William didn't use a flint or tinder; he simply channelled a thread of his newfound spirit power, and with a soft whoosh, the kindling inside the oven roared to life.
As the orange flames began to lick the stone interior of the forge, he turned his attention to the pile of materials he had laid out on the workbench.
He worked with a methodical, cold efficiency, organising his components like a general preparing for a siege. He placed the heavy mounds of Homos clay on the left and the pack of a hundred light candles on the right.
Finally, he turned to the dreaded scarlet vibrant ores. He didn't treat them with the frantic fear Ellina expected; instead, he divided them into two specific piles—one containing seven kilos and the other three.
Ellina, watching from behind her shimmering shield, made a silent bet with herself. She wagered that this boy wouldn't last five minutes before the room was engulfed in a catastrophic explosion.
Even if he possessed a modicum of forging knowledge, the scarlet ore was a temperamental beast that had claimed the lives of master smiths.
She kept her hand poised near the control of her shield, ready to intervene the moment the "inevitable" disaster occurred. No matter his station as a porter, he was still a human being, and her conscience wouldn't allow her to simply watch him disintegrate.
But unlike what she expected, William didn't reach for the dangerous ore first. Instead, he picked up the clay.
The Homos clay looked like a giant, wobbling mass of blue slime. Despite its soft, tender appearance, it possessed a surprising density. The ten kilos occupied only about three square meters of table space, looking more like a dormant aquatic creature than a forging material.
Without using tools, William used his bare hands to pull a large chunk from the mass. The clay yielded easily to his touch, stretching like thick dough. He carried it over to a heavy pot made of a heat-resistant spirit alloy and dropped it inside.
"Do you have ready moulds here? Specifically for arrowheads?" William asked, his voice steady as he carefully balanced the pot over the raging flames of the furnace.
"Here," Ellina replied. With a flick of her wrist, she manifested a one-meter-square metal plate from her own storage device. It clattered onto the floor just inside the shield's perimeter.
The mould was forged from a high-grade alloy designed to survive the thermal shock of molten spirit metals. It was a beautiful piece of work, containing hundreds of precise indentations for arrowheads.
William crouched down to inspect the patterns. He felt a genuine spark of admiration. Each space was carved into a perfect, elongated diamond shape, tapering sharply at the tip.
It was a sophisticated design; such a shape wouldn't just grant the arrows immense penetrative power, but the aerodynamics would significantly increase their flight speed and terminal momentum.
"It's my personal mould for making high-penetration arrowheads," Ellina noted, catching the look of approval on William's face. She couldn't help but boast a little, her pride as a master smith resurfacing. "Can that mysterious master of yours produce something as refined as this?"
"My master?" William grunted, his eyes never leaving the melting clay. "Humph. She is far more skilled than you could possibly imagine."
While he admired the craftsmanship of the mould, he knew that if he were at his peak, he could forge a mould that utilised spiritual grooves to double the arrow's velocity.
However, he wasn't entirely lying about his teacher—the woman who had trained him in his previous life was a legend whose name still echoed in the higher realms.
"Let's see what that legendary master of yours actually taught you, then," Ellina snapped back, taking his dismissive tone as a personal insult. She glared at him, her curiosity now sharpened by a competitive edge.
William didn't offer a rebuttal. He simply moved the mould into position near the anvil and waited for the furnace to do its work.
In this world, Homos clay was a staple of alchemy, often used as a stabilising agent in liquid decoctions.
No one in the Forging Department ever thought to subject it to direct, high-intensity fire. Usually, adding clay to a recipe helped refine the final product's grade, acting as a spiritual filter.
But when exposed to the direct heat of William's furnace, the transformation was dramatic. Not only did the clay melt with startling speed, but the intense heat began to incinerate the organic impurities hidden within the blue mass.
Within a single minute, the dull, slime-like clay had transformed into a sparkling, translucent blue liquid that shimmered with a strange inner light.
Ellina leaned forward, her eyes wide with disbelief. This simple, initial action was something she had never seen or heard of in all her years of study.
