Lightning Is the Only Way

Gravis and Cynthia flew around for a bit. Gravis always kept his Spirit up and searched through the ground. The ground was just littered with incredible ore that Gravis wanted. He was way closer to the core of the continent, which meant that the quality of ore increased significantly.

In less than 30 minutes, Gravis had gathered a plethora of ore. All of the ore was of different levels in the Nascent Nourishing Rank, which was quite impressive. Sadly, Gravis wasn't powerful enough to smelt such ore yet. With his lightning, he was barely able to make use of Late Unity Rank materials.

It required incredible power and Spirit to manipulate and forge with such ore. One shouldn't forget that Gravis had barely molten some of the Golden Dragon's body with a Lightning Crescent, which was his most powerful attack. With his current lightning and Spirit, he wouldn't be able to forge anything with Peak Unity Rank materials.

Because of that, most of the ore remained unused inside his Spirit Space. Yet, Gravis had gathered a lot of that ore and could already see that his future equipment was basically taken care of. The biggest issue right now was to find weaker ore.

While collecting all this ore, Gravis found out more about the Red Kingdom. Apparently, most of the beasts had claimed their own territories inside the Red Kingdom, and they weren't exactly happy when some weaker beast came to their territory.

Yet, as soon as they saw Cynthia, they remained quiet. They only carefully asked some questions about why those two were in their territories. Gravis had explained a lot of things about ore and forging to Cynthia while they flew, so she had no problems in answering the question.

After they heard that Gravis was after the hard stone in the earth, nearly all of the beasts stopped caring. This hard stone had no use to them, and they didn't really care about it. It literally made no difference to them.

Yet, some beasts weren't exactly happy about that. Beasts with a metal and earth affinity felt drawn to powerful ore. When they remained near such ore, they felt themselves become more in tune with nature and their element. They really didn't want to give any of that ore away. They owned the ore, and they had a use for it.

After thinking for a while, Gravis decided to exchange. Gravis had an incredible amount of powerful ore since so many beasts didn't care about it. So, Gravis offered them ore with a higher Rank than what they currently possessed. Of course, he only did that if he lacked this particular level of ore.

Basically all the beasts were quite delighted by that offer. The more powerful the ore, the better. After all, most of the places with stronger ore were occupied by more powerful beasts. These beasts, obviously, wouldn't give parts of their territory to weaker beasts. Because of that, it was quite challenging for these beasts to get their claws on better ore.

if Cynthia hadn't followed him. Every beast knew Cynthia, and they respected her. Even Kings on the same level as her didn't

"I need weaker ore," he said to Cynthia. "I'm fully loaded with powerful ore, but I can't use it yet. Do you know of a place where I can find weaker

have noticed that most beasts we have met were Kings. That's because the closer we get to our King's

thought. "That sounds reasonable," he

in that direction for a while. The further we travel, the weaker the beasts become. As long as you don't leave the borders

flew to the south, followed by Cynthia. While flying in the sky, Gravis still kept on checking the ground with his Spirit. He was sure that, at some point, he would find some ore that was actually

He and Cynthia traveled for over six hours until Gravis finally found some Unity Ore. It was a Peak Unity Rank material, and he couldn't use it yet, but it would become useful

he only needed some Late Unity Rank materials. With that, he would

general, a

Lord. This seemed weak at first

its whole body became as hard as its hardest part.

the materials, he could have created a

and made a shield of the Golden Dragon's body, an attack from the Golden Dragon would have destroyed the shield and parts of

compress and elevate the material. With this new method of forging, Gravis could increase the power of the ore by one level. So, by creating the shield with this new smithing technique, the Golden Dragon lost the ability to destroy it.

count as a weapon one level weaker. Example: By forging a weapon with a Late Unity Rank material with the newer and better method, one would

Yet, if one thought about it more, one would see the logic behind that. A Peak Unity Weapon should be able to fight against a Peak Unity Beast, right? Yet, if the weapon got severely damaged by such a beast in one attack,

of that, the classifications for weapons were always one level lower than the actual hardness of it. So, all in all, Gravis could now create a Late Unity Weapon with his current power. Theoretically, he

down to one point: Gravis could now forge weapons and armor two levels higher than himself