I woke up this morning to a notification I must have been too distracted to notice yesterday.
You have acquired the following skill:
[Soul Merge Magic (Lv. 1)]
Special magic only available to soulmates. Allows for easier, more powerful, and more flexible use of Tandem Magic using your soul connection as a focus.
This amazing skill lets me know that we shouldn't have been able to do what we did last night. Only because we have such a strong soul connection, for some reason. And it is very strong, making me feel really happy and fuzzy whenever Ciara is near me.
And speaking of her, we're going to start attempts at making her sword today, hopefully we don't need more than one day.
I did all my chores, helped mama with breakfast and lunch, then headed to the forge. Ciara was waiting for me outside and we walked in together. Mother Irina was already chatting with Mr. Darius about something.
"Good afternoon, Master Darius. Ciara and I will be in the forge starting on her sword. Let me know if you need me for anything, okay?" I waited a second, and turned to go when he nodded.
"Alright, so I have a special way of smelting mithryl, that apparently nobody has tried before, and I though that having you here to help with that would make the process more powerful and special. I assume you also got the [Soul Merge Magic] skill this morning or last night?" She nodded. "Alright, well, my idea was to use all of our aspects in tandem to smelt and refine the ore. I've done this on my own with just light or fire aspect mana. And it had some outstanding results. I figure I can create the most perfect metal I can currently find by doing what we did last night, but without a real idea. Just funneling mana into the metal in equal amounts until it melts. What do you think?"
"Sounds like an amazing idea. Did you think of it after we made this armor spell thing?" She looked at me with sparkling eyes.
"No, I actually had the idea right after we met. It just made sense to me. Even before we knew we were soulmates, I wanted this sword to be perfect, and I thought our aspects, being opposites, would make a great foundation for that." I walked over to the bin with the mithryl ore samples and grabbed a large one. "Now, this is going to take a good amount of mana from each of us to do, but I want to have some spare metal after we've finished your blade. I was thinking about making something matching for myself, not a weapon, but a tool. Depending on the properties it has after we finish, I was hoping on a smithing hammer of high quality."
"I would love that! Matching the tools of our trades is so cute. How about we start the process then? Is there anything you need to get ready?" She was excited at the prospect of matching, it was adorable.
"Nothing really. I just need to get the crucible ready." I moved it into place, and held the ore in both hands over it. "Just put your hands on the ore, and we'll get in sync like last night. Then we channel equal amounts of all our aspects into it until it melts, then the rest is up to me. Ready?"
She put her hands on the top of the ore, and we began syncing up. After we were there, we began letting our mana flow into the ore. There wasn't a lot of dark or water mana around. So we had to limit the amount of other mana we pushed in as well, slowing our progress quite a bit.
After around 15 or 20 minutes, the ore seemed to be fully saturated with our mana, and began to flow through my fingers into the crucible. Luckily, some of the water and dark mana inside it kept the temperature from being high enough to break my heat resistance.
It flowed into the crucible, and I began to sift out the impurities. We needed to add more mana every few minutes to keep it liquid, and once it seemed all the slag was removed, I poured it into a few ingot casts.
I chatted with her about our pasts and families while the metal was cooling. 'Since our levelling and stats are so similar, I was wondering. Are your Karma and Luck stats super high like mine? They're both 66 for me.'
'Yeah, that's what mine are too. Well, 67, but close enough. I wonder why that is?'
'There's no way to know, really. Bit of a shame really. Well, looks like the ingots have cooked enough to start shaping. Let's get to it!' I jumped up and walked over to the molds. Taking the ingots out, I noticed they had a peculiar rainbow sheen to them. They had no solid base color either, slowly shifting between the colors of the aspects in a cycle, though not quickly enough to notice unless you're paying attention to it.
I was awestruck. "They're beautiful. We made this together, and it's going to stay with us for a long time. I'm glad it's so unique, aren't you, Ciara?"
Stolen novel; please report.
"Yeah, and every time I draw my blade, I'll be thinking of you, and us together." She smiled brightly, and I couldn't help but to give her a quick hug and a small peck on the cheek.
"How are you so good at making me feel all bubbly like this? I don't ever want it to stop." There was a big smile on my face now, and she was blushing at me pretty hard. "Well, we'll have time for this later, bow I need to get testing. See what this version of mithryl can take, before going to forge it in a few days."
I began testing the ingot's strength, its malleability at various temperatures, and a few other things related to mana conduction. After that, it was about time for dinner, so Ciara went out with mother Irina while I went home alone.
It felt weird being apart now, even though I knew she was just a thought away. I didn't like being separated from her anymore, but I would do my best to keep that feeling in check. I knew she would be leaving town a lot on adventuring missions, so I had to make sure it wasn't too detrimental of a feeling. At most it seemed to make me a bit sluggish and a little more downcast than normal.
