She was still relatively tired after going through such a hectic day, but since she could keep going — and she had so much to do… — Elizabeth wiped the exhaustion out of her eyes before she started collecting some rocks from the cave. Coincidentally, the cave she had locked herself in for the night had trace amounts of metallic ore embedded in the walls. Unfortunately, Elizabeth was both too weak and not well equipped enough to extract and process the metals. She didn't lament the fact that she couldn't use metals at the moment, as her current abilities both with energy and the forging path wouldn't do the metals much justice anyways.

Instead, Elizabeth foraged for loose pieces of Marble and Quartzite; the most plentiful and easily harvested types of rocks she could find. Elizabeth didn't spend much time identifying the rocks and strains of metals around her, as she possessed an intuitive sense for cla.s.sifying materials after digesting the [Saintly Forging] technique. At least, that much was true for regular metals and materials, as there were quite a few bits and pieces of material embedded in the cave walls, which held energy, that Elizabeth could not identify at all.

It was the same problem Elizabeth had when she confronted the wildlife of the Shadow Realm; only in reverse. For the wildlife, Elizabeth could barely identify any animals and insects as she navigated through the Shadow Realm, which was why both the dogs and snake she killed came up as generic "dog" and "snake" respectively. If she knew what it was she had killed, or what types of metals were embedded in the cave wall, her status functions would most certainly not give such basic descriptions.

…

A couple minutes later, Elizabeth could be seen sitting before her campfire with her forging station setup and a couple dozen kilograms worth of rock lying next to her. As Elizabeth waited for her furnace to reach a high enough temperature — she had already ignited it with the flames of her campfire — she played with a piece of Quartzite to pa.s.s the time.

Eventually, when a clear orange flame stabilized, she stopped twirling the rock in her hands. At that point, the Quartzite could melt, so she tossed the rock into the flames and watched with extreme caution and care as the process of Refining began.

Elizabeth was losing Inner Strength at an expedited pace as she used energy to fuel and control the temperature of her furnace's flames. Her eyes and hands also needed a solid layer of Inner Strength coating them, lest she wants to either burn or blind herself. And all of that was being detracted from her reserves before she even used a portion to directly alter the inner structure of the rock.

For just the refining process, several hundred units of Inner Strength were consumed, and even though Elizabeth put in so much care and caution to her actions, there were a myriad of mistakes that plagued the refined Quartzite rock anyways. Fortunately, Elizabeth didn't have the time to drown herself in depression for failing so terribly this time around, as she didn't exactly have the energy to stop this session in forging halfway through.

She literally had to strike while the Quartzite was hot as letting it cool down while she recovered would just be a waste of energy. Thus, Elizabeth went from Refining to Engraving after drawing her new inscription pen. And since she was only working on bullets, the chisels and tongs that came with her forging tools weren't needed.

The first thing Elizabeth noticed as she used her inscribing pen for the first time, was how hilariously sharp the tip of the pen was. Granted, she was engraving molten hot Quartzite, but still! She was literally cutting through the rock as if it were b.u.t.ter with absolutely no damage left behind on her pen!

Not only did the Engraving Stage of the forging process dramatically decrease in length, the tessellated patterns Elizabeth drew on her bullet were much cleaner and crisp. They were still kind of shaky from her lack of experience, but for a newbie smith, it was impressive to say the least.

[+350 Forging Exp

Forging Level 2 (500/625) → Level 3 (850/1,750)

Current Effect: Mortal Grade Armaments and ammunition forged by the user come out 30% more powerful.

Status

Name: Compact Quartzite Bullet

Grade: Low-tier Mortal Grade Bullet

Description: Crafted by the user, this is a piece of magical ammunition imbued with Inner Strength and various Sub-Basic level principles of the path of forging. A fine piece of ammunition with a 65% Refined State. Though, the inscriptions are a bit "iffy," the bullet's alright for its grade.

Effects: Damages ent.i.ties up to Level 15. Typically fatal to beings Level 6 and below.]

Now… Elizabeth could be a little ridiculous and carve out some jagged edges to her bullets to make them all the more lethal. Or maybe encase them in a thin sheet of Iridium metal to get the full metal jacket effect. There was even the option to carve out a ridge for hollow point bullets, if she really wanted to go the extra mile. But all those options would effectively double her workload at the moment as adding those extra features would be the equivalent of making another basic bullet.

So… Elizabeth opted to just stock up on normal basic bullets for now, as even the objectively worthless bullet made out of dirt managed to instakill a top tier predator within the forest. To Elizabeth, there was no need to push her destructive capabilities when a one-shot kill could be achieved without extraordinary effort.

Thus, for the next hour or so, Elizabeth dedicated her time to creating Marble and Quartzite Bullets. For those types of materials, Elizabeth could just about manage crafting two bullets at a time before having to meditate, and every such cycle took about six minutes — even after factoring in the time it took for her to enter meditation and for her furnace to heat up.

The process only became easier as time pa.s.sed and she got more experience, but that kind of progress was clouded by the ever-increasing amount of fatigue Elizabeth acc.u.mulated. This led to her keeping a consistent quality of bullet all the way up to her twelfth and final cycle. Additionally, she found out after not touching her Dawnbringer during this hour-long forging session, that the magazine sp.a.w.ned of her Inner Strength would only persist for 10 minutes if she didn't constantly feed it some Inner Strength.

For some reason, even though the bullet was chambered and everything. When that time limit of 10 minutes came, the Iridium Bullet was ejected out of the pistol; its metallic clicking noise being what scared Elizabeth out of her meditation and revealed the existence of such a limit in the first place.

Now that she had a whole twenty-four bullets to her name, after recovering her Inner Strength for the umpteenth time that day, Elizabeth conjured up another magazine and loaded in bullets to find that her pistols could only hold ten bullets each.

After finis.h.i.+ng the hour-long goal of forging she had set for herself, Elizabeth was more than a little inclined to fall asleep to skip the amount of time she had to experience in the h.e.l.l-hole she had come to know as the Forest of Beginnings. She truly would have liked to continue forging and fix herself an actually useful armor set, but she was too burned out to actually go through with anymore smithing practice.

It was with half closed eyes and staggering form that Elizabeth had to physically stop herself from sleeping, as the ever-helpful P chimed in. P said, "Ay~ before you fall asleep, I'd recommend you absorb the Basic Beast Rearing Manual." She almost sounded happy to startle Elizabeth out of the peaceful sleep her body craved...

"..." Elizabeth stared at nothing as she thought through whether or not it would be worth it to follow through with P's suggestion, and eventually decided to entertain her thoughts. P hadn't yet done anything that would harm her well being, in fact, everything P did was for her own good. So with clear grumpiness and a total scowl, Elizabeth browsed through her Quest Functions and accepted the rewards for her Soulbound Contract Hidden Quest.

With yet another grimoire-like tome manifesting out of multicolored bubbles of energy, Elizabeth went through the familiar process of digesting knowledge — the magical way — which almost caused her to black out as the breeze-like sensation threatened to woo her into a coma. Somehow, she fought through the calls of sleep and came out after absorbing the beast rearing techniques with just enough consciousness to complete one final action before collapsing.

With the last couple fibers of strength, her body possessed, Elizabeth slumped over to her "Demonic Beast Egg," what would eventually be her first lifelong partner, and she set up an automatic process for nurturing the egg as she fell asleep. With the egg in her embrace, Elizabeth's insight into Time would work according to the plans she had had just learned from the Beast Rearing Manual, and through her sleep, her Inner Strength would work to gently coax the egg into accepting Elizabeth. Both to establish a master-servant relations.h.i.+p and to let the egg get used resonating its energy with Elizabeth.