Seberus coughed uncontrollably, but his eyes were glued to the fingernail-sized Unity Mithril on the table. Just from looking at it alone, he knew that it contained mysteries of the mystic that even he was unfamiliar with.
It felt like he was looking at a powerful and ancient relic, something that was lost within the sands of time and only now did it finally show its face.
He was so fascinated by the object that he wasn't even mad about Michael's prank.
"Cough… What is that? I feel… I feel the intensity of the elemental mana imbued in that material itself!"
Michael wiped the tears off his eyes and stopped laughing. After teasing the Tower Master like this, he deserved to know the truth.
He picked up the Unity Mithril and threw it to Seberus, making the white-bearded old man panic and juggle the Mithril in the air a couple of times before catching it with his robe.
"It's something I discovered after visiting the Dwarven Kingdom. According to them, this material is called—"
"—Mithril…" Seberus uttered, finishing Michael's sentence.
As a prestigious member of the Guild of Arcana, the organization in charge of everything magic-related in the world, Seberus was privy to a lot of ancient information about the history of the world and the world before the current era. And if there was one thing missing from today that was prevalent in the ancient days, then it was the presence of Mithril.
It was written by scholars that Mithril was the material that allowed the dwarves to build constructs that turned fiction into reality.
But due to some unknown circumstances, the ancient dwarves lost the ability to make Mithril forever.
"So it was true that you persuaded the dwarves to open up their walls to you… I don't know how you were able to do that, but it's even more unbelievable to see that you were able to recreate Mithril."
The top scholars and wizards in the Guild of Arcana spent the majority of their time researching and experimenting to find ways to recreate Mithril but to no avail.
Yet, Michael was able to do it.
It had only been a year since Seberus saw Michael, but it seemed that he had already forgotten how much of a monstrous genius the kid was. And perhaps, even now he was still underestimating him.
"But, there's something different with this Mithril. Why is it glowing with different colors? The records state that Mithrils only have one or two colors," Seberus said as he put the Unity Mithril near his eyes.
"Ah, that's different. You know that I can control all eight elements, right? Well, I tried putting all of it in one Mithril."
"Ah."
Seberus almost forgot the fact that Michael was a once-in-a-million savant of the mystic arts with multi-elemental mastery over every mana in the natural world.
Any mage would be satisfied if they could even get a fraction of Michael's talents in magic, but Michael wasn't even taking his mystic arts studies seriously.
It was truly absurd that this wasn't even Michael's greatest talent. He also had a Supreme Talent and an innovative mind that completely overshadowed his magic.
"I also have the one-element Mithril you were talking about…"
Michael explained everything he learned about Mithril, and how they could improve a magic spell's effectiveness by at least half.
Seberus listened with his eyes almost popping out of his head.
"Do you know what you have just created? You have solved one of the greatest mysteries that has persisted in the world for thousands of years!
You need to visit the Guild of Arcana and show them your discovery. I'm sure that if you tell them everything about Mithril, they will give you all the help and resources you will need to study and perfect Mithril to the relic it was before."
Michael immediately shook his head. Studying for years on end sounded like a complete bore.
"I'll visit them and give them Mithril to study, but I won't be staying there. Or better yet, why don't you study it yourself?"
He took out a thin rectangular box made out of expensive leather out of his pockets and handed it out to the confused Tower Master.
"What is this?" Seberus asked.
"Open it up."
Seberus took the box and lifted the lid, showing a metallic wand, made mostly out of pure Damascus Steel. However, there seemed to be a bulbous red glowing gem embedded near the wand's handle.
"I know you specialize in fire spells, so I made this wand for you with a Fire-element Mithril installed inside."
The old man gently picked up the wand from the box and held it in his hands. And immediately, he could feel the energy of the Fire Mithril resonating with his cores, improving the purity of his mana just from touching this relic alone.
Seberus knew.
This was the object that could help him break through to the 9-star realm!
"I don't know how to thank you… the value of this Mithril artifact is not something that I can repay," Seberus said genuinely.
Michael waved off the old man's concern. "Don't act like that. We're friends, of course I'm going to give you your own Mithril Artifact."
Seberus looked at Michael with a thankful gaze.
"If you really want to repay me," Michael said with a sly smile. "Then introduce me to the other Tower Masters in the Queens region. I'm planning on visiting a lot of Magic Towers while I'm there, so it would be helpful if you could vouch for me."
Seberus chuckled, finally knowing the reason why Michael gave him a 'gift'.
"Sure," Seberus said. "I'll tell them to never play chess with you or else they'll get scammed. Hahaha… No, but seriously, I'll do more than that. I'll ask them if you could take a look inside their Magic Libraries. I know you like learning magic spells.
This is the least I can do for you since gave me the honor to be one of the only people to receive such a priceless gift."
"..."
"Hm? What's with that look?" Seberus asked.
"Oh… um…. About that… "
Michael admitted to Seberus that all of his citizens had their own custom-made Mithril Artifacts, which amounted to about 5000 priceless tools and weapons.