Gone was her laughter and amusement. By the time she finished speaking, her voice was dripping with bloody malice. The intent to kill was so strong that Jim stepped back in fright.
Then she said to Jim, "Go and continue doing your job. I will reward you for bringing this to my attention. As for the rest, I will take care of it."
Jim didn’t know what she meant by she would take care of things, but he didn’t ask to know something she wasn’t willing to tell him. He simply nodded before scurrying away.
But he soon returned to tell Death Envoy that another person had come to watch Loki. But this time, Death Envoy didn’t care. She told him to continue doing his job without minding the other person.
She spoke as if she didn’t care that someone else was watching Loki, but she still immediately sent out a zombie to grab the new stalker and bring them to her lair.
This time, no other stalker was sent to keep watch over Loki. At least, it looked like only Jim was busy with that sort of work.
While this was going on, Loki was busy with his Life Ability. It took one and a half months, but he finally finished forging it.
The final product was a large block of black metal. One look at it and one wouldn’t know that it was made from Living Metal because Living Metal is a white material.
After forging it, Loki began the arduous work of refining it with his internal energy. He had already forged the whole thing using his blood as water for every step, so the block of metal was very receptive to his internal energy.
Once it was soaked up in a lot of energy and had drunk its fill, Loki then used the Telekinesis Metac on it. He used the power of his mind to lift the block and pull it into his body.
As the big block rose into the air and began approaching his body, it aos began shrinking in size. It shrank in size from a large block of metal into a small cube of metal the size of his fist. This allowed it to fit into his energy well.
With the cube of metal beginning to enter his energy well, Loki became nervous because this was a very important part. Not only will the reaction between his Life Ability and his Core Metac determine if his advancement to rank 3 is successful, but the product of the reaction will determine the final state of the Life Ability.
A Life Ability is not only the thing that he forges. It is the final product of the fusion of what he forges and his Core Metac.
Some Core Metacs will reject a Life Ability because it isn’t compatible with them. And some Core Metacs will change the Life Ability to make it more compatible with them.
The latter is why there is a fixed group of Life Abilities that every cultivator in a pathway can forge for their Core Metac.
For Forgers like him, their Core Abilities can be a small forge, a hammer, an anvil, armor, etc. Each of them will have various abilities, but they will all be compatible with the Telekinesis Core Metac.
As long as a Forger picks one of these compatible Life Abilities, they shouldn’t have a problem getting the Telekinesis Metac to fuse with it.
However, as for the mutation that occurs when the Core Metac tries to change the Life Ability to make it more compatible during the process of fusion, there is nothing that can be done about it.
One can’t prepare or account for a mutation. But most Forgers don’t have to worry about this because mutations rarely happen, and they are usually a good thing when they do. After all, their Life Ability is always compatible with their Core Metac.
Unfortunately for him, his Core Metac is actually Fenrir, not the Telekinesis Metac. So he has to be worried about what he had forged being incompatible with Fenrir and failing.
As for the matter of mutation during fusion, he is sure that it will happen. This is something he is willing to bet money on without knowing the outcome beforehand, simply because his Core Metac is actually Fenrir, not the Telekinesis Metac.
He simply expects the other energy chambers and their Core Metacs to influence his Life Ability in one way or another. So he has two things to worry about. He has to worry if the fusion will fail and what kind of mutation he will get after the fusion.
Even though he could restart if he failed, he was still nervous as he watched. His nervousness spiked to an unhealthy level when he saw the black cube of metal begin to do something even more absurd than shrinking when it reached Fenrir.
He saw that the cube of metal began to melt as soon as it touched Fenrir. It turned into a slimy liquid that coated Fenrir’s white fur and turned it black. This made Fenrir now match its black scaled tail.
So now Fenrir had been changed by the Life Ability. This made his heart relax because this could only happen if Fenrir was willing to accept the Life Ability.
The next step began immediately. Since he had been changed by Fenrir earlier during the paused breakthrough, the breakthrough could now continue because Fenrir had also been changed by him.
It is said that the goal one needs to achieve in order to advance to rank 3 is to let the Core Metac change the host so that the host will fit the Core Metac better, and for the host to change the Core Metac with a compatible Life Ability so that the Core Metac will fit the host better.
This way, both the host and the Core Metac can further fuse and try to become one entity. As it happened, this was exactly what he began to experience as the breakthrough resumed.