Chapter 209: Swipe It

The heat inside the District Four foundry hit like an open furnace.

Orange sparks sprayed across the stone floor with every blow of Master Tridon’s hammer, lighting up racks of blackened steel and rows of cooling tongs.

Tridon plunged the glowing metal into a stone water trough with a violent hiss of steam. He tossed his hammer onto the anvil horn and wiped his soot-streaked brow with a thick leather sleeve.

"You said on the phone you brought materials above Level Seventy-Five," Tridon grunted, looking over at Evren and Amber standing by the center table. "I cleared the afternoon schedule to keep this bench open. Let’s see what you pulled out of the sky."

Evren didn’t waste words. He stepped to the reinforced titanium slab and tapped his spatial storage ring to pull out two dark-violet spheres. Each crystal was the size of an orange, pulsing with a deep internal glow that warped the air above it like a heat shimmer.

A low hum filled the workshop, vibrating through the steel table until hanging chisels rattled against the brick wall.

Tridon took a step back, his eyes widening in disbelief. He slowly hovered a calloused hand an inch above the nearest core, feeling the void pressure push against his skin.

"The mana density on these stones is absurd," Tridon muttered, his gruff voice dropping low. "They have to be at least Level Eighty."

"Level Eighty-Two," Amber corrected with a calm smile. "S-Rank Void Royal Guardian Cores. Two of them."

Tridon looked up at Evren with a stunned expression. "The highest core I’ve ever worked was that Level Seventy-Five shadow core for your assassin. Working above eighty is uncharted territory where a single bad strike could shatter the mana matrix and level the block."

"Can you do it?" Evren asked calmly.

Tridon stared at the glowing stones for three seconds, then let out a booming laugh that shook the rafters. "Any smith who turns down materials like this should throw his hammers in the river and open a bakery."

He grinned through his thick gray beard. "Of course I can do it. This is the commission every master dreams about."

Tridon pulled a brass magnifying loupe from his apron pocket and leaned close over the twin spheres.

"Look at the internal lattice," Tridon murmured, pointing a thick fingernail at the swirling violet ribbons inside the crystal. "Because these two guardians spawned from the same pocket dimension, their resonant frequencies are identical twins. Most high-level void materials fight each other, but these two share a natural harmonic bond."

He glanced down at the sheathed weapons at Amber’s waist. "Are we melting down your old sabers for raw dragon marrow?"

Amber unclipped her scabbard and laid her intact right blade on the bench. Beside it, she placed the two fractured halves of her left saber, the jagged crystalline break catching the forge light.

The fracture revealed the dense white bone marrow running through the spine, still faintly glowing with the crimson warmth of her Valkyrie mana.

"No," Amber said firmly. "This blade took the blow from that Level One Hundred and Two bone scythe so I could live, and I’m keeping both halves as a souvenir. We want a brand-new matched pair forged from scratch."

Tridon picked up the fractured tip with gentle reverence, inspecting the clean crystalline shear. "A weapon that took a direct hit from an extinction-tier calamity beast and didn’t disintegrate earned its retirement. It deserves a display case instead of a furnace."

He set it down and tapped a steel ruler against the two violet cores.

"Here is the blueprint," Tridon said, his eyes gleaming with craftsman focus. "One core will be anchored directly into the pommel-root of each saber. That gives each hand an isolated mana channel, with an internal feedback loop running through the guard so the blades balance each other’s resonance in flight."

"Use the same balance specifications you used for these," Amber chipped in.

"Noted, Lady Sterling."

"What else do you need?" Evren asked.

"Forty pounds of refined Star-Metal alloy for the spines and conductivity channels," Tridon replied. "Void mana is intensely cryogenic, so without high-grade Star-Metal to insulate the grip, your palms would freeze to the hilt within three swings."

He rubbed his beard with a soot-stained palm. "Civilian warehouses are locked down tight under post-rift rationing. It would normally take three weeks of council permits to get that much military alloy released."

Evren tapped the Imperial Sovereign Defense Marshal’s Seal pinned to his combat jacket. "The Grand Arbiter granted me unrestricted requisition authority for defense logistics. I’ll clear the order with the Citadel depot right now, and the alloy will be on your dock within two hours."

Tridon let out a low whistle, eyeing the platinum medallion. "That solves that problem fast."

"What else?" Evren asked.

"Eight liters of Abyssal Quench Oil," Tridon said. "Void alloy shatters in ordinary water. I have six liters in my vault, and I can pull two more from District Nine by midnight."

He wiped his palms on his apron, his eyes sharp with focus. "Beyond that, I’ll need my primary furnace running at maximum heat for seventy-two continuous hours without interruption."

"Name the total cost," Evren said.

"Between the alloy expediting, the quench oil, and seventy-two hours of forging, total cost is ten million dollars," Tridon answered.

Evren pulled his black card from his wallet and set it on the desk terminal. "Swipe it."

Tridon keyed the terminal and tapped the card against the sensor. The transaction cleared with an instant green ping.

[TRANSACTION APPROVED: $10,000,000.00 USD]

A familiar golden window chimed in Evren’s private vision:

[DING!]

[HEROINE #1 INVESTMENT DETECTED: $10,000,000.00 USD]

[1,000x REBATE MULTIPLIER APPLIED!]

[REBATE RETURN: $10,000,000,000.00 USD (10 BILLION DOLLARS) DEPOSITED INTO SYSTEM SOVEREIGN VAULT!]

[SYSTEM VAULT BALANCE: $313,800,000,000.00 USD]

Evren dismissed the notification with an easy thought. He pocketed his card and looked across the table at Amber.

Amber picked up her broken saber halves, carefully wrapping them in a soft velvet cloth. "Seventy-two hours, Master Tridon?"

"Wednesday evening, six sharp," Tridon answered, his eyes already locked on the violet stones. "Don’t bother calling before then, because I’m locking the blast doors the second the alloy arrives."