Thomas carefully examined the burns on his hand. Thankfully, they were pretty light and his skin had only reddened a little bit. Touching the ingot had felt similar to accidentally touching a hot panhandle. It stung and burned him lightly but didn't do too much real damage. The longer he held it the more damage it would do. It only took a few minutes for his hand to heal and return to normal. Clad and the guards were looking at him funny so he just smiled and said, "Still a little too hot to touch."

They all nodded in understanding, buying his lie. Thomas looked at the ingot on the ground and conjured up his Magnetic magic to try to levitate the ingot back onto the anvil. However, Silver is a non-magnetic metal so his attempt failed miserably. He quickly switched to Metal magic and conjured a simple clamp that grabbed the ingot of Mana-Touched True Silver and placed it on the anvil in front of himself. He looked the unassuming silvery metal over for a bit before storing it away inside of his inventory. The metal would make for excellent ammunition against 'evil'-type creatures and players. It also made him think about the potential of metal with the exact opposite attribute to it.

Since he didn't know what the potential name of the metal was, he ignored it for now. He didn't have the desire to read through the hundreds, if not thousands, of metals and affixes listed within the book. He checked on the crucible filled with still melting ore and the steel ingot he was heating up. The melting ore still had a little to go so he grabbed the ingot with some tongs and carried it over to the hand-cranked extruder. He started passing it through the extruder and rotating it ninety-degrees with each pass. He was turning it into some bar stock to at least start getting the steel into the shape of a baton.

He decided not to add any of the Mana-Touched True Silver to this project. For one, if he did he wouldn't be able to work with his bare hands. He also didn't want to enhance the power of the baton for the pirate that would be getting it. Once he'd worked the ingot into a long thick bar, he stuck it back into the flames of the forge. While the bar reheated, he scooped some slag from the melting True Silver and poured a second ingot. While one metal got hotter and the other cooled, his eyes began to glow blue while he channeled Metal magic. He was highly curious about the other spots of metal mana he'd seen before. What other miraculous metals could he find in this cave?

With his eyes active he could only see two spots of concentrated Metal mana particles floating in front of the walls. Since he could only see so deep into the solid stone it was only to be expected that he couldn't see every node of ore. While the two metals did their thing, he conjured up a pickaxe and moved to the nearest bundle of metal mana near his workbench. He went ham on the wall using his full Power for strength and Agility for speed. His arms were a blur while the sound of the pickaxe digging into the wall was like thunder.

Chunks of stone and stone dust flew through the air as he wailed on the wall. The best thing about using his Metal Magic to conjure the pickaxe is that it had infinite durability as long as he had mana. With his Magic attribute being his highest one, mana wasn't an issue. He happily burned through his mana to keep the pickaxe from turning into a bent pile of scrap. As he dug deeper the cloud of Metal Mana particles grew thicker signaling that he was getting closer to the source. He only had to dig in less than a meter to strike the ore node and pry the first chunk out. Surprisingly, the ore had a sort of golden color to it. Dig he just dig out another precious metal? What the hell was up with this cave?!

He dismissed the pickaxe and grabbed a chunk of the supposed gold. Games didn't go so far as to make metals corroded or tarnished while they were raw. If they did it would make it too hard to tell what it was. That's why things like copper nodes had that brownish copper color instead of being green. He looked over the gold-ish colored metal for a bit before running some mana through it to use his Metallurgy skill to check it. His mana moved rapidly through the metal, faster than any of the previous metals he'd checked. When it returned to him the sensation he received felt sort of warm. Not warm like from fire but more like the warmth of a summer days sun shining down.

He stopped channeling his mana and looked over the ore a bit before storing it inside of his inventory. He'd melt it down and find out exactly what it was later. He stepped away from the mining spot and returned to the forge, the bar stock was glowing nice and hot now and ready to be rolled through the extruder again. He compressed and lengthened the bar until it was too long to fit into the forge anymore. So, he cut it in half. The first half would be used for the base of the baton. He planned to make it into a three-part collapsible baton.

He set the first section aside to let it cool down to room temperature then tossed the remaining steel into the forge to heat back up. Once he got away from these pirates making something like this baton would only take an hour or less not half a day. While the steel started to heat back up he checked the poured ingot. It was solid enough for him to knock it out of the mold and quickly store it inside of his inventory before it could burn him. With the mold empty he cleaned the slag off the top of the melted True Silver and poured the remainder into the mold. It wasn't quite enough for a full ingot, only about half of one. He didn't care. He wanted the crucible free for the new ore.

Using the ladle he scraped out as much of the slag that drifted to the bottom of the crucible as he could get. If a crucible wasn't properly cleaned after use it would get filled by the slag that was heavy and drifted to the bottom. He, obviously, didn't care about their crucible but he needed it to be somewhat cleaned if he planned to continue using it. He glanced at Clad and couldn't help smiling. The poor man had been running the blower this entire time because something was constantly inside of the forge. Beads of sweat were covering his forehead and he was starting to breathe a little heavy, a clear sign of getting tired. Thomas waved his hand, "Take a break. Drink a couple of mana potions or something. I'll dig in the walls for a bit while you recover."

