Spirit Soul

Because they wanted to be able to stand on their own feet, Kyle and the others decided to learn the three auxiliary occupations- Blacksmithing, Rune Inscription, and Alchemy.

It was not their goal to learn the three together, but to have a team with a member that specialized in one of them each.

Simultaneously, as rune inscribers were required to have the highest knowledge owing to the innumerably high number of runes, not only Selene had started to learn rune inscribing once again, but even Beatrice followed suit.

Both would focus on different topics as Rune Inscribers in the future.

But for now, they had to learn the same in order to build a proper foundation.

Meanwhile, Yasmine chose to focus on alchemy, which was the most suitable out of the three basic auxiliary occupations.

With the help of her unique eyes, Yasmine was able to concoct potions with great accuracy.

The purity of her potions was bound to be high, which was something Kyle hoped for.

After all, the alchemist created the inscription potions for the Rune Inscriber, who would in turn inscribe runes on the equipment the blacksmith forged.

Because that was a necessity, weapons with runes inscribed on them were either created by the cumulative efforts of three different beings or a single being who had learned multiple auxiliary occupations.

However, learning multiple auxiliary occupations would either deteriorate the quality of the final product or either one or two auxiliary occupations holding back someone from truly shining in the one particular auxiliary occupation one was more compatible with.

Furthermore, learning the occupation to a high extent would take way too long if one learned all three basic auxiliary occupations!

This was also a reason why the group of four had decided to learn different occupations or focus on different topics.

It was much faster to learn everything this way, and each of them could focus on one particular field of expertise, which made things much easier.

And, in the end, none of the women planned on leaving him for the time being.

Beatrice was bound to him by the blood pact, preventing her from easily leaving his side.

Meanwhile, Selene had just reunited with him.

As such, she would be the least likely to leave him after having waited for a year.

On the other hand, Kyle had no idea what he should think about Yasmine.

Her opinion and mindset were something Kyle had no way of accessing or understanding.

She just joined them on their journey out of curiosity and had stayed with them until now.

That also meant Yasmine would leave whenever she got bored of their company.

However, oddly enough, Kyle didn't feel that this would happen anytime soon.

Yasmine didn't really have any friends in the Anadra kingdom, and the only people she seemed to have made friends with were their group of four.

As such, Kyle was not that much concerned when Yasmine was the only one in charge of practicing alchemy.

With that in mind, it was possible for him to be fully focused on learning blacksmithing from scratch.

When it was time for his first blacksmithing course, Kyle entered the large mansion that was solely used for forging.

There were multiple forging rooms on the first and second floors that one could use whenever one wanted to practice.

One could also purchase resources in the forging mansion, and their prices were relatively low as well.

Thus, as long as one sold properly forged products, it was possible to never leave the forging mansion and accumulate wealth on their own.

This was quite interesting for the future, but right now, Kyle found himself in the basement, with more than 100 Lohars.

Not a single of the Basic Blacksmithing Theory courses seemed to have students from a different race.

Kyle had not expected this, and he had hoped to meet, at least, one more student of the Special class.

However, until now, Kyle didn't encounter a single being from a different race, other than his own group.

'Maybe the special class only consists of us three for this term?' He mused.

It was unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

If his thoughts were to be true, it would be quite astonishing that the Lohars in the Glory Knight academy weren't as biased as they were said to be.

Only some nobles and instructors looked at them with disgust, and even anger, almost as if they had infiltrated their holy lands of education.

This might even be on their minds, but neither Kyle nor the other two women cared about this.

Meanwhile, Selene couldn't ignore the advice telling her to keep a distance from the three of them, even after a few noble instructors had asked her to maintain her social status as Baroness.

Her answer when she was told to uphold her dignity as Baroness was something nobody, who heard this, would ever forget.

"Who the hell thought that it was intelligent to promote me to a Baroness, to begin with? Because of my own race's tradition, I was thrown out of my home, enslaved, and mistreated for my entire life.

As such, I choose to stay with the person, who saved me, rather than hypocritically holding up the dignity of an empty title!!"

Even if some might have known about Selene's past, most of it was not publicly known.

Because it was deemed as a tiny secret that was kept from the public, her angry outburst had made heads turn.

She was frowned upon by the noble instructors and certain old noble households, only for others to see her in an entire new light.

From being considered ice-cold and arrogant, Selene had suddenly turned into a fierce young woman that charmed more Lohars than the image she had before.

However, it was impossible for anyone to come close to her because Selene was around Kyle and the other two foreigners most of the time.

Smiling dryly as he recalled her words, Kyle returned his focus to the small smithy, the anvil, and the workbench, which were located around him.

