Although James wanted to first return to the old iron mine and see if he could get another brown magic crystal from the first mole monster he had killed, he wisely decided to stop and focus on forging a new war hammer and enchanting it with [Heavy Blow]. While his first war hammer had been devastatingly effective due to its sheer mass, realistically it was too large. The Smith also gave up on attaching it to a wooden shaft. Instead, he would forge it out of one piece, like he had with his first green iron hammer. He had worried when forging that first hammer that it would be fragile and break easily when swung with force, but the trusty hammer had held up well even when he hammered with his full force against the skulls of the downed monsters, so he felt confident that a larger war hammer would also be fine. Well, larger compared to the green iron hammer. He [Designed] his new war hammer to be a little smaller than his original, the better to wield one handed.

He dug out a mold and smelted down the old war hammer head, still bloody from where it had lain in the blood of the mole monster. But when he, as was his habit, inspected the molten metal for slag to remove, not that he expected any from smelting down forged iron, he found swirls and clumps of brown in the molten metal. Shocked, he inspected the molten metal more closely.

[Material Identification: Molten Brown Iron]

He continued to gaze at it intently. He felt something was… incomplete. Like there was more to learn about this oddity.

[Enchanter] Class Skill [Substrate Analysis] acquired.

[Material Identification: Molten Brown Iron, Earth Essence contamination ?/?]

James blinked, his eyes dry from staring into the heated, glowing metal. That was new. He recalled Jared and Meridox had mentioned undine essence affecting the sword Jared had made.

[Water Identification: Pure Water]

The water trickle on the wall inside his camp was, as far as James could tell, uncontaminated with essence.

After checking the cavern, still empty, he walked over to the blood from where he had killed the monster, by this point mostly dry but still damp. He bent over and examined it closely.

[Material Identification: Blood (Earth Essence)]

Having confirmed his suspicion, James quickly returned to the safety of his camp. He was surprised that blood actually registered in his [Material Identification] skill. Normally it only registered things he could use for forging, and Meridox had never mentioned using blood as a catalyst for enchanting.

The Smith quickly cast his warhammer and while it was solidifying, he tried smelting one of his stored iron ingots. As far as he could tell, it was uncontaminated with any essence. But once he put it in the smelter and it melted down-

[Material Identification: Molten Iron, Earth Essence contamination ?/?]

Although the skill was imprecise, perhaps because of his low level in [Substrate Analysis], he could tell it was less contaminated than the brown iron had been.

"Crap." James cursed. "Did I just contaminate the entire smelter?"

The war hammer now solid enough to move with his tongs, he put it in the forge to keep warm and poured out the molten iron into an ingot mold. He could see the brown swirls, just barely, in the iron ingot.

[Material Identification: Iron Ingot (Earth Essence)]

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Curious, he moved the ingot to his green iron anvil shaped object, and tried hammering it aimlessly, just to see what would happen. Strangely, it was like trying to hammer an ingot of soap. The ingot nearly slipped out from the tongs (also green iron) and skidded around on the surface of the anvil, and his strikes with the hammer required much more focus than normal, even more than he normally required to use his [Hammer Strike] Technique.

And although he could barely catch it, he saw the essence moving around in the iron with each strike, as though repelled by the strikes of the hammer.

For the moment, James set the odd contaminated iron ingot aside. He finished up his war hammer, contaminated with earth essence as it was, and although it was more difficult to forge this hammer than anything else he had forged before, he was able to complete it.

[Appraisal: War Hammer, Quality: Very Low, Durability: 15/15, Earth Essence]

At this point James realized that, even though he wanted to [Enchant], he didn't have the finer tools necessary for the etching. Additionally, his investigation and forging had used up most of the day.

He ate a dinner of porridge and a small amount of smoked mole monster meat he forced himself to swallow, eyes watering at the awful taste, and slept.

In the morning there were still no monsters in the cavern, and James spent some time working on the smelter. He soon realized that if he boiled Pure Water in the smelter, it would leech the Earth Essence from the smelter and boil off. Eventually, the water stopped registering as contaminated to his skill, and the smelter was no longer contaminated.

Feeling accomplished, the Smith spent the rest of the day crafting tools for himself: copies of the delicate tools he had seen Jared and Meridox use when they prepared the sword enchantment he had once witnessed. Once he was finished, he had a small assortment of picks, chisels, a metal brush (clamped with fur from the mole monster) and even several files of various sizes (the forging of which had been incredibly time consuming). Worried about the strange interaction between essence and colored iron he had seen the day before, these he forged with regular iron and ensured were uncontaminated.

After a quick lunch of more porridge and another foul piece of monster meat (this time he tried roasting it in the forge, nearly burning it black, but this made the meat tougher in exchange for reducing the flavor), he pulled out the war hammer and prepared to apply the [Heavy Blow] template he had memorized.

As he moved a small pick to start etching, his hand froze. The swirls of earth essence caught his eye. They didn't look right. He knew he was going to make an Earth enchantment, so he figured the contamination wouldn't hurt the final enchantment much, but he didn't want the contamination streaks to be crossing the lines perpendicular. He felt like they should be more aligned with the enchantment pattern.

The enchantment pattern itself was a mix of circles and radial lines and squiggles. The Smith, guided by his intuition, decided to work the metal of the hammer a little more. He warmed it up in the forge again, hotter and hotter until James saw the swirls of earth essence start to move again.

Using a small green iron hammer against the green iron anvil shaped object, the Smith tap tap tapped, less shaping the metal as much as the swirls of earth essence. He guided them, repelled by the green iron, until they coalesced roughly in the center of the head of the hammer, lined up in the center of the circles where he planned to etch the enchantment pattern.

Quenching the war hammer in the pure water froze the swirls of earth essence in place once again.

Now satisfied, he etched the enchantment pattern into the top of the war hammer. At first he thought to follow the pattern exactly, but the radial lines had room to extend to the striking faces of the hammer, so he went ahead and did so. Guided again by his intuition, he made these lines just a tad deeper than the radial lines going in other directions, and made those lines more shallow than the rest.

The etching complete, looking remarkably close to the template pattern thanks to James' double boost in dexterity, he now turned to his one brown magic crystal. He had prepared a rough approximation of a mortar and pestle using a monster claw to cut the stone roughly to shape, and now used this to grind the stone down to an even powder.

[Material Identification: Earth Crystal Dust (Medium)]

"Huh?" James muttered, raising an eyebrow. He continued to grind the powder further.

[Material Identification: Earth Crystal Dust (Fine)]

Now he nodded. Setting the mortar with the powder aside, he took his cup and filled it with Pure Water. Then, he dipped a finger in and moved his mana. It felt heavy inside him, almost like barely molten metal. He continued to push, imagining that he was heating it up to make it flow better-

[Enchanter] Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] acquired.

Now flowing slightly better, he pushed his mana into the water, activating his [Aqua Magia] skill. The water flashed brightly and he stopped pushing his mana, and the water faded back to looking like normal water, though it was now nothing like normal water in any other way.

[Material Identification: Aqua Magia]

When he set the cup of Aqua Magia down, James found that he was panting and exhausted. He scanned the empty cavern, the habit finally starting to sink in, and took a break. He wasn't sure if he was out of mana or just was tired from a long day of work, but he ate a hefty dinner and ate enough monster meat to feel nauseous, but not enough to vomit.

Just barely not enough to vomit.

Feeling queasy, he lay down and slept, falling asleep more easily than he had in a long, long time.

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