Chapter 20: Product finished
While everyone was commenting on what Sam is going to do. The man himself sat there with a metallic bone in hand with his eyes closed. There is cauldron under the bone. The cauldron in sculpted from the rock which is found beside lava inside volcanoes. The rock can resist high temperature. Even the readymade moulds which Sam has seen earlier are made by this rock.
Right now, Sam is still concentrating on spreading his spiritual energy through the bone as evenly as possible. If it was a month before, Sam would have already lost his concentration due to exhaustion of his soul power. But now Sam prepared himself by cultivating the Divine soul spirtual sense in the past time he spent in the tower. So, Sam has more than enough mental strength. When all are anticipating when Sam's cover will be blown, they saw the bone in Sam's hand started reducing into powders right in front of their eyes. The golden coloured metallic bone is slowly but surely turning into powders. The powders are so fine they looked like some golden coloured sand. All the people took a deep breath to calm their hearts. The sneer on the receptionist's face froze as she saw the scene unfold in front of her. Leonard also saw the scene with his mouth agape. Tower head is the only calm one at least on the surface. Even Philip and others who saw this scene and already knew the outcome, had showed their change in expressions. The tower head is only calm on surface.
He clearly felt shocked, but the excitement has far surpassed the shock. He saw an Acolyte whose limit should be the rank 1 materials acting against the norms and working with a most tough and difficult rank 2 material which even the rank 2 artisans would avoid. He is clearly feeling his excitement raising along with the expectation on what to come.
The bone in Sam's hand completely disappeared as it turned into fine powder and filled the large cauldron in front him up to third of its total limit. The full leg of the Golden Blood tiger is clearly large as it is already as tall as Sam. But the cauldron is even larger as that large of a leg only filled up to a third of it. Sam then backed off a bit took of his coat and vest revealing his handsome and chiselled upper half of the body. He then again started walking towards the cauldron. All the spectators looked towards the scars on his and abs. There is an obvious claw marks on his chest and scars two stabbed wounds on his abs. Looking at that all the people just stared in silence for a while.
"Don't tell me he got the tiger himself. He seemed to be only 3rd stage Acolyte, then how on earth did he kill the tiger? Judging from its size, it clearly is late stage of level 2." Someone said from the, everyone nodded as they were thinking the same thing. Then they heard a sneer.
"He must have been carried by a hunting party. What is so great about that?" The young receptionist spoke. Everyone felt as though realization dawned on to them. Seeing this Philip and others just shook their heads. Even if they told the truth, no one would believe them that Sam killed the tiger alone.
Meanwhile Sam is concentrating as he stood in front of the cauldron. He then slowly started circulating his spiritual energy inside the cauldron and spread it all over the metallic bone powder after every grain of powder is enveloped with the spiritual energy, all the spiritual energy is converted into golden flames. The flames burned fiercely but are completely condensed and concentrated over the powders.
"What intense flames? I have never seen the flames in golden colour." Someone said in the crowd.
"Yes, the intensity of the flame is quite high."
"Why is he using the flames directly through the mouth of the cauldron? Does he not know it he hard to control the flames this way and heat loss is high?" Somebody asked. Generally, an artisan will keep the flames around the cauldron to spread the heat evenly and to efficient use of heat. But Sam didn't seem to follow the norm.
"He doesn't need it." Tower head said from the side silencing everyone. They didn't understand the meaning of the words. Only a few elders in the crowd understood what he meant. Sam, doesn't need the cauldrons help to spread the heat evenly, he can do the whole process by himself. But the whole process is not as easy as said, he needs an impeccable control of flames and Sam is currently displaying it with his eyes closed.
"Hmph, whatever. Does he really think just because he turned the bone into powder, he can melt it? The Golden Blood tiger bone is even more difficult to melt." The receptionist said with same scorn on her face. She didn't really like the fact that Sam is still hanging on there doing things she can't understand.
Just as she finished speaking something happened that made everyone to look at her with an amusing look. Sam stopped the flames and as soon as he did, an extremely hot and sizzling liquid with in golden and red colour can be seen in the cauldron.
'He made the Golden blooded tiger's bone to melt with his Acolyte mage cultivation.' This is the only thought in everyone's head as they stared at the scene and looked at the receptionist and Sam with an amused expression. They initially thought that Sam's spirit stones are as good as gone as they saw all the weird actions he performed. Now, they are having second thoughts.
