[New Directive: 'Fabricate Glacial Silverite Core'.]
[Objective: Create a stable, high-density energy core from refined mine essence to fulfill bargain with Star-Swallowing Tower. Secondary Objective: Use core-forging process to advance host's cultivation to 2nd Order, 3rd Rank ('Avatar Materialization').]
[Materials Required: 100 units of Glacial Silverite, purified Earth-Mana Crystal (for stability), personal soul-essence imprint, and a suitable crucible.]
[Estimated Success Probability (with current skills): 58%. Failure may result in spiritual backlash or core detonation.]
Damien reviewed the System's stark analysis. Fifty-eight percent. Slightly better than a coin toss, with catastrophic failure states. It was acceptable. He had operated on worse odds.
He needed a crucible—a vessel capable of containing and compressing vast frost energies. The mountain itself had provided his first one. It would provide his second.
He returned to the deepest chamber of the Silver Vein Mine, where the Frost-Canker had died. The heart-cavern was now a cathedral of his power. The walls pulsed with steady blue light, and the air hummed with a clean, vibrant cold. In the center of the floor, where the corruption had been rooted, a natural geode of Void-Touched Obsidian had been exposed—a gift from the mountain's violent purification. It was a perfect, egg-shaped hollow in the dark stone, already resonating with his energy.
This would be his crucible.
Over the next week, Damien worked with silent, mechanical precision. Miners, now viewing him with a blend of fear and reverent awe, delivered cartloads of the purest Glacial Silverite chunks to the cavern mouth. They called it "Frost-Blessed Ore" now, and they handled it with gloved hands, their earlier terror replaced by a superstitious respect. The boy they'd looked down on was now the Frost-Warden, a fixture of the mountain's new order.
Using Cryo-Shaping refined by his Oculus, Damien pulverized the Silverite into a fine, glowing blue powder. He mixed it with crushed Earth-Mana Crystal purchased from Lilith at exorbitant cost—the Gnome-like crystals stabilized the given project. The mixture filled the obsidian geode.
Then came the delicate part: the soul-essence imprint. He couldn't just pour his will in; he had to weave it into the core's structure.
Sitting before the filled crucible, Damison activated his Conquered Frost Avatar fully for the first time outside his soul. A shimmering, humanoid form of condensed winter light materialized behind him, its presence dropping the cavern's temperature to near absolute zero. The Avatar raised its hands, and from Damien's chest, a thread of crystalline-blue soul energy, sparkling with the diamond-like data-points of his memories and will, extended toward the crucible.
[Initiating Soul-Weaving Protocol. Avatar synchronization: 99%. Mana channel stability: Optimal.]
The thread touched the powder. Damien didn't force it. He guided. He used the Oculus's enhanced perception to navigate the microscopic landscape of the mixture, aligning particles, etching fractal frost-patterns at a molecular level that would allow the core to breathe, to cycle energy, to be alive in the way a star or a reactor was alive.
It was a monumental task of concentration. Hours bled into days. He forgot to eat, relying on his constitution to metabolize ambient mana. The Avatar never wavered, a perfect extension of his frozen focus.
On the third day, as he wove the final, self-sustaining loop into the core's spiritual lattice, the System intervened.
[Warning: Structural stress. Mana density exceeding tensile strength. Imminent failure in 8.2 seconds.]
A flaw. A single misaligned crystal was creating a pressure point. There was no time to gently correct it.
Damien's mind, operating at the speed of the crisis, executed a brutal fix. He didn't repair the flaw. He isolated it. With a mental command sharper than any blade, he severed the spiritual connection to that sector of the core, walling it off with a barrier of pure will. The trapped, overloaded energy in that sector had nowhere to go.
It detonated.
WHUMP.
A localized implosion of light and sound shook the cavern. A section of the core-mixture, about the size of his fist, turned to inert, black slag. But the isolation held. The rest of the matrix, now relieved of the pressure, stabilized instantly.
[Crisis Averted. Core integrity: 91%. Efficiency loss: 9%. Acceptable.]
He continued, weaving around the dead zone. The process was like performing brain surgery on a star. Finally, after seven continuous days, it was done.
The crucible now held not powder, but a single, softly pulsing orb of deep blue light, the size of a grapefruit. Veins of silver and white lightning flickered within it. It was beautiful and terrifying.
[Directive Complete: 'Fabricate Glacial Silverite Core'.]
[Item Created: 'Glacial Silverite Core - Grade 2'. Contains stable, high-yield frost-aligned spiritual energy. Equivalent to peak 2nd Order cultivator's total mana reserves. Can be used for cultivation, powering artifacts, or as a tactical weapon.]
[Cultivation Bonus: High-stress spiritual engineering has forcefully expanded host's mana channels and refined Avatar control.]
A new prompt, glowing with significance, appeared.
[Threshold Reached. Host is advancing to 2nd Order, 3rd Rank: 'Avatar Materialization'.]
A wave of power, not from the core, but from within, surged through Damien. His Avatar, which had been a translucent silhouette, began to condense. Frost from the air, particles of light, and his own spiritual substance coalesced around it. When the light faded, the Conquered Frost was no longer a phantom. It was a solid, sculpted form of living ice and pale blue light, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Its features were a smoother, idealized version of his own, eyes closed as if in meditation. He could feel its presence like a second body. He could see through its senses if he focused—a dual-perspective that made his head spin for a moment before his brain adapted.
The Avatar reached out a hand and touched the new Core. A perfect resonance hummed between them. The Core's pulse synchronized with the Avatar's rhythm.
Damien was exhausted to the point of dissolution, but he had done it. He had a bargaining chip of immense power, and he had crossed into the mid-tier of the 2nd Order. The Frost-Warden was no longer just a title given by fearful miners. It was a statement of fact.
He sealed the Core in a lead-lined box infused with silencing runes and carried it back to Hearth's Watch. As he walked through the town, people didn't stare at the void or the glitch. They saw the Warden returning from the sacred mountain, his steps sure, an aura of quiet, formidable power clinging to him like frost. They bowed their heads, not in fear of the unknown, but in respect for proven, tangible power. Cultivators awakened many gifts—strength, elemental affinity, keen sight. His was simply more dramatic.
He was a power. A fact of the landscape. The conversation had changed.