Author’s Corner: Imagine that there is a witty remark here. Go on, do it. Good, now enjoy the chapter.

Yin and I sat there listening to Yang’s song until it was over. When it was done, she turned back to us and lightly smiled. The equipment that she had been working on seemed much more powerful than before, even without any of the enchantments on them yet. “I’m done, Master.” She then stepped aside to let me collect and inspect the gear.

As I had expected, this looked like higher level equipment you would normally find in a game wielded by nature-oriented classes. Although I knew their true power was fairly weak right now because of the materials, each one had been strengthened to the limits of Yang’s ability. In particular, a wooden sword seemed interesting to me. Its shape was like that of a katana, which made it a bokken. However, the wooden blade actually seemed sharp. It wouldn’t match up to a steel sword, but it definitely had some power behind it.

Picking up the bokken, I looked over to Yang. “Do you mind if I keep this one for myself?”

The girl immediately brightened up, smiling and nodding her head quickly. “Yes, please do!” She seemed incredibly happy that I would be taking one of her weapons for my own use.

“Thanks, Yang. They look great.” With a thought, I spread out my mana and absorbed all of the other items into the grove, aside from one other bokken which did not seem quite as powerful as this one. It would be my testing item, to make sure I was able to do some of the things I wanted.

From there, I left to go back to my crafting room, knowing that this place would provide me with the most privacy for my experiment. “Be careful, John. This shouldn’t be a life threatening experiment, so I won’t suggest you use your clone, but still.” Celeste’s voice rang out in my head as I decided on my course of action.

First, the ‘practice’ bokken. I set the other one aside while I worked so that nothing would happen to it, and then shifted into a slime person body. I had only been in this form a small number of times, so it took me a moment to stabilize my form. Afterwards, I changed my arm to surround this wooden sword, and directly consumed it with my new body.

Equipment Form UnlockedBokken

Durability: 15/15

Hardness: 10/10

Sharpness: 10

Special Effects: None

After devouring the sword, I suddenly knew everything about it, and knew that I could change into it. Briefly, I let my instincts take over, and my entire body shifted, growing smaller and more narrow, until I fell to the floor as a slime replica of the wooden sword. When I changed back, I instead turned only my hand into the sword. It was weird seeing a long slime blade sticking out from my wrist, but yet it felt completely natural.

Slowly, I reformed my hand around the hilt of the sword, until I was holding it. Finally, I tried to sever that connection between myself and the bokken, so that it would be an entirely separate entity. At this point, the slime sword in my hand fell down to the ground in a puddle of goo. “Okay… so I have to maintain the connection. I can’t drop it. Wonder how they handle projectiles.” I shrugged my shoulders at that discovery, before moving on.

The next step had me shifting back to my elf form, and trying again. Naturally, I couldn’t access my slime powers while I was an elf, so nothing happened. But, after I applied the slime aura to the palm of my hand, I was able to instantly form the sword in it. Giving it a test swing, I snapped the sword in half against the table I would normally sit at.

Broke your hand. More or less.-5 HP

No, I didn’t actually break my hand. The only thing that broke was the sword. However, a tinge of pain rang back through it and into me. When I did this, the sword essentially became a part of my body. I had to invest myself into its creation, so when the sword was broken, I suffered a backlash.

However, the bright side of this is that I was able to immediately summon the sword again. No matter how many times it broke, I would always be able to use it now. All in all, I’d call this experiment a resounding success.

The next part… well for that I had to go hop into my clone. I won’t go too deeply into detail because it took a while, but the next couple of weeks I spent in the hangar, spawning monsters and then killing them. At first it was just slimes, because they are easy to make and destroy. But eventually, I started practicing with other things as well.

Although she didn’t take part in the fights, Sharon was at the hangar with me to watch my progress. When I asked if she had discovered any new monster combinations, she said that the only thing she managed to create on her own was a goblin. Still, that was a rather impressive feat. But that was before she had the information from Celeste’s scanners. Now we knew how to make goblins, trolls, even ettins. I didn’t want to make any demons because they were unpredictable, so I stuck with those three.

After making each monster, with Celeste’s guidance to ensure the accurate usage of mana, I then immediately turned around and killed it. From there, I waited for my mana to recover and then repeated the process. In two weeks, I had earned a total of five levels. It would have been more if I was creating stronger monsters, but this was the best I could do right now. And out of those five levels, I already had plans for one to be sacrificed so that I could have my very own intelligent weapon.

