Around the hundredth attempt, Cain discovered something crucial.
The Chaos Ether didn't need to be distributed evenly throughout the material. In fact, it worked better when concentrated along specific planes within the metal's structure. Like layers in a sandwich, with each layer serving a different purpose.
That opened up entirely new possibilities.
He started experimenting with laminated structures. Thin sheets of the material entrenched with Chaos Ether, sandwiched between layers of mana-infused steel. The trick was getting them to bond, or rather flow over, without rejecting or repelling each other.
Temperature was critical too.
Too hot and the excited energies would tear each other apart. Too cold and they wouldn't fuse at all. There was a narrow window, maybe five degrees wide, where the two types of matter would grudgingly accept each other's presence.
Finding a way to stabilize at that window took another hundred attempts.
But when he found it...
