"Connect this to here, and we're done!"

Rino took a few steps back to admire his magical furnace's first prototype. For some reason, the first place that Rino did not mind risking an explosion was where Zerg's old village used to be. The charred remains on the ground told Rino that there could be no further damage done to this already ruined village. It was perfect for his experiments.

The materials he needed were all in his shadow inventory. The magical furnace used very little materials to construct. Rino used the most basic of materials fashioned out of good old earth magic, strengthened by fire.

His setup was simple. Following the example of a blast furnace, Rino had three chambers and two air outlets. The main chamber was where the mixed materials would get heated and tossed like a butter churn. The top chamber was for more charcoal to be poured into, and the bottom chamber was to drain out molten slag and metal. The two air outlets were for pumping in the fresh air and removing stale heated air.

He might not know the time intervals to pump fresh air and remove stale air, nor the amounts of coke and limestone added to fully process a cup of raw ores he was putting into the main chamber. However, that was exactly why this was an experiment.

Zerg was slightly nervous. He was initially thrilled when his master summoned him for a task more than just managing the farm works in Town Zera. Although he did his assigned job with pride to ensure that the operations went smoothly, the lesser vampire still felt dissatisfied about his role. He knew that he was young and inexperienced. It was why he studied hard and worked even harder to get acknowledged under Kragami's care.

Rino barely gave him a glance ever since he came to town Zera. He never missed a deadline to send crops to Noir Province. Neither did he forget to make offerings daily to the cat god statue. In fact, if Noir Province and Town Zera were to compare their offering amount, Zerg was confident they were winning because the lesser vampire made sure the cat statue was fed thrice a day.

His new job thanks to his diligence in studying reading, counting and writing was to help Rino record down numbers for his magical furnace experiment. The lesser vampire was told that the job could be traumatising because of possible death even if undead could regenerate infinitely as long as their summoner was around to help them. Zerg had his natural regenerative abilities too, so it wasn't a real danger. Compared to the unlucky scouting team who cleared the dwarven death maze with Rino, this job could be considered mild in insanity.

"Experiment Magical Furnace, take one. Record down the experiment number. I'm going to add one cup of ground metal ore, one cup of crushed charcoal and one cup of pounded marble stone all at once. Count the number of wax candles burned and the markings of the last candle when the experiment ends."

Rino's instructions were clear, and Zerg readied his pencil, scribbling notes on the new sketchpad dedicated to recording observations.

Rino slowly started activating the runes manually and watched as the spatial magic chamber fashioned out of mana imbued glass started to vibrate in its ceramic casing. The first cup of ingredients was added, and Rino sealed the upper chamber while increasing the intensity of the flame rune beneath. The flame turned from red to blue and finally an almost invisible violet.

Slowly, Rino opened the air channel to steadily pump in air using the air rune at a constant rate set at medium. Already, he could see some changes even though the gravitational magic was not adjusted. He also constantly pumped air out of the chamber and recorded the time for air to completely react with the materials inside.

When everything was running, Rino lit the first wax candle and let the setup do its thing inside. He wanted to leave gravitational magic for later after he determined the air vent intervals.

Presently, everything looked like it was going well. Even though the mixture of ore and rocks did not swirl like milk in a butter churn, Rino could see it starting to move and change colour. Over time, a slightly runny liquid was pulled to the bottom of the still mixture as more started to join.

Rino observed with interest how the liquid flowed downwards after the bits melted. He could not see any iron yet, but maybe it was because of all that confusing charcoal powder hiding them for now.

By the time the fifth candle finished burning, Rino had to stop the experiment. It did not seem like the amount of liquid pooling at the bottom was increasing. Rino drained the liquid out several times and hoped that more would form, but the amount decreased each time, leaving a huge lump of brown substance on the inside of the main spatial chamber.

"Record the time," he told Zerg, who did so without questions.

Curiously, both summoner and summoner stared at the unmelted lump that Rino used his shadow tendril to remove from the glass chamber.

According to the tutorial, this should be pig iron, full of impurities but mostly iron that needed refinement. While it was still hot, it was best to lightly pound it with wood on a flat surface like an anvil to test if it would crumble or remain malleable.

Rino had the stone anvil face ready on the ground and shadow tendrils to gently pound on the lump for that very purpose. It was still on flames when Rino removed it, and the lich learned something new. Ores could still combust even if they were not previously in direct contact with fire. The flames were caused by heat energy trapped within.

The first strike by the shadow tendrils gave Rino hope when the lump did not come apart. Maybe this was a genuine ugly piece of iron!

Rino could hardly believe his luck when the lump only mildly changed shape under huge pressure on the stone anvil face as it cooled. Hence, Rino felt braver and summoned water magic to cool the metal lump rapidly.

The lump was a lot smaller than the total volume of crushed ores, charcoal and marble stone he added earlier. If he had three cups of dry mix at the start, the slag that collected in his other chamber formed almost two and three-quarter cups of it. The last quarter cup remained in this lumpy pig iron ore, so RIno would count this as a success.

Still, it took Rino five candles long to finish smelting this little amount of raw iron. Each candle took from twenty minutes to half an hour to completely burn through. It was definitely shorter than using a traditional blast furnace, but it still took too long for such a small quantity of metal.

"Regular magical furnace extraction is a success. Let's move to phase two, regular metal refinement."

Refinement of the extracted metal was simpler than extracting the metal. Rino had to repeat the same thing but only add limestone and coke to the pig iron ore to remove embedded impurities. This time, he could opt for a slightly higher temperature while keeping the airflow constant.

Preparing for the refining process, Zerg noticed that the molten slag was now a very dolly shaped rock after it cooled.

"What to do with the slag?" he asked.

Rino took a glance at the trash by-product and shrugged. "Toss it aside for now. Help me to clear the candles and set new ones. Refining should not take as long."

True to Rino's words, the small lump started to transform when they started adding charcoal and pounded marble stone bits slowly into the spatial chamber with higher heat and regular airflow.

Once again, there was slag, but the amount was lesser, and the lump shrank as the slag dripped into a different chamber. Rino was slightly worried that his quarter cup of lump from the extraction process would be left with nothing. However, after the third candle, he started to see a semblance of the iron he once knew.

By now, the iron lump was only as large as his last finger, but it was the iron that Rino wanted. Unfortunately, he was faced with a new problem after it cooled. The shiny surface started to brown rather quickly as it reacted with oxygen. Rusting usually did not occur this quickly, and it took Rino a good while to understand why it was happening.

"We're too near the sea," he told Zerg with a frown. "This is a terrible test site."

The experiment to extract and refine iron took so long that dawn was already approaching by the time Rino and Zerg finished recording the first round of the experiment.

"Let's shift this to a different location without salt air," he told the lesser vampire as they packed up to relocate.