Andrew explained what happened to the others as they made their way back to camp, though he kept his suspicions about the nature of Jack and George's relationship to himself. Replicator. The ability itself was incredible, and it explained a few things about the other camp that had been bothering Andrew. The axes they borrowed before were both modern, and almost identical to one another. The sheer amount of firearms they had in their camp as well. They must have had a handful to start with, and the rest were copies made by Jack. They would have essentially unlimited ammunition so long as they had Jack with them. Andrew wasn't really sure why there were still people in the camp that went unarmed frankly. It also meant that George had two ways of keeping the people of his camp in line, faith yes, but bullets too.

I'm not sure what I think about my items blocking out his replication skill though. It means that empowered items will retain their value in the other camp for a while, but the ability to copy something like my chisel or spear? That would be incredibly valuable for everyone's survival. I'll have to ask him to make me a new pair of boots, the ones I've got are nearly worn out by now. Will the replicated versions be just as worn out? Who knows what I'd have to trade for that favor though, I'm not really sure where I stand with George after all that.

They arrived back in camp and split off, Rowan and Tyler heading back to the grove. They had a bit of a competition going as to who could cover more trees in a day, as Andrew understood it. They had been at it for nearly a week now, the branches they carved on the first day would have enough affinity to be useful by now, though he planned on letting them cook for a while longer. Carter and Andrew split to go explain what had happened to Isaac, Shelby, Kalan and Arges, just so that all the leadership was generally in the know. After that Andrew grabbed an empty box and followed after Rowan and Tyler, crossing the river, then taking a sharp right turn and walking out of their expanding grove of inscribed trees to a couple of personal projects of his own.

He was working on a new metal source. They had two major problems to overcome with the hobgoblin attacks. Heavy weapons capable of dealing significant damage to the brutes, and heavy armor capable of taking hits from brutes and mages. A metal source wouldn’t directly help with either of those problems, but it would allow him to be more reckless when experiementing with the metal they did have. It was also the most mana-stable material he had come across so far, barring the blue crystals he still kept in the wagon. They had one that was entirely drained, one that was about half full, and one that was still entirely full. Andrew would have to work on those at some point, but they were so unique he was terrified of destroying or permanently altering one. His first set of experiments was soon visible on the trees ahead. A pair of what he was calling 'kinetic' affinity branches. They were made from a combination of air and water accumulation and binding circles, and he wanted to let these ones cook a lot longer this time. The last one he made produced a tiny amount of affinity over the course of nearly two weeks, and it was extremely difficult to siphon out. He was still a bit worried about the destructive potential of what effectively seemed like force multiplication, but the loss of eight people in their defense against the hobgoblins hardened his resolve. He couldn't afford to be overly conscious of long term consequences right now. It had far too much potential to ignore.

He walked past those branches to the set of metal mana experiements before setting down his box. The first was an accumulation and binding circle carved right into the dirt and pumped full of mana. It had been powered up for about a day and a half at this point and the circle was already dim again. The dirt on the interior of the circle looked like it was plated over with silvery metal, and he had to use his unpowered chisel to dig into it. The silvery texture went about a half inch deep, and Andrew churned the silvery earth inside the circle up until it was loose, then piled it up into the box. It filled about a quarter of the box, and he threw a spare shirt over it to create a layer of separation. Then he headed over to a very similar experiment, a metal binding and accumulation circle filled with a variety of stones instead, which were speckled with little blotches of the same silvery material and sort of melted together in some places. He broke those up into single stones again and threw them in the box on top of the shirt, filing it another quarter. He moved to the third experiment which replaced stones with a pile of wood scraps and threw that in the box as well. Then the fourth and most interesting experiment, a metal binding and accumulation circle that was centered on a dense leafy bush. It maintained more of it's original browns and greens, though it's texture shifted to be a more metallically reflective and it's leaves were splotched with little patches of pure silver. It looked like it had contracted an exotic infection of some kind, which probably wasn't that far off honestly. He had to charge his chisel up in order to hack the bush up into small enough pieces to fit into the box. Then he scuffed out the unlit accumulation circles and picked up the box, carrying it back to his forge at camp. Even with his enhanced strength he had to take a break to set the box down for a moment. It was heavy.

Andrew started with the hacked up bush on top. The exposed broken wood of the branches was splotched through with little puddles of slivery material just like the leaves and he had to chop them into finer pieces with his chisel so that he could stuff them into the crucible. When he was finished he popped it into the forge and powered it up. Instantly thick black smoke started pouring out of the top, and he backed away to avoid breathing any of it in. He practiced his Mana Projection skill while the branches burned. He tried to practice it whenever he had a free moment over the last few days, and he was improving steadily. He could make a long handled lumberjack's axe in five seconds now, and it maintained it's shape for three or four strikes before shattering. Trying to create objects while moving still took him multiple minutes though, and that was what he was practicing now, walking in a slow circle around the forge while he made small knives, hammers, and single handed axes. After about ten minutes the black smoke coming out of the forge faded, though the runes were still charged and accumulating. Andrew tossed the crystaline dagger he had just finished into the dirt and walked over to check it out.

There was a thick layer of a matte black rocky material floating at the top of the crucible, and Andrew saw a new opportunity to practice. He concentrated, activating Mana Projection again to create a long handled ladle with little holes in the bottom, which he gingerly extended into the forge intending to skim the material off. As soon as the frosty crystalline mana dipped into the interior of the forge it began to shift to a glowing orange-red color. Andrew felt it warming up as it changed color, but the temperature shift was slow so he continued. The black rocky material on top filled most of the crucible, but was very brittle and he was able to easily break it up and scoop it out. He scooped until a small pool of silvery red molten material maybe an inch deep was all that was left inside the crucible. The ladle remained orange as he pulled it out, and when he set it down on the grass nearby it began to smoke, so he picked it up and tossed it into the river instead where it shattered and producing a little cloud of steam. He would have to see what that was about later. He grabbed his tongs and poured the little pool of material into one of their stone ingot molds, barely filling an eighth of the mold. It remained bright red and reflective silver, similar to a metal affinity infused ingot before the fire affinity was siphoned out, but in liquid form. He refilled the crucible with more metal bush and put it back into the forge, backing off as more black smoke poured out of it again.

The silvery metal inside the stone mold looked entirely unchanged when Andrew returned to check on it ten minutes later, as the forge stopped spitting out black smoke again. He picked it up with his tongs and turned it from side to side, It remained a thick liquid all the way through. He passed a hand over it and was surprised to find the air above was warm. Just warm, far from the blistering heat he would expect from molten metal. He dug the black material out of the crucible with another crystalized ladle, poured it into the same mold and refilled the crucible with more metal bush. He repeated this five more times until the ingot mold was nearly filled with the silver-red liquid, then he set it down in the dirt and carved a quick fire mana dispersal circle around it. He put a hundred points of mana into it and waited, watching. The silvery-red faded into more of a silvery-pinkorange as the metal slowly solidified. After about five minutes it looked to be entirely solid, so Andrew scuffed out the circle with a little pop of mana and flipped the mold over, tapping it into the dirt until a solid ingot of silvery-pink metal dropped out.

Well, that's definitely some kind of metal. The bush method is pretty time intensive, but these are promising results. I have no clue how this metal will perform, but it definitely has a strong metal affinity at the very least. I bet it would be more effective if I let the metal accumulation circle run longer. Hopefully the yield on these other materials will be higher.

[Mana Smelting lvl 6 -> 7]

[Mana projection lvl 6 -> 7]