You know, to most people, they are the ugliest person they know.
Simply because, after looking in the mirror for so long, dissecting your own appearance, you can spot the flaws, the tiniest details that make you ‘less desirable’.
I had no such mental problems with my image.
Especially when I had still occupied the body pulled out of a spacial pocket by Selina.
You see, I knew very well that I was not very good looking when in that body.
Some even mistook me for a better-looking than usual orc, or even a goblin.
And now, dying hadn’t done any favors to what had been my face.
Especially since that life ended rather…violently.
I was actually very impressed with how well Selina had reconstructed the face and everything, especially since getting sat on by an undead giant isn’t exactly conducive to leaving nice corpses.
The body she had pulled out stood at around 1.8 meters tall, and had a normal body mass. The face had a definite under-bite, and thick bushy brows partially obscured the milky white orbs underneath. Long and messy brown hair came down to the shoulders, and covered the wide forehead a little.
It’s too bad. Many had said that my one redeeming quality in that life had been my eyes, but they seem to have lost their light…
Then again, my body is now being used as an undead puppet.
I should feel offended by this, but I really don’t care anymore.
After reincarnating a few times, you tend to not care about what’s holding your soul, your memories and experiences, your personality. Whatever you call that which makes you, you.
Ah well. Knowing Selina, she’s put my body to better use than I ever had while still alive. Luckily, a soul isn’t needed for a vessel to grow stronger. That’s to say, undead can grow. I’m sure that my old body could give me a run for my money at the moment.
(Kai) “Yes, that was my body. I see you’ve taken good care of it.”
Selina put the corpse back into her spacial pocket.
I was slightly envious. Spacial magic like that was never my forte, and as such, convenient things like spacial pockets were only for others. I had to haul my equipment the old-fashioned way.
(Selina) “I can’t believe it, you’ve reincarnated again…. And here I thought that four times would surely have been your limit.”
I shook my head.
(Kai) “It wasn’t. I’m on my sixth reincarnation now.”
She stood, mouth agape for a moment before recovering the only way she knew how. She ignored it.
(Selina) “Well, anyway—It looks like you lucked out this time, with your body. And here I had thought at some point, ‘Wow, Kai’s such a manly man…’.”
She snickered a little, obviously poking fun at my current body.
(Kai) “Well, at least my body looks like this naturally, unlike someone who intentionally looks like a twelve year old all the time.”
(Selina) “Ugh. Low blow, Kai. Low blow. I’ll still fix your hand though. As long as you agree to owe me a favor in the future.”
I nodded. While owing Selina a favor in the future is something horrifying in it’s own right, it sure beats not having a hand.
She pulled out a thin wand, crafted from bone and covered in intricate carvings.
Chanting lightly under her breath, she waved the wand over my stumpy right hand.
Immediately, a searing pain ran through my body as something began growing from the end of my arm. I sat still, watching as bones formed before my very eyes, and muscle soon after. Skin covered it, and then the nerves came last, activated at the end to save some pain.
Selina looked at me while the whole process happened, somewhat disappointed.
(Selina) “You’re no fun. Normally, people would at least roll on the floor, screaming and pissing themselves from the pain.”
I shrugged while flexing the new hand. Die a few times in various horrible ways, and you tend to learn how to ignore something like pain.
The new hand felt…new.
Duh.
What I mean is that it didn’t have any of the callouses built up form over the years, as I handled hammers and swords, and it was clearly a shade lighter than the rest of my skin. I would have to carefully build it back up to my standards—though it shouldn’t take too long. The new hand felt like it had proportional strength to the rest of my body. It wasn’t weak, nor overly strong. Instead, it was about at the level of my left hand. This was good. I had worried that the new hand would be as strong as the one I had lost. Since I had lost that hand before training in the high-mana area, it would have been pitifully weak and unbalanced when compared to the rest of me.
Say what you will of Selina, but she does good work when healing.
In fact, most necromancers are originally healers who desired more power. And, as such, most of them are absolute geniuses when it comes to taking care of the human body.
Though, it looks like this took a toll on her, since I could see little drops of sweat rolling down her forehead. It looks like she lost most of her power during the summoning, though I have no doubt she’ll soon gain it back, with interest.
She hastily dismissed herself, and left. Probably to take a nap. But not before reminding me that I now owed her a favor.
That left Niten, Flavius and I in the office, Niten still on the couch, Flavius standing, and I still occupied his nice chair.
Noticing this, Flavius shooed me out of his seat, and sat behind the desk.
(Flavius) “I didn’t know you two were already…acquainted. Was that really your body?”
I nodded, while sitting in one of the chairs opposite his desk.
(Kai) “She’s an interesting person. It doesn’t surprise me that she kept my body. In fact, she likely has a few thousand more in that spacial pocket.”
His face turned ashen. He hadn’t thought about the possibility until now, that Selina would have a small private army stashed away. I have a feeling he’s going to talk to her about it soon.
Niten smiled mysteriously at me.
(Niten) “So you were male in that life, no? How many times have you been a male?”
(Kai) “If you must know, this is my second time in a female body.”
I shot a look at Niten, telling him to not ask any more questions. I had a feeling that I knew where that line of inquisition would lead, and I really didn’t want to answer such personal questions.
He got the hint, and threw his hands up in surrender, a mocking smile thrown across his face in good nature.
(Flavius) “I know you’ve made it very clear that you don’t want to meet the heroes, but why not just give them a chance, no? See them during dinner or something.”
