Chapter 217: Fire
Even with how fast Cassiel was able to find out the design of a mana sauna, it took some time just to acquire enough steel for the construction.
Iron was a bit of a rare commodity in Heaven, with almost all of it requisitioned for the Heavenly Host. The better part of a month passed before they were able to acquire enough, mostly by searching the manor for unused equipment. Their final break on that front came when Iriel showed up at the forge one night.
She arrived right when Rainier was trying to melt together a floorplate out of different kinds of steel, and when he expressed a need for more steel, she showed him to a disused armory full of the rusted detritus of her past projects.
Iriel seemed to think Rainier was forging himself a set of plate armor, and so had commented "Not many angels appreciate good steel nowadays. That factory shit just can’t compare," before giving him advice on how to fit a breastplate for wings.
Meanwhile, Ozzy and Cassie managed to track down the angel who’d once run the commercial mana sauna. He had a few parts in storage that would help them make the mana emitter, and Cassiel strongly suggested she’d bribed him for them.
They worked on that part on top of all the extra cardio and endurance training they were going through, in preparation for the Choir of Love’s idea of a deciding contest: A race across the skies of heaven, followed by combat between the first and second squads to finish.
The fact that most of the race would take place in the middle canopy all but confirmed Rainier’s theory, and while none of the other Houses were keen on spending time there, many within House Eros were taking frequent trips to the mana-rich area to train as they tried to get a feel for what the route might be like. No one would know the final route until the day of the race.
In the end, Rainier cobbled together a booth-sized chamber, using a closet in one of the most distant parts of the manor. The hardest part for him was concentrating enough magic into a flame hot enough to weld the seams of the chamber. Kir had once tried to teach him what fire really was, but Rainier just couldn’t visualize it.
Thus, he was confined to the limits of magical fire, and he wasted two days trying to weld with it before finally deciding to fix his understanding.