Caeden felt like punching his uncle. He had refused to make any comments until Caeden’s plow head was done rendering. Which took several hours. It was not a fast process, as with everything involving Earth ether. Finally, Caeden cracked the barrel and peeked in to see the inky black he was expecting.

When placed in the barrel of infused water, the Earth and Plant ether would leak out of the plow head, while the Water ether would leak in. This solved multiple problems. The Earth ether would make the iron inflexible and brittle. Over time, it would have cracked and shattered.

Water ether eliminated both of these problems. It formed a harmony between the normally reactive Earth and plant ether, softening one while stabilizing the other. It was a crucial final step toward making a balanced and long-lived infused plow head. It also took essentially no effort. The three ethers would naturally form an equilibrium if given enough time.

That only left the byproduct behind. When the ethers had iron as a medium, they formed a flexible but durable metal that would fertilize any soil it plowed. But when those three met in a liquid, the Earth, Plant, and Water ether created Oil ether instead.

This ether, essentially a magical explosive if lit in a confined space like the refining barrel, was what had leveled Caeden’s old forge. Normally, Caeden would use a few other ethers to refine it into a stable form. He had no use for Oil ether. But on campus, he had access to infused containers for hazardous materials. A wildly expensive luxury on the continents. Here on the islands, Oil ether was a valuable material and a component in the infinite refining cycles of several ether generator models.

Carefully, Caeden extracted his creation before using Sharp to remove the ether byproduct, placing and sealing it in an appropriate container. No more explosions for him. Which was why Erik was permanently banned from the forge. Too much risk.

Now that he was finished, Caeden placed his finished product back on the anvil, a quick run of Sharp making hours of sharpening pass in an instant. Obviously, the infused metal resisted his attempt, but with no shrouded to reinforce it, the edge sharpened under his domain’s effect.

Unc started circling the piece, hand running through his beard as he made noises of either happiness or displeasure at random. Caeden knew his uncle was messing with him. He’d known everything about the plow head before it went in the barrel.

His uncle could make a plow head with less ether that had a higher Crystal integrity in less time, all without the assistance of shrouds. His eye for the forge was unparalleled among anyone Caeden had met, including the shrouded who worked in the Academy’s forges that had been honing their craft for hundreds of years. He was a prodigy, a genius. All of this posturing was just to mess with him.

“Are you done? I think you’ve had enough fun with me.” Unable to just sit back and watch anymore, Caeden called him out.

Instead of responding to the question, Unc kept up a serious facade. “Create a sword with the effect of producing chunks of molten steel when swung. It can be no longer than three feet and no heavier than ten pounds.”

So Caeden went to work. And it didn’t stop there. Again and again, his uncle challenged him to make weapons and armor. He never told Caeden what resonance or ether to use, what materials he was limited to. All he set was what the item should be able to do. After the fifth item, over ten hours later, Caeden recognized what was going on. If Caeden did the correct sequence of resonance and ether, Unc’s challenges were slowly walking him through every single hand in the Hammer of One Hundred Hands. Every resonance technique it contained.

After the fifteenth challenge, when over a day had passed, Caeden finished his piece, but Unc didn’t declare another challenge. Instead, he looked at Caeden long and hard.

A giant, shit-eating grin covered Unc’s face, barely obscured by his beard. Walking over, he swept Caeden up in a bear hug, crushing his nephew against his chest.

“Caeden, my nephew. I’m so proud of you. You’ve grown so much. More than I’d hoped.” Unc patted him on the back, thumping him with the force of a life-long ethersmith. Caeden enhanced himself just a bit after his uncle knocked the breath out of him with the first hit. After a moment, he responded in kind. Unc wasn’t normally one for physical affection, so the almost fatherly embrace was nice, if a bit awkward.

“Thanks, Unc. I never slacked off when I had the chance to forge. Despite everything, this is still what I want.” Caeden spoke those words sincerely. He still wanted to be a professional ethersmith. Nothing else challenged or excited him in the same way. So despite his other skills, this was his chosen profession, and that had not changed.

“I can see. Though you’re coming off a long absence, and it still shows. But your fundamentals with all the hands have improved. It’s time.” Unc crossed the forge, taking up his own hammer. “I should show you the final techniques of our family’s smithing. These are the gate to true mastery, what you’ve never seen before.”

Caeden was stunned and touched. He would have never believed his uncle was going to tell him this when they started. He had thought this was a checkup, his uncle taking a look at his skills after three years. Not a test to determine if he was worthy to move from Master to Grandmaster.

