Dimensional Descent

Leonel exited his Dream World and smiled, taking the little Metal Spirit into his hands and playing with it again.

"This'll be our first project together, Tolly. Are you excited?"

Tolly split into numerous balls of silver, jumping around Leonel's hands like little globules of mercury. The little guy didn't need to speak for Leonel to know that it was excited.

Recently, Leonel had been feeding it a lot of metals. Earth might have not been a Fourth Dimensional world just yet, and as such, was lacking in high quality minerals that came with this evolution. But, they as a people had squeezed everything they could out of the materials they did have, creating alloys that this little Metal Spirit loved to eat at its current stage of evolution.

Tolly's favorite snack was an alloy of platinum and iridium. Using it, the little guy had already reached the Fifth Black Tier.

Leonel was very careful not to overfeed Tolly, though. According to the hazard lesson, doing so could cause 'Overflow'. It was a dangerous state spirits could enter where they sought to devour everything.

Toward this, Leonel could only shake his head. His father had actually likened the state to a stomach ache. How such a catastrophic event could be as simple as a stomach ache was beyond him.

Leonel took a deep breath and went into a state of meditation. This time, however, it wasn't to enter his Dream World, but rather to prepare his mind and settle his heart. His father said that the most important thing in a successful crafting was one's state of mind.

His oppressive aura unwittingly surged out from him, causing the playful Metal Spirit to grow silent and solemn. It was easily affected by Leonel's presence, its own will becoming somewhat suppressed.

The first step in crafting was exactly this, Spirit Unity.

work as one. It was necessary for their thoughts and actions to

that moment, Leonel's dull gaze became bright once more and two familiar ores appeared before

coating each one of his palms as he grasped toward the first

Ore'. It was part of the 'Urbe' class of metals. Those of this class were

a foundation piece in almost every treasure in existence and were key

it was combined with the high level metal technology of Earth, it was like

Earth was most definitely the strongest such world in the history of the

already had a plan in mind and the sniper rifle he took

time to begin the second

were many ways to approach purifying a metal. In the world of Force Crafting, 'purification' wasn't as simple as removing impurities. It was more accurate to

certain concentration of added carbon. If Leonel's goal was to make steel, then his 'purification' process would be taking iron and smelting

know that even amongst steel, there are various stages, purities and strengths among them. This is all decided by

Black Urbe ore such that its chemical structure was perfectly suited to the alloys of the sniper rifle. How well he performed this task was decided by a 'Compatibility' rating. Depending on the metals

methods he had to choose from were Smelting, Macro-Separation, or Oscillation. Leonel had already learned all three, respectively, via the techniques

ore became like a bouncing ball trapped between the cage

place, his fingers continually flicked at the ore, causing it to slowly, but surely, turn a deeper and deeper shade of red as its body became hot. However, the odd part was that this red only

and raising its heat. But, it was special in that it could target very specific chemical bonds, causing them to break and

difficult of the three. Controlling things on such a micro level while ensuring that the heat wasn't spread was nearly impossible for beginners. Of course, Leonel wasn't really

the current him to create a 100% Compatible Metal as that would require being able to use his Internal Sight to scan minerals at the level of chemical bonds. However,

was confident in such a thing, it would definitely cause an uproar. Even veteran Black Grade Force Crafters would find 50-60% acceptable while 40% was passable. Something like 70% was already above average, 80% was elite, 90% was legendary, while 100% was basically folklore. Who could claim to