The party soon came to an end and Fred went back to his chambers, the next morning, after breakfast he visited his paternal grandfather, they discussed Fred’s trip to the planar world, apparently, Edmund had already planned for him to enter within a month, Fred thought it was too fast, and he had plenty to do, but that was when the next expedition was going,

When he returned to his chambers, he realised he would need to reorganise his equipment, he spent the following month working on a new suit of armour, he had been learning enchantments and was ready to put them to the test, but first, he needed to create a power core,

He visited the market with George, he wanted to look into the monster cores, that he had heard so much about, there was a famous shop in the high street that sold them and that was his destination when he arrived the shop was half full of customers,

“What type of core are you looking for Fred?” George asked,

“Two cores to be exact, a metal core, and a lightning core,” Fred responded.

“Ah, they would be over here then,” George took him to one of the corners, where a glass display had a variety of cores, Fred could feel the mana radiating off of them, “Many of them come from the Planar world, most of the magical beasts here have been hunted or fled,”

“I see,” Fred was looking at one, in particular, it was a lightning core, and was flashing in a weird way, he placed one hand in his pocket, where a lightning Crystal was and activated his mana vision, he could see lines and lines of data flood his head, which overwhelmed him a bit, and he had to stop, he heard a laugh as he was massaging his temples,

“Seen too much,” a pot-bellied man came over, “what you were looking at was a lightning elemental phantom core, elemental phantoms are a special breed, their bodies are manifested by the core, a bit dangerous these creatures, if it wasn’t for those clamps around it, we would be fighting it right now,”

“I see, and you are,” Fred asked,

“Haha, I am a salesclerk of this show, I would be happy to help you,” the man said,

“Why are they cheaper than the rest?” Fred asked, looking at the price of the slate board,

“They are too hard to work with, only top enchanters work with them, and that’s when they are bored, their cores are very complicated structures, where a normal monster core would only be responsible for collecting mana and distributing mana, this core has to form the monster, and control it,” the clerk said.

“I’ll take five of them,” Fred said, “And do you have a metal variant,”

“Five, of course,” the shopkeeper was confused, maybe the kid had an ego after hearing only top enchanters work on them, “and yes, we do have the metal variants,”

“I’ll have five of those as well please,” Fred asked.

___

Fred returned to his chamber with his loot, he also picked up some common cores of lightning and metal elements as well,

He had seen something familiar when he used his mana vision on them, he took out one that looked the weakest, and placed it on the table in front of him, picking up his two metal probes and placing a lightning crystal in his mouth, he began to examine them.

At first, he was being overwhelmed by the flood of information, but he managed to force his mind to clear, it was like a three-dimensional structure of runes and glyphs in there, however, from what he saw from his study of these, they were close to logic gates and sorts, if he could map out these then who knows what he could achieve.

Fred then looked at a normal core, this was much simpler, he could understand the energy input circle and energy output circle, the circles, or magic circles, were the name given to a script of runes and glyphs,

With that experiment over, he began designing his suit of armour, with his lightning Esper, he was able to punch out parts relatively fast, he started off with an exoskeleton, he went off a model he was used to, back on his old world,

However, in place of motors and pneumatic pistons, he was using runes in the joints, this allowed him to add a boost to torque and/or speed, this was the hardest parts, as he had to write the magic circles in a way that was easily changeable between torque and speed,

This took 2 and a half weeks to complete, the only thing that was left was adding plate armour over the exoskeleton, he used a technique to layer the metals over each other, before the party he had experimented with overlapping the plats of the elemental irons over each other, it wasn’t perfect, but could allow very cool effects,

Most of his armour was a tungsten underlayer, with a high-grade steel middle layer and lightning iron overlaying that, this was used for most of his armour, however, his gauntlets were different, he made an alloy of fire iron and lightning iron, to use as the top layer, and wrapped it around a steel gauntlet.

He had found that using more than two elemental irons together cancelled out much of their effects, even just two together proved difficult, and would have to be matched with normal Iron to prevent energy conflicts.

but it was a time inducive process, and Fred was worried he wouldn’t have time to complete it, so he made another copy of pure high-grade steel, each piece of armour was modular, and therefore interchangeable when he completed his more advanced alloys.

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It would have been better with a blast furnace, but unfortunately, that wasn’t an option, so he had to do most of it via hand, or makeshift ovens that probably would have to be scrapped after this, as well, burning through 100s of mana crystals a day, luckily, they were cheap, otherwise, he would be in a difficult spot,

The problem, for now, was the weapons, he had to settle for a few enchanted ones from the market, the bastard sword had a sharped enchantment and a quickening enchantment, he also brought a short sword as a sidearm, and two pick-hammers, the pick-hammers didn’t have enchantments on them, but the short sword had a quickening effect and was made using lightning iron,

When he looked over the enchantment effects, he noticed the sharpening enchantment was an applied force on molecular structures to separate, while the quickening enchantment increased the velocity of the sword swing in a given direction, this meant that although his attacks would be faster, his control would lessen, and he would be more prone to over-committing with his attacks,

___

Harold and his friends were hanging in the lough where they were staying when one of his cronies came rushing in, “Harold, Harold, I have heard rumours about Fred,”

“What is it?” Harold asked, his mood instantly darkening by the mention of his brother,

“Fred is going to the planar world with us come February,” the crony said.

