The hind legs were covered in thick grey scales and each had the size of a stone pillar
The Vagrash had feathered wings on its back and a long tail covered in jagged scales. Raptor reached a height at the withers of 5 meters (16.4 feet) and was 8.8 meters (29 feet) long.
Unlike the Balor, the Vagrash had no sign of external damage aside from its tail. Lith had killed it with a burst of Origin Flames that had destroyed the internal organs and created the space he needed for the Spirit Crystal.
All of Lith’s assistants had learned Menadion’s Mana Well amplification technique and had brought their own Adamant Forge for the task. Before they began, Solus split the Fury into multiple copies, handing one to each of their friends to let them grow accustomed to it.
Lith needed a Fury as well, while Solus kept the original. There could be up to nine Furies coexisting, but the group was only comprised of Lith, Solus, Tista, Friya, Phloria, Quylla, Faluel, and Protector.
For the task, Lith needed only people who were competent Forgemasters, who knew about Solus and the tower, and that could be trusted with the secrets of his Forgemastering.
He didn’t mind sharing with them, especially with Faluel. The Hydra was more than a mentor, it was his friend and confidant. Also, Lith had gifted her with the Hands of Menadion that would make the crafting process easier.
He needed but a thought to connect them to the Library and share with them the specifics of the crafting method and what kind of pseudo cores each one of them would have to conjure.
“I know that if something goes wrong we can ask Grandma to reset the materials, but I want you all to remember that this issue is time-sensitive.” Lith said. “While I deal with the preparatory phases, you can go to the Workshop and practice your part, if you want.
“Don’t get cocky, because one single mistake from any of us will mean that the work of everyone else will be ruined and that we’ll have to perform everything from scratch.”
Tista and Protector swallowed a lump of saliva at the idea. They were the weakest and the least experienced Forgemasters of the group so they moved to the lower floor. Even with the help of a Fury and of the tower, they weren’t sure to be capable of crafting even the simplest power core on their own.
“I’m not interested in stealing your secrets, but I’ve never seen an actual Earth Root, let alone witnessed its effects.” Quylla said. “I’ll go as soon as you are done with it, then you can place the runes.”
Faluel, Phloria, and Friya nodded, sitting far away enough from Lith to not disturb him but close enough to study the procedure with Life Vision.
“It’s not a big deal, really.” Lith’s words garnered him a series of stern looks. “I mean, yes, getting your hands on an Earth Root is hard, but the how it works is nothing complicated.”
“Using it is easy.” Faluel corrected him. “How it works is a damn mystery otherwise throughout the centuries someone would have developed a way to imitate its effects. We would have had another Ruler of the Flames and Forgemastery would have reached a new golden age.”
Lith wanted to mock her for being so pedantic, but the tinge of envy in her voice stopped him. Earth Roots were very rare and Faluel had gotten her hands only on a few of them during her entire life.
To make matters worse, most of them had been used to practice and the ensuing Forgemastering process had taught her a lot but had produced mediocre artifacts. Lith had gotten only one, but he had kept it until Salaark had offered him to use her Creation Magic for him.
It had allowed him to experiment freely with the Earth Root before attempting the actual crafting. Then, after the tower had regained the Workshop, Lith had gained even more freedom, testing even the craziest theory that came to his mind with no consequence.
For a mage, it was the equivalent of having his cake and eating it too.
Lith took the Earth Root out of his pocket dimension and slowly imbued it with mana until the boundary between energy and matter disappeared.
Magical ingredients were precious for the unique variants of world energy they carried, not for their physical composition. A magical flower was still just a plant, like even a Phoenix’s feathers were still just made of keratin.
What made them magical in nature was the fact that along with respectively lymph and blood, a powerful mana had coursed through them for a long time, becoming an integral part of them.
Magical ingredients couldn’t be used in their natural state since it would have required adding them to molten metal or turning them into a fine powder. Not only would both methods cause a partial loss of the ingredient’s magical properties but they would also add new impurities that would need to be purified.
The correct way of using an ingredient was to extract its magical essence by mixing it with the mana of the mage. The new mana flow would further refine the ingredient and ensure that its energy was extracted until the last spark.
The process overloaded the physical component of the material, turning it into dust that Lith and Solus carefully collected. Salaark’s Creation Magic was powerful, but not a miracle.
Without the remnants of the Earth Root, once she recovered its energy after one of their failed experiments, she wouldn’t have a place where to safely store it and the Earth Root would have been lost forever.
Lith used his breathing technique, Demon Grasp, to flood the magical ingredient with his mana. The tuber pulsed rhythmically, producing a white aura as more and more of its essence was extracted.
Lith’s violet mana served two purposes. It consumed the physical vessel of the Root, freeing the energy it contained, and allowed Lith to manipulate the energy released as if it was his own.
He held the natural treasure in his right hand, moving the magical essence to his left where it took the form of a pristine sphere. Once he was done with the extraction process, Lith split the sphere in two and gave half of it to Solus.
Usually, a mage would have to stay focused until the energy of the Root was consumed and be careful with how much he employed but, in their case, they could split the task.
It halved the focus and time needed for the process. On top of that, it allowed them to use the same amount of energy for each golem. Lith worked on Trouble while Solus on Raptor.
They both injected their respective sphere where the Spirit Crystal would be later grafted and had the energy from the Root spread outwards from there. They used their mana and willpower to keep the energy of the ingredient focused despite the disruption from the Adamant’s natural flow of world energy.
The refined magical metal had a high mana conductivity and because of that, any form of energy it came in contact with would be evenly spread throughout its structure. In normal circumstances, it helped a Forgemaster to imbue their creations with their spells, but in the Earth Root’s case, it would nullify the ingredient’s effect, making it go to waste.
