Guy and Karmin left for The Burning Forge's head office two days after their last meeting. Guy anticipated a long journey by road and had packed sufficient items to last him during the travel. However, contrary to his expectations, the journey from Radiant City to their destination lasted less than an hour.
"There's a teleportation ritual connecting your showroom to your head office!" Guy exclaimed as Karmin led him into a room concealed behind the back wall of the shop's storage.
Guy tended to forget just how big of a deal Karmin and his business was. The man was clearly loaded to be able to set up such an expensive ritual connecting his facilities together. In fact, transporting sentient beings was many times harder and costlier than inanimate objects.
No one really knows the exact mechanisms behind how these teleportation rituals work. If an object is to be moved from one point to another, once it is transported to its destination, does the object remain the same or is it a copy of the original. Are we essentially disintegrating the original, transporting it through obscure means to the destination, and reconstructing it again? Or are we creating an exact copy of the object at the destination and deleting the original?
In this case, what if the object was sentient and had a will? Would the reconstruction or the copy at the destination maintain the properties of the being at the origin?
Another school of thought surmises that it is space and time which is being affected while the object remains stationary. This would alleviate the concerns posed by the former theories since the sentient being isn't affected, just their environment. But this concept opens up another can of worms regarding the stability and safety of affecting the fabric of reality.
Many mages had pondered on this thought for years on end, and each of them had their unique interpretation on the topic. Which one was right? That didn't matter since their interpretations resonated with them and meshed with their cultivation in some way.
Nonetheless, the truth remained that setting up these teleportation rituals wasn't something any Tom, Dick or Harry could achieve. First off, the spell formation for this ritual was immensely intricate, and well beyond the limits of comprehension of any Foundation Establishment mage. Secondly, the act of teleportation itself was resource-heavy, in that it required a large amount of mana. So, anyone that wanted to use it would have to feed the ritual a lot of high-grade mana crystals.
"All of the company's branches are linked to the head office. Besides, this is a safer mode of transit as there are fewer eyes following us," Karmin nodded as he cleared up the ritual's space and placed the mana crystals in its vicinity.
Guy scrunched his eyes as he tried to follow the spell formation drawn on the platform in the centre of the room. He quickly realised his presumptuousness. Just because he had managed to simplify a bunch of Tier-1 and a few Tier-2 spells didn't mean that he could reach multiple levels beyond his capacity.
It was already established that spells and rituals were classified by tiers. Tier-1 spells were within the reach of Middle to Late stage Mana Condensation realm mages. Tier-2 to Tier-4 were within Foundation Establishment mages' capacity. The teleportation spell could be classified as a Tier-5 or Tier-6 spell depending on its mechanism.
"Alright! Ready?" Karmin asked while stepping onto the centre of the platform.
Guy snapped out of his trance and followed Karmin. Once the two were situated within the inner circle of the ritual, Karmin activated it by impressing a small drop of his mana on a token in his palm. Within seconds, the faded ritual on the floor lit up and a corporeal outline started to rise. Once the outline reached level with Guy's hips, it started to rotate with increasing velocity. From that point, as it ascended higher, Guy observed his surroundings change into a blur. Right as the outline passed over his head, the background settled into a completely different sight.
Guy struggled to maintain his composure after the teleportation ritual concluded. Compared to the space-warping type teleportation Al performed, this one felt much more unsettling. His head ached and his gut felt like it was about to burst. Guy stumbled slightly, and then lowered his body into a squat to stabilise himself.
"Teleportation sickness... You'll get used to it," Karmin commented and walked towards a table in this new room and poured a glass of water.
Guy took the glass and drank the fluid in large gulps.
It took him another minute to fully overcome the disorientation. But they couldn't afford to waste time so Guy shook it off as he followed Karmin through the hallways.
Even though they hadn't exited this new facility, Guy could already make out that it was probably a large and sprawling structure. The hallways were long and grand, with a lot of natural light entering through the wide windows. It followed a similar architectural style to Radiant City, with elegant marble pillars adorned with The Burning Forge's symbol at its base and tip.
Surprisingly, the facility was eerily quiet.
"There don't seem to be a lot of people here today," Guy probed carefully.
Karmin smiled ruefully and replied, "We're working with a barebones crew at the moment. The situation in the market is... less than satisfactory."
Guy nodded and followed Karmin in silence. He knew better than to poke a downed man. He recognised that The Burning Forge was like Karmin's baby, and he probably wasn't eager to see it meet a tragic end.
The duo travelled downwards from the teleportation room and arrived at a small yet highly functional workshop. It was more compact compared to the one Guy saw back at the shop. There was only one regular-sized forge, with a lot of tools and set-ups which were of much higher quality.
"This is my personal workspace!" Karmin declared as he opened up the windows and exhaust in the room, allowing natural light to flood in.
Karmin then directed Guy to a haphazard section of the room which opened up outside the building. In it, Guy saw a physical representation of the steelmaking set-up Karmin alluded to in his journal.
It stood out like a sore thumb amongst the more hi-tech units in his workshop, clearly indicating that it was most likely a relic of one of his old experimentations.
"We should probably get started, huh?" Karmin pointed out as he tossed over an apron and rolled up his sleeves.
____
Karmin had altered his original blast furnace following Guy's advice. It could now accommodate three bellows on its sides.
He first poured in a calculated amount of Ashen Coal, or coke, and ingots of iron. He had determined these ratios through his earlier trials in replicating Dwarven metal. However, he recognised that coke had a higher concentration of carbon and so he tweaked it accordingly.
After lighting the coal, he closed the blast furnace and allowed it to heat up. Through his intuition, Karmin could recognise the temperature inside the furnace simply by observing the colour. This ability had been cultivated over years of work in the forge.
Once he determined that the blast furnace had reached the temperature to melt iron, he gestured at Guy to assume his position next to one of the bellows.
The bellows operated through a marriage of gears. The user had to turn a wheel, and through commutation, the bellows would move up and down. Although this had greatly decreased the amount of physical effort required by the worker, it was still a strenuous task. Guy could persist longer due to his young age and superior endurance from his cultivation, however, Karmin could not.
And so, after half an hour of strenuous driving, Karmin slumped onto the ground while wheezing.
"I regret sending everyone home," He lamented through heavy breaths. He didn't want the information regarding his experimentation to leak out. After being backstabbed by someone he considered a close friend, Karmin was having a hard time trusting other people. And so he didn't want to take any risks.
"How is it inside?" He asked Guy. Usually, Karmin would operate an inspection artefact, which was a standard enchanted tool used by smiths and enchanters. Since |Inspect| was a basic cantrip, anyone could use it. However, mortals could at most cast it once every hour with their measly mana capacity. The inspection artefact leveraged a mana gem's ability to hold mana to cast the cantrip. Eventually, it became a common item in every craftsman's toolbox.
However, with a capable mage present, Karmin didn't feel like trudging over and fetching the tool.
Guy directed his cantrip into the blast furnace and inspected the molten alloy.
After half a minute, he pursed his lips and shook his head in dismay, "Not quite there yet. We still need to refine it further. The impurities haven't been fully separated."
Karmin groaned as he rolled over onto his stomach.
"This will take ages!" He exclaimed. "Is there any magic that can speed this up?" He asked in defeat.
When he heard that, Guy audibly slapped his face in embarrassment, 'Why didn't I think of that!'
"I might have a solution!" Guy answered while walking over to his satchel.