I sighed deeply. It looked like Flavius was dead set on having me instruct these heroes. To be honest, after meeting Selina again, I was a little curious as to whom the other heroes were. Selina, being a very shrewd person, would have run away at the soonest indication of them being bad comrades, or potentially dangerous to her health. And, that whole thing where the heroes are subtly controlled via the use of magic changing the disposition of their minds likely never worked on her. She simply has too much willpower for it to.
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Also, Flavius had said that this time around, all the heroes seemed to have…eccentric personalities.
Finally, I get the feeling that Flavius would keep hounding me until I at least meet them once.
(Kai) “Fine. I’ll meet them, then.”
Flavius beamed a smile, like I had just told him I would be teaching them as well. I won’t, though. I would teach someone like Selina, but in reality, there are many things she could teach me.
I’ll meet them once, then tell Flavius that I won’t teach them. And, if he asks why not, I can always just tell him the story of what happened with the other heroes I knew.
We agreed to set up a meeting tomorrow, before I went to the room given to me by the academy all those months ago.
Everything was untouched, exactly how I had left it. I propped the staff and what was left of Twilight—still in the scabbard—up against the wall.
At some point, I’m planning on going back into the dungeon, after I’ve gotten much stronger, and picking up the part of Twilight that had been sheared off. It isn’t necessary to have both pieces to be able to re-forge it, since I could just melt down that which I have, and make a smaller blade. However, I liked the length of Twilight.
Though, in the meantime, I might have to reforge that which I have left, just to have a good weapon handy. Given that the sword had been longer than normal, I should have enough metal left for a normal katana, if just barely. I would be hard pressed to forge all those mana circuits back into it, though. Thankfully, since most of them were still largely intact, I might be able to salvage at least three of them.
I’ll have to check out that possibility later, though.
For now, I just wanted to sleep in a bed.
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I slept in a little, glad to release some of the extra stress I’d been carrying around.
Of course, I properly ate breakfast after that, in a special cafeteria set aside for the staff of the academy. Then, since I was to meet the summoned heroes at dinnertime, I went to the forge, to fashion the remains of Twilight into a new katana.
Nobody was in the forge when I got there, so I happily set up at a good workstation, and set up my tools, which I had brought in my bag. Thankfully, I hadn’t brought the bag with me while entering the academy’s dungeon, since I had thought I would only be in there for a few hours, at most.
Well, since I’m going to be reforging Twilight, I first needed to break it into small chunks.
I know, it seems slightly counterintuitive, but it’s the only way I know how to made a whole, good katana from recycled metal.
I took the little pieces of starsteel, and stacked them on top of one another. I wrapped the whole thing in cloth, and immediately started heating it using my magic, which had become super effective after turning so dense inside my body. I actually had to be carful, to not reduce the starsteel to a molten pile of slag.
After it had been heated to a great enough degree, I took it to the anvil, and began the process of reforging it into a single bar of metal. After I felt that it had become solid enough, I used my wedge tool to cut a groove at the halfway mark, where I folded the metal. Again, I beat it into a single bar again, and folded two more times. I didn’t want to fold too many times, since that tends to diminish the carbon content of the blade, undermining it’s structural integrity.
Sure that the bar of starsteel was now completely whole, I drew it out into a straight blade, not bothering with anything fancy. Though, I did bevel in the edge, so it would be markedly easier to sharpen later. After the blade had cooled down, I set some clay on it’s spine, so that it would stay flexible after the heat treat, while the edge became brittle, but able to hold a keen edge. Of course, as the whole process happened, I worked hard to ensure that as many of the mana circuits were preserved as was possible. As it was, I only lost one circuit, mostly due to the fact that it had predominantly been in the part of the sword lost in the labyrinth.
With the clay applied, I stuck the blade into the heat treatment—or tempering, and watched it the entire time, taking note of what color the exposed part of the blade was.
As soon as it turned the right shade, I pulled the sword out, and took care when dunking it into an oil bath by the tempering oven.
During the tempering, and the oil bath, the blade had curved elegantly, as the metal by the edge expanded, and the back of the blade contracted. This had given the katana that ever-so-recognizable look, that had made it famous along with it’s cutting abilities when wielded right.
Again, I waited for it to cool again, and began the process of sharpening it, and fashioning a hilt and sheath for the sword. I had to get creative with a few materials, since I didn’t have the ‘traditional’ ones with me. Other than that, the sword was finished well.
Only five hours after I had started, I had a very nice, and complete sword. It was a good length for a proper katana, unlike the original Twilight, which had been more of a bastardized nodachi than anything else.
I checked the sword with〖Analyze〗, and wasn’t too surprised to find that it already had a name, just like Twilight once had.
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Nightfall’s SongA sword crafted by Katariah SilverProperties:Keen EdgeUnbrokenMana FocusGrowth
Though, after I set the sword down to admire it, I finally noticed that there were others in the forge with me, as they started clapping.
Ah, it's that old man and his three assistants...
Wait, wasn't there only two before? And why does this new one look like...
No, it is Hogvir.
I wonder what he's doing here?
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Author's Note:
For those who are interested, I thought I would explain the 'Unbroken' property that Twilight, and now Nightfall have.
Unlike the name, blades with this property can still be broken, if they encounter a force greater than a certain point.
Essentially, since the blade is filled with it's wielder's mana—which strengthens it further than would be possible with simple physics, when the blade encounters a force that completely overwhelms it's wielder's strength, the blade will break. That's what happened with Twilight, when the lich had cast a spell shearing it in two. Kai didn't have nearly the strength required to block the spell, nor keep Twilight intact.
That's basically what happened.
Also, as far as reforging a blade, it wasn't done often, since it would normally be cheaper to simple commission a new sword, instead of having the old one reforged in the way I wrote. Alternatively, western sword could have been reforged a different way, but I think I'll get into that later.
—River.