Thomas looked over the notifications he received after completing the Gravity Hammer and wasn't sure how he felt about the upgrade to his title. If he understood it correctly he'd no longer be getting experience bonuses for creating items that had a rarity of Magical or lower. On the flip side, he'd be getting double the previous bonus experience for creating higher quality stuff. It felt like the title was meant to push him to get better and create higher rarity items instead of languishing at lower rarities. He dismissed it all and instead focused on his creation. He gripped the handle and lifted the hammer up to inspect it.

Weapon Type: Gravity Hammer Rarity: Uncommon Quality: Excellent Description: A product of either a genius or an unstable mind. The gravity hammer uses a complex enchantment to vary its weight at any given time based on the amount of mana injected into it to fuel the multiple enchantment stages. Each stage of the enchantment will double the weight of the gravity hammer.

Current Weight: 19.8 Kilograms

Thomas looked over the description and grinned like a madman. The enchantment he designed was pretty simple in principle. Each one of the twenty-five nodes carved into the top of the hammer had just one simple function. Double the weight of the hammer. The Gravity Hammer really was the product of a madman. The exponential increase in the weight of the hammer by doubling its weight twenty-five times was just ridiculous. In all honesty, he was pretty sure the hammer would just destroy itself if he actually tried to use all twenty-five nodes in the enchantment. He doubted that even Origin Steel could handle those stresses.

Thomas bounced the hammer in his hand and got a feel for the weight of it. Nearly twenty kilograms of weight was nothing to scoff at and could do some serious damage. He carried the hammer to the backyard of the smithy to check the enchantment out. He didn't want to risk destroying Rockbeard's floor if the hammer got too heavy and he dropped it. Once he was out in the yard he lifted the hammer so he could observe it while he slowly trickled his mana into the enchantment.

He was very careful and deliberate with his mana. He didn't want to risk dumping too much mana into the hammer and dropping it on the ground when it weighted too much. Slowly the filigree engravings on the handle began to glow silver as his mana started to course through them. The silver light wrapped around the black ironwood handle, joined with the hammer, and lit up the ground edges and the two faces. He carefully watched the glow inch into the first complex node on top of the hammer. Immediately the weight of the hammer doubled from 19.8 kilograms to 39.6 kilograms. The description of the gravity hammer confirmed the increase in weight.

Under forty kilograms was still easy to hold given his current Power attribute so he fed enough mana into the hammer to light up the second node. The hammer's weight doubled again, increasing to 79.2 kilograms. The third node upped the weight to 158.4 kilograms, the fourth node hit 316.8 kilograms, and so on. Thomas managed to light up to the ninth node before he started to struggle with holding it in his hand. If he lit the tenth node up he knew he would drop the hammer immediately. This, inadvertently, let him know that with his current Power attribute he could lift at least ten thousand kilograms of weight.

Given the weight of the hammer, it would be impossible for him to swing it with the current amount of mana flowing through it. He dropped his mana output and checked his reserves. Thanks to using the pure mana crystals the efficiency of the enchantment was excellent so just testing the hammer out had only cost him about a quarter of his total mana. He figured that with the intended use, bursts of mana instead of a constant stream, the mana cost would drop. He would need to practice to control how much he put into the hammer, though. If he wasn't careful the hammer would go from less than twenty kilograms to over six hundred million kilograms in an instant. That much weight was just plain scary and could deal some serious damage to just about anything, especially the arm swinging it.

The gravity hammer was not a user-friendly weapon and extremely dangerous to use. It did, however, prove another of his theories about enchanting. Enchantments could function in stages and didn't have to be all or nothing. He stored the hammer inside of his inventory and returned to the smithy where he proceeded to collect all of his materials. Rockbeard glanced over at Thomas. There was still an hour or two before the usual quitting time for the blacksmiths so he called out, "Ya done for the day kid?"

Thomas turned to look at Rockbeard and nodded, "Yeah. I need to prep some stuff before I get started with what I want to make starting tomorrow." He moved closer to Rockbeard and whispered, "It's stuff you definitely don't want to see or know about."

Rockbeard groaned and went back to work without looking at Thomas again. Muttering to himself about 'getting too old' and 'kids trying to shock him to death'. Thomas just grinned and left the shop with Snowlily. They went to their inn and to their room where Thomas could have some privacy. He had one last thing he wanted to test and couldn't risk doing it in Rockbeard's smithy.

Once he was in his room, he sat on the bed and pulled out a couple of already purified mana crystals. Mana crystals could be used as mana batteries for enchantments. The size and purity of the mana crystal determined how much mana they could contain. Most of his mana crystals were small and even purified, they couldn't hold much mana. But what if...

He selected two of the mana crystals and held them together while he activated his Transmutation ability. His hands glowed and covered the two crystals as he pushed them together. His Transmutation merged the two smaller mana crystals together into one larger crystal. He looked it over and couldn't see any flaws with it, even after using his 'All Seeing Eyes' to the best of his current ability. However, the moment he tried to put mana inside of it the crystal cracked in half and fell apart.

He studied the broken pieces of the mana crystal and assumed they'd broken along the area where they had been fused together. Still experimenting, he took one of the broken crystal halves and fed a little mana into it. The crystal accepted the mana and didn't break further, so it was still good. Though, thinking about it, even when shattered into powder the mana crystals could still conduct mana. Next, he took out his mortar and pestle to grind the two mana crystals into powder. He made sure the powder was as fine as he could get it.

