A few minutes with the ore had been enough to make it clear that it was anything but ordinary.
Every attempt at breaking it had ended in failure, forcing Atticus to step in and use the life weapon himself just to finally crush it.
Even smelting had proven troublesome, to the point where he'd had to push his will to its highest temperature before the metal would even begin to melt.
Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about the refining. That part of the process simply took time.
Garvin had spent the past months doing nothing but this, and if Atticus was being honest with himself, he hadn't expected even half of these ingots to be refined by now.
'I doubt he even rested.'
Atticus found himself looking at Garvin differently. This wasn't something that could be accomplished easily, and it finally explained the man's absence during battles and major events.
While others had been fighting, Garvin had been down here, day after day, relentlessly refining the metal.
