Floating Island - Triple S Talent-Chapter 585: Man Who Walked Out of the Forge

The protective formations surrounding the forging table trembled violently. The Unstable Star Core now burned with a fierce red glow, cracks across its surface spewing lines of light like molten magma.

"Shut down the formations! Seal the core! Stop the process!" one overseer shouted.

The Head of the Workshop ground his teeth, ready to retreat for the sake of safety.

Varon raised a hand, as if about to offer "advice" though the mocking curve of his smile betrayed his true intent.

"If this is as far as your techniques can go," he said loudly enough for the entire plaza to hear, "...then perhaps the reputation of the Eternal Forge has been greatly exaggerated."

Several young blacksmiths lowered their heads, their faces burning, caught between anger and shame.

Just as the tension reached its peak...

Heavy footsteps echoed from the direction of the main workshop gate.

DUM.

DUM.

DUM.

The steps were unhurried, yet every impact seemed to shake the entire plaza. The chaos that moments ago bordered on panic suddenly... subsided. Not because the danger had passed, but because every head instinctively turned toward the source of the sound.

The massive gates of the Eternal Forge’s main workshop swung open.

From within the swirling steam and red furnace light, a broad, muscular figure stepped out.

Bare-chested.

A worn brown leather apron hung from his waist, stained with charcoal and splashes of molten metal. His skin gleamed with sweat, the powerful lines of his back and shoulders etched with old burn scars that had long since become part of him. His black hair was loosely tied back.

In his right hand, he carried a black hammer.

It looked... ordinary.

No golden decorations. No gemstones. No blazing aura.

And yet, the moment he fully stepped into the plaza, the air itself seemed to change.

Not from an explosion of pressure.

But from an invisible wave of heat spreading outward, drying the air as though a colossal furnace had just been opened.

Gusti Bagus.

Grand Artisan.

One of the Twelve Legendary Pillars of the Earth Kingdom.

"Gr... Grandmaster Gusti..." several apprentices whispered, eyes wide.

Among the invited guests, a Lord from one of the autonomous islands exhaled in disbelief. "Insane... that’s Gusti? He came down himself?"

"He’s one of Lord Lein’s pillars," another Lord replied in a low, reverent voice. "If he’s the one moving... then the Star Empire chose the wrong day to come."

Gusti stopped a few steps away from the forging table.

He looked at the Unstable Star Core on the verge of explosion. His eyes usually half-lidded and lazy, sharpened.

To him, the core was not merely a glowing sphere.

He saw the structural lines within it: layers of colliding energy, deliberately preserved empty pores designed to induce instability, and most clearly, two precisely engineered flaws in the arrangement of its energy "molecules."

The fourth point.

And the seventh.

Both placed perfectly within its circular circulation pattern.

"Shut down all stabilization formations," Gusti said calmly.

"It’ll explode if we do!" the Head of the Workshop protested instinctively.

"Relax," Gusti cut him off flatly. "If something this small can blow up the Eternal Forge... then I should retire."

Silence fell.

Varon lifted his chin, struggling to reclaim his authority.

"So this is it," he said with a sneer. "Your famous Grand Artisan."

Gusti glanced at him briefly, then returned his gaze to the core.

"This is what you call a challenge?" he asked indifferently. "This is engineered trash."

Several people sucked in sharp breaths.

"The structure at points four and seven was deliberately damaged," he continued, as casually as if discussing flawed scrap metal at a market stall. "You were hoping anyone who struck it using standard techniques would trigger an explosion. A cheap trick."

Varon’s expression stiffened for a fraction of a second.

"Nonsense," he snapped too quickly. "If you’re truly as great as your reputation claims... then prove it. Stabilize the core. Forge it into a sword. Or stop pretending you understand its structure."

Gusti let out a slow breath.

"Very well," he said, as though he had finally agreed to wipe a trivial stain from his own worktable. "But don’t regret it... once you realize how vast the distance is between a blacksmith and a mere metal beater."

He stepped forward.

Without protective gloves. Without any special safeguards.

With his left hand, he grasped the Unstable Star Core directly.

Several people let out small cries.

The runes surrounding the table died instantly, Gusti severed the energy supply to the protective formations so they wouldn’t interfere with the core’s rhythm.

The core trembled violently in his palm, its red light flickering in fury, as if enraged.

"Quiet," Gusti murmured... not to the people, but to the core itself.

Then, with a casual flick of his wrist, he tossed the Star Core into the air.

It hovered several meters above the table, spinning slowly.

Gusti adjusted his stance slightly.

He raised the black hammer in his right hand.

DUM.

The first strike.

The hammer struck the core from the side not with brute force, but with pressure at a specific... frequency.

To ordinary eyes, it was just a single clang.

But to the Unstable Star Core, that vibration penetrated into the deepest layers of its structure, forcing the turbulent energy vortex within to realign.

The once-wild red glow flickered... then faltered.

DUM.

The second strike.

The rhythm was slightly different. The vibration spread into the fine cracks, forcing them to knit together instead of widening.

"Watch closely," murmured a senior blacksmith in the crowd, his eyes glistening. "That’s... not forging metal. That’s forging the laws inside the object."

DUM. DUM. DUM.

The third, fourth, and fifth strikes.

Each hammerfall echoed across the entire plaza.

It sounded simple.

Yet in the minds of those who truly understood, the rhythm was a code, a hidden sequence governing pressure, direction, and resonance.

The Star Core no longer looked as if it were about to explode.

Instead, its red light dimmed, replaced by a clear, stable blue glow. Its spherical shape slowly elongated, flattened, and then... folded inward.

No furnace.

No fire.

That energy-metal obeyed Gusti’s hammer.

Within ten seconds.

Roughly ten strikes.

The final impact rang out.

TING!