"You should all know what you're supposed to do. The common materials—well, difficult or not—I don't really care how you obtain them. As for the rare ones, you'll need to find someone with a creation ability capable of producing them, or someone with a world-hopping ability," he said. "You're going to have to go out there, search for these things, stir up some trouble, and gain combat experience. Kill a bunch of people. Only through life-and-death battles will we truly grow stronger. Sure, we can slowly accumulate strength over time, but since you're not progenitors, there's an upper limit. Life and death—that’s the real path to power, especially for spiritual life forms. Training only provides a minor boost to raw strength; most of the gain comes from honing your skills. A soul's fear of destruction pushes it to evolve and grow stronger."

  "Anyway, as for you—Ghost and Flare—I want you to be my bodyguard. I used my magic to create mithril. It doesn't exist in this world, but since I know how to make it, I can produce it. My low-tier creation magic requires a certain amount of information about whatever I'm trying to replicate, though—so I can’t make beskar, vibranium, or a bunch of other materials like that. I can only create about two tons of mithril a day.

  As I’ve said before, gold is easy for me to create—I can make hundreds of tons before running out of spirit energy. But the energy cost for mithril is insane. I actually started sweating—and we don’t even sweat as a race. That’s how ridiculously difficult it was. I was completely out of spirit energy after making just two tons of mithril.

  I tried to stand, but almost fell. Fortunately, flare—the teacher of nen. Well, former teacher, and one of the first people I turned. I chose her because she already had immeasurable combat experience and skill. In her case, she just needs time. I could tell that even if she did nothing for a few months reach Captain level, she’d reach that level of strength naturally. In fact, it would be detrimental for her to fight in life-and-death battles right now. Her power is trying to catch up with her skill—she needs to wait for that balance. She should be around Captain level in terms of combat skill.

  I’d already explained the method to everyone: the ritual will proceed by transforming the refined element into its unrefined form. Once it reaches 50%—when half of your body is composed of the unrefined element—the corruption and the elemental spirit will attempt to take over. Defeat them before you're fully corrupted, and you'll unlock your shard. Fail, and you'll become a mindless elemental beast.

  Also explained that these element spirits were extremely resistant to magic—natural enemies for a magical race like ours.

  Naturally, I was staying at the shrine. After all, trying to create so much mithril in one day left me exhausted. It wasn’t easy. After I was finally done—after several weeks—I snapped my fingers and said, “These are all the materials that don’t exist on Earth that I can create.”

  The leader of the Soul Reaper faction—the one that looked like Ichigo—was surprised. “How did you make them so easily?”

  I simply said, “It’s not that it’s difficult to make things with creation magic. Creation magic makes it easy to produce things like Ashwood or White Oak that need to be 10,000 years old—I’ve made those because they don’t exist on Earth. And while I could mass-produce common materials, like creating a literal mountain of gold, the quantities we need are so ridiculous that it might actually be easier to just steal pre-mined gold from somewhere like Fort Knox.

  I’d say Fort Knox has about half the gold we need. It takes me several days to create thousands of tons of gold. Sure, I can easily create hundreds of tons in a single day, but due to the spirit energy required for creation magic, it’d still take a few days for that amount. It might only take you a few hours to rob Fort Knox—and that would give us half the gold we need, not even counting the other common materials we’re going to need in absurd amounts.

  Honestly, it might just be faster to rob stockpiles that already have this stuff, rather than creating it. My creation magic is better suited for materials we can’t obtain on Earth.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  I could snap my fingers and create a literal mountain of gold, and it wouldn’t even take that much energy. But mithril? That’s a special case. Haven’t you ever wondered why, in a Marvel world full of geniuses, no one’s managed to create a synthetic version of vibranium on a large scale? It’s because they can’t. Materials like that are incredibly difficult to create. Sure, you can replicate them—but mass production? Not feasible.”

  Even someone like Odin—comic book Odin—wouldn’t be able to mass-produce it. Not that they have comic books on my original earth anymore. A lot of them got turned into animated series, which people started calling 'comic-book canon' or whatever. I read on forums that while the source was originally comic books, the animated series were more faithful to the original material than the movies.

  Anyway, I'm going to search for someone with a world-hopping ability or unrestricted creation magic.

  I teleported using spatial magic and began wandering around, trying to find someone with those abilities. So far, I hadn’t found anyone—but I was far better at sensing than most. Skilled individuals with a talent for sensing were rare, but easy for me to distinguish.

  Eventually, I picked up on someone with an absurd amount of mana... wearing Mandalorian armor. "Oh, I see."

  I began using my appraisal spell. “Let’s hope this is actual beskar and not just cosplay.”

  The individual was incredibly powerful—an absurd amount of mana. My appraisal spell began analyzing the Mandalorian armor: an alloy made of 90% vibranium and 10% beskar. Interesting.

  I let the appraisal run longer to get enough data to replicate it. Clearly, this guy had world-jumping abilities. Is that a fucking lightsaber?*

  I landed in front of him. “Do you mind if I take a look at that lightsaber?”

  He shrugged and tossed it to me. I ignited it. “Oh… I always assumed it was a plasma blade. But it’s not.”

  It was more like a Quincy arrow—concentrated solidified energy with a physical form. It emitted a huge amount of heat and light, but there was a containment field that restricted the amount of heat and light energy that leak out. Unless you touched the blade directly, you wouldn’t feel its full effect.

  I continued analyzing. The beskar had the density of lead—slightly less, maybe. Durability-wise? Tougher than diamonds, more heat-resistant than tungsten. Vibranium, on the other hand, was interesting: only about twice as strong as steel, but with one key feature—its ability to absorb, conduct, and disperse energy made it far more durable than its material strength.

  “My appraisal spell can’t make sense of your lightsaber. It's too complex for me to understand. The kyber crystal... I thought it was just a soul-infused rock. But it’s a hyper-complex lifeform. Way more advanced than a human. I couldn’t recreate that if I tried.”

  “So,” I asked, “want to become a member of my race?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well then, how about a job?”

  After some more analysis, I added, “Your armor’s good, but not ideal. A 60% vibranium to 40% beskar lightweight alloy would be better. Beskar is insanely resistant to heat and corrosion, with durability stronger than diamond. Vibranium, while only about twice as strong as steel, is an extremely efficient energy conductor—it disperses kinetic and other forms of energy, making it significantly stronger than its base material strength suggests.

  Combining these two at that ratio would create a nearly indestructible alloy. Even adamantium would probably crack if it had to face off against something made with this.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll take that into account for the next set.”

  “So if I give you this list,” I asked again, “you’ll go gather the materials?”

  He nodded. “Your creation magic must have limitations, though.”

  “Yeah, I can’t create anything I don’t understand.”

  He accepted that. “I want a nuclear diamond battery in return. And the process to make them.”

  “No problem,” I said. “They’re more like generators than batteries anyway. I can use creation magic to produce them—just irradiated diamond encased in regular diamond. Should last a hundred years.”

  He nodded, satisfied, and vanished with my list.