The Kingdom of Gaia has always placed great importance on outfitting its warriors, since its foundation.
Even before it consolidated as a kingdom, the Iron Legion was already supplied with blades, armor and artifacts forged by the hands of the dwarves — who were considered the best blacksmiths and craftsmen in the world.
In the last year, with the material resources and magical knowledge left by the extinct Kingdom of Milis, that craft reached a new level.
There were state workshops with molds and magical circles and bodies of increasingly powerful magical beasts to be used as material.
The Beast God even implemented a system in which weapons could be requisitioned directly from the throne — provided the individual had notable deeds and contributions in favor of the Kingdom of Gaia.
Even the emerging magic swordsmen could have blades enchanted with Magical Beast Cores, which made them equivalent to a mage's staff.
This could drastically reduce mana expenditure during spellcasting.
Not every piece was a masterpiece, obviously.
Still, in terms of weapon quality, Gaia already threatened to surpass the Asura Kingdom.
And, in that context, the leader's weapon could not be just anything.
So Godbard, Rufus and Brightstone gathered for a project: to forge a weapon worthy of the Apocalypse Beast.
When Rygar learned of it, he obviously said he would go to help.
There was symbolism behind creating that weapon, but the most important reason was another.
The blades Rygar possessed no longer comfortably withstood the current threats; only Tsukikage remained reliable, and even she needed to be augmented with lightning or fire to reach the required performance.
Watermirror could be used, but Rygar doubted it would be very useful against someone like Orsted or the Sea God, Esterópes.
Of course, Touki could break through most of those limitations, but if two people of the same skill level faced each other, the one with the better weapon would undeniably win.
The materials gathered for the undertaking represented a fortune that could fund entire cities. Failure was not an option.
The foundation of the project was to use Tsukikage as the base; it would be reforged into a new sword, with new abilities.
But Rygar didn't want to abandon the sword's main characteristic, for it had been very useful throughout his life.
As a secondary material, Rygar decided to create it himself; he spent days condensing his Earth Magic to form a perfect ore.
He channeled most of his mana reserve, and that when his efficiency was amplified nine times by Tsukikage herself.
Even so, reaching such a level required an extraordinary mastery of focus.
At several moments, the mass of mana-matter almost dissolved into instability.
Waves of uncontrolled mana threatened to break the cohesion of the metal, and Rygar had to rebalance his focus more than once to avoid a collapse that would ruin days of effort.
When, finally, the work bore fruit, the ore surprised even Rygar himself.
It was a block of black appearance, dense, yet translucent — reminiscent of the tungsten from his previous world, but with something extra, a whitish glow shining at its core.
It was a material that seemed to belong to another tier compared to everything else.
Rygar named it Orichalcum, in homage to the fantasy stories of his former world. Many of them described Orichalcum as a divine ore.
Even channeling Lightning Magic through Tsukikage, Rygar couldn't cut or even scratch the Orichalcum.
This, in fact, proved a problem, because not even Rygar's God-level Fire Magic could melt the ore. And if they wanted to forge it into a weapon, they needed to melt it.
Thus, the quartet set out for the mouth of one of the fiercest volcanoes in the world. They invaded the region, fought and eliminated the former inhabitants — who were a group of Blue Dragons — and descended to the center of the volcano.
There, heat was part of everything. The air shimmered in mirages, droplets of steam burst on the rocks, and magma ran through fissures in the ground everywhere.
Even residual heat could kill Saint-level warriors if exposed for too long. For that reason, Rygar raised fire- and heat-resistant magical barriers around the group.
Rufus was also capable of using that Magic; Godbard had a magical item passed down between the Ore Gods' generations that granted him enormous fire resistance.
Brightstone, however, had no particular advantage and relied largely on Rygar's Barrier Magic.
With the exorbitant natural heat of the volcano's lava added to Rygar's God-level Fire Magic, they finally reached Orichalcum's melting point.
The metal darkened, glowed, and yielded: it turned into a liquid, metallic mass that floated in the air, it had a density reminiscent of thick mercury.
It was the moment for Brightstone to raise his craft.
The dwarf master applied his enchantment method. The same he always used, a high-level Magic Core, imbued directly into the weapon.
But for the weapon they would forge today, Brightstone would not use just one Magic Core as usual; instead, he liquefied a hundred Blue Dragon cores, all rank A and S.
And as the principal core he chose the Magic Core of the Blue Terror Dragon — the same Dragon that Rygar killed during the Milis war.
The dwarf's procedure was the culmination of a lifetime of research: he extracted the essence of the cores, reducing it to crystalline drops of mana, and then inserted them into the liquid metal through complex magical circles so intricate that every stroke had to be perfect.
It was painstaking, risky and brilliantly clever — which allowed the Orichalcum not only to accept the energy, but to weave it into its structure, transforming the matter into a magical conductor capable of storing, amplifying and guiding mana like a staff.
But using this method in that way also represented a risk: a hundred cores meant an enormous concentration of mana; any mana leakage would be catastrophic.
To handle this, Rygar and Rufus created Mana Containment Barriers.
Rygar kept his Demon Eye alert, ready to detect the slightest fluctuation and react in fractions of a second, rebalancing the layers of Barriers.
When the dwarf's process finally completed the first incorporation, the liquid Orichalcum not only floated, it pulsed.
An oppressive presence emanated from the mass.
From the heart of the metal came a roar, and with it a mana vibration that ran through the veins of the rock and made the mountain tremble.
And then the blue flames fell.
Flames rained down on the four with violence, crackling and making sparks explode on contact.
Rygar had to double his concentration.
Brightstone soon realized that the protection he needed was consuming part of Rygar's attention.
And since he had already enchanted the blade, it wasn't really necessary. So Geri took him outside.
The metal seemed to have become something alive.
But the first step was complete.
The forging hammer Godbard wielded was not an ordinary tool; it was also a magic item.
Each strike was measured and controlled, revealing a lifetime dedicated to his craft.
His only mission there was to give the blade its final form.
But even for an Ore God, that was perhaps the most impossible work he had ever attempted; the metal seemed to resist, as if refusing to yield to the smith's will.
Godbard's strength was great, but not enough to make an entire mountain tremble, not by a long shot. What caused such chaos was not him — it was the sword itself.
With each hammer blow, the forming blade seemed to resist, as if it had its own will.
Furious blue flames sprang up and ravaged the unstable ground around, spreading in sharp tongues that licked the rocks.
Rufus, nearby, was also finding it increasingly hard to hold on.
His mission was to maintain the mountain's structure — to prevent the shockwaves and fiery explosions from making everything collapse.
Rygar, however, faced an even greater challenge.
A question hammered in his mind:
"Does this thing really have its own will?"
He felt the blade trying to dissolve, as if it wished to dissipate into the air.
Those roars were not mere sounds — they were direct attacks on the soul. If it weren't for the Barriers Rygar sustained, Godbard and Rufus would already be dead.
A hundred magic cores, condensed into drops of essence, bubbled inside the metal; the mana trapped there threatened to break free at any second.
Rygar contained them, controlling several Barriers at the same time while his Demon Eyes watched the smallest fluctuations.
But above all, it was the blade's will that represented the greatest obstacle. It was like an ancient beast demanding respect from the mortals standing before it.
Rygar faced that will without blinking — after all, he himself was no simple being, and he would not yield to any will.
In fact, he could hardly imagine what it would become when the weapon was finally completed. He was excited.
"Rygar!" Godbard shouted, his voice cut by the crackling flames. "Something strange is happening!"
The temperature shot up suddenly. Rufus roared, a few meters away:
"If this continues, the whole mountain will melt!"
Rygar frowned, watching the glassy, incandescent mass.
The blade was still liquid, but had ceased wanting to explode or dissipate; now it seemed to converge, to hasten into itself.
Without warning, he felt his senses vibrate and ordered:
"Protect yourselves!"
He suspended concentration on the Barriers for a fraction of a second and, in a wide gesture, released a gust of Wind Magic that threw Rufus and Godbard away among the cavernous corridors, sparing them from the epicenter.
At that same moment, an explosion of golden and orange fire burst around the sword — like a concentrated sun — having the metallic mass as its focus.
The flame seemed to devour everything around it.
Rygar felt the heat burning his skin.
The flames punished him, but Touki and his own natural constitution, allied to Regeneration Magic, turned that damage into nothing very important.
The burns appeared and healed in the same breath.
He gripped and squeezed the hilt of the blade, and his will exploded in synchrony with the burning sword.
In the blade's liquid shine, he saw — as clearly as if it had arisen there — the reflection of a dragon.
Before he could react, a roar larger than all the previous ones ran through the mountain.
The blade wavered and undulated violently and, as if perceiving that Rygar ignored the heat that burned him, launched itself at him, aiming to decapitate him.
Thanks to his Demon Eye, in an instant, Rygar remembered the final step missing in the forging: the quenching.
He held the still semi-liquid blade with the hand that wasn't holding the hilt, and then released his mana like an ocean.
Ice Magic burst forth, freezing everything in its path.
He knew that, for normal weapons, such thermal shock would have cracked them — but this was not an ordinary metal.
He even laughed at the thought of throwing water on the incandescent blade.
A cloud of steam and shards of ice exploded through the chamber when the ice collided with the fire.
The noise was deafening, the steam carving shadows into the fissures as the mountain trembled.
Gradually, the blade began to lose its fluidity: the liquid stretched, shivers of deep blue circulated in the mass and, slowly and inexorably, it took the shape of a long sword.
The color was a translucent dark blue.
Instinctively, Rygar felt he should put his blood upon the blade.
And so he did; with a small cut on his finger, the red blood fell onto the blade.
The blood did not stain; it was drained by the sword.
The flames gave a last gasp, a final sigh that went out.
Rygar let out a short smile, one of relief and excitement.
The sword now lay in his hands, but still exuded a monumental pressure.
This was the first self-aware weapon Rygar had seen in his life, but it would not be the last... for better or worse.
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