My sword was shaping up to be a good one, I first individually forged two identical blades from the white and black iron respectively.

Once I had produced two special steel blades I used a special process on them, fusing the two blades into one mixed blade and converting the left over mass back into magical power.

My blade was left half and half even though technically the metal was the same thing throughout the blade, I sharpened it and prepared to check how many enchantments it could hold.

A weapons grade was determined by how many enchantments and/or curses could be placed on it at any given time:

F could take only one, E could take two, D could take three, C could take four, B could take five, A could take six and anything higher than that was S ranked.

My newly forged blade could withstand five seperate enchantments or curses, making it B rank.

I was extremely happy that I had forged such a powerful sword, I knew that my skills had improved a lot in both alchemy and smithing.

With my new pride and joy before me, I began the tedious but rewarding enchantment process. ; Words of power were inscribed upon the blade to give it special properties, the blade also had a single powerful curse planted upon it.

All together my blade had five seperate magical effects: Extreme durability, self reconstruction, magic resistance, weight manipulation and a curse of gluttony.

The glutinous curse usually destroyed any magic item you placed it on whenever it absorbed mana from slaying a monster, however I had successfully developed a method for taking the immense energy involved in the curse and transferring it into the other enchantments to empower them.

With the blade complete, I spent an hour studying the ritual book and ring I got from the beserkers.

The books all pertained to rituals of blood, but one described the ceremony of perfecting the ring.

According to the book an imperfect ring blocked the magic of someone whilst they wore it, making ir essentially useless.

But by gathering a variety of monster blood and performing an incantation the rings true power could be brought fourth : An army of soldiers formed from blood, total blood manipulation and creation, a tremendous boost to both physical and magical power.

The ring seemed like a hassle to me and ritual books usually played up their supposed earth shaking effects, reading through a few more led me to only one ritual that caught my eye.

I had heard it mentioned in passing, bone and flesh enhancement: The bone was made tougher than diamonds, the flesh harder to cut than steel plate.

With those two rituals together one only needed the third element to worry about, muscle strength.

Bulking up was an option but not one I cared to entertain, my style of fighting relied on me being agile and any changes to my body would disrupt that balance.

I went and checked on the laboratory, as expected the subjects had escaped withour incident.

Though leaving them felt bad, I wanted desperately to create my sword and my own safety anf peace of mind regrettably took priority.

Returning to my room for a bit of relaxation and some alchemy, I studied some of the grass I had picked earlier.

The magical effect of the grass wasn't discovered immediately, but a quick bite led to me feeling sick and emaciated.

I rested in bed, intent on recovering through sleep before trying to leave the following morning.

My sleep was calm and without much incident, no notable dreams or trouble sleeping at all.

When I woke to the frantic sounds of a raid bell ringing, I knew then that something was wrong.