"…and then the entire thing led to a cascading result in which we were forced to evacuate, but only temporarily!"

"Uh-huh, right," Rory muttered as the woman continued to jabber on. "Well, I'm glad you found much inspiration from it, but I've got places to be."

"Of course, Lord Founder, and thank you once more for your patronage!"

"Uh-huh, yep, totally." Rory muttered before finally escaping the clutches of the short woman, apparently the 'Acting Head' of the crafters in the 'undercity,' the name coined for the fake city within the Khan of Blue Lightning's territory.

The only reason he made his way to the undercity was to replenish his gem reserve. While he could have made everything from scratch, it was far easier to snatch up some gems that had yet to be properly worked on, like blank templates. While Ehkorrus proper had unworked gems in reserve, the highest quality ones were within the undercity.

Thus, Rory's current situation, where the short lady, Sasha, had talked his ear off for nearly fifteen minutes about how useful the gem he'd given her had been regarding their own understandings and yada, yada, yada, stuff that Rory had tuned out as eighty percent of the speech was just constantly reaffirming his perceived greatness.

While Rory could appreciate being talked up, there was a point where it became excessive.

Having finally made his escape, Rory quickly made his way toward a rather squat-looking building, which he'd been informed was temporary storage. Entering inside, a brief flash of his aura was enough to wrench open the otherwise locked doors, and Rory was met with what looked nearly identical to any ordinary warehouse from Earth. Boxes and crates of stuff were lined up everywhere, but ignoring them, Rory instead hastily walked to the very back, finding a section with simple signage with a single word.

Gems.

Cracking a crate open, Rory began to rummage through, inspecting the gems, a frown deepening until, at last, with a sigh, he closed the crate back up.

"Well, that was the opposite of fruitful. Fruitless?"

The gems were trash, to be frank. If he mapped out a barrier gem using one of them against a tier seven or, god forbid, a tier eight, it would be smashed apart in a single strike. They were gems suited for tiers three, four, and five, but anything higher would be pushing it.

Alright, time for plan B.

Rory had briefly considered that this would be the case, and thus wasn't entirely taken off guard. Instead, he turned around, making his way back to the teleportation temple and returning to Ehkorrus within minutes.

Going to need some stellar mass, rubedo, nigredo, some crystal dust probably… yeah, this shouldn't actually be too hard.

Starting with the crystal dust, Rory had to search out the central storage warehouse of Ehkorrus, far more extensive than what could be found in the undercity, but also filled with far more 'mundane' things such as regular food and other standard provisions. As large as it was, it took Rory nearly a full hour before he finally found what looked like a vase filled with clear crystal sand or dust.

Helping himself to a scoop, next was locating some stellar mass.

Oh, shoot, I promised I'd bring Astra something to munch on… Maybe I can avoid waking her up and slip in and out.

Nodding to himself about how clever a plan that was, Rory slipped out of the warehouse before slinking his way over to the forge factory.

Foundry? Foundry is the word that I'm looking for.

Entering, Rory kept his head down as he meandered, searching for only a few seconds before who he was looking for made themselves known, a booming voice hollering out across the foundry floor at some poor schmuck who had earned Gil's ire over… something.

Not that I care all that much.

Following the source of the noise, Rory found Gil, vein bulging and eye twitching.

"You alright there?" Rory asked, taking in the angered expression.

"Oh, Lord Rory,"

"Mr." Rory corrected.

"Aye, sorry, easy to slip up when that's how just 'bout 'eryone refers you, 'Lord Founder' this or 'Lord Founder' that."

"Right," Rory held back a sigh before shaking his head. "Question, do you have any stellar matter I could borrow… Alright, I won't be returning it, so it's not borrowing. I just don't want to rouse Astra."

"Aye, we have some. We aren't able to store a lot of stellar matter due to how difficult it is to maintain the conditions to keep it stable, but we got some."

"Great, and I can have it?"

"Of course, I figure you'll use it better than anything we could use it for; usually, we reserve stellar matter for the making of Night Copper."

"Hmmm," A new thought entered Rory's mind, one he quickly shelved lest he be distracted. "Have some Night Copper on hand when I come for the demonstration two days from now."

"You have something in mind?"

"Aye," Rory said, borrowing from the smaller man's vocabulary.

Following Gil, he was led to what looked like a miniature stellar forge, several circling orbitals around an ionized bubble filled with a few loops of stellar matter.