Each of them had a small forge in front of them and they looked at it with interest as a bulky middle-aged Lohar stepped forward.

He was holding a small, but heavy-looking forging hammer, while wearing a fire-resistant apron.

Thick veins bulged out of his arms that were partially covered by the half-burned fiery-red fur that formed a layer covering large parts of his body.

"Hello everyone, I'm the instructor for the Basic Blacksmithing Theory course. You can either call me Instructor Gara, or Blacksmith Gara!"

His loud voice boomed through the entire basement, bouncing off the walls.

The basement might only be one large hall, but his voice reached every nook and cranny nonetheless.

He had not used even a single trace of primordial energy to enhance his voice but his voice was loud enough to intimidate a few Lohar commoners in the first rows.

"Some of you might wonder why we are in the basement around forges if we're only learning theoretical knowledge today.

And the answer is simple; we won't learn theoretical knowledge today!"

Kyle almost let out a chuckle when he heard Instructor Gara's last sentence.

He could roughly gauge what was going on, but many Lohars were dumbfounded and were trying to understand the crux of Instructor Gara's words.

Seeing the confusion in the eyes of many Lohars, Gara kept his attention on the minority, which seemed to understand what was going on.

'The bunch of little kiddos, who chose the majority of blacksmithing courses seems to understand what is going on. That's good then…ohh, and the Aldra look-alike seems to be unfazed as well. He is trying to hold his laughter as well… I see.'

Unbothered by the fact that Kyle was suppressing his laughter, Instructor Gara reverted his attention back to everyone else.

"To put it simply, I won't act like your nanny and be like 'This is a forging hammer. You use it to strike hot iron in order to shape it.' If I were to do that, we wouldn't be able to leave this room until next week.

As such, everyone is supposed to acquire the theoretical knowledge of forging, all by themselves.

In the second room of the basement, we have a library solely dedicated to blacksmithing. The lot of you can find anything there.

Instead of teaching the theoretical knowledge, I will focus on showing everyone the forging process once.

For today, I will make it rather simple. I will create a bar of black iron, one of the most common ores in the Shalivra valley!"

Receiving permission to use the library in the second room of the basement was very helpful.

Not only would it be possible for Kyle to procure the necessary knowledge for his courses, but he could widen his knowledge beyond that.

Adding the forging books that belonged to him to those in the library made Kyle confident to show Instructor Gara a few surprises in the future.

The forging book he owned in the ancient language would also come in handy in this regard.

As such, Kyle could tell that the Basic Blacksmithing Theory course was more focused on deepening the knowledge one had already gotten to know.

He presumed that Instructor Gara would continue to demonstrate various forging processes that one would only be able ot understand greatly as long as one had the necessary knowledge.

"In order to melt a piece of Black iron ore, you first need to expel the oxygen within the ores. This process is called reduction, and it occurs when a metal loses oxygen and forms the elemental metal.

There are multiple processes that allow us to reduce the black iron ore to the black iron metal, but we will use one of the simplest for today; that is ordinary charcoal!"

After Instructor Gara said this, a large piece of metal appeared in his hand.

It had a dark bluish color and didn't look any special.

A moment later, black palm-sized piece of charcoal appeared next to the Instructor.

And without hesitation, he threw them in the smithy before igniting a flame.

​ Through the extractor hood, the smoke was quickly expelled, allowing everyone to see what happened thereafter relatively easily.

Thus, all of them could see that Instructor Gara put the large piece of metal inside the smithy once it reached a certain temperature.

"In order to prevent the ore from melting completely, you have to know the melting point of each ore.

If we use a temperature that is too high for the metal, the biggest problem we have won't be a dirty smithy, but the fact that we destroy the energy veins within the metal.

And this will deteriorate the potency and value of the weapons and other finished goods that will be forged out of the piece of metal."

After that was said, a few minutes passed before Instructor Gara used the tongs to take a bluish, glowing piece of metal out of the smithy.

Now, there were many dark dots within the glowing ingot, and larger dark spots on the outer areas, where the reduction process was still underway.

However, that was quickly solved as Instructor Gara moved the ingot towards the anvil, before striking the black iron ingot a few times.

Afterward, he used the tongs to move the ingot back to the smithy, where he heated it once again, to finally complete the reduction process.

"Today, we won't focus on extracting the impurities out of ingot, otherwise, I might fry the brain of my dear students in the first lesson.

And that is certainly not something we want, right?"

He simply said, not really expecting them to answer him while his eyes never left the black iron ingot. Raising the hammer, he began to strike it once he moved it back.

"After the reduction process has been completed, the heating process starts, where the pre-forged metal can truly be called an ingot.

The ingot will be heated to a nearly molten state in which it will still retain its shape but can be altered easily with force as well!"