Chapter 177: The Arrancar
After a couple more minutes had passed, Ethan slowly descended from his floating position, the reddish-amber glow of his eyes fading as his feet reached the ground.
Lucy clapped, giving him a standing ovation as he landed, with a a wide smile on her face.
Ethan smiled back, though his expression turned slightly puzzled. "Who’s Sylvester Reeds?"
Ethan shook his head.
"He isn’t even a citizen of Gritnia. He’s from Sloania and is the only reawakened Magi-Engineer in the whole world."
"He makes and posts content on M-Tube," Lucy said, already pulling out her Arcphone and scrolling through the app. "Hold on, let me show you."
[Self-Imposed Objective Complete:
[Reward: 8,000 XP]
He blinked at the numbers. In the last four days alone, he had gained a total of 36,250 XP.
They were trembling slightly from the exertion, so he clenched them into fists, trying to steady the shaking.
"Hey, Ethan, are you watching?" Lucy’s almost childlike voice pulled his attention back.
Lucy clicked on a video titled: "Watch me as I couple a Radeon Blaster Gun in 5 seconds!" The thumbnail showed a weird-looking smiley face of a man wearing thick protective goggles.
-
Ethan was back at the Clustervayne Guild building, standing at the makeshift workstation he had set up in one of the side rooms.
Tweezers, small hammers, grinders, containment vials, and fragments of the Aranchras’s mana core were randomly placed on the table.
Ethan barely noticed the noise as his focus was locked on the object resting on the table before him.
After Ethan’s earlier study, where he discovered the microscopic crystals which was responsible for the phasing, he had extracted some of it.
The ink had been solidified into a compact containment chamber, forming a bowl-like structure with reinforced walls.
The sword had been placed inside and exposed to the searing temperatures while Ethan carefully applied the crystalline powder he ground from the Aranchras’s body.
The essence of Aranchras’s mana core, was to provide a constant flow of power that helped bond the crystalline formations to the blade’s molecular structure, ensuring they integrated deeply rather than simply coating the surface.
Her ink had also been used to reshape the blade’s form.
When it was finally pulled from the forge, the blade gleamed with this violet hue, and had a more elegant design to it.
Now, it rested on the table before Ethan, still warm to the touch.
"Hayley," Ethan said without looking up. "Put that down."
"Hayley."
"Soon," Ethan replied, his tone distracted. "I just have to finish this. I’m making the final touches."
Ethan didn’t answer. He was too focused on modifying the pommel of the sword, carefully inserting a small fragment of the Aranchras’s mana core into it.
A certain amount of time passed with Hayley continuously talking about different things, complaining again about her boredom, and asking the most random questions.
"Mhm."
Nod.
"Are you even listening to me, Ethan?" Hayley finally asked, her tone somewhere between amused and annoyed.
He set down his tools, lifted the blade, and held it up to the light. There was a purple-like glow along its edges.
Hayley let out a light chuckle. "Maybe we go with a name based off its feature. What does it do?"
He gripped the hilt firmly and channeled his mana through the weapon. The blade’s surface looked like it flickered then it turned translucent.
He held it there for a moment, watching the countdown in his mind.
Two seconds.
The blade flickered again and returned to its tangible state, solidifying inside the table with a faint thunk.
"Shit," he muttered. "I totally screwed the timing on that one."
"At least five seconds," Ethan said, shaking his head. "But I guess it was always going to work differently based on the original monster itself."
Hayley leaned back in her chair, thinking. "What about the hilt? Does that phase too?"
A sudden thought then came to Ethan as a stared at the weapon. "Hm, I just realized I still need to make a few adjustments, but I’ll do that later"
Ethan gave her a weird look. "That sounds cool, but it’s cringe. Feels typical."
Ethan thought for a moment as his gaze lingered on the weapon.
A notification screen appeared in front of him.
[SR-Grade Weapon: The Arrancar]
[Reward: 7,000 XP]
Ethan dismissed the notifications with a satisfied nod.
Ethan chuckled. "Yeah, yeah."