Chapter 43

Chapter 43 Strongest Sage, Refining the Dungeon

"Alright, are you two ready?"

A day after the audience .

Ruli, Alma and I went to the dungeon .

We need most of the students for the barrier creation, and those students need to be able to use chantless magic .

Even though the teachers have gotten used with chantless magic lesson, teaching all of them in one week will still be difficult .

Therefore, we agreed that we needed around three weeks before we could begin the barrier creation in earnest .

"Yes! I'm good anytime!"

"Me too, all perfect!"

"Then, let's go!"

Thus, I started the search for one of the materials needed to create the barrier; a 60cm magic stone .

Well clearing the dungeon would take some time, so today's main objective is teaching Ruli and Alma magic .

"Alma, you can shoot 【Simple Mana Enchant】 without a problem right?"

"I can do it with my eyes closed now! I mean I've shot like hundreds of it!"

"Then, the next one is 【Wire-guided Enchant】 . Alma, try using 【Simple Mana Enchant】 but stop before you shoot it . "

"Un!"

Alma put her mana on the arrow she readied .

It's still a bit crude, but she got the passing mark . At this degree of completion, she should be able to learn the next enchant .

"You'll shoot that arrow . . . . but this time, try to concentrate your consciousness on the arrow before you do . Connect the arrow with a mana thread and feel as if you hold the endpoint . "

"Hm . . . Like this?"

I could sense mana coiling on the slight space between the shot arrow and Alma .

The range is only about 3 meters . . . . It's good enough to get the feel .

"Then, try to make the arrow curve to the right using that thread as an intermediately . . . . "

"Oooh, it curved!"

Alma's arrow slightly turned right .

She really has a good sense .

"This is called guided enchant . Once you can make the arrow turn at your will, you don't need to worry about line of fire anymore . Also, that arrow can penetrate right?"

"It can easily penetrate a mere hermit crab . . . "

"Then, first you should practice shooting through two crabs at once . "

Doing it on one crab is easy, but you need to have an unexpectedly good control to penetrate two crabs with differences in highs and lows .

It should be optimum for her practice .

And since I've hanged the pendant from yesterday on my neck, I should also get a bit of experience points from it .

"Okay, I'll give it a try!"

"Don't go to other floors for now okay . "

"Got it!"

After she said that, Alma left us to hunt hermit crabs .

This means she'll be a bit away from us, but I can sense if she's in any danger with 【Passive Detection】 as long as she's in the same floor, so there's no need to fret .

After confirming that Alma turned at a corner, I turned my line of sight to Ruli .

"Is it time for Augment magic at last!?"

Ruli raised her voice before I could say anything .

However, unfortunately, augment magic isn't the thing I'm going to teach her now .

"Augment magic . . . . Or rather, first we need to make the materials for it . You should make your own weapon if you want to do augmentation . "

First of all, if a First Crest bearer needs to bring a sword whenever they want to practice, they will never have enough money on them . If they can create their own sword, they can practice anytime they want .

Moreover, if you want to master augment magic, you'll have to be able to concurrently use augment magic while you're creating a sword . Thus, blacksmithing is indispensable for it .

"Creating weapons . . . . ? But don't you need to train for years or even dozens of years to become a blacksmith . . . . "

"If you're going pro, yep that's about right . "

Even if she took the shortest route using the knowledge of my past life, it would still likely take her several hundreds years to completely master blacksmithing .

However, it isn't that difficult if it's only to surpass the swords you can find in the present royal capital .

"Well, I'll teach you weapon creation later, first our problem is . . . . procuring the materials . In short, metal refinery . "

"But first, we'd need ores to refine–"

"We have raw ores here . This . "

While saying that, I take out a sword from storage magic, put 【Mana Strike】, and 【Brittle Fracture】 on it and hit the dungeon wall with the sword .

Then a part of the dungeon's wall crumbled and fell to our direction .

By the way, 【Brittle Fracture】 is a magic to raise offensive power against hard brittle things like rocks .

"Dungeon's wall have a moderate amount of metal in them . There's many reasons for that . . . . Well, just keep that in mind for now . "

"Eh, you're breaking that!? Or rather, you can break that!?"

"Hm? Isn't dungeon's wall a resource?"

"Let alone resources, it should have been the forefront of things that absolutely can't be broken . . . . "

But it can be broken though .

The principal also already gave me his permission, 『You can do anything you want with it if you can break it』 anyway .

Well, no point thinking about it . It's probably another weird knowledge the demons spread . Those bunch really never do anything decent .

"I'll teach how to break the dungeon's wall later, for now let's focus on refinement . I'll show you how to do it right now, so watch closely and keep using 【Passive Detection】 . "

"Yes!"

I pick up a huge lump from the crumbled wall while Ruli is watching .

There isn't much metal in it since we're in upper floor, but it's quite enough for training .

I diffuse my mana into the lump, and after my mana melted the metal, I pulled the mana out and recrystallized the metal portion .

And then I crushed it into pieces using the sword with 【Brittle Fracture】 .

"What do you think? Did you get it?"

"It felt like the mana melted the dungeon wall somehow . . . . Was that how to do refinement?"

"No, this is the second stage . "

I activated magnetic magic and gathered black lumps from among the broken pieces .

"These are the dungeon's crude ores . Well, put simply, they're mix of metals contained within the dungeon wall . "

Dungeon's crude ores contain iron within it so you can collect them using magnetism .

You can use your hands as well, but using magnetic magic is far quicker .

"Dungeon crude ores . . . . So we make a sword using these?"

"Nope . We collect these and then refine them . "

I gathered the dungeon crude ores in one place, and melted them into one lump using flame magic .

The secret here is to put in a largish amount of mana right before they melt . The melting point will become lower if you do, making it easier to melt the lump .

I cooled it with water magic lastly, and recrystallized it using mana again by the same method like earlier .

Afterward, the black lumps this time are mixed with gray and blue crystals, creating spotty patterns . I think it's 90% gray and 10% blue .

The blue is mithril, the gray is iron . It seems the metals mixed within the wall in this floor are mostly of these two variants .

"How about it?"

"Don't tell me that's . . . . Mithril!?"

After identifying the blue parts on the lump, Ruli asked me .

"Correct . The gray one is iron . . . . But the purity is lacking, thus we need to raise it by repeating the process before . "

Afterward, I broke the spotty lump, melted the blue pieces and the gray pieces separately and recrystallized them again with the method earlier .

Silicones, oxygens and other elements besides metal are mixed in dungeon crude ores .

Recrystallization is needed to remove those impurities .

Well, my Fourth Crest can't make it that pure even after repeated processes though .

"I, I see . . . . So you get mithril from dungeon walls . . . . "

"This isn't really that complicated, you'll learn in no time . "

"No time!? . . . . I'm not sure which part of it isn't complicated, but thank you in advance!"

–And then, about 30 minutes later .

"I did it!"

Ruli is holding mithril she refined herself, with a smile on her whole face .

To be honest, I thought it would have taken around two hours .

Should I say as expected of the school's runner-up, or maybe it was thanks to her intense determination . . . .