Daemon's calculated campaign of brutality had paid dividends. The final results of the Placement Tournament confirmed his dominance: he had secured the top spot, earning him the coveted rewards. However, this triumph came at a cost: he had now undeniably placed an invincible target on his back, making him a priority enemy for two of the kingdom's most powerful noble houses, and an object of intense, exploitable interest for every other faction.
He now occupied his winnings: a spacious, dedicated residence—a clear upgrade from the commoner dormitories—which included a bedroom, living room, bathroom, kitchen, and, crucially, his personal training area. Financially, he was a warlord: he had his prize money of ten thousand credits and had accumulated another twenty thousand credits from his strategically controlled weapons making business.
Daemon immediately invested his earnings into his primary research. He spent three thousand credits converting his bedroom into a specialized alchemical and scientific lab. He commissioned beakers, flasks, distillation apparatus, and other necessary materials. Since formal science was nearly non-existent in this magic-obsessed world, most of these complex glass and metal instruments had to be fabricated from scratch based on his dimensional memory. For specialized equipment like Bunsen burners and centrifuges, he knew he would have to go at it the old school way—using simple combustion magic and physical mechanisms, relying on his Aetheric control rather than machinery.
His most immediate project, however, was the fate of his trophy. The mythril greatsword that once belonged to Adolf von Steiner—the blade that had so contemptuously shattered his Ninjatō—was now his to command. Daemon melted the entire mythril blade down, combining the mythical metal with the industrial strength of tungsten to create a novel mythril-tungsten alloy. He had a precise goal: craft blades that were traditionally heavier and longer than his Ninjatō (known as Chokuto), but that would remain fast and manageable. Thanks to the inherent lightness of mythril, the resulting blades were perfectly balanced. During the heat treatment, he cured the inherent brittleness of tungsten by quenching the blades in oil, allowing the mythril to stabilize the micro-structure.
The two resulting Chokuto blades were magnificent. The alloy resulted in a deep, lustrous grey hue, almost obsidian in color, that shimmered faintly with the inner light characteristic of mythril. The oil-quench brought out a stunning, complex Damascus pattern across the entire length of the blades, showcasing swirling rivers of darker tungsten laced with silver streaks of mythril—a clear, brutal testament to its superior composition over Adolf's original. The hilts were equally striking, crafted from a material alternating between deep red and black, perfectly contrasting the cold light of the metal. The scabbards were made of meticulously carved charcoal wood and covered in resin, giving them a dark, glossy, and impossibly sleek finish.
But his work was only half complete. Daemon began the painstaking process of inscribing powerful, complex runes onto the Chokuto blades. The first rune was a master seal designed to prevent theft or unauthorized use, making it so that only his direct descendants could wield them—a necessary precaution against the nobles already eyeing his talent. He sealed this complex proprietary enchantment by adding his own blood to the runic ink. The second rune was a custom-designed Flame Affinity matrix. He inscribed it in such a way that when activated by his magic, the flames would immediately begin heating the blades, but in a specific thermal pattern that would interact with the mythril-tungsten alloy's structure, preventing any damage to the structural integrity of the blades themselves. Based on his complex theories, this sophisticated thermal activation could allow the blade to reach temperatures of at least two thousand degrees Celsius—a heat guaranteed to cut through anything not similarly enchanted or constructed of exotic material.
The entire forging and enchanting process consumed seven full, uninterrupted days. When he finally tested one of the completed swords on a dedicated training dummy, the blade sliced clean through the heavy, reinforced wood even without the runes being activated. Then, he activated the flame runes. A low, internal thrumming sound preceded the terrifying visual effect: the obsidian grey of the blade turned a shimmering, incandescent white-hot, and every flammable material within a ten-foot radius instantly caught on fire. He could see the air visibly distorting around the blade due to the extreme heat. There was no need for further testing; the weapon was perfect. He was fortunate he had chosen to test outdoors in his new private training area, or he could have easily burnt down his entire residence. He felt a moment of clinical pity for the next unfortunate soul who would decide to face him and his new weapons. The remaining mythril-tungsten ingots were all safely stored in a secured location for future projects.
As Daemon finalized his preparations for continued study and combat, a parallel event was unfolding in the first-year Dean's office. Dean Thiel, looking severely troubled, sat opposite an envoy from the Imperial Magic Academy of Germany. The envoy was a man of cold, severe efficiency, and Thiel was reading a letter summarizing the Imperial will: it was an admission letter for Daemon, effective immediately. Several powerful nobles, acting under the pragmatic agenda of the new German Empire, had pulled strings to have Daemon admitted to the centralized Imperial institution without delay. Dean Thiel expressed his profound concerns about Daemon's recent behavior—the unorthodox science, the combat brutality, and the public humiliation of the Duke's son. The Imperial envoy, however, remained unmoved. He assured the Dean that the Imperial Academy was more than capable of handling anything the commoner could bring, and that Daemon's eccentric genius and aggressive behaviors would be put to far better, more controllable use within the Imperial system. And just like that, the fate of the commoner prodigy was sealed. Daemon would be moving to the Imperial Academy, which was located far away, somewhere in Austria.