Meanwhile Sam didn't seem to be bothered at all. He is just carrying on with his work. He then spread the spiritual energy into his palms as they started covering with the Golden flames. This is First stage of the innate elemental fusion. Sam achieved this when he is practicing his fighting techniques as his control over power is increased. Then Sam carried the cauldron and walked towards the moulds. Everyone was dumbfounded when Sam is using a cauldron half as tall as him, but wider than him by a few times to pour the molten metal inside the Sand moulds he made. After pouring all the molten metal into six moulds Sam came back and put the cauldron back in its place, then Sam went back to the skeleton and removed a rib bone and went to a smaller cauldron. Then he repeated the same actions. Making it in to powder and then melting it. In the same way he went back to the last seventh mould and started pouring the metal. This time, the seventh mould has a lot of cavities which are small and complicated, some are hollow cavities, some looked like fine straight line. After pouring the metal, Sam came back to the table and examined the sketches on the scroll carefully once again, after looking at it, Sam gave a satisfied nod and came towards the door.
"Can you bring me some wasted glass pieces, the transparent the better and few more planks of wood." Sam said to Marvin. Marvin nodded and left in hurry. Sam, then looked at the receptionist and gave a cold evil smile. The receptionist didn't dare to say anything. Previously, whatever she said that Sam couldn't do, he had done it and seemingly in a fast pace. It had been around four hours and a normal rank 2 Artisan will take this time to only heat the Golden Blood tiger's bone. But Sam had made it melt along with the many other things. Now she only wished that Sam's sand moulds are not good enough and his work can't be finished
Marvin came back with a big leather bag full of glass pieces and a person can be seen carrying a large number of planks from behind. Sam took the bag and was about to walk back and start working again Sam heard the tower head speaking to him.
"Where did you learn such a profound technique to melt the Golden Blood tiger bone? Even I can't see through it." Sam just shook his head with a smile and went back into the room without speaking as if he was amused by the question. Actually, Sam's technique cannot be considered as a profound thing at all based on earth standards. Yes, he has an amazing fire control, but that is not the main reason that melting of the bone is possible. The main trick lay in making it in to powder.
Sam used the very basic of the heat conduction principle. Any metal will be difficult to melt if it is bigger. Why? Because when any substance changing its phase that is when it is changing from solid form to a liquid form then, it needs to absorb a large amount of heat energy after reaching a critical temperature point which is known as melting point. This is called latent heat of the substance. If the material is in a large quantity, it will take more time to raise its temperature to melting point and it will be harder to reach the Latent heat limit. Because according to law of heat conduction, a metal with high conductivity and large surface area will tend to conduct the heat to surroundings, instead of absorbing it. That is why in modern earth people won't use these kinds of materials for casting and go to powder metallurgy instead.
Sam simply used this principle and turned the large bone into millions of entities which are so small. These entities are the grains in the powder. Then he used his spiritual energy to separate each grain and used the fire to melt it separately. This cannot be called profound instead it would be called a waste in modern earth. Because in powder metallurgy the powders are not molten instead, they will be heated to a certain temperature after the powder is poured into a mould until a new bond is formed. Melting the powder is waste of energy in modern earth. But Sam didn't have that problem in this world.
Sam came back into the room and kept on working. He has total of twelve hours to work and he only used a little over 8 hours. So, he is continuing the work as he waited for the moulds to solidify. Sam just took out another scroll and started preparing more moulds with a new set of patterns. This time the number of moulds filled the whole room, in tens. Sam then walked towards the cauldron. This time he didn't use the bones instead he took out the whole large leather bag of glass pieces. Then he started melting it. This time it didn't take much time and then started pouring it in more than 90 percent of moulds in the room. The glass is clearly a lot different as it can be directly used for ordinary casting. But the glass back on earth can't be used like it as it solidifies as soon as it leaves the heat for a second.
As Sam was doing this the first batch of the seven moulds all cooled down, Sam slowly went there are and then, he slowly started destroying the moulds as Soil collapsed. Crowd looked at the scene curiously, they want to see how these knew moulds will work. Then they saw Sam taking out some metallic objects in various shapes and sizes from the heaps of the soil. Particularly from the seventh and largest mould he took out a bunch of objects. Sam slowly went to the grinding stone and started grinding the objects after an hour of grinding, Sam had a bunch of shiny metallic objects with him. Then he took some long and thin vertical metal strips with circular cross section. They can be considered as wires. Actually, it is impossible to produce a casted wire in modern earth, but here with Sam's control over spiritual energy and his dexterity, Sam has done the impossible. Sam took the wires to the anvil and stood before the circular protrusion which is used for making curved shapes. Sam put a wire across the circular protrusion and started coiling it. All the crowd looked at Sam with a surprised expression as he made a weird coil out of the wire. It is one of the oldest things created in the modern earth which is used in a myriad of things and completely new to this world. A helical spring. The crowd didn't know what purpose it serves, but they are waiting as they saw Sam making a number of springs. Then Sam finally made his way to table.
