After bidding farewell to Hyacine, the relaxed smile vanished from Phaethon's face. With clear purpose, he navigated through the bustling Marmoreal Market.
Deliberately avoiding the food stalls with their enticing aromas and the vibrant handicraft booths, he headed straight for the market's periphery.
Here, the air temperature noticeably rose, filled with the scents of hot metal, sweat, and the distinct smell of furnace fires. The rhythmic *clang-clang* of hammering was incessant.
He moved familiarly to the front of a particular shop. Deep within the shop, a figure as imposing as an iron tower was wielding a massive hammer of unimaginable size. Each strike sent sparks flying, and the marmoreal ground beneath his feet seemed to tremble slightly.
This was the *Grand Craftsman Chartonus*, the most renowned forging master in the Eternal Holy City of Okhema.
Phaethon waited patiently until Chartonus finished a stage of forging, plunging the red-hot metal into quenching fluid with a great hiss of steam, before stepping forward.
"Grand Craftsman." Phaethon's voice cut clearly through the noisy clangor.
Chartonus turned. He responded in the low, measured tones characteristic of his mountain-folk heritage: "What matter, outlander?" His voice grated like two rough stones rubbing together.
Phaethon gave a slight bow, showing respect to the master. "My apologies for the interruption. That special material I asked you to look for before... high density, extremely hard, capable of withstanding extreme heat... has there been any progress?"
A trace of urgency, barely perceptible, colored his tone.
Chartonus fell silent for a few seconds, as if assessing Phaethon's sincerity.
He walked over to a specially made, high-temperature furnace engraved with complex sigils before speaking again, each word falling like a hammer blow: "High density. Hard. Heat-resistant. Found some."
Phaethon's eyes instantly lit up. He almost immediately pressed for details: "Excellent! Then—"
However, Chartonus raised a large hand, calloused and scarred with old burns, cutting him off. "But. Forging. Requires. Much. Lonsdaleite."
He paused, seemingly to emphasize the weight of the words. "This stone. Rare. Costly. You. Have. Considered?"
Phaethon's heart sank, but he took a deep breath and pressed on: "If... if one were to forge a solid cylinder, approximately one meter in diameter and three meters in height... How much material would be required, roughly? And the total cost... what would it be?" He asked cautiously, almost hearing his own heart pounding like a drum in his chest.
Chartonus's gaze sharpened, taking on a scrutinizing edge.
He barely calculated before quoting a figure that made Phaethon's vision darken: "Material needed. Hundred tons. Finished product. About fifty tons. Price. About. Eight million. Balance Coins."
*Eight million!* The number seared into Phaethon's mind like a red-hot brand.
What was the concept of eight million Balance Coins? One could say that within the Holy City, aside from those few half-gods who had lived for centuries, *no one* could produce such a sum!
For an informal city-state like Janusopolis, built around the faith in the Fate Titans, this represented more than half a year's tax revenue!
And Janusopolis had a population of nearly a hundred thousand!
*Think about the three hundred thousand I managed to save up back in Janusopolis... Eight million? This is an astronomical figure!*
Phaethon felt his throat go dry. He swallowed hard, his voice carrying a faint, barely detectable tremor, yet it held a resolute determination as he continued: "Grand Craftsman... If, and I mean if, I could gather enough Balance Coins. How long would it take to forge such a cylinder?"
Chartonus seemed slightly surprised that Phaethon hadn't been outright scared off by the number. He looked Phaethon over once more.
His tone remained flat, yet it carried an undeniable confidence: "Seven days. Sufficient." As if forging dozens of tons of super-alloy was as simple as hammering out a few kitchen knives for him.
"Huu—" Phaethon let out a long, almost silent exhale, as if steeling himself. "Good. I understand."
He seemed to have reached some kind of decision. Then, as if remembering something, he asked: "Grand Craftsman, before placing a formal commission, could I... perhaps see a sample? Just a small piece, to confirm the material's properties."
Chartonus didn't elaborate. He turned and walked back to the special high-temperature furnace.
The sigils on the furnace walls glowed faintly; inside, orange-red flames raged at temperatures sufficient to melt ordinary steel. Using a large, precision-made tongs engraved with sigils, he carefully retrieved a single metal pellet, no larger than a fingernail, from a sealed chamber within the furnace.
"Look." Chartonus's voice held a trace of barely perceptible pride.
Even within the terrifying heat of the furnace core, this tiny metal pellet only showed an extremely subdued, barely noticeable dull red. Ordinary metal at such temperatures would have long since melted into liquid, but this one merely blushed faintly.
Phaethon held his breath, watching as Chartonus placed the scorching pellet into a special quenching fluid. With a light *hiss*, steam billowed. A moment later, a pellet of a deep, matte grey color, its surface seeming to sparkle with fine, star-like points of light, was placed into Phaethon's hand.
It was incredibly heavy in his palm, far denser than an equivalent volume of gold.
"Take it. Payment. Unnecessary," Chartonus said succinctly.
"My thanks, Grand Craftsman!" Phaethon solemnly clenched the invaluable sample, feeling its weight settle heavily in his palm, its surface cool to the touch. He turned and left the scorching heat of the smithy.
The moment he stepped out of the shop, leaving behind the clamor of hammering and the furnace's heat, the gravity on Phaethon's face was replaced by an expression of near-feverish concentration.
Phaethon opened his palm, his gaze locked onto the tiny metal pellet.
"Infinity Gate, open!" he whispered, focusing his entire being.
Above his palm, a miniature spatial gate, no larger than a ping-pong ball and unnervingly stable, instantly snapped open. It cleanly swallowed the heavy metal pellet.
*The Edge of the Amphoreus, the Exosphere.*
Hundreds of kilometers above the surface of Okhema—here, at the outer fringe of the planet's atmosphere. Gravity existed, but the air was so thin it was almost nonexistent, a near-perfect vacuum!
A tiny metal pellet appeared out of nowhere. The next moment, the planet's gravitational hand firmly grasped it. With negligible resistance, it began a silent and frantic freefall, its speed increasing by nearly ten meters per second.
Time passed in the silent void.
In just one minute! Its speed had already broken twice the speed of sound and was still climbing wildly.
Three minutes... Five minutes! Speed broke through the ten thousand meters per second mark! The metal pellet transformed into a death-grey streak, utterly impossible for the naked eye to track.
The extremely thin atmospheric molecules violently rub against it, tearing the particles apart and ionizing them. Behind it, an extremely faint, fleeting, eerie blue ionization trail, like the trailing cloak of death, quietly appears and disappears against the dark backdrop of the universe.
Ten minutes! The speed is approaching six thousand meters per second! This is a speed sufficient to escape the reach of some small celestial bodies!