The One-Eyed Dragon worked with practiced efficiency, hefting a massive hammer to strike the Golden Silk Phoebe Wood in a rhythmic clang-clang-clang. The forge blazed, its heat so intense that Kael's forehead gleamed with sweat. Each hammer blow—delivered with the precision of a seventh-tier warrior's refined combat aura—sent sparks cascading across the anvil.
The blacksmith pumped the bellows, their wheezing gusts stoking the flames to white-hot ferocity. Tongs in hand, he lifted the half-formed staff blank from the forge. Steam hissed as the wood met air, its surface now faintly patterned with molten gold veins.
Clang!
The hammer struck again, the impact resonating like thunder. Kael's eyes widened. Every strike carried identical force, every angle calibrated to perfection. This wasn't mere blacksmithing—it was a martial art. The Book of Immortality had described such mastery: "The dance of fire and steel, where chaos submits to geometry."
No wonder Zorath had recommended this irascible craftsman.
The One-Eyed Dragon's movements flowed with monastic focus—no flourish, no waste. Under his hammer, the Phoebe Wood gradually tapered into a sleek baton, its length optimized for single-handed grip. Metallic clangs reverberated like temple bells, each strike compressing decades of expertise into the grain.
"One-Eyed Dragon," Kael ventured during a rare pause, "could Spiral Forging be applied here?"
The hammer froze mid-swing.
Spiral Forging—an ancient dwarven technique to refine magical materials by imprinting helical energy channels. The Book had devoted three chapters to its theoretical principles, though no living human smith was rumored to wield it.
"Hmph. Spiral Forging?" The blacksmith's milky eye sharpened, scrutinizing Kael as if seeing him anew. "Brat's got some knowledge. But that art vanished with the Dwarven Kingdoms. Even I…" He trailed off, thumb brushing a jagged scar across his collarbone—a wound suspiciously resembling claw marks.
With a derisive snort, he resumed hammering. "You want spirals? Then fetch me a dwarf's ghost to consult. Until then, watch and learn what human hands can achieve."
The baton began to pulse in time with the strikes, its golden veins now swirling like captured sunlight. Kael's respect for the blacksmith deepened—even incomplete, this staff already hummed with latent power.
Yet his mind raced. The Book's diagrams superimposed themselves over the glowing wood: counterclockwise torsion here, mana-vortex induction there… Could human techniques approximate dwarven secrets?
He opened his mouth—
CLANG!
The final hammer blow shook the workshop, its echoes fading into the metallic shrieks of cooling steel. The One-Eyed Dragon lifted the finished baton, its surface now etched with faint, spiraling glyphs.
"Not dwarven," he growled, "but it'll channel fire."
Kael stared. The glyphs weren't mere decoration—they formed a fractal helix, tightening toward the embedded flame crystal.
How—?
"Payment's due at dawn." The blacksmith shoved the baton into a quenching trough, his smirk hidden by billowing steam. "And kid? Next time, bring better booze for storytime."
In his view, it was genuinely surprising that a mage would know about something as profound as Spiral Forging.
His remark caught Kael off guard.
The Book of Immortality had documented Spiral Forging, but Kael never expected it to be a dwarven smithing technique—one that was nearly lost to time.
"I know Spiral Forging," Kael said after a moment's hesitation. They were forging his staff, after all, and the better its craftsmanship, the greater its utility to him.
"You know Spiral Forging?" The one-eyed dwarf's hammer jerked to a halt mid-swing. His lone eye blazed with sudden intensity as he fixed Kael with a piercing stare.
His entire demeanor shifted—gone was the lazy, middle-aged man; now he radiated an entirely different aura of pressure.
"A master… at least at the level of an Oathbreaker!" Kael's heart tightened as he assessed the dwarf, but he nodded nonetheless.
"Don't mock me. A frail mage, skilled in smithing? Let alone advanced techniques like Spiral Forging?" The dwarf snorted, skepticism plastered across his face.
Kael frowned. He stepped forward and picked up the hammer.
