Looking at Thabon, Marcus smiled confidently before lighting the crimson ore furnace, and picking up the three mithril ingots with his spectral arm.
Using his spectral arm Marcus held the three ingots inside the furnace and with the control flames spell began heating them up.
Marcus using all of his skill to control the fire within the furnace began melting the mithril and fusing the three ingots into one.
After thirty minutes Marcus had successfully created one very large ingot and then got to work.
Pulling out a specially made enchanted mithril and steel alloy hammer, Marcus began hammering away at the large ingot.
Minutes turned to hours, and soon Thabon and Gurrom who were watching Marcus were able to tell what kind of weapon Marcus was making, and it surprised them.
They had never seen Marcus make this type of weapon before, but it was actually the item that Marcus had the most experience with, a scythe.
Seeing it, Thabon remembered back when he looked over Marcus' status and that the weapon skill Marcus had was scythemanship.
'So, she is making herself a personal weapon for her test. What a bold move, now let me see if you can actually impress me.'
Once Marcus had the general shape of the scythe blade design he wanted, he began grinding down the blade until it was to satisfaction.
When that was done Marcus moved onto the handle taking the two pieces of opposing wood, and with a very special glue, he began putting the two pieces together.
After the two pieces were aligned, Marcus sent a massive amount of mana through the wood and the special property of the glue activated, causing the two opposing pieces of wood to begin fusing.
Thabon was actually surprised to see this since it would normally be impossible to fuse these two pieces of opposing woods and it was only because of the nature of Marcus' own duality that it was possible.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Marcus looked towards the magic core of the boss of the third layer as well as the three elemental stones he had brought out.
'Now the hard part begins.'
Picking up the magic core first, Marcus brought it over towards the scythe blade and measured out the area where he was going to imbed it.
Taking nearly twenty minutes Marcus was finally confident in where to place the magic core and began condensing the core into a manageable size.
Once that was done Marcus heated up the area he was going to place the core, and chiseled it out.
Next, he placed the core within the scythe blade before melting the previously removed mithril and covering up the core.
Taking a deep breath Marcus picked up the three elemental stones and measured out where they were going to go since it was crucial that they be aligned perfectly or one of them would overpower the others.
Putting them into a triangular pattern with lightning being in front of the magic core while the dark and shine stones being behind.
Marcus sure of his measurements chiseled out three hole for the elemental stones and inserted them.
He then resealed them with mithril and began the most difficult part.
Taking out a specialized pen that looked like a scalpel Marcus sent a large amount of mana into it and began etching a formation into the scythes blade.
Starting around the magic core, Marcus began drawing the formation for an enchantment that increased the power of mana before drawing out a line to each of the elemental stones he had placed into the scythe, having to control his mana with extreme precision as to not to have the mithril reject the enchantment.
However, as he added the enchantment for the dark stone, the two opposing lightning and shine stones began to reject the energy coming from the dark stone.
Seeing this Marcus began to panic, and he tried to change the formation he was drawing so that the lightning and shine stones would not pressure the dark stone.
Unfortunately, even as he tried to change the formation the two stones that were complementary began trying to destroy the dark stone.
Clicking his tongue Marcus used his last resort and hoped that it worked out somehow.
'Embodiment of Darkness.'
Using his unique skill Marcus began enhancing the strength of the dark stone so that it was not overpowered by the light and lightning stone.
With razor sharp focus making sure not to give the dark stone either too little or too much support Marcus continued his formation until he finally made the enchantment stable.
Taking in a deep breath of relief Marcus could not believe that he had successfully completed the enchantment on his scythe.
'The hardest part is now done, now I just need to sharpen the blade and connect it with the handle.'
Taking the blade over to a special whetstone Marcus began painstakingly sharpening it, making sure that it was perfect.
Once that was done Marcus put slight amount of glue on the top of the handle before slotting it into the hole, he had left in the scythe blade.
Finally, he took the metal around the handle and slowly pressed it until it was constricting around the wood and would not release it no matter what.
With that done the scythe was practically complete, but Marcus decided to add a few cosmetic etchings to the blade and handle before handing it over to Thabon to inspect.
In total it had taken Marcus around fourteen hours to complete his scythe, but there was no doubt that it was an impressive piece.
Looking it over Thabon was actually surprised, it had been a while since he had seen such a fine item, especially from someone who had only been practicing for six months.
'A tripe elemental enchantment, and with one opposing element no less. She must have been crazy to have tried something like this, and if not for that unusual ability she used, there is no way it would have worked. Still there is no doubt that this a masterpiece and a practitioner of any of the elements within this scythe would love to have it. She also gave it a general strengthening enchantment which further makes this weapon impressive, and she used top quality mithril you can only receive from dungeon chests. However, the most extortionary part was that she did not degrade the enchantments at all and the mithril accepted it. If she knew the proper way to add enchantments to mithril this would not be anything special, but she instead used extremely precise mana control. Unfortunately, this is as far as she can go without specialized teaching on the true ways of enchanting.'
