The mountain was gradually consud by flas and reduced to a sea of lava during the forging of the sword.
In the final mont, when Rygar unleashed a violent burst of Wind Magic against Godbard and Rufus, the two kept retreating without hesitation, like warriors escaping a collapsing dungeon.
To Rygar, a mountain turning into magma and collapsing was nothing more than an inconvenience.
For most people, however, that would have been a death sentence.
Still, trusting in Rufus’s magic, they managed to leave the interior of the volcano relatively intact.
And, a few minutes later, they saw Rygar erge from the smoke and heat, wielding the bluish-translucent blade that seed to exude a draconic presence so intense it could almost be felt physically.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA! We really did it!" Brightstone shouted, even with his body covered in soot and burn marks.
He leaped and bellowed in euphoria as if he had forgotten the pain.
Even the usually calm and austere Godbard was laughing, slapping his companion’s shoulder hard.
"You old madman! You doubted we’d make it?! We’re dwarves, after all!"
Rufus, although equally carried away by excitent, was more paralyzed by astonishnt. His gaze remained on the blade, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
"We really did it..." he murmured.
And then, overco with joy, he too joined the jumps and shouts of the other two. The three embraced, leaping like children who had just discovered a treasure.
Rygar simply watched them, stunned.
As he watched that trio of dwarves celebrating, he replayed the recent events in his mind to make sure he hadn’t missed any detail.
After a few seconds of reflection, he smiled. He understood — at least in part — what motivated such happiness.
The dwarves had always been recognized as the best smiths in the world. Always.
However, the most legendary blades in history had not been created by one of them, but by a demon: Yulian Jalisco, the smith who forged the 49 swords — 24 cursed and 24 sacred — the most powerful of all being the Dragon King Kajakut’s Sword.
Those weapons were known as the greatest works ever forged, and this, no matter how much they tried to disguise it, was a wound to the pride of the entire dwarf race.
After all, they were a race whose principal activity was forging.
The argunt most used by them was that they did not have access to materials as extraordinary as in Yulian’s ti.
And that was not really an empty excuse. After all, the Dragon King Kajakut himself was a unique being; there was no other Dragon King of such caliber to be hunted and killed.
But with Rygar, that scenario had changed completely.
The Terror Dragon might not have been as singular as Kajakut, but it was not far behind: an ancient, imnsely powerful dragon that had only been defeated because Rygar was far above normal standards.
Besides, he had also hunted another hundred Dragons.
Thanks to that, the group possessed ore, base materials and magical cores of incomparable quality.
This new weapon was exceptional in every aspect.
It combined the skills of three of the most talented dwarf smiths of the current era, added to the Beast God himself. It was conceived to surpass even the Gravity Sword.
Thinking about that, Rygar was not so surprised by their joy. Even the Ebony Wolf, sitting a few ters away, watched the three with a strange expression.
Then he cast Rygar a confused look, which made the warrior let out a brief laugh before returning his attention to the sword.
The blade was a dark-translucent blue, with inscriptions ticulously carved by Godbard still visible.
The guard had been redesigned at Rygar’s request. The length remained the sa, but the width had been slightly increased.
Everything that wasn’t blade had the color of Orichalcum: a dark, slightly translucent hue, with a soft white sheen.
Just by holding it, Rygar could feel the ferocity and imposing presence it radiated, and he was increasingly eager to test the blade in combat.
When the excitent subsided, Godbard cleared his throat, a little embarrassed for having been carried away.
After all, he was the Ore God! He then turned to Rygar, curious.
"So... what happened at the end of the forge?"
After all, Godbard had been responsible for almost the entire forging process, but at the final part the sword began to spew fire as if it wanted to kill everyone nearby.
Brightstone and Rufus, equally intrigued, turned to hear the answer.
Rygar raised the blade with a smile.
"Actually, I have an idea about what it might be... Brace yourself."
He pointed the sword at Rufus. In the sa instant, without any command, a wave of fire erupted from the blade, natural, as if it had been born to breathe flas.
Rufus reacted imdiately, raising a Wall of Earth while stepping back a few paces so as not to be engulfed by the heat.
The flas spread widely, but without enough power to injure Rufus.
Godbard narrowed his eyes, puzzled.
"What is with this fire? Its flas have beco stronger?"
Rygar lowered the sword, still smiling.
"I didn’t do anything... The sword did it on its own."
"..."
"..."
Brightstone, still breathing heavily from the euphoria, widened his eyes and asked frantically:
"The sword...? Are you saying the sword is self-aware?!"
Rygar kept the smile on his face, looking at them as if he were amused by their reaction.
"To a certain extent... yes," he answered, raising the blade so that the light reflected off its bluish surface.
"I can feel its will, I can perceive its intent. It is not exactly sentient... but it certainly has a will of its own."
Rufus stepped closer, examining the sword as if it were sothing from another world, and asked cautiously:
"What do you an by will of its own? What kind of will does it have?"
Rygar spun his wrist, making the blade emit a faint tallic hum, and replied simply.
"It longs for annihilation and destruction. It desires blood. Simply pointing it at soone is enough for it to enter a hostile mode... It’s impressive."
Godbard, hand resting on his chin and his gaze distant, seed to be searching through old mories.
"In the dwarven records... there’s a ntion of a supposedly sentient weapon created thousands of years ago. I always considered it just a fanciful legend. But now..." his eyes narrowed and shone like living embers as he looked at Brightstone.
"It seems we might now have so clues about how a weapon gains consciousness."
Brightstone, still excited, stepped forward:
"Maybe it’s because we used a hundred cores from Blue Dragons! The remaining will must have been very strong."
Rufus completed imdiately:
"Wouldn’t the will of a single extrely powerful being carry more weight? The Terror Dragon core might be the real reason."
Rygar swung the blade lightly, the movent producing a rippling reflection on the dark-blue surface, and added:
"I believe it’s the extre aggloration of mana. Observing with my Demon Eyes, I could clearly see how the mana, furious and unpredictable, behaved... But, at the sa ti, it could very well be the sum of all those hypotheses."
Godbard nodded, returning to his firm posture.
"Well... we still have you. We’ll have other opportunities to create powerful weapons. The experints must continue!"
Rygar smiled wryly.
"I agree. But what matters now... is that I need to test it. I cannot use a weapon with a will of its own in real combat without knowing if I can control it perfectly."
His tone grew more serious:
"For that, I’ll need space. I feel that destructive magics will be greatly amplified by this weapon."
As he said that, his body began to float gently as if gravity obeyed him.
"I’ll be back in half an hour, at most," he said, looking at the dwarves.
"Start collecting the spoils, if possible."
Without waiting for an answer, he shot off into the sky, leaving a trail of cutting wind.
Rufus did not waste ti, running toward the corpses of the fallen dragons. Geri, the Ebony Wolf, followed him with agile steps, sniffing the air laden with the sll of blood and sulfur.
Rygar flew a good distance, holding the sword firmly. During the journey, he noticed an annoying detail:
"I need a sheath..." he murmured to himself.
"But that will have to wait."
He chose the top of an isolated mountain.
Upon landing, he felt the silence of the area, broken only by the distant roar of a river crawling far away.
He took a deep breath, held the blade in guard position, and began.
His movents flowed with the naturalness of soone who had practiced his whole life: the Flow, fluid and continuous; the Savage Slash, sudden and brutal; the Longsword of Light, strong and swift. Each technique, each strike, was like a silent dialogue between him and the weapon.
With every swing, he felt the perfect edge, the impenetrable durability and the balanced weight of the blade.
As one of the greatest swordsn alive, Rygar was used to making any weapon feel like an extension of his own body.
But this... this was different. It was as if he were wielding a living creature, which reacted and responded to his commands, even without words.
Soon, he was totally accustod to it.
"Strong... strong enough to face Orsted?" he thought silently. "Maybe."
He decided to test further. He channeled Fire Magic into the blade.
To his surprise, his mana not only entered the weapon — it was sucked in like a waterfall plunging into an abyss, flowing with double the maximum efficiency he had ever reached before, which had been nine tis.
It was absurd. He knew that even a Rank SS beast core would hardly surpass tenfold efficiency.
And, the higher the level, the harder it was to increase. Here... it was as if the sword ignored all the rules.
Of course, Rygar wasn’t complaining. On the contrary. He injected mana at full force and struck toward the mountains.
A colossal wave of fire exploded from the blade, forming an incandescent arc that advanced like a living wall, licking the sky and consuming the ground.
The flas spread in spirals, lting rocks and turning distant snow into instant vapor.
The impact made the ground tremble, cracks appeared and columns of smoke rose.
"Hmph..." he murmured, impressed.
Just a casual cut had resulted in a fiery storm that could sweep away armies.
Visually, he seed close to the level of Yamamoto Genryūsai, and perhaps his skill was approaching it as well.
Not satisfied, he tested with other magics: lightning, gravity, ice, wind... And, in each of them, he felt the sword’s hostility, its destructive impulse ever present.
He realized that his most intense affinity was with fire and destructive magics, but even support magics were amplified, albeit to a lesser degree.
Rygar spent a good amount of ti exploring the weapon’s possibilities... and, to his own surprise, he couldn’t reach its limit.
The first finding was that his efficiency in mana consumption was truly absurd.
The mana flows, which normally required careful and constant control, now flowed as if they were a natural reflex of his body.
More than that, Fire Magic seed to have fused to him organically, as if it had always been part of his instinct.
It was almost automatic.
Overall, his magical capacity had indeed taken a colossal leap.
He also confird that the Tsukikage ability remained intact.
He was fully convinced that, as long as the blade was imbued with lightning or fire, it would never break, not even against Orsted.
The weapon’s structure seed to reinforce itself, as if defying the concept of wear.
The second discovery was that, sohow, the sword seed to interact with his touki and with his own body, altering them subtly.
This perception was only possible thanks to the Demon Eyes, which allowed him to notice even the smallest changes, almost imperceptible.
His resistance to fire, for example, had increased to a surprising level. It was as if, while wielding the blade, the flas were no longer a real threat.
The third point was that by holding the sword, he had acquired sothing he could only describe as a Terrifying Aura.
It was not his natural combat presence nor a thirst for blood, nor a direct manifestation of touki.
It was sothing different — sothing that penetrated deeply into the instinct of those who faced him.
He still did not understand the exact workings of this phenonon, but he knew it could be used as a psychological weapon as lethal as the blade itself.
And even with all that, it was easy to see he had not yet touched the true limit of the weapon. With each test, new possibilities arose.
He was certain there was more. Much more. The problem was simple: he still didn’t know the blade well enough to awaken its full potential.
But he knew this was only the first step.
The creation of this sword represented the beginning of the creation of his magical items, made to transcend the limits of common weapons.
When he finished the tests, he returned to the lted mountain where the dwarves still awaited him.
Now, they still had to decide on a na. And it would have to have great aning, for it would be a weapon whose na would echo through the ages.
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