Shadow Slave

The forge had become permeated by an almost unbearable heat. Sunny fanned the flames, watching as the blessed iron slowly turned into an incandescent liquid inside the crucible. His pale body was covered in sweat, and the scales of his intricate tattoo glistened in the radiance of the white flame like black gemstones.

The iron melted, poured over the remains of Winter Beast's icy heart, and froze solid again. The process repeated over and over, until the ice finally started tomelt itself.

Sunny watched it with a distant expression.

'...I am glad.'

He had felt great joy after destroying the Winter Beast to avenge millions of its victims… and himself. But it was a sad thing, really, to end the story of their tragic deaths with another act of destruction.

So, Sunny was happy to see that the final chapter in the story of Falcon Scott would be an act of creation instead. That the heart of the Winter Beast would lay the foundation for the forging of a remarkable sword — a sword that would excel in sowing death, but was ultimately destined to save countless lives.

It was as if he was pouring all those orphaned souls into the mystical alloy.

How heavy would a blade carrying the weight of millions of souls be?

…Sunny's blood was also there, added to the mix. Strangely enough, he could still vaguely sense it, and even exert a little bit of control over it, as if his blood was still alive despite being expelled from his body. And since it served as the binding agent between the various elements of the alloy, the alloy was becoming a little bit alive, too.

Granted, there was no need for his blood to bind the mystical ice and the blessed metals together. That could have happened naturally, just as it had happened the other day.

However…

For this next part, the presence of his blood was necessary.

Wiping the sweat off his brow, Sunny inhaled the scorching air deeply, and then picked up an ominous black arrow from a nearby workbench.

The arrow seemed quite mundane at first glance. Its shaft was made from dark wood, its fletching was fashioned from raven feathers, and the arrowhead had been carved from a piece of black obsidian. But the arrow was not mundane at all — it was one of the two arrows from the Shadow Realm that Sunny possessed.

A daunting souvenir of the Realm of Death.

Letting out a quiet sigh, Sunny gritted his teeth and grasped the arrow tightly in his hands. Taut muscles rolled under his skin like steel cables, and the coils of the Soul Serpent seemed to move. As ragged breath escaped from his lips, the black arrow shattered.

It was incredibly tough, rivaling the durability of Supreme Memories. However, Sunny was a Transcendent Terror… his strength was truly terrifying, and his will was adamantine.

Breaking the arrowhead off the shaft, he grasped the piece of sharp obsidian in his fist and crushed it into dust, paying no attention to the blood pouring to the floor.

Then, he poured the obsidian dust and the blood into the crucible. He threw the splintered shaft there, as well.

The fletching caught fire first, swiftly turning into ash. The dark wood of the arrow's shaft drowned in the incandescent liquid, and was thenincinerated in its depths. The obsidian dust mixed with the alloy.

His blood acted as a medium, helping the alloy inherit the intangible quality of the destroyed arrow — the cold, deadly sense of finality that it had possessed. The eerie breath of the Realm of Death.

With that done, the alloy was almost ready.

All that remained was the final step.

His other self was still preoccupied with preventing the Dream Blade from collapsing. He was holding its weave together, and at the same time guiding the stream of ethereal sparks that swirled in the air, ready to dissipate, but not quite able to.

As the incandescent liquid in the crucible seemed to reach a state of equilibrium, neither growing hotter nor cooling off, Sunny guided the stream of sparks into a mold.

And as they entered it obediently…

He held his breath, picked up the crucible, and poured the blessed alloy over them.

The radiant stream of incandescent metal swallowed the sparks of essence, making them a part of itself.

And just like that, the anchor of the intricate spellweave shifted from the concept of a silver longsword to the mass of liquid metal.

Sunny sighed in relief, knowing that this part of the plan had worked as intended, at least. He was not sure that it would… after all, he had never attempted something like that before.

But there was something that Sunny realized while experimenting to prepare for this forging. It was that at this level of craft, the will of the craftsman was like a blacksmith's hammer in and of itself.

It, too, was a tool to forge metal into a desired shape… or maybe even reality itself.

So if his will was sharp and tyrannical enough, many things would become possible simply because he willed them. Of course, the more his will went against the will of the world, the more difficult it was to enforce it.

In this case, the desired result was a relatively minor divergence. And since Sunny's Transcendent will had been tempered and sharpened by countless trials, he achieved it without too much problem.

'Now… the forging.'

As soon as the blessed alloy cooled off enough to become solid, Sunny removed the glowing bar of hot metal from the mold and placed it on the anvil.

The coils of his serpentine tattoo moved as Serpent slithered down his arm, manifesting itself into a weapon.

However, this time, it was not an odachi. Instead, it was a blacksmith's hammer made from dark, lusterless obsidian.

Gripping the Soul Weapon tightly, Sunny raised it above his head, and then brought it down on the glowing metal.

A rain of incandescent sparks shot in all directions, and the Marvelous Mimic quaked.