Lith swung the Orichalcum hammer in his hands to check its balance, making Solus green with envy. She yearned to put her hands on it, but as long as she kept her ability to take physical form a secret, Solus could only watch.
Aside from being entirely made of Orichalcum, the hammer wasn't much different from the carpenter tools with a nail slot Zekell sold in his shop. It consisted of two parts: a straight shaft to hold it and the head. The head featured the actual hammer and the claw.
"The design is really poor." Lith sighed. In none of the stories he had read as a kid an enchanted item seemed out of a WellMert. He was solely interested in its properties, but the mundane look of the hammer made it underwhelming even for him.
"With no mold at his disposal, there wasn't much Zekell could do. Since we just have to perform experiments, we'll worry about the shape for last. Solus, can you make me a blacksmith lab?"
"Give me a moment." She replied, making the tower rumble for a few seconds.
A new door appeared in the basement. Behind it, there was a perfect replica of Zekell's workshop. Lith nodded in approval and looked at his pocket watch. He had six hours before he had to be at Kamila's place.
"Okay, no time to lose. First things first. Let's check out our Forge."
Solus took the Adamant Forge out of her pocket dimension, allowing both of them to appreciate the vigorous flow of world energy it induced in its surroundings. The Adamant was like a magnet for world energy.
No matter how good a mana conductor the Adamant was, it couldn't contain an indefinite amount of energy. Once it was saturated, the constant stream of new world energy would force the old one stored inside the metal to come out, generating an artificial mana flow.
It was a phenomenon very similar to Invigoration, when Lith made the world energy course through his body without absorbing it. That way the world energy wouldn't nurture his mana core, but it would replenish his mana and bring his body back to its peak condition.
"This is interesting. What if Adamant is just one of the many metals that don't exist on Earth? What if it's a metal capable of using some kind of Accumulation to refine itself over the centuries until it becomes Adamant?" Lith wondered.
He placed his hand over the forge and used Invigoration on it. Just like for the Orichalcum, he could see inside the block of metal as if it was a living being. To him, the forge appeared as if it was made of light, with very few impurities inside of it.
The impurities were thin black veins, tainting the otherwise pristine element. He attempted to take control of the Adamant's mana flow to expel the impurities, but they refused to budge even of a single millimeter.
Not even Solus's power, boosted by her tower form managed to do any better. They couldn't risk damaging it, so they put it back inside their pocket dimension and took out a new crate of Orichalcum ore.
"I'm really curious to see if Zekell is right. Maybe with Origin Flames we can skip the smelting phase and obtain Orichalcum faster." Solus proposed.
Lith put the ore inside a crucible and made his throat turn into his hybrid form.
"Wait a minute!" He choked on his flames and burned his own mouth.
"Everything in the tower is part of you. Did you make the crucible or crafted a real one?"
"I made it." Solus's wisp shuddered. With the Origin Flames' power, she had been seconds away from a world of pain.
After Lith made a makeshift crucible from clay with earth magic, he put it inside the furnace and breathed a small jet of Origin Flames. The crucible held, but Lith could see it getting thinner, forcing him to add new clay that would immediately ignite as well.
Solus had to use a few arrays to keep the flames in check and prevent them from attacking the furnace too.
"Origin Flames are hungry little critters. If I'm not careful they would spread everywhere." She said.
When the fire went out, the results were appalling. The clay had turned into high quality ceramic, which was useless to them, whereas the over 10 kilograms of ore had disappeared, leaving only a few droplets of silvery metal.
"The good news is that's pure adamant. The bad news is that there is so little that I can't even make a ring out of it. Sure, if I sacrifice a few crates I could get an Adamant ring, but to what end?
"I have no blueprint for powerful rings, it would only be a waste of precious material. I don't know how much Orichalcum we'll need to make the improved version of the Skinwalker armor. 10 kilos is already a huge hit." Lith sighed.
"Let's work on the hammer, then." Solus said.
Their aim was to Forgemaster a tool that would improve all of their future works. The idea was based on their studies on true Forgemastering when they were still at the White Griffon academy.
Back then, Lith had been forced to use a hybrid technique using both fake and true magic to Forgemaster his creations, but now he could rely solely on the latter to step up his game.
During his research, he had devised two possible ways to create superior magical items with true Forgemastering. The first required for him to shape the pseudo core outside its future recipient and then merge them together before creating the necessary mana pathways to make it permanent.
The second one, instead, would have him create both a small pseudo core and thin mana pathways at once. Lith had to infuse both of them with more energy until they reached the desired size.
Each method had its pros and cons, at least on paper.
By creating a complete pseudo core, Lith had all the time he wanted to shape it with surgical precision and charge it with enough energy to fuel the effects he wanted to achieve.
The downside of such a method was that injecting such a big energy mass inside inanimate matter would encounter a lot of resistance and put a huge amount of stress on its recipient.
If he wasn't careful, most materials would shatter due to a mana flow too strong and sudden for them to handle. To make matters worse, the pseudo core was likely to be deformed in the process, and fixing it would require to inject even more mana, adding even more stress on the material.
Only then could Lith try to create the mana pathways necessary to stabilize the pseudo core. Too few and the mana would be dispersed, too many and the item would crumble.
Creating a small pseudo core and mana pathways at the same time, instead, would allow Lith to pile up the mana inside its recipient one bit at the time. It would give him the opportunity to not exceed the limits of the chosen material and fix any errors he might make in the early steps during the later stages.
The main problem of this method was that any late mistake couldn't be fixed. Also, developing all of the mana pathways along with the pseudo core at the same time was very demanding in terms of mana and focus.