Shaking his head, Jayce watched as Vorona skittered over to her father’s side. He returned his attention to the table in front of him and let out a long breath. It wasn’t long before his focus returned and he felt ready to resume his work.

Jayce used physical objects like metal pins and resin along with material submission to merge the metal he’d forged with the gloves, creating a pair of gauntlets. The vessel was mostly complete but there was still one more material that Jayce hadn’t used.

For the final step in the shaping process, Jayce brought out a mana core from the Frozen Expanse. When a monster died, their aspects would concentrate within a random part of their body and create a talisman. On rare occasions, these aspects would combine with the residual mana inside the corpse’s body and form a crystalline sphere. This was how mana cores were formed. In truth, they were just a uniquely valuable kind of talisman.

The mana core Jayce was using today came from a sickle-thread spider. This monster was a low-level ambush predator that used its icy webbing to slice its prey apart. Even if an intruder didn’t step directly into its web, the spider could manipulate its threads from a distance. Their traps were modified in real time and anyone who got too close would find themselves in an inescapable maze of near-invisible garrote wires.

Placing his hand on the core, Jayce closed his eyes and concentrated. Just like he’d done when he was making the Bands of Freedom, Jayce used his mental energy to cordon off one of the core’s aspects. Soon, about a quarter of the fist-sized core split off to form a separate crystal. For refiners, the best thing about mana cores was how their aspects could be cleanly isolated.

Jayce split the smaller crystal even further and attached pieces to each gauntlet’s knuckles. Inside every one of these tiny dark crystals was a flickering blue light manifested from aspects of control.

“That’s the shape done…” Jayce blew out a heavy breath as he wiped his brow. The time and effort it took to make something like this was incomparable to a small trinket like the Ice-Gathering Charm. Even the Bands of Freedom was mostly the product of melting a mixture of metals onto a wooden ring. That kind of extreme casting was still different than forging a vessel from scratch. Jayce felt tired but his success invigorated him.

He took a small break to recover his lost energy before starting the second step in the refining process. While Jayce rested, Verne remained uncharacteristically silent. The old weaver stared at the incomplete vessel in front of Jayce and released an inaudible sigh.

“Abnormal. If I hadn’t witnessed its creation, I would have a hard time believing a month-old amateur made this,” Vorona observed, taking the words out of her father’s mouth.

Jayce turned back towards his gallery with a flat expression. “I appreciate the compliment but the way you phrased that makes me sound like a newborn.”

“It isn’t uncommon to refer to apprentices like that,” Verne explained. By now, he was already aware that Jayce was an otherworlder. “For example, a 20-year-old woman might only be a 4-year-old seamstress. This is a rare thing that both the Collective and the Federation have in common.”

“Rare?”

Verne gestured with one of his three-fingered hands. “Our countries are very different. If you’re talking about power, weavers are much more unified, but the Collective isn’t even as strong as one of the Federation’s five clans. If you’re talking about lifestyle and culture, well, Vilar has mostly grown up in the Federation while Vorona hasn’t acclimated at all. Just compare the two of them and you’ll see how different we are.”

Verne sounded a little upset when he mentioned the difference between his two children. Vorona let out a strange chuckle in response but she didn’t speak.

Meanwhile, Jayce was more interested in the first part of Verne’s explanation.

“What about Elysia, the jotun kingdom? How do they compare?”

Because information consoles could only connect him to other villagers, Jayce had very little information about current events in the continent. The library had information about the various powers on Caelum, but all of that was written from the Federation’s perspective and it still didn’t reveal much about the current state of the world. Jayce was curious about the relationships between Caelum’s various powers.

“The Federation is the undisputed master of this planet,” Verne answered. “How could it not be when astrals are an SS-Rank race? The only reason the other races have their own territories is because the five astral clans are restraining each other. If the northern Ascia clan tried to devour Elysia, they might accidentally start a civil war. After that, they might even get eaten up by White Forest in return.”

“White Forest?”

“You haven’t heard of them, really?” Verne looked at Jayce strangely. “White Forest is both a clan and a country. They’re stronger than any individual astral clan but weaker than the Federation as a whole. Or so I imagine, anyway. There aren’t very many of their kind and you’ll only see strays outside their home country…not that you’d be able to recognize them.”

Jayce opened his mouth to ask more but he suddenly had a bad premonition. This wasn’t a gut feeling or his sixth sense activating. Instead, a few things clicked in his head and he decided to leave his questions unasked.

‘Don’t lose focus,’ he reminded himself. ‘Putting everything else aside, this isn’t the time to hear about it. I have something very important to finish.’

