Chapter 159 - 158 The True Way Of The Forge (2)

Unfurling the now unsealed piece of paper, Marcus quickly read the contends of the letter written by his friend.

'Dear Irene,

I was hoping to find you so that I could ask you for a commission, but it appears you are currently out. I have written this letter so that when you come back you will know that I am looking for you. I know it may be inconvenient for you but when you have the time, please come see me at my post or my residence. If that is not possible you can always write me a letter and I will come see you at the Blazegram Forge.

Sincerely, your friend Adrianna Harthen.

After reading the short message left by Adrianna, Marcus made a mental note to go and see her as soon as he had finished with his week of training under Thabon.

'I will be able to make her a better product once I have learned all of the tricks of the trade so I am sure she can wait just a little longer for a vastly superior product.'

Walking into the forge, Marcus saw a number of the regular forgemasters hard at work refining metals and working on different products or teaching some of the apprentices.

"Bang, Bang, Bang."

Marcus knocked loudly on Thabon's door and waited for just a minute before the old dwarf opened the door, and when he saw Marcus a smile appeared on his face and he said, "Irene you are back, do you have the goods."

Hearing this, Marcus gave Thabon a frown and said, "Yeah I got some but less than I could hold since we were chased out of the place by your "security"."

Thabon with a look of guilt beckoned Marcus in and the two of them further discussed what happened in the mine.

"I see so you attacked one of the large caves that was teeming with celestial platinum ore. I knew I forgot to mention something, yeah if you attack one of those the overlords of the level you are on will come, though it sounds like the master of the mine even took an interest in your intrusion. You are lucky that all of you made it out alive, last time I ran into her she was level fifty-seven and even I have a little trouble handling her."

With an angry look Marcus stared at Thabon and said, "Level fifty-seven, were you trying to get me killed. Now I know why Gurrom will not go back there, if we had not been lucky that thing would have killed us. I even had to sacrifice half of the ore I had mined just to avoid being melted by its acid. Seriously who are you trying to keep out by infesting that place with such dangerous monsters."

Thabon just shrugged his shoulders and said, "When I found the mine, I did not have very much money to afford security and those lizards were cheap, so I just threw some in."

Marcus almost went and whacked Thabon on the head wanting to berate him for being a cheapskate but held back since he did not want to upset him.

"Oh well, all's well that ends well, I guess just empty out the ore in my storage area and then you can take your twenty percent after we refine it."

Nodding his head Marcus unloaded the around eight tons of ore he had stored within his item box.

Taking the ore to the massive processing furnace that Thabon had, the two of them went through the tedious process of turning the ore into metal ingots and after around seventeen hours had refined the celestial platinum ore.

What they had left at the end was four hundred ninety-three pounds of celestial platinum which was around three percent of the total material they started with.

"Well, you did pretty good Irene, this should be enough to last awhile so go ahead and take your cut and then we can take a break for today and get started on your training tomorrow."

However, Marcus shook his head and said, "I am not tired, you said that I would get week of uninterrupted training if I went and got this platinum for you. I nearly died getting it, so we are not going to stop until you have taught me for the whole week. Do not expect to get any sleep until I have learned everything."

Thabon looking into Marcus' eyes had a sudden expression of fear on his face since he could tell Marcus was serious about going a whole week without sleep.

Sighing Thabon said, "Fine let's get started, your week starts now but you said you wanted to do it all at once so do not give out on me halfway through."

As Thabon was heading over to his workstation, Marcus remembered the bracelet he made yesterday and decided to ask Thabon his opinion on it.

"Ah but first I got a little restless yesterday and tried making something with a bit of the celestial platinum would you mind looking at it."

Pulling out the bracelet he had made last night Marcus handed it over and let Thabon inspect it.

"Ha, this is a piece of shit. I am surprised you even managed to do this and make a working item. I mean the base technique you used is already flawed so of course you are not going to make a good item. Though the fact that you were able to incorporate the celestial platinum in this way does speak volumes to your talent. Now then I will teach you how to really use this celestial platinum."

Walking over to his workstation, Thabon pulled out a mana etcher which was what was used to make enchantments on items, but this one was different than most, being made of crimson ore and had a long tube attached to a box.

"This here is the tool you use to apply the celestial platinum while you etch the enchantments at the same time. With this it will deposit the correct amount of molten celestial platinum into the enchantment as you are making it, so the enchantment does not get damaged like with the method you used."

Thabon then opened up the box at the end of the tool and showed Marcus that it was actually a mini furnace with a crucible in the middle that would keep the platinum from cooling. The crucible was then attached to the hose that would bring the molten platinum to the mana etcher and deposit it like wielding on Earth.

