Chapter 223 - 222 New Gear (2)
Starting with Lilia\'s gauntlets first since they were going to be far more of an ordeal, Marcus heated up the mithril ingots and got to hammering.
Shaping the gauntlets took quite a bit of time and then getting them perfectly smoothed out even more.
Yet with near unending endurance Marcus worked, hammer blow after hammer blow until they were ready for the next step.
Marcus first implanted the magic cores into each of them before adding four different types of elemental crystals into each gauntlet.
On one side Marcus added lightning and wind elemental crystals to help increase Lilia\'s speed and agility, and on the other an earth elemental crystal and a rare metal elemental crystal to increase toughness and weight.
Of course, he would have liked to make them with something that would increase the power of her force affinity but finding something like that for a beyond rare magic like force was not going to be easy.
So, Marcus made do with what he had and did his best to make the gauntlets as strong as possible.
He put on many different enchantments using celestial platinum in high amounts to fortify and strength the powerful and numerous formations he was etching.
And when he put on the finishing touches, the gauntlets began to shimmer before a pattern of the sky filled with a storm and tall powerful mountains appeared.
Seeing that another of his works got the system\'s recognition Marcus felt a sense of elation welling up inside him.
It was as if the world itself was approving of the work he was doing, and it gave him a sense of pride.
\'Maybe being a lawyer was not supposed to be my calling last time. I certainly was pretty good at it, but I never got this type of fulfillment out of it.\'
As his mind started to drift to his past life as it did every so often, Marcus felt a sense of sadness come over him, but the pain of never seeing those he cared about on Earth had become duller as he spent more time on Mirrion and got closer to the new people he cared about.
\'I think it is time for a little break before working on my scythe.\'
After having worked for over sixty hours straight with no rest in between, Marcus sat down and allowed himself to relax.
He had certainly gone beyond the limits of a normal forgemaster already and could tell that even though he could easily keep going he was not quite at his peak right now.
He had constantly been using copious amounts of mana and even with his mana regeneration skill he had nearly drained himself dozens of time at this point.
Yet it only took him an hour of resting before he felt that he had gotten back to his peak and the anticipation of making himself a new weapon got him back on his feet and right to work.
Moving over to the table where he had laid out the materials for his new scythe, Marcus quickly and expertly shaped the blade using the mithril he had smelted with the fangs of the abyssal spider he had killed along with the talons of the caladrius.
\'You served me well, but it is time for you to retire.\'
Taking out his first mithril scythe, Marcus removed the handle he had made for it as he planned to reuse it for his new scythe.
However, he was planning to make a few improvements to the handle to increase its power.
Using the biggest lightning elemental crystal he had, Marcus ever so carefully chiseled out two long strips, absorbing a number of shocks along the way, but a little pain in the pursuit of progress is inevitable.
Once that was done, he carved away just enough wood on either side of the handle and implanted the elemental crystal.
\'The next part is where it is going to get hard.\'
Bringing out the core of a lightning affinity monster, Marcus compressed it down as small as he could before boring a hole in the bottom of the handle and placing it inside.
With that done he brought out his mana etcher and filled it with molten celestial platinum and began carving a formation into the handle.
He had to be very carful during this process so as not to damage the wood with the heat from the celestial platinum and was using his new and improved mana control to reinforce the wood.
Luckily, he somehow managed to do it, and when the platinum cooled it began absorbing into the enchantment and disappearing.
\'Whew, it actually worked. Now I just need to add the enchantments to the blade and combine the two and hope that the dual enchantment works.\'
With what he considered to be the hardest part of making his weapon, Marcus brought out the scythe blade he had already made and got to work on its enchantments.
As always, he placed the cores first before implanting a number of the strongest and purest darkness, and light elemental crystals he had.
Once that was done, he took two more strips off of the lightning elemental crystal and placed them along the scythe\'s blade so that they would line up with the ones on the handle.
After that he went through the process of adding numerous enchantments onto his scythe, that increase its mana output, sharpness, and connected the two normally opposing elements light and darkness.
\'Embodiment of Eclipse, harmony form.\'
Activating his supreme skill Marcus used his own duality to help stabilize the scythe\'s and when he was done the darkness and light that had been fighting each other fused in the middle of the scythe and became stable.
\'Now one last step.\'
Taking the handle and blade Marcus put them together and sent his mana into it to make sure that the enchantments would line up and found that his plan had worked, and the handle and blade had perfectly melded together.
It was at this moment when the scythe shimmered, and it gained a pattern of intermingled light and darkness with streaks of lighting surrounding it.
\'It\'s done.\'
Giving his new scythe a couple of swings Marcus could only feel that it was quite natural and that the weight and balance of his new scythe outmatched his old one.
Having now finished the main projects he set out to make, Marcus figured he had a bit of time left before he was supposed to meet up with Jarek and Treasa, so he got to work on the other things he had thought up.
Taking six small ingots of mithril, Marcus shaped each one into a ring before taking some large darkness and light elemental crystals and carving them into the shape of lenses.
When he had finished that, he affixed the lenses into the mithril rings and put in a high-level core into each one before carving in a series of formations.
\'Hm it actually worked, I really thought that this was going to end in failure.\'
Having the six lenses three of each with darkness and light affinities float around him Marcus was quite pleased.
He had used a part of the formation that allowed him to move around his iron sphere and feathers with his thoughts onto the rings and could now move them if he focused.
Unfortunately, it did take a lot of his attention, but they still would be useful for amplifying his light and darkness based spells.
\'Well, I guess that will do for now.\'
With the items he wanted to make finished Marcus exited the private forging room after five days of tirelessly working.
During this time no one had disturbed him and as the people who were working on their own projects watched him come out, they were surprised to see the condition he was in.
There was not a speck of soot on him, and it appeared that he was not fatigued at all.
Of course, there was no soot or grim on him because he could just go ethereal and all of that stuff would fall off him, and his ghostly constitution kept him from looking haggard even after five days of near endless forging.
Soon Edzard heard of Marcus\' emergence and came up to him and said, "You certainly were in there awhile, I assume you made something truly extraordinary."
Marcus nodded his head and first took out Lilia\'s new set of scale mail which was still in its deployed from since he already knew Edzard would want to see it.
"Remarkable work. I daresay that this armor would protect you against attacks from quite formidable enemies. You used a large amount of elemental crystals to give the wearer protection against many different elemental attacks. Though their appears to be a set of formations I can not really gleam anything from."
Marcus then went to explain what that formation was derived from and Edzard yelled out in surprise, "Force Magic!"
Edzard\'s eyes went wide as he thoroughly inspected the formation, though even with his expertise he would not be able to replicate it without Marcus\' help or access to someone who knew force magic.
"How did you do it, force magic is basically the stuff of legends in a similar league to space magic."
Marcus explained to Edzard how his sister was actually a practitioner of force magic and that with her help he had learned how to implant force magic-based formations.
"I see you are truly lucky to have been able to have someone that allowed access to such a rare magic type. From one forgemaster to the other, how about you introduce me to your sister and maybe let me have a go at making some force magic-based formations.. I of course would be willing to share any of my findings with you."