A small furnace had been installed in the yard of the Winslet mansion.
A smelting furnace for melting Wisterium.
Since it was magically operated, the furnace didn’t need to be large, nor did it require any fuel or complex structure beyond mana.
As such, it looked more like a cooking stove than an actual furnace.
As I dropped small chunks of Wisterium into the slowly preheated crucible, it felt more like a leisurely camping trip than a serious task.
“Can such a small device really melt metal?”
Dahlia who was watching from the side asked.
She was holding a bucket full of sand and a small shovel.
She’d brought them just in case she needed to put out a fire. But of course, that was unlikely.
A magical furnace was under complete control.
“I don’t feel any heat at all.”
“That’s thanks to the magic that traps the heat inside. Do you see that faint bluish glow within?”
“Just barely.”
“When the flames grow stronger, the metal will start to melt.”
“Be careful, Master. A burn would be terrible.”
Of course, all handling was done through telekinesis, so the chance of me getting hurt was minimal—
But I accepted Dahlia’s concern all the same.
She had a particular dislike for anything involving fire.
Perhaps it stemmed from something in her past.
Her arms and legs bore the marks of terrible burn scars, and she viewed anything that reminded her of them as ominous.
Did she put up with that discomfort even when boiling tea or cooking meals?
As I drifted in thought, the pieces of Wisterium in the furnace began to glow red.
This was where it really began.
I had to keep the internal temperature of the furnace steady.
If it was too low, the metal wouldn’t melt.
Too high, and it might vaporize. Or worse, create unintended impurities.
Still, I wasn’t an expert, so I stayed on high alert.
In Candela of Judgment, players could simply bring materials to a Magic Smith in Karaf to receive a cleanly crafted artifact.
But in this era, the method for working with Wisterium hadn’t even been invented yet.
So I had no choice but to try it myself.
For now, I’d have to trust in Winter Winslet’s stats and talent.
After accepting a roughly 20% loss of Wisterium, I finally found the right internal temperature.
Keeping it there was actually the easy part.
All I had to do was control the amount of mana going into the furnace.
Once the Wisterium had fully melted, I skimmed off the impurities that had risen to the top of the crucible.
Then I poured the liquefied metal into the prepared molds and let it cool.
After repeating this process a few times, I had eight Wisterium ingots, each smaller than the size of a palm.
With that, the easiest part of preparing for endgame equipment was done.
I had refined the Wisterium into ingots. Now came the molding and enchantment phases, the latter being far more difficult and important.
Since this required intense concentration, I brought the completed ingots up to the study on the second floor of the mansion.
The reason why Wisterium equipment was considered endgame gear in Candela of Judgment was due to a unique property:
Its mass could change when infused with mana.
Take Josephine, for example—
Let’s say she wore a full suit of armor made from Wisterium.
A suit of plate armor made from steel would weigh around 20 kilograms, rain or shine.
But a Wisterium suit could weigh 5 kilograms or 80, depending on the wearer’s will.
When running or climbing walls, the armor could be made lighter to improve agility and conserve stamina.
When swinging a weapon, it could be made heavier to enhance destructive power.
Especially in close-quarters combat, sheer mass often dictated the victor.
A knight clad in Wisterium plate was, quite literally, a walking tank.
The problem, however, was that to fully utilize this trait, the wearer had to be able to channel mana into the equipment.
If the wearer was a mage, this wasn’t an issue.
But what if they weren’t?
A separate mana supply system would be required.
That was exactly what I was about to make.
Put simply, I needed to install a rechargeable mana battery into the Wisterium ingots.
But this process had an absurd difficulty curve.
It wasn’t just about inscribing a disposable magic circle meant to break after one use—
I needed to construct a semi-permanent pseudo-magical circuit.
This was the process behind creating what are commonly known as artifacts or magical tools.
In human terms, it was akin to crafting and implanting an artificial organ.
The difficulty of artifact creation varied drastically depending on the material used.
Gems were among the easiest.
Human bodies were the hardest.
I was seriously considering whether I should use points from the achievement shop to awaken a talent related to artifact crafting—
When there was a knock at the door.
Knock knock.
Not that there were many suspects.
Only two people lived in this house.
“Come in.”
The door opened quietly, and Dahlia peeked in.
“Sorry to disturb you while you’re resting, Master…”
“What is it?”
“Um… I’m starting to have a hard time enduring it.”
Enduring? Enduring what?
I glanced up above Dahlia’s head.
[Notification]
[A death flag has been raised by this character.]
