Chapter 43 Strongest Sage, Refining the Dungeon

 

"Alright, are you two ready?"

A day after the audience.
Ruli, Alma and I went to the dungeon.
We need most of the students for the barrier creation, and those students need to be able to use chantless magic.

Even though the teachers have gotten used with chantless magic lesson, teaching all of them in one week will still be difficult.
Therefore, we agreed that we needed around three weeks before we could begin the barrier creation in earnest.

"Yes! I'm good anytime!"

"Me too, all perfect!"

"Then, let's go!"

Thus, I started the search for one of the materials needed to create the barrier; a 60cm magic stone.
Well clearing the dungeon would take some time, so today's main objective is teaching Ruli and Alma magic.

"Alma, you can shoot 【Simple Mana Enchant】 without a problem right?"

"I can do it with my eyes closed now! I mean I've shot like hundreds of it!"

"Then, the next one is 【Wire-guided Enchant】. Alma, try using 【Simple Mana Enchant】 but stop before you shoot it."

"Un!"

Alma put her mana on the arrow she readied.
It's still a bit crude, but she got the passing mark. At this degree of completion, she should be able to learn the next enchant.

"You'll shoot that arrow.... but this time, try to concentrate your consciousness on the arrow before you do. Connect the arrow with a mana thread and feel as if you hold the endpoint."

"Hm...Like this?"

I could sense mana coiling on the slight space between the shot arrow and Alma.
The range is only about 3 meters.... It's good enough to get the feel.

"Then, try to make the arrow curve to the right using that thread as an intermediately...."

"Oooh, it curved!"

Alma's arrow slightly turned right.
She really has a good sense.

"This is called guided enchant. Once you can make the arrow turn at your will, you don't need to worry about line of fire anymore. Also, that arrow can penetrate right?"

"It can easily penetrate a mere hermit crab..."

"Then, first you should practice shooting through two crabs at once."

Doing it on one crab is easy, but you need to have an unexpectedly good control to penetrate two crabs with differences in highs and lows.
It should be optimum for her practice.
And since I've hanged the pendant from yesterday on my neck, I should also get a bit of experience points from it.

"Okay, I'll give it a try!"

"Don't go to other floors for now okay."

"Got it!"

After she said that, Alma left us to hunt hermit crabs.
This means she'll be a bit away from us, but I can sense if she's in any danger with 【Passive Detection】 as long as she's in the same floor, so there's no need to fret.
After confirming that Alma turned at a corner, I turned my line of sight to Ruli.

"Is it time for Augment magic at last!?"

Ruli raised her voice before I could say anything.
However, unfortunately, augment magic isn't the thing I'm going to teach her now.

"Augment magic.... Or rather, first we need to make the materials for it. You should make your own weapon if you want to do augmentation."

First of all, if a First Crest bearer needs to bring a sword whenever they want to practice, they will never have enough money on them. If they can create their own sword, they can practice anytime they want.
Moreover, if you want to master augment magic, you'll have to be able to concurrently use augment magic while you're creating a sword. Thus, blacksmithing is indispensable for it.

"Creating weapons....? But don't you need to train for years or even dozens of years to become a blacksmith...."

"If you're going pro, yep that's about right."

Even if she took the shortest route using the knowledge of my past life, it would still likely take her several hundreds years to completely master blacksmithing.
However, it isn't that difficult if it's only to surpass the swords you can find in the present royal capital.

"Well, I'll teach you weapon creation later, first our problem is.... procuring the materials. In short, metal refinery."

"But first, we'd need ores to refine--"

"We have raw ores here. This."

While saying that, I take out a sword from storage magic, put 【Mana Strike】, and 【Brittle Fracture】 on it and hit the dungeon wall with the sword.
Then a part of the dungeon's wall crumbled and fell to our direction.
By the way, 【Brittle Fracture】 is a magic to raise offensive power against hard brittle things like rocks.

"Dungeon's wall have a moderate amount of metal in them. There's many reasons for that.... Well, just keep that in mind for now."

"Eh, you're breaking that!? Or rather, you can break that!?"

"Hm? Isn't dungeon's wall a resource?"

"Let alone resources, it should have been the forefront of things that absolutely can't be broken...."

But it can be broken though.
The principal also already gave me his permission, 『You can do anything you want with it if you can break it』 anyway.
Well, no point thinking about it. It's probably another weird knowledge the demons spread. Those bunch really never do anything decent.

"I'll teach how to break the dungeon's wall later, for now let's focus on refinement. I'll show you how to do it right now, so watch closely and keep using 【Passive Detection】."

"Yes!"

I pick up a huge lump from the crumbled wall while Ruli is watching.
There isn't much metal in it since we're in upper floor, but it's quite enough for training.

I diffuse my mana into the lump, and after my mana melted the metal, I pulled the mana out and recrystallized the metal portion.
And then I crushed it into pieces using the sword with 【Brittle Fracture】.

"What do you think? Did you get it?"

"It felt like the mana melted the dungeon wall somehow.... Was that how to do refinement?"

"No, this is the second stage."

I activated magnetic magic and gathered black lumps from among the broken pieces.

"These are the dungeon's crude ores. Well, put simply, they're mix of metals contained within the dungeon wall."

Dungeon's crude ores contain iron within it so you can collect them using magnetism.
You can use your hands as well, but using magnetic magic is far quicker.

"Dungeon crude ores.... So we make a sword using these?"

"Nope. We collect these and then refine them."

I gathered the dungeon crude ores in one place, and melted them into one lump using flame magic.
The secret here is to put in a largish amount of mana right before they melt. The melting point will become lower if you do, making it easier to melt the lump.

I cooled it with water magic lastly, and recrystallized it using mana again by the same method like earlier.
Afterward, the black lumps this time are mixed with gray and blue crystals, creating spotty patterns. I think it's 90% gray and 10% blue.
The blue is mithril, the gray is iron. It seems the metals mixed within the wall in this floor are mostly of these two variants.

"How about it?"

"Don't tell me that's.... Mithril!?"

After identifying the blue parts on the lump, Ruli asked me.

"Correct. The gray one is iron. ...But the purity is lacking, thus we need to raise it by repeating the process before."

Afterward, I broke the spotty lump, melted the blue pieces and the gray pieces separately and recrystallized them again with the method earlier.
Silicones, oxygens and other elements besides metal are mixed in dungeon crude ores.
Recrystallization is needed to remove those impurities.
Well, my Fourth Crest can't make it that pure even after repeated processes though.

"I, I see.... So you get mithril from dungeon walls...."

"This isn't really that complicated, you'll learn in no time."

"No time!? ....I'm not sure which part of it isn't complicated, but thank you in advance!"

--And then, about 30 minutes later.

"I did it!"

Ruli is holding mithril she refined herself, with a smile on her whole face.
To be honest, I thought it would have taken around two hours.

Should I say as expected of the school's runner-up, or maybe it was thanks to her intense determination....















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