Chapter 1623 Maturity
Little Tolly was Leonel's greatest reliance. In fact, even in comparison to Little Blackstar, the little one was Leonel's greatest partner. If Leonel prepared things for Blackstar, he couldn't possibly forget about Tolliver.
Leonel hadn't really done anything special for Tolliver in his lifetime. Outside of feeding the little one as many ores as it could manage, there was really nothing else to do.
At the same time, though, Leonel had to be careful about this. This was because he had never forgotten his father's first lesson about the hazards of Metal Spirits and how overeating could cause them to go berserk. Due to this, Leonel was very careful with how he fed Little Tolly and the little one's progress was quite slow, although consistent, as a result.
As of now, Little Tolly should still be in the Fifth Dimension, and the little guy wasn't close to the Sixth. This could be considered to be another limitation to Leonel's Force Crafting.
As a Metal Spirit, working with and manipulating Sixth Dimensional Ores even while in the Fifth Dimension wasn't impossible. But it took effort, and it also required a lot of stamina on Leonel's part as well.
Only when Little Tolly entered the Sixth Dimension would things become much easier.
When the items appeared, Leonel quickly scanned them all one by one, his expression flickering with surprise from time to time.
The first category of items were about guiding Little Tolly into maturity.
Leonel had learned long ago that Spirit Familiars were genderless. Usually, they would choose as they pleased once they reached this point of maturity. Leonel hadn't really thought much about it before, but he never really considered exactly what "maturity" meant.
According to these, maturity to Metal Spirits was like a hack to progressing through the Life Grade.
The current Little Tolly could only bend and manipulate metals as Leonel directed, liquefying them and controlling them at will. However, a mature Tolliver would be on a completely different level. In fact, a mature Metal Spirit could even give birth to Ores that didn't exist by taking and fusing together the Essence of existing Ores.
Essentially, if there wasn't an Ore in existence that perfectly fit Leonel's needs, Tolly would be capable of forging them at Leonel's behest.
This wasn't all, it was even possible for Little Tolly to "perfect" Ores. For example, Dark Ice Ore was a Fifth Dimensional Ore, it wasn't "perfect" enough to be a Sixth Dimensional Ore.
With proper preparations Little Tolly would be able to improve these weaknesses and allow it to evolve to a whole new level. Essentially, when paired with an Evolution Ore, Little Tolly could take the Quasi effect granted by the Evolution Ore and turn it into a true and permanent effect.
This could be considered an extension of its fusion abilities.
As for why this was a hack to progressing through the Life Grade, wasn't the Life Grade exactly this? Wasn't it the creation of a treasure so perfect that it could be seen as a new entity all to itself?
Essentially what this meant is that a mature Metal Spirit would make forging Life Grade weapons thousands of folds easier.
Even for Leonel, if he wanted to forge a Life Grade item, he would need to spend a lot of energy blueprinting and even tweaking Force Arts so that everything would fit together perfectly. However, with Little Tolly maturing, he would need to fit himself into rigid boxes already outlined by what Ores could naturally exist.
Theoretically, he could create an Ore that was perfect in all aspects, dealing with all potential weaknesses in one fell swoop.
What was interesting, though, was that not all mature Metal Spirits were created equal. If Leonel's deductions were correct, the sooner after the Fifth Dimension a Metal Spirit matured, the more potential it would have into the future. In this way, it was a lot like the God Path for humans.
Beyond this, there were actually several paths a Metal Spirit could take when stepping into maturity as well.
The first was the mimicry path, a lot like Little Blackstar's path. Because Ores of all types existed, and a Metal Spirit could eat them all, they could start taking on these characteristics as well. In fact, this was the most common path for Metal Spirits.
Leonel was surprised when he read this. This was almost identical to his Metal Body's properties, no? It felt like it was likely that these techniques were actually birthed from observing Metal Spirits!
The second path was the fusion path. This path leaned into a Metal Spirits ability to combine and create new life through Ores. In fact, a Metal Spirit that took this path would even gain powerful healing abilities that it could share with its owner.
This was a much rarer path and it allowed a Metal Spirit exceedingly powerful abilities in creating new alloys and ores, much more so than most Metal Spirits. While some less mature Metal Spirits would be limited to combining two Ores at most, a Metal Spirit on this path would be able to fuse three, four or even five instantly upon maturing.
The third path was the universal path. This Metal Spirit was able to tap into Universal Force to help their partner during the forging practice.
Those with this Metal Spirit had seemingly endless stamina and could forge hundreds of weapons at once without the slightest issue.
The fourth and final path was the pure path. This Metal Spirit was a jack of all trades but a master of none. However, depending on the resources it was fed, it would likewise be able to improve in all areas.
This path was by far the most expensive and the most involved. And, the requirements were exceedingly difficult to meet.
In order to take this path, one had to allow one's Metal Spirit to step into the Sixth Dimension while under a Force Eruption. Such a requirement truly left Leonel speechless.
Of course, the worst part was that this was just the introduction. If he wanted the complete method… He needed to pay 500 billion Demon Points…