Stanis turned from his original path and began pacing back, the bottles rattling against each other as he ran.

It was a brilliant idea and also one that was as clear as day, so why hadn't he thought of it earlier?

Stanis scrapped this thought immediately, his mind too giddy to be affected by his pessimism right now.

It was night and so most of the people in the village had gone to sleep, but there were always a few Guards stationed around the perimeter, just in case of a surprise attack. Two of these Guards had just seen Stanis walk out of the gate minutes back and thus were rightly surprised as they saw Stanis running back, the bottles now making a racket. On the one hand, they wanted to tell him to slow down since people were trying to sleep right now, but on the other hand, they decided not to after thinking of their personal consequences if they angered Stanis.

The rest of the world was a blur to Stanis as he ran towards the Smithy, his mind going through several ways he could apply his skills to his creations. How many of them would work? He had no clue, but that didn't stop him thinking up even more applications.

Ruun wasn't guarding the gateway right now, instead the Smithy had been locked up for the night.

Stanis discovered this the hard way as he barrelled into the door, rebounding back as he realised the door wouldn't open under his strength. He rubbed his scratched forehead before creating several ice crystals around him, each of them piercing through the door in the following second, a sizeable hole in their wake.

Stanis threw his bottles in before he too slipped through the hole, running towards the forge before lighting it. He threw a truckload of fuel in before running back to where the metal was kept, cutting off a sizeable chunk before putting it into the forge.

As the metal was heating up, he checked his Status to see which of his skills had potential use in this field:

Stanis Volkov

Age: 18 years

Mana capacity: 257(regeneration is capacity/4 per hour)

Level 47 (Progress to the next level is 10%)

Class: Origin

Strength: 89 [53]

Dexterity: 89 [55]

Constitution: 91 [55]

Intelligence: 85 [40]

Wisdom: 82+5[40]

Tenacity: 84[54]

Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot, Blueshot spitfire, Lightning seed

Looking through them, he quickly realised that most of his ideas wouldn't work since all but one of his skills seemed to be useless in this field. Having played a few games before in his life, he remembered weapons with one-time abilities or ones with abilities with a cooldown, but neither of the two seemed viable here. This was why all but one of his abilities were useless in this field. But he still had the one, Lightning seed. And Darkness manipulation of course!

Stanis hadn't had the opportunity to test Lightning seed much from after having obtained it. Thus, this was the perfect way to combine the practise of his skill and blacksmithing.

Stanis quickly grabbed the protective clothing and took the length of metal out of the forge, throwing it onto an anvil. He closed his eyes and imagined his finger as a pot of soil with a seed, before imagining a plant sprouting out of it. This seemed to be the most effective imagery for him as an almost-silent crackle cried out, a small bolt of lightning emerging from his finger.

Stanis kept fuelling this little bolt, it growing bigger as it voraciously drank up his mana. Stanis opened his eyes after 5 seconds, doing his best to maintain the lightning. The reason why he closed his eyes to create it was because it was extremely difficult to find the source of the lightning otherwise, the bolt of lightning dancing so fast off his finger-tip that it almost seemed teleport.

One might think that all you had to do was flow mana towards his finger-tip and that was it. Sadly, it turned out that the Lightning seed had to be baby-fed in order for it to grow. This was the reason for why it was such a difficult skill to use.

It had grown to a decent length by now, around 20cm, as Stanis picked up the hammer with his other hand. He then slowly passed the hammer from his left hand to the right one, his eyes cross-eyed and squinted as he maintained his high focus.

*zccZzzZCC*

Stanis breathed a deep breath as the hammer now cackled, lightning jumping out of it like dolphins in the ocean.

The lightning seed wasn't as mana-intensive as it was concentration-intensive, beads of sweat now flowing down his forehead.

He used his left hand to hold the cold part of the metal in place as his right arm rose high, hammer zapping with excitement as it began its freefall.

*FPPPTHHH*

Stanis was blown away as the hammer hit, his body slapping against the anvil behind him.

"Arggh" groaned Stanis, his legs struggling to produce the energy to stand up. His mind was blurred and lost, taking a few seconds to re-find the directions before he stood up.

The hammer he had used was fine for the most part, the only apparent change being the black tint it now had.

Stanis picked it up and was pleased as he realised that there was no electricity hiding in it to shock him. He then walked over to the anvil, his mind lost for thought as he took in the scene.

