Tri-Peak had been a city that was rebuilt from ruins meaning it's outline was inherited from it's previous owners. Felix didn't know who the previous residents of Tri-Peak were, and he certainly didn't think that they were incapable of planning a city well. On the other hand, he expected that the city had grown in a more natural way, from a few residents among a few buildings to eventually growing into a city. That meant that the layout was not ideal, at least for Felix and the residents of Tri-Peak. It was totally possible it's previous residents enjoyed and prospered living amongst it's layout but it definitely wasn't ideal for the residents of Tri-Peak.

Atalus, was designed from the ground up and had the unique advantage of being able to place down a large number of buildings all at once. Noah had also designed it to be expandable. The city was split up into modular subsections that could contain entire industrial, commercial and residential districts within them. In future, they could simply add on a small section or district. For now though, the city consisted of a single main section and Felix walked through it's commercial district. The buildings were mostly finished with construction and there were decorations going up here and there. The goods themselves were still a work in progress for the most part. Restaurants were operational but storefronts with furniture, equipment and general goods were almost entirely empty at this point.

Felix bought some spiced meat but not much. Walking through the town he had realized he wasn't overly hungry. He thought back and realized he hadn't really eaten at all for almost a month or more. He managed to pinpoint when it happened and realized that using mana to create energy must have resulted in his not needing to eat much, if at all anymore. He knew it meant he didn't need to sleep, he had noticed that almost immediately, but he didn't even realize he wasn't eating. Before that, he had just eaten when he was hungry so afterwards he simply didn't get hungry anymore.

He unfortunately didn't really find anything for his familiar to eat as most of those shops weren't open yet. He also didn't find anything else of value or interest so he simply headed back to Henry's forge once it was time. It wasn't a complete waste though, Felix enjoyed walking around a little and getting a feel for the city, exploring the shops.

Back at Henry's forge, Felix opened the door without knocking and walked into the back room. The forge in the main chamber was cooling down and the anvil was still hot but the room was empty. In the back room though, there was a drill head similar in appearance to the ones Felix had eaten through. Instead of a shiny chrome though, it looked like it was made out of a dull dark red rock. The cannon was completely gone, melted down Felix suspected, and Henry was looking over the design Felix had drawn out as well as the mana battery blueprint next to it.

"All done?"

Henry jumped a little and turned his head, registered Felix, then returned to scouring over the plans, "Yeah, stuff's a real pain in the arse to deal with, but it's the strongest stuff we've got. If that can't drill through whatever your trying to drill through, then we might not be able to at all."

"Thanks, I appreciate it. I'll let you know how it goes and deliver some of whatever it is if it works."

Henry just nodded.

I feel guilty leaving the sprite with him now that it ate his c-

"You can leave the sprite here too. I was just surprised it could move earlier. Now that I think about it though, it ate through the hardest material I've ever encountered. I kind of want to see what else it can chew through." Henry interrupted Felix's thoughts.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, you can't exactly carry a stone around with you while you mine. Don't worry about it."

"Thanks, I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Sure."

Felix placed his sprite on the ground and flew off to the south west, back to the treasure under the sea. After the many hour long flight, he dove down and cleared out the sea creatures that had tried to move in and managed to find where he was drilling before. He quickly swapped the new head onto the handle and inscribed the spell onto it's base. He had forgotten to do so earlier, but luckily the depths of the sea didn't seem to hinder his ability to do so now whatsoever.

With all the preparations complete, Felix pushed the tip of the drill against the impenetrable material and pushed mana into the spell. The drill head began accelerating and he pushed into the stone with a little help from a simple force spell. While the drill head didn't seem to be damaged at all, neither did the material he was trying to drill through.

Any ideas?

Actually yes. You know how you enchanted the heads and armor to be hard and durable?

Huh, I know what you're getting at. I have no idea if that would work. The only issue is drilling would likely damage the enchantment… Actually, I know exactly what to do, thanks.

In the past, while experimenting with enchantments, Felix had noticed that enchantments were potentially be replicated with spells. An enchantment, or some of them, were essentially just programmed and channeled spells. They had an effect that activated either always or based on a condition. For durability enchantments that was imbuing and enhancing the forces that already existed within a material.

A normal enchantment inscribed on a material would eventually degrade and become ineffective. The way to get around this was to inlay a mana conductive material in the shape of the enchantment and that would last an indefinite amount of time. On the other end of the spectrum, simply replicating the enchantment as a spell would make the enchantment very temporary. That's what Felix planned on doing, he designed an enchantment that would have the opposite effects of a durability enchantment and cast it as a spell.

He played around with the ratios of hardness, elasticity and flexibility but he couldn't seem to find any ratio that made a difference. He had no indication that any ratio was better than any other, but he suspected any ratio would work somewhat, given enough mana. Felix began pouring buckets and buckets of mana into the spell at a 1 to 1 to 1 ratio just to see if it had any effect. Around a few thousand mana, his drill head managed to find purchase. From there, he began playing with the ratios until he found the perfect ratio for the material, which turned out to be 100% reducing it's hardness. Using any amount of mana to reduce it's elasticity or flexibility did nothing no matter how much he used, at least all the way up to 100,000 mana.

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Once he found the ratio, he pumped mana into reducing the materials hardness and began to drill a hole as deep as he could. Once his drill was about half a meter deep, he pulled out and began enchanting about a square meter of the wall with the hole he drilled at the top left. Then he drilled into the other three corners. His enchantment was just intended to loosen the rock layer that was on top of his goal. After he drilled holes into all four corners, he began blasting the surface of the wall he had enchanted with Force Bombs. The layer of rock a few inches thick covering the surface of the material began to crumble and fall off the wall revealing what he had so much trouble drilling into. He couldn't really see it though as it was dark and even with a mage light, the water distorted it. It simply looked like a metal, but Felix couldn't be sure until he brought some out of the water. He had the extra filings from his drill, but he intended on getting as much as he could before ascending.

