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Chapter 495

The next three hours vanished in a flash as he contemplated the air before him, trying to force the Dao around him to let him see into the inner workings of the cosmos. The Dao itself had no shape or size. It could be as big as Existence itself, or as small as nothing. There was no obstacle to his perception save for his power. A Dao Seed should grant him more than enough to achieve his goal.

Eventually, he managed to glimpse the atoms dancing in the air before him for the briefest of moments. It was gone before he could even blink, but his E Rank mind sealed it in time forever. It was a strangely magical experience, to see the things that made up everything he had ever seen, felt or loved within his life. All that, from a collection of tiny specks orbited by striated clouds of electrons. There was no color, simply raw energy bound into tiny capsules of electromagnetism and nuclear forces.

Sam closed his eyes and studied the mental image, flitting around it. He could analyze the atoms’ elemental nature easily enough from how many protons and neutrons they had. He had not exactly been the most science obsessed of students, but he had given it his due diligence, and knew most of the elements. The fact that his superior mental facilities allowed him to conjure up that one picture of the periodic table from his fourth grade classroom helped.

For steel, he needed to find carbon atoms. Unlike the Dao, atoms were not evenly distributed. More annoyingly, the one thing that could have produced carbon easily, namely him, was no longer human. With no lungs to cycle the air into oxygen and carbon dioxide, there was no way to form it.

Sighing, Sam kneaded his forehead with his fingers. He was back to step one. Sure, he could easily finish the challenge without making steel, but it was something that he had set his mind on. He would be damned if he did not finish.

Then he remembered the impurities he had cycled out of the iron, and smiled. Perhaps that was what he needed. He raced over to the few particles still visible on the ground and leaned down, using his new technique on them. It flickered and almost failed, but he managed another snapshot.

To his joy, there were a sizable number of carbon atoms there, unassuming in their appearance, but beautiful in their utility. Sam teleported over to the chute, and began tugging at the lever for all he was worth, triggering a cascade of iron.Then he created a box of Dao energy at the bottom, gathering about three tons of metal. That was more than enough to get started.

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The opening to the forge was a lot larger than Sam had seen a use for up until now, and its interior space was large enough to fit a large room into. He carried the box of Dao energy over with his will and slid it into the forge. The metal started to heat up, and he sat back, watching as the forge did its work.

A tendril of Dao energy snaked out and began to pump the bellows. If nothing else, this little expedition would help him gain greater mastery over his energy usage. He closed his eyes and started to meditate, knowing that melting down all of that metal would take hours at the very least.

Images of his most recent battle spiraled through his mind, and he picked insights off of them like ripe fruit from a tree. With his new class, Dao comprehension had reached a new level of ease. It was like the universe itself simply reached down and handed him all of the ideals and epiphanies that he needed. The only thing stopping him from ascending into godhood in a matter of moments was how long Dao cultivation took anyway. The Seed stage was one that took decades, or even centuries to leave, as it was intended for E Rankers. Who knew what would happen in the next stage?

The metal eventually melted down into a bubbling pool of liquid iron, ready for Sam to use. He closed his eyes and began passing a molecular sized net of Dao energy through the substance, pulling out the impurities. From this much metal, he was able to leach out a few pounds of the stuff, and he soon had a pile of greyish dust before him. Within it was the carbon he wanted.

The only thing now was to separate the carbon from the rest of the impurities, which was his hardest task yet. Eventually, he settled on creating a net that was just large enough to let carbon pass through, but quickly scrapped that idea after realizing that the substance wasn’t in molecular form. Rather, it was in the form of tiny specks of graphite.

“Damn it,” he whispered to himself. Perhaps he had overstepped here. Most people would hardly care about such things, as they would simply use the higher Tier metals, having already passed through the Novice stage long ago. For Sam, he needed the practice.

Then he remembered something else from his elemental school science classes, deep in the recesses of his memory. Carbon had a naturally high vaporization point, and it took thousands of degrees to even melt it. Sure, it would burn easily enough, but it only produced more of the same. If he kept it within a smaller container, he could filter out the carbon for what he needed.

This was becoming more enjoyable the further he went. Sam found himself annoyed for not delving into his profession more over the last few months. If he had known that it was this easy to further his mastery, he could have already done so.