150 Ambitious project

The next day was a rather important one for Nick as he was finally going to attempt making a ring wraith. It was little surprise that Helena had eagerly offered to serve as a guinee pig in this endeavor without any hesitation. Thanks to the detailed knowledge of the crafting style Nick knew that the ring itself didn't need to be very powerful in order to create and maintain a ring wraith. In fact the rings given to the humans barely had any powerful enchantments at all. First and foremost was that the wearers were invisible as their bodies resided in the astral realm.-

Only their spirits walked the world in a physical manner and as a result they did not age as time bore no meaning in the astral realm. Nick's rings instead could directly skip placing the physical bodies in the astral realm and focus on the physical spirit aspect of the rings. The second ability that all the rings of power that made the ring wraiths had was that it allowed normal mortals to become powerful sorcerers by tying their power to Sauron's. Once again Nick could skip this aspect as one of the prerequisites for becoming a ghost was being magical.-

It was for this reason that there weren't far more ghost around since muggles tend to die with unfinished business as well as strong rejection of passing on which were the other requirements for the formation of a ghost. Instead he was planning on tying the rings to him in such a way that they fell off should the ghost wearing them turn against him. With the requirements to create a ring wraith ring having been lowered so much thanks to these reasons Nick guessed that he may be able to create a ring wraith with his crafting ability far bellow Celebrimbor or Sauron's.-

The biggest hurtle for him however was that unlike both of them his energy pool was vastly inferior in quantity. Celebrimbor was an elf over a thousand years old while Sauron was basically an immortal fallen angel. Needless to say a a soul equivalent to a fourteen year old's in age didn't hold much in the form of power in comparison. Nick's soul would be worth nearly thirty years had his memories and knowledge of his previous life not been stripped from it. The term "knowledge is power" applied quite literally in the case of wizards in this world.-

A a wizard learns and grows older their souls grow stronger naturally so the twenty sevenish years of knowledge would have made Nick's soul considerably stronger had they not been stripped from him. Quality of soul however is an entirely different matter as right now Nick's soul was fusing with the spirit of the celestial bird while also becoming elven in nature making it qualitatively superior to any normal wizards soul by many tiers. This qualitative difference is what allowed Nick to learn so fast as otherwise he would be only a bit above average in terms of learning talent.-

"What do you thing would be a good material for something like this? Mithril or something else?" Nick asked Helena who was waiting eagerly nearby in the workshop. She seemed to fall into thought for a few moments with a serious expression. Meanwhile Nick had already turned the furnace on and switched it over to his new cold flames sending a chill throughout the workshop. The paradoxical nature of the cold fire seemed the best choice out of those available to him for making a ghost into a ring wraith.-

Even Celebrimbor agreed that this was likely the case since he honestly wasn't sure as there were few types of magical fire in his world and he had only ever used sun flame out them. Sun flame was a fire that contained lots of positive energy and as such had purifying properties against curses and imperfections in metals. It existed in this world as well however it was notoriously hard to get since it only appeared during lunar eclipses and tended to die out within a couple minutes of forming on earth. This made getting the stuff an act of serious luck on someone's part as you not only needed to be near it but also prepared to contain it as well.-

Soon enough Helena seemed to decide on a metal as she looked at Nick and said seriously "You should use blood silver." "HISSSS!" he sucked in a deep breath in surprise and horror when she said this. Blood silver was a dreadful metal created by extracting the iron contained in the blood of wizards or other magical beings while they were still alive before being mixed with mithril and magically sealed in a jar of blood for no less than six days.-

The metal had the unique property of being extremely powerful when enchanted with dark magic and was even theorized to have some connection to soul magic. Helena was likely referring to this when she made the suggestion but Nick refused to even attempt to make the horrible stuff. "NO." he said firmly and while she looked a bit disappointed at his response she could still accept it and fell into thought again. While he waited for her to decide on the material he took stock of his collection of metals.

'4 bars of goblin silver , 12 bars of dragon steel , 7 bars of mithril , 2 bars of orichalcum , 2 bars of adamantium , half a bar of star metal and plenty of base magicless metals.' he thought as he sorted the pile of metal. He hadn't purchased any more metals after raiding the metal held within the room of requirement as he hadn't felt the need to. Most of the rings he had made since that point merely used magicless metals while a rare few used the precious magical metals he had. "Mithril should suffice though it has no known ties to souls." Helena finally said with a small frown.-

Nick ignored this since he knew it was only from the less than optimal conditions of this attempt. Grabbing a bar of mithril Nick placed it within the furnace while gritting his teeth at the cold that hit him during this process. Strangely the metal started to change color as though it was heating up and even melted within the flames. Using his wand Nick removed the liquid from the furnace and separated a certain amount before placing the rest in a mold to reform into an ingot. The amount he removed from that however was shaped into a small sphere before being allowed to cool(heat up).-

Once solid and work able again Nick placed the sphere on the anvil before immediately hammering it flat on two sides like a coin. It was much thicker than a coin of course but the idea remains the same. He then carefully began to create a hole in the center in order to turn the metal into a ring. He needed to put the metal back in the furnace to become workable once again but managed to finally get a hole through the center of it finally.-

He then started to shape the metal into a simple band ring while being careful not to stress the metal too much and cause cracks. After an hour of work he was done with this and could finally try and enchant the ring. He started to glow filling the room with a bright gold and white radiance that soon was focused on his hand and hammer. "GUL!"(wraith) He spoke and struck the ring with his full intent and knowledge of what he wanted. The ring hummed and a fuzzy elvish word briefly shone next to it. "SORNA!"(steadfast) He spoke another word upon his next strike causing both to appear next to the ring that was humming even more intensely.-

"NEM!"(appear) he struck yet again causing three words to appear next to the ring and Nick repeatedly chanted these words as he struck the ring again and again. After about three more hours of work he finally felt the rebound of energy that signified that the enchantment had fully binded to the ring and spoke one last word with his final strike "NAZGUL!"(ring-wraith). The ring stopped humming after that and sat on the anvil radiating a cold blue shine off of it as it waited for someone to use it.

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