'Such an intricate design, I wonder how long it took people to figure all this shit out, I mean what is this tube made out of, it is flexible, but it must be heat resistant to take the molten platinum.'

Thabon seeing Marcus looking at the tube intently said, "It is made from the hide of beasts or monster with high fire resistance. That one there is actually made from the skin of a lava eel. Ah and I forgot to mention it is your present as my new apprentice."

With a twinkle in his eyes Marcus looked back at Thabon and said, "Thank you, so can we get started."

…

Wham!

"Not good enough, you spilled a bit of the platinum here, try again and next time you mess up I will hit you harder."

Gritting his teeth and holding his now broken hand, Marcus glared at Thabon who while a generally jovial guy, had become a monster while teaching.

Unlike Gurrom who would help Marcus and point out his mistakes, Thabon would teach by hitting harder with his hammer.

With a nasty smirk Marcus cast a healing spell on his hand and in a matter of seconds he was moving it around like normal.

Getting back to work on perfecting the etching technique while applying the molten platinum, it took Marcus three days to master the technique up to Thabon's standards and well over a hundred broken hands.

Luckily, Marcus was a ghost and only had a pseudo internal structure that was only built for function, so he was able to repair his hand easily, though it still hurt.

"Hm, your work is finally acceptable, I must say I am impressed it took Gurrom two months to get to this point."

'Yeah, probably because he got tired of having his hand smashed every thirty minutes.'

Holding his hand, Marcus looked at Thabon with disdain, but he could not question that he had truly learned a lot and there was no doubt that the old man was a genius.

"Now we can move onto the next step, there are a number of enchantment formations I have personally created, and I am going to teach some of them to you, then after that we can work on beast and monster part combinations that increase mana output or give certain special properties."

Steeling himself Marcus prepared for more hammer whacking throughout the next process but found that Thabon had decided to abandon his stick approach, and now began the carrot approach this time encouraging Marcus whenever he made a mistake.

…

Soon the long week of Marcus' training was nearing its completion and for his final test Thabon said, "Now then try making that same type of bracelet but this time use what you have learned."

Marcus with a confident look took out a mithril ingot, a magic core from one of the trolls, along with a single troll bone.

He then ground up the bone into a fine pounder before moving onto the mithril ingot which he placed into a crucible before melting.

Next Marcus melted the mithril before carefully adding the troll bone powder and making sure to spread it out through the molten mithril.

Once that was done, he poured out the mithril back into an ingot mold and let it cool.

When the ingot was cool Marcus took it out of the mold and heated it back up before shaping it into a bracelet.

'Okay the form is ready now it is time to add the magic core and then the enchantment.'

Quickly moving on, Marcus completed the next steps of the process, boring a hole into the bracelet where he placed the magic core.

With that done Marcus went onto the most sensitive part, adding the enchantment while applying the celestial platinum.

Carefully etching out the formation for the healing spell that would be contained with the bracelet, Marcus allowed the celestial platinum to flow out while pouring his mana into it and the bracelet.

The celestial platinum absorbing the mana bonded into he the etching as Marcus went along until he had finished the bracelet.

With the bracelet that was the culmination of a week of learning complete, Marcus had a proud smile on his face as he inspected it.

Taking the first bracelet he had made out of his item box; Marcus inspected the two items that were nearly identical on the outside but completely different in their quality.

"Impressive isn't it, how much of a difference the proper techniques make. While most people would never be able to tell the difference between the two of them from a glance this old man can see that what you just made is easily ten time better."

Marcus nodded his head and activated both items at the same time to figure out just how much of a difference they had.

Immediately Marcus could fell that the bracelet he had just made absorbed far less mana to activate its enchantment and was much faster in applying it.

And not only did it take less mana it was just as efficient as if Marcus had cast the spell himself.

'Wow, the difference is truly amazing. The first one I made is incredibly weak in comparison taking way more mana for less healing, and after testing it my new bracelet can activate twelve times before needing to cool down.'

"Well, your week of training is over, and I must say you learned at an incredible rate, in all honesty I expected you to quit after two days of getting you hand smashed, but you really persevered. I am also amazed that you were able to stay up for the whole week, at your level I would expect four days to be your max. Now then you have learned pretty much all I have to teach you for now. Of course, you can continue to ask for my guidance if you have questions or want to pounce off ideas but until you reach level five on your forge skill, I have taught you all you need to learn to start your journey on being a forgemaster. So, if you would not mind do not bother me for a while I have not slept in a week and am beat."

After saying that Thabon patted Marcus on the shoulder before heading up to his room and collapsing onto his bed wondering where a talent like Marcus had come from.