“I’m curious, does the world you came from have the philosophy of ?”

In a metal room lit by dim yellow light and populated by machine parts, two youths sat side by side. One was a human male with rather average looks and the other was a female with tufted ears and a gorgeous azure fox tail. At a glance, the pair looked quite close as they sat together. However, those with keen vision would notice that there was a subtle wall that neither side crossed. The atmosphere in Marin’s workshop was comfortable and harmonious, but both youths could feel the distinct lack of intimacy. In many ways, they were still strangers to each other.

It had been approximately two months since Jayce was summoned to the Upper Bound and there were only a few days before his bet with Leon ended.

Jayce replied with a hmm as he stared at the holographic screen in front of them. “The idea that all people are born equal and deserve equal treatment? My world has plenty of discrimination, but I’d say most people agree with that concept. I certainly do.”

“I figured,” Marin said, smiling lightly. She reached out and tapped several places on the screen in quick succession. “Everyone only has one soul, right?”

Jayce grimaced as he watched the results of Marin’s tapping but his expression quickly shifted to one of confusion. “What do souls have to do with anything?”

Now it was Marin’s turn to look confused. Her fox tail waved as she turned to stare at him. “Races are empirically different, but everyone only has one soul. Therefore, we deserve equality. That’s the core theory of equalism.”

“Oh.”

At that moment, Jayce was almost entirely focused on the screen before him. His finger moved deftly, tapping various points with confidence. Unfortunately, if Jayce was a climber moving steadily from one handhold to the next, then Marin was a freak who could sprint up a sheer cliff face. After he made a series of moves, Marin would reply in a quarter of the time.

“On Caelum, this philosophy was pioneered by a jotun,” Marin added.

“A man?”

“Of course. Why would their women be asking for equality?” Marin chuckled. “By the way, did you practice this game with someone else? I can’t believe you’ve improved so quickly.”

Jayce smiled in a self-deprecating fashion. “I can’t say I feel much of an improvement.”

The game in question was called block-flow and Jayce could only describe it as a mix of sudoku and a water pipe puzzle. It was a single-player game, but with Marin’s information console generating random scenarios, they could take turns competing for time. Normally, Jayce wouldn’t agree to waste his time on a random game. He would be even more upset if he had, hypothetically, spent an entire night practicing said game in a dream after Marin crushed him the first time they played. This had actually happened a couple nights ago, but Jayce wasn’t upset, nor did he consider this to be a waste of time. Block-Flow was created to teach players about controlling the flow of mana through objects and it was particularly useful for rune engravers.

“How are you splitting your focus like that?” Jayce muttered bitterly as he watched Marin solve another puzzle in seconds. More than just thinking quickly, it was clear that Marin was solving different parts of the puzzle at the same time.

“From an equalist perspective, I’m cheating,” she replied in a smug tone. “I’ve also been playing this game ever since I was young, so you shouldn’t feel discouraged. You’ve been growing astonishingly quickly, and I’m not just talking about the game here.”

Once again, Marin turned and her sapphire eyes gleamed as she stared at him. Being appraised like this by a beautiful young woman would cause many men to feel prideful, but Jayce couldn’t relax. While she watched him, a faint prickling feeling told him there was something invisible lurking at the edge of his personal space. Jayce knew that if he activated Sense Aspects, he would see a rope-like object nearby. If he traced its source, he’d find it connected to Marin’s back like a puppet’s string.

‘Ever since that incident with Leon, I thought I was doing a good job acting like nothing had changed. Recently, though, I feel like she’s been watching me very closely. Why is that?’ Jayce thought, feeling a little unnerved. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was really ok to stick his head in the sand just to keep Marin happy.

Jayce didn’t sense any ill-intent from Marin, so he shelved the question for now. He had plenty of other things to worry about.

“You’re overworking yourself,” Marin diagnosed, turning back to the game. “The Resplendent Earth Festival is coming up. Take it as a chance to relax.”

“I’ll be inside the dungeon during the festival. That will be the best time to gather materials.”

Marin’s tail swished in an unsteady rhythm. “It’s true that monsters have a much higher chance of forming mana cores while the Auspicious Lord is nearby but…”

Jayce blinked, as he hadn’t heard anything about that. He had only wanted to borrow some luck to find the materials that Yara wanted in that high-order area. During Jayce’s last trip into the Frozen Expanse, bad luck had forced him to flee after he ran into a powerful golem monster. Jayce felt that he wasn’t strong enough to wander deeper into the dungeon just yet and so he’d opted to spend all of his free time on refining. That effort was about to bear fruit, and once Jayce finished his bet with Leon, he would need to trade with Yara to make the artifact that he wanted. Jayce was markedly stronger after training in his dreams and the Resplendent Earth Festival would be his best chance to find what he needed.

