Chapter Forty-Seven: Self-Empowerment (R-18) – Part One

Chapter Forty-Seven: Self-Empowerment (R-18) – Part One

Speaking with Ruru during our little fishing trip motivated me to do something I should've done much earlier.

It was time to learn about the wonderful world of enchanting!

I had hundreds of cores that were dutifully extracted from goblins, boars, scatter bats, slime, draingi, and araneae. I even had one from Glog, Metalborn Prince of Goblins—the boss that dwelled within the Mines of Gamor.

Honestly? Now was, by far, the best time to get a handle on that since we had time to kill. And it wasn’t like we had any severe commitments other than waiting. But right as I left the Deerfolk and his ward, my activity log indicated the mana from the clone I had made was only just now returning to me. And with it came the memories and feelings of what it did with Tilde.

Wow... She wasn’t kidding...

The images and visuals flashing through my mind were like a movie, and without even thinking about it, I reverted my crotch to Murag’s penis. The front of my shorts felt tight, and I quickly wrapped the waist cloth around my lower body to act as a skirt while hurrying to the mansion. The AI told me Sekh was in the training room with Tilde and Niva, so I walked to the second floor after entering and stared over the balcony. In the time it took to do this, my erection had come and gone, leaving me flaccid.

Sekh was in a combat stance with her shield at the ready. Her armor was lying nearby, and she was training in only her tunic as a fountain of sweat littered the floor. With a focused expression, nocturnal flames curled around her shield and slowly enveloped it until it was like a wave of torment. It looked like this was an exercise in manipulating [Black Fire] because large circles of the training room were covered in ash and burnt marks.

The conflagration blanketing her shield continued to spread until it formed something like a tower shield with a pointy end. Sekh lifted and slammed it into the ground. The shadow flames started to trail out from the impact until they had created a circle three feet in diameter. At that point, everything within that boundary was set ablaze in a tyrannical inferno devoid of any light. It was like the very flames of a dark, void-like reality were swallowing this world piece by piece.

“[Black Fire: Immolation]!!!” Sekh continued to channel the technique even while her footing became wobbly and uneven. Pained expressions covered her face. Perhaps it was too much strain because the blaze promptly vanished in a shimmer and left behind a reminder it was alive in the form of ash. She dropped to one knee and violently gasped for air. I hopped down from the balcony and rushed to her, extending a hand.

“My liege... How... How long have you been watching...?” she asked with bated breath, coughing for a few seconds while I rubbed and patted her back.

“Just for a minute or two. Are you alright? Don’t overdo it.” I refused to let her go because I wanted to hug and pat her head. Sekh said when she was in her prime, she could create a flame circle dozens of miles big because [Black Fire], and its evolved forms, were more like an extension of her body. Unfortunately, Sekh didn’t retain that ability to freely manipulate it. But since she once knew how to do it, it was carved onto her soul. So, it wasn’t a question of ‘if’ she would relearn it. Fịndd new updates at novelhall.com

It was ‘when.’

I looked around at the damage she’d done and asked if she felt better, to which she replied with a genuine nod. “It’s technically my house, I guess. What happens to it is up to me. Come on, let’s go take a bath.”

After grabbing Niva’s wheelchair, we all went up to Susize’s room and quickly stripped down to enjoy the oh-so-relaxing paradise that was her bathroom. This time, though, we put Aello’s housewarming gift to use. Sekh asked me about my day while I washed her back with the pink cloths.

And I did not have enough, so I settled for blessing the breastplate. Boar hide, boar tusks, boar cores, and boar meat were examples of what I needed, but I only needed seven items. Tilde said there were tables that could use cores as substitutes for blessing, but this wasn't one of them. Had I wanted to bless the whole set, it’d require over 40 materials, and I didn’t have that. After satisfying the condition by pulling out seven boar parts, they transformed into colorless mana and danced around the breastplate before being absorbed into it.

In my activity log, I was alerted to the successful blessing and acquisition of a new title.

