"Yeouch. That's hot." Taking out one of the materials from the furnace with a pair of tongs, Valyr took a long look at the material he was going to work with as he plopped it onto the anvil. From one perspective, it was a material that signified the pinnacle of Wind-attribute materials within Valyr's capabilities, exuding a strong aura of Wind element even after undergoing through the furnace.
However, from another, the material looked like nothing more than a ton of light green feathers stuck together and had clumped up into a ball.
"The Griffin Tempest Orb," muttered Valyr to himself, bringing up memories from his past life regarding the method on how to prepare it for the second step of the forging process. "With how sensitive it is, even the slightest touch from any tool I use would cause it to release a strong gust of wind in my direction."
"With that, I have to find a way to dull out its sensitivity first before working on it." Closing his eyes as he contemplated over the method he would use to go about doing so, the young man also thought about the first step of the forging process in detail.
Though he said to himself earlier that the first step of the process would be to obtain the purest essence from the four foundational elements and combine it with a couple more materials to complete the second step, what he was actually doing was prepping and priming the materials he had specifically chosen to represent the four foundational elements, allowing them to be at their strongest state before proceeding with the second step.
"Hmm… if I remember correctly, smothering it with a lot of mana has a good chance of dulling its sensitivity." Going through a couple of methods that had come to mind, Valyr went ahead and swiftly surrounded the Griffin Tempest Orb with a great amount of mana… only for all of it to dissipate in an instant under a strong yet brief gust from the orb as retaliation.
"Wait a second… was the method actually trying to bombard it with mana from all sides instead?" Seeing that his first idea was unsuccessful, the young man swiftly moved onto the other method that came to mind. With that, he expended a great portion of his mana once more, raining down a barrage of mana bolts towards the orb in hopes of being able to prepare it.
Unfortunately…
Swoosh!
Just like the first method, the effort Valyr had put into the second method was swiftly negated as the orb retaliated with a gust of wind that blew in all directions, rendering all of the other methods Valyr recalled that were in same vein useless.
"Of course, touching it with a physical object won't work either…" With him not making any headway in progressing through the first step, the gears in Valyr's mind madly turned as he pondered over more possible ways of approaching the Griffin Tempest Orb. "I would assume that touching it with both physical objects and mana at the same time wouldn't work as well…"
"…but what if I used Shadow Energy?" Eventually, a radical thought popped up in Valyr's mind, his curiosity towards its feasibility at its peak the very moment it appeared. "Aside from it being a whole different energy from mana, the approach in manipulating it is different as well."
"…I guess it won't hurt to try." Deciding to test it out, Valyr summoned the Shadow Energy that was stored in the small black mass near his heart, giving it the permission to course throughout his body as he felt a faint bit of his strength decreasing.
Unperturbed by the sudden onset of weakness, he then coaxed the Shadow Energy to appear outside his body before proceeding to head straight towards the Griffin Tempest Orb, blanketing its entire surface.
Whoosh!
"Huh." Expecting to feel a strong gust of wind blow at him once more, Valyr was left quite surprised when he did not receive any retaliation from the orb at all, prompting him to look at the outcome of his experiment.
Rather than a ball of light green feathers appearing on top of the anvil, what the young man saw before him was a pitch-black ball that seemed to absorb all of the light in its surroundings, emitting a nefarious aura that contained traces of death and destruction to it.
Scratching the back of his head for a bit from the sheer surprise of how simple the solution was with his current means, Valyr decided not to waste time and used the Shadow Energy to prime the Griffin Tempest Orb for the second step, removing all of the feathers that were on its surface, eventually revealing the pure green core that slumbered within.
"With that done, up next is the Infernal Magma Core." Moving the green core to the side for now, placing it within what seemed to be a container specifically made for the core, Valyr soon turned his attention back to the furnace, taking out what looked to be a rough dark sphere that was oozing with lava.
"After preparing the Infernal Magma Core, there's still the Azure Halcyon Essence and the Starstrike Terra Crystal." Going through his treasure trove of memories to see if he had any methods to prepare the Infernal Magma Core, Valyr also thought about the two other items he would be working with for the first step, keeping them in the back of his mind at all times.
"Hmm… though I don't seem to recall any specific methods to refine this material, it really wouldn't be wise of me to use the usual rough-handed methods for Fire-attribute materials, especially if it's something as precious as this." Surprisingly, after rummaging through his memories for quite some time, a dumbstruck expression appeared on Valyr's face, scratching the back of his head as he slightly frowned, wondering whether he should risk wasting the material or not.
"Ah, right." Fortunately, it only took a glance to the side for him to scratch out that possibility entirely, noticing that Theraldine was waiting for some of her materials in her furnace to be ready for forging.
"Hey, Theraldine. I have a question." Deciding that now was the perfect opportunity, Valyr went ahead and called for the young woman's attention, to which she looked back at him in slight curiosity.
"What is it?" asked Theraldine in response.
"Do you perhaps know the methods to refine an Infernal Magma Core?"
"An Infernal Magma Core?" Raising her eyebrow in curiosity at the question, Theraldine looked at what Valyr was doing, only to notice that the young man was in the midst of working with the item he was currently asking about.
At first, the thought of giving Valyr false information appeared in her mind, considering that the two were competing to see who among them was the better blacksmith when it came to forging artifact replicas. However, after recalling the rules of the forging duel, as well as the fact that the young man had given her information on forging artifacts even though they had only interacted for a short time, she eventually decided otherwise.
"Well… to refine an Infernal Magma Core, you need to smother it with mana, applying pressure on it and compacting the entire thing smaller and smaller until it turns into a pure red crystal."
"Is that so? Any tips on how I would go about that?"
"If you don't have enough mana control, or if the amount of mana you have is lacking, you could go about compacting the core in sections. Though it would impact the quality of the final product slightly, it would still be a better outcome than the core transforming into dust."
"I see. So that's how it is, huh… thanks!"
