"I can't believe we got out of dueling, I hate that class." One student remarked as we left class
"Yeah, did you see that hermit beat Ward? Wimpiest fight ever." his companion laughed.
'It's like they don't know that I'm here. Assholes.'
'They know you're here, it's just that they aren't scared of you. I think it's better for you to finish your armor than listen to these little shits.'
'I think that's the problem, I've spent so much time in my work ignoring them that they don't know me, and we both know that most people are afraid of the unknown.'
'So what? What are you going to do? Slap one and assert your dominance?'
'That might actually be a good idea, just without the violence. Watch this.'
I walked up to the pair of gossipers with Boel, Denny, and Orin behind me.
"What did you say about the hermit?" I kept my most unintimidating face on while making Denny and Boel's faces look like they came straight out of a horror film.
"I said he's a wimp!" One of them said I can't remember who.
"If I'm a wimp what does that make you? A worm?" I made eye contact and tried to recreate the feeling I induced with Justin.
It worked to great success.
"What do you mean worm? You're a superior spirit holder and you had trouble against a lesser spirit!" he said with shakey hands.
"Well, you seem to be quite scared of me." I brushed past them as to not cause too much trauma, after all, I was using an unknown phenomenon to scare them.
'My hypothesis is this strange effect, let's call it Dominance, is caused by my higher stage. All of the people I've used it on are on a lower stage than me.'
'I'd agree, we need to study it, I'll add it onto the list, right after making an engine and building a weapon.'
'I'm ready to start on the armor, lets go.'
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"Alright, now I need to do a lot of scribing for the enchantments, but after that, I can't have anyone in the room, I'm going to need to do some stuff that you're not allowed to see."
"I got it, so I'll just finish the heat proofing and Laura will continue heating the forge?" Devin asked.
"Yeah, but Laura, you should go find Yomo, he can help you."
"But he's an ice mage, what can he do?"
"No, no, he's not just an ice mage, you will see," I smirked.
"Okay? I'll go get him." She opened a portal to the common room.
"Hmm, I forgot to ask her what she named that." I said, "Well anyway, I'll be in the study."
I shut the door and spent twenty or so minutes scribing using a combination of the speakwrite and intuitive manipulation. Then I heard her.
"What in the flying FUCK?!"
I opened the door thinking that something went wrong, but then I saw Yomo heating the forge and remembered what I sent Laura to do.
"Oh yeah, I taught him that. You wanna know how to do cold?"
"Yeah! Obviously! If I don't have to worry about overheating in training, I could be the greatest fire mage of all time!"
"Alright, we can deal with that after the forging, you would get caught up in practice if you started now."
She gave me the death stare. "Fine."
'It is NOT fine! She is planning her revenge as we speak!' Spirit had seen this before.
"Ok, I'm going to go finish scribing."
I spent forty minutes after that scribing down the enchantments, and when I finished, I went out to the workshop and shooed everyone out. Dad apparently had a technique for enchanting items that I wasn't allowed to share with anyone.
I swept the dust off of the hidden runes I had in my forge, and with a wave of my hand, the forge and the runes roared to life, making the liquid and the ingot float into the middle of the white-hot flame.
Despite my nature as a superior core user, this process required me to ask the gods.
"I beseech the God of Order, Master of The Forge, please bless these vessels of your will!"
With that, the white flames ran through a series of colors, red, blue, yellow, green, brown, black, and finally white again. Then it was my turn to work the metal in a trial by the gods. I took a mundane hammer and started to work the near-fluid into a shape, I had to be fast because the nature of my material meant that it wouldn't stay put, every part I hammered into shape started to lose its structure in seconds. To top it all off, the entire process was taxing, almost making me finish the second stage with the amount of Eneru I expended. In the end, the spirit papers all surrounded the piece and disintegrated.+
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"Fourteen hours!" Laura shouted, "He's been in there for FOURTEEN HOURS!"
"I know, and I knew when you said thirteen hours and twelve hours, he said not to open the door no matter what, and that it was so important he'd rather that he'd died than go in." Devin wanted to go to bed.
"I know, but I'd rather he weren't dead. I'm going to check on him."
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She kicked down the door through the makeshift ward I put up with ease. However, when she got on the other side, all she could see was me on the ground, hugging a set of armor in my sleep.
I rubbed my eyes as I woke up. I put the armor on with a thought and stood up.
"Laura? What are you doing here?"
"You were ASLEEP?"
"Yes, I couldn't move at all when I finished the process so I took a nap to regain the strength to leave," I remembered a thing. "What did you name your glove anyway?"
Laura looked like she was going to pop a vein.