New Title: [Novice Blesser]

Okay, so it seems like there’s a hierarchy to crafting titles. I got [Novice Blacksmith] back when I first started forging with Irisa. I still haven’t gotten the second tier, yet. Makes sense, I guess, since you really gotta put in a ton of effort.

“Okay, so that’s taken care of,” Tilde said, pointing to the breastplate. “Remove everything but that. Then start taking out the orbs and putting them in the slots. Remember to use [Analysis] to see what skills they hold. Or you can use the AI to help you filter by offensive, defensive, or utility enchantments. And you can add additional filters if you want, so you can sort them by level, when you acquired them, what monster they came from, and stuff like that. Proper use of evolving [Biological AI] means you gotta work it like a dog.”

I remembered what Tilde said about combining multiple enchantments, and I played around with them. It seemed the goblin cores focused on enhancing physical defense and physical attacking. The scatter bat provided protection against ailments and debuffs. The slimes, however, increased your regeneration of mana. Likewise, the spiders improved piercing damage and offered resistance to poisoning.

It was clear to me, and Sekh backed me up on this, that the best option was increasing her defenses. I had the appropriate cores to acquire {Physical Resistance}, so that was my goal. Tilde, however, stopped me. “This table is enchanted with the ability to remove an item’s enchantment.” I didn’t see why that was so important until she grabbed a core that improved crushing damage. “Before you do anything, use this.”

“Okay, but I don’t know why,” I replied, placing the core onto one of the divots. A menu appeared in my vision asking me if I wanted {Crushing Damage (Lv. 1)} applied to the breastplate. I confirmed it. The core dissolved into pure mana, which traveled along the mana lines on the table to the piece of equipment. It flashed for a moment, and I acquired another title.

New Title: [Novice Enchanter]

“It is now possible to recreate the enchantment {Crushing Damage (Lv. 1)}, my lord,” said the AI, who bloomed into existence in front of me.

“Yep! When you break it down, an enchantment is literally just a set of specific instructions locked within a core, and the AI can lock onto those instructions and copy them. However, it requires a shit load of mana to brute force it this way. And I mean a lot. Even a Lv. 1 enchantment will drain you as you are now, and don’t even try to do a Lv. 2 or Lv. 3. Speaking of which, there is very little difference between a skill and enchantment of the same name. So, if you had the skill [Fire Resistance (Lv. 3)] and enchantment {Fire Resistance (Lv. 7)}, they would not add together. Instead, you’d receive the effects of the one that’s a higher level,” explained Tilde. “Oh, this goes without saying, but the AI keeps track of each level of an enchantment. You’ll still be able to enchant something with {Physical Resistance (Lv. 1)} even if you know the Lv. 3 version.”

When I opened my Status Menu, I saw a separate button to open the enchantment menu, and yes, there it was. “You know what you must do. Save the cores that have {Slash Resistance}, {Pierce Resistance}, and {Blunt Resistance} until the end so you can get {Physical Resistance},” said the fairy.

Tilde was hinting at me using all my cores, and I did. I quickly discovered that if I used all available slots on the enchanting table, the menu that appeared was my best friend. It removed the guesswork from this rather tedious process. But it wasn’t all bad because I also learned you could make {Physical Resistance (Lv. 3)} if you had enough fodder material with the required skills. It was like me assimilating a hundred thousand goblins to max out [Spear]. Well, almost. It was the same difference.

Tilde said it was much easier to just put in the effort to find the monster cores with the higher ranks of the skills I needed rather than trying to work my way up from the bottom. In her words, there wasn’t an enchanting table with tens of thousands of core holders. In the end, I had quite a few enchantments populating my menu, including one that increased all physical damage. It was Lv. 2, but it was still a generic buff. Unfortunately, Sekh’s mace required iron to bless, and I was totally out. But other than that, I had enchantments that offered resistance against venom, poison, and the bleeding debuff. My goal of eventually making our casual clothing as tough as armor remained out of reach for the time being, but I was going to eventually accomplish that.