Chapter 265: A children’s rhyme
Irwin hummed happily along with his own soulstrum guitar, his hammer striking in a slow cadence before speeding up again. The Gneisian ore was way smaller than it had been when he'd started and gleamed with an internal light. Ethereal Strings felt like it would overflow at any moment, and he continued hammering the ore.
It had been four days since he'd reforged Greldo's heartcard, but it had shaved days off Ambraz's estimate for when his soulstrum guitar would grow to diamond.
As the sense of buildup in the card grew, Irwin felt his anticipation grow with it.
Finally, a dozen strikes later, the guitar's sound gained a momentary howling quality, and Irwin stopped hammering as he felt the card's soulforce capacity expand. The power he'd put in his strings had been close to the limit just a moment before, but now they began hungrily sucking in soulforce at a breakneck speed. Before he knew it, the power in them had doubled, and the part of him that was in his soulscape gawked as the volume increased with an explosive bang.
Waves of soulforce rippled from it, bouncing from the nearby mountain, the waves scattered by its jagged surface.
Irwin stopped playing, looking at the guitar and noting some minor changes. The neck had lengthened, and the strings burned even brighter than before.
He felt a shift in his soulscape, and then Ambraz appeared beside him.
"Damn… Kid, this was way faster than even I had thought! I think we should find more people that need a heartcard," he said.
Irwin nodded, looking at his soulstrum guitar and then at Ambraz.
"How long do you think it would take if we could have some more heartcards to reforge?"
"It depends on their difficulty and whether there are diminishing returns, but I'd say weeks instead of months," Ambraz said.
Irwin nodded, letting his daydreams of growing that fast and getting a second ammolite card play for a moment. Then he sighed.