Now he had one more reason to return to the Frozen Expanse.

“Listen to me properly,” Marin complained, seeing the calculating look in Jayce’s eyes. “There will be a lot of people in the dungeon during the festival and you won’t be the only one blessed with luck.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t go?”

Jayce understood he couldn’t become a god by playing it safe and relying on his innate potential. The Resplendent Earth Festival represented a chance to accelerate his growth and he wasn’t going to let it pass without a very compelling reason.

Folding her arms, Marin released a short sigh. “No, but I’m worried, so I’ll come with you.”

Jayce’s eyes widened as he looked at her. At this point, they had both forgotten their game. “Is that alright?”

“I’m not that close to level 40. One trip won’t hurt.”

“Thank—”

“You don’t need to thank me. I’m just upholding my end of our de—.”

“Thank you.”

Marin pursed her lips, but she didn’t speak any further. Instead, she began crushing his times even more ruthlessly than before.

‘Dammit. I don’t want to dream about this game again,’ Jayce complained inwardly. Despite his grumbling, he continued to tap the screen at his own pace. He didn’t have any hope of beating Marin at the moment, but his speed was steadily improving.

---

The next day, Jayce stepped into old Verne’s tassel-covered shop. He passed through a wide curtained opening and entered his teacher’s forging room. A gust of heat paired with loud metallic clanging assaulted him the moment he stepped inside. Verne was looming over his cylindrical forge, pounding a piece of red-hot metal with a long hammer. The old weaver didn’t stop to glance at Jayce, and with his level of concentration, Jayce wasn’t sure if he even noticed the intrusion.

The racks of materials in the room’s periphery were emptier than usual, revealing more of the maroon brick walls. As the Resplendent Earth Festival drew closer, more villagers were ordering artifacts to protect themselves.

Activating Keen Eyes, Jayce stood off to one side and patiently watched Verne work. Verne was as knowledgeable as he was meticulous, and Jayce felt a deep respect for the weaver’s skills. He still found it hard to understand how Verne could put so much effort into his work while looking down on his profession.

Verne eventually set his hammer aside and gestured at the forging table. The rings on the table’s surface lit up and the fire was sucked deep into its center. After that, a dome rose from its edges to cover the artifact vessel. It wasn’t long before cool air began wafting from the formerly hot forge.

Leaving the forging table to quench the metal, Verne finally turned to greet Jayce. “Get ready to work. The value we represent has greatly increased because of this holiday.” Verne’s antennae suddenly twitched as he remembered something. “Oh, I was going to let you try refining your companion tool today. A slight waste during this busy time, but I already promised.”

During the past month, Jayce had surprised Verne again and again with his potential. Even so, Verne still didn’t believe that Jayce would succeed so quickly. Refining was the combination of three disciplines, each one deep enough to be treated as its own field of study. Reaching a basic level of competence in all three was easier said than done.

The pair quickly cleaned up the workspace and brought out the refining materials. There were only three. One was a mana core that Jayce had collected from the Frozen Expanse while the other two were materials that Verne had kindly donated. To Jayce’s chagrin, etiquette dictated that this ‘donation’ must be repaid with interest once Jayce finished his apprenticeship. Of these materials, only the mana core came straight out of a monster. Talismans—parts of dead monsters that contained their aspects—were easy to get, but they usually had to be processed before being used as materials. When used ‘raw’, their chaotic mix of aspects practically guaranteed a shoddy product. Up until now, this hadn’t been a problem for Jayce since he was guaranteed shoddiness from the get-go.

Jayce turned towards the forging table, but he found himself hesitating. He had made outlines and plans but he was aware that those wouldn’t necessarily reflect reality. In the same vein, he knew that no matter how motivated he was or how hard he worked, effort wasn’t always enough to ensure success. There wasn’t much time before his bet with Leon ended, and it would be difficult to convince Verne to let him try again until after the festival ended and things calmed down.

Mobilizing his mental energy, Jayce took a look inside his storage artifact. Star Girdle had twenty different ‘stars’ that each held the volume of a keg. These containers could also be combined and have their environments customized to some degree. Inside Star Girdle, there were several stars that had joined together to hold a small mountain of artifacts. From weapons to defensive gear, simple charms and strange appliances, the result of Jayce’s continuous training with Soul-Guided Forging had taken the shape of this eclectic mountain. Seeing it calmed Jayce down somewhat, and he stepped forward.

