What a nice surprise for Debauchery, getting rich from just following after a "lucky bastard" three times in a row, three outings with Yunan as the lead and all three of them ended with Debauchery appraising enough treasure to bankrupt kingdoms and this time was the best of them all. For the sake of simplicity, Debauchery left the winged lizard for later scrutiny, as for now they needed to mine whatever ore is emitting so much pure and gentle mana and make something from it. The amount of mana in the room had dropped significantly after only one night of absorption by the Starheart. It turns out the vein was not producing as much mana as they though at first, they found the mana in the room was just the residual mana emitted from the vein and the kobolds made repeated use of the room to achieve something. After half a day of mining around the vein, they found it was a blue crystal ball as big as a three storied house. It had a diameter of 10 meters and was emitting a trace of light as well as the traces of pure gentle mana. After an hour of scrutiny and book flipping Balin identified the ball as a mana cluster, a residue of an explosion made by those mana weapons the humans made through the device Hephaestus gifted them. It was a testament to both the genius and the brutality of humans, as the aftermath of their weapon not only released so much mana it caused a plague and wreaked havoc in the land it also created a pure mana cluster that can be harvested and be reused for another weapon. After another hour of sorting through the ores and items in the cave, even the doors were taken into consideration, Balin with a heavy look on his face threw an apologetic look at Dustan and told everyone his plan while they were eating lunch beside the mana cluster. "After careful consideration for both current and future gains to be had, i found that we can forge a special item that can help everyone in this room grow stronger. The catch is that we have to use all the materials inside the cave to upgrade the Starheart and make it into something even more precious, however that will reduce the duration it will last by at most a full year." The solemn mood was interrupted by Lili who did a spit take after digesting what Balin said "you have a Starheart? Where is it, how come dad did not notice it, we have been looking for it for a month now, show it to me, i want to see it". Everyone just pointed at Yunan and collectively said "how else can 10 year olds clean a nest after only 3 months of entering the academy". Lili told the group that an astrologist informed the pope about a Startheart that was falling into the planet, but for some reason it changed trajectory and they lost track of it and had to search for a full month without any news. She almost pulled her hair out when she heard how it fell on Yunan's head mid training. It was best not to tell Lili how last week they found a chest worth enough to clean out the millennia accumulation of the guild,since she might just have a heart attack. After confirmation and consideration the party emptied their rings for Balin to look at in case there was something he might use from the gains of the purge. As for Balin he took out a furnace that was so big it almost filled the extra large 20mx20mx20m boss room. After transporting all the materials for forging. The furnace made a sound and a heat wave assaulted everyone in the party. The winged lizard who was feasting on the corpses of the kobolds left behind from last night's fighting, made a screeching sound and spewed flames at the furnace as if in revenge for startling it in mid meal, that prompted Balin who had glowing eyes to pick up the lizard and put it beside a hole in the furnace were one could feed fuel in it and let the lizard breath as much fire as it wished. He even tasked Dustan with gathering all the corpses in the cave for it to keep it in place. Balin took away the Starheart from Yunan and removed it from its necklace, under the envious gaze if Lili who spent her time trying to find where Yunan hid the stone, she did not expect it to be there in plain sight in the form of a cheap bead necklace. Balin tossed the Starheart into the furnace first and then the mana cluster, then all the materials and ores he selected for this forging, and while the items were fusing and reacting inside the furnace, Balin used the leaking heat and mana to fuse the 8 spacial vaults they got into 4 small rings and decorated them with some gems. When the four rings were done, Balin passed the rings to Leader then started chanting some spell and everything inside the furnace turned into a great ball then it started shrinking until it was only fist sized like the original Starheart, he then tossed the necklace that housed the stone into the furnace and it all turned into a black bead on a metallic string, after some thought he gestured at Leader to pass him the cart sized spirit stone and then tossed it too into the furnace, the bead that was black before turned glassy with black veins inside it. With a move of his hand Balin pulled the final product from the furnace. And started to scrutinize it while the furnace shut down and cooled with in moments, as if it did not just spew flames for the past 3 hours, the winged lizard made its way back to Yunan's neck where it burped and coiled itself into sleep. After a moment Balin announced his results by clearing his throat and saying with a very proud voice " Today, I master dwarf Balin. give you the first dragon forged item in the last 800 years and the first item made from a Starheart, a mana cluster and a spirit stone, and forged under dragon breath i name it the Spirit heart. It has the following effects : it can assist the growth of anyone by a maximum of 10 points per year in each attribute, it allows those who are near it to sense mana and gain insight into manipulating it, and with the proper training it will boost all mental and physical faculties of those in its area of effect, i am pleased to announce that thanks to the dragon breath the stone can support its effect of a total 3 years instead of the predicated two, congratulations"
-----update on the naming quest-----
The origin of the following names have been guessed correctly : Bai, Balin, Fae, Mary, Theresa, Lucian, Hephaestus.
The following names are up for grabs : Burkan, Adun, Dustan, Mark, Mar sara, Joey Ray, Leol, Reina, Damascus, Lili.
If there are any names i missed feel free to correct me in the comments. Enjoy the start of the new arc