With that said, Gravis immediately got to work. Surprisingly, even Ferris seemed to have become inspired by Gravis' words, and he also started looking at different stuff in the area.
Gravis' first stop was the mountain range. He already had quite the knowledge about metal, but this mountain range had more than simple metal. Especially these crystals on the mountain range looked different from everything Gravis had seen.
Gravis went to one of the crystals and took one into his hands. After that, he simply stared at it.
Gravis had a lot of experience regarding pure metal, and he had also learned a lot about different kinds of alloys. Sadly, Gravis wasn't able to manipulate alloys. He knew how he could create them, but his understanding regarding their Composition was lacking.
There were a lot of alloys that were harder than the pure kinds of metal, but without being able to compress them while forging, these alloys would be even weaker than his current equipment.
Out of interest, Gravis used some of his lightning on the crystal. He expected the crystal to melt, but, surprisingly, it simply broke apart and started smoking. After some minutes, instead of melting, nearly the whole crystal transformed into a kind of smoke.
'Interesting,' Gravis thought as he scratched his chin. 'These crystals feel like metal, but when I use my lightning on them, instead of melting, they act more like living matter and burn away.'
'Yet,' Gravis thought as he saw the black ash remaining in his arms, 'not all of the crystal burns away. Some parts of it remain in my hand. If the crystal were made of only one material, all of it would have vanished. This means that this crystal is not a pure material, but a complex material, like alloys.'
Gravis grabbed some more crystals and burned these too. After he was done with that, he took the ash he had created and tried to manipulate that with his lightning.
Gravis used more and more lightning until, finally, even the ash started to vanish into smoke.
Then, he grabbed more crystals and created another usable pile of ash. After that, he used some metal he found in the mountains and combined it with the ash.
It took several hours and a lot of crystals until Gravis managed to find the right temperature and correct manipulation to make the ash fuse with the metal.
Clank! Clank!
Gravis flicked the new sheet of alloy some times to test its hardness.
Crack!
A small crack appeared as Gravis used more strength. 'The hardness of the alloy is about the same as the pure metal I have used, but if I'm right, something else should be different.'
BZZZ!
Gravis used a lot of lightning until the alloy started to melt again. 'Sure enough, it can withstand more heat now. So, if I'm correct, this ash should be Pure Fire Ash. Then, if this is Pure Fire Ash, and I have just used Mountain's Secret Metal, this alloy must be Mountain's Fire Alloy.'
Gravis had learned everything about metals and alloys, but nearly all alloys needed some materials that were not metal. So, because of that, Gravis knew the names of the non-metal materials he needed but didn't know their properties. Due to that, he couldn't search for the non-metal materials. He had to discover them by himself.
'I know how the Energy creates Hard Pure materials, so I should be able to extrapolate the workings of this Medium Pure material by using the Energy make-up of the Hard Pure materials as reference,' Gravis thought.
Gravis thought about the make-up of Hard Pure materials, but this Pure Fire Ash acted way differently from metals. Instead of melting and becoming liquid, this ash directly became a gas. 'I wonder how that works,' Gravis thought.
Gravis grabbed another crystal, but this one just melted down, which surprised him quite a bit. 'Interesting,' Gravis thought as he scratched his chin in thought. 'This crystal looked the same as the other one, but it is obviously very different.'
'Additionally, this crystal doesn't fit any of the Hard-Pure materials I know about. This means that it is not a Hard-Pure material. Yet, the crystal is most definitely hard. This makes it impossible for this crystal to be a Medium Pure or Soft Pure material. So, it can only be a Hard Complex material.'
'Yet, if it's a Hard Complex material, it shouldn't act like one single material when put under a lot of stress or heat. The whole thing liquified evenly and at the same time, like it was only one material.'
As Gravis looked at the molten crystal, he also turned his head to look at the crystal-filled mountain range.
Then, he sighed. 'I might have bitten off more than I can chew,' Gravis thought.
'Soft Pure, Medium Pure, Hard Pure, Soft Complex, Medium Complex, Hard Complex,' Gravis thought. 'These are already six different Laws. Yet, I can't know which materials correspond to which Law without experimenting on them first.'
'This means I can either try to find the corresponding materials for one of the Laws and only look at them, or try to comprehend five additional Laws at once since I've already understood the Hard Pure Law.'
'This is way harder than I had anticipated,' Gravis thought with a sigh. 'Additionally, I don't know how the Laws combine. It could be that Soft Pure, Medium Pure, and Hard Pure combine into Pure, but it could also be that Soft Pure and Soft Complex combine into Soft.'
'So, there could be two or three level two Laws in this Law Comprehension Area. Either we have the Pure and Complex Law, or we have the Soft, Medium, and Hard Law.'
Gravis furrowed his brows as he tried to think about a way to find out which Laws he should try to comprehend first. 'Father has told me the full name of one of the Laws, which is the Hard Pure Law. The full name of it was the Middle-Tier Hard Pure Material Composition Law.'
'Every word further specifies the Law I know. So, I should try to remove some words. I, obviously, can't even attempt to remove the Middle-Tier part. Material refers to dead things, and to remove Material, I need to comprehend the Composition of living matter, which means that I need to make some headway in the Life Laws.'
'Composition is the last word and shows the major category of the Law. I don't even need to think about attempting to remove that. So, this only leaves the Hard and Pure words.'
'If we ignore the Hard and Pure parts, we would be left with Middle-Tier Material Composition Law. This should be a level three Law. This encompasses the knowledge of every dead material in all the middle worlds. Now, in order to understand that, I first need to find out what counts as a material.'
Gravis looked into the surroundings. 'Metals count as Hard-Pure. Coal, sand, and different kinds of stone should be Medium, but I don't know which ones are Pure and which ones are Complex. Earth is probably a Soft material, but that can't be the only thing. So, what else is dead?'
'I should be able to find out what is dead by simply looking at everything and checking if it has a will,' Gravis thought.
Whooom!
Gravis stretched out his Spirit Sense and only used a minuscule amount of his Will-Aura to check everything. Then, he started looking at everything.
Yet, the more he looked, the more nervous he got. 'Fuck,' he thought.
What was dead?
Earth was kind of dead, if one ignored the small living beings. Mountains were dead. Sand was dead. Crystals were dead. Yet, what else was dead?
Water was dead.
Air was dead.
Fire was kind of dead but also kind of alive. Gravis wasn't even sure if that counted as dead or alive.
Did light count? Did darkness count?
Did light and dark also have a Composition?
Lava was dead.
Clouds were dead.
Different kinds of gasses and liquids were dead.
Was Space dead? Was Time dead? Did Space and Time also have a Composition? Did Gravity have a Composition?
Scales and bones could be used as materials for weapons. Did that mean that some living matter also counted as a form of material?
What about dead wood? It counted as living matter when it was alive, but when it died, would it count as a dead material? Houses could be built with wood, and wood would most definitely be considered a material in that regard.
What about wind?
What about oil?
Salt?
Gravis no longer concentrated on anything and simply stared into space.
"Why is so much stuff dead!?"
