What!

Adrien stepped back from the glowing focus ring, exhaling deeply. A pin drop silence had fallen over the hall.

The other disciples nearby had paused their own work, watching with varying degrees of surprise, confusion, or, most notably, disbelief.

The elders were the most surprised. Because they could see the quality grade of the focus ring.

Every craft had a grade quality percentage, and the two elders could see that this a crafted to perfection, meaning, it was a one-hundred percent grade quality piece.

It wasn't unheard of for someone to succeed on their first try. But to produce a flawless piece? With no formal instruction? Using only theory? As an initiate crafter?

That was something else entirely.

The white-browed elder who had watched Adrien begin, the forge steward known to most simply as Master Rin, stepped forward and lifted the ring.

Adrien, startled, stepped out of the way, and finally realised that everyone was staring in his direction. He simply raised a brow in surprise and decided to observe.

He was still oblivious to the feat he had pulled off.

Master Rin's fingers trembled slightly as he rotated the piece under the workbench's inspection light.

No warping. No fluctuation in the rune structure. The alloy had been tempered at exactly the right cycle of dream pulses.

Even the inlay of ink across the runes carried a subtle resonance, as if each stroke had been dictated by intuition honed over years, not hours.

It was simply, "Immaculate!" Master Rin shouted out loud.

"Young man," Master Rin said at last, "where did you say you studied again?"

Adrien rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Ah… the library."

Someone nearby choked on their tea. Another disciple scoffed. "Library? Please. You expect us to believe that?"

Adrien didn't bother responding. His eyes were already scanning the forge interface again, ideas bubbling.

Master Rin narrowed his gaze. "There's theory. Then there's comprehension. But what you displayed just now… that was instinct. As if you could feel what the craft wanted."

Adrien smiled faintly. "I wouldn't describe it that way, it felt more like there was only one right way to make a proper focus ring based on the description on the blueprint, any different, and it would be something else entirely to me."

Rin blinked. Then he did something that made the whole forge hall freeze.

He bowed his head.

Just a shallow tilt. But from Master Rin, that meant something.

"You may use this forge any time, so long as you do not interfere with the others," Rin said. "If you wish to pursue this path… I Advise that you take the intermediate dream crafter exam. We will have to notify the elder in charge of second professions for that, however. And you can call me Master Rin."

Adrien bowed gratefully. "Thank you, Master Rin. I will keep that in mind."

But in truth, his mind was already elsewhere.

He needed to craft something.

Something that wasn't in the schematics.

Something that had burned in the back of his thoughts ever since he saw his first blueprint when he held Selyra's blade and felt the weight of true craftsmanship.

A weapon core. But not just any weapon core.

He pulled out a blank dreamsteel crystal from the material rack. It shimmered with untapped potential, like the sleeping husk of a dragon.

Adrien placed it on the engraving table, fingers twitching as a million designs crashed through his mind.

A modular construct. A living weapon core that could evolve based on its wielder's dream core growth.

Channel different forms depending on battle context and learn from its own failures. A weapon meant not just for war, but for understanding.

A tool of creation and destruction.

He called up a blank schematic scroll, dipped a rune pen in moonlight ink, and began sketching. 

At this point, the whole area had settled for silent observation. Maybe they could witness the creation of another masterpiece, and the birth of another legendary crafter.

At first it was messy. Raw. Just energy flows, containment symbols, channels for binding dream arrays.

But as the hours passed, it evolved, forming a strange hybrid of alchemical cores, smithing sequences, and even some strange engravings he vaguely recalled from one of the books on ancient Asura crafting arts.

One of the elders watching whispered to another, "That's not from our archives, is it?"

"It is," the other muttered. "But inscribing the markings onto a craft is deemed to difficult so everyone who has tried it so far has failed... something let's watch.."

Meanwhile — Back at the Library

The librarian from the night before sat behind her massive, floating lectern, flipping lazily through an old ledger when her pen suddenly stopped moving.

A small light blinked on the edge of her humble shelf, indicating a flagged tracking rune, one she placed on the boy who had devoured over two hundred books in a single night.