Speaking of the bokken, I had been working on it ever since that first experiment. Because I found that I could enchant an item after absorbing it, I had upgraded the ‘practice’ bokken with increased hardness and cutting power. This had brought its hardness, durability, and sharpness attributes each up by ten points.

The real one had also been given the same enchantments, but on top of that I gave it another ability. I wanted to give it a fire magic, but being a wooden sword and all that would likely end poorly. Instead, I enchanted it with a wind blade which further enhanced its cutting power, and extended the blade a couple inches beyond the visible portion. If this experiment worked right, that would be the base power that I built up with the weapon leveling.

Now, after I got my five levels, it was time for the final procedure. Unlike with what Celeste did, I was not going to wait until an AI was put into the sword before imbuing it with a soul. If I needed to, I could add the AI in as an enchantment after I absorbed it, but from my tests I discovered that I could not add the soul to an absorbed item. This was likely because the item was a part of me, so it already had my soul in it to some degree.

So first, I placed the bokken in front of me, and began using my Soul Arts to focus on my buffer area. I kept pulling that buffer aura out while watching my experience drop, until it had reached the bottom of level 54. From there, I began slowly infusing the soul into the sword, which seemed to soak it up like a sponge.

This sounds quick, but it took me a total of five minutes to fully infuse the sword with my buffer aura. And when I was done, there was no real change in the sword itself. If not for my Soul Arts confirming that the soul was present, I might have thought that I failed. However, as it was I just had to continue.

The next step was, of course, changing back into my slime body and consuming this new sword. When I did so, a rather interesting window appeared.

Equipment Form UnlockedBokken(Enchanted)

Durability: 50/50

Hardness: 60/60

Sharpness: 80

Special Effects: Wind Blade, Growth Item

No, not that one. Though the higher stats on this sword were interesting. It was the next window that appeared.

Please select an upgrade.Points available: 8Base EnchantmentSharpness, Hardness, Wind Blade

After selecting the Wind Blade option, another list appeared. This one allowed me to either choose between a preset power, upgrade the wind blade, or design my own enchantment. My first instinct was to check out the list of preset powers, and there were a lot of them. Most were grayed out because they required more than eight points, but there were options like wind blasts, projectile wind blades, or even a ‘vacuum’ blade that sucks the air out after a swing.

After looking through those, I went to design my own power, where there were a bunch of options to allocate points for things like range and special effects. Eventually I just went back and selected the ranged wind blade from the preset window. I would try to design my own stuff later, but for now this was fine.

Besides, there was another part of this that I hadn’t even considered until now. I could make the sword appear by ‘sliming’ the palm of my hand. But if I did so to a different part of my body, wouldn’t I still be able to do it, at least partially? To test that, I slimed up the side of my hand and focused. The slime quickly reshaped into an edge, and when I swung it a light ripple appeared in the air, which launched itself to a nearby wall.

I had to quickly use my Wind Manipulation to erase the wind blade, just in case it might have been strong enough to damage the wall. Would not want to get spaced because I was stupid. Anyways, now that I had this taken care of, I no longer had to worry about needing a physical weapon.

Rather than going back to farming newborn monsters, I decided to go to the bridge. It had been a while since I had been there, and I needed to be all captain-y. We were already well on our way to visiting the psychic planet, so there wasn’t really much to do on the bridge. However, being there was important, so I was there.

Of course, that didn’t mean I was focusing on being there. My mind was still busy learning the language for the planet we were visiting, while I idly practiced summoning my psychic power and weaving it together to form basic shapes. My goal was to be able to form a psychic shield by the time we reached the Ha’vosh!

Yeah, that probably wasn’t happening. But at least I had my nights to look forward to, as Sharon had been filling Yin’s head with all kinds of things for women to do for a birthday boy. I have to admit, she can get pretty creative.

Compared to before we arrived at Hydra, the crew seemed to have undergone a drastic change. People were using magic much more easily, going so far as to use it to help in their day to day lives, such as using fire magic for cooking, water magic for cleaning, and so on. The hunters would be seen playing with their beasts, the fighters sparring with each other in practice rooms. Even the craftsmen were hard at work exploring their new abilities.

And like that, we continued our journey to the Ha’vosh, with a crew that had adapted to this new way of life. What would this world hold for us? Will we get new and awesome companions? I hope so, but since when does anything go exactly as I want?