After he finished inspecting the scythe Marcus had just made, Thabon handed it back to Marcus and said, "Irene what you have shown me today is truly impressive, never in my wildest dreams did I think you would be at this level of skill within only six months. And while this weapon could not have been made without the unique albites you exhibited, that too is a part of you talent. I honestly can only call what you have made here a masterpiece for someone at you level and therefore I will take you as my apprentice."
Hearing this Marcus jumped up into the air with joy. He had enjoyed every moment he had been working on forging and was desperate to learn more.
Gurrom seeing Marcus celebrating Thabon accepting him as an apprentice walked over and clapped him on the back before laughing loudly and saying, "Well I guess from now on you are going to be my junior, congratulations on becoming one of the master's disciples."
Marcus smiled at Gurrom and said, "Yeah I may be your junior for now, but you should watch out since I have no intention of stopping until I am the best."
Gurrom looked at Marcus with a fire blazing in his eyes and said, "Don't get too cocky now, you still do not know any of the advanced techniques of forging yet. I am already so far ahead of you that I would have to fall asleep for a decade for you to catch up."
Marcus and Gurrom continued to bicker about who was going to do what, but this only lasted for a few more moments before Thabon coughed loudly to get their attention.
"Irene, I have something important to show and tell you, follow me into my workshop."
Marcus hearing this immediately became serious and walked behind Thabon as he went towards his workshop.
Entering inside Marcus could see the impressive set up Thabon had, him even owning an adamantine anvil.
Looking at the tools he did not appreciate the first time he was here; Marcus could only hope that one day he would have a setup as impressive.
However, Marcus' gawking did not last long as he saw Thabon come back with a lockbox and a sheet of paper.
Handing the sheet of paper to him Thabon said, "This here is a magically binding contract, if you are to learn the most important secrets to being a forgemaster you will have to sign it."
Taking the contract Marcus looked it over and was surprised to see how harsh it was. Should he disclose the secret to one who is not privy to it, he would instantly die. However, the contract did become void when his forge skill reach level seven which was the qualification for a true master.
Marcus continued to read the contract carefully and after thinking about it, realized that there was a good chance the instant death clause would not work on him because he was not technically alive.
However, this did not mean Marcus wanted to test his theory or break Thabon's trust.
Quickly signing the contract, Marcus handed it back over to Thabon who looked it over before unlocking the box he brought over.
Marcus could see two different metals within, one which he immediately recognized as platinum although it was glowing slightly, and the other metal had a deep purple color and Marcus thought he had seen it somewhere before but could not place it.
Thabon first took out the glowing platinum and said, "This here is the single most important metal for making enchantments. It is called celestial platinum and is used to add enchantments to any weapon that can absorb mana without fail."
Marcus looked at the celestial platinum dumbfounded since he had been told that to add an enchantment one need to embed a magic core into the weapon and then carve the requisite formation into it.
However, with this method there was a chance of the enchantment being rejected and one had to be very careful and not add too many or too powerful enchantments that would cause the metal to reject them.
Thabon looked at Marcus with a bit of sympathy and said, "Yes the way you learned to add enchantments is technically flawed, instead of carving a formation into the metal itself you use celestial platinum to draw the formation and it will bond to whatever metal it is being applied to and as long as the formation was drawn correctly, it will set in."
Hearing this Marcus could only feel cheated since he spent an incredibly long time perfecting his ability to put enchantments onto mithril, but if he had known this simple trick, he could have done it easily and added a more powerful enchantment.
Alas, that was just the way of the world, people were not going to just hand over such valuable secrets readily and Marcus was lucky to be learning it at all.
Snapping himself out of the negative feelings welling up in him, Marcus turned his gaze towards the purple metal and waited for Thabon's explanation.
Thabon seeing that Marcus had gotten over the revelation that had caused many others that had learned it to have a mental shut down for days, was happy and continued his explanation.
"This here is a metal called amethros and is actually the strongest metal in the world. I am sure that until now you believed that spot was held by adamantine, but it is only the second strongest quite a bit behind amethros. However, amethros is not really a secret like the qualities celestial platinum and is just so incredibly rare that few know of its existence. Unlike every other metal in the world which occurs naturally, amethros can only be found in the chests of high-level dungeons. In fact, even I myself have only ever worked with it a few times and the kingdom only has four weapons made from it."
Looking at the small piece of amethros and hearing Thabon's explanation, Marcus finally remembered where he saw this metal before.
'The kingdom's knight commander, his axe was made out of a purple metal. It must have been made out of amethros.'
Marcus coming to this realization inquired with Thabon who acknowledged that the axe the knight commander used was indeed made from amethros.
Sighing Marcus realized how little he truly knew about this world, but he was happy that things were still going to be interesting going further.
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