Chapter 171: The Forge Begins I

Zac walked toward them, with his eyes still on Armani. "What are you doing here?"

Armani raised her teacup. "Can’t you see, I’m having tea?"

Zac gave her a flat look. "Fine! I came to support my nephew."

"Is that really necessary?"

Armani lowered the cup. "Why? Am I going to distract you?"

For the brief moment, Zac’s mind betrayed him. An image surfaced from the night he’d seen Armani drunk, a version of her so completely different from the composed woman sitting in front of him.

He immediately pushed the memory away. "That isn’t what I meant."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes."

"Whatever." Armani took another sip of tea. "I’m mostly here to make sure the world doesn’t end because of you two."

Zac paused and turned toward Siegfried. "She knows about it too?"

Before the old smith could answer, Armani spoke. "You can’t blame him." She gestured lazily toward Siegfried. "He’s something of a blabbermouth. Keeping secrets has never been his strongest talent."

Siegfried gave her a dry look. "Thank you for the appreciation."

"You’re welcome."

Siegfried sighed. "She already knew enough. More importantly, she’s here as a safety measure."

Zac nodded, considering everything he had learned about Azryx; having Armani nearby is only common sense.

Armani set her cup down. "Anyway, enough talking." She looked toward Siegfried. "Do you have everything you need?"

The old smith’s expression became serious. "Yes."

Zac barely had time to wonder what they were about to do before she stepped between them. She placed one hand on Siegfried’s shoulder and the other on Zac’s.

The next second the world vanished before him.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in a completely different place.

An enormous, unfamiliar landscape stretched out before him.

Chunks of rock floating silently through the air, some no larger than a fist, others the size of buildings. They hung at impossible angles, drifting slowly through empty space as though there were no gravity.

Beneath Zac’s feet was a vast circular platform resembling an ancient altar, its surface covered in intricate patterns and structures he couldn’t recognize.

Beyond it, the entire place seemed detached from anything resembling an ordinary world.

Zac slowly turned his head, taking it all in.

[Well. This is certainly more dramatic than a workshop.]

Zac ignored the system. His attention remained fixed on the impossible landscape around him.

"Where am I?"

They were standing on an enormous circular stone platform suspended high above an endless expanse of blue.

Massive stone pillars floated at different distances around the platform, and ancient rune-like symbols had been carved into their surfaces, many of them glowing faintly beneath layers of age and erosion.

"A pocket dimension," Siegfried answered.

"My pocket dimension," Armani corrected immediately.

Siegfried glanced at her. "Yes. Her pocket dimension."

Zac turned toward Armani. "You own a pocket dimension?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Why do you sound so surprised?"

"Because people don’t normally own dimensions."

"That sounds like a poor-people problem."

[There she is.]

Siegfried snorted.

"Ever heard of a ruin called the Nine Towers?" Armani asked.

Zac thought for a moment, and suddenly his expression changed. "Wait."

"You mean that Nine Towers? The ruin where you stole every reward before anyone else could get to them."

Armani’s face changed.

"Hahahaha!" Siegfried burst out laughing while slapping his hand against his thigh. "Finally! Someone who says it directly to your face."

"Shut up, old man." Armani turned back toward Zac. "I didn’t steal anything; I cleared the floors and took my reward."

Zac nodded slowly. "So you did take every reward."

Armani’s eyebrow twitched even further.

"I heard, except for the last floor, the other variants were perfectly capable of clearing the ruins themselves."

"They said that because they were incompetent."

[An inspiring retelling of history.]

"I’m starting to understand why people complained."

Armani folded her arms. "This pocket dimension was the final reward for clearing the Nine Towers."

Zac looked around again.

[That is actually impressive.]

Zac raised an eyebrow inwardly. "Not a lot of things surprise you."

[Even in considerably more advanced worlds, personally owning a pocket dimension isn’t exactly common.]

"At this point, I don’t think anything about her is common."

[I wasn’t going to argue.]

Armani had already turned toward Siegfried. "Let’s get started."

Siegfried stepped toward the center of the stone platform and began removing items from his inventory.

One after another, crates, tools, metal structures, containers, forging instruments, and equipment appeared across the platform.

Within moments, the previously empty altar had begun transforming into a temporary forge.

Zac watched Siegfried work for a while before turning toward Armani. "Why exactly are we doing this here?"

"You seriously have to ask?"

"I have my guesses."

Armani pointed beneath their feet. "This place is isolated from Earth. So if something goes wrong... Earth won’t get destroyed."

"And us?"

"I teleport the three of us back immediately. If we survive, that is."

"What happens to Azryx?"