Now that they were powder he tried to once again fuse them together with his Transmutation. Turning the sand-like fragments into a single solid clump. It took a bit of time and when he was done the resulting crystal was milky white and misshapen. It didn't look much like a mana crystal at all. He carefully fed some of his mana into the fused conglomeration of mana crystal shards. Surprisingly, the remade crystal easily accepted and stored the mana. It was ugly but functional.

Since it worked, he used his Transmutation once again and reshaped the milky-white crystal into a perfect cube. Once again he attempted to feed mana into it and the crystal still accepted the mana easily. He smiled and set the crystal down. It didn't work quite as he expected but he could now fuse multiple smaller crystals to form bigger ones! It was actually a little frustrating that he could make such valuable and desirable items but simply couldn't risk selling them. He was completely certain that if governments found out what he was capable of they would do everything in their power to get their hands on him. Potential profit didn't outweigh potential harassment.

Now that he knew how to combine the smaller mana crystals into larger ones he spent an hour purifying orc mana crystals. When the hour was up he made his way down to the dining room with Snowlily to enjoy their dinner together. With her glittering new collar, Snowlily looked rather regal as she calmly dipped her head down to pick up some food and slowly chewed on it before swallowing. Thomas couldn't help but grin at just how much of a 'princess' she was being. He found it extremely adorable. Once she finished her prim and proper meal, they went back to their room.

Inside the room, Thomas went through the process of purifying mana crystals, with the window open, grinding those mana crystals into powder, and combining the powder into much larger cubes. He'd been carrying around goblin and kobold mana crystals for so long and now was finally putting them to use. They were tiny and easy to purify and grind to dust. He combined at least a dozen of each together to form one much larger and far more powerful mana crystal. Within a few hours, he had combined several hundred mana crystals from the leftovers of his dungeon expeditions into a couple of dozen mana cubes that glittered on the writing desk in his room.

He had no idea what the value of the mana cubes he had created would be but judging by Rockbeard's reactions so far, he could probably just buy a kingdom with what he had on hand. He enjoyed the view of the priceless treasures for a while then stored them and crawled into his bed to get some sleep. Tomorrow he had something important to work on and these mana cubes of his just became an important piece.

The following morning, after breakfast, Thomas and Snowlily returned to Rockbeard's shop. Thomas located the dwarf and the three of them entered his study for some privacy. Thomas sat across from Rockbeard, "I need you to take a look at something for me."

He set the smallest mana cube he'd made on the table between their chairs and slid it closer to Rockbeard. Rockbeard picked the mana cube up and slowly examined it. He looked confused at what he was seeing and turned to Thomas, "What the hell is a 'Mana Crystal Amalgamation'?"

Thomas sighed, "I'm so jealous that you can identify things like that." He leaned back in his chair, "Are you sure you want to know what it is? I wouldn't want to make your mind explode."

Rockbeard suspiciously eyed the mana cube in his hand as if he expected the object would actually attempt to kill him. Thomas laughed, "I took several mana crystals from different dungeon monsters. I purified them, ground them up, then fused them all together to create that."

Rockbeard turned pale and immediately passed the object back to Thomas, "Kid are you crazy?!"

Thomas just nodded. Rockbeard sighed and slowly shook his head, "That... thing shouldn't even exist. It shouldn't be possible." He took a deep breath before he could continue, "Does it work?"

After Thomas nodded an affirmative, Rockbeard let out a long groan and sank as deep into his leather chair as he could, "I think my brain is exploding."

"Do you want it?"

Rockbeard froze like a statue and stared at Thomas like a deer caught in headlights. His eyes widened and his jaw hung loose while gears furiously turned in his head, "Hell yes! Hell no! I don't know! That... that... thing is just..."

"Dangerous?"

Rockbeard nodded enthusiastically, "Damned dangerous kid! It's even more dangerous than your purified mana crystals. If I'm not wrong you can make them pretty much any size you want right? As long as you got enough mana crystals right? And all completely pure right?"

In response, Thomas set the largest mana cube he'd created. It was nearly twice the size of the first one. Rockbeard went pale as a ghost. He hissed desperately, "Put that away! NOW!"

Rockbeard crossed his arms over his chest to hug himself as he rocked back and forth in his seat, "Kid. You're dangerous to know. If you thought people would hunt you down just for purifying mana crystals then they would go to war just for the possibility of getting their hands on even the smallest of those cubes you made. The whole world would go to war over it. Do you even have the first clue what something like that could be used for?!"

Thomas stored both of the mana cubes as he listened to Rockbeard. He shook his head so Rockbeard continued, "War machines. Big behemoths of mechanical and magical slaughter that could easily claim the lives of thousands. Their biggest drawback is that they require large high purity mana crystals to run. The mana crystals are not only rare but the behemoth machines end up destroying them before too long. With someone like you who could provide an infinite supply of large high-quality crystals... well I'm sure you get the point."

Thomas nodded in understanding. Long story short, he basically had the key to the equivalent of 'super weapons' within AoG. This was definitely capable of causing more trouble for him than he expected. The two of them sat in silence for a bit while Rockbeard calmed down from his shock. Once some color returned to his face he looked Thomas square in the eyes, "Kid. I like you but I can't risk you sticking around here too long. If one of the guys downstairs notices what you have all hell will break loose."

Thomas sighed, but nodded in understanding. Rockbeard was a good man and he didn't want to bring trouble into his life, "I just need two to three days to make two items. After that, I'll continue my journey."

Rockbeard nodded and they silently went down to the smithy where they could do their work.