Monica was brash and cocky when it came to fighting. She knew how good she was and she had never felt inadequate in terms of experience.

  When it came to forging, however, she was just starting to get a feel of how hard superior forging was. In fact, she still had no idea how they'd manage to put the Spear of Dhoznil back together. And good luck trying to kill Machina without it.

  "I'll guide you," Dworsul said, seeing the insecurity in Monica's eyes. "This is hard, Avatar. I don't expect you to succeed without help. But, this alloy is too good to pass up on. I wouldn't allow the armor to be forged with anything else now that it is in our hands."

  "Dworsul," Monica said, looking at the Dwarf intently. "I trust you."

  "You don't sound very sincere," Dworsul smirked.

  "Because you're an asshole," Monica smiled. "But you know your stuff. If you say we can do it, I'm sure we can."

  That seemed to warm the old Dwarf's heart. Now that there was a true Blacksmithing challenge in front of them, he seemed reinvigorated. Monica had noticed that Dworsul was often down in his moods. He felt like he always hid away his despair, his sadness. Only when Monica saw the upswing while she practiced Blacksmithing, she understood that he was actually a rather cheerful guy. He was just terribly sad most of the time.

  "We'll now smelt steel, Duranium, and a bit of gold. The armor will require gold to channel the Mana between the Mithril and the rest of the metals."

  "Oh, how come?" Monica asked curiously.

  She half-expected a snarky reply but instead Dworsul spoke like a teacher.

  "Gold is one of the best Mana conductors. Sadly, it is too soft on its own, too weak. You can only add so much to anything before it would break apart. Steel, instead, is the opposite. It's on the lower end of Mana conductivity, but it's among the hardest metals. Duranium, instead, is softer and more malleable than steel, but has a much higher Mana conductivity. If you mix steel and Duranium, you get one of the most resistant materials you can employ without having to recur to Mithril. Understand that in Blacksmithing we mostly work with alloys, not pure metals. Pure Mithril, for example, is not only extremely expensive, but so hard to work, that, practically speaking, it's much more convenient to make alloys out of it."

  "Can I ask a stupid question?" Monica said.

  "Like always," Dworsul nodded.

  "What's the Spear of Dhoznil made of?"

  The Dwarf smirked.

  "At higher levels, all equipment is part monster, part metal. You saw that making an alloy out of the Wasps' bodies made you stronger against them. Now, if a Divine Weapon is meant to kill a God, Avatar, take a wild guess of what it's made out off."

  Monica's mouth hang open in stupor.

  * * *

  Monica carefully eliminated impurities from the steel, the Duranium, and the gold, but her head was somewhere else.

  Dworsul had not really given her details about the Spear of Dhoznil's making. But, he had confirmed her suspicion: a God's body had been used for it.

  When she had asked how it was possible that she would then get a Divine set of the Twin Phoenix, Dworsul laughed and shook his head.

  "What do Titans do, Avatar?"

  Apparently, to make a Titan's set, one had to engage in the rather cumbersome task of killing Gods.

  "Six Divine items means that that's how many Gods you have slain, at the very minimum. Three remain on this land. Three stubborn ones, but... only three. There weren't many to start with, you should know."

  I wonder if I killed all those Gods or if there was a Twin Phoenix Avatar before me.

  "Once bestowed, a Divine Beast's power cannot be taken back," Dworsul said. "And if an Avatar is killed off for good, their patron suffers great damage. Therefore, why Avatars are usually so unfairly powerful. Old Gods take time to root themselves back into a world once they're expelled. But drop an Avatar in the midst of a Dungeon, and in a matter of months, you might be facing a powerhouse with unfairly powerful Skills."

  Sounds like me, Monica smiled confidently.

  As soon as the metals were ready, Dworsul had Monica start the forging of the armor pieces. The design was much more complicated than what Monica had gotten used at. That's why Dworsul oversaw every single blow of Monica's hammer.

  The beautiful design of the Nightshade Battle Wear, however, wasn't just for show. Monica saw that by shaping the metal exactly as the Nightshade Battle Wear was supposed to look like, the Mana flowed much more strongly along the metal. Compared to the gauntlet she had made for herself? This was a whole different level.

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  "Put the chitin in it," Dworsul said. "It would be nice to have a piece of whatever Machina has in store for you, but the fact that it's still one of her creations means that you'll have an advantage over her."

  So, Monica had to mix steel, gold, Duranium, and Wasps' pieces to mold the metal parts of her armor.

  It took two days for her to be done with it after countless failed attempts.

  And then, it was time for the truly hard part.

  For the first time since Monica had awakened the Dwarf, Dworsul took his hammer off his belt and stepped beside Monica, taking the coil of Black Widow Thread.

  "There's a lot of magic involved in what I'm about to do. Runes from the forge have to be used in order for the thread to be woven as it should. We'll first do the cloth with our hammers. Then, you'll attach it to the armor with your flame, soldering it, and then q the entire thing and redistributing the Mana equally throughout the armor. Do you understand?"

