"Thanks," William replied shortly. He would never act polite or feign hesitation, not when a weapon that would easily cost tens of thousands of spirit crystals was offered to him free of charge.
He strapped the scabbard to his waist, feeling the reassuring weight of the gold-grade blade against his thigh. It was a massive upgrade from the jagged, notched iron he had been forced to carry as a porter.
Without wasting another moment, he turned his attention to the stacks of raw timber piled in the corner of the workshop. He began to scatter the logs around, rolling them over and inspecting the grain under the flickering light of the forge.
"What are you looking for?" Ellina asked, stepping to his side. Her curious gaze followed his movements as he discarded several pieces of high-quality spirit-oak.
"I have the arrowheads, but no shafts," he said. He reached into the pile and pulled out several faint brown logs, setting them aside with a nod of satisfaction. "These would do perfectly fine."
Ellina's eyes widened in disbelief. "The brown bark woods?! That's a common and weak grade of wood! It's practically kindling! If you want, I can call a disciple and have them fetch some Iron-Feather wood or even Silver-Leaf pine. Those would hold a spirit enchantment ten times better than that rubbish."
William was momentarily tempted. Iron-Feather wood was indeed superior in terms of durability and flight stability. However, he quickly dropped the idea. It wasn't just an issue of quality; he wanted something that served his specific goals best for this trip.
He knew that if he agreed to her offer, it would take much longer to wait for the delivery and check the properties of the new wood. He had already lost an entire day in his preparations, and he was still not finished.
Despite gaining a lot from coming to the Forging Department—including an alliance with a Master and a gold-grade sword—he still felt a twinge of regret for the time wasted. Every hour spent in this shop was an hour his enemies could use to close in on him.
"Thanks, but these will do," he said firmly. He gathered up ten thick and short logs of the brown bark wood and carried them to a workbench.
Drawing the gold-grade sword, he started to cut the wood. His work was diligent and precise, the razor-sharp blue blade slicing through the soft bark like it was warm butter.
He wasn't just chopping; he was shaping, whittling the wood into identical, cylindrical, thin pieces to act as shafts. In the span of twenty minutes, through sheer focus and the help of a superior blade, he got the entire batch of shafts ready.
From the side, Ellina couldn't help but feel weird about his actions. To chop wood, any normal person would use an axe or a specialised woodworking knife, not a master-crafted gold-grade combat sword!
Using such a legendary weapon for carpentry was almost a sacrilege in her eyes. But she refrained from speaking. She had learned over the last several hours that William didn't do anything without a reason, so she kept her thoughts to herself and continued to watch.
Under her curious gaze, William took the first green pot of second-stage candle liquid off the fire.
The formerly sparkling green liquid seemed to have reduced in volume, becoming smaller in size but significantly brighter in light. To Ellina, it now looked like pure, shimmering water, while the dregs of the normal candle material at the bottom had become like thick, useless mud.
Sizzle!
Without waiting for it to cool, William poured the refined liquid directly over the brown bark shafts he had prepared. They emitted loud, violent sizzling noises as the hot fluid made contact with the porous wood. To Ellina's astonishment, the shafts absorbed the liquid instantly. Not a single drop splashed away or fell onto the ground.
William's goal was specific. He didn't just want to have long-distance control over the flying knives; he wanted a level of influence over his arrows as well.
Even if his control over the arrows wouldn't be as perfect as the knives, such a trick would come in handy during desperate moments in the forest. By saturating the wood with second-stage candle essence, he was turning the common wood into a spiritual conductor.
Those faint brown shafts changed colour, taking on a subtle, sickly tinge of green. One pot wasn't enough for the volume of wood he had, so he had to bring another from the fire before he was finally done. Around a thousand shafts were now ready, glowing faintly in the dim workshop.
He left the shafts to cool down and turned back to the forge. He took the scarlet red pots—the ones containing the purified ore—and poured the remaining second-stage green liquid over them.
Each red pot received the contents of one green pot. William waited precisely five minutes for the mix to slowly and partially solidify, reaching that perfect semi-solid state he had mastered.
"Can I use your help again?"
As he saw how efficiently Ellina had worked earlier, he didn't shy away from being shameless. He knew his limits, and her power was a tool he would be foolish not to utilise.
"Always," she replied, picking up the heavy hammer.
She started to help again. In the span of the next couple of hours, she completed the arduous task of final tempering. Every time she finished a cleansing cycle, William would step in, take the glowing, semi-solid mix, and pour it carefully into the modified knife mould.
Twenty flying knives were produced this way. However, before William would give any batch of the mix to Ellina for hammering, he would prick his finger and let a few drops of his blood fall into the molten metal.
This established a blood link, a deep spiritual bond that would allow him to call the knives back or guide them through the air.
