The only question that kept flashing inside her mind was that if this was the secret William mentioned before or he still had more to astonish her.
Soon she got the answer.
William worked diligently like this for an entire hour. After exhausting most of the Homos clay, he finally managed to cover up the seven kilos of the scarlet vibrant ores.
"One task is done, more to come," as he placed aside the last batch of handled ores, he muttered to himself before stretching out his body.
Despite raising his spirit power to thirty-five points, he still was considered weak. In the next task, he had to use the hammer in forging, and he had to do it in a tedious way.
But that didn't stop him. As William picked the hammer here, he found it slightly heavy. The hammer wasn't made of any special alloy, but its weight was at least more than five kilos.
Raising it with one hand made him feel a little strain over his muscles. But he had to not only hold it with one hand, but he needed to keep moving it for a long time.
"Need a hand here?" At this point, Ellina's earlier impression about William changed drastically for the better. Just the show he put earlier was enough to consider him a forging genius.
Her past harsh attitude vanished and was replaced with a gentler one. Besides, she wanted to know more about him. So, helping him here was the best way to get what she wanted later on.
"No need, but thanks," William simply refused before taking one normal vibrant ore from the three kilos stash and took a deep breath.
"Careful with that," Ellina shouted in fear. If she was previously saying such a warning out of her kind and pure soul, she was now honestly and sincerely concerned about William's safety.
If something wrong happened to him, she would lose a genius forging disciple. She wouldn't allow this to happen.
Instantly she gushed out spirit power outside her body, preparing herself to intervene with all her might if things went wrong.
Thick pure golden energy appeared enveloping her body, giving her a holy appearance. William just gave her a mere glance, feeling surprised that she was a gold grade spirit master, so close to becoming a dark gold spirit master.
One had to know most of the forging spirit masters were at silver grade. Gold and above ranks were considered experts in this world. He knew she was a strong master before, but he never expected her to be this strong.
Spirit masters learning other professions like forging and alchemy had to spend a lot of time on these professions. That meant they would pay less attention and pour less effort in raising their spirit power.
So, if silver spirit masters were considered common, in such a secondary profession world, they were considered elites.
Ellina expected the ore in William's hands to explode. After all, from his stance, she knew he was trying to forge it directly using the hammer and his spirit power.
If he didn't use the hammer and instead threw the ore inside the fire, even if it was inside that melting pot, then this would cause the berserk energy inside that little piece of ore to violently explode.
But what William did next didn't only startle her, but it even made her freeze out of pure shock!
*Clang!*
William didn't intend to do such a suicidal act as she expected. Standing in his place, he simply threw the ore high in the air as if he was playing with a ball or something, before starting to rotate himself while holding the hammer.
The hammer was heavy, so he simply raised it horizontally and let its weight drive his body in rotation. He exerted little strength at first to start the rotation, but later on his body was literally dragged by the hammer.
In a span of a few seconds, his speed escalated to a terrifying degree, even creating images while rotating.
The piece of ore he threw high lost its driving force and started to free fall. Just when it reached the level of his hammer, William acted.
He simply let the hammer hit the ore. Under normal circumstances, the ore wouldn't sustain the heavy force of the hammer and would either crash and explode or be thrown far away and explode.
But neither happened! The moment the hammer touched the ore, William delicately adjusted the hammer to slide over one of its surfaces and not directly smash into it.
As the hammer glided over the ore, it continued to rotate afterwards like nothing happened. In return, it lost little of its driving force, something William easily countered by exerting little force during the next rotation.
But the astonishing part wasn't in that subtle, yet complicated move, but in what happened to the ore itself. Logically speaking, even if William managed to avoid clashing directly with the ore, the ore piece would drop to the ground under gravity.
However, under the watchful shocking gazes of Ellina, the ore stood in its place motionless as if it was held by an invisible hand.
And just in a blink of an eye, the hammer completed one circle and returned to hit the ore again… again… and again for continuous five minutes.
"What is he trying to do?!!" Elline could now swear that the skills William showed weren't simple! She totally believed what he said earlier. And seeing such weird skills that she never saw or heard about before made her quite sure that he had some sort of a mysterious master behind his back.
But soon enough she knew the answer to her puzzlement about William's actions. As the hammer kept slamming in such a genius way at the ore, the size of the ore started to get smaller.
One piece of ore was in the size of a closed fist. But after five minutes of continuous hammering and tapering, it became the size of a finger, even looking like one of the thin fingers of William.
"Phew," at this point, William suddenly stopped and couldn't help but rotate a couple of times freely as he deliberately controlled the speed of his body and forced the hammer to gradually stop. But he was drenched in sweat, panting heavily in racing breaths, while his face looked slightly pale.
*Thud!*
As the hitting force vanished, that final piece of ore finally lost its invisible force holding it midair and fell on the ground in a muffled voice under the petrified gazes of Ellina.