The need to figure out something he had never seen before was giving Kas a terrible headache. Frowning deeply, he analyzed the few words the rune-smith had left behind before his death.
Radel must be forged together by all the rune masters. Find the Heart of the Mountains. On the last day of the Frost Moon, light the furnace at midnight. When the ore glows red-hot, hammer it until dawn.
Chant ancient songs to beg the Ancestral God for a blessing. The Song of Forging must be sung seven times, and the Song of Furnace Fire seven times. Quench the flames with dragon's blood, then temper the metal in the glaciers of the Heart of the Mountains...
First of all, even if this thing were real, it couldn't be replicated.
The Frost Moon fell at different times in different places. In the Sorrow Mountains, it was in October. Who knew when the dwarves' Frost Moon was?
Midnight and dawn were even more ridiculous. Different latitudes caused obvious variations in the length of day and night. The dwarves might spend five hours hammering away underground before dawn, while in the Sorrow Mountains it would take eight.
And that was before the blessing of the Ancestral God and the songs.
This was a heavily encrypted recipe, designed to mislead readers in every possible way.
The only part with any value was the description of Radel.
It resembled red gold, yet was incredibly hard. Even in the sunlight, it remained dull.
That was a contradiction. Even the most precious Adamantine was soft compared to meteoric iron of the same quality...
Wait, I think I've fallen into a mental trap.
If Radel was an artificial metal, the key wasn't how the dwarves forged it.
It was how I could make a material produce a similar effect, enhancing the magical capacity of weapons and armor.
I think I've got an idea...
"Baize, stop fucking sleeping and find me a few ores with magical capacity."
Once he had an idea, Kas had no trouble ordering around the unreliable shaman of the Black Ember Tribe. He kicked awake his "mentor," who was leaning against a chair and snoring.
"Oh, oh, looks like you've got an idea. I knew you were clever."
After yawning, Baize quickly retrieved three different ores from a box of keepsakes and explained them one by one:
"Adamantine, Mithril, and Dark Ore. Dark Ore has the greatest magical capacity, but it isn't a metal. It's a crystalline powder mineral, similar to graphite. Southern mages use it to draw high-level magic arrays."
The shaman was clearly letting Kas try his hand at the easier options first. Adamantine and Mithril were rare, but they could still be found in quantity. Dark Ore, on the other hand, was unique.
"Can you heat and melt them? I mean without using witchcraft."
Baize frowned, thinking Kas's request was bizarre.
"Adamantine, I might be able to figure something out for. Dark Ore can only be melted in the Blood-Ash Furnace. There's no way to get it to its melting point by normal means."
"Can't you think of some unusual way?" Kas shot a look at the shaman, who was about to go on explaining the ores' properties. He had to admit, he was starting to get interested in this plan.
Alchemy really was a lot more interesting than copper smelting.
"Fine... What next? Any other requirements?"
"The melting process needs to happen in a sealed environment."
Baize shrugged and ordered the Black Guard to prepare equipment for melting the ores. If there was even a one-in-ten-thousand chance, he wasn't going to let it pass.
A while later, the Black Guard returned carrying a strange device resembling an iron barrel. They opened a hatch at the bottom and tossed in several crystals containing the essence of fire.
The heating device looked a lot like the oil tank Kas remembered from his previous life, the kind used to smoke sausages back home. Its steel-gray exterior was smooth, with an iron pipe sticking up from the top.
"We paid a fortune to buy this thing from the Southerners..." Baize patted the tank and sighed.
"We have to admit, the Southerners do have their strengths when it comes to technology. This is a Sealed Heater, powered by crystals of fire essence. It's designed to extract valuable gases from certain unusual ores...
"I got swindled by those damned Southerner Alchemy Association bastards. This piece of junk is completely useless, and every time you use it, it costs a fortune."
"No. This might be the key to turning things around."
Kas put the Adamantine into the device. The iron barrel had three layers.
The bottom layer was the furnace used for heating, the middle held the ore, and the storage layer above was divided into several compartments of equal height.
When the ore was heated, gas flowed upward into the storage layer. Once the device had cooled completely, the gases that had risen to the top passed through filters of different mesh sizes according to their weight, before undergoing further purification as needed. It was an extremely specialized piece of alchemical equipment.
Kas had no interest whatsoever in the toxic gases produced during ore processing. He'd just thought of something interesting.
The core principle of alchemy was Transmutation: turning base metals such as "lead" into perfect metals such as "gold."
The basic idea was that base metals possessed the potential to become perfect metals, their perfect forms obscured by crude exteriors and impurities.
Alchemy was the process of transforming one substance into another by various means, stripping impurities from base metals until they became precious metals.
He didn't know much about the theory of alchemy in this world. After all, that money-grabbing Alchemy Apprentice Introductory Manual was truly worthless—more useless than a university general-education course.
But as a humanities student who liked to ponder things, Kas was interested in strange tales and anecdotes. He'd once read a little about the occult, thanks to his roommate, who never stopped rambling about religion, theology, and philosophy.
"As above, so below."
Analyzed through Aristotle's Four Causes Alchemy, the efficient cause (the alchemist's actions) acted upon the material cause (the base metal), removing its imperfect, accidental qualities to obtain the formal cause (the precious metal), thereby achieving the final cause (the perfect metal—that is, the Philosopher's Stone).
The plan he was pondering was to use the efficient cause (heating the metal and separating out impurities) on the material cause (ore with magical capacity), stripping away all the irrelevant properties to find the formal cause (magical capacity) and achieve the final cause (granting other ores magical capacity).
It might not be any easier than making a perfect Philosopher's Stone, but Kas thought it was worth a try.
Alchemy wasn't about making a giant bomb capable of destroying the world. It was about life itself, its Transmutation from base to perfected. He was fascinated by this process, so rich in metaphysical meaning.
The precious Adamantine melted bit by bit in the high heat, and a great deal of gas flooded into the uppermost storage layer. Kas didn't even bother to glance at it before tossing both items to the Black Guard as trash.
"Keep going."
Mithril.
"Keep going."
Dark Ore.
"Keep going."
Emerald Rock.
"Keep going."
By the time Baize was nearly at his wits' end, the Sealed Heater's outer layer had begun to melt, and the Ash Tribe's supply of fire-element crystals was almost exhausted. Only then did Kas put a stop to this utterly shameless waste.
[Plan: Transmutation Status: In Progress Inspiration: The conditions necessary for something to come into being are all causes. The first is the archetype that gives a thing its form; The second is the form or model to which it belongs—that is, its material; The third is the original source of change or rest; The fourth is the end, that is, the purpose for which a thing is what it is. I have to say, compared to the occult nonsense of "As above, so below," I think I prefer the endlessly rambling philosophical drunk.]
Kas thought to himself.
Why wasn't it done yet?
Before you continue