Kyle sat on the ground with closed eyes.
Right now, he was focusing on the Rank F Materials, or more precisely, the understanding he had of them.
For the past two days, he had been focused on creating a combined framework for all of them.
From time to time, he grabbed some random Rank F Material and experimented with it.
When he found some success with one material, he tested other ones.
His framework had to work for all of them.
He tried one after the other, and when his framework failed, he had to refine it.
At this moment, he was only missing three materials to make his framework make sense.
He looked at the last three materials and found the overlapping parts.
Then, he looked at how this little framework contradicted his big framework.
He had to once more scrap the entire framework to include the small framework.
After that, he tried all the materials again.
This time, it worked.
When Kyle put the last material down, he just looked forward in confusion.
"It worked… I guess?" he said.
Silence.
"What now?" Kyle asked.
"Try to create a new material," Theodor said.
Kyle furrowed his brows and looked at his empty hand.
The next moment, a minuscule piece of metal appeared, and a big chunk of Kyle's Ether vanished.
What Kyle was doing was very different from what Spells did.
Spells like the avalanche of spears that had almost killed Falk didn't create stable materials.
They created short-lived materials that turned back into Ether after a minute.
In essence, the materials created in this way were only imitations of real materials.
Meanwhile, Kyle was creating something stable, and that required much more Ether.
Kyle's Ether refilled quickly, and he continued growing his new piece of metal.
After some minutes, he created a fist-sized piece of metal.
The piece of metal was shining like a diamond, but one couldn't see through it.
When he created it, he changed its shape into a long, thin plate.
Next, Kyle flicked it with his finger.
Due to Kyle's power, this finger flick was quite strong.
Almost all metals from Earth would have broken.
Yet, this thing was still in one piece.
'It's about as hard as diamond,' Kyle thought.
Then, he pushed against it, and the material started to bend.
'And it's about as flexible as aluminum.'
Next, Kyle crumpled the material like aluminum foil, but he needed to use quite a bit of power to do that.
'Huh, would you look at that? As hard as diamond and as flexible as aluminum foil.'
'Exactly what I wanted.'
Kyle felt like the Rank F Materials made a lot more sense.
The murky picture finally became clear.
As he looked at the material, he almost felt like he could see how the Ether acted and moved.
He could look at the entire picture, but he could also zoom in to look at the individual components.
Everything just made sense.
"It makes sense," Kyle said. "Yeah, I can see how that works."
"I guess I know the Rank F Metal Material Fragment now," Kyle said.
"You do," Theodor said. "It took less time than expected."
A grin appeared on Kyle's lips.
He had finally done it!
He had comprehended his first Fragment!
Yet, as Kyle looked around the Rank E Materials, his mood quickly returned to normal.
'Great, I know a Fragment, but it's unusable and doesn't improve my power in any way.'
'The best things I can create are Rank E Materials, which are just as useless.'
Kyle sighed.
'Yeah, well, gotta continue learning.'
Yet, before Kyle continued learning, he left the Stark Brotherhood and charged towards the peninsula.
He quickly reached Forest Haven Cradle and went to the small mountain in its northern area.
As Kyle arrived, he saw several gigantic signs.
"Private property!"
"Keep out!"
"Trespassers will be killed!"
Naturally, Kyle had already made use of the two deeds he had purchased.
Everything in and around Theodor's Inheritance Crypt now officially belonged to him.
He could do whatever he wanted to anyone who dared to enter his property as long as it was clear to everyone that this was private property.
Since everything in there belonged to Kyle now, he also didn't need to be afraid of someone stealing his loot.
Because of that, he also didn't need to keep the golems secret.
Ever since he had taken possession of this area, more and more golems came out of the mine to trade ore with other Cradles.
The entire peninsula already knew of this valuable mine since the golems were not very secretive.
However, nobody knew that this mine belonged to Kyle.
In their minds, some kind of secret but extremely powerful Grand Artificer had their home there, and nobody wanted to mess with someone like that.
There were not many worse places to enter uninvited than the home of a Grand Artificer.
According to Granite, they had already gotten rid of a couple of invaders.
The dog-dragon-thing patrolled the cave system, getting rid of any intruder.
Sulfur was protecting the most dangerous mining operations.
Granite was controlling everything and sometimes dealing with bigger threats.
The money Kyle earned from this mine put his other mine to shame.
He was earning two Ether Gems per day!
Kyle entered the mine and grabbed his profits before issuing some orders and returning to the Stark Brotherhood.
'Alright, back to the grind,' Kyle thought before he focused on the next set of materials.
The Rank E Materials.
Thanks to his wealth, he had already purchased every single Rank E Material in existence.
As Kyle started working on the Rank E Materials, he realized that this would take much longer.
There were about three times as many Rank E Materials as there were Rank F Materials.
Even more, the materials were harder to comprehend.
'This might actually take me an entire year,' Kyle thought as he put his hand into the molten form of one of them.
He felt immense pain from the heat, but he had also become quite good at dealing with the pain.
'Yeah, well, it's for my future.'
'Just gotta keep going.'
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