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Lubbock bowed respectfully. "Your Highness, the people you told us to keep an eye on have arrived in the capital. I've brought them all here."
Alex paused what he was doing and looked past Lubbock.
Sure enough, they looked more or less the same as in the anime.
He turned his gaze to the boy at the front. "You're Tatsumi, right? You came to the Imperial Capital to save your village from poverty?"
Tatsumi's eyes widened. He stammered, "H-How did you… know that?"
Alex chuckled. "You don't need to worry about how I know. I'll ask you something else instead. Do you want to work for me and build something great together?"
Tatsumi exchanged glances with his two companions. Then the three of them nodded and dropped to one knee in unison. "We're willing!"
Alex nodded in satisfaction. "Lubbock, take Tatsumi and Ieyasu to the City Defense Force. Let Bulat train them properly. Send Sayo to the Ministry of Personnel and have her study under Najenda, learning how to govern."
"Yes!" Lubbock clasped his fist and accepted the order, then led the three away toward the City Defense Force and the Ministry.
Tatsumi was worth investing in, but right now he was still a complete novice. He had a lot to learn.
As for Sayo and Ieyasu, Alex didn't know much about them.
After all, in the original story, the two of them died right at the beginning.
But Alex didn't really care whether they were especially talented or worth cultivating. As long as they were kind at heart, that was enough.
Watching their backs as they left, Alex thought about who else from the original plot might still be useful.
It seemed that everyone valuable from the main storyline had already been recruited, except for the leader of the Path of Peace. Other than that, there wasn't much left.
Ah, right. There was also the Imperial Fist Temple, and the Four Rakshasa Demons.
The Four Rakshasa Demons had done plenty of terrible things, but they were all acting under the Prime Minister's orders. If they were willing to swear loyalty to him, he could give them a chance to live.
That was about it. The prequel had some truly talented characters too, but they were already dead.
Alex couldn't help thinking of Akame's former teammates, the elite and enhanced squads of the Empire's assassination unit, as well as the Revolutionary Army's Oberge Assassin Guild.
The prequel's story was fantastic, easily on par with the main series.
Unfortunately, he couldn't travel back to that time.
He sighed, feeling a bit regretful.
Then a sudden spark flashed through his mind. He thought of Lady Aisha from the Godslayer world.
She seemed to possess an Authority called "Fairy Corridor," stolen from the third Authority of Niamh, Queen of the Celtic Everlasting Land.
That power allowed one to return to the past, or even travel to parallel worlds.
If he had that Authority, couldn't he go back to the prequel timeline and recruit the Empire's elite and enhanced assassination squads, as well as the Revolutionary Army's Oberge Assassin Guild?
Not only that. If he used that Authority in the DanMachi world and went back in time, could he save the Astraea Familia and bring Ryu's fallen comrades into the Hestia Familia?
And if he went back even further, could he save Bell's aunt, the legendary woman known as a "monster of talent"?
Just thinking about it made Alex's breathing quicken.
If he could truly gather all of those people into the Hestia Familia, then even without him as a Godslayer, the Hestia Familia could rise to become the strongest familia in Orario.
Reaching that point would count as repaying Hestia for believing in him.
Unfortunately, obtaining the "Fairy Corridor" Authority required 5,000 points.
That was an absurd amount. Completely unaffordable.
Unless he went back to the Godslayer world and killed another god.
Relying on daily sign-ins alone, accumulating 5,000 points would take 500 days. A year and a half.
…
Alex told Akame and Kurome to practice their swordsmanship on their own, then headed alone to the national treasury.
Recently, after Esdeath wiped out all the foreign tribes, their hoarded treasures had been sent back to the capital.
Those collections included not only Imperial Arms and Ministerial Arms that had been lost by the Empire, but also large quantities of rare metals.
Among them was orichalcum, the metal used to forge Imperial Arms.
Of course, this orichalcum wasn't the same as the one from the DanMachi world.
They shared the same name, but were fundamentally different metals.
Still, they had one thing in common: incredible hardness.
In addition to the metals, there were also long-lost forging techniques for Imperial Arms.
The techniques preserved by the foreign tribes were incomplete, scattered fragments at best.
