The last time Nick had to craft a focus, he relied on Rhea’s expertise to manage most of the process and only supplied the ingredients and mana.

  For a rudimentary focus like the wyvern wand, that was more than enough. Even their limited understanding of the processes involved in attuning a wand had been enough to produce a fully functional product, as the various components were attuned to one another through their intrinsic connection to the air.

  Working with orichalcum would be different. That much, he’d known from the very start, but as his mana spread through the metal at record speeds, suffusing it all before he could even blink, he realized that assessment had been flawed.

  Orichalcum wasn’t so much a single element like iron or an alloy like steel. Instead, what it reminded Nick of was glass.

  Oh, it was a solid block, capable of withstanding more than even the best tempered glass he’d ever seen, but its structure was undeniably that of an amorphous, metallic glass.

  If he had to pinpoint one thing, it reminded him of the supercooled materials he’d seen during one of his heists in a museum. He’d spent some time learning about them afterward, but decided that the mana needed to work with any such materials far exceeded what he could support at the time.

  Now… Now things were completely different. Not only did Nick have reserves more than a hundred times larger than what he was forced to work with in his previous life, but his control over that mana was vastly better, and with [Empyrean Intuition], he could precisely sense how it interacted with the orichalcum.

  He pulled back his hand, mulling over what he’d just learned. “I might not be a scientist, but even I know that the conditions needed to form metallic glass in nature are practically impossible to achieve on a planet like this. Achieving temperatures over a thousand degrees, only to cool rapidly to the low hundreds, can’t happen through natural cooling methods.”

  Even if a place is magically cold enough to do it, there would be no way to naturally attain the initial temperature. However, orichalcum is considered as natural as iron, only infinitely rarer.

  There were a few possible explanations. The first was that this world had, or had once been host to, pockets of extreme weather conditions that could cause the necessary drop in temperature, but so far, Nick hadn’t observed any natural phenomena like that.

  The other was that this result was artificial. After all, he had seen something very similar when the fake Philosopher’s Stone had activated in the dungeon, turning a section of the forest into mana-conductive crystal.

  Orichalcum was much harder to achieve than that, but he didn't doubt that someone with Ogden’s power could do it if they put their mind to it and were willing to experiment for a long time.

  Huffing out an exasperated breath, Nick shook his head. “It doesn’t really matter, in the end. There is no echo of a creator left in it, so if it were man-made, it had to have been thousands of years ago, if not more. For all intents and purposes, I can treat it like a natural element.”

  That was a crucial assessment, since he would have needed to significantly modify the ritual he had in mind to account for a forger’s signature.

  Considering the amount of divine energies he intended to use, the simpler everything else was, the higher the chances of success were.

  I will already need to watch out for heavenly retribution. I really don't want to have to worry about internal corruption at the same time.

  His second test focused on elemental compatibility. He suspected what the results would be, but he needed concrete knowledge, not guesswork, for this Great Work to come together.

  Gathering wind mana in his hand, he gently placed it over the orichalcum cube and pushed it through.

  As expected, there was little resistance, even though wind mana was a wild kind of energy that much preferred to rage freely rather than being confined within a solid.

  But Nick didn’t stop there. He held onto the mana as it spread through the cube and manipulated it in a familiar pattern.

  The [Wind Blast] that appeared on the other side was no different from any he could summon himself, and as it broke against the reinforced wall, Nick observed that the power loss was so slight he couldn’t even notice it, if it occurred at all.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  And that was without any improvements to the casting process. Truly, orichalcum was the most mana-conductive element of all.

  He repeated the process with all the elements under his control, and a few more, casting everything from [Spark] to [Fireball], up to [Push] and [Spirit Blast].

  The results, no matter how much he pushed and prodded, remained the same. The orichalcum could absorb any amount of mana he supplied, and despite its extremely tough structure, it allowed for smooth movement inside.

  “Even just this is worth a lot. If I didn’t have so many powerful ingredients I could use to enhance the final product, I’d be tempted to carve out a wand from it right now,” he muttered. The enhancement to his casting would be null, but going through such a medium would mean that the chances of his spells being disrupted by foreign energies would be zero. That alone was a huge advantage.

  I wonder how casting through an orichalcum focus would work around a demon. Something tells me the results would be quite spectacular.

  The thought was innocent at first, simply driven by curiosity from the impressive results he’d been getting. But once it was there, it couldn’t be shaken.

  “It’s probably not worth it right now,” he tried to convince himself. Without actual forging, the orichalcum could only defend his magic during the casting process. Once the spell was fully formed and released into the atmosphere, the demons’ unnatural, disruptive properties could still affect it.

