Chapter 597: Classifying Spirit Tools

Today, while working on a new steam engine powered mechanical press designed to help speed up the shaping of sheet metal pieces, like pots or armour, Lucas and Braxton had somehow gotten caught up in a design debate regarding a more efficient method of engraving Spirit Arrays.

This was neither the first, nor would it be the last time the pair had gone off on a random tangent and gotten into something of a heated argument, so when closing time for the day rolled around and the old man and young boy were still shouting at each other, the rest of the staff just straight-up ignored them, cleaned up their work stations, and left.

It was only a couple hours later that Lucas begrudgingly admitted his idea wasn’t feasible.

Yet.

Braxton, drunk on the feeling of victory, departed the forge with a big grin on his face; however, the old had learned from experience that this would not be the end of this debate. Lucas rarely gave up on his idea entirely and would likely come back a few days later with a new proposal that would blow his mind.

This time, in particular, he had only managed to convince Lucas that his proposal wasn’t practical right now, not that it wasn’t ’possible’. Sure, there were a lot of issues to work out, but none of them were completely insurmountable.

Logically, solving each and every one of these issues would take years, or even decades, but after all the crazy things Braxton had watched Lucas do over the past year or so, he wouldn’t be surprised in another year from now, the little monster had workable solutions for each of those problems.

Damn brat, trying to make this old master obsolete, are you? Not on my watch! Braxton Levitt snorted to himself.

Of course, Lucas wasn’t trying to put Braxton out of work, he just wanted to make things better for everyone, but no matter how many benefits technological progress brings, there are always victims along the way.

That being said, as one of the best Spirit Smiths in the entire Rockwell Kingdom, Braxton wouldn’t be retiring anytime soon, no matter how much innovation Lucas introduced to the field of blacksmithing, so the old man really was just grumbling for the sake of grumbling.

If he was being completely honest, Braxton actually thought Lucas’ idea had merit, but he wasn’t about to let Lucas know that. Not yet, anyways.

When Lucas first learned about Spirit Tools, his inherited memories were still incredibly vague, so although he felt he had seen similar devices before and somewhat understood how they functioned, he couldn’t be certain.

Later, after he broke through to the Second Step Sea Establishment Realm and cleared up more of the other universe’s knowledge, Lucas speculated that Spirit Tools and Spirit Arrays functioned similarly to how electronic devices and circuits worked.

That assumption had been Lucas’ working theory until he arrived in Misty City, met Braxton, and began learning from a true Spirit Blacksmith what exactly Spirit Arrays and Spirit Tools were, and what made them different from ordinary tools.

The simplest way of putting it was that ordinary tools were designed to be fully functional without any kind of Spirit or World Qi input.

Such tools actually constituted the vast majority of those used in the Rockwell Kingdom, which made sense seeing how the overwhelming majority of the citizenry were simple Mortals.

That was not to say that Spirit Initiates and Spirit Adepts only used Spirit Tools in their day-to-day life; quite the contrary, in fact. You could eat your meal with a Spirit Fork and Spirit Knife, but what would the point of that be?

Items or artifacts classified as Grade 0 Spirit Tools were probably the most confusing category to define as they spanned the broad gap between normal tools and Spirit Tools.

What did that mean, though?

The way Lucas saw it, the primary difference was that Grade 0 Spirit Tools had no Spirit Arrays and could thus be manufactured by ordinary craftsmen.

These were items that made use of Qi to perform specific functions, but how they did this was extremely rudimentary.

Now, this distinction had initially eluded Lucas and had confused him greatly for a time even after it was first explained to him, because everyone kept telling him about the ’Spirit Arrays’ being activated on all the Grade 0 Spirit Tools he had encountered thus far.

The Freezing Tool which his Aunt Sasha had purchased back in Redwood Town to create the Town Lord Manor’s underground cold storage had an ’Ice Array’, for example.

When Lucas brought this point up with Braxton, however, the old man just chuckled and said it was just a common misunderstanding.

The ’Spirit Arrays’ in Grade 0 Spirit Tools were, in essence, straight lines of Qi conductive material that connected a source to an output. By the strictest of definitions, this was a Spirit Array, but it was a big stretch calling it that.

It would be like calling the two wires linking a battery and a lightbulb an ’electrical network’.

Technically true, but hardly worthy of the name

This matter became even more complicated when taking into account that many Grade 0 Spirit Tools or Items really didn’t have any kind of Spirit Arrays.

Such items were generally just made from materials that had good Qi conductivity or absorption and could thus benefit from Qi being injected into them.

The dresses Lucas had Isaac and Felicity sew for Christina, Eris, and Celestina for the princess’ 16th birthday fell into this category.

The primary material used to produce those dresses was Sovereign Silk, which was excellent at both conducting and absorbing Qi and became much tougher and more resistant to damage when it did.

Despite not having a single Spirit Array woven into them, all of those dresses could be classified as Peak-Rank Grade 0 Spirit Armours based on their material composition alone.

It was easy to see why people became confused about what was and wasn’t a Grade 0 Spirit Item, hence why the category itself was so ill-defined.

In order to simplify things for themselves, most people simply referred to any item that was meant to absorb Qi that wasn’t a true Spirit Tool, ’Grade 0’, and then described its functionality by saying it had a specific kind of Spirit Array.

This practice had become so commonplace that even most Spirit Professionals had adopted it, with only those who were particularly stuck-up or anal-retentive not following this trend.