"If things go badly enough that we have to abandon the dimension, it’ll be lost with this place somewhere in the spacetime."

Zac stared at her in surprise. "You’re willing to sacrifice your pocket dimension?"

"I’d rather lose a dimension than a planet."

[Reasonable.]

"The fact that this situation requires that sentence is the problem."

"I don’t think it’ll come to that." Siegfried’s voice came from behind them.

He was kneeling beside several pieces of equipment, carefully arranging them around the center of the platform.

"I’ve been preparing for this for years. I’ve tested everything I reasonably can."

"Reasonably?" Zac repeated.

Siegfried looked at him. "Don’t start."

"The physical forging process isn’t what concerns me anymore."

His hands stopped briefly, and his eyes moved toward Zac. "My concern is what happens afterward."

Zac immediately understood what the problem seems to be. After what the system had told him last night, those words carried considerably more weight than Siegfried realized.

"Still... your father was convinced you could handle it. And I trusted that man."

He glanced toward Armani. "She wouldn’t be participating in this madness either if she didn’t trust him."

"Come here, boy." The old smith reached into his storage again. This time, thirteen dark stones appeared in his hands.

Each was roughly palm-sized and covered in incredibly intricate patterns.

"Array stones."

Siegfried nodded. "This was the first of the three things your father gave me before he disappeared."

"How old are they?"

"I have no idea. I spent years studying them and still don’t fully understand how they work."

"But you know what they do, right?"

"Enough to use them." Siegfried gestured toward the open space at the center of the platform.

"When all thirteen are arranged correctly and supplied with mana, they create an isolated spatial field."

Zac frowned. "A zero-gravity field?"

"No." Siegfried shook his head. "That’s what I thought at first too. But zero gravity wouldn’t solve our problem. The material would still possess its mass. Removing gravity alone doesn’t magically make something harmless."

Zac nodded slowly. "So, what does it actually do?"

"I myself don’t fully know yet. From what I’ve observed, the array creates a separated space pocket, and within that field, the Azryx can exist without its gravitational influence."

"I think the array creates an environment inside the pocket similar to the one from where your father retrieved it."

Zac nodded.

[You didn’t understand anything, did you?]

"Well, let’s just trust this old man."

"The array needs to be constantly supplied with mana without any interference. If the supply is interrupted even for a fraction of a second, the entire process will fail, and we’ll all be meeting in hell."

"Very encouraging."

"That’s because once the material is removed from the containment, there can be no interruptions, not even for a millisecond. And that’s why she is here."

Siegfried pointed at Armani. "She’s going to be the battery of this process."

Armani snapped her head toward Siegfried. "What did you call me just now?"

Siegfried cleverly avoided arguing with her by moving on to the next topic.

"I’ll be inside the field, forging the material with you, so I can’t divide my concentration between smithing and maintaining the array. Plus, I don’t know anyone else capable of supplying this much mana continuously for several days."

"You mean for seven days?" Zac asked.

"Yes. Even for her, maintaining a stable output of mana for that long won’t be exactly a comfortable process."

"You don’t need to worry about me, old man." Armani walked toward the edge of the formation. "I can handle it."

Siegfried placed the thirteen stones around the area while also drawing connecting arrays between them, linking each stone to the others and eventually converging toward the place where Armani would sit.

He then took one final look over everything before nodding. "Let’s start."

Armani moved into position and sat cross-legged, closing her eyes. The moment she released her mana, Zac felt the atmosphere change.

A massive flow of energy poured from her body into the nearest array stone, which immediately lit up. The energy continued flowing through the formation until all thirteen stones were illuminated.

Within seconds, a translucent sphere began forming around the central forging area and expanded outward until the entire circle was enclosed within a shimmering globe.

After watching the globe of energy surrounding the area, Zac tried moving his body and frowned. "Why do I feel exactly the same?"

Siegfried shrugged and looked at him. "I did tell you I don’t completely understand how these things work, right?"

"Come on. You’re the topmost blacksmith in the world. A practical legend. You’ve studied this for years, and now you’re telling me that you don’t understand it. Doesn’t that bother you?"

Siegfried thought about it for a moment before answering. "Well, it bothered me for the first few years. Then I accepted that some things are simply beyond my understanding."

[That’s what you call character development.]

"Whatever it is, it works. That’s the important part." He walked toward the center and took out the containment chamber, with the black, rock-like sphere inside.

Immediately, both Zac’s and Siegfried’s expressions became serious.

Siegfried looked at Zac and then at Armani, who was still sitting with her eyes closed. "Well, here goes nothing."

He opened the containment chamber and took out the Azryx.