Chapter 690 Back To The Basics

Myropsis nodded with satisfaction while Vivian looked defeated. She couldn't believe that she was defeated by the creation of someone who did not even know the basics of forging. It made her wonder just how many other fundamentals he lacked.

​ The scariest part was that he was tackling some of the most advanced spells and techniques and actually making progress. He could make things that no one else was capable of, yet he didn't understand how what he was making actually worked.

The thought sent shivers down her spine as she recalled another time when something similar had happened. When he had accidentally started freezing his entire manor. She realized that this wasn't something new. He always jumped in headfirst. And sometimes something big would happen because of it, and only in those times did he reflect. The thought caused her to sigh in exasperation.

"What a pain..." Vivian grumbled, "Myropsis is right, you need to get the basics hammered into you before you do something that can't be undone." She turned to Myropsis and continued, "While you hammer it into him, I'll go and check if I can see anything special on or around the flowers."

Dragged out of the training hall and to the library, Myropsis forced Eldrian to sit and placed just one book before him.

"You've been relying on Two too much. By rushing through so many books you ignore all the minutia they contain. Focusing only on what captures the eye. Unless you plan to never master the topics, you need to change your approach."

"Bu-" Eldrian quickly stopped the words of counter as he saw Myropsis's sharp glare. For the most part, he was always the one teaching her, it was strange having her now lord over him as this. He discovered that she was quite a strict teacher.

"Take your time going through this book. Read everything, word for word. If you don't take this seriously I'll force you to follow the guide step by step."

Eldrian nodded but when he saw the first page containing instructions on how to hammer normal iron he wanted to argue. A quick flick made him keep his complaints to himself and helped him understand that he did not want to be forced to follow it step by step.

"Unless you can tell me exactly how you should approach everything in this book, don't argue." Her tone was sharp, leaving no room for arguing.

With a few soft grumbles of complaint, Eldrian started going through the book. He found it terribly boring at the start, what it explained he could easily skip over thanks to ether manipulation and the general spells used in forging. While the pressure he could exert with ether wasn't as great as industrial presses, it was getting closer and closer as he continued to get more comfortable with the technique. His growth to Tier 5 especially gave him a large jump in how much force he could exert.

However, as Eldrian continued to read he realized many small details that he had ignored or simply brute-forced to work. While that was fine for the artifacts that didn't need to withstand attacks, it would be terrible to do the same approach with weapons.

Eldrian paused, remembering one of these typical problems--cracking of the metal which had happened with one of the daggers he had made. Taking out the dagger with the red crystal, Eldrian looked at the tip and froze with an awkward smile. The tip was blunt and a large crack had nearly split the blade. And most importantly, it had only clashed once with Vivian's sword.

If she had blocked once or twice more the dagger would have been completely destroyed. And that could actually have been really dangerous--if it shattered and flew at Vivian she could have been badly hurt.

'I might want to blame that on the difference in material or Tier, but the truth is my craftmanship is crap. I need to own up to that. If she had been hurt that would have been completely on me.'

Accepting this, Eldrian started to read the book far more seriously. He paid attention to everything it said. Understanding well that while this wasn't so important in ANW where there was an abundance of material and his own life was unlikely to be in danger -unless he met specific opponents- messing up on Earth would be a massive problem since he wouldn't be able to afford any do-overs.

This book that Myropsis had handed him contained only smithing instructions and guidance. Yet there was so much in it that he could learn from. By the time the sun started to set he was only halfway through. Eldrian did not rush to get through the rest, instead, he made sure to try his best to remember each word.

'Two, I think we should take more care going forward.'

'Maybe, but first we should sort out what would be useful to carefully read through and what wouldn't.' Two remarked, but he too started to slow down a bit as he sped through the books in their inventory. Making more notes than usual and a catalog of what they needed to revisit at a later date. The catalog would aim at interesting topics that did not apply to their immediate situation, they would look at it when they had more free time.

"Hey, take a break." Myropsis gently shook Eldrian's shoulder to pull him out of his reading. "I'm glad that you are taking this seriously, but you need to eat and sleep."

"Thanks... And thanks for forcing me to read this. I really was running forward blindly."

"I should have realized how lacking your basics were..." Myropsis countered, feeling ashamed that she had never noticed this. She had simply thought Eldrian relied completely on magic since it was easiest for him, but now she understood that it was all that he knew. His grasp of magic was great, but perhaps due to a lack of exposure or simply due to haste, his grasp of other things was lackluster at best.

"At least we realized before it was too late. I'll finish this one tomorrow, I suspect you have another book or two you want me to go through?"

"Yeah, after this one I have the basics for runes and inscriptions, then the basics of enhancement, and finally the basics of forging. But you mustn't rush."

"Yeah, I know. I won't." Eldrian nodded, actually hyped to go through a guide of the basics. Shockingly he hadn't ever done this. Like an excited kid, he had jumped into the deep end with what fascinated him, and since he hadn't failed in a true sense, he never bothered to calm down and re-evaluate things.

'I had wanted to make the artifact since I felt myself stagnating, but perhaps I wasn't stagnating because of the lack of topic shift but rather my lack of basics. No, that is certainly it. I could keep up with Ashliel and even impress the smith whose forge we are using, but if they ever asked me these basic principles, I would have been clueless. It is only natural that after a while it will start limiting what I can achieve. '

The next day arrived quickly, with Eldrian diving into reading with fervor. Around midday, he finished the first book and Vivian arrived along with Myropsis.