Nick was aware of her fondness for him and admittedly also felt a little bit the same even if he tried quite hard to prevent such a thing. Getting attached when a foe like Zeus lurked around the corner was ill advised to say the least but some things were outside of ones ability to control. Ignoring the troublesome emotions he was developing Nick had chosen to start the goddess on the Celebrimbor style rather than the twilight style like Lucas because unlike his assistant she definitely had the control needed to safely pick up the art.-

Lucas instead was admittedly quite mediocre in terms of magical and crafting talent so if he was human Nick wouldn't even bother teaching the man as he would die of old age long before getting to an acceptable level. As a vampire however Lucas's talent could be made up for with sheer devotion over time to learning and improving as he no longer aged. This was why Lucas had been taught the basics all metal workers should know before being taught the twilight style so that his magical control could reach the level of learning the Celebrimbor style.-

Nicks system was a bit unfair in this regard as it directly ignored the prerequisites to learning a crafting style and gave him full understanding of the styles he obtained from it based on the creators will. Even then every style upon acquisition could be considered complete even if there was much room for improvement like in the twilight style. Nick hadn't forgotten that he still possessed a crafting style ticket that would let him gain a new crafting style if he wanted to but like when he first got it he wanted to reach a point with the twilight style that he ran out of ideas for improvements before he got a new style.-

Hephaestus was surprisingly frugal with her use of materials as she experimented with the new style she learned as she tended to recycle the materials after she completed a work even if Nick found the loss of the items painful to witness. The reason for that was simply because NOTHING she made was ever below mythical grade and she had even discovered that the Celebrimbor styles limit was legendary as no matter how complex she made the enchantments the power never went beyond tier five.-

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

She postulated that the growth type enchantments using the style might be the only exceptions to this rule however. Nick had not been surprised by this discovery as he had assumed that something of the sort was the case but he had been unable to verify it as tier five was his limit for power to begin with. The same was obviously not the case for Hephaestus since she was a tier seven existence and thus had a limit at or even above that level. The person who did take the discovery harshly however was Celebrimbor himself as the elf lord had always assumed that since he himself first learnt the basics of it from Sauron who was a Maia that the limit was at least at that level.-

Maia were basically gods however and also knew that the world was unable to handle such a level of power and thus limited the amount of power to ever appear on the world. Even the evil ones like Sauron and Morgoth limited their power massively when they walked the world. Considering this it was actually impressive enough that the style could even reach the transition point to divinity.-

Two days after teaching Hephaestus the style however Nick noticed something surprising , she had grown more powerful. It was a small increase but an increase none the less. "You have grown stronger in such a short period?" Nick stated in confusion after watching her craft a beautiful dagger with the Celebrimbor style that could directly kill even Dumbledore like he was an ant. The reason for this was because the enchantment was designed in such a way as to pierce all defensive magics below tier five and only meet resistance upon encountering flesh. Basically whoever had this dagger could stroll up to the old man and stab him in the heart without any issues at all regardless of what passive defenses the old man had on him.-

"Yes , after transitioning towards the divine the method to grow ones power has less to do with ones mana quantity but rather the quality instead. In the case of tier sevens like myself we improve our power by refining our domains with aspects of other domains , in this case the soul domain." she explained with a small smile. "I see , that would explain why none of you gods ever reached tier eight as you rarely interacted with other domains on purpose." Nick said and she nodded in agreement.