Chapter 136- The forgings.

Chapter 136: Chapter 136- The forgings.

It was already the fifth day of the seven days Leo had set for himself. He’d finished the Rare-rank pieces and was now working on his first Epic-rank item.

The required materials lay spread out across the table in front of him.

Among them sat a rough chunk of dark ore, mined from the tunnels near the lightning mana veins. Every bit of it carried a lightning attribute.

That meant the guild now had additional sources of ore, and of entirely different types — an undead ore mine, and a lightning ore mine.

The piece in front of Leo was roughly the size of a football, heavy in his hands, with faint electric arcs flickering across its surface every so often.

He set it on the anvil, lifted his Starfall hammer, and brought it down. The hammer had barely touched the ore when a bolt of blue light leapt out of it and spat sideways across the anvil. Leo yanked his hand back just in time; the arc shot past his knuckles and slammed into the stone wall behind him, leaving a pale scorch mark where it landed.

The thundering of it was loud enough that Hugh and Sigil both looked over. "What happened?" Hugh asked.

Leo shook his head. "The ore’s rebelling."

He tried again, but he got the exact same result.

He tried several more times, varying the strength — light taps, heavier strikes — but nothing worked.

Finally he stopped and stepped back, studying the ore once more. He actively scanned through every grain of it using his forge sight.

The lightning energy inside kept flowing, storing charge and releasing it, almost like it was searching for a way out — and every strike of Leo’s hammer only made things worse.

He thought it over for a moment, then dug through the stock materials until he found a coil of serpentine wire. It was one of the items he’d bought alongside the ingots and ores during their trip to Graystone City.

He laid the coil down beside the billet. His theory was simple: the ore had nowhere to discharge. Every time the hammer landed, the charge built up inside had no route out except straight through the point of impact.

Firstly, He didn’t need the whole chunk, so he cut off a smaller working piece with his sword and set the rest aside.

The random discharges persisted, so he connected the serpentine wire directly to the ore and ran the length of wire from the ore down into the ground, deep beneath the floor.

Leo tapped the ore lightly with his hammer. This time there was no recoil, no arc bursting outward. He’d successfully grounded the lightning.

He then summoned the Eternal Flame, heated the ore, and began hammering and shaping it slowly while purifying it at the same time.

The Eternal Flame itself was capable of handling the purification without any additional effort.

Every time he struck the lightning ore, the discharge carried harmlessly down into the ground.

Leo drew the ore out, flattened it, heated it again, and flattened it thinner. He folded it, flattened it again, repeating the cycle until every unnecessary trace of impurity had been worked out of the metal.

Gradually, the piece began taking shape. Leo kept his forge sight active throughout, tracking every subtle change occurring within the metal as he worked.

Once it had taken the rough outline of a sword, he stopped hammering and looked at the grounding wire. It had served its purpose, so he removed it. The instant the connection to the earth was cut, thin arcs of lightning flashed across the sword’s surface once more.

What he needed was a permanent path for that lightning to travel through the blade. So the grounding it always was not an option. Leo fell into deep thought.....

Then, He reconnected the wire briefly and began carving shallow channels along the core, spiraling from the hilt all the way to the tip.

He then pressed the serpentine wire carefully into those channels. This time its purpose wasn’t to ground the lightning, but to guide it — to give it a natural, efficient flow through the blade. Once the wires had been heated and hammered permanently into the core, Leo took out a scribing pen, the tool he used to carve runes, and began etching basic conducting and binding runes into the sword. He carved a simple lightning rune into it as well.

Next he prepared the steel. He carved binding runes into the steel layers too.

Once the basic runes were in place, he heated the steel layers and positioned them carefully around the shaped billet. The lightning ore stayed at the center, the wire remained within its channels along the core, and the steel would form the weapon’s outer structure.

Leo brought his hammer down as the Eternal Flame wrapped around the metals.

Clang. Clang.

The heated layers began forge-welding together under the Eternal Flame’s heat and Leo’s steady, rhythmic strikes. The lightning ore, already shaped into a sword-form core, ended up sandwiched between layers of steel on both sides.

The steel gradually took its final shape around the core. Leo had carved the channels and conduction runes carefully alongside the serpentine wire, so that the lightning within the inner core would flow properly through the entire body of the blade.

As he continued shaping it with steady, rhythmic strikes, the lightning inside gradually became more stable. The random discharges found their circulation path, and that circulation path became the means of controlling the lightning properly.

When he finally finished tempering the blade, Leo lifted it out with a pair of tongs and lowered it into the water to quench it. Steam hissed violently, and electric arcs flashed beneath the surface.

Soon the glow faded, and Leo lifted the sword clear of the water. It gave off a low, steady hum.

The weapon looked like it was made entirely of dark steel, apart from an occasional violet-blue sheen running along the edge, wherever the lightning flowed.

Leo heated the sword lightly again and hammered out a few remaining rough spots, straightening loose ends before beginning to sharpen the blade.

The sword was finally complete.

[Ding~]

[Forging Completed]

[Storm Breaker — Lightning Sword]

[Rank: Epic]

[Quality: Flawless]

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On the other side of the forge, while Leo worked, Hugh was busy forging a piece of his own.

The metal had already taken the shape of a broad chest mantle. Hugh was aiming to make it heat-resistant. The frame itself was finished, but he was still struggling to work with the ember dust.

He spread the dust across the heated surface, trying to work it into an outer weave, but it wasn’t going the way he wanted. The dust kept spreading and separating from the metal.

The heated surface simply couldn’t hold onto it — every so often, some portion of the dust would lift away and scatter into the air.

Hugh kept hammering, trying to force the dust to bond permanently, but the ember dust just flared up and separated again.

He stared down at the mantle, which now had not a single particle of dust left on it.

"Let’s try again," Hugh muttered. He added another layer of dust, raised the temperature, and hammered faster, hoping to give the dust no chance to detach. It lasted longer this time, but eventually the same thing happened — the dust separated and burst into sparks.

Leo noticed and couldn’t help walking over to examine the mantle. "What’s the problem?"

"The dust just won’t stay," Hugh said, frowning.

Leo studied the surface, which was completely smooth. "You’re trying to forge loose dust onto a smooth surface?"

Hugh glanced down, nodded, and thought about it for a moment. "You’re right. I need something to hold the dust in place," he muttered, scanning the forge until his eyes landed on a fine wire mesh.

The mesh was extremely delicate, with hundreds of tiny openings running across it.

Hugh held it against the armor’s surface, heated it, and fixed it permanently in place.

He ran his fingers across the piece. "Now we’ve got something to hold it." Hugh covered the whole armor surface with the wire mesh.

Just as Hugh was about to spread the dust again, Leo stopped him and handed over a jar of some sticky resin solution. "Try mixing the dust into this to make a paste, then apply it to the surface."

Hugh’s eyes lit up, and he did exactly as Leo suggested.

He mixed the ember dust into the solution until it formed a thick paste.

He picked up a wide brush, dipped it into the mixture, and painted the armor with the ember-dust paste.

The paste seeped into every tiny opening in the mesh.

Hugh brushed it across the entire surface of the armor.

Before long, the chest piece was completely coated in ember dust.

Hugh heated the armor, and soon the moisture evaporated and the paste slowly dried.

He tapped the surface, and tiny cracks spread across the dried layer of dust.

"That’s no good," Leo said, watching. "The heat is only drying the dust." Then another thought struck him. "Try heating it from the inside instead — and use your Ashen Flame this time."

Hugh’s Ashen Flame was unlike ordinary fire. It could instantly raise the temperature at a specific point, and it carried the property of rebirth, like the Ashen Phoenix itself.

Hugh did as Leo suggested, heating the armor from within. Soon the smooth outer surface turned ductile — the back side stayed hard, but the layer where the mesh and dust sat softened until it was almost liquid. The dust was now completely sealed in, coated by the armor’s own liquid metal until it became part of the armor itself.

Hugh quickly grabbed his hammer and began working the dust and the ductile surface together.

Leo nodded, watching him. "The dust is now part of the structure."

Before long, the armor was complete.

[Ding~]

[Forging Completed]

[Phoenix Mantle — Flame-Woven Chest Armor]

[Rank — Epic]

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