The Exalt [Cultivation Fantasy]

Oscar placed his hammer down and looked at the time to see ten minutes remained in this stage. Around him, many fabricators hammered with a hint of impatience to refine the metal, but Oscar's attention was on the ones who seemed quite relaxed. Some of them had finished far before Oscar, which piqued his interest.

"What kind of fabricators are they?" Oscar sat down on his chair, waiting for the stage to end. He remembered his master didn't want him to participate but watch to see the talented fabricators of his generation.

"Stop!" The fabricator elder shouted. "If anyone decides to get a few strikes in, they'll be disqualified."

Everyone placed their hammers down and awaited the elder's appraisal. They slumped in their chairs from how tired they were.

"60 percent, close but still failed. Disqualified." The elder started to make his rounds around from the first row.

"70, not bad. Passed."

"64, one percent off. Disqualified."

"80! That's pretty good. Passed."

His words determined the fate of the students in this stage. Some left dejected with their heads hung down in shame, some seemed relieved and tired, and the rest were happy and puffing their chests out proudly. The highest purity so far was 89, shocking many fabricators, who stared at the student with awe.

Before long, the elder made his way to Oscar. Oscar didn't feel nervous in the presence of the elder because he had full faith in his refinement skills. He presented his refined viridium with calm hands.

The elder took out a hammer and tapped on the viridium before snapping his face at Oscar; behind his fabricator helmet, his eyes stared with delight.

He cleared his throat and loudly proclaimed, "94 percent purity. That's incredible. Well done, and you passed."

"94?" Some of the fabricators near Oscar exclaimed. "How do you get it to a 94?"

Murmurs and talks occurred between many fabricators about Oscar's refinement skills. The person who managed an 89 seemed depressed and looked at Oscar.

"Quiet!" The elder barked. "The assessment isn't finished yet. I must go to the others."

As the elder continued to assess the rest of the students, Oscar clenched his hammer, staring down at the viridium. 94 was a superb purity, but he felt he could have done better; however, he stopped upon seeing how thin it was and that he didn't yet possess the means to refine it further.

"I need to get better with 'Shattering Wave' and blanketing my Ein all over. I should aim for 100 purity." Oscar was stuck in his thoughts.

"97….You got a 97?"

Oscar snapped his head toward the elder's shocked voice. He thought his ears were deceiving him somehow, but the elder's trembling hands, which held a viridium plate, showed this to be true. A 97 was an insane number.

"You passed. A 97 is incredible." The elder regained his composure; the shock of a 94 and then a 97 purity had gotten to him. These students were surely the cream of the crop.

Oscar sighed. This person was surely one of the geniuses that his master mentioned.

"97 again?"

The surprises did not end there as the elder discovered another 97.

"98?"

Another fabricator was discovered with incredibly high purity. This time, a 98, which Oscar could not help but admire. His rivals were indeed monsters in their own way.

But the biggest shock came with the elder's loudest shout of the day.

"100?!"

Even Oscar could not contain his voice and shouted along with the other fabricators, "What?!"

The entire room stared at the fabricator, who refined their viridium to 100 purity, an awe-inspiring feat that everyone could only stare at dumbfoundedly. Oscar clenched his hands. It was only six percent, but that small amount seemed like a wide chasm that Oscar felt would take an extraordinary amount of time and effort to bridge.

"To get 100 purity is an insane accomplishment, but I wonder how they are for the rest of the process?" Oscar knew there was more to fabrication than material refinement. The crux always lay in the refinement of beast parts, the core, and the formation–doing each step well before the formation step would make it easier.

"This stage is over. I did not expect to see such high purities, but I am glad our young generation is not lacking at all." The elder said proudly. "However, half of you have already failed. That number is quite worrying for me to see some be unable to refine materials properly."

Oscar checked out the room. Indeed, only half of the contestants remained in Block B. He didn't expect so many to drop out at the first stage at the most crucial first step of refinement, but that was due to a lack of experience; not everyone had an insane master ready to beat them down for every mistake.

"Everyone must strive to be better. The viridium is one of the tougher ores for one-star fabricators to refine, so those complacent in their refinement after handling lesser ores were weeded out." The elder rubbed to wipe the soot from his visor. "Now then, the next stage will begin."

The refined plates of viridium were taken away and replaced with a sharp tooth of an Exalt Beast. The feeling that emanated from this fang gave Oscar the impression a vicious predator was right in front of him, about to chomp down. It wasn't real, but the fang had that much of an impression.

"This is a fang of an Apprentice Exalt Beast, a powerful one at that, the Silver-Tongue Sabertooth. We have spent quite a bit of effort safely procuring these without disrupting the balance. Your next task is to refine these and create pellets for a spear tip."

Oscar stared at the fang; its sharp point was certainly best for a spear tip. But the troubling part was to refine it into pellets. Oscar had full confidence in himself to overwhelm the beast's will that lingered, but he wasn't sure about the other fabricators.

"Fabricators mostly do not fight well, like those elixir drunks, because we focus all our attention on crafting rather than battling. But we can't complain when it's only a remnant will lurking in a broken piece of the beast's body. If you can't repel the beast, then you fail. You have thirty minutes break, then two hours to work on the fang."

Oscar sat on his chair, closing his eyes underneath his visor; under the effects of meditation, he recovered his Ein and calmed his mind. Next, he checked his body to soften the tension that was building and get to the best condition possible. The time passed slowly until thirty minutes were up.

"Begin refining the fang!" The elder declared the start of the second stage.

Immediately, some fabricators smashed their hammers down onto the fang but made groans of pain as their arms whipped back, dropping their hammers. The rebound from the savage beast lingering in the fang was too much for them to bear. But they were not deterred and grunted as they forced their swings.

Oscar was calm and raised his hammer high. On its way down, the hammer slowed as an invisible pressure emanated from the fang to deter it. A loud bestial roar echoed in Oscar's mind, and an image of a wide mouth with sharp teeth and a pair of horrifying fangs popped into his head.

"Nothing but a remnant of an already slain beast." Oscar regarded this as a futile resistance. His Ein and Reis instantly crushed the opposing pressure and hit the fang, cracking and breaking it down. "I'm sorry, but I need to destroy what remains of you."

Oscar swung repeatedly. His hammer was undeterred by the fierce backlash from the sabertooth, a resistance that diminished with each hit until Oscar could no longer hear its roar in his mind. The fang on the anvil was pounded until it became a fine powder that looked no different from the flour used for bread.

To his side was the burning kiln with flames coming out the top chimney-like opening. Oscar took handfuls of the powder and dropped them into the flames, which burst with more heat and enlarged each time. "Now I just have to wait."

It didn't take for the flames to die down after they consumed the powder. Once the flames withdrew to a certain level below the kiln's opening, Oscar poured in the quenching oil to kill the fire. The massive amounts of steam that came out made the kiln look like an erupting volcano spewing black clouds into the air.

"Ready." Oscar removed the slag from below and smashed it on his anvil to separate the fang pellets from the rubbish. "They're perfect."

The time dwindled down. Only ten people remained after failing to overcome the sabertooth's will. Oscar looked around at his rivals, noting that the four others with higher purity refinement than him were still there.

"Congratulations to the ten of you. We have now judged who could refine the tougher ores and overcome a powerful beast's will. Now is the last stage, to create an armament."

Oscar felt a stone in his stomach. He knew it would come eventually, but he still felt unsteady about his formations.

"The top four armaments will pass the block."