Very pleased to see the project finally complete, Elizabeth nodded her head in approval. Her happiness lasted all but a couple seconds, before the three Mortal Grade Reforging crystals she exchanged for during her first visit to the Sky Seizing Castle were withdrawn from her spatial ring. With the supplementary armor complete, Elizabeth felt now would be a good time to upgrade her main armor set as well.She recalled the time when she found out that a side objective to her first side quest involved taking revenge for herself in the Heavens, against G.o.ds… in her Beginner Armor Set; an F Grade, less than Low-tier Mortal Grade Magical Armor Set… "Heh..." she couldn"t help but chuckle at the exaggerated reaction she gave P at the time. Even while she was scared of the unknown powers her divine supervisor might or might not have had, at the time she cursed, "WHAT?! You want me to f.u.c.king, what?!?! How am I supposed to defend myself with 20 Defense? That only offers twice as much defense as my regular mortal body!"
At that time, P didn"t even get upset. Anyone would be upset if they were asked to do the impossible. She just calmly replied, "We never said you couldn"t upgrade your armor..." And that was it took to let Elizabeth have some peace of mind.
Returning to the present, Elizabeth understood the purpose of Mortal Grade Reforging Crystals to be like erasers. They could give her a second chance to reforge a material from the ground up after clearing away the work of the past. The white dress that made up her Beginner Armor Set was said to have been made of the greatest mortal-grade quality fabrics in the universe. With a description like that, Elizabeth didn"t have a sliver of doubt in her mind that she could use her [Saintly Forging] to create a master-cla.s.s set of gear. Alas, each separate part of her armor set required an entire Crystal to reforge, and she only had three on hand.
Either she would have to choose to take the last reforging Crystal required to completely upgrade her set from the options presented to her from completing her first Main Quest, or she would have to settle for having an incomplete upgraded armor set.
Looking over the other options available to her, she didn"t really need her Ice or Fire Affinities increased to Mediocre-tier. Her Yin and Time Affinities — origin energies that require Non-Elemental Affinity Stones — could be easily upgraded to Bad and even Mediocre Tier if she cultivated them a bit longer. And if she really needed it, she could choose to use up Extra Break Time as the bonus reward from completing her third Main Quest.
Elizabeth made her mind up, as a fourth Mortal Grade Reforging Crystal materialized in her hands. She withdrew her Beginner Armor Set from her spatial ring and after activating the crystals, all the inscriptions already engraved onto the surface of the "armor" faded away to reveal a clean slate.
The biggest problem Elizabeth faced when reforging her Beginner Armor set now appeared as she had to apply the principle of Melding for the first time. Melding was an aspect of forging similar to Refining as it could be said that she would be removing impurities out of the material. However, unlike Refinement, Melding incorporated a whole new set of variables, as it was essentially fusing a strengthening material into the source to elevate the quality of the final product better than the sum of its components; synergy, if you will.
Given that her armor was made out of fabric, Elizabeth sighed as the only materials available to her would complicate the matter more than it otherwise should have. In the end, she chose to use up some of the Graviton Bismanthium she"d excavated from the cave within the Forest of Beginnings for its potential in the field of s.p.a.ce and time. But, if she had the hide of a strong Magical Beast, grafting the tissue of an animal would be much easier than incorporating crystals into the mix.
Elizabeth retrieved six of the largest crystals she had in her possession and just as she was about to start the melding process, disaster was avoided. Just before she did anything to the materials, she felt that first urge to kill from her G.o.dslayer Bloodline. Luckily, she hadn"t begun anything as the distraction caused by her bloodline would have certainly ruined her ability to concentrate and this reforging process would have ended terribly.
Shaking her head in disappointment, Elizabeth got up and told Yrre she would be back in a moment. Then, in the dead of the night, a white-haired demon la.s.s descended on the marine life unfortunate enough to be around the yacht as it travelled to Sharktop Island. Elizabeth kept silent as she ran through the ocean ma.s.sacring dozens of fish until she felt the urge vanish. She had naively thought that with just one or two kills, her evidently weak bloodline would calm down. But before she knew it, 55 fish had died with nothing but the urge kill increasing. Like a junkie"s high, every time Elizabeth"s blade claimed another life, a wisp of faint death energy would swarm to the heptagram that manifested at the base of her left shoulder; her Mark Of The G.o.dslayer.
