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A bead of sweat rolled down the back of his neck and he wiped his brow. The heat in the forge was oppressive, and it only grew worse with every passing minute. It was almost impossible to completely focus himself on his task when it felt like all the water in his body was doing its best to escape him. Even though the lava had cooled from running through the passageways, it was still hot enough to singe the hair on his arms.

Arwin formed a gauntlet of [Soul Flame] around a hand and dipped it into one of the rivers of lava, scooping a palm-sized puddle of it free. The thick molten rock was like taffy in his hand as he squeezed it.

What kind of intent am I supposed to be infusing this with? It’s not like I’m trying to make something in particular. I’m just trying to connect with the stone… but it isn’t magical, so Stonesinger won’t let me cheat and just speak right to it with a vision.

He sent his thoughts forward, probing the hot stone to see if there was any sort of feeling or thought he could get from the stone. There was a flicker of something within it — the faintest acknowledgement that there was indeed something, but he got no real response. His brow furrowed and he focused harder. Arwin pressed his mind into the stone, opening it to try and pick up on anything that it may have been willing to share.

A dancing sea of light flashed through Arwin’s head. Flashes of thought and desire flitted about, vanishing before they could properly form. It was an avalanche of different materials, all mashed and melted together into a conglomerate.

Arwin stiffened and jerked his head back, nearly spilling the lava in the process. There were too many voices. Too many desires. The lava wasn’t a single material that he could reach out to. It was like someone had mashed a thousand different souls together and destroyed them all in the process.

I don’t think I can speak directly to this. There’s no way I can handle all these voices at once. I’m not so sure the lava actually has something it desires to be… and even if it did, it’s not like I’m actually making the lava itself into anything. I’m just using it as a tool.

He let the puddle slide off his palm and back into the molten river. The [Soul Flame] covering it flickered out and he leaned back against the anvil, resting his chin in his palm while he dug through his mind in search of a solution.

It’s too early to ask Wallace. I’ve barely even done anything yet, and I don’t want to just have the solution handed to me. Maybe that’s childish, but the Mesh already did that when I was learning the first time. I want to figure something out myself now.

The dwarf had said that he needed to make himself one with the lava. He had to find a way to do that, and it didn’t seem like the current approach was the one. There had to be a different way he could do it.

A minute trickled by. At some point, Lillia stepped away from the wall she’d been leaning against and made her way over to the anvil behind him. She brushed it off before sitting down on top of it. Lillia squeezed her legs between Arwin’s back and the metal so he was leaning against them. She set her hands on his shoulders and gave them a small squeeze.

“You look constipated,” Lillia informed him.

Arwin’s thoughts broke and he let out a snort of laughter, craning his neck back to look up at her. “I was trying to think.”

“It didn’t look like it was working very well.”

“It was not,” Arwin admitted with a sigh. He let his head lay back against her knees and let out huff. “I can’t speak with the lava in the same way that I can with metal. It’s rather frustrating.”

“I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to help there. I don’t speak to my food while I cook it. That’s honestly probably for the best. It would be unsettling at best if I did,” Lillia said with a smirk. “I’m just here for moral support.”

Arwin’s nose scrunched and he grimaced. “Yeah. That would be creepy — and moral support is appreciated.”

“Keep at it, then,” Lillia said with an encouraging nod, giving him a small nudge in the back of his head. “Don’t mind me. And try to move a bit faster, would you? I’m cooking alive over here.”

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“It’s probably cooler by the wall, you know.”

“The whole damn workshop is painfully hot,” Lillia grumbled. “And if I’m going to cook, I’d rather be here than there.”

Arwin gave her a small smile, then straightened his head again to look back down at the thin river of lava flowing before him. He summoned [Soul Flame] to his hand once again and scooped another puddle free, studying it intently.

Magical energy gathered in his palms as Arwin sent it out, trying to infuse the lava. The power tingled against his fingertips and slipped past it, failing to accomplish anything. He didn’t have a specific intent, so there was nothing to infuse.

Maybe this is because I don’t understand lava enough. Perhaps I have to get more familiar with it before I can try to control it. It’s not like [Molten Novice] is a skill I can choose to activate. It’s passive.

His lips pursed and he summoned a [Soul Flame] gauntlet on his other hand so he could pass the lava between them. It was surprisingly fun to play with. Kind of like a stress ball with enough heat trapped within it to burn through unprotected flesh in instants. It was even fun to look at.

