"I don't think this is a good idea." Hestia said with a deep frown.
"It's not normally but we need to get stronger as fast as possible so here we are." I said helplessly.
"They might die though!" she argued firmly.
"They WILL die if they don't." I said just as firmly.
What we were arguing over was to put it simply forcefully leveling up everyone in the familia. I don't mean that barbaric ritual that Ishtar had originally planned to turn Haruhime's magic permanent either. My method was far more, organic shall we say.-
The falna reacts to feats and experiences so i figured I could just forcefully stuff feats down everyone's throat to forcefully cause their vessels to overflow with high tier excelia. The problem? I needed to give them feats that they had no business even getting near for it to work. For Bell, Welf, Lili, Cassandra and Daphne it was killing Amphisbaena. For Haruhime and the newer ones a minotaur each. Ophelia due to her weapon needed a much more terrible challenge, a level three Hobgoblin. To no surprise Hestia was less than happy about this plan.-
I understood really I did but we needed a burst of growth or things were going to get really uncomfortable when the dragon showed up. Yes when, not if. I'm being realistic here. Even with all the nightmarish obstacles I stacked in the things way it would eventually power it's way through them. I'm good, I'm VERY good. But that thing? It killed a level nine and dozens of sevens and eights SIMULTAENEOUSLY. The thing is more likely than not at the very edge of hitting godhood or at least true demigodhood. There was no other explanation why it had so much power as a level nine monster.-
Anything not at least semi close to that level of power would at most injure it. And that was only with hopes and fucking dreams since the beast was also no less smart than a person. Thankfully it was a dragon and had a stupid amount of pride and would like choose to tackle my traps head on even knowing they were there. As for my cursed technique one shotting it? Hang that shit up on the wall, it wasn't happening. I tested it on that small piece of the dragon that had been chipped off and my technique barely tickled that shit.-
Not totally ineffective but such a minor effect I may as well not have done anything at all. One thing I DID do however was forge a scale shirt for Ottar out of Draconite plated durandal adamantite. He absolutely fucking HATED it. I knew he would but we both knew he'd take it anyways with the black fucker on the horizon. Hephaestus was most unhappy about the thing though as she had a long hateful relationship with draconite, which is to say she couldn't forge it herself.-
It wasn't a matter of knowing how but of there being no mortal means to do so. As the goddess of forging she had an instinctual understanding of materials used to do so. The trouble was there was nothing capable of achieving the temperatures needed to soften draconite enough to work and technically there still wasn't. My technique didn't use external forces to force a material to bend to my will but moved the material from inside out instead. Not that she didn't know this as she sulked about my success for three days after learning about it.-
She "forgave" me for surpassing her definitively once I gave her a furnace that contained my hellfire that wouldn't break this time. The fact she almost immediately tried to use it to forge draconite wasn't lost on me but it barely even worked. The flames did indeed get hot enough to soften the stuff a bit but it was so little and cooled so fast she got one good swing of her hammer in before needing to reheat the stuff. It took her a solid thirteen hours a day of work timeframe to manage a small dagger being shaped only to give up when she realized she couldn't sharpen the thing.-
Sharpening was a process of literally grinding off pieces of something to form a thin edge. Draconite couldn't be grinded down so no edge. I took a little pity on her and put on an edge to the dagger but we both knew she hadn't completed the blade alone so it was still a failed attempt. Freya on the otherhand was beyond the moon happy with the scale shirt I made Ottar since it could be seen as a status symbol. There was a bit of a fight with Loki about it though since the mischievous tomboy goddess was upset that she didn't get anything made of draconite.-
When I bluntly stated that she didn't have an Ottar level fighter either she shut up about it. A low blow I know but facts stood that when the dragon came Ottar and I were the biggest targets and thus in the most danger. Well technically anyone below a certain level was in the most danger but that's mostly because the aftershocks from the battle would hurt or kill them. For actual combatants though it would definitely be Ottar and I.-
I even had it worked out to drag Ottar to the deepest levels of the dungeon to finally get him to level eight so that when the dragon got here Haruhime could level boost him to nine. I myself had no hope of hitting seven in the time we might have and could only go on a rampage in the dungeon for smoke to get as many stats as I could. Right now I was already the equal of a lower middle level eight in theory so if I could max my stats I might barely hit peak mid nine or new upper nine with a level boost of my own.