There are all the components in front of him shining. Sam took deep breath as he started assembling. The crowd looked as Sam took a slightly curved metallic block in his hands. It has a converging cross section. That is one end is bigger than other. The block has two circular grooves on bigger side and a single hole on smaller side. Then the Sam took a weird looking blade. What seemed like the handle of the blade is also curved, then Sam inserted the 'handle' of the blade inside the single hole on the smaller side. Then he took out some metallic bone powder with one hand and made a fist with another hand. Then he pointed his index finger from the fist towards the joint of blade and the block, then the fingertip of the index finger released a golden flame which is burning fiercely, Sam slowly moved the finger around the joint while slowly pouring the powder. Sam is welding the joint, but the crowd didn't understand, but the tower head understood. He saw a similar technique from the higher rank artisan, but the technique is made in much different form. Sam then did the same thing to another pair of identical block and blade. After that he kept them aside and took another which is also curved but has a large hollow, inside the hollow there are two holes smaller than the holes in previous block, Sam took a weird looking object which the crowd didn't understand. The object looked like a long cylindrical rod mounted by a thick metallic disc on top. It is a piston. Sam inserted the piston rod inside the block and then took another piston and did the same to another hole. Then Sam carefully took the previous block welded with blade and inserted inside the hollow. The two piston heads inserted perfectly inside the grooves on the metallic block.
Sam repeated the same actions with another set of the blocks. Then Sam turned over the set, there two, much smaller holes can be seen, and there is long rectangular hole. Sam inserted two coin like objects inside the small holes. Then Sam took two springs and inserted inside the holes and again inserted a pair of coins again. Then Sam took out a bottle of liquid from the storage and started pouring. It is the blood of the Blazing earth bull which he killed earlier. This is preserved in a bottle of special material. Crowd grew even more confused by his actions. But they won't be getting any of the answers now.
Sam slowly poured the blood and then repeated the same actions with another set. Sam kept the sets aside carefully not to spill the blood outside and took the rectangular block in his hands. Its width is a lot lesser when compared to other blocks. It has two long protrusions in rectangular shape on both sides and a circular hole in centre of the long flat side. Sam took two, wedge like objects and welded on either side of the circular hole.
The wedge is hollow all the way with both sides open. Sam took another hollow wedge which has one side closed and other side open, then Sam inserted the wedge (second one) such that closed surface will face the circular hole. He took two springs and kept them in hollow he took two small pistons and inserted the piston rods inside the springs. Then Sam took the set (Curved block and blade) he previously kept aside and inserted the rectangular the rectangular protrusion of the block into the hole of the set. Then the pistons on the wedges inserted themselves inside the holes where Sam poured the blood. Sam welded all the joints and then did the same on the other side of the rectangular block,
Now there is a weird looking object with half a crescent of irregular cross section on both sides of a rectangular block. Looking at the object the crowd didn't know what to make of it. Even tower head looked a little lost. Sam then took out a small thin rope like thing from the storage. It is the spinal tendon of the Blazing earth bull. Due to staying outside without any bodily fluids of bull, the tendon shrunk, but its elasticity can't be doubted. Sam inserted the ends of the tendon inside a small hole near the joint of the blades on both sides. The crowd didn't notice this at all. Sam poured some metal powder on both sided and melted it to solidify.
Sam came to the final step. There are only three objects left on the table. A weird looking spline like object and a small metallic frame and a coin like object. Sam welded the metallic frame on the bottom side of the central rectangular block. The crowd understood something for first time. It is the handle. They understood because Sam held it with his hand. Then Sam took the weird looking spline. They can't recognise the shape. But anyone from the modern earth who know the English alphabet will recognise, it is shape formed by intervening of the two 'S' letters in different fonts (Cover page). There is a circular protrusion on the bottom side of the shape, Sam inserted the protrusion inside the hole, then took the coin like object and welded it with the protrusion which came barely came out from other side. Then Sam took the completed object in his hands and held it with his hands. The 'S' shape is not parallel to the object but it is some what tilted outside. But Sam didn't care as it is intentional. Sam cleaned his creation for one last time and then slowly walked towards the platform.
"He seems to be finished." One of the people from the outside crowd said.
"But what is it exactly? I can't understand"
"Me too."
"Tower head do you know what it is?" One of the braver ones asked. But tower head shook his head. Sam took the weapon to the platform and placed his hand on the palm shaped groove on the platform.
The platform has two grooves. One is in shape of the circular coin. This is where badges of artisans kept when they bring the product for evaluation. They will place the badge in the groove and their hands on the badge to proceed for examination. The tower spirit will evaluate the product ranking. This is used for product appraisal as well as promotion examination. The fresh examiners have to keep the hand on the palm groove.