"What the heck are you rambling about? Do you think that if something like that had happened to them, I would be wasting my time on social calls? I would be hunting Manohar's a.s.s down while one of my men seeks your help.

"I'm calling you because of an outrageous rumor I heard a few hours before. Some of my Forgemaster colleagues in the expedition say that you claim to have crafted an Orichalc.u.m Skinwalker armor.

"At first, I paid it no heed, but when I called my Little Flower to hear about her mission, she confirmed it. Is it really true? I need to hear it from your voice." Orion said.

Lith furrowed his brows while looking at Phloria, who just shrugged.

"The cat was already out of the bag. There was no point in denying it." She said, hurting Orion's feelings. The idea that one of his daughters could keep secrets from him was terrible.

Yet Phloria had never shared with anyone Lith's secrets just as Friya never talked about Protector's ability to shapes.h.i.+ft into a human.

"Yes, it's true." Lith injected a bit of his mana into the Skinwalker, making it turn into a quicksilver-like liquid that covered him from head to toes and made him resemble a humanoid metal golem.

"Amazing! That's supposed to be impossible. The Thunderbird's feather and the Orichalc.u.m release wild energy whenever they interact, making the spell unstable. I tried countless times with as many variations but I never succeeded.

"How the heck did you do it?" Orion asked.

"There's no such thing as a wild energy release." Lith wasn't going to give away his secret, but if he wanted to obtain something decent to replace his lost weapon, he had to drive a hard bargain.

The first step was baiting the prey with an honest, but useless information.

"It's just that the Orichalc.u.m amplifies the feather's energy field, so if you had planned to handle a spell with 100 units of power, you actually get one with 130, which is more than your spell is devised can harness."

"It makes sense." Orion pondered. "Orichalc.u.m has the property to amplify energy based enchantments. It's the reason Orichalc.u.m is considered so precious since its hardness is just above Damascus steel levels.

"Still, I handled tons of Orichalc.u.m, yet only a few crafting techniques always fail, like it happens for the Skinwalker. How do you explain that?"

"Because the interaction between ingredients is very strong and it significantly varies with the amount of adamant in the Orichalc.u.m." Lith replied.

Only a true mage like him could comfortably wait for the pseudo core to stabilize before fusing it with an enchanted item. Fake mages used spells that would barely last twenty seconds and they had no way to a.s.sess how great the amplifying effect was.

They could adjust the energy output with a tier five spell, but without Life Vision or Invigoration, it would still be like a blind man trying to kill a bird with a single arrow.

"Would you like to share your method? I've struck a bottleneck in crafting armors because to upgrade my products I would need to use Orichalc.u.m or Adamant, but the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds always mess with my spells." Orion's request was the closest thing to a taboo between mages.

Sharing spells was something that could be done only on a voluntary basis, and usually no one would reveal one of their trump cards.

"Would you like to share your crafting methods?" Lith replied with a sneer.

"Of course not." Orion sighed. "What about an exchange? I heard that the Gatekeeper has been destroyed. I can give you an even better weapon if you provide me with an Orichalc.u.m Skinwalker as a study subject."

Orion wanted to exploit the situation as well. Any decent warrior knew that a weapon was more than a tool. In their line of work, it was a lifeline.

"I first need to see what you're offering. As you can see, my crafting process made the armor much more versatile than a normal Skinwalker. A Gatekeeper is good, but it's not enough. To use it at its full power, it takes a lot of mana.

"On top of that, it was too frail. It almost broke during the events in Othre, Maekosh, and even Jambel. What good is a weapon that it's not able to protect my life and that requires to be protected?" Lith painfully remembered every time he had come close to sacrifice the Gatekeeper to protect his life.

"Fine! You're right." Orion yielded, especially because Phloria was giving him a bad, bad look.

"It was just the gift for a 13 year old and one I didn't like much at that. I'll make you something worthy of a Ranger. You have my word."

Lith hung up after showing Orion exactly what his armor could do. Lith didn't ask him for anything specific because he knew that as a craftsman, Orion's pride would force him to give his best to not fall short of Lith's skill.

Making specific requests would have been like giving him boundaries, whereas this way Orion could do whatever he wanted and Lith was free to refuse the trade if he considered it to be unfair.

To Phloria, Lith said:

"Well, at least now I can put one of my prototypes to good use. You have no idea how many tweaks it took to craft something that could store my full power without it exploding into my face."

"Are you really going to give Dad just a prototype? A faulty item?" Now she was giving Lith a bad, bad look.

"Not faulty, just not the best one. He will tinker with it a lot, probably even damage or destroy it. There's no reason to waste a good armor when even a mediocre one follows the same principles and has the same properties." Lith shrugged.

"If your father is even one bit like me, if I were to give him a masterpiece, he wouldn't bear the thought of destroying it and limit his experiments as a consequence. This is yours, by the way."

Lith handed her a chainmail set that even under the dim light of the camp shone like a precious gem, creating a rainbow on the tunnel ceiling.

"As I told you, I made a lot of them but I only need one. You've already almost died today and if something happens to you, I would never forgive myself. I might not be in love with you anymore, but I love you nonetheless." Lith said.

"I- I can't accept it. It's too precious." Both his gesture and his words made Phloria incredibly happy and sad at the same time. Lith still cared for her deeply, but not like before.

When he looked at her, she could almost perceive an invisible wall between them and its presence hurt her way more than she expected.

"Precious, yes. Rare, not so much. I have already given one to Tista and to the rest of my family as well. It took a lot of work to get this right, so I have plenty to spare. I have even one for Quylla and Friya. So get down your high horse and accept my gift."

Phloria took the armor and imprinted it immediately. There were just cyan crystals bonded with the metal. They proved that it was indeed a prototype and that Lith lacked powerful resources.