Chapter 60: Soulforge

Three months passed by with no significant news, yet Styx had been constantly progressing.

He stood before a giant furnace six meters tall, the bricks glowing with violet runes and complex array lines.

Therina had asked the blacksmiths in the town, but none of them held any idea about infusing a spectral, soul-like attribute. According to them, the tangible and intangible couldn't mix, but Styx astutely felt differently about this.

Whilst he was unsuccessful for months and held no knowledge on how the body and mana network were connected, the prime example of intangible affecting the tangible, he was certain it was possible.

This led to creating what he referred to as the soulforge. The easiest way to utilize the special nature of the tortured soul flowers was to use their own attribute.

A large number of the flowers were carefully harvested and ground into powder, which was then mixed with celandine clay and fired into bricks. More powder was used to inscribe Gilderon Magic System warding runes into the bricks.

Because the runes were created from the powder of the flowers as a conduit, the mana which flowed through them adopted the intangible soul/spirit attribute.

The main chamber of the soulforge was then inscribed with more arrays to control and alter the mixture inside without actually touching it. This was necessary as resentful souls lurked inside the furnace and caused many of the changes in the mixture inside. If anyone where to stick their hand in the furnace without the correct protection, they would almost certainly have their souls ripped from their bodies.

The resentful souls couldn't leave the furnace though, as all the warding runes and arrays used as a safeguard held the soul attribute which then trapped them inside. Woe forbid whoever accidentally broke the furnace open however.

The soulforge was them situated in the center of another array, this one extending all the way to the walls and held the shape of two interlinked squares fill with formulae and various array organs. Flowerbeds of tortured soul flower grew in the room too at specific locations of the giant array, providing the attribute and driving force of the forge.

Large tapestries banners hung from the ceiling around the edges of the room, each having focus runes dyed into them out of a paste made from tortured soul flowers. This focused all of the ambient energy in the room into the central crux of the formation, specifically, the center of the forging chamber in the soulforge

Styx had found iron to be too rigid in nature and unable to adopt such an intangible nature, but there were alternatives.

The final product was an exotic combination of tortured soul powder, copper and gold.

With the exception of Irie and Therina who were currently in Lagoon Porter City, all of Styx's woman were in the room while watching this giant furnace work. They could see the powerful concentration of strange mana in the center of the soulforge, pulsating as if alive.

Styx used mana gems and moved them around arrays to control the reaction within the furnace, all of the magic powered inscriptions lighting up with a gloomy violet hue.

Violet ghostly flames burned at the base as all the metal was quickly turned into its molten state with a light but high pitched screeching sound.

All the tortured soul flowers in the room swayed and leaned toward the center of the room as spectral motes of violet light appeared and floated into the giant forge.

Resentful souls circulated through the giant, flying through the molten metal and causing it to warp under the influence of pure magic. They released silent screams along the surface of the soulforge yet were unable to escape it.

The concentration of mana inside of it was dense enough that the resentful souls no longer even needed to return to the other shore in order to survive. As long as they trapped in the furnace and occasionally fed souls, they would continue existing.

Under Styx's control of the arrays, the molten material begun changing, finally turning into a light violet glowing molten metal.

⠀

[

New alloy created.

Testing against existing records…

Record already exists.

Award for discovering existing alloy: Soulium.

+ 240 exp

]

⠀

Styx was greatly surprised it already existed, but there are a seemingly innumerable number of kingdom's out there, some of which were even intergalactic empires, so it wasn't so strange it already existed.

While other almost definitely haven't used tortured soul powder, any alternative product with a similar attribute should theoretically create soulium.

It was then cast into weapons, which seemed to be the best option. It was around the same hardness as manasteel but had a bit less mana conductivity. What made it truly dangerous was its soul attribute.

Soulium was safe to handle with bare hands, but any injury caused by it also injured the soul.

"Is it that dangerous?" Kale perked her head up while looking at the new soulium dagger in Styx's hand.

"It is. Damaging the soul is not like damaging the body, allow me to demonstrate."

On cue of Styx's mental message, Rhea entered the room with a helplessly flailing goblin. The short monster spat and cursed in goblish at everyone around them. Styx had recently been studying their language, so he could understand what it was saying.

"Vile elves! Unhand Jo'puk'den, son of Pok'puk'pen! Jo'puk'den will ****, impregnate you all!"

Styx glared at the vile little creature with an expression of disgust and responded in barely legible goblish, "Vile Jo'puk'den, dare to want my women. Death."

He didn't even cause a grievous injury, he merely caused a gash on the goblins arm about a finger width deep. Despite this, the goblin begun hysterically screeching and thrashing, whilst the injured arm seemed to be having trouble moving.

"As you can see," Styx said after switching back to elvish, "not only is the pain of damage to the soul tremendous, but even the function of the limb is hampered significantly. With a deeper cut, it probably wouldn't be able to move its arm at all."

"As an added bonus, the damage to the soul means the body can't recognize the damage and by extension, not knowing how to heal it. This means any wound will continue bleeding until the soul heals or is treated for the damage."

Goblin blood ran down the creatures arm in a constant steam without any sign of stopping or even slowing down. The creature began to get woozy as its curses and screams began to die down as it died from excessive blood loss.

⠀

[

Goblin <Lv. 3> killed!

+ 45 exp

]

⠀

"And that is the demonstration," Styx gave a playful bow to all the girls who cooperated and gave a light clap.

"How about enchantments?" Elena asked this time.

"Speed and sharpness, the most important two factors in making wounds. It can store some mana in the blade, but it still relies on your own mana pool. Not that any of you are lacking in mana anyway."

