Chapter 68- Blood Against the Aegis, The Inspiration.
He tried a different approach. This time he let the heat soak in slowly over a longer period so the metal would have time to adjust and the stone might soften under steady pressure. The result was worse. The blood steel grew sullen. Its current slowed to a crawl. The surface darkened and went dead.
The upper layer began to harden while the lower layers still held some heat.
Too much heat held for too long had cooked the life out of the blood steel. Once its living currents died, the metal lost the will to move. A dead liquid could not enter living stone. The Aegis sat sealed inside a corpse of its own making.
Leo emptied the crucible, cleaned it, and started over. He tried adding more blood steel. He tried changing the position of the stone. He tried shorter bursts of higher heat followed by cooling intervals.
Every attempt ended the same way. The blood steel either boiled uselessly around the stone or died and locked the stone in place.
He stopped and reviewed each failure in order. The pattern was clear.
"The blood steel isn’t the problem," he said. "It’s eager. It wants to flow. It wants to become something new. The Aegis is the one resisting. It isn’t simply hard. It’s guarding. It was forged to protect, so it treats everything that touches it as a threat. It won’t submit. It won’t open."
Hugh nodded. "More heat won’t change that. You can cook the steel until it’s useless and the stone will still sit there."
Leo straightened. "The Aegis has a guard around it. So I need to make it so that it doesn’t need the guard against the blood steel. I need the stone to stop seeing the metal as an invader."
He searched through everything he had studied in Asgard and everything the Eternal Forge had shown him in memory.
....
One method rose to the surface: blood refining....
He cut the palm of his left hand and let the blood pour into a small bucket. Then he began to draw on the floor of the forge. The lines were careful and measured.
Hugh’s voice rose. "Brat, what are you doing? Have you gone mad from thinking?"
Leo did not answer. He kept drawing.
The formation was simple: a circle, a five-pointed star inside it, and at the exact center he drew the ancient symbol for refining. He placed the Aegis stone in the middle of the star, then channeled mana into the formation.
The lines activated. All the blood inside the circle, together with the mana, surged toward the center and covered the stone. The Aegis began to be refined under the pressure of Leo’s blood. The process was slow. When the blood was exhausted, the stone was only partly refined.
Leo redrew the formation, cut his hand again, and repeated the work. He did it several more times. Each cycle took more blood and more focus. His vision swam at the edges by the end, but the stone was finally completely refined. Its surface should no longer reject contact the same way.
Next he turned to the blood steel. He expected the same long process. The steel was far greater in volume than the small fragment of stone.
He prepared a larger formation and more blood. To his surprise the steel refined in only two sessions. It accepted his blood readily and settled into a calmer state.
Leo understood then why the stone had been so difficult. The Aegis was a true legendary material. It did not yield easily to his blood.
His health had dropped to a dangerous level. He drank a health potion, sat against the wall, and forced himself to rest until the worst of the weakness passed.
If this had been the real world he would already have been on a bed, half-conscious. Here he only had to wait for the potion and his own recovery to catch up.
Once his hands stopped shaking he stood again. Both materials now carried his blood and aura.
The Aegis should no longer treat the Blood steel as foreign. He placed them together in the crucible. These were all the materials he had. There would be no second chance with fresh stock if this failed.
The Eternal Flame covered both.
Leo cut his palm once more and let fresh blood drip into the melting mass.
He divided the crucible into three temperature zones. The Aegis stone received the highest heat he could safely hold. The blood steel sat at a slightly lower temperature. The added blood remained at the lowest of the three.
When each part had fully melted he equalized the temperatures and let the liquids mix. The colors shifted and blended. He poured the combined liquid into a series of cubic molds and watched the surface settle into layered reds and whites.
The metal needed time to cool enough to work. While it did, Leo turned to the design.
He wanted flexible armor, not a bulky shell that would slow him down.
Hugh watched him sketch and said, "You want something that moves with you, right? I saw you fight. A stiff build would only get in your way."
Leo nodded. He kept turning the problem over in his mind, coming up with all sorts of designs. Solid plates, cut strips, different joint methods, varying gaps—each one solved one issue and created another.
Hugh spoke again. "Coming up with a good design and blueprint requires proper visualization first."
Then it hit him.
"Visualization....?" ..... his eyes lit up.
The inscriptional space.
Fuck. I could visualize every design, every variation, every failed idea inside it and discard the ones that did not work before ever touching real metal. Why had I not thought of that sooner?
He looked at Hugh. "Wait for me. I might look spaced out for a while."
He opened the inscriptional space.
Outside, Hugh stared at Leo sitting motionless, eyes fixed on empty air as if he had gone completely blank.
"What the fuck? Is this brat toying with me?"
Hugh stepped in front of him and waved a hand. No reaction. He shook his head and went back to the scroll Leo had given him earlier.
Inside the inscriptional space, he began with a standard set: chest plate, arm guards, shoulder pieces, and protection for the legs and hips.
The first version was too rigid.
Even a simple twist of the torso felt restricted by the solid chest plate.
He marked every section that blocked natural movement and cut those sections away. The plate became a series of metal strips instead of a single shell.
He did the same with the other pieces. What remained looked like scrap metal stuck to a dummy, but the dummy could now bend and turn without resistance.
The new problem was connection. Solid metal joints would restore the stiffness. Welding the strips together would recreate the original plate.
Should I Use leather to tie them together?Leather ties would give flexibility, but leather could be cut by any decent blade.
Leo rejected that option almost as soon as he considered it.
Then,.. after thinking for a while, he thought of construction work in the real world—iron rods bound with wire. He could do the same here. If the wires were made from the same alloy as the plates, they would match the strength of the armor itself while still allowing movement.
He visualized the next version.
Each metal piece was joined to its neighbors by hundreds of thin wires. The wires were heated and welded into the edges of the plates so they would not pull free.
The gaps between plates were kept small enough that a sword tip or spear point could not pass through cleanly. Even if something forced its way between the plates, the dense clusters of wire would stop it. The whole arrangement flexed like heavy cloth. When the body bent, the plates shifted and the wires took the strain.
It was better, but still not perfect. The limited gaps kept a residual stiffness.
Leo considered the runes he knew. The rune of flexibility and the rune of reshaping could solve the last problem. Under those runes some plates would widen and others would compress according to the movement required, the way a stretch fabric adjusts without tearing.
He carved the runes into every plate inside the visualization space. The work was detailed and time-consuming.
He considered carving the same runes into the wires and decided against it. The wires already flexed within useful limits, and the plates could close any temporary gaps created. When the last rune was set, the virtual armor moved with the body instead of against it. It felt close to a tight shirt that happened to be made of metal.
Leo closed the inscriptional space. The real work remained.
He would have to forge every plate, every wire, weld the connections, and carve the runes into the finished metal. After that he would still need to bind a soul into the armor to complete it. The materials were ready. The design was clear. The only thing left was the long, careful labor of turning the vision into something he could wear.
He checked the molds. The alloy had cooled enough to handle.
Leo heated the forge again and prepared his tools. Hugh who was reading the scroll shifted his attention back to Leo and watched without comment.
The next hours would decide whether the blood, the stone, and the steel would become armor or simply another failed experiment.