Helena finally offered Elias a seat as she seemed to be waiting for someone and after a few minutes surely someone came in with a large case, almost as tall as the person carrying it. After saluting Helena, he left immediately.
Helena then opened the case and What was inside was exactly what Elias had imagined when he asked for the axe but he didn't think it would be this big,the blade alone was already almost twice the length of his arm and the body was pulsed faintly with runes and at the edge a gap where both his hands could fit perfectly for grip,but despite the axe being so big Helena lifted it with one hand as she turned to Elias "This is a simple axe with a bit of weight adjustment and strengthening runes, you are a blacksmith you can make your own axe when you are ready but for now here."
Helena said as she handed it to Elias but just as Elias touched the axe and Helena let go, the weight seemed to increase a hundredfold as it immediately fell down Elias could not even budge it.Confused he looked at Helena only to see her laughing at him and after waiting for a few minutes with no clear indication that she was stopping anytime soon, Elias paid no attention to the her instead he concentrated on the axe in front of him wondering why he couldn't lift it,sure Helena was by a large margin stronger than him but he felt it was something else and after studying the axe for a bit,observing the runes and the material the realisation hit him as he looked up at Helena who had already stopped laughing a while ago but before he could say anything "Took you long enough, the axe is made with a bit of aetherstone and added with the runes it becomes extremely light when mana is supplied to it and that's the reason you could even move it, this is your first task lift that axe i didn't say move or shift-lift the damn thing .I will not help you in anyway but I will answer any question you ask that I think i should,you have an S rank spark and a brain make use of them."
Helena said leaving Elias as she went back to the bench and this time she seemed to be playing a game on the tablet,which left Elias wondering about her work ethics. Elias sat down infront of the axe wondering how he should go about this,he had felt mana a lot of times, especially when he was drawing runes on weapons but the mana never really came from him as the brush had a tiny core which could gather mana from the environment over time, so where does he even start with.
Elias sat in the same position for almost thirty minutes pondering on the question, he even often turned to Helena hoping for some sort of guidance, but it was like she forgot he was even there she just munched her way through a chocolate bar. Another twenty minutes passed but nothing changed at this point Elias just layed down facing the ceiling, he tried almost everything he could think of, he meditated and he even tried focusing his "chi" into the axe but turns out chi wasn't mana whatever that was but just as he was about to go to ask for help, like a divine revelation of some sort something Aria told him about how they were taught to sense mana crossed his mind, with nothing to lose he sat back down in a meditative position while rembering Aria's words that the spark was like a small flame and the warmth it gave off was the mana in the body so he just had to find exactly where his spark was ..seemed easy enough but the spark was very hard to find alone without someone feeding you mana to try and trace it to the spark, but Elias was determined and another thirty minute passed chasing the only lead he had and on the thirty fifth minute he finally felt it or at least he thought he did, something so small that it seemed it could be extinguished at any moment,if this was an S-rank spark, what did his D-rank spark even feel like? and when he traced the feeling the spark was inside his heart a tiny light that seemed ignorable,but he found it this had to be it, Elias was very excited but he knew this was just the first step the task was not completed.
He gripped the axe with one hand but did not break his position.Seeing this, Helena finally looked up but her expression remained unchanged.Elias knew that now he found the spark he had to try to move the sensation which was mana to his hand, he tried and tried again but the mana refused to move according to his will, sometimes it stopped halfway and most times he didn't even succeed in moving it at all but he didn't come so far to break now.
An hour later and at this point a small sweat puddle had formed under him as he was sweating heavily,but after one 1,388 trials he finally did it he lifted the axe above his head but his hands were shaking violently but he did not open his eyes afraid he would lose concentration, but he could only lift it for ten seconds before it fell back down and as the axe went down he collapsed with it, Helena smiled as she stood up and walked over to him and looking at him on the ground she saw that he was smiling, he fainted with a smile on his face, "What an odd boy he could have just asked and I would have helped but I didn't expect he would actually do it all on his own" Helena said with an impressed expression clear on her face she chuckled as she thought "he really does have spirit."