The sun was bearing down hard over the floating continent of Yurza. It was already late morning but the forest seemed quieter than usual outside a certain small village. It’s been a whole week since the night of the auction, but Kiefer had yet to even show himself once. Since he had left that night with the 3 boulders of gravitite ore, no one has seen him. Isana had been entrusted with helping Eril train the girls and at this moment, that was exactly what she was doing.

Seated cross-legged in their own puddle of sweat were the two girls. They had their eyes closed, brows furrowed in concentration and bodies still as a statue. The only visible movements were the laboured breathing of their chests. The intense pressure made it extremely difficult to breathe as Isana continued to gradually increase the gravity around them. The air pressure had risen to a phenomenal level, they are barely capable of keeping their backs straight.

Having been kept in this position for the past 3 hours, the girls were just about getting used to the intense gravity, but they still could not do anything to stop the training. Their task was to either stand up to end the training, or to endure until lunch time, which was 2 hours away. Kina had been instructed to not use her enhancements, without the restriction bracelet on. Kiefer had done so to show his trust in the girl as well as to train her discipline. Of course Kiefer had made hints about heavy repercussions should it their agreement be broken.

For the past week, kina had honoured their agreement, not using body enhancement even during the toughest of training. However, as her stomach growled and back ached, the thought of sneaking a tiny bit of enhancement crept into her mind. ‘Only a little. They won’t notice,’ she thought, but almost as soon as she thought it, Jielin spoke out, as if having read her thoughts.

“Don’t Kina,” Jielin groaned as she barely opened her beak. With the simple reminder, Kina once again banished the thoughts of cheating into the back of her head where it lingered, waiting to surface once more. Kina nodded her head, only to find it almost impossible to raise her chin after it went down.

Isana was doing her best to alleviate their pain, regularly blowing a comfortable cool breeze their way. Eril remained seated within the gravity field, but right on the edge and continued to observe the 2 ladies. To him, this was also a golden opportunity to train since he had never come across anyone else who could manipulate gravity. As the silence ensued, Isana sighed and glanced towards the mountains behind the house where her husband had gone to, wondering what he was doing right at this moment.

Meanwhile, Kiefer too was sighing as he finally gave up trying to study the gravitite ore. He knew for a fact that it was a metal, or at least had some metallic properties. With the exception of its density being variable, everything else seemed to scream metal. The only hypothesis he could come up with was that the material had an intrinsic property to negate gravitons, hence making it practically weightless. Mana, on the other hand, seems to hinder and disrupt this ability, causing it to return to its ‘normal’ super dense state where Kiefer estimated it to be denser than even Osmium.

Seeing no other way around,Kiefer began the fundamental step of refining the ores. He would have loved to crush the large boulders to make it easier to melt, but it seemed that even his almighty mana ropes which could bend and warp adamantium could not but a dent in the ores except chipping off some dirt.

As he formed a large translucent silver furnace out of his mana, he threw the 3 boulders inside and started a flame spell beneath the 2 storey tall magical furnace. As the fire burned hotter with more mana being supplied, the gravitite ores began to show signs of melting. It was a slow process as the melting proceeded at a snail’s pace.

By nightfall, the entire area outside the main city of Natirira was enveloped in an eerie red glow from the blood moon. It was like this throughout with the exception of the mountain base where a bright glow was flickering. This light could be seen from miles away and it was so bright it lit up the entire side of the mountain. One could only imagine how bright the source is.

Within the towering furnace was a blinding molten fluid that was bubbling slowly. Below the translucent furnace is a roaring flame that seemed to threaten to burn the entire world. It had taken the whole day, but all 3 gravitite boulders were finally melted down. Kiefer had already drained off the slag and impurities that settled at the bottom of his mana furnace. His next step was to alloy it with another metal to find the optimum strength and durability. His first thought was to use adamantium, but he had no idea how much to alloy it with.

Having come up with a solution, Kiefer began segregating the pure molten gravitite metal into smaller mana pockets which he kept under the flame to make sure it stays molten. Then, by varying the weight of adamantium in each pocket, he shaped the pockets into identical looking plates and let the alloys of different percentage cool. Finally, on the afternoon of the second day, Kiefer started testing.

Loud explosions rang out within the forest from the mountain’s base as shockwaves threatened to uproot trees. Animals scurried away in fear and birdmen who heard the loud noise kept away from the area. A few hawkmen guards patrolled the area but could not stay stabilised in the air from the constant shockwaves emanating from the source. The cause of all this was, of course, Kiefer blasting his test plates with his strongest mana bullet, each stacked with 5 acceleration runes.

What surprised Kiefer though was that none of his attacks were even strong enough to penetrate the 5mm thick metal alloy plates. The most damage he could deal was puncture a hole in the thin plate that was pure gravitite metal. As the fire continued to roar away, keeping the rest of the gravitite metal bubbling, Kiefer continued blasting away with pinpoint accuracy on each plate, creating a tiny dent each time. Finally, as one plate after another drop out of the testing, Kiefer found that the plate with 20% adamantium was the most durable.

Working according to his test results, Kiefer quickly poured out the molten alloy after melting the appropriate amount of adamantium. The red glow of the moon had eventually returned as night fell once again, bringing an end to his second day of forging. By now, he had a thick billet of the alloy which has cooled considerably but taken still hot enough to radiate heat. This billet was quite large, measuring 2m long, 1m wide and half a metre thick. It was a rusty brown colour but light as a feather.

With an image of a heavy greatsword in mind, Kiefer proceeded to melt what remaining mithril he had to form an identical sized dull grey billet. Stacking the Adavitite alloy and mithril metal billets on top of each other, he put it back into the flames to heat them till they were malleable but not molten. Then, he began a folding, cutting, stacking and pressing repetition with the 2 metals, trying to create his own version of a Damascus blade.

The end result was a tiring entire 24 hours of work as it was not easy handling such a large piece of metal with the proper processing tools. In the end, he was satisfied with a 2000 layered billet of adavitite and mithril, pressing it into a block of metal measuring a little less than 2m long and a square base measuring 1m by 1m. With this, he started on the last stretch of making the great sword.

He pressed and shaped the large block of metal into a large sheet about 2 inches thick, and half a metre wide. Then, he pinched the glowing billet off to form a sheet 2.5m long, and stored the excess in his PD. The final stretch. Kiefer removed the flames and the furnace, allowing the entire mountain side to cool down quickly. Then, carefully inspecting the sheet of Adavitite Damascus, he began shaping the blade tip, and the bevel with a minuscule but controlled singularity, slowly eating away at the metal bit by bit.

The finished product, was a large and wide sword with on end tapered from the side to form a point on the other side of the blade. The bevel started from about a third of the width of the sword, revealing concentric layers of rusty brown and dull grey lines. The bevel ended about 30cm from the guard, which then proceeded to become the core of the hilt. From the guard to the point, it was about 2m long, with the hilt extending for another 40 cm or so.

Satisfied, Kiefer began planning for the balancing of the sword, choosing to use steel for the grip. Then, he took out some leather strips from his PD which he had acquired from the merchant waggon he commandeered from the bandits and lined the grip, giving the handle a nice firm grip. The sword ended up being almost twice his height but was so light thanks to the gravitite that he could swing it around like a badminton racket. The mithril within had yet to be branded with any mana, so he had wanted to leave it for Kina to personalise it.

Having finished with his little project, Kiefer kept the sword within his PD and teleported directly back to his little house in the woods. There he fell asleep like a log, only to be rudely awakened by Kina who had cast a water spell on him. It was no wonder, since Isana was pinching her nose and frowning as well. He stunk of sweat, smoke, metal and rust and fell asleep without so much as a shower. It was close to the evening of the fourth day when he finally reappeared outside the house, facing Kina who was a full head taller than him.

“Well, it took a while, but your sword is done. First, let me see how proficient you are with mana manipulation,” Kiefer requested, folding his arms and inspecting Kina. She had grown taller without him noticing. It must have been puberty, but with her current growth spurt, she would soon reach her mother’s height and the sword would be a nice fit for her. Right now though, it was still a little big, but domineering nonetheless.

Kina nodded, and her once smiling face quickly turned into a focused one. She quickly started projecting a dome shield, the very first of mana manipulation spells that her father had taught her. Then, layer by layer, her wispy white mana threads formed a thicker dome progressively. At this point, Kiefer nodded, and extended his own silver mana rope, wrapping around her dome shield and with a blink of an eye, crushed down on it, shattering the dome. Kina blinked, still unable to believe the level of control and strength that her father had over his own mana.

“Ok, that should be good enough. I want you to brand the sword with your mana. I’ve folded the metal alloy with mithril and I want you to be extra careful when doing so. Do not move the mithril with your mana, just let it slowly diffuse to the tip of the sword from the hilt.” Kiefer instructed, producing the massive sword from his PD.

Kina stared at the rusty brown sword, her eyes sparkling. It was her very own weapon. With a quick teleport, she appeared next to Kiefer, grabbing the domineering sword and lifting it high up into the air with ease. It did not weigh much. Kina estimated it to be around 5 kilos at most. Infusing her mana into the sword, the dull grey colouration of the mithril layers quickly changed as it gulped down her mana.

Everybody watched in awe as Kina slowly branded the blade. Initially, the dull grey colouration turned white, spreading from the blade guard towards the tip like a tissue paper soaking up water. Then, a second change started occurring as the white changed to silver. Finally, the silver changed into a transparent glass-like appearance, revealing the intricate layers of rusty orange colour within the blade.

After the 3 colour changes, Kiefer felt that it was done, watching the orange blade stabilise in his daughter’s hands. Then, he noticed something else. As if the mana was branding the gravitite ore, the orange coloration began to deepen, eventually settling on a blood red colour which seemed oddly similar to the colour orihalcom turns when infused with his own mana. However, the slight difference was his orihalcom turned bright red, while Kina’s orihalcom turns bright green. The massive sword truly did look terrifying now, almost akin to a demon lord’s sword. It was big, easy to wield, and most of all, visually terrifying, as if it had soaked up the blood of all that it has slain.

Kina finally relaxed, as she waved the sword around gently, admiring her personal weapon. It was light, and no doubt sturdy as seen in her fight with Tianmen. Then she began infusing her mana into the sword once more, finding it surprisingly easy to channel her mana into the gravitite metal with the aid of the mithril.

At first, she felt no difference, then as the weight increased, she found it increasingly tiresome to hold it upright. Strengthening her arms with mana helped, but within moments, she could feel that the sword was already immovable, way beyond what her strength allowed. The worst part was, Kina was confident that she was not even close to saturating the sword, which meant that it could get heavier, but she just would not be able to lift it.

Satisfied, she retracted her mana from the blood sword, and swung it around happily. Little did she know, she would come to be known as the Blood Maiden all over Risea in the years to come.

Now, as all of you have probably realised by now, I kinda took a short hiatus from writing the past few weeks. it's not because I lost interest, but rather I was swamped with work and I also had too many ideas for my fiction that I needed time to settle down and really think about the direction I was heading. as such, I have finalised and solidified the plot for this arc and you will be happy to know that there will be more frequent releases as I begin to open up more time to write. TY for all your support so far, if you have any issues with the direction this fiction is heading, do speak out in the comments since I read and re-read comments from the most recent chapters daily.