Fortunately, the ecstasy given to her through the absorption of death energies didn"t come close to altering her priorities and as soon as she felt the urge disappear, she stopped her killing at once. Addiction was something she couldn"t afford manifesting, so against her body"s will, she returned aboard the ship and did her best to forget the wonderful feeling her body tried using as a tool for manipulating her to continue.
Unfortunately, those warm and bubbly feelings were like a glue that stuck to her and distracted her, probably more so than even the urge to kill which initially prompted her to stop forging. Now annoyed, upon returning to her room, Elizabeth sat down and meditated in [Temporal Meditation] to empty herself of any unwanted feelings by force. She only stopped for a couple moments as she didn"t plan to start cultivating her talent for Time, her Intelligence Stat, or her capacity for Inner Strength. But, after the short period of time spent meditating, when she opened her eyes to begin forging, now clean of any distractions, Elizabeth had to stop once again.
This time, the source of her interruption was Yrre. Upon leaving meditation, Elizabeth caught Yrre staring at her with rage and a horribly repressed aura of concern. When the two made eye contact, before Elizabeth could ask what was wrong, Yrre worriedly said, "You… You"ve been tainted with the blood of an Ancient Race? This… This is really bad..." Yrre spoke slowly as if each word physically hurt her.
"Huh? How"d you know I was tainted by an Ancient Race? And what exactly do you mean..." An ominous chill crept down Elizabeth"s spine as her bloodline was randomly brought up with such an extreme reaction out of Yrre.
"After you came back from killing things, I detected death energy cling onto your body. Worried, since you haven"t mentioned anything about cultivating Death, I tried to diagnose the origin of the energy"s strange behavior... You must have been corrupted very recently as your Mark hasn"t vanished yet. That mark is how I know… As for how bad this could turn out to be, I first have to ask if you know what Ancient Race tainted your blood?"
"Uh… I have the Ancient G.o.dslayer Fiend Bloodline..."
Just hearing the term "Ancient G.o.dslayer Fiend" caused Yrre to almost seize up as she had to rub her eyebrows to calm herself down. Weakly, she said, "That... That"s! That"s the third highest rated Ancient Bloodline!!! This… This is even worse than I imagined..."
"What"s… wrong?" Seeing Yrre so spooked, Elizabeth started speaking with apprehension as well.
Shaking her head and looking down on Elizabeth with pity, Yrre said "Ancients are superior beings with members as strong as true G.o.ds! They"re known to be horrible murderous Fiends and Saints who run rampant in the higher dimensions to satiate their uncontrollable bloodl.u.s.t. Remember the story I told you of how I met the Castle Lord? Well, what he saved us from was a single Cataclysmic Gold Saint! That one individual was strong and crazy enough to threaten my entire clan of Djinns, and without the help of the Castle Lord, I surely have turn into that Saint"s dinner. Your bloodline is rated third highest, while the Saint I confronted in the past had a bloodline rated second highest. But among the top three Ancient bloodlines, there"s hardly a sizeable between each. So... Unless you learn to master Death energy and keep that bloodline of yours in check… I"m afraid you"ll turn out like the rest of those psychos and become a walking calamity to all that surrounds you."
"f.u.c.k..." Elizabeth"s imagination still couldn"t picture the insanity behind her bloodline and do it justice. But after listening to Yrre"s words, even with inexperience, she could tell this would become a very big problem if she didn"t heed her advice. Death energy was yet another type of origin energy, and just the thought of having to cultivate yet another one of those tricky energies inspired feelings of depression. Now taking the matter of her bloodline serious, Elizabeth resolved to incorporate training in Death in the future. But for now, it was back to the forge, as she wanted to finish all the extrapersonal cultivation matters available to her, this night.