《God's Eyes 》Chapter 159: Small steps
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Hours passed and Jason´s clothes were completely drenched in sweat, as he gazed lovingly and with pride at the jade iron bar in front of him.
He forgot how many times he failed to expel the impurities within the jade iron ore and only the small mountain of scrap to his left could tell Jason the answer.
But he didn´t care about that as the jade iron bar in front of him shimmered lightly, revealing a faint black color, even if it was only barely visible.
Shane looked at Jason oddly, as he questioned himself if Jason´s eyes were made for forging or if the Origin flame he possessed was the cause of his superiority in exhaling the impurities out of the jade iron bar.
Inspecting the Jade iron bar in front of Jason, Shane was baffled to figure out that it was an almost perfectly purified jade iron bar, shocking him extremely.
He was jealous of Jason´s mana eyes and origin flame but on the other side, it was a huge advantage for both of them, as Shane reduced the set time to teach Jason how to forge perfectly purified bars from all kinds of ores by a few months in an instant.
Previously he was already sure that Jason would be much faster than him in learning how to perfectly purify bars, due to Jason´s mana eyes and origin flame, but he underestimated his disciple's capabilities by a lot.
If he knew that Jason could see every single particle of impurities within the ores, Shane would definitely be enraged and overly jealous, but fortunately, that wasn´t the case.
Even Jason was astonished that he could control his flame relatively well after a few hours, as the temperature was relatively stable after experimenting some time.
He decided to use a moderate temperature between the highest possible temperature to purify jade iron and the lowest possible temperature in order to have a small range for "accidents".
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More problematic than his control over the black origin flame was rather injecting his mana into the jade iron mold, expelling the impurities forcefully by leading them around without bumping into the mana veins, damaging them.
The detour Jason had to take sometimes was through the whole bar and would take dozens of minutes which he had to concentrate on maintaining the perfect heat of his flame, in addition, to accurately leading around the impurities towards the surface.
Even if the perfectly purified jade iron bar in front of him was his first success, Jason was lucky as the impurities were on the outside and not deep within the jade iron mold, like it was often the case with the other molds he tested.
A single mistake would damage the mana veins, and decrease the efficiency of a perfect purification if it wouldn't even destroy the mana veins within.
In the beginning, Jason was extremely frustrated, but as time passed, he was becoming more relaxed, focused on the task in front of him, without caring about anyone´s existence.
It was already lunchtime when Jason finished his first try and he initially wanted to continue practicing even more when he noticed Shane and Dalia behind him with Artemis further away standing on a table.
He hadn't even noticed that Artemis and Dalia followed them and Jason wondered why they were gazing at him so oddly, which was noticed by them.
While Shane shook his head in denial, Dalia laughed, before she told Jason to change his clothes to make himself ready to go to school.
Previously she wanted to teach him about alchemy and how to make perfect inscription solutions, but once she saw Jason´s determination while exhaling the impurities within the ores, Dalia was sure that Jason would do fine, even if she teaches him later.
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Socializing and being among peers was important in her opinion and She wanted Jason to live his youth as well as possible without any worries, even though they forced a huge responsibility on him.
Jason could follow this responsibility later if he wanted to and it was no use to isolate him from his peers.
Rather than that, it would most likely harm his growth and turn him less humane which was the last thing they wanted to do.
The thing they wanted Jason to do was to lead humanity into a more prosperous time and in order to make that possible, he would need to have superior socializing skills and not social distancing.
Jason himself didn't even know what he wanted, but he just nodded his head.
Artemis was extremely bored throughout the last few hours and spectating what Jason did wasn't really helpful as he repeated the same thing over and over again.
She couldn't even enter Jason´s soul world because the soul energy she required was too high for Jason to handle and standing too close to him while he worked was also not helpful, even more than that, it was uncomfortable for her due to the heat she didn´t really like.
When Jason glanced at the clock, he stored away his perfectly purified jade iron bar, before he left the forging room and entered a secluded room to change into a new set of clothes.
Shane transported him out of the underwater bubble back to the surface and Artemis flew through the treetop to greet the fresh air and sun that shone on her white plumage.
The sun´s heat wasn't uncomfortable for Artemis, only the black flame Jason had, was, even though Artemis didn't know why that was the case.
There was an odd feeling that Jason´s black origin flame was the most dangerous existence she had ever felt.
As such, Artemis told herself to either overpower the flame's heat or flee as far as possible in order to never meet this flame ever again.
Unfortunately, as both Artemis and the black origin flame were Jason´s soulbond, the latter option wasn't possible and Artemis could only strengthen herself in order to ease her worry against the black origin flame
Outside the small lake, Jason looked around if someone saw him jumping out of twisted space, but Shane had most likely done the same by releasing his mana, easing up his tension.
Running towards the combat arena, Jason figured out that there were more students challenging them than a day before, while their strength increased only slightly.
Unfortunately, there was still not a single student from the main school and most likely not many high-ranked students from the remaining affiliated schools, turning Jason´s mood slightly down.
He wanted to have some exciting spars that would cause his adrenaline to soar, but it looked like he would only again be disappointed as not many high-ranked students would challenge him.
There was still some time left before the special combat lesson would start and Jaso undecided to practice the Heaven's Hell technique to increase his soul energy.
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- In Serial20 Chapters
Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
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