“What!?” Harold was visibly angry, this was a great opportunity, and Harold wanted to use it to get ahead of Fred, but if Fred is going as well, then, Harold would struggle to stay ahead,

“This could be a good opportunity, the planar is a dangerous place after all.” One of his other friends commented,

“What do you mean?” Harold wasn’t thinking straight from anger, “Wait, yes, you are right, the planar is a very dangerous place, maybe too dangerous for my little brother, we better keep an eye on him over there, for his ‘safety’,” Harold laughed, with the rest of the cronies following suit.

___

“Father, why are you having Yasmin marry that boy, she deserves better than him, to have a princess marry a bastard who lives in the backwaters of Albion this is an insult to her and us,”

“Francis, the crown is losing its power, you have seen the state of this kingdom, do you think the dukes dared to run amok just because I was absent, do you know what the consequences would have been if I had the power to enforce them, every duchy is making little kingdoms that are outside our reach, and we almost lost Albion over this fiasco as well,” the king sighed,

“What’s so great about Albion, it’s just a backwater land.”

“You only see it as a backwater place because it hasn’t been developed much, the kingdom is running out of resources, and is becoming more financially dependent on the planar gates, planar gates that can be relocated, and that boy can tap into resources on a larger scale, reports state that 2 years ago, 10% of the duchies grains were imported from Poilutonne,” the king ranted.

Frances was shocked, before, the towns of Albion imported most of their foods “Still, although he has increased his Iron output, he would sooner or later run into the same problem we are facing, with the mines flooded.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that, my spymaster has informed me that he has a way around that problem, if his methods are brought to the duchies lands, we could see a surge of Iron production from them,” the king iterated.

“So, you want Yasmin to spy on him, is that it,” Francis was angry, although their children were commonly used for political marriages, they still expected the marriage to gain some prestige for their children, and not be reduced to mere spies.

“No, preferably, I would want Fred to share his technology with his extended family, but more importantly this subrace is very important to us,” the king explained.

___

It was the day of departure, Fred had equipped his steel armour, and weapons, the elemental armour pieces in his luggage, with spare ingots for repairs,

He was brought to the main bailey of the castle, where he met a few familiar individuals, Jackson, Ronald, as well as Harold, most of the people there had fancy looking enchanted armour, most following a very prominent style, Fred’s on the other hand, was completely different, it was more streamlined and practical, whereas a lot of the armour worn by others had a lot of decorative designs.

Furthermore, Fred’s enchantments were covered by the armour plating, on the exoskeleton, he didn’t have time to etch them onto the plates themselves. So, most people believed he couldn’t afford enchanted armour,

Fred moved over to Jackson and Percy, “How come you suddenly have enchanted armour, you didn’t have it back on Albion?”

“Enchanted armour is expensive, we brought it with the reward money from the war, plus, Albion is weak in mana, so enchantments become more expensive to compensate,” Jackson explained.

“Why aren’t you wearing any enchanted armour, you should be rich, and where did that design come from?” Jackson asked,

“It is enchanted, well parts of it are, although it’s on the inside of the armour, I have better pieces in process in my luggage that I will enchant when I get to the base fort on the other side,” Fred responded.

“You can enchant, that’s impressive, and wait, you have pieces in process, what does that mean?” Ronald asked.

“Well, I am currently overlapping elemental iron sheets over each other, but the process is taking a very long time,” Fred explained.

Ronald was going to continue but was stopped when Duke de Ansul came to the stage, it was a wooded popup stage placed in front of the castle door,

“Ladies and Gentlemen, you are gathered here today to participate in a planar excursion, where you will find rewards and opportunities beyond your wildest imagination, but you are not the only one seeking these opportunities, this is not our personal playground, this is a vast world with both it’s own native inhabitants as well as other invaders, invaders who may come from other duchies, other empires, other races or even other worlds to our own,” Duke Ansul iterated,

“Any treasure you come across may be contested by any man or monster, including your own companions, these treasures are tempting enough to cause battles and wars across the landscape, let alone, a jealous companion, I can only advise you to stay vigilant at all times when you are there,” Duke Ansul finished his speech,

after which he led the people down to a gate tower next to the castle, that opened up to a stone staircase leading down, Fred must have walked 40 meters down by the time he reached the bottom, where another heavy door stood, with 2 guards either side.

When they saw the duke and got confirmation from him, they knocked on the door, Fred heard something like heavy locks being moved, them the doors were opened from the inside.

Inside, Fred got a good look at what seemed to be some sort of stone altar, there were engravings of a magic circle in the middle filled with gold, and it was surrounded by eight square pillars, each with a face, facing in, all containing golden glyphs and runes as well, at the other side of the altar was a podium where the duke went to,

Eight hooded figures came out of the shadows of the room and walked to the pillars outside of the altar,

“Are you ready?” the duke asked.