"Let's try it!"
Just as Ethan was about to place the Instant Staff and the Godslayer Sword onto the Scale of Fairness for fusion, he suddenly remembered that there were two other items in his storage ring.
[Petrification Magic Stone: A magic stone with a petrification effect. Commonly used to craft petrification wands or petrification-type treasures.]
[Red Dragon Eye: An excellent material for crafting wands. Embedding it into a wand grants it dragon elemental affinity, reduces spell chanting time, and enhances the gathering of fire-element energy. (Special Effect: A moving eyeball. Isn't looking cool enough?)]
One was a gray-white fragment of a magic stone taken from the Medusa statue.
The other was one of the two Red Dragon eyes he got after killing the Red Dragon.
Ethan had never found a good opportunity to fuse them into his wand.
Now that he had the Fusion Tempering Furnace, naturally, he didn't want to miss the chance to upgrade his wand another step.
Both of these materials were meant for wands, not for the Godslayer Sword. If he fused them into the wand first and then fused the sword afterward, the success rate should be higher.
[Instant Staff + Petrification Magic Stone + Red Dragon Eye]
[Required Materials: 100 Spirit Stones + 3 Enchanted Ores]
"Not bad. The cost isn't too outrageous this time."
Ethan silently took out twice the required materials, left the equipment behind, and walked away.
What he didn't realize was that he had already begun to be conditioned by the Fusion Tempering Furnace.
At first, fusion only cost one or two Spirit Stones.
Then it became ten, twenty.
Then a hundred.
Eventually it even climbed to a thousand Spirit Stones.
The whole process was a form of conditioning, gradually increasing what you were willing to accept.
Then, once you'd reached the limit, it suddenly lowered the price again.
And you'd instantly think...
'Wow!'
'That's so cheap!'
[T/N: That's how most grocery prices are manipulated right now.]
It was kind of like having a wife who asked you for money every day to buy clothes, cosmetics, and all kinds of other things.
At first, she might ask for one or two hundred.
Later it became one or two thousand.
Eventually she'd ask for ten or twenty thousand at a time.
And once you'd gotten used to spending that much, one day your wife would suddenly say, "I want to buy a handbag."
Your heart would immediately skip a beat.
Then she'd casually add...
"It's only one thousand."
You'd instantly breathe a huge sigh of relief.
Compared to ten thousand, a thousand was still expensive, but well within what you could accept.
You might even secretly feel happy that you were spending so little this time.
But was it really little?
Actually... Not at all.
It was just that your tolerance had increased.
Clack!
The door of the Fusion Tempering Furnace opened again after only a little over a minute.
"That fast?"
Ethan quickly walked inside.
The materials on the Scale of Fairness had disappeared, but his wand didn't seem to have undergone any obvious changes.
The wand, made of a material that was neither metal, wood, nor plastic, still had the same understated yet luxurious texture. At first glance, it looked almost unchanged.
But the moment Ethan picked it up from the scale, he finally noticed the difference.
It felt noticeably heavier.
And its material seemed to have become more stone-like.
Was it because of the Petrification Magic Stone?
How about trying a petrification spell?
However, as Ethan waved the wand and was about to recite a spell, he opened his mouth, only to realize he couldn't remember one.
Well, not exactly.
It was more that, he didn't know any petrification spells at all.
"'Stiffen Up' should count as a temu version of a petrification spell, right?"
Holding the Instant Staff, which now had the texture of petrified wood, Ethan pointed it at a cup of water on the table in the villa and cast the Stiffen Up spell.
Whoosh!
Stiffen Up was almost instantaneous.
The moment the spell flashed through Ethan's mind, the magic formed automatically. As soon as he swung the wand, it shot out.
It was even faster than firing a gun.
Click... Click...
BANG!
The instant the cup was struck by Ethan's Stiffen Up spell, it immediately underwent a qualitative change.
Then, because of inertia, or perhaps because the magic had knocked it away, it rolled off the table and hit the floor.
The water inside didn't spill at all.
Even the bamboo cup failed to make the usual sound of bamboo hitting the ground. Instead, it sounded like stone striking stone. The entire bamboo cup shattered into several pieces, revealing the transparent stone material inside.
It looked just like crystal.
"This is... Stiffen Up?"
Ethan was stunned.
The effect was unbelievably good.
It had petrified the cup almost instantly.
Not only that, but the water inside and even the bamboo cup itself had all turned into different kinds of stone. If he were back in the modern world, he could probably open a strange stone exhibition with this trick alone and make a fortune selling rocks.
But what would happen if he cast Soften Up on this cup now?
Ethan remembered that back in the Land of the Living Dead, he had once run an experiment by casting Soften Up and Stiffen Up several times on the same tree. The tree's structure hadn't changed at all.
The only difference had been its material.
It simply became softer or harder.
But now, both the structure and the material of the teacup seemed to have fundamentally changed.
If he cast Soften Up on it now...
Would the cup turn back into what it was before?
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