Forging A Mortal Weapon

All Ciemnosc could see before his vision, which was already growing to an impossible, catastrophic level, could become dark, and he would be pulled out from whatever that was; he could see the surrounding scenery around his eyeballs twisting and becoming smaller, shrinking and wrinkling at an impossible speed which he had never imagined before just as the creature continued to destroy more of the endless forest.

The more the images shrunk, the more wrinkled they became, and the more darkness appeared around his sight so did the images of the fleeing creature became tinier than a dot. Ciemnosc was still marveling at the sight of such prairie and endless forest, how the gigantic river made a simple and most brutally different reality than anything he had ever and would ever think of facing; before.

But now, without any warning or notification, simply; he fell into darkness and his eyesight became full of that, though it was less dark and empty than in his very own being.

… But this time around, Ciemnosc didn’t take much time to wake up. He was neither injured nor was he invaded in his brains with more information. Everything was still the same, and only the shock from seeing such… ‘reality’ remained a little in his body.

“Ciemnosc? Are you awake now?” Older Brother’s voice sounded from above himself, so Ciemnosc opened his eyes and realized that he was still with his back against the platform’s floor and was lying on it with a cold and fresh body; just as it always is.

Rustle~, tap step.

Standing up with a quick movement to first sit down and then jump up to his feet, Ciemnosc ended up facing the statue of Lady Calisneia. After giving it a couple of glances, he turned around and faced Older Brother who calmly stored back a stretcher that was made out of roots at the edges and feet while its bed section was all made out of flowers and herbs’ unique petals each but all in green color.

“I was about to bring you back, doesn’t seem like you studying the academy’s grand array is that safe. Will you continue to do it?” Older Brother asked after storing his stretcher and looking at both Ciemnosc and the statues, crossing his arms before his chest and looking up. Ciemnosc turned around and stood side to side with him, before raising his head and mimicking his actions.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll continue. It doesn’t hurt me, not me.” Ciemnosc said, tilting his head a few times, and not just a little, for a couple of times before stepping towards his side of the workshop. After getting riled up and given such images for his eyes and self to experience, how the hell would anybody not feel like needing to let it all go when creating?!

“...” Older Brother naturally could not know of Ciemnosc’s experience just now, that for ordinary people would either be the result of drugs or a godly vision; but that for any cultivator in the Craftsmaking would take it as a training, learning and whatever else they could feel - process.

After looking at the boy’s back for a few more seconds, recognizing that the boy was now completely fine unlike before, the old man turned around with ease and prepared to go back to his hard building to keep building one of those strange disks. If all came to the boy’s notes, maybe he would have to learn array formations at the very least, in the last few tens of years of his life… a bit pitiful. But somehow, it feels just… right.

Step, step, step…

Ciemnosc continued stepping towards his side of the workshop. He walked to the east of the workshop until he arrived at the first building, the closest one to the mountain, the one for Creatures in case he wanted to spend some time taking care of them and for heavy machinery processes. He revised everything, down to the tiniest of specks and particles of dust around, making sure that everything was within his vision before proceeding to the next one.

After going into the first building, the next one was the storage for finished tools and products, which was almost as big as the first one, for the heavy machinery processes just needed a lot of space to do work and the storage could have multiple floors unlike the previous one, which only a few floors could be built with how needy of space some of the heavy machines are.

The next one, forging. In this one, Ciemnosc went over everything and also noticed every single little thing that needed maintenance. He allowed no one to come into his buildings when he wasn’t around, and such things both Tini and Older Brother respected. Let alone any other person from the academy.

Following up next was the storage of all flora that he had possession of. Unlike keeping them in his Covert Space bags, they would need their very own caring from time to time, and if it wasn’t because of a few array formations that Ciemnosc placed, they would’ve mostly withered by now as he left them all for almost half a year or so.

On the other hand, he had to do both: show Older Brother that he wouldn’t be letting these ‘children’ die or even suffer a bit while he was gone; as well as make sure that Older Brother wouldn’t find a way to get in and check on his flora every now and then out of concern. One couldn’t tell the capabilities of a person with a purpose.

Finally, there was the alchemy building, which was the one to be most looked at when it was built by the pair of the academy’s 2 eminences’ descendants.

From Tini, she was crazy when looking at some of Ciemnosc’s rooms in his alchemy building, and she begged the bad and evil Ciemnosc to do some of those for her. Of course, with its own touch of it belonging to her and that she would like the most for her alchemy days. It wasn’t until all was done that her building was worked personally by Ciemnosc when she would hang around like a koala hanging on to air and never leave his side to fix every single little thing that she wanted a change from.

… Once coming out of the alchemy building, Ciemnosc noticed the sun setting was somewhat reflecting from the other side of the mountain, for the platform was big but not too elongated and projecting from the mountain outwardly. He could not see the sun directly but could see its orange that was being eaten away by the dark deep blue slowly and bit by bit were there.