The one-eyed dwarf didn't stop him, stepping aside with a shrug. If the brat ruins his own staff, that's his problem.
Gripping the massive hammer that felt as heavy as a thousand pounds, Kael focused, recalling the methods described in The Book of Immortality. His gaze sharpened.
Boom!
Though Kael's body had been tempered by Frost Essence, his strength only matched that of a third-tier warrior. Swinging the hammer strained him slightly, but executing the motions of Spiral Forging remained feasible.
With one hand on the hammer and the other steadying the rudimentary Golden Silk Sandalwood shaft, he struck the wood fiercely. His blows fell in rapid succession, each swing carrying a peculiar, rhythmic cadence. The hammer whistled through the air before colliding with the embryonic staff—the impact erupted in a thunderous roar, like a clap of lightning.
The one-eyed dwarf jerked his head up as if witnessing something unimaginable.
"How…?" To the untrained eye, it might seem like mere hammering—but a true master could discern the skill in the resonant clangs of Kael's strikes.
The dwarf was stunned. Since when do mages master smithing?
His lone eye locked onto Kael's every movement, scrutinizing even the subtlest details.
As the hammer fell repeatedly, the dwarf noticed something astonishing: Kael maintained a perfect angle between the hammer's arc and the forge's anvil, with near-zero deviation. Each strike landed with uniform force, as if calculated by a machine—not a single error marred the relentless rhythm.
The dwarf knew he could achieve such precision, but only through decades of experience and his formidable battle aura. Yet here was a mage, barely twenty years old, pulling it off…
True, Kael's strikes were slower due to his limited strength—a third-tier warrior's power couldn't match a seasoned dwarf's—but the essence of the technique was unmistakably authentic.
After sustained hammering, mysterious spiral patterns began surfacing on the Golden Silk Sandalwood shaft—intricate, ancient, and breathtakingly precise.
"It's… truly Spiral Forging!" The dwarf's voice cracked, nearly choking on disbelief.
The legendary technique, thought lost, was unfolding before him. Those spiral patterns were its hallmark, capable of refining materials to unparalleled purity.
His gaze burned with fervor as he stared at Kael.
Kael struck another dozen blows before exhaustion forced him to drop the hammer. Sweat dripped from his brow—smithing was grueling work. Though The Book of Immortality granted him mastery, his physical limits hindered completing the piece.
"Boy," the dwarf rasped, hands clasped eagerly, "teach me Spiral Forging, and I'll forge this staff for you—free of charge."
Kael glanced at him, lips quirking into a half-smirk.
The one-eyed dwarf gave an awkward chuckle, aware his request was unreasonable. Charging 50,000 gold coins for a staff was trivial compared to the incalculable value of Spiral Forging.
"How about I embed a Mana Crystal into the staff's tip?" he blurted out when Kael remained silent. The dwarf's heart clawed with desperation—he needed that technique.
Mana Crystals enhanced a spellcaster's magical reserves, but Kael's innate mana was already monstrous. With ample potions to replenish it, he shook his head dismissively.
Watching Kael refuse so casually, the dwarf's agitation spiked. To any master smith, Spiral Forging was a holy grail—he couldn't let it slip away.
"An Equilibrium Gem!" he rasped eagerly, upping the offer.
Equilibrium Gems stabilized magical balance, crucial when aborting high-tier spells or avoiding backlash from disrupted incantations. The rarer the gem, the more vital for advanced mages channeling colossal mana.
From his spatial ring, the dwarf produced a fist-sized amber crystal—the gem's worth easily surpassed hundreds of thousands of gold coins, dwarfing even Grade 9 Magic Crystal in value.
Kael's eyes gleamed. The gem was useful—not just for him, but any mage.
As for Spiral Forging? The technique mattered little to Kael. Mastery meant nothing without the strength to wield it. Besides, the dwarf was a trusted ally of Zorath the Silent, whose interests now tightly aligned with his own.
"Agreed." Kael nodded.
"Deal!" The dwarf's grin split his face as he eagerly pressed Kael for the secrets of Spiral Forging.