Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 245 - 244 - Grade 3 Forging

After the near farcical meeting, Lind was trained in pure combat for nearly a month.  His tempered body was far stronger than he realized and Master Bord had felt it.  It became the norm for Lind to fight Bord, Cyntilla, and Shoti at the same time.

Their battles were brutal but Lind was surprisingly able to endure easily on a physical level.  To win, however, he had far to go.  The Relic had taught him how to think quickly but the style he mastered had not been tested against a living being as much as when Master Bord took over his lessons.

His wives sparred with him and Little Fey could push him, but they held back too much until Bord pushed them hard.  Fey was death on 2 legs but she only fought when the other 3 took a break.

Bord observed those battles and would often stop them mid fight to correct them both.  He had nothing but praise for Fey's skill which made her blush.  Praise from a Divine Sword Sect elder was treasured by any sword wielder.

After nearly 4 months, Master Bord ordered Lind to digest his lessons and work on other things in his cultivation.  The tournament would be brutal and he needed to reach his peak.  As such, Lind refocused on Forging.

Mythra and Su reorganized his original plans due to being in a slot for the tournament.  It was now impossible for Lind to work on other projects until after the tournament.  Still,  he created a batch of elixirs before diving hard into Forging.

This placated many requests and earned Lind a lot of World Stones.

Low grade 3 had been achieved but Lind wanted to strive for more.  He needed better armor and weapons that he could easily use.  No such items existed at grade 3 for him aside from the few he had made.  Those were too weak to be of use to him also.

"Gallerite, ribbed coran, and sylvan wood."  Lind was currently working with more advanced materials than he had before.  Like elixirs. Smelting the metal was fairly easy but manipulation was far more difficult than before.  Incorporating non-metals was also challenging for his delicate touch.

Metal was much easier to use for Forging for him but Delenn could use cloth, wood, and even gems for her Forging in beautiful ways.  It made him feel highly inadequate but he also had not focused much since the contest in Cimmeria.

Now, he only had 4 months to make something for himself for the upcoming tournament.  He had no staff anymore and he was unsure if he wanted to recreate the staff or make actual weapons for himself.

The Relic had taught him how to adapt but he was essentially a staff wielder so far as expertise went.  Having the basics of each weapon class was not bad but Bord had told him that while his sword play was steady, it was hardly something to rely on in the tournament.

It meant that if he continued, Lind would master the sword but it would not truly be an extension of himself.  It would only be a tool, never part of his body.  Conversely, whenever he used a spear, glaive, or other mid range weapon, he was more in tune with it.

Bord was not an expert on them but he had fought plenty and said that Lind felt far more dangerous when using those weapons.  He could not determine if Lind leaned towards a particular one, but that was up to Lind to find out.

For now, he was smelting metal that made his smithing area glow deep red with the fires in front of him.  Lind controlled the flow of fire Qi in the pot and the coals around it.  The metals liquified and combined into the alloy he was currently working on.

The wood was for when he was completing the object but the moment he was ready, he used his Qi to lift the pot from the coals and poured the molten metal onto the stone slab next to him.  The bright yellow liquid was quickly transformed into a shaft and was cooling rapidly as elemental Qi infused into it.

Before moving to the next step, Lind tried to complete just the shaft but it suddenly cracked and lost all Qi within violently.

A tired sigh left him as he wiped sweat from his brow.  He cooled the smithy to be safe and sat down as he looked at the ruined shaft.  It kept happening that the Qi would slip his control and wreck whatever piece he was working on.

"Here."  A steaming cup of tea was offered by Annabelle.  Her golden and sapphire lochs were shining brightly in the sunlight streaming in from the doorway behind her.  It made her look like an angel to Lind.

"Thank you."  The tea quenched his thirst while he relaxed for a moment.

"Still stuck on low grade 3?"  She picked up the cracked shaft and Lind could only smirk as she suffered a bit similar to him.  Formation plates could not withstand the power of her illusion arrays no matter how high a grade they used.  It frustrated her and he wished he could Forge plates that could help her.

His tea cup froze.

Why couldn't he?  Why couldn't he Forge formation plates for Annabelle?  He understood her illusions as much as she did.  He understood the issues the plates were giving her as well.

"Annabelle, could I see one of your formation plates?"  She looked surprised at his question but summoned one from her storage bracelet and he looked it over.  His Eyes could see the metal was straining to contain the high quality array inside it.

His grasp of formations was not enough to reveal the full details of the array but that was not what Lind was after.  He was after the physical vessel.  The plate was low grade 4 but Lind did not think that quality was insufficient.

It was how it was created, meaning refined, by an artificer.

Lind had not really tried to make formation plates as his lack of understanding arrays to make formations was a concert, but he thought something finally clicked into place.  He did not need to understand arrays.

Formation plates are about endurance and capacity to withstand but Lind could see flaws just examining the plate in his hands.  It should not be a low grade 4 to him.

"Let me try something."  Lind kept the plate while he looked at the metals available to him but he then considered something.  What if the issue was material itself?  Formation plates were generally made of metal but not always.  The rare non-metal was usually crystal but he had never seen any artificer using crystal in Cimmeria.

Lind looked into his ring and smiled.  He had Iron Tier light and water crystals.  They were harder to get a hold of but for him it was fairly easy.  He would need a catalyst to fuse the crystals well but he found that easily enough.

Filenite was a grade 3 metal that was used often enough to catalyze materials into a single item.  It was especially good with materials charged with a single element to a complimentary one as he planned to do.

He used his melting pot only for crystal smelting.  The filenite silver metal was mixed in as Lind had to control the 2 elements flaring within.  It felt much more like he was using an Art but he carefully fused the crystals together.

The glow in the pot was increasing but the flow of light and water was fighting him to fuse.  He pictured how the illusions of Annabelle felt.  He pictured the result she wanted and it was like the Qi suddenly sang in his veins.

His meridians instinctively made the Qi flow into the pot and the filenite did its job to bridge the physical crystals.  The flare of light made the pot seem like the mythical pot of gold in Earth legends.

Once the Qi settled, Lind extracted the molten crystal alloy.  It was gold and sapphire in equal measure.  He quickly set it on the stone slab and began the final step.  He infused his Qi into it and molded the molten mass into several plates.

He had to curb the flow of Qi in each equally and prepare it to accept arrays.  The constraint was delicate but Lind felt like he was conducting music as his goal was clear in his mind.

He finally grasped it.

He finally understood what he had been missing.  Grade 3 was similar to the difference between Soul Realm and World Realm.  It had to be able to absorb not only the Qi from the cultivator but the Qi from the world!  It was so clear to him!  It was also why he found the other formation plate lacking.

They were refined with the flawed concepts of the elements but also from a refiner that clearly did not know how light and water could be combined as Annabelle did.  The plates were generic no matter how high a grade they were.

A chagrined smirk crossed his face that he was likely making refiners' jobs harder in the future due to his elemental theories.  Maybe they too would increase their quality later but for now, he grasped the missing piece of his Forging.

The plates cooled on his slab and there were no signs of cracking or instability.  Once they were safe to handle he evaluated them as Annabelle looked at them curiously.  Peak grade 3!  They were peak grade 3!

Lind was stunned.  He had hoped to reach high grade 3 possibly but to skip straight to peak grade 3 floored him.  How was that possible?

He carefully examined the steps and realized the difference was both the material and his goal.  He was intimately familiar with what he was trying to make and who for.  Annabelle was stunned as her arrays seemed to happily sink into the plate in her hand.

Unlike any other formation plate there was no feeling of strain or resistance.  She was in awe of how well the plate held her array.  She began to push the capacity to what she truly wanted to do before.

The plate was like a sponge and had no issue at all until she was completed.

"You did it, Lind!"  She was so happy.  These formation plates could easily accommodate her power!  The formation was infused with Qi and the whole area changed to a very familiar brook.  Lind smiled as he recognized the place they had once met.

The smell, sight, and sounds all lined up but he dared not move as they were still in his work area.  The formation plate in Annabelle's hands barely flickered as it continued to sustain the illusion all around them.

She canceled the flow of Qi and it dispersed.

"I will make a few more batches for practice, then I know what I need to do.  I still have a lot of testing but I now have a direction to send it.  Let's begin."  Lind brought out more crystals and started over.  He had so many ideas and wanted to see if he could replicate the quality he just had.

The light of inspiration in his dark green eyes made Annabelle swoon but she stepped back as she began to work with her new formation plates.  She wanted to see how far she could push them now that she could.

The time to the tournament started to fly by until 4 months later, they all headed out to the Saint Kingdom.