"You'll soon be able to see for yourself," William said, his voice calm despite the late hour.
He finished arranging the dimmed, clay-treated ores on the workbench before moving to a different task entirely.
Unlike what Ellina expected, William didn't place the ores back into the forge immediately. Instead, he reached for the bundle of light candles he had purchased at the market.
"These candles…" she muttered, her brow furrowing in confusion. She watched as William began liquifying the candles in small crucibles. It didn't take much time before three pots were filled with a viscous, glowing green liquid.
The light from the melted wax was surprisingly potent, illuminating the entire room and casting long, flickering shadows against the stone walls in the deep quiet of the night.
"Do you want more light during your work? I have a higher grade candle here," Ellina offered, misinterpreting his intent.
She reached into her storage ring and produced a much bigger, significantly thicker candle of a deep green hue. It pulsed with a rich spiritual essence, far superior to the common candles William was using.
"No, I'm using it in the forging process itself," William replied without looking up. He brought another large pot forward and filled it with the dimmed scarlet ores he had stabilised earlier.
The moment he placed the pot over the raging fire, Ellina couldn't help but call out her spirit power.
A shimmering golden aura flared around her as she tensed in fright. The deep-seated fear of the scarlet vibrant ore's volatility was etched into her very bones; she reflexively prepared for a blast that could level the building.
But the catastrophe she feared never arrived. Another miracle unfolded before her eyes: the ores began to liquify smoothly, melting into the pot without so much as a spark of instability.
It took roughly ten minutes to melt the entire batch into a bright, scarlet-red fluid that shimmered with contained heat.
William didn't hurry to start hammering the liquid. Instead, he carefully placed the pot on the ground before taking one of the three crucibles of green candle fluid. With a steady hand, he slowly poured the wax into the molten scarlet liquid.
Swoosh!
A thick, violent cloud of steam hissed upward, assaulting William and rising fast to fill the rafters of the room. His face was slightly singed by the sudden gush of heat, and his hair became dishevelled in the updraft. However, the mist didn't prevent Ellina from witnessing yet another impossibility.
The moment the red melted ore touched the green liquid, it began to emit dazzling sparks of light, like miniature fireworks contained within the pot. It was clear that something within the candle wax was stimulating the melted scarlet vibrant ore in a very specific way.
Ellina was baffled, but William understood the chemistry perfectly. The material used in light candles had an outstanding ability to augment spirit power in conducting materials—the same property that allowed them to burn so brightly when fueled by a master's essence.
However, this wasn't the only effect it had. It also possessed a unique ability to regulate energy conduction.
The candle wax acted as a secondary stabiliser; it took the fierce nature of the scarlet vibrant ores—which were already partially tamed by the clay—and made them even more smooth and obedient.
It was a second "calming bonus" added to the mix to prevent the ores from going berserk under any condition, even when subjected to the extreme pressures of high-velocity flight or impact. Doing this ensured that the further forging and shaping of these ores could proceed safely without any unforeseen accidents.
Within the thick cloud of red mist, William reopened the small wound on his thumb and let a few drops of his blood fall into the mixture. He didn't wait for the mist to clear; he placed the pot aside to cool slightly and grabbed the next one.
During the next hour, he repeated this process methodically until he had melted and blended his entire supply. The number of light candles needed wasn't nearly as many as he had anticipated; out of the bundle he had bought, he was left with almost half.
"Time to temper it," he announced. He returned the first pot to the fire, watching the surface of the mixture with intense focus for five minutes. He didn't want the mix to remain a liquid; he needed it to reach a semi-solid, plastic state.
When the consistency was exactly right, he took it out and poured the glowing mass onto the anvil.
He knew he didn't have the raw physical strength to hammer this high-density alloy properly and efficiently using standard strikes, so he fell back on the same specialised method he had used for the needles.
He began to rotate, letting the hammer's weight build momentum. Rotating several times before finally landing a crushing blow, he worked the semi-solid mix. Each strike released brilliant sparks of fire that rained down around him, effectively cleansing the alloy and burning away any lingering impurities.
Despite it being a simple hammering process, William didn't have enough strength or spirit power to use the hammer efficiently in doing so. And soon enough, Ellina noticed this.
She could see the way his breath hitched and how his strikes, though precise, lacked the crushing force needed to drive the impurities deep out of the semi-solid mass.
"Let me do it for you." At this point, Ellina knew this was William's weakness. He had such a fragile body, and that would limit the amount of cleansing he could do.
She saw the potential in the material, and as a master smith, she couldn't stand to see a masterpiece-in-the-making held back by lack of raw physical power.