With the demonstration over, Styx assigned everyone new tasks and used the dextrous forest assassins to control the soulforge to create weapons for everyone.

He also replaced all the existing furnaces with magmaforges, a more advanced forge crafted from magmasteel bricks.

Magmasteel was constantly extremely hot, feeding off the ambient mana. Without enough ambient mana, it rapidly coked and turned inactive until it was fed mana or placed in a mana rich environment again

The magmaforges didn't have open flames either and instead contained chambers of lava with brimstone flowers floating on them. The temperature inside the furnace reached as high as 6,430°C, hotter than the surface of the sun in his former life.

Because of this, a multi layered heat shielding array was created for each furnace, which would redirect heat into a series of vents that would warm the rest of the dungeon to a nice temperature and provide a constant supply of hot water without the need of local heating.

There was the risk of base metals evaporating and recondensing in the vents though, so each furnace had their own temperature controls for various metals.

The dungeon expansion project had completed as well. The dungeon was much more open now, with a floor approximately ten meters below the original bridge adventurers were confined to unless they decided to drop into the river below it.

Colossal stone pillar with obsidum reinforced cores supported the dungeon ceiling and blocked vision of deeper parts of the dungeon.

One the lower layer, grass was spreading as well as the ever increasing number of vibrant modified flowers. Styx had managed to create redwood trees with light blue and green leaves which grew underground and would breathe the underground mana and further increase the ambient mana density.

They were still saplings though and would take years to grow.

The blood crystal bees were extremely happy though as they spread their activities throughout the dungeon. They even produced yellow honey, crimson honey, and blood gold honey from the new flowers, each a mana rich luxury that only Aura could eat as well as Styx's women who had good control of their mana networks. Many of the elves had gotten better at eating mana rich food and could eat the yellow honey without consequence already though.

The final change was the overall improvement of life standards in the dungeon. Now longer did the elves have rooms, but cobblestone and wood houses were created in a small village in the heart of the dungeon.

Stores were also made which any resident were free to request any available life items or other objects through. Board games in particular were currently a popular commodity as well as various types of balls. This was a side effect of all the fun Piri and the three slaves children were having with games and others also seeking quality of life improvements.

~~~~~

⠀

Next on Styx's agenda was a class to teach to the children, which Rhea also joined in as a prospective future teacher. She was very studious in both her training and studies, making Styx very proud of her. Whilst she wasn't one of his women, she was still his.

Two months ago, Theo and her seed had finally successfully taken hold in her womb and she fell pregnant. Styx stared at her slightly swelling stomach frequently, his gaze intent and unwavering.

"It feels odd, seeing a pregnancy taking its proper length. I am still happy you are pregnant."

"Thank you, Styx, but I am just doing my duty."

"Mmhmm, you are doing well. I know how much effort you have put in."

Rhea thought of how Styx could hear and see everything she did, as well as the fact there was technically no privacy in the dungeon from him and deeply blushed. Vivy may be accepting of it, even oddly excited of the thought of a hidden watcher, but she was always embarrassed when actively thinking about it.

"Can I touch it?"

Rhea was still embarrassed but still directly answered.

"Do you need to ask?"

"No, but it's supposed to be polite. Come here."

Rhea walked over and rolled up the bottom of her tunic so her pregnant stomach was exposed. Styx ran his hands over it, mana tendrils entering deep within her body and making her mentally moan in pleasure.

"It's perfectly healthy, so I'm looking forward to its birth. Make sure you look after yourself, elves already have enough difficulty getting pregnant."

"Of course, I constantly adjust my body and heal any exertion. The baby is also quite demanding,"

In the classroom of the recently build school building, Piri and the slaves, Avora, Felix and Thomas, sat at their seats with pencils and notebooks ready. Rhea sat in a special teacher's assistant spot at the front of the classroom, overlooking the children.

"Avvy," Piri cheerfully whispered to the female slave girl, "do you remember the timestables?"

"I do. It was hard, but I have learned it as best I could. Felix and Tom are having a harder time though."

"Good, good. Can you please help me with them after class? I need to be able to answer them when my future husband asks me questions about multiplication."

"Of course I will, but should you be referring to Styx as your future husband?"

"How else should I refer to him? I promised to do the duty for my family in the future. I want to do what I can to have mum and dad be looked after. They have done so much for me in our old village."

"You're… surprisingly mature… but do you really understand what that means."

"Hmph, of course I do. Once I become an adult. I will move into future husband's house with the others and also give birth to the monsters which protect us all."

Felix was sitting behind the two girls and leaned forward as he also whispered, "But… aren't you afraid?"

Piri didn't have time to reply before Styx began the lesson.

"Ahem, be silent now that we are starting today's lesson. Today, you will be learning the basics of mana theory. I will teach you about several different magic systems and what they are based on. For starters, let me show you a couple of basic magic formations, and we will discuss how they work, and why they work."

Styx had pre prepared several parlor trick magic array and Gilderon runes for this lesson, which he demonstrated before going over the basic matters of what magic was, and how these different systems interacted and changed it to produce a result.

The children were confused at first, but he had plenty of assignments to help them learn more about magic, and not just basic skills which were instilled into their bodies when they received a class.

In the middle of the lesson he was suddenly alerted by his connection with Therina. He saw and heard everything she did, but she still had a habit of explaining to him anyway.

"Styx, we have discovered The Relevant's reporter's source for information that nobody should know."

Immediately afterwards, Irie also stated in outrage, "Hey! It was my source who found out, I should be the one to tell him!"