"We took some pages of inspiration from 'yer original forge. It ain't nearly the same thing, and it actually draws on some of the literal starpower of Astra's Star, so it ain't able to exist without an original stellar forge, and it can't make stellar matter of its own. Still, it can recreate some of the same levels of heat. It's how we keep excess stellar matter that we might want on hand without needing to bother Astra as she gets finicky about asking for some."

"Let me guess, she asks to eat a person,"

"Aye," Gil chuckled. "Being a gluttonous star, and technically a monster, it ain't a surprise, but she is persistent."

"One day," Rory said, waving it off as Gil chuckled, before his chuckle turned into a frown.

"'Yer jokin', right?"

Smiling knowingly at Gil, Rory kept quiet.

"Right?"

Patting the man on the shoulder, Rory reached into the fake stellar forge with his once metallic hand, which had, over the decades, fused into mostly normal flesh but retained some of the properties. Rory plucked several loops of stellar matter before sealing them in a red crystal orb and tossing the entire thing into his inventory.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

And that's basically everything.

"I appreciate it, Gil," Rory said, giving the shorter man a quick thump on his shoulder with his fist.

"Said it before, but you're the boss," Gil responded, choosing to ignore Rory's earlier purposely ominous comment. "May I ask one thing?"

"Shoot," Rory said, the 'project' he was about to take was hardly meant to be secret.

"What's the plan for it? Even for you, stellar matter can't be common."

"Hell no, it ain't," Rory snorted. "But to answer your question, simple. Something…. Grand."

"Why are 'ya looking off into the distance like that?"

"I'm not."

"Whatever you say, boss."

"Alright, so, a little bit of cheating might be necessary," Rory said to the captive audience, the traumatized monsters that had begun shaking the moment they'd seen him.

"While normally a regular forge or stellar forge or whatever would be more than enough, I'm not just aiming for basic alloying. Instead, I need a sort of heat source that I can control as if it were a part of myself. I'm not that good with fire magic, not yet, at least, so the plan is to go bloody."

In his basement dungeon, Rory had hastily constructed what looked like a kiln from the abundant earth elements all around, in a corner away from the containment of the scourge mites.

"Now, this probably isn't going to be very stable or sustainable, but I don't need either of those in the moment."

Bringing his hands together, arcs of electricity began to bounce between them, before Rory's face pinched in concentration. While regular lightning and even heavenly element pneuma were forms of 'electric' pneuma that Rory had grown rather practiced with, what he was doing now was something new.

Well, new-ish. In theory, he'd broken it down in his Mind Palace, but sometimes theory and reality diverged.

Regardless.

Still focusing, the lightning began to change, the crackling white and yellow flashes turning vaguely orange before darkening further, until at last angry red bolts crackled and arced between his hands.

"Tadah, easier than I expected," Rory said, grinning. "Blood lightning achieved…. No wait, Crimson Lightning… no, that sucks too… God damn, why does everything related to blood sound so edgy?"

Mentally groaning at how prepubescent it all sounded, like a thirteen-year-old boy trying to come up with a cool name, Rory shook it off after a moment.

Anyway, it's just a proof of concept for what comes next.

Rory had only started with lightning because it was his most practiced element of choice outside of his two affinities. Contrary to what many would assume, just mixing elements or aspects didn't necessarily make something more 'powerful' or useful. Take the heavenly element, for instance. Over the years of practicing, Rory had come to understand that the heavenly element was actually less powerful than regular lightning. Still, it made up for it by serving as a natural anathema to corruption or noxious-aligned elements and aspects. Against something that didn't have a natural affinity for either such forces, you'd be better off just straight up using regular lightning.

Hence, Rory hadn't bothered much with infusing his blood affinity into other forms of magic when he hadn't needed to.

Alright, technically, there were moments he could have, but half of the point of forcing himself not to was that it was a form of practice; adding his affinity to the mix would be like adding the bumper rails at a bowling alley.

Feeling confident after the fusion of his blood essence affinity with lightning, Rory switched up once more to another element, one he was far less practiced with.

Fire.

The reason why he was so unpracticed with fire was simple, really. Most of the monsters he'd fought over the last few decades had an innate fire-resistance, even when you wouldn't assume as much, as a result of being monsters found within a damn volcano, a point that was often easy to forget.

Thankfully, I'm not trying to pull off some big fuck off-sized magical attack right now.

Conjuring some fire, with only a bit more effort than the blood lightning had taken, soon Rory had a bloodred flame curling up around his fingertips.

Bingo.

Proof of concept achieved, Rory turned his attention back to the unfired kiln. Channeling Earth Soul for a single instant, a circle instantly appeared around the small kiln. Then, placing his hands just outside the circle, pneuma began to well up within like a gas leak. Waiting until it had saturated enough, the interior was lit up in an instant by a massive wall of blood-red flames.