She watched the feed on a crystal tablet. Her eyebrows shot up.

"…Dreamfire Forge?"

Another light blinked.

"Accepted restricted schematic access? Master Rin… sponsored him?"

She stood abruptly, nearly knocking over her stool.

For decades she had watched disciples come and go, those chasing sword glory, those hungry for fame, those obsessed with climbing the sect's inner ranks.

But this one… this strange boy with too many books, too little sleep, and an ego so well sheathed, and nonchalant arrogance, that could pass faking coolness while reading to others?

He was turning the sect's foundations like a crankshaft, and it didn't feel like he was even trying to.

She smiled slightly, then turned to the floating book by her side.

"Add him to the Hidden Seed Ledger," she whispered.

The book flipped open and inscribed his name on an invisible list.

Name: Adrien

Status: Unknown potential

Affiliation: Moonlight Sect (Outer Disciple)

Classification: [REDACTED]

Notes: Possible seed of innovation. Monitor closely.

...

Back at the Pavilion

Hours passed.

The sun had long since fallen, and the moon cast silvery light over the open ceiling of the forge hall. Adrien hadn't moved.

His eyes blazed with purpose. Blueprints were scattered across the floor, and half-finished cores shimmered with incomplete potential.

But at the centre of it all, resting in a containment field, was the early version of his vision, a jagged, asymmetric crystal wrapped in layered dream steel, shaped like the core of a weapon that had yet to be born.

It pulsed once. Faintly.

A heartbeat.

Adrien stared at it in awe.

"…You're not done," he whispered. "But you're real. And you're mine."

He named it under his breath:

"Nova Edge."

Somewhere, deep within the inner mountains of the sect, a divine bell rang once. A sign to the oldest masters.

A new path had been born.

And far above the clouds, high in the Moonlight Sect's hidden sanctum, an old man with a long silver beard stirred from meditation. His eyes snapped open, crackling with lightning.

"…An echo of the Primordial Forge?" he muttered.

He smiled.

"The game has changed."

...

The inner sanctum of the Moonlight Sect was far removed from the training halls, libraries, or even the Dreamfire Forge.

Nestled within a crescent-shaped valley above the clouds, it was carved directly into a ring of alabaster stone known as the Moonspire, where ten shimmering towers spiraled skyward like frozen beams of moonlight.

Each tower belonged to a High Elder, and at the heart of their convergence stood the Council Pavilion, a quiet, floating courtyard of black marble suspended midair by ancient enchantments. Here, the sect's true decisions were made, far from the gaze of the common disciples.

Today, the elders convened.

At first glance, the Council Pavilion was serene. Elegant, unhurried, and quiet. But below the surface, tensions simmered.

"—he forged a perfect core on his first day?" one elder said, her silver robes rippling faintly with her agitation. "Rin, you cannot be serious."

Master Rin, sitting with his arms folded calmly, gave a half-smile. "I've taught for four centuries, Lan. I know talent when I see it. This boy, Adrien, he's more than any dream crafter you have ever seen. He's an innovator. He just casually made something we have never seen before. He made his own creation, without even making a blueprint to start with."

Elder Lan scoffed, but another voice spoke up, measured and rich, like rain on stone.

"Perhaps the boy should be tested more rigorously," said a tall man with faintly pointed ears and pale hair that shimmered silver-white. "It's far too early to draw conclusions."

That was Councilor Elandros Moonveil, the sect's most revered elf and one of its oldest members. Though calm and rarely the first to speak, his words carried weight like anchors in a storm.

"And yet…" murmured a younger elder seated beside him. "The ancient scripts prophesied a Second Flame. A rebirth of the Crafting Path. We all dismissed it. But what if—"

Elandros raised a hand, and silence followed.

"I will allow the boy his space," he said finally, "but let us not forget where true legacy resides."

He turned slightly to the empty seat beside him, where a small, pale blue flower rested in a crystal vase.

"She is still the Moonlight Sect's brightest flame."