Thomas took off the armor and set it over by the weapon rack to be picked up by whoever it was going to. He didn't pay attention to the nas of the people ordering the gear, just what they wanted. With the armor taken care of, he checked the ti and decided to call it a night. As he made his way to his sleeping spot he stopped and looked at the wall in front of him while smiling. His eyes started to glow blue as he activated his 'All Seeing Eyes'. His vision was flooded with mana particles in various colors. He looked along the wall until he spotted what he was looking for, a fluctuation of tal mana within the earth mana.
After focusing on tal mana, all the other mana particles vanished leaving just the clump of tal mana showing through the wall. He conjured a pickaxe with his tal magic and started going to town on the wall. It was impossible to tell what the tal in the wall would be just from looking at it. Though he expected it to be another clump of Icebound Platinum. He wanted to spend so ti every now and then to mine so of the materials out of the walls of the cave. Once he had a solid plan for his escape he would take as much of it as he could. The Icebound Platinum was an excellent material for making items for Snowlily.
After digging a little over a ter into the wall he started to break up and pull out chunks of the tal ore that was buried there. He collected each chunk of ore and dropped it into his inventory for slting later. The guards made no move to stop him or claim the ore as theirs which he found odd. Still, he wasn't going to complain about it. As he finished pulling out the ore he saw another clump of tal mana particles a little further in. He stopped swinging the pickaxe and stepped back. As he did the particles slowly faded away and disappeared from his sight. It looked like there was a limit to the distance he could see the particles. It seed like he could only see the particles at a range of about five ters or so.
He stepped closer to the wall and saw the clump of mana once more. Looking closely at it, it seed like it was a bit more densely packed than the one he'd just excavated. He dug a little deeper into the wall and got closer to the ore so he could see what the difference in particle density might an. A common the in gas was for there to be two kinds of ore deposits. Common and rich. If the previous ones were common then perhaps the next one he was looking at was a rich one. He easily dug through the solid stone wall carving out large chunks of rock until he got to the next lump of ore.
It took him a while to dig a man-sized tunnel to get to the second ore node. Once he dug the first chunk out he snapped it in half and ran so of his mana through it. Using his tallurgy ability was heavily reliant on his own personal experience, regardless of the rank of the ability. As his mana ran through the ore he paid close attention to the sensation returning to him within his mana. The feeling he got back actually surprised him. He'd been expecting a cold feeling such as Icebound Platinum would have given. Instead, he felt a slight tingling sensation. Lighting? Odd, this didn't seem like a place where that sort of energy would gather.
He was confused about the properties of the ore. Since it seed interesting, he took the ti to mine the entire area clean of the ore and stored all of it inside of his inventory. Tomorrow he would lt it down and form it into ingots and find out for sure what it was.
The next morning, Thomas enjoyed a delicious breakfast cooked for him by Mr. Pancake personally. He had to admit, he wanted to steal Mr. Pancake and have him all to himself. The man could cook and was good at bookkeeping. That was sothing Thomas had never really been good at himself, bookkeeping. He tended to just buy anything that caught his attention and sotis completely forgot he even had it. Every ti he opened a shop sowhere he hired soone to be his accountant or manager to help keep himself in check. If said manager could also cook delicious food it would just be an excellent bonus.
Once breakfast was finished he went over to the forge and lit it up. He set up the crucible next and tossed in a few chunks of the newly dug out ore he found last night, the one that tingled. He used his tallurgy to make sure he was tossing in the right pieces since the Icebound Platinum ore and the ore that gave him the tingling feeling looked pretty much identical when covered in stone and dirt. He did take so ti to clean as much of the waste material off of the raw ore as he could but without excellent machines, there was still plenty of it left.
The crucible was filled to the brim with ore and Clad went about his job of powering the blower like a professional. While the ore was slowly heating up and lting, Thomas pulled out the list to check for sothing that caught his attention. For the ti being, he was restricted on what he could make by the materials he had at hand. He was really looking forward to getting his hands on so truly exotic materials that would allow him to make weapons designed to complent their inherent magic.
After looking at the list for a while he let out a sigh of disappointnt. The pirates weren't exactly creative types. A lot of the requests were for common things like flaming longswords or cutlasses. It took a bit of digging but he did find an interesting request that he decided to work on. Soone wanted a taser baton. The idea was simple, it was essentially just a tal stick that could shock and paralyze whoever was hit with it. If he did it the simplest and easiest way possible then it would just be a tal rod with an enchantnt. That didn't seem like too much fun though so he decided to make it more like a collapsible baton made of lightning attributed steel with a proper enchantnt.
After deciding what to do next, he checked on the crucible and found that the ore had already started to lt a bit. This ant it definitely wasn't Icebound Platinum. The Icebound Platinum ore had taken a lot of heat and effort to lt down and refine into ingots but this new tal wasn't nearly so hard to lt. Still, it had only just begun to lt so he didn't need to do anything yet. Instead of just standing around and waiting, he grabbed an iron ingot and a clump of coal to throw together a quick steel ingot. Doing such things with his Transmutation made life so much simpler to him.
The steel ingot got tossed into the flas of the forge to heat up while he collected a pair of tongs and a hamr to work with. Once he escaped he would make a proper set of tools for imbuing mana into ingots that were more efficient. He was holding himself back from making improvents to keep from accidentally over-arming the pirates with top quality gear. If he allowed himself to go all out the pirates would end up with Origin Steel swords and armor while terrorizing the seas.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Before taking the steel ingot out of the forge, he scooped so of the slag floating on top of the lting tal in the crucible and disposed of it. Truth be told, he was relatively certain he could purify the ore directly with Transmutation and get purified tal nearly instantly without all this extra work. He didn't do so for the sa reason he didn't make new tools or work too hard on items for the pirates. The more they knew about what he could do the more they would demand.
