Transmigrated as a Ghost

Watching intently both Marcus and Lilia stared with astonishment at Ardea's punch, but not because of is power.

In fact, she had not enhanced her ability in any way with magic or skills, and simply demonstrated the profound mastery over her technique.

Even for Marcus who was not someone that fought with his fists, it was a sight to behold.

Yet, for Lilia it was like an amateur who witnessed a peak expert performing the same craft as them.

She could tell just how much higher Ardea was in the realm of fighting than she was with how refined her technique was.

"I suppose that my demonstration was insightful." Ardea said with a smile, as she saw Lilia's gaping mouth and stunned expression.

After a few moments once she had come back to herself, Lilia nodded her head vigorously at Ardea, and said, "I promise that I will work hard to be worthy of being your apprentice. When you come back in four years, I promise I will be so much stronger you will not recognize me."

"Good that is what I wanted to hear. Just make sure not to lose yourself in the pursuit of power. There is more to living than just being strong." Ardea said as she patted Lilia on the shoulder.

She then turned to Marcus, and said, "I will come back tomorrow two hours after dawn. If it is not a problem for me to accompany you to your forge?"

"No, I do not think it will be a problem. Ah, but you are actually more than welcome to stay here if you want until then." Marcus said, offering his generosity.

However, she just shook her head and said, "No I should not stay here any longer than necessary. My presence is making a certain someone very nervous."

Casting her gaze in the direction of the castle, Ardea nudged her head and Marcus understood what she meant.

This city, and kingdom for that matter, was Gwyneria's domain, and if someone who was as strong as Ardea just waltzed in it would make anyone nervous.

"Very well, then I shall see you tomorrow."

Nodding her head Ardea gave her confirmation, before she slipped into the ground and vanished.

With Ardea now gone, Marcus finally had time to test out his new top tier adamantine equipment and enlisted Lilia and Roxene to attack him to assess his new defensive capabilities.

"That should be enough." Marcus said as the sun began to set.

He had gotten to test out his armor and shield's powers quite well and was very happy by the performance.

At the same time, Lilia had been able to test out her own, but there was a slight problem.

She simply did not have enough mana to properly use her equipment for very long and would have to use her mithril gauntlets and armor if she was going to be fighting for any extended amount of time.

Still, if she needed a sharp increase in power, she could always equip her adamantine gauntlets and armor.

Now that they had finished up their activities for the day the three of them headed back inside and ate a lavish meal prepared by the house maids.

"Ah that was good as always. Make sure to tell Stella that I thoroughly enjoyed it." Marcus said to Violet as once he had finished eating.

With dinner now over, he went up to his room and hopped into a hot bath.

'Time to call Mrazivý.'

Taking out one of his sending stones, he contacted his fiancé and updated her on his schedule and that Ardea had come by.

"Got it, so we will be leaving the day after tomorrow. I will make sure that everyone else knows and that we are ready." Mrazivý said, before hanging up.

Getting out of the bath, Marcus dried off before changing and going to sleep, a bit tired from the intense work he had been doing over the last two days, and knowing he needed to be at his peak to fix Ardea's gauntlet.

When the next day came, just as she said, Ardea showed up at Marcus' estate again, and the two of them headed over to the Blazegram Forge.

"So, this is where you work. I can feel that there is a lot of mana gathered here, and that there is one decently strong person inside." Ardea said, examining the forge.

Of course, Marcus had no idea how she was able to pick up on this information, but at her level she must have certainly had any number of tricks up her sleeves.

Entering into the forge, he greeted everyone as normal before heading over to Thabon's personal workshop.

"Ah Irene it has been a while since you last showed up." Thabon said with a smile on his face.

That was, until his gaze drifted over to Ardea, and immediately his eyes went wide while he visibly shuddered.

Gulping loudly, the fear that Thabon was feeling was nearly palpable, as he was able to realize that Ardea had what seemed to be a fathomless amount of power.

"No need to get worked up. I just hired Irene here for a simple repair job and we are here to fix a piece of my equipment." Ardea said, trying to defuse Thabon's tension.

And while this did take the edge off him, his apprehension was still quite apparent.

"I will vouch for her Thabon. She is a pretty decent person from what I can tell. Now how about we head inside and discuss the job she hired me for."

Sighing, Thabon opened his door wide letting Marcus and Ardea inside, before slamming it shut tightly.

Once they were inside Thabon's workshop, Marcus fully explained the situation to him.

"Very well, feel free to use my equipment, but this time it is not going to be for free. You are no longer my apprentice, so we are working together as peers now. Therefore, using my personal facilities will cost you three thousand gold, and you will need to use all of your own materials." Thabon said, no longer giving out any freebies to Marcus.

Nodding his head, he understood that he could not just expect to come by whenever he wanted and use Thabon's best equipment for free.

He then handed over the money, and Thabon happily got the workshop set up to work with amethros.

When everything was ready, he headed out and left Marcus to work on his own.

"Okay I am going to get started now. It is going to get hot in here so I recommend you step out now if you cannot take it."

Smiling, Ardea waved her hand and said, "I will be fine. I am more than tough enough to take a little heat.

Shrugging his shoulders now that he had her confirmation, Marcus lit up the furnace and got to work.

Carefully he melted down the ingot he had already taken a bit off of and separated around twenty percent of it into two separate crucibles.

Next, he poured them into some smaller molds and waited for them to cool before heating them again.

After that, he shaped them into fingers to replace the ones that were missing from Ardea's gauntlet using her other undamaged one as a guide.

"There, that is the hard part done. I just need to fix the damaged self-repair enchantment and connect these replacements, and it should be pretty much as good as new." Marcus said. updating Ardea on his progress.

'Now where is the worst damage.' He thought as he examined the gauntlet in detail.

Pushing a bit of his own mana in, he focused on its flow and found where it was unable to move properly.

'Whew it is only slightly damaged. I should be able to fix it easily enough.'

Having identified the area where the formation had been disfigured, Marcus took out his amethros mana etcher and reconnected the formation while adding a bit more celestial platinum to stabilize it.

Once that was done, the cracks in the gauntlet began to mend themselves, and he attached the replacement finger which began to connect to the gauntlet.

At the same time, he poured more celestial platinum into the formations that were reforming around the new fingers, so that they would be as strong as the rest of the gauntlet.

Soon the once damaged weapon was back in peak condition, almost as if it had never been damaged.

"I believe that I am finished. But I would like it if you would test it out and make sure that it feels right." Marcus said holding out he repaired gauntlet to Ardea.

A smile creeping onto her face, it was obvious that she was pleased to have one of the set of her prized weapon fixed.

Putting it on she began testing the motion of the new fingers and flexed her arm and hand around.

"Wow it feels as good as new. Thanks Irene, I really owe you for doing this for." Adread said, a full and bright smile on her face now.

"It was no problem; it gave me a new challenge to overcome. I rarely get to work with amethros, and this is actually the first time I have fixed anything made out of it, so it was a good learning experience."

"Well, you did a really good job, and I am very grateful. I will make sure to keep up my end of our deal and gather these items that you want." Ardea said, as she stored her gauntlets into her item box.

With what they had come her to accomplished now completed, Marcus quickly cleaned up Thabon's workshop, before exiting the forge with Ardea.

"I suppose this is goodbye for now. I will come and find you again as soon as I have the items that you wanted."

Waving goodbye, Ardea took off down the street leaving Marcus alone, as she headed to the far reaches of the world.