"What a wimp!" Tista cleaned the floor with vortexes and sent the dirt out of the house. "I’m not a wimp!" Solus half said and half burped. "It’s you guys who have a stomach the size of a literal house." With three mages, cleaning the kitchen and washing the dishes took less than five minutes. "The good news is we can resume our lesson straight away." Menadion nodded. "The bad news is that Solus won’t participate." "No way I’m missing it!" Solus used light magic to accelerate her metabolism and speed up the digestion process. "I’m ready to go." She said after a quick stop to the bathroom to dump the extra weight. "Oh, so now that the kitchen is done you suddenly remember you can do that." Lith clicked his tongue. "It’s nothing like that." Solus blushed. "Cleaning the kitchen wasn’t worth wasting good food. Mom’s lesson is. It’s a matter of priorities." "More like laziness." Tista replied. "You go and have fun. I’ll hold the fort." "Thanks, Big Sis." Lith Warped everyone back at the tower. "Where were we?" 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢 "The coins." Menadion returned the pieces of silver already bonded with the small red crystal to them. "Start over. It will help you think." Lith and Solus also took a normal silver coin out of their pocket dimension, to use it as a reference once they were done splitting the crystal from the coin. ’Okay, back to square two.’ Lith though. ’How do I go from this to this?’ He examined the mint coin and then the dismantled one. Read exclusive chapters at freewebnovel ’Let’s see.’ Solus thought. ’Creation Magic requires both light and darkness in all of its steps. Maybe that’s what I need to do here as well.’ She then imbued her coin with equal amounts of both elements, but light and darkness canceled each other once they spread evenly. ’Nope. This is as pointless as turning the heat and the AC on together. Maybe a little unbalance is needed.’ Solus took a deep breath and injected more light element, making it circulate inside the coin like blood inside a living being. Slowly but steadily the matter inside the metal started to rearrange itself. ’I did it! I did it on my own and before Lith!’ Or so she thought until the coin bent with a screeching sound. ’On not.’ The noise drew Lith’s attention and a tut from Menadion. "Again." She fixed the coin and bonded it with the red crystal before returning it to Solus. A corner of Menadion’s mouth was curled up in a smile she couldn’t suppress and Lith noticed it. ’Okay, if light doesn’t work, let’s go with more darkness.’ After removing the mana crystal, Solus inverted the amounts of injected elements and once again the metal started to change. To fall apart, to be precise. The coin turned into a fine silvery dust that Menadion restored with Creation Magic. "Again." She said, making Solus whine at the idea of splitting metal and crystal for the umpteenth time. ’What Solus is doing is right yet wrong at the same time.’ Lith thought. ’Menadion is proud and happy with her progress, no matter how much she tries to keep her face straight. The problem is I have no idea what the right part is.’ He had been studying his coin without making random attempts because, at the first mistake, Menadion would restore the coin, but that was only on the surface level. The inside of the coin would be completely different and Lith preferred to face an enemy he knew. ’Okay. Back from the start. Light and darkness. Order and chaos. Need both of them to restore my coin.’ He pondered the issue for a while, alternating between studying the scarred coin and the mint one. ’Now that I think about it, calling the residual trace of the mana vessel a scar is misleading. It’s not damage but the result of the coin rearranging itself to host the energy of the red crystal while offering the minimum resistance possible. ’The bonding process increased the order inside the coin so to restore the metal’s previous shape more chaos is required, hence more darkness than light.’ Lith started infusing the elements with a 1.25:1 ratio and then suddenly stopped. ’No, that’s wrong as well. What happened it’s more like putting a heavy stone on an empty cardboard box. The box deforms to best support the stone’s weight and then stays crumpled even after you remove the stone because at that point the box’s sides are bent. ’It’s not a transition from order to chaos, but from order to another kind of order. A normal person can’t restore the cardboard box to its previous state but Creation Magic can!’ Lith infused the ’healthy’ part of the coin only with light magic to preserve its internal configuration while flooding the ruined area with the same amounts of light and darkness. He slowly increased the amount of darkness element but only at the borders between the scar and the healthy coin. After a while, the deformed metal turned into a semi-liquid state, allowing it to move. Lith kept the amount of darkness element unchanged and connected the light element in the healthy part with that in the deformed part. The light element rearranged the semi-liquid metal by using the still-solid coin as a template. The natural order born from the most stable configuration of the metal without the crystal and the order generated by the light magic overcame the chaos induced by the darkness, forming stable bonds. Then, Lith moved the higher concentration of darkness element to the newly formed border between the two parts of the coin and the cycle started anew. With each layer of metal he fixed, his understanding and mastery of the process increased, and with it, its speed. Once he was done, only by examining the most minute details of the inner structure of the coin could Lith find traces of its previous bond with the red crystal. "I think I’m done, Ripha." Lith handed her the coin. "Master Ripha." She took the coin. "Or Mentor, Professor, whatever you prefer. I’d like to keep a clear boundary between us during the lessons, especially considering our weird relationship." "Sounds fair." Lith nodded. "The student must respect the teacher or he will learn nothing. How did I do, Professor?" "It’s a bit rough around the edges but it would be weird otherwise, considering this is your first time. Speaking of time, I didn’t expect you to figure it out so fast. Your academy professors were right. You truly are a talented Forgemaster." "Mom!" Solus grunted. "What’s the problem, sweetie? Are you jealous I’m praising someone else?" Menadion chuckled. "Yes. I mean, no. Do what you want but be silent, please. I can’t focus while you rub salt in my wounds." Solus blushed a little. "He might be done, but I’m still working here. By the way, congratulations, Lith." "Thanks, Solus." Lith gave her a nod. "Second best has a point." Menadion said, throwing rocket fuel on the fire of Solus’ competitive spirit. "Do it again. Once you can do it ten times out of ten, we’ll move on to the next step." She bonded the red crystal to Lith’s coin and handed it back to him.