Looking at the contrast between days and nights, between colors and between… life itself; Ciemnosc gazed for a bit of a long time before blinking after such a long time. Then, he turned around and went back to where he came from. But not without taking care of the buildings and making hella sure that everything was once again in order.

The alchemy building was cleaned off the dust all around, as it would be with the rest of the buildings right now. Each cauldron received a cleaning, in and out, and the reserves of water and other especially needed liquids were also checked to be in great condition. When Ciemnosc saw that his array formations needed no actual maintenance, he simply rearranged it and strengthened it again as his current brains were already of a better experience for array formations before leaving the building alone and having made sure everything was ready.

The flora storage had a further need for maintenance in terms of its array formations, and to be sincere, Ciemnosc felt that his previous array formations were somewhat dorky now that he took another look at them after just training for over a few hours and having read a few things for another couple of hours; just with that.

While realizing of how good the thing that the ‘it’ left for him, Ciemnosc re-inscribed his array formations and prepared better the materials for array formations. And this time, Ciemnosc didn’t use any Inferior Powerful Stones, only materials that were needed. As for the cleaning of filth around the building and its floors, there was barely any since the array formations from before didn’t have anything wrong, they were just… Ciemnosc was a bit awkward to admit they were his. He could only fret furthermore when thinking back of the protective arrays back at his base. Dear lord!

After making sure the flora storage was all right and ready to have his precious flora all taken care of with even there being a simulation for copying the light that the sun could give, but mostly being an illusion for the plants. Though that thing was mostly whenever a plant or herb needed it if it needed it since Ciemnosc kept all kinds of flora in his flora storage. And that new ‘feature’ could be activated with the said flora in specific either feeling down or about to further evolve, this illusory light of the sound would become a crucial part of their well-being; just in case.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Thus, the forging building was next, and like the alchemy building, it had every room and material in it completely cleaned up and turned into a bright and spotless beautiful inside; while most of the outside was just completely fine anyway.

The storage for finished tools and products was next, where not just arsenal and tools, both for cultivators and for ordinary people, but also for alchemy products be it pills, potions to poisons and uniquely specific other type of items.

The building made specifically for keeping Creatures and for heavy machinery purposes was of the cleanest since there was no Creature around still and no machinery in process or left automated ding something with a few materials. It was all empty and idle, but that would change the next time he left, and when he came back, many parts would be finished.

As such, instead of spending a lot of time cleaning it, Ciemnosc quickly went through it before getting to what he was really coming to do. Filling the heavy machinery with tons of materials, he pressed buttons and accommodated certain required commands to get the results he wanted. Only when the sounds began and they started moving exactly how he wanted them to did Ciemnosc return to the forging building with a lot of materials that were taken before from elder Apegos’s hidden storage compartments.

‘Now, let’s see if I got any rust somewhere.’ Now in the forging building once more, Ciemnosc began moving stuff. Bodies of water with large and small containers, buckets, and pools; some already melted materials that are at an always heating process and have been for months now and even began preheating all forging furnaces all at once as well.

From his Covert Space bag, Ciemnosc took out tons of materials, a lot of which was specifically what he was going to try to do for the first time. Books? Read many of them about these things, especially since those weren’t ‘public’ books but very important ones that could even be considered to be an immortal teacher each.

‘Mhm.’ After giving them a look, Ciemnosc began grabbing them and taking them to the back of one of the floors for forging, and the ones he was currently preheating every single furnace from. After storing them for the time being, Ciemnosc began to work with the ‘normal stuff’ once again. Palming his hands and rubbing them fast and strong together, the itchy Ciemnosc sighed once after quickly breathing in through his nose before getting to it.

Materials came and went from the nearby carts, and moved around with unique, slightly comical expertise as Ciemnosc went from furnace to furnace. Nothing was stopping him and he didn’t stop once to reconsider the materials he was putting in each furnace. Some were for weapons, of all kinds, some for more tool-making materials, some for equipment, and some for heavy stuff.

But most of the things he did were different from how he usually made them. In some he was planning to add more liquid, in others he directly added the same kind of ingredients as he has done so before but with different property or properties. The ones who had their ‘recipe’ changed the most were those who got into their working furnace to be added items that had some pure energy in them; barely anything.

All of these were, naturally, for ordinary weapons. Top notch quality, but still just ordinary weaponry and equipment.

Ciemnosc danced about, his feet never leaving the floor even when he dashed around in the room, and every single little bit of his rapidly moving body wasn’t erroneous nor did it end up creating wind enough to make any flame within the room flicker. His body was also bare from the top, looking like a mighty young man who was so muscled he could probably get away with fucking his beautiful female cousins.

But he just didn’t have that much muscle, he was mostly slender still and partially muscles, in a way. His brain was still the most amazing feature of himself, especially his whole being…

For a couple of hours, Ciemnosc went around, finishing set of items after set of items, finished products, and tools that were most needed for him right now and in the future. Especially considering what was approaching and what was slowly coming to be back around the base.

