The new location wasn't too far, and Rino could teleport himself over after he unsummoned Zerg. The lesser vampire had no idea where they were, but he knew they were definitely underground.

"Where are we?" Zerg asked. Wouldn't conducting experiments that could potentially explode underground be more dangerous than experimenting with them above ground?

The dripping of water in the background of this new test site told the lesser vampire that there was humidity in the air and poor airflow. Should they still be here?

As if sensing Zerg's concerns, Rino reassured the lesser vampire that it was alright.

"External physical factors do not affect the process on the inside. Besides, there's hardly a place that we could potentially destroy when the sun is up. The most logical thing to do is conduct this activity in a cave nearby that does not face the sea."

With their options limited, Zerg tried his best to be near the candlelight to record his observation from a relatively safe distance from the experiments. Rino added the lump back into the spatial chamber and reduced it further with charcoal until it was silverish despite glowing hot. The small amount of slag was drained, and the most magical thing happened soon after.

Silvery white thick goo started to pool below the main spatial chamber, and RIno felt excited. According to the tutorial, only pure extracted metal will turn into molten liquid at a fixed temperature. This meant that there were no more impurities within and anything that happened inside this controlled chamber was pure metal.

However, that excitement fell short when the liquid constantly had brown flecks at the top that slowly increased. Rino could not understand what was happening and referred back to the tutorial to find out what went wrong. His refining process was going so well, and even if this iron was only a little in quantity, it was still better than crude iron with tons of impurities, right?

As Rino read through the tutorial diligently, cancelling the experiment temporarily, Zerg wondered what was wrong.

The curious lesser vampire went up to look at the cooling molten iron that started forming a nasty colour. It had a pretty colour when it was melted, but now, there were more brown spots than silver, reminding him of what happened in the village.

"Master, do you think this is the same thing as what happened earlier when we took it out in the sea breeze?"

Pausing and looking up for a moment, Rino took a look at the cooling iron piece. He looked back to Zerg and patted the boy fondly.

"You're right! It's rusting! That's what it was! Rust!"

Pure iron free of other impurities could not retain its original colour for long, much like gold and silver because of the air. The science behind this wasn't fully understood, but Rino was told metals were weak to water and air. They must be protected by oil from air and strengthened by heated forging and mixing with other metals or impurities such as charcoal over high fire.

The alloy was a mixed breed of metals. Bronze was an excellent example of alloy most commonly used with nine parts copper and one part tin. Steel was made from iron strengthened by adding a dash of charcoal into the mix. Not a lot is required. Just even a sprinkle could strengthen the metal astonishingly. The dwarves in his previous world told Rino that steel was a smelter's soup. Almost anything could be added into a pure iron mixture to create steel.

Rino was slightly curious about creating the fabled mana steel from legends that his alchemy failed to create. Back then, they used mithril that was a difficult material to obtain. If mana steel could be manufactured from iron found in rocks and sand readily, they could rapidly improve the technology used and give non-magicians a chance to experience the convenience of magic.

Creating magical tools for the common folk to use was one of Rino's unfulfilled dreams. The glowing rock and mana absorbing rocks he mined from the dwarven cave gave Rino some ideas about the type of steel he wanted to produce in future. However, for now, he should be satisfied with making regular steel. Mana steel was still a possibility that he would experiment with after completing his quest.

Adding a pinch of charcoal after bringing the iron to a molten state again made things very clear. The brown flecks from earlier started to disappear, and instead of seeing slag after the addition of charcoal, Rino saw that the substance thickened steadily and glowed a warm yellow instead. With this, Rino confirmed that his smelting process using his magical furnace prototype worked.

All he had to do now was make it accident and possibly explosion proof. Zerg appeared nervous when Rino poured the little bit of molten steel into a tiny clay mould Ubel made. Unfortunately for the clay and ceramic moulds, these items were one-time use and break cases.

Rino chose a simple mould that had a tiny curved blade and handle. The mould came in a set, so one faced the left, and one faced the right. Zerg had no idea what that was, but he watched Rino pour the molten steel into them, and there was just enough to fill both casts.

After that was done, Zerg and Rino went through the observation recording to find out how long a regular smelting process would take without the aid of gravitational magic. Also, Rino decided that once there was no more slag produced in the refinery stage, the air supply should be cut off until charcoal was added to create a strong metal alloy.

The total time for this process took half the time it would take a traditional blast furnace to get the raw iron clump concentrate. Three hours wasn't short, but it wasn't needlessly long either. However, the bottleneck of the process Rino faced was the amount that could be produced at one time. Even with the help of gravitational manipulation, he doubted that the process could be shortened to under half an hour.

Eventually, Rino concluded that he needed a bigger magical furnace, especially in the spatial chamber. The problem was how he was short on time to complete his quest. Even if he started now, there wasn't enough time to complete the request of the gods. The bar was too big, and with one cup of raw iron, Rino could only produce a pair of delicate sewing scissors. A bar was worth at least twelve sewing scissors.

"My lord, what's troubling you?"

Seeing how Rino wasn't reacting positively to their experiment's success, Zerg deduced that something was wrong.

Rino studied the intelligent lesser vampire. Zerg wasn't very educated, but this was the only villager he found promising enough to rescue back then. Zerg was younger than Fronzo, but he was hungry for knowledge and was always open to new perspectives.

"What would you do if you needed to make bars of this metal but have limited time to produce huge quantities of it?"

Tilting his head to the side, Zerg looked at the furnace. 

"Get a bigger furnace?"

Rino nodded. That was what he thought too. Maybe he should invest those GF credits to get some time extension to complete this project. It was made to be impossible after all.

However, Zerg wasn't done with his answer. He looked over to the molten steel cooling in the moulds that Rino poured it into.

"Or make smaller bars."

That answer made Rino snap his neck back at Zerg, who wondered if he said something wrong when bony hands gripped his shoulders.

"That's it! Zerg, you're a genius!"

Not knowing what a genius was but liking how it sounded like a praise, Zerg simply nodded, inciting laughter from Rino, who rummaged through his inventory to find if Ubel made any mini bar moulds.

The wraith king did not make a mini bar mould as he followed Rino's designs strictly. However, making a mould would not be difficult. In fact, Rino relayed the message back to his faithful servant to make tiny bar moulds for about fifty grams of metal. If this did the trick, he needed to reward Zerg handsomely.

From above, Phil closed an eye and overrode the system's perimeters to accept anything that looked like a bar of metal, ignoring the size input. Ark and Stephanie were too busy attending social functions and soliciting business to care. Besides, why fault the lich when he would build something bigger and better with the time he bought himself?

Once Ubel returned an affirmative reply to deliver the moulds by nightfall, Rino started packing up. He gave the miners an order to dig out a new space in the dwarven mines for a huge magic furnace. In the meantime, Rino could borrow one of those abandoned caverns to put his small magic furnace and hook it up to the main mana web array for power. The runes were adjusted for output, and Rino unsummoned Zerg for a while to teleport back.

They had work to do.