Jayce turned away from Verne, placed his hands on the gauntlets and closed his eyes. “Force, protection, control. F- (35%), F- (45%), F- (28%)…The overall purity has a grade of F- with harmony at 34%.”

An eerie purple flame spread from his hands to cover the artifact vessel. Jayce was using nothing besides his soulfire for this step. When raising the harmony of a vessel, most refiners used tools like the tuning fork that Jayce had trained with. The ethereal qualities of Jayce’s soulfire could already handle this role, and with the knowledge he’d accumulated from Soul-Guided Forging, Jayce was more comfortable using it over a tool.

“Harmony increased to 40%...” Jayce muttered five minutes after he started working. If he wanted to avoid making a shoddy artifact, he’d need its harmony to reach a minimum of 70%.

Ten minutes after he began, Jayce announced that the harmony had reached 50%. Progress started to slow after that. It took another ten minutes before he reached 55% and thirty before 60%. Jayce’s brow creased and his breathing grew heavy, but he didn’t stop to take a break. The purifying process was similar to forging metal in that it couldn’t be paused. Once a blade was finished, it couldn’t be reshaped unless the craftsman was willing to toss it back into the forge. Similarly, if a refiner wasn’t satisfied with how they purified a vessel, their second attempt would only begin at a marginally better place than their first. Jayce had been told anecdotes about refiners who would spend months purifying the same material over and over again, restarting at a slightly higher percentage each time. The better their starting point, the further they could go, but purifying only became more difficult as the vessel’s harmony increased. This method was very time consuming and wasn’t suitable for a newbie like Jayce.

“Harmony increased to 70%,” Jayce exhaled. It had been well over an hour since he started purifying.

“Very good,” Verne encouraged. “Now there’s only…”

The weaver trailed off as he watched Jayce grab a particularly large forging hammer and raise it with both hands. Jayce’s eyes turned red for a moment as he activated Bloodrage, then he threw the hammer down. It smashed on top of both gauntlets and yet the earsplitting clang that Verne braced for didn’t appear. Instead, there was only a dull thud, as if that heavy collision had been one big lie. Jayce hastily returned the hammer to his storage and placed his hands on the vessel. It looked like he was going to continue purifying it.

“Harmony has increased to 70%,” Jayce announced after ten more minutes.

Verne and Vorona were stunned. Wasn’t it already at 70%?

Time passed slowly for Jayce and quickly for his gallery.

“Harmony has increased to 75%...80%...85%.”

After 85%, Jayce’s forehead was covered in sweat and his eyes were bloodshot despite having cancelled Bloodrage long ago. After he removed his hands from the vessel, his eyelids began a cycle of drooping before fluttering open again, a clear sign that his mental energy was critically low.

Vorona scuttled over and stretched her legs to raise her head above the table. “What did you do back there?”

Jayce opened his mouth and slowly closed it when he saw Verne step forward. A look of gratitude appeared in the human’s eyes as he slumped over to rest.

“If I liken his actions to forging, Jayce took a piece of metal that was about to cool down and thrust it back in the forge,” Verne said. “I’ve seen tools that produce a powerful ethereal shock to accomplish the same goal, but they are too heavy-handed for such a complicated process. If you’re unlucky, they will send you back further than where you started.”

Jayce gave a weak nod from his place at the table. He had used his third Soul Forger ability, Soul Strike, to add that last 15% onto the vessel. Unlike the tools that Verne described, Soul Strike was Jayce’s own ability and he could control it much more reliably than similar tools. This was an idea he’d gotten after using his authority to learn more about his class abilities. After experiments in both the real world and in his dreams, Jayce learned to execute this trick with a fair degree of reliability. The only catch was that he could only do it at the tail end of the purification process, as that was when the material would be most susceptible to a shock. If he was too early or too late, Soul Strike would be just as bad if not worse than the tools Verne mentioned.

After another period of rest, Jayce moved onto the final step, rune engraving. Neither Jayce’s soulfire nor his class abilities could help him here. Despite that, and despite the fact that Jayce had largely neglected engraving to focus on learning the other two processes, the third step in this artifact’s creation was the fastest and easiest of all. Jayce had already been drawing runes on his arms while performing Soul-Guided Forging. After doing this so many times, Jayce had burned the pattern into his mind and was able to replicate it without much trouble. Most of an engraver’s effort came from drawing up plans for systems of runes—a step that Jayce had completely avoided. The actual engraving process could be as fast or slow as the refiner wanted. As long as one had a steady hand, they could carve runes very quickly.

And just like that, it was finished.