  Still, it persisted, nagging at the back of his mind, and though he managed to push it aside for now, he knew it would bother him until he actually followed through with it.

  To distract himself from the ridiculously dangerous test, Nick started casting increasingly complex spells. He wasn't just testing orichalcum’s conductivity, which he was pretty confident was near perfection, but also its stickiness.

  The two things may have seemed connected, and in a way, they were, but he wasn’t willing to risk leaving residues on the metal before shaping it into a focus.

  So he kept casting increasingly complex spells and even minor rituals, all adapted from his many improvisations.

  When the [Rite of Dissolution] proceeded smoothly, just waiting to enforce a broken contract, despite him barely calling upon any external force, much less the Uttermost Abyss, or sacrificing any pure obsidian for it, he decided he had done enough and carefully untangled the threads of mana, pulling what he could back into his channels and allowing the rest to dissipate into the ether.

  The orichalcum sat on the table without showing any signs of the stress tests he’d subjected it to. It simply gleamed dimly, seemingly unchanged.

  Nick grinned to himself between deep breaths. “At least I got my money’s worth.”

  Once he had gotten his breathing under control, he scratched his chin as he thought about his options. Since the orichalcum had exceeded all his parameters so far, he was pretty sure that the forging process wouldn’t be too difficult on its own, but he would need to set up several things before he could proceed, not just to contain the divine energies he would be using.

  Heat might be the most complicated obstacle. To affect something this stable, I’ll need extreme heat, and more importantly, to generate it all at once.

  Fire magic wasn't his specialty, but luckily, he had an alternative way to reach those temperatures.

  A spark arched between his fingers as he thought about his options. It hadn’t been his plan, but the three elements he had dedicated himself to turned out to be quite suitable for forging. Lightning could superheat the orichalcum, given enough time and effort, while wind would isolate the metal, preventing it from losing heat, and water would quench it when the moment arrived.

  The only things left to do before he could actually get to it were testing the divine artifacts and their cross reactions, but for that, he would need more security measures than what he’d prepared for this preliminary session.

  He tapped his knuckle on the orichalcum, causing a dull sound as the iron band around his finger made contact with it, and a moment later, the work table was empty once more.

  In its stead, Nick pulled out the other mysterious item he had received from the Duke.

  The rose cross appeared in his hand without a hitch, but the moment it touched his skin, the same electric sensation ran through him.

  He’d been too shocked in the vault to question it much, but now that he was alone and over the surprise, he could tell it wasn’t just his reaction to its appearance.

  It wasn’t entirely magical either, though. There was no mana transfer from it to him, nor from him to it. It was more like a ping, an acknowledgment.

  Nick still struggled to believe such an item could be found here, but if he set aside his knowledge of what the symbol was used for on Earth, one thing became clear.

  It’s not something I have much experience with. By the time grandpa started teaching me, mana was too thin to support the great artifacts of the past, and they had become little more than beautiful art pieces. But now…

  This was pretty clearly an ancestral treasure.

  Its function was still a mystery, as was its purpose, but Nick had a keen enough eye to know the cross had recognized him as part of the bloodline, even though it didn't do much with that information. That kind of passive scan was only ever added to items that were considered essential to a House.

  No wonder Aleister Crowley, who founded Floria, was so bitter about his exile. Sure, he was probably angry about being pushed to the lawless frontier, but that was nothing compared to what happened to his House shortly after.

  The Crowleys, who had lived in the capital, fell into ruin too quickly for it to be a natural process, and vultures feasted on their corpse, all while he could do nothing but lead his congregation of criminals and desperate peasants.

  For the Rose Cross to have found its way to Alluria meant that everything that defined the house had been taken away. That no one carried on its legacy anymore.

  Closing his eyes, Nick concentrated and guided a thin strand of mana into it, feeling the ivory warm just a little.

  Yet nothing happened. He opened his eyes again, feeling both disappointed and understanding in some way. He had the right bloodline, no doubt, but ancestral treasures weren't kept by the Head of the House just for their monetary value.

  They needed more than just leadership. Power and knowledge were required before he could use it, although he might be able to crack the code and access the artifact sooner.

  The rose cross, after all, symbolized humanity’s progress. All adepts committed their lives to that goal, aiming to guide their race toward a bright future while laboring under any guise they believed necessary.

  That, he suspected, was the real requirement to access the cross’ true power. He would need to prove himself not just as a son of House Crowley, but as a genuine forerunner willing to stay in the shadows and forgo any praise, all in service of the greater good.

  It was a good thing he was already halfway there.