Clad just let out a sigh and flopped down onto his back spreading out all over the floor as he relaxed. On the bright side, his Mana Control skill was leveling up like crazy while working for Thomas. Thomas left Clad where he was and went over to the wall to return to digging out the ore. He modified the pickaxe to have a serrated pick to rip through the stone and ore faster. Once again stones, dust, and ore started flying out of the hole as he dug deeper to get every last drop of the possible golden ore out of the wall.

It didn't take long to extract all of the gold-colored ore from the cave wall. The deposit was the smallest one that he'd found so far, less then ten kilograms of ore if his guess was right. Maybe just enough to make a single ingot. Hopefully, it was some powerful stuff. Even the supposedly rare Mana-Touched True Silver had several tens of kilograms in a single deposit. With the golden ore mined out and nothing else in sight through the stone, he moved to the section of the wall covering the last visible deposit in the room. Digging once again ensued as Thomas started tunneling through the wall to the next deposit.

Clad continued to rest while watching Thomas go ham on the walls of the room to dig out small clumps of ore. He had no idea what those ores were or what they could be used for. He was curious but Thomas didn't really seem like the kind to chat with his captors. It also wasn't what he was here to do so he just ignored it like the guards were. He was learning a lot just from watching the man work and he was looking forward to when it was his time to try to make things. Sadly his Blacksmithing skill wasn't going up just from observation.

Thomas plowed through the stone and soon arrived in front of the clump of ore. He hacked and pried a piece out to examine. The cross-section of the ore was silver in color. He channeled some mana through the ore to use his Metallurgy skill. The mana transmission was fast and returned chilled. It seemed like it might be another deposit of Icebound Platinum. If it was that would be fine with him. He had a companion that specialized in ice magic so having more ice attributed metal to make her toys with was a good thing. His pickaxe furiously hammered through the stone until he extracted every last piece of the metal ore.

With the last visible clump of ore removed from the walls, he had nothing left to dig out. His vision couldn't penetrate the stone deep enough to see anything further in and it would be a waste of time to go about digging blindly. So with nothing left to dig, he went back over to the forge and checked on Clad. The young man seemed to have recovered and immediately went back to powering the blower for Thomas. Thomas gave Clad a nod of appreciation and dropped a few clumps of the golden ore into the crucible. He was really curious about what it might be. For now, he just needed to wait for it to melt and for the bar stock to get hot enough to work with.

He had nothing to do but sit around and wait for the stuff to heat up so he could work with it. Finally, the bar stock was hot enough so he took it over to the extruder and worked it through a few times to shrink the diameter down more. He got it down to about half the size of the previous piece and cut it in half once again. One half went to sit off to the side to cool while the other was tossed back into the coals of the forge. He checked the crucible and dropped a few pieces of ore into it. The golden-colored ore was melting rather easily. Way more easily than the Icebound Platinum had for sure.

While the steel bar was heating up, he picked up the first piece he'd cut off and left to cool, the thickest one, and started working on it to make the handle of the baton. First, he used the grinding wheel to grind off the corners and start the process of rounding it so that it would fit comfortably in the hand. There was a ton of material that needed to be removed from the thick piece of steel to round it out and make it small enough to be held. He didn't mind though, it was a great way to waste time. Tomorrow he planned to head into the dungeon, that was where he would start working on some tools for his escape.

After grinding the thick square bar stock down into a round bar that his hand easily fit around, it was time to move to the next step. He could use the hand drill and vice to manually drill a hole through the center of the bar but that would take far too much effort. So, he went for his favorite cheat-like ability, Transmutation. His hands started to glow as his ability activated and started to move metal out of the center of the bar. He took his time and slowly hallowed the bar out while simultaneously making sure that it was slightly tapered. It needed to be tapered at one end so that the baton could extend without flying apart. Once the material was removed and only held on by a thin spur, he snapped it off and set it to the side.

He checked the weight and balance of the first part of the baton. It felt good in his hand but still needed a good leather wrap to cushion the grip a bit. Hitting something solid without any cushioning would hurt. With the first part done, he set it on the work table and picked up the ingot mold. He easily knocked out the under-sized ingot and quickly stored it. Working with hazardous materials was always a pain in the ass. A quick check of the crucible showed that the metal inside was liquifying nicely. He scooped off the slag floating on top then poured the molten metal into the ingot mold. He'd know what the metal was for sure shortly. While waiting he tossed a few more lumps of the golden ore into the crucible. The ore didn't weigh much but the clumps of ore provided more metal than expected. Still, the remaining ore would only be enough for one more ingot.

This concerned him. If the metal really was gold then the weight should have only equated to a single ingot. Well, if it was normal gold without some sort of natural magical thing going for it. He sighed and shook his head. Working with magical metal could be such a pain in the ass. He grabbed the steel out of the forge and took it to the extruder to shrink it down some more. This would be the third and final piece that made up the collapsable baton with an enchantment to stun people. He couldn't help smiling as he pictured testing it on someone. One of the guards perhaps?