Since the founding of the Auckland Academy of Magic and Warriors, not a single Demon-Slaying Warrior had ever emerged from its halls! Even academies boasting superior resources and student caliber found producing a Demon-Slaying Warrior exceedingly rare!

The Ninth-Level Warrior was a formidable threshold! Should one manage to break through to the Tenth Level, they would instantly become an immensely powerful Demon-Slaying Warrior! Even the Lord of Auckland would treat such an individual with deference, perhaps even extending extraordinary offers to secure their services.

Rodriguez had an intuition that the very first Demon-Slaying Warrior produced by the Auckland Academy of Magic and Warriors might well be Qian Jin, the student he favored most highly! If he could persuade the notoriously tight-fisted Headmaster to allocate some of the academy's meager stock of Battle Stones to aid Qian Jin’s progress, then a genuine chance for breakthrough—to become a Demon-Slaying Warrior—might truly exist! This would finally end the scorn cast upon the Auckland Academy of Magic and Warriors!

The mere thought filled Rodriguez with soaring joy. “The examinations are approaching, and we won’t be covering any new material in the days leading up to them. You’ve always been diligent in your studies; even without classroom review, your written tests should be fine. Wasting time here would be better spent visiting the blacksmith, accelerating your self-improvement. Very well! I am granting you special leave. For these few days before the trial, consider yourself excused from all classes—go to the blacksmith’s every day.”

Qian Jin, who had been agonizing over the lack of time to forge a weapon entirely his own before the trial, readily accepted Rodriguez’s words with a smile.

Rodriguez watched Qian Jin run off, a triumphant smirk playing on his lips. The Auckland Academy of Magic and Warriors was about to have its own Demon-Slaying Warrior! With this prospect, perhaps in two years, the Academy would finally be qualified to challenge those institutions boasting Bloodline Warriors.

Clang… Ding… Clang… Ding…

In the early morning quiet of the Franlin Blacksmith Shop, a relentless rhythm of hammering echoed across the yard, which still seemed caught in the remnants of sleep.

Franlin rubbed the sleep from his hazy eyes and pushed open his door, preparing to voice his annoyance at whoever dared to interrupt his rest so early for work, only to freeze dead in his tracks at the sight before him.

It was Qian Jin! The person currently holding the highest forging skill at the Franlin Blacksmith Shop, holding that massive sledgehammer, utterly engrossed in wrestling with several slabs of raw iron.

Franlin had never seen such intense focus on Qian Jin’s face, not even when forging the Grade Eight Refined Iron a few days prior.

As the rising sun slanted across Qian Jin’s figure, Franlin felt a sudden optical illusion: the young man wielding the hammer and bellows wasn't Qian Jin, but the sculpted figure of the Master Craftsman Ovilan, standing sentinel outside the Blacksmiths' Guild Hall!

In that instant, Franlin felt as if the long-dead Master Craftsman Ovilan himself had appeared in his humble forge, demonstrating firsthand what the true art of forging entailed!

“This…”

Franlin violently rubbed his eyes and looked back at Qian Jin’s work, his jaw nearly unhinging from shock, his mouth gaping wide enough to swallow an apple whole.

One glowing red iron bloom, then another, then a third… a fourth… the tenth…

One by one, the super-heated iron blooms were dropped onto the anvil, subsequently hammered and fused together by the iron hammer in Qian Jin’s grip. The shower of sparks generated by the impacts seemed to be violently expelling the impurities from the metal.

Ten blooms, stacked together, would have formed a significant pile of mass. Yet, the total volume of the ten iron blooms, now struck and integrated by Qian Jin’s work, appeared slightly smaller than a single, unworked bloom.

“This… How is this possible?” Franlin’s facial muscles twitched uncontrollably. “E-even forging a Grade Ten Refined Iron would never require this many separate blooms while maintaining such a compact final size.”

Qian Jin was entirely oblivious to Franlin’s presence; his entire mental focus was locked onto the iron piece on the anvil. With every inhalation and exhalation of the Blacksmith’s Breathing Technique, hot vapor billowed forth, and his strange, rapid hammer strikes swiftly purged the impurities from the metal.

Here at the Franlin Blacksmith Shop, there was no Hundred-Year Ice Iron Ore that Blacksmith Blake had spoken of, nor any slightly higher-grade exotic metals; they possessed almost exclusively the most common grades of iron ore.

Since there were no superior exotic metals available, Qian Jin decided he would forge his personal Battle Weapon using these ordinary ores first! Once Qian Jin set his goal on forging Iron Essence, he soon realized that refining these common ores—which wouldn't even qualify as high-grade—into Iron Essence was an incredibly troublesome process.

A Hundred Pounds Reduced to One! Qian Jin hammered one hundred pounds of raw pig iron, but the resulting Iron Essence weighed only a single pound! This wasn't reducing a hundred pounds of ore to one pound of essence; this was the raw iron remaining after the impurities had been refined out of the ore! This material, suitable for making plowshares, sickles, and even swords, required a hundred pounds of initial ore to yield just one pound of usable Iron Essence.

In the span of a single morning, every smith in the Franlin Blacksmith Shop stopped working, all staring in stunned silence at the intensely focused Qian Jin. They had never witnessed such a terrifying rate of ore consumption; nearly a thousand pounds of raw pig iron had been utterly depleted in just one morning.

If Franlin hadn't witnessed this with his own eyes, but had only heard the tale from someone else, he would have suspected the speaker hadn't woken up properly or was wildly exaggerating. How could anyone transform a thousand pounds of raw pig iron into nearly ten one-pound ingots of high-grade Iron Essence? Was he forging iron ore, or was he eating it?

Franlin had always believed that despite his physique being robust, even if his forging skill wasn't the best in the shop, his stamina at the bellows and hammer was certainly unmatched! That pride, however, had vanished without a trace not long ago.

The entire morning! Qian Jin performed only a few actions: adding charcoal, frantically working the bellows, and then relentlessly swinging that immense hammer, strike after strike, engaging in an unceasing duel with the pile of raw iron.

“The eleventh piece of Iron Essence…” Qian Jin happily set down the newly forged ingot and reached for the next piece of pig iron, only for his fingers to grasp empty air. He then noticed that the entire mound of raw iron beside him was completely gone.

“It’s all gone?” Qian Jin looked at the pile of pig iron, which had resembled a small mountain that morning, now utterly depleted. He frowned slightly, suddenly recalling that these materials were intended for the Franlin Blacksmith Shop’s business; he had been so focused on forging his own Battle Weapon that he had unknowingly used up the entire stockpile.

Snapping back to reality, Qian Jin noticed the astonished expressions of everyone around him and awkwardly scratched the back of his head. “Ah, this… I got a little carried away…”

:Hey there, voting tickets and member clicks F