Letting the flames peter out after several seconds, Rory examined his handiwork, the unbaked kiln of soft earth elements now baked into an odd-looking quasi-clay material.

"Bloodflame Kiln, acquired. Next step…."

Taking several items from his inventory, first, Rory placed the blood red crystal sphere containing the loops of stellar matter inside. Then, retrieving some rubedo and nigredo from his inventory as well, with a flex of Earth Soul and quite a bit of pneuma, they were reduced to fine dust.

You know, I could have just physically ground it down, but ehh, convenience.

Taking the dust, as well as the earlier retrieved crystal dust, Rory mixed the three powders, and as he did, Rory reached inward, feeling for the 'space' where skills felt like they were activated from. Technically, it wasn't necessary to 'activate' passive skills, but one could coax them along for extra effectiveness, though overdoing it could be quite tiring.

But not the concern for now.

The skill Rory was coaxing was Alchemical Transmutation. Usually, it was a skill that existed more as a badge of proof of what he had accomplished in the past. Still, it did technically make alchemical transmutation easier, like a guiding hand for his thoughts and intent.

Coaxing it and drawing on Earth Soul some more, Rory isolated elements from the nigredo and rubedo that he felt were unnecessary or counterproductive, 'burning' them up with a hint of effort. At the same time, the 'spaces' left behind in the conceptual tapestry were replaced by drawing from the crystal dust. In the end, it was like taking three separate quilts or blankets and reweaving them into a single tapestry.

Taking a moment to inspect the final product —an ashy-looking dust —Rory nodded to himself, approving. From there, he reached into the Blood Flame Kiln, unceremoniously dumping the powder into the blood crystal sphere, which he temporarily opened.

Alright, that's everything in place.

Taking some time to refill the bound circle with pneuma, it lit up with bloodflame once more, but rather than a massive pillar of flame, the blood-red flames were drawn entirely within the kiln, swirling unnaturally around the blood crystal sphere.

Which was because it was unnatural. Being that it was blood flame, an offshoot element of blood essence, it was far easier for Rory to control than an ordinary flame.

That, and there was one other reason. Blood and blood essence, by extension, were corruptive forces or change elements. It made the elemental aspect exceptionally useful for alchemy, albeit only if you specifically wanted to transmute something to be blood essence aligned, such as his early experiments in creating bloodwood trees from the old Sol's Glories that had once dominated the Ehkorrian jungle.

Fire, meanwhile, was a purifying force, much like lightning. If it weren't for his blood essence affinity, fusing both fire and blood elements would have been exceptionally difficult without straight-up canceling each other out. It was why he had started with lightning, an aspect that he was more versed in than fire.

Having confirmed he could fuse the two without much hassle, it opened the door to using blood flame as a general change agent rather than a corruptive agent; the purifying force of fire offsetting the corruptive force of blood essence.

Which was important for his goal. Just plunking nigredo, rubedo, stellar mass, and some crystal dust together in a forge would have likely resulted in a promethium variant or outright failure, as the materials refused to play nicely with so many ingredients.

All of that was to say, what Rory was undertaking wasn't purely forging; it was a split art between alchemy and metallurgy.

And soon, Gem Crafting.

Operating the flames for long enough that the materials subsumed one another, Rory finally ended it, and just in time, too, the hastily made blood flame kiln was crumbling moments after, as the forces at play were too much for a hastily made kiln.

Good enough.

Inspecting the final product, it was like molten glass, albeit with a metallic gleam and grey coloration.

Alright, just a bit of shaping and we're done.

For those without his skills of pneuma manipulation and his Earth Soul skill, what would have followed would have been an extensive process similar to glassblowing as the molten material was shaped into a gem of varying shapes and languages.

For Rory, between the threads of pneuma that appeared, latching on and pulling the molten material, and the material itself, which seemed to move of its own accord thanks to Earth Soul, it took less than a minute before Rory finished.

Sapping the heat from the end product took only marginally longer, as he kept it steady and gentle, lest he cause deformation during the forced cooling. Ten minutes later, Rory held his hand out, directly holding the item.

It looked like an egg-shaped Rubik's Cube, with segmented faces that could slide and twist. For now, the segmented plates were unadorned, plain of any carving or inscription, but none of that really mattered to Rory, at least not compared to the notification that suddenly popped up.

Successful creation of a Grand Craft

Item Crafted: Mechanical Modular Gem

Prerequisite Skills: Alchemy, Gem Crafting, Metallurgy

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