Chapter 60 - First Converter

On the grassy field of the hill that Imfrim lied on to watch the night sky, staring at the stars far away from his grasp.

"That was my first time manifesting my strength?"

Tears soon welled up in his eyes and pride filled him whole. "I finally took the first step," he thought as he allowed the tears to streak onto his beard.

"But the price required to pay was me being motionless for hours,"

All of a sudden, he gritted his teeth and his fingers dug into the earth.

"Someday, I'll have to forge eight, nine or ten weapons in a day. Someday, I'll have to discover how to let the dwarves connect and transfer their strength with their weapons."

"To think that I've been motionless for hours just after one go,"

With a strong will, he pulled himself up and sat up before clasping his palms.

"I only managed to hold it for less than a single second. This time I'll learn how to handle it for a minute,"

"With this Skill called Body Power Conversion!"

He focused on his body, feeling every ounce of strength contained from his legs to his torso and then to his arms.

He imagined them pulling towards his palms and could feel the strength he had regained pull through.

This time however, his palms were glowing and he slowly separated them while controlling the energy of his body to flow through them.

A ball slowly emerged but this time its color was red. Imfrim was curious as to why, but for now he was going to maintain control of that orb.

He could feel the struggle of the energy within, the force to return back to its original nature.

This reminded him of another dwarven saying "If the strength of one's body could be withdrawn we dwarves would have no monster to compete with us,"

With a smile on his face, Imfrim continued to maintain his focus on the orb despite his mind's struggle to release it.

After almost a minute of holding things together, he clasped his palms once more.

Contrary to his expectations of him losing his strength, he felt revitalized as his power gushed back into his body.

Taking notice of this, be made an inference "I summoned my strength out of my body but I can also summon it back in and if I don't then I lose it?"

After a while of practicing a few times under the moonlight, he was happy to know that he had made enough thorough progress as his mind had slowly adjusted to the absence of his strength from his body.

However, there was now a new problem which was the feeling of weakness that engulfed him in the short time his strength was absent.

"I have to control the amount I take from my body so that it can at least be enough to allow me to move around,"

"But if that happens then the focus on my mind will split,"

With the realization that he had started getting the hang of it but also overthinking, he returned back to his home and slept.

When it was dawn, he woke up from his wooden bed and dressed up before running towards the door.

To his shock, his father stood beside the door with a frown on his face "Before you go to do whatever you want to do, I'll implore you to eat first then head out,"

"I agree with your father," said his dwarven mother who appeared from behind him and dragged him by the ear.

"The day is just starting, it is necessary to eat to prepare for it,"

After a forceful episode of being made to eat. Imfrim was out in the fields again.

The area was remote as the clan settlement was just down the hill he and his family stayed.

A burst of light erupted from his palms before converging into an orb that grew bigger.

"Now let's try to move," he told himself as he tried to move but ended up gritting his teeth and clasping his palms.

He covered his left eye as pain spread from his forehead, making it seem as if his head would split.

The pain was intense even for a dwarf but he endured and resisted the urge to scream.

"It seems things are going to get much harder than now"

"I still have to learn how to move before I can learn how to infuse and how to infuse before I can learn how to teach,"

With the new weight that he had placed on himself, he immediately laid on the ground to rest.

After a while of sitting down, his headache finally reduced and he sat down again to gather his strength once more.

However nothing happened, he could feel his strength but he could not feel it gathering.

It didn't take him long to realize that he had used up the ounces of sensory energy that he had collected and entered the intermediate realm to breathe in the energy present.

From how he had calculated, the ounces represented a breath but the last time he had been there he had only taken a hundred breaths to absorb to get two hundred ounces.

That was because he had taken deep breaths and not the one the body regulated.

As he continued breathing, he was unaware of an ikki that silently approached him. On its triangular head were four diagonal lines two for each slanted line of the triangle.

He was unaware of the creature's presence and was only focused on breathing and due to his state of hurrying, he had attracted a two tiered one.

Out of the pain his nose experienced due to his deep breaths his eyes finally opened and when he saw the approaching from his right, he rushed the breathing.

But this awakening caused the ikki to increase its pace towards him.

"I've thought long enough now," he told himself before imagining that he was back in his home.

Just when the ikki was about to touch him to take control of his mind, he blurred out in its presence making it reach out to empty air.

When Imfrim's eyes opened in the main world, he took heavy breaths "I survived,"

Twelve days later, Imfrim awoke from his home and carried the stone anvil, foundry and other useful tools with him outside.

He had practiced and gotten nothing but headaches the previous days until the day before when he finally got the hang of moving his body and doing other things.

And today, he was going to hone his dual focus and infuse his strength orb into one of the crafts he would be making.

"If not because we were such uncaring parents" said his father.

Taking deep breaths once again, he clapped his hands against one another and gathered his strength towards his palms, this time while standing up.

This time it was the same red orb that he had been seeing lately that formed when his palms separated and he maintained control over it while shifting his right arm away.

He grit his teeth, trying to endure the pain as he grabbed a thong and withdrew a black ore from the furnace.

With his still remaining strength, he struck the ore with his hammer to give it the shape he desired.

"Forging with one hand is definitely not easy,"

After almost an hour of nonstop hammering and his almost drained mental strength, he gently placed the orb near the sword, being patiently careful enough not to burn his hand in the process.

His ears were welcomed with the sound of sizzles but no spark was created in the process as the orb came in contact with the iron sword he was crafting.

He was lucky that no one saw what he was doing and also that he was at the back area of his house while both of his parents had gone to the dwarven settlement.

After a while, he began to grow frustrated as his red orb showed no sign of entering the sword while producing constant sizzling noises. It felt like two solid objects had hit against one another.

"What's this problem? What's this drawback?" The dwarf gritted his teeth and pushed the orb even further against the sword.

"After all the trial and error, I have come too close to turning away!"

As if on cue with his rant, the red orb released a flame under the influence of constant pressure and began to bore a hole into the sword.

When the entire orb was almost inside the sword, Imfrim positioned his forefinger and removed it.

A blinding erupted and when it had fully dimmed, the smith came face to face with a sword that had a red circle at its center.

"Excellent!" Shawn said with a smile.

"All the races are progressing and have something unique with them. It is nice to see that there are none of them are weak and they are all developing uniquely,"

Suddenly, the smile on his face was replaced with a frown.

"The fact that the races of this world don't have accent at all makes it seem as if I'm watching two actors do the roles of the same cast over and over again,"

"I'll make sure to research that when I'm awake,"