“Make no mistake. You’ll spend years mastering the final techniques. But I think you’re ready to begin.” Unc swung his arms, limbering up as he collected his own set of items from the forge’s storage. “There are only two techniques to complete the Hammer of One Hundred Hands. One for opening and one for closing. Together, they amplify the resonance of every other hand, boosting the Crystal Integrity of any piece. They are not taught until every other hand is mastered so as not to act as a crutch. Only when every hand is at its peak can one truly claim mastery over the Hundred Hands.”

Unc had not stopped working while he explained. The hearth was adjusted, ether added. “I’ll be making a simple piece so you understand the impact these hands hold. First, the Zero Hand.”

For a moment, Unc paused, hammer hovering over the small iron ingot he had selected.

His muscles bulged, flexing with decades of trained and built power.

The hammer screamed through the air, ripping down only to feather the metal with ghostly taps, barely contacting the surface. The absolute control Unc held over his hammer to strike with such speed and ferocity while hardly touching the metal was nigh on superhuman. Caeden doubted he could replicate the feat using Physical Enhancement. It was a testament to Unc’s dedication to his craft. Skill that surpassed even the raw power of a shroud.

Finally, the blows stopped as fast as they started, and Unc let out a heavy breath. Steam rose from his muscles; such was the speed and force he’d displayed. “The Zero Hand-” He paused to take a breath. “Is immensely straining. I’m sure you will wield it more freely than me, with your shrouds to help you.”

After recovering himself, Unc breezed through the heating and normal resonance that Caeden was familiar with. Nothing had changed, nor did the small dagger with a fire infusion seem any different from the hundreds he’d seen before. The dagger found its way to a barrel for the final refining to solidify the infusion.

It was here that Unc deviated once more. Before the barrel refining had finished, he withdrew the dagger again. “Now, the Hundred and First Hand. This is the last technique I have to impart to you.”

As if in counterpoint to the Zero Hand, Unc spent no time preparing himself, instead immediately launching into a series of wide arcing swings, landing powerfully as they cruised across the dagger’s surface. The infused metal was not deformed, as it had long since cooled and hardened.

Instead, Caeden watched as the ether within the weapon shifted to each blow. Eventually, each arc carried a trailing stream of ether, dragged out of the dagger only to be hammered back in. The very air began to glow with reds, yellows, and oranges as the Fire ether charged the atmosphere of the forge. Trails of light followed Unc’s hammer.

With a final, sharp, downward blow, like the final string of a knot being pulled tight, all the ether in the air charged back into the dagger, causing it to shine brilliantly for a moment. Then he plunged the dagger back into the refining barrel.

Moments later, the refining was complete. Caeden used his aura to examine the dagger and found exactly what he had expected. The Crystal Integrity had more than tripled what he would have initially predicted. “Does the effectiveness of the opening and closing hands diminish the more ether is used?” Caeden guessed. If those techniques could triple the CI of such a simple infused weapon, he could only imagine how insane that would be when applied to something more potent. There had to be a limiting factor.

“No.” Unc shook his head. “In fact, they become more effective with more ether. It can only boost this dagger from around 100 CI to 300, but a 1,000 CI dagger could jump up to 5,000 or more. It’s exponential.”

“That…” Caeden could only shake his head.

“The Hammer of One Hundred Hands has been passed down and refined for longer than the Central Authority has existed. Each master has added their own advancements to the hands, small changes or large. That is how it has come so far. Though the opening and closing hands were the basis of the refining techniques, created by the styles founder.” Unc explained. “Though his name has been lost to the millennia, his legacy lives on in these transcendent techniques. The only major flaw in them is how difficult and taxing they are. Most men can only use the opening three times a day without hurting themselves. I can do it five times.” Unc puffed out his extremely muscular chest. Caeden believed him.

“Handing these techniques to you might well see them reach their peak.”

Caeden nodded. After all, so long as he had the reserves left to fuel Physical Enhancement, he would never become tired or sore. To a normal smith, the Zero Hand’s stamina cost would be a major flaw. After all, an ethersmith that can only make three pieces a day would find themselves hard-pressed to compete in the craft. Caeden could only imagine how difficult it must have been to learn normally. Only being able to attempt the technique three times a day before exhausting yourself limited the chances to train.

Unc seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “It took me five years to master the Hundred Hands enough to satisfy my father. It took me almost twenty to reach true mastery of the Zero hand. The Hundred and First Hand is much less taxing, but also more subtle and mutable. The Zero hand only varies according to the material it is used on. The Hundred and First Hand vary according to the material and the ether used, leading to exponentially more variants.”

That much was obvious. Caeden had recognized the challenges of the closing hand the first time he saw it. The blows interacted so deeply with the dagger’s ether, he couldn’t imagine the patterns being the same for an even slightly different ether composition. Both the opening and closing hands were fiendishly difficult, but for wholly different reasons.

And now, Caeden was going to learn them.

“Where do we get started?”