The only question that kept flashing inside her mind was whether this was the specific secret William had mentioned before, or if he still had more tricks left to astonish her.
If he could tame the most volatile substance in the forging world with a bit of common river clay, what else was he hiding in that young, enigmatic mind of his?
Soon, she got the answer.
William worked diligently for an entire hour, his movements rhythmic and steady despite the sweltering heat of the small workshop.
After exhausting most of the Homos clay, he finally managed to saturate and stabilise the seven kilos of the scarlet vibrant ores. The air in the room was thick with a strange, metallic ozone smell, but the expected cataclysm never came.
"One task is done, more to come," he muttered to himself, setting aside the last batch of matte-scarlet stones. He stood up and stretched his body, the joints of his spine popping audibly.
Despite raising his spirit power to thirty-five points, he was still considered physically weak by the standards of a true cultivator. The burst of strength he had gained from the monkey cores was a foundation, but it was not yet a fortress.
In the next task, he had to use the hammer in the forging process, and he would have to do it in an incredibly tedious, repetitive way to achieve the precision his project required.
As William reached for the blacksmithing hammer resting near the anvil, he found it surprisingly heavy. The hammer wasn't made of any special spirit alloy—it was just standard high-density iron—but its weight was at least five kilos.
For an eleven-year-old body, even one reinforced by spirit power, raising it with one hand sent a sharp strain through his forearm and bicep muscles. He didn't just need to lift it; he needed to wield it with absolute control for a prolonged period.
"Need a hand here?" Ellina asked.
At this point, her earlier impression of William had changed drastically for the better. The show he had put on with the clay was enough for her to consider him a once-in-a-century forging genius.
Her past harsh attitude and mocking scepticism had vanished, replaced by a much gentler, almost respectful tone.
Besides her professional curiosity, she genuinely wanted to know more about him and the master he served. Helping him now was the best way to build rapport and get the answers she craved later on.
"No need, but thanks," William simply refused. He wasn't being arrogant; he knew that the spirit-sync required for this specific forging technique had to be personal.
He reached into the second stash—the three kilos of unhandled scarlet vibrant ore that hadn't been touched by the clay—and took a deep breath. He picked up a single, raw, sparkling red stone and placed it directly onto the centre of the anvil.
"Careful with that!" Ellina shouted, her voice laced with sudden fear.
If she had previously issued such warnings out of a sense of general duty, she was now honestly and sincerely concerned about William's safety.
To her, he was no longer a disposable porter; he was a priceless treasure of the forging world. If something went wrong, she would lose a genius before his light could truly shine. She wouldn't allow that to happen.
Instantly, she gushed a torrent of spirit power out of her body, preparing to intervene with all her might if the stone showed even a hint of detonation. Thick, pure golden energy erupted from her skin, enveloping her tall frame and giving her a shimmering, holy appearance that illuminated the shadows of the smithy.
William gave her a brief, sideways glance. He was genuinely surprised to see the colour of her aura. She was a Gold-grade spirit master, and from the density of the light, she was incredibly close to breaking through into the Dark Gold realm.
In this world, most spirit masters who dedicated themselves to secondary professions like forging or alchemy rarely rose above the Silver grade. The sheer amount of time and effort required to master a craft usually meant they had less energy to pour into their own cultivation.
To find a Gold-grade master in a regional Forging Department was rare; it meant she was an elite among elites. Ellina watched him with bated breath, fully expecting the ore in William's hands to explode. From his stance, she could tell he was intending to forge the raw ore directly using the hammer and his own spirit power.
It was madness. Everyone knew that you couldn't hammer scarlet vibrant ore. If he didn't use the clay to stabilise it first, and instead struck it or threw it into the fire, the stimulus would cause the berserk energy inside that little piece of ore to violently explode, likely taking the anvil and William's arm along with it.
She braced herself, the golden energy around her rippling as she prepared to catch the shrapnel of his mistake.
But what William did next didn't only startle her, but it even made her freeze out of pure shock!
Clang!
William didn't intend to perform the suicidal act she expected. Standing in his place, he simply threw the raw, unstable ore high into the air as if he were playing with a ball. Before it could even begin its descent, he started to rotate his entire body while holding the hammer.
Because the hammer was heavy, he didn't try to fight its mass; he raised it horizontally and let the weight drive his momentum.
He exerted only a small burst of strength at first to initiate the rotation, but soon his small frame was literally being dragged by the centrifugal force of the hammer.
In a span of a few seconds, his speed escalated to a terrifying degree, his form blurring until he was creating after-images while rotating.
The piece of ore he had thrown high finally lost its upward driving force and began its free fall. Just when it reached the level of his spinning hammer, William acted.
He didn't smash it. Under normal circumstances, the ore wouldn't be able to sustain the heavy, blunt force of a five-kilo hammer; it would either shatter and explode or be launched across the room like a projectile before detonating. But neither happened!
The moment the hammer touched the ore, William delicately adjusted the angle of the head, allowing it to slide over one of the ore's surfaces rather than smashing directly into its core.
As the hammer glided over the ore, it continued its rotation afterwards like nothing had happened. The hammer lost only a fraction of its driving force, something William easily countered by exerting a subtle push during the next rotation.
But the truly astonishing part wasn't the complicated, gliding strike—it was what happened to the ore itself.
Logically speaking, even if William managed to avoid a direct, explosive clash, the ore should have dropped to the ground under the relentless pull of gravity.
However, under the watchful, petrified gazes of Ellina, the ore stood in its place, motionless, as if it were held in midair by an invisible hand.
The hammer completed one circle and returned to hit the ore again... again... and again. The rhythmic strikes sounded like a rapid-fire heartbeat, echoing through the small workshop for five continuous minutes.
"What is he trying to do?!!" Ellina gasped, her voice barely a whisper.
She could now swear on her very soul that the skills William was showing weren't simple! She totally believed everything he had said earlier about a mysterious master.
Seeing such weird, transcendent skills—techniques she had never seen in any manual or heard of in any legend—made her quite sure that the boy was the disciple of a hidden powerhouse.
Soon enough, the answer to her puzzlement became clear. As the hammer kept slamming into the ore with that genius, gliding momentum, the size of the stone began to shrink.
When he had started, the piece of ore was the size of a closed fist. But after five minutes of continuous, high-speed hammering and tapering, it had been compressed and shaped until it was the size of a finger—even looking like one of William's own thin, nimble fingers.
"Phew," William suddenly exhaled.
He stopped his active rotation, though the momentum forced him to spin a couple of times freely. He deliberately controlled the deceleration, forcing the hammer to gradually come to a halt rather than jerking his muscles.
When he finally stood still, he was drenched in sweat, his white porter's uniform clinging to his skin. He was panting heavily, his breath coming in ragged, racing gasps, and his face had turned slightly pale from the sheer physical and spiritual exertion.
Thud!
As the hitting force finally vanished, the shaped piece of ore lost the invisible force holding it midair and fell to the ground with a muffled sound. Ellina remained frozen, her eyes fixed on the small, finger-shaped piece of refined scarlet metal on the floor.