Seeing the sly smile on the boy's face, Tsubaki arrived at a possibility—one so absurd it should have been impossible.
Faced with the shock on her face, Xien chose not to keep her guessing and said it outright.
"It's exactly what you think. I used my power to give it life. And now it's reached the absolute limit of how far it can strengthen itself. It wants its creator to reinforce it further."
Words like that were enough to overturn the entire world of smithing. Yet as she listened, while also feeling the closeness and longing radiating from the weapon in her hand, Tsubaki froze for a moment—then burst into peals of laughter that echoed through the forge.
"...Hahaha! You really are something else, you know that? Every single time, you manage to hit me with something I never could have imagined. I swear, I love you to death."
"Uh, the last part really wasn't necessary…"
At that moment, Tsubaki truly wanted to grab the boy and plant a kiss on him. She understood exactly what this meant.
This was a turning point.
An unimaginable turning point.
A chance for her to go a step further.
And this chance had just been handed to her, right at her doorstep.
The feeling was so good it was almost intoxicating.
"Alright, alright, alright! Let me take a proper look. I need to have a little talk with this little guy. Go sit down for now."
Without waiting for a reply, she carried Candlelight off to her desk.
Xien watched the feverish glint in her eyes and chuckled, shaking his head.
As she herself had said, he simply pulled over a chair, sat down, and took out one of the magic books his teacher had written, quietly reading while he waited.
There was no need to worry. Candlelight was not some mind-corrupting cursed weapon. Xien trusted that Tsubaki, the captain chosen by the Goddess of Smithing herself, would never be overwhelmed by something as simple as this.
Sure enough, half an hour later, movement came from her direction.
"It's too exquisite... I never would have thought... no, this is the true answer. Each part doing its own job, each material's properties brought to their absolute peak, all working together in perfect harmony. Rather than a weapon, it's more like a complete organism. That's right—this is how it was always supposed to be! This is how it should have been all along! Little guy, your existence really is a miracle…"
"You want further strengthening… yes, I see it now. That's right. Only this way. Only this way can there be a true qualitative leap…"
Another half hour passed.
"Xien, come here. I think I've found the answer."
He blinked. He had not expected her to need him personally, but he stood up at once and walked over.
Tsubaki was furiously sketching out something on paper, her expression bright with excitement.
"I've already talked it over with the little guy. We're reforging it."
"Reforging?"
"Exactly. I'll handle the materials and the process. You only need to do one thing: keep pouring your power into it exactly when I tell you to. Do not let it die. Got it?"
At the last sentence, she lifted her head and stared at him with deadly seriousness.
Xien fell silent, thinking it through.
"So, if I understand correctly, you're going to shatter its body, then melt it down and rebuild it with new materials. And my job is to keep its life from extinguishing while it undergoes a complete reconstruction—a process that, from its perspective, is basically equivalent to being torn apart and remade from scratch. Is that right?"
Tsubaki grinned.
"Knew you'd get it fast."
"But is that really necessary? Isn't that too cruel for it?"
Before coming here, Xien had assumed it would be something much simpler—just feeding it a few rare metals and letting its own self-repair mechanism do the rest.
Tsubaki answered without hesitation.
"It chose this itself. And it's the only way for it to truly change."
Xien lowered his gaze to the weapon that had accompanied him for so long and gently stroked it. Through their connection, he could clearly feel its desire.
Its yearning to go further.
Its yearning to evolve.
After a long pause, he exhaled.
"Then are you confident? What are the odds of success?"
"In an ideal scenario? Seven or eight out of ten. This is the first time I've ever handled something like this, so that's as much assurance as I can give."
Xien was quiet again.
Then he finally nodded.
"Alright. The will to move forward shouldn't be denied. I agree to the plan."
A beautiful curve rose at the corner of Tsubaki's lips.
As expected.
"Hah. I knew I hadn't misjudged you. Wait here. I'm going to get the materials. When I come back, I'll explain everything you need to watch out for."
"Got it."
Without another word, Tsubaki left the room.
That gave Xien a little time to speak with Candlelight alone.
"You really are something else. You didn't hesitate at all, did you?"
Candlelight trembled faintly in his hand.
"What? You learned that from me? Do I really seem like that kind of person...?"
Some time later, Tsubaki returned—with an armful of materials.
Orichalcum. Mithril. Adamantite. And several others.
All top-grade materials.
Xien's eyelid twitched.
None of these were cheap. This really was going to bleed his wallet dry.
Then again, if they were using materials of this caliber, his own curiosity had already been hooked.
What kind of finished weapon would come out of this?
He genuinely wanted to know.
With everything in place, the reforging began.
This was one of the city's finest workshops. The massive furnace blazed with astonishing heat. The new materials were added in stages and in carefully measured quantities, melted down to achieve the ideal alloy balance.
The temperature was so intense that just opening the furnace for a few seconds made the room itself feel hotter by an entire level.
Watching that, Xien could not help but wonder if Candlelight would really be able to withstand what was coming.
There was no time to dwell on it.
As the display window showed the metals inside gradually melting, the most critical stage arrived.
Looking down at the now-completely still Candlelight in his hand, Xien no longer hesitated. While pouring Abundance into it, he lifted his other arm high and brought the weapon down with all his strength.
Crack.
Rather than being broken by the strike, Candlelight seemed to use the blow itself as permission to collapse.
In an instant, it shattered into dozens of fragments of roughly equal size, all of them dropping neatly into the prepared basket below.
Seeing that, Xien was struck once more by how absolute its resolve was.
His eyes met Tsubaki's. Neither dared delay.
He seized the basket and dumped Candlelight's fragments into the furnace.
The doors slammed shut again.
Through the viewing slit, he watched as the fragments full of life gradually melted, evenly blending into the other materials.