The bar of metal had been split in half, and not a pretty split at that. It was scorched black where he had hit it, the metal little more than foul-smelling sand under his touch.

That was basically all to it, the length of metal now split down the middle with no sign of the electricity that had escaped the hammer. And yet this caused cracks in all of Stanis's ideas. But not big-enough cracks to throw him off track, at least right now.

The Forgery's few neighbours did not have a pleasant night as the continuous zapping and explosion sounds filled the night.

It was only 4 hours after he had begun that Stanis gave up. He had made progress, sure, but he also knew that this was the limit.

He had started by lowering the output of electricity into the hammer, eventually going down to nothing but a hint. And yet the metal still broke…

Stanis had, in his frustration and admittedly foolishly, then whacked his own arm with the electric hammer, only to feel little more than sting. This had thrown an even bigger spanner in the works than before, only further confusing the little information he had.

He had then decided that it was most likely due to the skill itself, and had thus changed over to manipulating darkness. He had done the same thing as he had done with the lightning, applying it over the hammer, before hammering away at the heated metal. Unlike the lightning, the hammer didn't explode with force and sent him sprawling back, but like the lightning, the metal was ruined under the darkness. The metal under the hammer bubbled and melted, giving off a noxious odour as it did so.

How did Stanis know this? His coughing fit gave him enough clues.

Stanis had then lowered the amount of darkness he put on the hammer but the results were still largely the same, the metal always ruined.

He had then thought up a new idea. He applied the lightning over the hammer before striking the metal, no explosion or anything as the lightning merely spread from the hammer into the metal and air. He then lifted the hammer and once again struck, this time sent sprawling back as the force threw him off his feet.

Rubbing the blood off his head, Stanis had then sat on his arse in thought. The only difference between the two hammer strikes had been that one had been with no intent, whereas the other had been with the intent to change the metal. From the testing he had already done, he knew that lowering the strength of his lightning and darkness did lower the damage, but not to the point of success.

This meant that his ideas were still viable, the only problem being that the metal wasn't strong enough. He had been working with Rikkey's best metal but clearly even that wasn't good enough.

His failures weren't enough to wipe the smirk off his face as Stanis went about roughly clearing up the Smithy, before taking his bottles and walking towards the largest home in the village.

He got there quickly and knocked on the door, the noise echoing through the innards of the home. He heard the scattered response of muddled footsteps before the door was opened a few seconds later, Drak staring at his guest.

"What do you want?" asked Drak, his voice hiding an edge.

"Is Alyona here?" asked Stanis, deciding to keep his words to a minimum.

Refusal flashed through Drak's eyes before he changed his mind, calling out Alyona's name. Alyona came walking through the hallway a few seconds later, her clothes not as neat as usual. Stanis didn't need to be a genius to put together Drak's bare chest with Alyona's messy clothes.

"Oh, Stanis, what pleasure do I owe to gain a visit from you?" asked Alyona.

"Where's the strongest enemies around here?" asked Stanis.

"Mm, I guess the strongest here would be from Haven" answered Alyona.

"I'm not joining your fucking crusade" spat Stanis.

There was a silence.

"Where's the strongest enemies around here?" repeated Stanis.

"If not Haven, I really don't know." answered Alyona, her expression slightly unsightly.

"Oh," cut in Drak, "there is a place behind the mountain."

Stanis turned towards Alyona, his stare threatening enough.

"I wasn't lying to you" defended Alyona, "it's just that the place behind the mountain is of insane difficulty."

Stanis kept staring.

"We sent a few scouts past the mountain but they never returned. Then we sent Tanya, who came back in tatters a few weeks ago, telling us how dastardly strong the enemies there were." Alyona carried on.

"That's enough" said Stanis as he turned around, running to the market to get a bag to put his drinks in and a bit of food before leaving the village.

Alyona turned to Drak, clearly irritated.

"Why'd you do that?"

"Why wouldn't I? We'll be better off when that bastard of a boy leaves."

"That bastard of a boy is also our greatest defence if we get attacked."

Drak grunted before walking deeper into the house. Alyona sighed as she followed him. She didn't necessarily like Stanis but she also understood his strength. Her control of others' powers had been her claim to fame, and she hoped Drak hadn't just thrown the strongest person in the village into a spiked pitfall…