With the still lting mystery ore partially cleaned out, he plucked the glowing steel ingot from the flas and set it on the anvil. He silently wished there was an easier way to do this part as he lifted the hamr and began to channel his mana. He shifted his mana to the lightning attribute and started to hamr rcilessly on the ingot to pound the mana into it. With his 'All Seeing Eyes' active he could see so much mana being wasted as it dissipated from the tongs, hamr, and the ingot itself. If he had to roughly estimate, sowhere between eighty to ninety percent of the mana he emitted was simply wasted as it evaporated into the air. Creating the elental 'embryos' inside of ingots was a truly wasteful process.
His only hope is that with better tools and materials the process would beco more efficient. While thinking these things his hamr rose and fell repeatedly to bash the mana and force it to stay inside of the ingot. This part he actually enjoyed because he got to see the different ways that the various kinds of mana would reside within the ingots. It gave him insight into how the various elents behaved when contained within the tal and allowed him to create better enchantnts to complint the elents. As he observed the lightning elent being contained inside of the tal he saw it moving closer together and forming strings and chains like tiny lightning bolts frozen in ti.
After hamring on the ingot for a few minutes it flashed with yellow light and emitted an electrical crackling sound. Inside of the ingot, the small strings and chains rged together and ford multiple thick lightning bolt-like lines throughout the ingot. The lightning mana inside of the ingot moved and danced reminding Thomas of the bolts of electricity coming off of a tesla coil. He observed the mana for a bit before deactivating his eyes and tossing the tal back into the forge to heat back up.
While the lightning steel heated up, he scooped so more slag from the lting mystery tal and checked its progress. With more impurities removed there was more space within the crucible for him to toss in a few more chunks of ore. If this tal was lightning attributed, like he suspected it was, then he wanted to get so of it ready so he could rge it with the lightning steel he'd just created. While the new chunks of ore lted and mixed with the older ones, he plucked the reheated lightning steel from the forge and started to hamr it back into an ingot shape. Adding an elent to a regular piece of tal always turned it from an ingot into an unsightly lump covered in hamr marks.
He worked on the lump of tal to beat it back into the shape of an ingot. He could have just reshaped it with Transmutation, but he was essentially wasting ti doing it the hard way. Slow walking the job as it were. As the lightning steel was reshaped back into an ingot, he continued to scoop slag off of the lting ore and checked its progress. When it appeared to be lted enough with the slag removed from the top, he decided it was ti to turn it into an ingot. He collected the sa mold he used to make the Icebound Platinum ingots and slowly poured the liquid tal into it.
Once the mold was filled with the molten tal, he summoned up a light breeze that gently blew over the mold to cool it down faster. He was really curious about the new tal and its properties. As the ingot cooled its color changed from bright orange to a shining silver that glittered in the light of the forge.
System Notice: You have created a Normal rarity Mana-Touched True Silver ingot. Quality: Excellent. You have gained 222 Magitech Engineering experience.
Thomas beca excited after reading over the system notice for the new ingot. It was not lightning-related as he expected but was instead mana related. This is why he felt the tallurgy skill left a lot to be desired and really only beca helpful with true experience. Grinding its rank seed utterly pointless. He set the ingot of Mana-Touched True Silver to the side and pulled out his book on tals to look up information on it. Unfortunately, there was no entry within the book for Mana-Touched True Silver. Instead, it was broken up into two entries. The term 'Mana-Touched' was actually an affix that could appear on almost any tal.
Mana-Touched
tals that are 'Mana-Touched' are rare and special. To beco Mana-Touched a tal must have first contained an elent and then been purified of that elent by ti. Mana-Touched tals carry no particular elent and can synergize well with any other tal boosting its performance and power. Only a small amount of a Mana-Touched tal is required to drastically boost the power of another elental tal.
True Silver
True Silver is the purest natural form of silver that can be found. Though soft on its own it can be added to other tals to make an alloy that is stronger than either tal alone. True Silver also has a purifying effect on creatures of darkness. Unholy, Undead, Ghosts, Vampires, and other negative forms of life will be hard more by a weapon made from an alloy containing True Silver than by a weapon without it. True Silver is also one of the greatest catalysts for Holy magic making it a popular, if rarely found, addition to Holy weapons used to fight the forces of darkness.
Thomas had to piece the two descriptions together to form a full description of just what Mana-Touched True Silver was. In essence, it was one of the ultimate tals to be used when constructing a 'Holy Sword' that could deal additional damage to 'dark' creatures. True Silver was also described as 'rare' but could it really be that rare? He'd just dug at least forty to fifty kilograms of it out of the cave wall. Granted, that was without lting it down and removing the slag in the crucible. Still, that seed like an awful lot to find. Was it possible that the pirates had unknowingly picked a spot that was filled to the brim with rare and precious resources? First, the Icebound Platinum and now the Mana-Touched True Silver. Even without their magical additions Platinum and Silver were already valuable tals on their own.
Thomas looked at the Mana-Touched True Silver and picked it up. The mont he did there was a sizzling sound like at on a grill. With a hiss of pain, he dropped the ingot on the ground and cradled his right hand in his left. Just touching the ingot had caused light burns on his skin that hurt like hell. Cursing to himself he conjured ice-cold water and coated his hand with it. He couldn't help feeling like an idiot for touching the tal monts after reading what it could do to 'Unholy' creatures. Like it or not, he was at least half 'Unholy Creature'.
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