But his role wasn't over yet.
A moment later, as the furnace gate opened, the blazing alloy was poured into the prepared mold. Feeling the life within beginning to fade, Xien didn't need Tsubaki to tell him what to do.
His emerald Abundance surged into the mold, and the molten metal began to solidify at an utterly unnatural speed.
When he felt a faint pulse of satisfaction in return, he withdrew his power.
The next part belonged to Tsubaki.
"Good. Now leave it to me."
She drew the crude blank from the mold, carried it to the forge platform, and raised the hammer that had accompanied her for years.
Then she struck.
Again and again.
It wasn't fast, but there was a rhythm to it—a pulse like breathing itself.
It was as though she and the newborn weapon were answering one another.
For some reason, she felt unprecedentedly good right now. Both of them were immersed in the same emotion.
Transcendence.
Each of them had staked everything they knew, trying to tear through an unseen barrier and force open a new future.
"Xien—"
She didn't need to say more.
He stepped forward at once, emerald power rising again and drifting toward the half-formed blade on the anvil.
A while later—
"That's enough. Next, I need your blood. Quick."
Xien flinched, but there was no time to waste. He grabbed the short blade lying nearby and slashed his palm open, then held it over the metal. Under his control, blood flowed out in a thin stream, splashing onto the glowing steel.
The sheer heat turned it to a crimson mist on contact.
With the regenerative ability of his current body, a wound like this would ordinarily have closed before even a single drop could fall, unless he deliberately held it open.
And Tsubaki's hammering grew faster and faster.
Her expression sharpened into total concentration, and at some point the sound of the hammer changed.
It was no longer merely striking metal.
The ring of it seemed to reverberate directly into the soul.
Finally—
"Done!"
Xien immediately pulled his hand back.
In that short time, he had lost roughly a fifth of his blood. Had his physical constitution not been monstrous, anyone else would have been flat on the ground by now.
Still, the result was just as obvious.
The glowing billet atop the forge had changed from bright yellow to a vivid crimson, as though it had absorbed the blood itself.
Then came fold-forging. Heat treatment. Quenching. Again and again, repeated.
And from within the steel, an invisible pulse began to spread.
It was something ordinary people could never perceive.
But there were three beings who noticed it at once:
Xien.
Tsubaki.
And high above, in an office atop the familia headquarters—
the goddess Hephaestus.
She had been in the middle of paperwork when the pulse reached her. She lifted her head sharply, stunned.
"What was that...?"
"A newly born holy blade? In this era? That should be impossible."
Not even bothering with the ink she had just smeared across the paper, she rose to her feet and focused her senses.
"The direction... Tsubaki?"
Back in the forge, with one final hammer strike from Tsubaki, Xien felt that resonance fully answer him.
Candlelight was declaring its rebirth.
Just when he thought more steps were coming, Tsubaki suddenly grinned and, without warning, flung the still-red blade blank straight at him.
"Xien, catch!"
"Eh?!"
He caught it instinctively.
For a split second, he nearly threw it away on reflex—only to freeze.
It wasn't hot.
At least, not in the way it should have been.
Instead of the searing heat he had expected, the metal felt warm and smooth in his hands, almost like jade.
Then, right before his eyes, the rough steel blank began to change shape.
Its red glow faded into a bright silvery sheen.
Its form refined and settled until, in the end, it became a sword.
In that miraculous instant, Candlelight completed its trial by fire and emerged as a sacred weapon made for him alone.
Xien had barely begun to admire it when Tsubaki barked from the side, visibly impatient.
"Quick—test the strength!"
He looked up, following her gaze toward the finished weapon she had been forging earlier.
"With that? Isn't that a little extravagant?"
"At a time like this, that's what you're worried about? Just do it! I'm not making you pay for it!"
She slapped a hand to her forehead.
Fine.
With a helpless shrug, Xien took Candlelight in one hand and the newly forged high-grade blade in the other. Without even using much force, he set the edges against one another and pressed.
There was no resistance.
It was as if the two blades had never made contact at all.
Caught off guard, Xien nearly lost his balance.
Then, in Tsubaki's blazing eyes, the high-grade weapon simply broke.
The cut was so smooth it looked as though Xien had used Kongtong Rift on it. Just like that, a high-grade weapon was destroyed.
Before he could fully process it, Tsubaki shoved another blade at him.
"Next one. Test hardness with this. It's got the Sharpness trait, strong enough to wear down even Indestructible equipment."
It was a thin sword, taken straight off the wall.
Xien accepted it. After sensing Candlelight's clear response—Do it—he laid the reborn blade flat and slashed the thin sword down against it with force.
Clang.
Both of them stared in delight as the upper half of the thin sword flew off into the air.
And Candlelight?
Not a single mark.
Its surface was still flawless, shining as if nothing had touched it at all.
"I did it... Hahaha... I did it! I really did it! Hahahaha!"
Tsubaki threw her head back and laughed wildly, her voice echoing through the workshop.
Xien found it a little terrifying, honestly.
And then footsteps sounded from behind them, accompanied by another voice.
Turning, he saw a woman with a perfect figure and crimson hair. The aura she carried made her identity obvious at once.
A goddess.
Hephaestus spoke as she approached, but as her gaze passed from her captain to the boy and finally settled on the weapon in his hand—a weapon utterly out of place in this dim forge—her voice slowly grew quieter.
That unique pulse.
That unmistakable presence.
"Hey, Tsubaki, what's going on here? That pulse just now—what exactly... happened... here?"
Then, as understanding dawned, a smile appeared on the usually expressionless face of the Goddess of Smithing.
"It's Lady Hephaestus. Nothing much, really."
Tsubaki grinned broadly.
"I just forged a weapon."
....
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