It wasn’t until he was done with such things in those 2 hours that he finally felt at ease and, once he calmed down and all the furnaces were quelled of their raging flames, Ciemnosc went over to the back of the floor once more to pick those special items…

Drop, tud tud tud…

After picking the items up, Ciemnosc returned to the forging room, where he walked to the largest room and where he had already stored the items in his Covert Space bags. He would’ve slowly brought them back to the storage for such if it wasn’t because he was too hurried for time so he just placed some of the items on the conveyor system and the majority went to his pockets.

‘Here, you… mhm, you too.’ Directly and as if talking to them, Ciemnosc spoke in his mind while choosing a certain few materials that had a good enough pure energy to be considered the top notch resources for creating a Mortal weapon!

Of course, while Ciemnosc was able to more or less understand the spectrum of this world’s experts, quickly identifying which resources have ‘the second strongest and greats amount of pure energy in existence’. To him, these ‘too incredible’ resources were but ‘okay’. He didn’t know if there was a specific way to identify them, but he was sure that their methods were pretty laughable when any Supreme Powerful Stones is many times as abundant and strong in pure energy than these items and even Inferior Powerful Stones aren’t far off from one of such.

In any case, that didn’t really matter to Ciemnosc as he began following his steps.

According to the books he had gone through, there are above 52 different methods and ‘techniques-arts’ to forge a Mortal weapon. There were many more, but from them, only 52 are either somewhat… ‘unique’ without being a blatant copy with different names and exaggerations just to be different.

Yet, every single one of those 52 methods that Ciemnosc ended up accepting in his mind were all with their own exaggerations which the basics of another method that exposes them, and… well, it makes things much more awkward to know of when reading all of these books. It was as if discovering not the method for forging Mortal grade weaponry, but the fact that this world was doomed with selfish, superficial, and deficient ideals and thoughts all around.

Ignoring all of that, ad doing perhaps the most absurd and dangerous thing than following those self-exposing methods, Ciemnosc decided to try and make a Mortal grade weapon with what he’s learned, in a way that wasn’t ‘his’ method in truth but ‘the’ method instead.

Hence, Ciemnosc began. Unlike any other ‘grandmaster in forging’, Ciemnosc wasn’t at the Conflagrate realm at the very least but the 9th stage of the Spirit Gathering realm. He couldn’t use any technique of lethality with his dark Power Energy if he wanted, so he could not meddle with the flames of the furnace as they do nor was he able to try and move the melted materials in the same way.

As such, Ciemnosc didn’t depend on techniques or so-called ‘arts’. Instead of relying on just his dark Power Energy, he directly placed his hands either into the flames of the furnace, holding the Inferior Powerful Stone as it fueled the furnace, or into the liquid that was going to be melted and kneading it as if it was either dough or a beauty’s huge, gigantic breasts.

Fuwwomp~, crackle crackle.

The selected furnace had its flame coming to life, the Powerful Stone fueling it held by Ciemnosc as the few materials were already there despite the furnace itself having cooled down quite a lot since its last, recent use just now. With his left hand, and the compartment where the furnace’s Powerful Stone was to be eaten away into flames opened, Ciemnosc’s right hand was right in-between the compartment and the furnace’s belly.

Though it was opened, the flame didn’t come out and the heat also somehow didn’t dissipate into the outside. By the time the flame his right hand was ‘holding’ onto and which he was being held back with, the hatch of the furnace had already been closed and the materials in the semi cold environment began to feel the heat rise… at an astronomical level.

‘...’ Ciemnosc’s eyes were closed, the images of that ‘other reality’ crossing his mind. After just ‘glancing’ at that past memory once, he opened his darkest pool for eyes and looked at seemingly the emptiness of it all with his lifeless eyes looking somewhat disturbed by a rage that his frowning eyebrows seemed to emanate but not at the same time; creating such the bizarre image of his facial expression.

Sizzle, crackle! Crackle~, crackle~, crackle~.

The flames under the furnace’s belly began making more and more cracking noises, something undoubtedly rare for only a large amount of flames constantly bursting their fuel and facing off the air suddenly would make such a quantity of noises.

But from the in-between of the furnace’s belly and fuel compartment, they went on and on, getting louder and more in quantity as time passed. While in Ciemnosc’s eyes, tiny pieces of dull, murky orange were flashing from time to time, ever so tiny and unnoticeably even for him.

Ciemnosc’s left hand was burning, but it felt as cold and fresh as always despite the burning down Inferior Powerful Stone turning to ash little by little but consistently smoking off great amounts of it. There was no smell coming from it, but the smoke was so much more than ever in either any of Ciemnosc’s forging or in the records of those ‘grandmasters’.

He now knew that everything… was going so very damn well…

…

----------------------------------------

This is the beginning of Volume 3 — The End and Beginning of Change