Bubbles of warm orange glowed around dark ridges like molten caramel. Arwin squinted at the lava cupped in his palms.

It almost looks tasty.

Arwin bit back a dark laugh at that thought. Eating lava. There probably weren’t many intelligent people who’d ever had that particular thought. It didn’t seem like Jessen had enjoyed the taste too much, but perhaps he’d just been slightly preoccupied at the time.

He shook his head to keep his thoughts from drifting too far. It had been almost an hour since he’d sat down by the anvil and started fiddling with the lava, and he’d still made no progress in the first step of many.

There was no chance of getting back before dinner if he didn’t speed things up. Arwin pursed his lips and squinted at the glowing mass. He had to find a way to connect with the lava. To make it one with him.

Another droplet of sweat joined the rivulets rolling down his neck. His mouth was parched and his throat dry. The workshop was ridiculously uncomfortable. He had absolutely no idea how Wallace could concentrate for any amount of time in this environment.

And then there were Lillia’s legs pressed against his back and her hands on his shoulders. Her presence was comforting — and it also reminded him of her food. Arwin’s stomach rumbled.

I don’t know why, but I’m starving.

He looked down at the lava. His eyes narrowed as a thought tickled the back of his mind. Then his head tilted to the side.

Huh. I need to become one with the lava. I was approaching it in a really philosophical or magical way… but what if Wallace was being way more literal? [Soul Flame] can cover any part of my body. Not just my hands. If I was to — no. That couldn’t be right… could it?

Arwin glanced to the dwarf. He was still in the corner of the smithy and had taken to fiddling with one of his tools. It didn’t look like Wallace was paying him and Lillia even the slightest amount of attention.

There was no way the dwarf went around eating lava. The only reason Arwin could eat magic at all was because of his class, and he was pretty sure that [The Hungering Maw] wasn’t something that every single dwarf had access to.

That said, he couldn’t think of a single other way to go about this. His magic couldn’t penetrate the lava and he couldn’t speak with it. There was no way to start a vision with a non-magical material, and he couldn’t start crafting until he could connect to the lava.

Fuck it. It did look tasty.

Arwin lifted the lava. His mouth erupted in a warm, tingling sensation as he covered its entirety with [Soul Flame]. His lips pulled apart and tongues of flame lapped out, escaping into the outside air.

For an instant longer, he hesitated. Then his jaw set. Lillia couldn’t quite see what he was doing because of her position behind him. That was probably for the best. He lifted the lava to his lips and poured it in.

Arwin bit down on molten lava, and to absolutely nobody’s surprise, it tasted like stone. There was no other way to describe it. He was chewing a stew of hot, gritty rocks. What did surprise him was that he didn’t actually hate the texture.

It was thick and dense, with just enough crunch to give his teeth something to do. Even though the lava didn’t taste all that great, it was kind of entertaining to chew on. Toddlers would have loved it.

Well, provided they kept their faces from getting melted off.

Arwin continued to chew, mostly because he had absolutely no idea what else to do. There was no way he could actually swallow the lava. It wasn’t magical. His body couldn’t digest it, and even if he could keep it from burning him with [Soul Flame], he did not want to get stuck with a giant chunk of stone in his stomach.

What the hell do I do with the lava now? Why did I do this?

Arwin continued to chew, mostly because he had nothing else he could do. Seconds ticked by. Sweat rolled down his back and soaked his shirt — and then his head tilted to the side. His mouth was tingling.

It wasn’t the [Soul Flame]. Not exclusively. He could still feel the magical fire lapping against his cheeks, but there was something more. The flavor of the lava had changed. Not just that. The tingling was a sensation he’d felt before. It was the feeling of the Mesh filling an item with magic.

Arwin cast his attention inward toward the lava and bracing himself for a myriad of voices to slam into his mind once more. His eyes widened and his breath caught in his chest in surprise.

A delighted grin pulled across his lips. He’d done it. The cacophony was gone. All the voices had vanished. It was as if the lava had been purified, all the different desires stored within it mashed into a single, cohesive extension of Arwin’s own will.

He was so caught up with his success that he didn’t even realize that Wallace had walked over to check on how he was doing.

“So, have you figured out that you need to knead the lava until…” Wallace started as Arwin’s lips parted to reveal a ball of bright pure-yellow lava he was chewing on. The dwarf stared at him, aghast, and his mouth dropped open in disbelief. “By the Earth Father’s bedridden mother-in-law, are you

eating

lava?”