"Well, it is different. The academy is surrounded by a luscious forest, so the air is bound to be much fresher and fragrant than a city's. I'm sure that Kamila will gladly take you out for a walk, both before and after the procedure." Lith said.
"If she finds the time, I suppose she could." Zinya sighed. She had rarely been in a park, let alone a forest. She would give anything just to sniff a few of its flowers.
"In the meantime, you can talk to her with this." Lith gave Zinya a communication amulet with only two runes: his own and Kamila's. He explained both how to imprint and use it before he left.
Lith invited Quylla and Anathor for a double date so that they had the opportunity to meet outside their medical practice.
"Kamila is a lucky woman." Quylla sighed.
"First the Camelia, then the procedure, and now even a free communication amulet. I wish I had someone who spoiled me like that."
"You have two wonderful parents that do nothing but spoil you!" Lith said.
"I meant as a significant other, my father doesn't count."
"No offense, Quylla, but what can a boyfriend do that your parents can't? When I was with Phloria, finding a present for her was a nightmare. You have to set the bar a little lower, or any sane man will run away in desperation."
His words make her half laugh and half worry. Not only were her parents scary, but also being the Ernas one of the most powerful families of the Kingdom, there wasn't much that she couldn't acquire with just a snap of her fingers.
Quylla walked Lith to the academy's Gate and from there he went back to Lutia. Lith spent the time before lunch with his parents, returning to the tower only after they consumed the meal together.
He had used no mana in the morning and the time with Quylla and his parents had relaxed his mind, allowing Lith to be at the top of his game.
"Solus, we are going to take a second attempt at the Orichalcum Skinwalker. If I have enough energy left, I'd like to work on your personal cloaking ring." Lith said.
"Necro Forge again?" Solus asked while preparing everything they needed on the Mana Forge.
"Yes. If it fails again, I'll use the remaining two chainmail sets to experiment with Bloom Forge. If even lowering the output to 50% doesn't work, I'll have no other choice left."
Lith went to the Forgemastering lab, taking out the chainmail set, the ingredients, and the blue mana crystals. First, he performed the Bonding spell, to give the Orichalcum armor a mana circulatory system capable of harnessing the power of the powerful magic he would imbue it with.
Then, he refined the Thunderbird's feather, the Magma flower's petals, and the Skinwalker's skin into as many pseudo cores. This, time Lith refined them one by one.
Since he was forced to use a low energy output, he also had the opportunity to focus on the cores' smallest details rather than on raw power. The four pseudo cores were so puny that Lith sighed, considering the experiment worthless already.
He merged them with the help of the slime goop and only then did the real Forgemastering begin. Solus used the energy from the mana geyser to empower both the magic circle surrounding the Lith's obsidian Forge and the Necro Hammer.
The Forgemastering energies made the armor and the merged cores orbit around each other. They kept getting closer until their auras clashed so strongly that they bounced back to their initial position.
Lith kept the charged hammer still while he studied the unknown interaction between the Orichalcum and the Thunderbird's feather. Soon the merged cores started to pulse and grow.
The Orichalcum's artificial mana flow was drawn by the feather's energy field. Somehow, the feather was able to amplify the incoming mana, using part of it to feed the merged cores before returning the rest to the Orichalcum, making its mana flow also grow stronger.
The exchange of energies lasted a while until some kind of symbiotic equilibrium was established. At that point, the merged cores were almost as big as those Lith had prepared during the last experiment.
"Incredible! No wonder our first attempt was an utter fiasco. Not only did I have to keep the pseudo cores merged and fix any imperfection that appeared, but also due to the amplification effect on both magical items I had to fight against an increasingly strong rejection between five different kinds of mana!"
"No duh, Sherlock! I told you that 50% was an excellent starting point." Solus gloated.
"Alright stop. Hammer time." He said making her laugh so hard that she almost lost her focus.
The Necro Hammer struck the condensed mana circle, channeling Lith's mana and willpower through it so that when the two items collided, they started to merge. Lith rhythmically struck at the circle, releasing each time a blue blast of energy.
He would switch between using the accumulated mana to continue the merging process and fixing the deformities that arose due to the clashing forces at work.
'I'm so glad that I put the lab in the basement, otherwise the light this new type of Forgemastering produces would be seen for miles.' Solus thought.
After more than an hour of unrelenting focus that pushed Lith's blue core and mind to their limits, the first prototype of Orichalcum Skinwalker Armor was complete.
"That was intense." Lith said while wheezing. "I wouldn't have managed to succeed without your help and the hammer. I wonder if fake mages can use Orichalcum like I just did.
"Jirni's armor wasn't much different from my old one, whereas the Awakened assassin's was a masterpiece with a lot of powerful enchantments."
"Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Why didn't you try to add to the new armor Full Guard as well?" Solus asked. She knew how power hungry Lith was.
"Because without the cloaking field it would turn me into a neon lamp. That means adding not one, but two new pseudo cores to the mix plus using an alloy of gold and Orichalcum. Too many variables for someone that had yet to succeed once."
Lith imprinted the new armor with his mana and gave it a test run. In its chainmail form it was ugly and uncomfortable to wear. The rough edges of the Orichalcum rings scratched and prickled even his enhanced skin.
The moment he stored one of his suits inside the armor's dimensional space, the metal turned into a silvery liquid resembling quicksilver, which spread all over Lith's body until the mimicking process was complete.
"It shapeshifted faster than the old armor. The fabric of the clothes feels identical to the original as well. Let's test its defensive properties." Lith took an enchanted dagger out of his pocket dimension and handed it to Solus.
She struck at Lith's chest who blocked the dagger with his open palm. Thanks to an invisible energy field enveloping Lith's body, not a single drop of blood was spilled. Solus draw the dagger back and struck again, but this time Lith stood still.
When the clothes and the blade collided, neither Lith nor the armor sustained any damage.