To see an alchemical stabiliser treated like a base metal was a violation of every forging tenet she knew. The realisation made her frown, and for the first time, she began to seriously question her assumption that the boy was merely playing a game.
"It's ready," William murmured, his voice cutting through the roar of the furnace.
As the Homos clay reached its transcendent, liquid state, William didn't hesitate. He used a pair of heavy iron tongs to lift the glowing pot from the flames, placing it carefully on the specially designed heat-resistant table.
Then, he moved with a speed that blurred the vision of the watching master. He grabbed the scarlet vibrant ores, placing them one by one onto the table in a series of swift, rhythmic movements.
Ellina's heart hammered against her ribs. Every instinct in her body screamed at her to stop him, to collapse the shield and drag him away from those volatile stones.
But William's confidence was a physical weight in the room; he moved so fast that by the time her mouth opened to protest, he had already arranged dozens of the dangerous ores in a precise circular formation.
Then, he tilted the pot. He began to pour the sparkling blue liquid slowly, deliberately, over the jagged red stones.
Sizzle!
The sound was sharp and violent, like cold water meeting a white-hot blade. As the blue liquid made contact with the scarlet surfaces, the room was momentarily flooded with a strange, dazzling blue light.
Thick plumes of fragrant vapour rose toward the ceiling, but more importantly, the liquid clay didn't run off the stones or pool on the table. Instead, it started to slowly disappear, soaking into the very pores of the ore.
Under the influence of the clay, the scarlet vibrant ores began to transform. The terrifying, sparkling red light that had previously pulsed from their depths began to dim. The vibrancy faded into a muted, matte scarlet.
This was the secret William carried from his past life—a secret that the alchemists of this world had fundamentally misunderstood. They believed Homos clay was an "upgrading" agent, a material meant to boost the quality of a recipe.
In reality, the clay possessed a profound controlling effect, a stabilising property that rivalled some of the most expensive and rare materials in the higher realms.
The primary defect of the scarlet vibrant ore was its uncontrollable, high-density inner energy. It was like a coiled spring under immense tension; any stimulus—heat, friction, or spirit power—would cause the spring to snap, leading to an instantaneous and catastrophic explosion.
By saturating the ore with the liquid clay, William was essentially wrapping that spring in a dampening field. He forced the berserk energy to stay stored within the stone's structure, taming it into a docile, manageable form. This was the first, most crucial step in the process of turning a "cursed" ore into a weapon of war.
Ellina was not a normal forging master. Within the massive hierarchy of the Forging Department, she was ranked among the top five experts. Her spiritual senses were razor-sharp, and her experience with materials was vast. The subtle shifts in the ores' energy signatures did not escape her notice.
She stood frozen, her mouth falling agape without her even realising it. She was shocked beyond description. What she was witnessing at this moment was nothing short of a miracle in the world of forging.
In her world, every smith knew about the staggering amount of energy stored within scarlet vibrant ore.
Every master had, at one point or another, dreamed of finding a way to harness that energy, to tame it and forge it into artefacts of legendary power. But throughout the long, blood-stained history of the spirit master world, not a single master had ever succeeded—to her knowledge.
And yet, here was this little porter. A boy who had appeared out of nowhere in a servant's uniform. He was handling the impossible task with the casual ease of a man eating a simple meal. He wasn't sweating; he wasn't trembling. He was simply working.
As she struggled to regain control of her shattered expectations, William finished processing the first large batch of the ore. Without a moment's pause, he tossed another slab of clay into the pot and returned it to the fire, all while neatly stacking the "tamed" scarlet ores on the corner of the workbench.
Ellina's tongue felt heavy in her mouth. She wanted to scream out a hundred different questions. How are you doing this? What is the ratio? How did you know the clay would react this way?
But as she watched the sheer level of concentration etched into William's youthful face, she forced herself to stay silent. She knew that in a forge, a single distraction could mean the difference between a masterpiece and a funeral. She stayed behind her shield, her eyes wide, watching the boy do the impossible.