  Monica nodded seriously.

  "Good," Dworsul said. "I don't have much power I can call upon without consequences. Therefore, I will only strike to show you and to correct your mistakes. You can't stop. Once the process starts, stopping means we would have to throw out all the thread we've used so far."

  "I got it," Monica replied.

  "Let's get to work, then," Dworsul said and raised his hammer.

  In that moment, Monica felt the air go still, and a terrifying pressure like she had never felt before, not even when facing Machina in the Crystal Wolves Dungeon.

  When Dworsul's hammer struck the anvil and the thread, she had expected a thunderclap, but instead a sound akin to crystal being tapped with a silver fork came out.

  "Keep Mana Sense active," Dworsul reminded her.

  And so that's what Monica did. She held her unblinking gaze through Mana Sense to follow the legendary Blacksmith's strikes.

  The hammer struck until about a foot of thread had been uncoiled and hammered along its length. Monica saw the Mana in it being perfectly distributed by Dworsul's strikes before he used the side of the hammer to separate the thread and lay another line over it. This time, he bent the second thread over it, then took another line, hammered it, and did the same. He was weaving the steely coil together.

  "Get ready to take my place. Do you see how this works?" Dworsul said, not removing his eyes from the thread and keeping a steady hammering rhythm.

  "I do," Monica said, taking a deep breath and taking out her own hammer, tightening her grip around it.

  "Good, switch," Dworsul said, suddenly moving and leaving a void.

  Monica instantly saw the Mana in the threads starting to coagulate and went to strike the thread again.

  It seemed like as long as one of the threads was being hammered during the process, the other threads' Mana would keep moving around, redistributing itself.

  The process filled Monica with a sense of wonder. She was almost ashamed to think that, in certain ways, forging seemed even more esoteric than fighting, more interesting almost.

  She twisted foot after foot of Black Widow Thread until it became a large square.

  "Move," Dworsul said, pushing her away with his hips.

  She had gotten distracted for a second and, without noticing, some of the Mana had started coagulating. Dworsul struck the clot and then again the wire, adding several hits in quick succession that Monica couldn't explain but that still did their job in smoothing out the Mana.

  "Switch."

  Monica took his place again.

  This process went back and forth for the better part of two hours, until Monica was starting to grow so tired she didn't know whether she could go for much longer.

  Thankfully enough, the thread had almost been fully used up, and they had a chainmail-like net of threads that Dworsul, with expert hits, had woven closer and closer.

  As soon as they finished the thread, Dworsul took over again and adjusted them until they were so thick together that Monica could barely understand how they hadn't gotten melded one with the other.

  Dworsul kept hammering and shouted to Monica, "take the armor pieces! We're almost done!"

  Monica did as Dworsul said and took the armor pieces and put them together. She takes the armor pieces and puts them on the stone table where they had been working. Each piece glinted in faint, multi-hued light under her Mana Sense. Despite her fatigue, she couldn’t help the sense of pride edging into her voice.

  Monica inhaled the scorching air of Thizmug’s forge, turning to Dworsul for confirmation. He gave her the slightest nod, still hammering the last few strands of spider silk.

  "Now, use your Fire Breathing to tie everything together. I'll point out where," the man said, his hammer not stopping even for a moment.

  Monica started welding the thread into the armor pieces, carefully reassembling her Nightshade Battle Wear in a new, enhanced form. Following Dworsul’s sharp instructions, she fed slow pulses of Fire Mana into the hammered mesh and lined it up to fit each metal portion. It felt like puzzle work—trickier than forging any single plate. She had to ensure the hammered silk bonded cleanly to the Duranium-steel-gold alloy A ripple of tension ran through her arms as she sealed the spider mesh to the curved edges of the armor, but Dworsul’s firm voice kept her grounded.

  Monica struggled several times as she saw lumps of Mana forming beneath a piece of plating. Dworsul barked out an order, then deftly knocked the lumps loose with perfectly timed hammer blows. He hurried Monica along to the next seam, guiding her to maintain a seamless weave where the metal met the spider silk.

  "It's done, temper it now!"

  Monica threw the entire armor and attached thread into the forge and exhaled a large amount of Fire Mana into it.

  She was barely conscious about what happened next.

  She was so tired that any other function in her mind that wasn't fully dedicated to smithing had shut off. She just stared at the armor and used the same technique she had used for forging steel in order to make sure everything was good. She would cycle the Obsidian Flame and the Golden Flame to remove imperfections while the heat allowed the Mana to spread in the right patterns.

  Only now that Monica was tempering the armor she saw just how strong the thread they had used was. She could see the thread's Mana patterns shifting with the kind of fluidity she would have only expected from a living being.

  Mithril, she reasoned.

  By the time that she was done, she had sucked the last Vitality out of her body and she felt Dworsul's hands cushion her fall as life left her.

  At the same time, she heard a deluge of notifications ringing in her head.