up, even with my resistance I can't hold it for more than a couple seconds before it burns me. Can you bring it over to the furnace here? we're trying to see how much it can absorb."

"Yeah, that's not a problem," I say as I head over to the corner where Hakase's cauldron is.

Just from merely approaching the cauldron I can feel the heat radiating from the hihi'irokane. Unlike the others who can't seem to withstand it, I feel empowered and nourished from holding the metal. As I bring it over to the furnace where Hakase, Boshi, Gyosu, and Yue are, I feel a little reluctant to let it go, but I can create more whenever I want so this thought doesn't last long.

"Don't bring it too close just yet," Gyosu says.

"We can't have it absorb the fire before the heat is raised to the max," Boshi says.

After around thirty minutes of them increasing the temperature, Yue says, "isn't this enough? you three are sweating buckets... wait, I think Hakase is unconscious."

Having only now noticed that their leader is unconscious, they just shrug and slap her a couple of time before going back to their attempts to raise the heat as they endlessly continue to add more wood.

"Ouch... why'd you... hit me..."

The other two don't respond but Yue asks, "since you seem to be fine don't you think this is enough? I mean, your chimney looks like it might melt, or rather, it is melting."

"It's fine... not the... first time... can go... hotter..."

Even I don't think it's fine, the walls of the chimney clearly look like they can't hold on for much longer before they actually melt. But just as I think this, Gyosu runs off to the side and returns with a long hose and begins to blast the outer walls of the chimney with a blast of cold water. This looks like it stopped the melting process but the walls are clearly deformed.

After another fifteen minutes, even the furnace where the fire is contained looks like it's starting to melt. Gyosu grabs the hose again to repeat what he did with the chimney and it does the trick, but after another ten minutes, both the chimney and the furnace begin to melt again as the heat has significantly increased since the last dose of water. This time though, the water actually evaporates before making contact.

"Ok, Cordelia, bring the hihi'irokane over!" yells Boshi as it's clear that they really can't continue this time.

Although the heat doesn't affect me, I don't really want to walk over the parts of the floor that are half-melted, so I just toss over the hihi'irokane into the furnace from afar. Within a matter of seconds the heat rapidly dies down and the raging fire in the furnace dissipates.

The floor between us and the furnace is still in a half-melted state and still hot, so before we can approach the furnace to check the situation, I create some new metal flooring as a temporary measure for the time being.

As we head over to the furnace, Aurelia, Lia and Wanjing also get up and comes over as they're also curious. But as we approach the furnace we begin to feel an immense heat coming from the furnace, causing Hakase, Lia, and Wanjing to immediately back off. Gyosu, Boshi, and Aurelia continue to move forward despite the visible sweat dripping from their bodies. Yue has a much better time as she has decent resistance to heat, but as we get up close to the furnace, we hear a soft sizzling sound and then a loud bang as the heat from the hihi'irokane melted through the furnace, landing on the floor.

With the furnace no longer blocking most of the heat, Yue actually takes a step back as she can no longer handle the extreme temperature. The ground around the hihi'irokane has also begun to melt, so I move quickly to snatch it up. Much like before, I'm the only one not bothered by it and even feel good holding it.

"It's truly amazing how you can hold that without it burning a hole through your hand," Yue says.

"So, what should I do with this? It's obviously too hot for us to put it anywhere without it causing damage to its surroundings," I ask.

"We can try a container made of flarium," Aurelia suggests.

Without any other suggestions, I make a small box made of flarium and place the hihi'irokane inside. We wait around for a few minutes to make sure everything works as intended, but even the flarium begins to show some signs of melting, to the surprise of Aurelia who had thought the metal to be impossible to melt.

Picking it back up, I say, "any other suggestions?"

"What about... a container... made from... hihi'iro...kane..." Hakase suggests.

"Wouldn't that just leave us with a larger piece of hot metal to deal with?" Wanjing asks.

"No, that might actually work. The two separate pieces would be absorbing each other's heat until they are separated," Yue says.

"Why not take it a step further and make the container from two separate layers, one being just slightly larger than the other so the smaller one can fit inside the larger one," Boshi suggests.

Since there isn't any harm in trying I follow their suggestions for the multilayered container made from hihi'irokane since even if it fails I can just eat it all and be done with it. First I make a box then I make a slightly smaller one inside of it and finally I place the hot hihi'irokane inside. Although it should have been obvious, there were no signs of melting after a few minutes so I close the top of the box and the radiating heat disappears. With the top closed, no one can even notice the heat from the hihi'irokane unless they physically touch the box and even then it only feels slightly warm.

"This gives me a few ideas on how to design the base frame of this... what did you call it, a mech, whatever it is, I've got a few ideas but there's still one problem left," Gyosu says.

"And that is?" I ask.

"From the preliminary tests we did, we couldn't break or bend the metal in any way, although this might have been because we were trying to smash the large chunk over there with a hammer, so maybe it was just too dense, but I suspect that there isn't anything we can do to properly shape it to our needs. We obviously can't melt it and it's seemingly too hard to bend and shave," Gyosu explains.

"I'll deal with that part, I can shape the metal as I please, all you have to do is hand over the design once your done and I'll make all the parts."

"That saves quite a lot of time, I'll get to work right away. If anyone needs me for anything I'll be in my workshop down the hall," Gyosu says as he runs out of the room.

"We'll get to work as well, you all are free to stay here or go back to your inn," Boshi says as she drags the half-asleep Hakase out with her.

"It's been a long day so lets just go back to the inn," I say.