The last thing he needed to do was to enchant the surface of the material between the four holes to reduce it's hardness as much as he could. Then he placed his bombs into the holes and set them all to explode at the same time. He swam back as far as he could and covered his ears. He turned around after the explosion, but the wall was almost identical to how he had left it. Felix was frustrated now so he decided to just go all out on the wall. He drilled holes just a few fingers apart along each side and placed bombs in each hole. He had drilled 37 holes and placed 37 bombs this time, with one at the center just for good measure. This time he moved much further back and covered his ears.

This time, he wasn't sure if it worked, but it shattered his ear drums even with his hands over his ears. He swam back over and had to race downwards to catch a slab of whatever the material was that he had blown out of the wall. It was almost a perfect square with a hole in the center, a perfectly flat side and a rough cratered opposite side. He lifted the insanely heavy material, even under water, up to the surface slowly. He used a bubble of air from his inventory to help, which was the only way he managed to move it so far. Back on the surface, he saw the material was a shiny metal with a blue luster to it.

[D - Epic] Starmetal

A large amount of Starmetal mined out of the remnants of a meteorite.

Looks like you were right.

Huh, I'm curious what the hell is up with this metal.

Yeah, me too. I suspect the sprite will appreciate it. I think I'll also make a weapon of some kind with it.

A sword?

I was thinking a staff.

That definitely fits your class better, what would it do though?

Nothing? Just a quarterstaff for now, then if I can find something for it to do I can worry about that later.

Why that over a sword?

Seems better for defense and that's what I lack most, I think. I can also then enchant it to do all kinds of things like swing harder and or absorb force. Also I kind of just like the idea of a staff better. I still want to learn how to fight with a sword because it seems fun and it will also help against enemies that wield swords. Right now though, the idea of a quarterstaff appeals to me greatly.

Felix stowed the chunk of material, which he wasn't initially sure would be possible given how big the chunk was, and flew back to Henry's forge. He walked in without knocking again and found Henry feeding pieces of scrap metal to his familiar. Felix walked right up next to him before Henry noticed him.

"You get it?"

"Yeah. I see you two are bonding?"

"I thought about what you said and started making a bunch of different alloys and feeding them. It's been fun, seeing how different they need to be to be considered new and just playing with alloys."

"That's good. Turns out the metal was exactly what I thought it was, it's called Starmetal."

"You managed to get some out? How much did you get?"

Felix stepped back and made sure there was a cleared area of the floor about a meter to each side and placed the Starmetal from his inventory in front of him. It fell to the ground with a loud thunk and an odd lack of reverberation through the metal.

"Holy shit. That's a lot more than I expected you to get."

"Honestly, same."

"So what do you want to do with it?"

"I think we feed a quarter to my familiar, another quarter I'll keep and get you to forge me something. You can keep the other half and do whatever you want with it. How's that sound?"

"Sounds good to me. What do you want me to forge your quarter into?"

"A quarterstaff."

Henry shrugged, "That won't take nearly all of this, want me to just give you the rest to hold onto?"

"Sure, then if I decide to turn it into an actual staff later I can do that."

"Let me go get something hot to cut through it."

"I have a sword here we can use." Felix pulled the longsword he had enchanted to heat up without melting out of his inventory, "Let me do it. I'm going to have to cast a spell on it to make it workable anyways."

Felix took the sword and lined it up to cut out a quarter of the Starmetal chunk then began manually casting an enchantment to remove hardness from the metal. The sword heated up and very slowly began to sink into the metal. Instead of melting and seeping around the blade though, the Starmetal simply split into two pieces. It looked more like Felix was cutting a cake then melting through a chunk of metal. He stopped about halfway through and had Henry hold the chunk standing vertically then he continued all the way through with his sword. He cut off two quarters then stowed the blade. Overall it had cost him almost half his mana pool just enchanting the metal to be workable, he had no idea how Henry would be able to use it at all.

Felix picked up one of the quarters and carried it over to his sprite. He placed the chunk of star metal down on the ground, far from the rest so the sprite didn't accidentally eat it too. Then he picked up his sprite from the table and placed it on top of the large chunk, almost cube, of Starmetal.

"That seems a little big for it, doesn't it?"

"Remember the cannon?"

"Yeah b-"

They looked over and the Starmetal was completely gone. Felix looked at Henry and shrugged, "For the rest of it, you're going to need to learn some spells to make it workable. Can you make a wand out of some scrap metal? Make it out of something that resists heat."

"Uh sure… What for?"

"I'm going to inscribe the spell I'm using so you can actually work with the metal. You'll need to channel mana through the wand into the metal anytime you want to actually do anything with it."

Henry quickly melted down some scrap metal and poured it into a vaguely wand shaped mold. He did some simple finishing to remove the sharp edges and imperfections but didn't bother to polish it or anything like that. He handed it to Felix, "How long do you want the staff? I'll work on the mold while you inscribe this."

"Uh, not sure. How about 3 meters then I can shorten it from there if I need to."

"Anything else? This is going to just be a big long stick basically."

"That's fine, thanks."

Henry nodded and began working on the mold while Felix inscribed a spell to decrease the hardness of a material. He made the target of the spell very small so that Henry would have enough mana to do anything and also made it so that more mana caused the spell to spread out a little. When Henry's pool increased in size, he could channel more mana and it would spread over the material a little easier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .