Taking A Break

Meanwhile, Minos soon arrived back at the Weapon Refining Union. With his mind empty and his stomach full, he was in the perfect state to begin his training.

Using his badge, he reserved a refining room, also asking the receptionist to bring him the material he needed.

Having been told about Minos from Okrum, the receptionist nodded, going into the backroom before coming out with a small pouch and handing it over.

"What's this?" Minos asked in confusion. The material he needed was quite a lot, so it was naturally impossible for a small pouch to hold it.

"Oh, that's a spatial pouch, don't be deceived by its size, the inside has a spatial formation that expands its size ten-fold." The receptionist answered.

"Make sure to give it back once you're done. While spatial pouches can't compare to spatial rings, they are still incredibly valuable. You'd be in trouble if you lost it." She warned.

"No worries." Minos said, taking the spatial pouch with curiosity.

Opening the bag slightly, he peered inside, seeing the large space filled with ores. While the space was much smaller than the spatial ring, it was still miraculous.

Having already gotten a spatial ring, Minos wasn't too surprised by such a tool, so he put it away after a quick inspection, making his way to his private refining room.

On his way to the refining room, he couldn't help but wonder how both the spatial ring and spatial pouch managed to remain so light despite having so much stuff inside, but this was a question for another time.

Reaching his destination, Minos entered the refining room, locking the door behind him. The moment the door shut, the entire space went silent, showcasing the amazing soundproofing that went into making the room.

With such silence, Minos got completely comfortable. After enjoying the atmosphere for a moment, he soon got to work.

The room already had all the tools necessary to refine, alongside a furnace, so all Minos needed was his ores, which he now had an abundance of.

The Plion Sword was made of the same material as the Wood-Shift Dagger, but its refining process was completely different.

Despite being very similar to the Wood-Shift Dagger, the process was new, reminding Minos of the depth that existed within the weapon refining world.

Mastering one weapon is just the beginning, and Minos still had a long journey ahead of him, however that didn't deter him, instead his eyes burned with a strong vigor.

Pulling out the ore, he got right to work. Having already mastered the Plion Sword refining manual, and having unlimited access to ores, he decided to use the most efficient yet most wasteful method, and that was to just refine.

When it came to the Wood-Shift Dagger, he didn't have this luxury, which restricted his training speed quite heavily, but now he was free to train as he pleased.

Minos's eyes shined with excitement, the weapon refining process flowing through his hands endlessly.

Failure, after failure, Minos got used to the sensation, but soon success came to him once again.

Holding the Plion Sword in his hand, he was incredibly dissatisfied. While he met Okrum's requirements, he didn't meet his own.

Besides, he still had three months left, so he naturally wouldn't waste this opportunity to push his skills to their absolute limit.

Pulling out a small journal, Minos noted down his initial refining process, contemplating ways he could improve it.

Everytime he had an idea, Minos wasted no time, and immediately went back to work. Most of the time his ideas led nowhere, and instead caused the Plion Sword to come out worse, but occasionally he would hit gold.

As his journal became more dense with different results and ideas, Minos suddenly noticed a thread that connected them all, which was the hammering method.

While it was practically impossible to record the hammering process during each refinement, Minos's tremendous muscle memory remembered it.

Comparing the feelings, he soon noticed that certain hammering techniques would result in better weapons, meanwhile others would cause the weapon's quality to drop.

The second he realized that, a light bulb went off in his mind, his eyes shining with brilliance. Having found the key, Minos got to work immediately.

Having realized that the hammering process was the most essential part, he began paying much more attention to his hammering during each refinement.

At the end, he would compare the quality of the weapon, trying to distinguish which hammering methods resulted in the best result.

This process was naturally not easy, and refining weapons was already a process that took hours everytime, so Minos could only improve at a snail's pace, at least according to his usual progress.

But this fact just encouraged Minos even more, since he knew the best things took time and patience.

Having already warned Rubella that he was likely going to be away for a while, he had no concerns, completely focusing on refining.

…

The weeks passed by slowly for some people, but for Minos it was akin to a blink of the eye. While time passed fast, his progress had instead gone far.

Minos had already established the outline of his self-made hammering technique, which he called 'Minos Hammering' for simplicity's sake.

Minos had noticed a long time ago that certain hammering movements would remove more impurities than others.

Having established that, he began studying backwards, eventually realizing that it was the different vibrations that caused these different purifying levels. With that in mind, he began creating his own hammering technique, utilizing the laws of vibration.

With the basics of his technique understood, Minos began pushing it further and further, slowly comprehending these vibrations and the effects they had.

However after establishing this, Minos ended up hitting another wall. It didn't take much time for him to realize that some vibrations helped some ores, whereas those small vibrations would actually worsen others.

Fortunately Minos realized the problem almost immediately, and that was that each ore was different, so naturally their impurities were also in different places.

Sometimes his vibration would remove these impurities, whereas other times it would instead push them deeper.

Having noticed this, Minos quickly came to a solution, which was to find a way to identify where exactly the impurities were, of course, this was much easier said than done.

After spending a few hours contemplating, a bright light suddenly seemed to go off in Minos's as he remembered Okrum and the flicking technique he used while he was judging weapons.

Okrum's technique seemed to similarly utilize vibrations, but instead of using those vibrations to refine the weapon, he used it to identify and visualize the weapons interior.

Minos decided to replicate Okrum's technique, which soon proved to be much harder than he expected.

Not only did it require a tremendously acute sense of sound, but more importantly, you needed the wisdom to make sense of that noise.

Minos decided to use the tried and true method of just doing things until it worked. With that decided, he began utilizing the 'flicking technique' to guess where the impurities were before he got to work.

Initially he failed over and over, failing to truly distinguish the impurities from the other parts of the ore.

But failure was the mother of success, and with each attempt, Minos began slowly distinguishing the difference between the sound of impurities and ore.

As Minos tasted more and more success, he soon managed to establish his own 'flicking technique' which he decided to name 'Vibration Sense.'

His 'Vibration Sense' was still far from perfect, but it was much better then it was initially, and combining it with his newly created hammering technique, Minos began improving at a rocket's speed.

With all that acting as his foundation, Minos soon reached his current point, having created his infant 'Minos Hammering' technique, as well as further perfecting his 'Vibration Sense.'

All this progress cost him two months of time, which Minos considered well spent. However he also realized that his training was becoming less efficient, proof that he needed more knowledge to expand his reserves.

With that in mind, Minos decided to take a break, not only to see if he had any chance to learn more about weapon refining and broaden his horizons, but also to just relax his tense nerves.

While he loved learning, he wasn't a machine, so a break once in a while would instead benefit him, also he wanted to check in on Rubella, Beetus, and even Zatiana.

Minos stretched, relaxing his sore muscles. Two months had caused his body to become stiff, so the first thing he wanted to do was get a massage.

Having decided his destination, he hung his hammer away and exited the refining room, saying hello to the receptionist before entering the streets.

What Minos didn't realize was that just as he left, Zatiana entered, noticing him. She wanted to say hello, but realizing the direction Minos was heading, she decided against speaking, instead quietly following behind him.

It didn't take much time for Minos to reach the massage house, which naturally was also an establishment of other unsavory occupations.

Of course Minos's intentions were pure, and he only came for a massage, unfortunately for him, Zatiana didn't know his intention, and instead went red in the face, both in shame and anger.