Chapter 1621 - Life And Death (Part 3)

Lith had embedded the black eye first so that the moment the remaining two merged with the staff, the necromantic energies that now flowed through the mana circulatory system would keep the Evil Eyes from rotting while the light element from the silver crystal would feed them.

Lith had to counter the bursts of fire and ice that the eyes released until they became part of the six-elemental flow of energy and recognized the staff as their new body.

"What do you think?" Lith used Spirit Magic to hand the staff to Solus.

"This is amazing." She replied. "Even without any enchantments, it can already provide me with a constant flow of energy that only needs a spark of my life force to become identical to my own mana.

"I need to give the Sage Staff a test run away from the mana geyser, but the ability to filter Mogar's energy signature out is already outstanding."

"What's so different from just using Invigoration?" Tista asked.

"Invigoration loses efficacy over time because your body suffers from both mana abuse and from the aftereffects of taking in Mogar's energy signature." Solus replied. "With this, my only problem is mana abuse."

Then, Lith applied to the staff four sets of runes. The first set would enhance his energy signature so that the mana flow originating from the crystals embedded into the staff would offer less resistance to the Forgemastering process.

The second set would amplify the effects of every pseudo core that he planned to assemble into a power core. It granted an artifact the ability to not only to temporarily boost its single enchantments, but also their combined effects.

The third set would disperse excess energy in the case that casting too many spells in rapid succession overloaded the staff. The runes would also help the wood to withstand enemy spells and reduce the stress that the boosted power core would experience.

Thanks to the three sets of runes, the Sage Staff could now activate several enchantments at the same time without burdening Solus and making up for her lack of body casting.

Also, they would allow both the Staff and its user to replenish their energy reserves faster than normal.

The fourth set of runes, instead, was something that Lith and Solus had created from one of their bounties in Urgamakka that they had combined with the data collected after watching General Vorgh's staff and Athung in action.

The runes by themselves had no effect nor would they even be linked with the power core. At a first glance, they were just a bunch of random very intricate runes, but at a second glance, one would notice that they were all related to arrays.

Yggdrasill wood was famous for its ability to mix spells and Lith planned to exploit it.  Whenever Solus would need to cast an array, by activating those engraved in the staff she would save herself the time and energy to weave the most complex runes.

It would significantly reduce the time and focus required to cast the most common types of arrays.

Solus traced a golden circle in the air while infusing the staff with her mana. Several runes left its surface and joined the circle, filling the empty spaces that she had left on purpose.

The moment the sequence of runes was completed, Silverwing's Hexagram appeared above the Forgemastering lab.

"It's not as good as Vorgh's staff but it's a start." She said.

"Tista, Friya. Stand back and don't move a muscle. This is the final step." Lith took his Forgemastering hammer, filling it with mana before hitting the Adamant Forge to trigger its amplification powers.

At the same time, Solus picked her own and conjured the Forgemastering circle. The world energy from the mana geyser below filled the space surrounding the staff until the air started to crackle with power.

'Dammit, this doesn't bode well.' Solus said while noticing that the presence of the crystals and eyes messed up her control. The Sage Staff seemed to have an unquenchable hunger that constantly depleted the circle.

'If it keeps up like this, the energy will overload the wood, making it burst into splinters. I really don't want to put Creation Magic's regenerative abilities to the test.'

She had to use her willpower to take control of the magic circle and keep the world energy from getting sucked in.

Lith took his time crafting one pseudo core after another, following the teachings of the Fifth Ruler of the Flames.

From the Adamant sphere in Urgamakka, Lith had learned that the best way to minimize the resistance from merging multiple pseudo cores into a power core was to keep them unstable on purpose.

After studying Bytra's technique, Tavar Sinak had discovered that just like by choosing pseudo cores with similar enchantments it was possible to make so that the sets of runes would affect all the pseudo cores instead of just one, a similar principle could be applied in the crafting of power cores.

The trick was brilliant in its ingenuity.

Sinak's Forgemastering technique required choosing pseudo cores with as many runes in common as possible and to craft them in an imperfect form on purpose. Each one of them had to be comprised of all of its unique runes but to lack part of those in common.

It made the pseudo cores unstable, requiring from the Forgemaster a great focus and mana just to keep them from fading away or blowing up in their faces. On the other hand, however, once the mage proceeded to make them overlap to form the power core, the process would go smooth sailing.

The hardest part of crafting a power core was that the greater the power each pseudo core possessed, the harder it would be to make them perfectly overlap until they fused into one.

On top of that, a truly powerful artifact would never use just a few of them, but at least a dozen.

The purpose of purifying magical metals was to make them capable of withstanding many enchantments while that of crafting a power core was to combine such spells in a way akin to how a mage would do.

By combining these two properties, a good Forgemaster could create artifacts as powerful as their owner. Crafting a power core from just a few pseudo cores was considered as a waste of good materials and of the Forgemaster's time.

Combining several powerful pseudo cores, however, had proven to be a mammoth task for a long time. Something that only Guardians, mages with their own tower, or those willing to share their crafting methods with many apprentices could perform.

At least until the fifth Ruler of the Flames had shared his discovery with the rest of Mogar.

Thanks to his technique, the unstable pseudo cores would offer little resistance to the merging process because they would obtain the runes they lacked and achieve stability. Only once the power core was fully formed would all the pseudo cores have their rune sequences completed.

The procedure reduced the repulsion between the different enchantments not only because the missing runes would fit into the different pseudo cores like pieces of a puzzle, keeping them together, but also because it made their energy signatures and properties harmonize with each other.