Jayce couldn’t help but smile as he donned the gauntlets. The metal armor was fairly dark, but it gleamed brilliantly like a silvery pond dyed by dusk. Small rhomboid crystals decorated the gauntlet’s knuckles, each giving off a faint blue glow. The orange gloves underneath them also flickered with an an iridescent glow when viewed in the right light. The gauntlet’s overall design was sleek and nimble, as this was a tool and not combat gear.

Flame Shaper’s Gauntlets

Energy Requirement: Below First Gate

A multi-purpose tool for forging artifacts. Allows the wearer to remotely grip, cut and mold objects with a precision that can only be achieved through mental energy. At the same time, it grants the wearer better control over the shape and intensity of their soulfire. This artifact will also insulate the wearer from high temperatures, but its protection is limited by the low-grade materials it was made from.

With a thought, a short gout of flame erupted from Jayce’s right palm. Jayce willed the fire to extend, but he felt his control grow exponentially weaker as it moved away from his body. After stretching it about half a meter, Jayce recalled the flame and switched his focus to precision. The fire in his hand warmed until it reached a temperature that could melt most common metals. Prior to this, Jayce had already been able to melt objects with his soulfire but it required every ounce of his focus. He couldn’t perform material submission or manage anything else while tending to the flame, which was another reason why he used Verne’s forge when creating these gauntlets. Now, he was confident that he wouldn’t have to rely on an external forge.

While Jayce was marveling at his new artifact, a strange feeling welled up from his core. Jayce stared at the gauntlets that were wreathed in violet flames and felt as though he could see them even if he closed his eyes. This connection pulsed like a heartbeat and Jayce soon found that he could sense these gauntlets just like he could sense the souls of nearby lifeforms. The soulfire in his hands roiled and its ethereal pressure intensified. While this happened, Jayce instinctively drew a link between his soul and the new artifact. The link quickly established itself and Jayce immediately noticed a change in how his soulfire interacted with the gauntlets. Normally, when he wanted to perform material submission, there would be some natural friction between his will and the material in question. Now, Jayce felt there was absolutely zero resistance between him and this vessel.

Jayce’s soulflame flickered and the metal on the gauntlets began to shift. Under Jayce’s direction, the force iron plates became smoother and more tightly linked. Jayce’s work was already impressive for an amateur but now there was no need for a caveat. Jayce easily cleared away the imperfections and minor mistakes he’d made, allowing the gauntlet to look truly complete. Jayce felt that with some slight improvements to its purity and runes, it might even become polished.

Verne stepped closer and examined the newly improved gauntlets. “Did you…What did you do just now?”

When Jayce described what he’d felt, Verne lowered his head in thought before concluding, “It should be soulbinding flame.”

“That’s my soulfire’s characteristic?” Jayce was quick on the uptake.

“I believe so. Soulbinding flame can link vessels to its owner, making them significantly easier to process. The downside is that artifacts created this way will become ineffective when anyone other than their creator uses them. If you’re trying to make a living as a refiner, then this characteristic is completely useless.”

“But I don’t have to bind it, right?”

“Confirm it yourself. I’ve only ever read about this flame.”

Light blue monster fur appeared in Jayce’s hand and he quickly wrapped it within his soulfire. After a minute, Jayce sighed in relief. When he thought about it rationally, he realized this process couldn’t be automatic. If it was, then he should have felt a connection with every artifact he created with Soul-Guided Forging.

As for what Verne said about it being useless for making money, Jayce couldn’t care less. Jayce was learning refining to boost his personal strength. Even though this flame wasn’t the legendary fire of life or fire of creation, it was just as good in his eyes. With this characteristic, it would be much easier to produce polished artifacts for himself. Those artifacts would essentially be one grade higher than their energy requirement, allowing him to compete with enemies at higher levels and/or life orders.

“The optimal word here is congratulations.” Vorona stated before turning to Jayce and saying, “Congratulations.”

Jayce was about to reply when a chrome-colored creature flew into the room. He initially thought it was a dove, but upon closer inspection he realized it was made from a flowing lifelike metal. As Jayce marveled at this beautiful artifact, it started speaking.

“Verne, I’ll just assume you’re busy at work and can’t check your IC. We were making preparations for the festival and something’s come up. How quickly can you come to this location…?”

That slack, soothing voice was unmistakably the village head’s. He had specified a location at the outskirts of the village, which put both Jayce and Verne on guard. Nothing good ever happened at the intersection between the village and the surrounding no-man’s land.

“I’ll be there with company in less than five minutes,” Verne replied to the dove in a serious tone.

Jayce sensed impending danger as Verne shuffled over and gripped his collar in one three-fingered hand.

“No need to sprint,” the dove said. “This matter is important, but it isn’t too urgent.”

“…Ten minutes then.”

Jayce let out a sigh of relief as Verne released his collar.