The death flag notification hovering above Dahlia’s head glowed unusually bright in the dark study.
I briefly imagined her suddenly pulling a kitchen knife from behind her back and saying, “I just can’t bear the urge to kill you anymore, Master.”
Then I immediately erased the ridiculous thought from my mind.
Dahlia only fidgeted with her hands, clasped neatly in front of her, hesitating in silence.
“…Would it be alright if I asked for that?”
“That being…?”
Dahlia answered softly.
“…Mana recharge.”
***
Mana recharging is just that. Recharging mana.
Nothing more.
Definitely nothing more.
A little while later, I was looking down at Dahlia’s back.
Etched into the skin where her bones showed starkly beneath the surface, a glowing blue tattoo stretched from her left shoulder all the way to the right.
[Tattoo of Blue Frost – (Magic)]
– A magical tattoo drawn using powdered blue gemstones mixed with the caster’s blood.
– The inscribed spell appears to be of the frost element.
– Due to its high detail and complexity, it requires Dexterity A-rank or higher and Magic Talent A-rank or higher to handle.
– Replenishing the frost-elemental mana requires Element (Ice) Talent A-rank or higher.
– Current charge: 32 / 336
A magical tattoo.
In short, a spell implanted into the human body.
It even includes a rechargeable mana battery so the user can activate it without needing to wield magic themselves.
Now that I thought about it, it was strikingly similar to the exact process I had just been attempting with the Wisterium ingots.
No…since the target here was a human body, the difficulty level must be far higher than Wisterium.
Knowing the answer already, I asked anyway:
“Dahlia, you remember who gave you this tattoo, don’t you?”
“Yes. Of course, it was you, Master.”
“How long ago was it?”
“It was when you took me in, so this would be the fifth year now.”
“Do you know what the tattoo does?”
“I remember it as a magic that suppresses the symptoms of the illness I have. Beyond that… even if you explained it, I probably wouldn’t understand. I’m not as clever as you, Master.”
Dahlia laughed self-deprecatingly.
She suffered from an acquired illness.
It was a terrifying cursed fever that burned the body alive from the extremities inward. That was why Winter Winslet inscribed a tattoo on Dahlia to slow the progression of the disease.
Of course, it wasn’t done purely out of goodwill.
If the tattoo wasn’t periodically recharged with mana of the cold element, it would lead to a gruesome death. And to handle the tattoo, one needed both a Technique stat of at least A-rank and a Magic talent of at least A-rank.
On top of that, recharging it with cold-element mana also required talent in the element of Ice.
Who else in the world but Winter Winslet could meet all those conditions?
So Dahlia had no choice but to seek Winter Winslet’s help to prolong her life….it was help that came in the form of charity.
This was the true nature of the safeguard that Winter Winslet had placed on Dahlia in the past.
A safeguard to ensure she could never betray him.
“Relax your shoulder. I’m going to recharge your mana.”
I placed my palm at the center of the magical tattoo.
Recharging mana had something in common with playing the drums.
Rhythm was what mattered.
Mana, after undergoing an elemental conversion, had to be infused at a steady tempo and with consistent output.
As I charged Dahlia’s tattoo with mana, I unintentionally found inspiration for processing Wisterium.
Dahlia’s magical tattoo didn’t contain any spells for altering the attribute of mana.
Instead, it was infused from the start with mana already converted to the ice element.
If I applied that same approach to Wisterium, it might lower the difficulty of embedding magical formulas.
To increase Wisterium’s mass, I needed mana with positive polarity, and to reduce it, mana with negative polarity. So I had struggled with designing dual attribute conversion spells.
But if I just made two separate mana batteries and charged each one with a different attribute, that would solve the problem.
This unexpected breakthrough gave me some peace of mind, and since it took a bit of time to fully recharge the mana, I struck up a conversation with Dahlia.
“Have you ever felt any discomfort because of the tattoo?”
“Uncomfortable? Not at all. Thanks to this, I’m still alive today.”
“There must have been some side effects.”
To me, the technique embedded in Dahlia’s magical tattoo didn’t seem all that user-friendly.
As if it served a different purpose than healing.
Dahlia spoke.
“Right after it’s recharged, I feel a bit of chill, and when there’s not much charge left, I feel a slight fever. But that’s because of the illness I have, not the tattoo itself. Other than that, hmm… I guess I do wish each charge would last a bit longer? I feel bad for constantly taking up your time like this, Master…”
“I see. Let me ask you one more thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“Have you ever thought about killing me?”
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