Chapter 967 (2/2)
The waiting for his ‘assistants’ to finish their own tasks was difficult, but Randidly calmly kept himself from getting impatient. Time after time, he used those waiting moments to stress the importance of image and did his best to make sure he showed how capable images could be.
Over time, the expression on the assistant’s faces turned from confusion to simple workman-like frowns. Likely less about the use of images and more about the fact that Randidly’s speed in smelting metal was almost one half of theirs, and it was clear that he was waiting around quite frequently so that distance didn’t grow to something impossible.
His casual efficiency completely surpassed their prideful attempts to keep up with him. This while he was taking the time to instruct all three of them in the finer points of each’s image.
Carefully, they took the newly mixed metal alloy and dunked it in Randidly’s processed red blood in order for it to cool and strengthen. Then after a few minutes, they removed the gleaming hunks of metal and physically hammered the metal.
There wasn’t really a goal to the hammering but to add pressure to the process. The base structure of all metal was based upon uniformity. Even Randidly didn’t have enough Perception and Control to make sure that it was perfectly uniform with just his Influence of the Molten Core. By hammering the nascent metal, those defects in structure would be revealed and could thereafter be addressed.
Then the metals would go back into the weakening solution, allowing the flaws to be thoroughly destroyed. Afterward, the process repeated itself two more times.
Finally, Randidly calmly watched as his sweating assistants were hammering out their final ingots. It had taken almost two hours, and that was only because Randidly had streamlined the learning process for these three.
It was clear, however, that they were nearing the end of their physical endurance; they had been struggling with too many things for too long. Generally, Randidly didn’t use hammering as the way to find the stress points. But he was glad that he had for this demonstration.
Randidly grinned. Good. When the body is tired, the mind is free to imagine.
“Finished?” Randidly asked casually. During the last rotation through the process, Randidly hadn’t bothered to wait for these three. As such, he had finished his five hammered ingots almost a half hour ago and had simply studied the three. Very carefully, however, so as not to interfere with any images that had been lucky enough to force into the metal.
Not that Randidly had high expectations for them. But this would be the ultimate test.
At Randidly’s question, the three assistants looked at each other. Then they nodded. Without saying anything else, Randidly swept up the twenty ingots that the different groups had produced. Despite his extremely low expectations, he was surprised to see that the three varieties from the assistants looked rather different from each other. And amongst the same type, there was a high degree of uniformity.
They aren’t the best just for show. Randidly thought.
“Mark?”
The man hurried over, handing Randidly an ingot prepared beforehand. Randidly held it up. “I’ll be personally testing these for you all. It isn’t the most scientific method, but I just want to demonstrate the general strength provided. And also… the pieces will be left in this room for anyone to inspect. In case you doubt my impartiality. I’ll start… with this, Erickson Steel’s high-performance alloy. Our best seller.”
Randidly tossed the ingot lightly up into the air. Then Acri blurred into motion.
Several bits of metal clanged onto the floor.
“Five slashes,” Randidly announced. “Due to the relatively poor resistance to cutting attacks, I could complete five full slashes through the material while it was in the air. So… who wants to volunteer their ingots to go next?”