Mama noticed something was different at dinner. "What's the matter, sweetheart? You don't seem yourself tonight."
"I just feel wrong while Ciara's away. It's not a big deal, I'll do my best to get a handle on it soon. Thanks for worrying, Mama. I love you." I guess it made me a bit more emotional too, as I got up and hugged her tight.
"It's alright sweetie. I guess this soulmates thing had to have some kind of drawback, right? Well, at least it's not too terrible. I'll do my best to be there for you when she's not around, okay?." Mama kissed my forehead and stroked my hair, calming me down a bit before I had to go back to the forge.
"Thank you Mama. I think I'm feeling better now. I should probably go though, I shouldn't keep Mr. Darius waiting after all. I love you." I kissed her cheek, and started heading back to work.
It was time to start designing the blade I'd be making.
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I ironed out the full design for the sword, then got ready to go to the field to have a conversation with Trix and Ms. Jasmine. Hopefully, it would turn out okay, and we hadn't done anything that broke magic or something. I met up with Ciara on my way out of town, and we held hands all the way to the clearing. When Trix came into view, she looked over at us and shook her head.
"Is there a problem, Trix?" I was hoping it wasn't anything serious.
"No, just can't believe two ten year old's have a more successful romantic life than I do, that's all. A minor hit to my ego at worst." She was clearly a bit down now. "But that's beside the point, let's get to talking about what you two did last night. That was unbelievable to watch, and it seems that the area has mostly healed from it. It's good that you didn't permanently damage the forest here with that stunt, but I really want to know what you two did. The thing you made doesn't really look like a spell, it looks more like an artifact of some kind."
"Well, I'm certain it's not some item like that, because I didn't gain any exp. through the [Craftsman] Skill, and if it's as special as you're saying, I would have. It has to be a spell, just one that acts like an item." I hoped my logic was right, because not getting experience for the thing we made would be a huge bummer if it were something like armor.
"I suppose you have a point there. If it is a spell, what does it do?" Ms. Jasmine sided with me, my explanation must have been enough for her.
"Well, it was made for the sole purpose of keeping Ciara safe. Protecting her when I'm not around to do so. I wanted something that could shield her from harm, better than anything she currently has. And I personally think we succeeded. But we haven't tested it yet." I was very passionate about this, as it needed to keep her safe.
"We should get right on that then. How does it work?" Trix was eager to fling a few spells at Ciara it seemed.
"It's all connected to my mana and my mind. It does what I want it to, and protects where I need it to. It also seems to gradually absorb ambient mana to make itself stronger, or repair itself if it gets damaged. It does pretty much everything we wanted it to when we made it." Ciara explained the armor spell to them, showing it change color and move around. The thing that stayed around the same place the entire time was the nebula core that we made, in the center of her chest.
"That's incredible! Now to see how protective it actually is. Go stand over there with Jasmine, and I'll send progressively more powerful spells at you until one of them damages the armor. That way we know a bit of the limits of what it can take." Trix was too excited about throwing spells at my soulmate, and I was a bit grumpy about it.
"I'll be going over with her too, in case something goes wrong." I followed her over to the other side of the clearing, a bit grumpy at Trix's disregard for her total safely.
"We're ready over here.
Trix started firing spell after spell at Ciara's new armor spell, and it took a while before it even made a scratch. She was conjuring spells larger than any we'd really had to use yet, and it was barely doing anything to the armor. It was very encouraging.
"It seems like this armor of yours will be able to protect you from pretty much anything in this area, except the strongest beasts in the forests, or maybe something from the bottom of a dungeon. It's incredible, and if what you said is right, it will grow in strength with you. I believe you accomplished what you set out to, congratulations to you both." Ms. Jasmine was very happy for us, and I was especially relieved at the news that Ciara would be safe as long as she stayed away from the most dangerous of places around.
"Thank you both for testing this with us, it's great to know she'll be safe when I can't be with her. And we sure did make something incredible together." I gave Ciara a long hug, and felt the armor morph under her clothes, which I just realized were in tatters from the spells being used on her.
"Oh no. Uh, Ciara, it looks like we overlooked something important during the tests. Cover yourself with the armor please, and stay here while I go find some new clothes for you." I was blushing, and trying my best not to look at all the newly exposed skin.
"What? Oh. Oh that's not good. At least I was wearing one of my older outfits, and not one of the matching ones today. That would have been heartbreaking. I trust you to find something nice, though you don't know where Mom and I are staying while in town." Ciara gave me detailed directions to their inn, and I rushed off to get her a change of clothes.