Spirit Taming

Chapter 314: Found What!?

"This is really a genuine wind elemental caterpillar? I can just hatch it as it is with a few wind elemental crystals. You are sure?" Isa grabbed Clark and tried to test him for the fourth time. She had been struggling to figure out if he was just messing with her.

"Again, yes it is and you should be able to raise it in to a wind monarch butterfly. It will be really powerful. I promise." Clark shook his head. He had already heard the run down of products for Maria since Isa was freaking out too much. "And make sure you take some notes when you do hatch it. Ella will kill you if you don't."

"Do you really think I would do that to Ella? I have to make sure that she has all the details possible. She will use them to better raise my little wind caterpillar." Isa was already struggling to stop herself from hatching the egg right there on the street.

"Can you stop just sitting there and looking at us? Know you want us to give you attention but it's annoying." Ralph snapped suddenly. He had finished eating some time ago and was looking right at a pile of snow near them.

"Jerold, your camouflage is a lot better, but that isn't all we care about. You should be strengthening yourself somewhere." Clark was sure that Jerold's time could better be used elsewhere.

"The merchants seemed interesting…but there is a blacksmith with good weapons you didn't see since he has a rented building." Jerold seemed to have made notice of a thing or two. That was why he had remained around even though he had been ignored.

As much as Clark wanted to ignore Jerold perfectly, he couldn't allow that. He had to see what Jerold would do and how he would act. There were some changes but the largest was that Jerold remained out of sight of everyone, not just the group. It meant that he most likely had a bad run in with a group while he was alone. But again, Clark was not going to ask about it. Not yet.

"There's no way that I missed a good place like that. All the blacksmiths around here are specialized in ice type weapons or armor. I didn't see anything worth looking at without losing money or having to make an appointment." Isa immediately pushed her new beast from her mind. She was annoyed that Jerold was around and going against the information she had gathered.

"Well, what I saw was a guy trying to forge ice that even his red hot hammer wouldn-"

"Tell me where it is now. I am going to speak with him." Clark's outburst made everyone jump. Even Ralph was shocked to see Clark move so fast and get right in front of Jerold. It was clear that just that little piece of information was worth it to him.

"I-I it should be- well it is"

"I will tell you what materials you need to stabilize your chameleon's poison typing if you show me." Clark saw that this sobered Jerold up a little. His panic had receded slightly.

It seemed that Jerold had lost his ability to speak to a degree and was just starting to walk toward the forge he had seen. Isa, Ralph, and Maria just followed Clark as he started off in the same direction. They were all curious as to why Clark had just gotten so interested. None of them would know that he was thinking about the eternal ice or the ice that he would be able to forge.

"It's that palace. The guy was swearing a lot while trying to break the ice and saying something about a sword made of ice…" Jerold pointed the shop out. Clark instantly heard the muffled shouts of anger and annoyance that anyone would know belonged in a forge.

"Go find a white moon poppy and mix it together with a purple haired swamp rat's fur. It will make a weird paste. Have your chameleon coat its tongue in it and rest for five hours without moving." Clark left Jerold there and entered the forge without worrying about anyone else.

"We are closed! Get out or I will shove this hammer where the sun doesn't shine!" The angry roar came exactly as Clark had opened the door.

"You won't want to do that. You have eternal ice in your shop and I want it." Clark's response brought the clatter of a hammer to his ears. The next moment, a man clad in far too few clothes appeared.

The man was well covered from the waist down but the rest of him was all sweat and body hair. It was clear that he spent hours in front of the forge fires due to the fact that his skin was somehow rougher looking than anyone else's should be. But there were also burned patches on his body that proved he would rather let himself burn than become distracted from his task.

The sign of a truly carrying craftsman.

"How does a brat like you know I have unmelting ice? You don't even look like you are from here. You aren't pale like the normal kids. Even the rich noble brats aren't tan like you. You're here for some competition, aren't you? Tell me and I won't beat it out of you."

"If you try to beat it out of me, my friends will get angry but mostly, you won't get to see me forge eternal ice in to a weapon. I need to train a little." This just sounded absolutely crazy to the man. He was looking at a kid much thinner and weaker than himself. Not to mention that there was absolutely no evidence that Clark had ever forged anything in his life.

"If you don't believe me, and I fail to even make a dent in it, I will pay you twenty gold." Clark knew that Isa had at least that from business deals left over. It would be fine to lose it if he accidentally failed. However, he trusted the skills and the talents that the system gave him. They had not been wrong as of yet.

"Arrogant outside, show me what you can do or get out and leave the gold." The rest of the group entered right behind Clark hearing this. They had no idea what was going on. But they saw Clark taking off his cloak and taking the hammer from the blacksmith.

The eternal ice had steam coming off it. This wasn't normal steam, it wasn't because the ice was melting. Instead, the ice was so cold that it was causing the surrounding air to become cold and condense in to steam around it. This effect was very strange to witness in front of a roaring forge.

"I already tried heating it directly for a week, hitting it with a heated hammer, and even hitting it normally. How can you make a single dent?" This tone of unbelievable arrogance in the blacksmith's voice made Clark want to prove him wrong even more.

"That's because you don't know where this kind of ice comes from and the fact that some of it has been frozen since the start of an age where the entire world was covered in ice. There are large amounts of this even further north. I know that for certain. Not that I have been there." Clark took the hammer and let it sit next to the eternal ice.

He seemed to be preparing himself while his audience watched.

Within a few moments, they all noticed that Clark was circulating his internal energy. But it was pushing all the heat in his body to his hands. This was not a normal way to meditate or circulate energy at all. Even beasts would not require this to help them get stronger.

Even more shocking, Clark reached out and repositioned the eternal ice with his bare hands. The multiple frost covered and cracked gloves in the smithy proved that the eternal ice was capable of extreme freeze damage to anything that touched it. Yet Clark had just done that with his bare hands!

"Hmm, this will work. Let's see if I can make the sword you were complaining about being unable to make." Clark's first hammer strike using the same energy did nothing. It had just made a thud on the anvil. Although, this was what the blacksmith expected, and was ready to just chalk all this up to Clark having a powerful ice type beast as a partner.

That was until Clark struck a second time and the ice seemed to flatten every so slightly. The blacksmith couldn't tell if he was seeing things or if he had truly just seen a miracle. But as Clark struck again and the eternal ice changed even more, the blacksmith's anger was doused. Now he was ready to jump at Clark and demand every tiny detail about what was happening.

It was not wise to hide secret forging knowledge from a blacksmith. They often became obsessed.