"Thanks," knowing his limits, William didn't refuse the help. He wasn't so proud as to sabotage his own weapons. He stood on the side while preparing other pots for her, ensuring a steady rotation of materials.
And Ellina started to show her position as one of the top five forging masters in the entire academy.
She didn't use the gliding, centrifugal rotation William had used; she didn't need to. Her arms, thick with seasoned muscle and backed by Gold-grade spirit power, brought the hammer down with the authority of a falling mountain.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Each hit was done with all her strength, making even the entire room tremble under her fierce hammering. The anvil groaned under the pressure, and the very foundations of the small stone house seemed to vibrate in sympathy with her strikes.
William looked in envy towards her and couldn't help but aspire to get such strength and more. He remembered his past glory, where a single strike of his could shatter continents, and it made his current vessel feel all the more restrictive.
"It's ready," after hammering, cooling, reheating and repeating the process for a dozen times, the earlier scarlet bright mix with a few lines of green changed to become silver in colour.
Such a change was bizarre in Ellina's eyes. She had worked with hundreds of ores, but she had never seen a deep red mineral turn into a shimmering, mercury-like silver through pure tempering. But it was expected for William. After all, the real colour of the scarlet vibrant ore's essence wasn't scarlet red, but silver!
All that red was the impurities which invaded the ores from other minerals and soil over centuries of geological formation.
By using the wax and clay as chemical catalysts under Ellina's supreme pressure, they had finally reached the "True Heart" of the metal. The first piece to be ready was left again inside the fire before it turned totally into fluid.
Ellina didn't continue working immediately, and William knew the reason behind that. She was a scholar of the forge as much as a practitioner. She wanted to witness his last moves—the final shaping and tempering—before returning to work on the remaining scarlet ores.
"Do you want special water for cooling? I have a flask of Arctic Marrow Essence or some Dragon-Blood Spring water," she offered.
She didn't consider this as a simple forging process anymore. In her eyes, William might be doing arrowheads, but these heads looked far too special to be cooled with normal, stagnant tap water.
"No need," but William knew wasting such resources over these consumables wasn't a wise move. While those liquids could add elemental attributes to permanent weapons like swords or spears, these arrows were meant to explode.
They were one-time use items. Besides, the forging process went better than what he expected, thanks to the timely help of Ellina.
Using higher-grade cooling water wouldn't add any boost effect to the arrowheads' explosive yield. So, he calmly declined her offer, much to her surprise.
The next thing was done like any usual forging process, yet executed with the steady hands of a surgeon. He poured the melted silver mix inside the mould Ellina had provided.
Each diamond-shaped cavity filled perfectly, the liquid tension of the silver alloy shimmering under the forge light. Then, he used water from the big basin inside the room to splash it evenly on the mould to cool it off.
Ssssss! Steam came out again, a thick white curtain that smelled of ozone and hot metal, but it didn't last long this time. The silver alloy set rapidly.
Clang! Clang!
As he got done from forging these arrowheads, William just flipped the mould on the side and hit it with his fist. The pieces fell out onto the stone floor with a crystalline ringing sound.
The arrowheads were ready to be used. They were beautiful and terrifying—silver diamonds with a dull, matte finish that seemed to swallow the light around them.
"These contain such tremendous power… enough to wound silver grade monsters," Ellina remarked.
She picked one up, using her spirit sense to probe the internal structure. She could feel the volatile energy coiled inside like a sleeping serpent. She gave out her surprised opinion, truly impressed that a porter could produce a silver-tier threat.
"Wound? Humph, if these arrows are used properly, forget about silver monsters… They can even wound gold grade monsters in a fatal way! As for silver ones, they would be long dead by the explosion," William said in pride without holding back his ego.
He wasn't exaggerating. He knew the chemical potential of the scarlet essence combined with the pressure of his "needle" cores.
After all, this was his work. How could he let Ellina misjudge his arrowheads like that? To him, calling these "silver-tier" was almost an insult to the complexity of the design.
"Really?" Ellina seemed to doubt him. Even for her, the idea of an arrow wounding a Gold-grade master or monster was nearly unheard of unless the bow was a legendary artefact. "Can I keep some for me to test? I want to see this 'fatal' power for myself."
"Take whatever you want," William said, waving a hand toward the pile of shimmering silver tips. He knew she didn't ask this solely out of her own curiosity. She was thinking practically.
She needed proof. She was thinking not only to mimic his brilliant forging process later on but also to show such unique products to the high-ranking forging masters.
Without a physical sample of the "impossible" results, how could she make these stubborn old masters agree on the fifty-percent profit deal she had promised him?