Jayce took a cloudy dark grey ingot with a faint reddish glow and placed it on the forge. By now, he could recite its basic information by heart. The metal’s scientific name was vortium, but it was colloquially known as force iron. As a metal with aspects of force, it was commonly used in many home appliances. Its grade ranged from 0-2 depending on the metal’s quality, and Jayce was using the roughest grade 0 to keep things simple.

A refiner’s grade/rank was mostly decided by the grade of artifacts that they could refine. Higher grade artifacts required higher grade materials and working with stronger materials made the refining process more difficult. Right now, Jayce wasn’t even a proper grade 0 refiner, so he wasn’t going to push it.

When Jayce activated the forge, a tiny orange sun rose from the center of the table. Most of the heat was trapped inside the forge, but what little escaped was enough to noticeably raise the room’s temperature. It wasn’t long before the votium succumbed to this heat and became malleable. Carefully, Jayce controlled the forge to retract its flames and readied his hammer and tongs. With a steady posture, he swung his hammer down onto the red-hot metal. There was a loud clang and a depression appeared on the bar-shaped ingot.

Verne’s insectile feet tapped the ground in a fluctuating pattern as he watched Jayce work. Normally, he would shout out corrections even if it disturbed Jayce’s focus, but today he was silent. Jayce’s legs were locked in an extremely stable stance and his breathing was steady. Power rolled from the soles of his feet up through his torso and down his arms in a smooth fashion, and this impressive feat was reproduced with every strike of Jayce’s hammer. While Jayce wasn’t at a veteran level, Verne could hardly associate his movements with an amateur’s.

Once Jayce constructed some basic shapes, he used several other tools to finish the details. Multiple small artifact hammers, a portable sanding belt that looked like a defanged chainsaw, a special drill-like knife, all of these and more entered Jayce’s hands at some point during the forging process. He didn’t use his soulfire or perform material submission. Instead, he purely relied on the forging techniques that Verne had taught him to preserve the quality of this low-grade metal.

Over two hours later, Jayce had forged a few pairs of metal bands and several scale-like plates. He brought them back to a work bench and retrieved a small sheet of leather. This material was a flamboyant orange, but it gave off a faint prismatic glow under the right light.

Jayce idly wondered if Mize knew that there were monsters called glazed mud salamanders. He wondered if she would be upset to know that they were farmed in artificial dungeons for their tough and famously temperature-resistant hides. Higher grade versions of this material contained a mixture of elemental aspects, but the grade 0 leather that Jayce was working with only had aspects of protection.

Jayce’s teacher specialized in metal refining and his student wasn’t about to sew up a pristine set of gloves with only a month of training under his belt. Jayce sat down at the work bench and closed his eyes. Seconds later, violet soulfire blossomed on his palms. He pressed his hands down onto the leather and allowed a thin layer of fire to cover the material. This fire wasn’t very hot, but it still caused the leather to soften like putty. Jayce’s hands moved but his fingers only provided vague directions. The leather seemed to flow of its own accord, creeping over Jayce’s hand and congealing into the shape of a glove. This process took about half an hour while the second glove only took twenty-five minutes to form.

Over to the side, Verne had stopped tapping and was now still like a statue. Jayce learning his forging techniques was one thing, but he truly had no idea how his student became proficient with material submission so quickly. Controlling soulfire and performing material submission could be considered a fourth discipline that was only slightly shallower than shaping, purifying, and engraving. Verne hadn’t given Jayce too much instruction on how to use his soulfire and he hadn’t planned to until Jayce forged his companion tool. By then, Jayce would have a much easier time learning how to control the flame.

This was a miracle from Verne’s perspective, but Jayce knew that his skills were the result of countless Soul-Guided Forgings. Now that his control had already reached this level, Jayce was excited to see how well he could manage his soulfire once this companion tool was completed.

With both gloves finished, Jayce planned to attach the metal he forged and turn them into gauntlets. When he turned to reach for a tool at one end of the table, he caught a glimpse of a small dark green figure out of the corner of his eye. Jayce looked up and only saw an empty section of the room. Narrowing his eyes, he whipped around and found Vorona standing directly behind him.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed, jumping up from his chair.

“Ah, you found me,” her high-pitched, soulless voice drifted out. It was an extremely distinct tone, as both Verne and Vilar had plenty of emotion in their voices. “I felt there was some value in witnessing this event, but then I remembered that I had disturbed you before with my cheering. This time, I decided to watch while remaining outside your perception.”

“…Thanks for the consideration.”

“You are welcome.”