As for the time she spent hammering, William stayed busy assembling the arrows. He worked with a feverish pace, fitting the silver-scarlet heads to the green-tinged shafts. He used drops of his blood to link these arrows to him as well, ensuring he established a weaker but functional form of a blood link.
Flying arrows would consume a lot of his spirit power if he insisted on doing it the same way as the flying knives.
The knives were designed for a continuous, high-fidelity connection that allowed for complex manoeuvres in mid-air. However, the way he had prepared the arrows allowed him to just exert a little control over them while they were already airborne.
This was a subtle but vital distinction. Instead of powering the entire flight of the arrow, he would simply "nudge" the green-tinged shafts using the energy stored from the light candles and the blood link.
This would significantly decrease the amount of spirit power consumption, allowing him to fire dozens of rounds without draining his reserves.
Moreover, it would help him exert enough control to change the direction slightly in mid-flight—turning a near-miss into a lethal hit or curving an arrow around a tree to strike a hidden foe.
"Thanks," William said, looking at the bundle of finished arrows and the twenty silver-red knives secured in a specialised leather roll.
After finishing all that, William saw that this trip to the forging department had been more than worth his time and effort. He no longer felt any lingering regret about losing nearly an entire day here.
He had not only made exactly what he wanted for his survival, but he had also gained a high-quality gold-grade sword, far better than anything he could have hoped to purchase with his meagre savings.
"Say hello to your master for me," Ellina said as they stood at the side gates of the academy, the ones leading directly toward the sprawling, shadowed expanse of the Blessing Forest.
She had insisted on accompanying him this far, acting as a personal escort through the academy grounds. William hadn't argued; he wouldn't miss the chance to have a Gold-grade master as a shield.
After all, he was still worried about Guanin and his gang of bullies. What if they had been lying in wait to ambush him or try to cause trouble again inside the academy?
Not to mention, there was always the risk that Berry's clan would notice the inconsistencies in his story and come looking for the "porter" who had seen too much. With Ellina walking beside him, no guard or student dared to even breathe in his direction.
"Sure," William nodded with a big, practised smile. It was a pleasant expression, but it didn't quite make Ellina satisfied; she could sense that he was still holding back a mountain of secrets.
"Next time we meet, we'll work on our deal," Ellina reminded him, stressing over this point once again as they reached the tree line.
"I'll take care of things inside the forging department for you and your master. I'll prepare the contracts and the initial materials. Just make sure the esteemed master will agree to the terms we discussed."
"She will," William firmly said. He spoke with absolute confidence because, in reality, there was no master—he was the one holding the final say in everything.
If this deal was executed properly, William would solve a massive portion of his financial problems in one stroke. He might not face any big obstacles for the immediate future, but he was thinking ahead.
He knew that once his spirit power started to climb into the higher ranks, he would definitely need a ton of resources: rare herbs, high-grade monster cores, and specialised catalysts. And any resource in the spirit world that was worth having would cost a staggering amount of spirit crystals.
Securing this deal early on was a good piece of news for him. Despite the fact that even fifty percent of the profit might not be enough to reach the peak of cultivation, it would buy him more time to find more sources of profit for his pockets.
As he turned his back on the academy and stepped into the cool, damp air of the forest, his attention became focused on two primary things.
First, he needed to get inside the deeper zones of the forest—the high-risk areas he wasn't yet familiar with in this life, but where the most powerful monsters dwelled. And second, he had to solve his mud spirit phase issue once and for all.
Despite having the godly devouring ability of the Nine-Tailed Fox, he knew that such a power had its limits. It would help him grow his spirit power and physical strength at a terrifying speed by consuming the essence of others, yet his own spirit was still immature.
Pushing his spirit power further without having a good foundation was a common mistake that led to unstable cultivation and eventual collapse. It was a trap he had seen many "geniuses" fall into in the outside world, and it was one he wouldn't commit.
"To elevate my spirit, I need to select carefully which monster I should merge with," he muttered to himself.
As he walked, his footsteps silent on the forest floor, tons of information from his past life flooded his mind. Having a mud spirit wasn't a big deal to him. In the outside world, the vast majority of spirit masters were born with "trash" spirits just like him. It was the same case here in this secluded region as well.
But what made a big difference in the outside world—a secret that the people of this academy seemed to have forgotten or never learned—was the simple and yet game-changing concept of spirit purity and evolution.
Anyone who had a chance to upgrade their spirit from the mud phase all the way to the top-grade spirit ranks if they knew the correct rituals and materials.
Mud phase might be considered the absolute bottom line for any spirit master. Some people were blessed enough to be born with higher spirit grades, like Berry, who possessed a natural-born talent. Those were the only ones considered true "spirit masters" in this current, limited world of his.
But William knew better. He knew that the mud phase was merely "Phase Zero" of any spirit master's journey—a starting point where spirit power would typically range below thirty.