Alex gathered the techniques from the three major tribes along with those still kept by the Empire, and to his surprise, managed to piece them together into a complete forging method.
He was overjoyed and immediately began studying it.
Thanks to his background as a blacksmith, combined with Unlimited Blade Works' scanning and analysis ability, he learned extremely quickly.
It didn't take long before he fully mastered it, pushing his forging skills to an even higher level.
Alex selected the materials he needed from the treasury, along with a Philosopher's Stone, and left.
He went to the royal weapons forge, dismissed all the blacksmiths, and began forging on his own.
This time, he directly used divine flames to melt the rare metals.
Among them was orichalcum from the Akame ga Kill world, orichalcum from the DanMachi world, and mithril.
Fusing so many different metals should have been nearly impossible, but under his alchemical transmutation, they merged into a single block of super alloy.
Then Alex took out Udaeus' black sword, a weapon dropped by the floor boss of the 37th floor of the Dungeon.
In the original story, Ottar of the Freya Familia used it as raw material to forge the "Supreme Black Sword," valued at 410 million valis.
That was more than twice the price of Bell's two-hundred-million-valis dagger.
And Bell's dagger was sold at a friendship discount. Its true value was definitely higher.
Even so, there was no way it could reach 400 million.
Alex once again used divine flames to melt Udaeus' black sword.
Using the Philosopher's Stone as the core, he fused it with the super alloy.
The final step was shaping the weapon.
He wasn't exactly artistically gifted, so he shamelessly copied a design from Genshin Impact again.
This time, he chose "Wolf's Gravestone."
Not the broken version, but the complete Wolf's Gravestone.
When the forging was finished, Alex could feel that the sword was already infinitely close to a divine artifact.
"From now on, your name is Wolf's Gravestone," he said, not bothering to change it.
Alex left the capital, flew into the sky, and headed for the Kievnora Forest Sea.
It was an endless primeval forest, towering ancient trees forming a vast green ocean.
Countless dangerous species lived within it.
Even super dangerous species thought to be nearly extinct could still exist there.
Hovering above the forest, Alex released his immense spiritual power.
Before long, he sensed a special-grade dangerous species.
He took a single step and used spatial compression, appearing instantly in front of it.
It was a colossal gorilla, massive enough to rival King Kong from Godzilla.
Disturbed from its rest, the beast roared in fury and swung a massive palm at him.
Alex smiled faintly. He didn't dodge, simply clenched his fist and punched back.
Boom!
With a thunderous crash, the gorilla's arm was blasted away, while Alex didn't budge an inch.
Howling in pain, the gorilla went berserk. It clasped both hands together and smashed down like a hammer.
Alex grinned, drawing Wolf's Gravestone as a savage glint flashed in his eyes.
"Let's use you to test the blade."
He brought the sword down in a single slash.
He used no divine power, no skills, no magic, no Authorities.
Just pure physical strength.
As the blade fell, Wolf's Gravestone erupted with black-and-red sword energy, like a Getsuga Tenshō from Bleach, completely engulfing the gorilla.
When the energy faded, the massive beast had been split cleanly in two, dead beyond any doubt.
"Not bad. Sharp," Alex said, clearly satisfied.
After that, he tested the sword on several more special-grade dangerous species in the forest.
Unfortunately, he couldn't find any super dangerous species. The special-grade ones couldn't even begin to reveal the weapon's true limits.
After storing Wolf's Gravestone inside Unlimited Blade Works, Alex flew back to the imperial palace.
What followed was an unrestricted forging spree.
Imperial Arms. Ministerial Arms. He forged them all.
Then he integrated the forging techniques of Imperial Arms and Ministerial Arms into the forging methods of the DanMachi world.
The techniques for magic swords were merged as well.
He took the essence and discarded the flaws, creating a forging art that belonged solely to him.
When materials ran short, he contacted Loki and the others, who were on expedition in the DanMachi world, and had them send monster drops to him through group red packets.
If rare materials were missing, he borrowed points in the group chat and bought them directly from the shop.
And so, day after day, Alex immersed himself in forging.
A week later, he finally finished fusing everything he had learned. He even incorporated alchemical transmutation itself, creating a complete forging system that was entirely his own.
"..."
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