Chapter 132- The weird Surgery

Chapter 132: Chapter 132- The weird Surgery

Before long, Leo got a reply. "Yes, I know someone. Haven’t invited him to the guild yet, but I can vouch for him — he’s someone we can trust."

Leo read through the message and asked Elona to bring the person over to the guild.

Elona, for her part, was genuinely puzzled by the whole request. Why would he need a surgeon, of all things, inside a game? Does the game even require doctors? I thought healers could just fix anything with a spell. She muttered the thought to herself as she messaged her employee, who happened to be online at the moment.

She explained the situation, and the guy agreed almost instantly. He even volunteered to join the guild outright. Since Leo had already made her vice guild leader, Elona simply added him to the roster herself, on the spot.

His name was Ash, though his in-game handle was Dr. Blades.

He teleported over to the guild shortly after.

Elona let Leo know the man had arrived. Leo made his way to the hall, introduced himself briefly, and quickly led Ash through to the Hall of Undead.

"So, here’s what I need," Leo said, laying out the situation. "Cut open this man’s hand, remove every fragment of shattered bone, and replace it all with new bone."

Ash stared at him, clearly caught off guard. "Sorry — you want me to replace all the bones in his hand? With what, exactly?"

Leo paused, thinking it over. "Could metal work as a substitute for bone?"

"What? No, absolutely not," Ash replied immediately, without a moment’s hesitation.

"I mean — if you wanted the whole hand replaced as a full prosthetic, sure, that’s technically doable. But swapping out every individual finger bone for metal piece by piece? That’s just not feasible. If it were only a couple of small bones needing replacement, maybe, but..." His voice trailed off uncertainly.

Leo thought it over for a moment, and then suddenly remembered the wyvern bones he’d picked up earlier at the market for stock, still sitting in his inventory.

He pulled out several of the large wyvern bones.

"Could these work, then? If I cut them down and shape them into proper human finger sized bones?"

Ash stared at the massive bones in visible shock. "I... guess that could work?"

Leo nodded and got straight to work. He drew his sword and began cutting the bones down into appropriately sized pieces, checking each one against Sigil’s actual fingers, slicing and shaping as he went, carving the bone to fit precisely.

Ash watched, clearly stunned. "You’re carving bone like it’s soft wood."

Leo finished shaping every bone needed for the fingers and palm. Since the fingers needed to remain flexible enough for delicate, precise work, he was meticulous about matching every measurement exactly.

He laid the finished bones out carefully across the table.

Now came the harder part — connecting the finger bones to one another, and then linking the whole assembly to the palm bones.

Leo studied the joints of the massive wyvern bone he still had left, noting the tendons still attached, long and remarkably strong. ℴ

He turned to Ash. "Can you take the tendons from that wyvern bone and use them to connect these pieces together?"

Ash blinked, looking back and forth between the enormous tendons and the small finger bones laid out on the table. He’d never attempted anything remotely like this before. "You want me to graft wyvern tendon into a human hand?"

Leo nodded.

Ash considered it for a moment. "I suppose I can try. Not that I’ve ever done anything like this before." He reached toward the joint. "I’ll need to trim these down to fit the bones properly first."

"Go ahead, then," Leo said, watching closely.

Ash nodded and got to work. He cut a section free from the long tendon, peeling it carefully away from the joint with a short dagger. It came away easily, almost like leather. He rubbed it between his fingers, testing the fibers. "It’s a bit dry. Needs softening — some moisture worked into it."

He pulled out a mana potion, poured it into a small container, then added water to dilute it.

He soaked the tendon sections in the mixture.

A few minutes later, he pulled them back out.

Ash threaded the tendon carefully through each finger, weaving it under, over, and around every joint in sequence. Leo watched closely as each tendon settled into place, correcting the angle between adjacent finger bones as needed. He used the Eternal Flame sparingly, just enough to make sure each graft bonded properly to the bone beneath it.

Ash took considerable time on the first finger, working slowly and carefully, but he picked up speed as he went. Nearly two hours later, he’d finished grafting every bone together with tendon.

He then took out a dagger and carefully cut open the muscle and skin along the length of each finger and across the palm, opening the hand up like the pages of a book, exposing every bone beneath.

He removed the shattered bone fragments piece by piece.

The removal alone took a full hour, given how tangled the wreckage had become.

Once that was finished, Ash carefully placed the newly grafted bone assembly into position and fused it to the wrist. Leo double-checked every connection point, reinforcing the bond further with careful applications of fire.

Ash closed the hand back up, stitching the skin and muscle carefully back into place.

By the end of it, his hands were thoroughly stained with blood from the entire procedure.

"Alright. Let’s begin," Leo said.

"Begin what, exactly?" Ash asked. "Now that we’re actually done here, I really do want to ask — why go through all this trouble fixing the hand of a dead man? Are you planning to bury him properly repaired, or something?"

Leo chuckled quietly. "Just stand back and watch closely."

He opened his palm and summoned Sigil’s soul. A pale, silver-blue orb of light materialized above his hand, dense and heavy, layered with decades of accumulated experience.

The soul’s structure was noticeably heavier than the wolf’s had been — far more complex, with many more layers woven through it.

Leo summoned soul fire and began the refinement process.

[Ding~]

[Soul Refinement — Initiated.]

The soul fire began burning away the unnecessary layers — the slave markings, the pain, the fear, all of it. Deep corruption buried within the soul burned away as well. Even the poison Sigil had mentioned, the one slowly killing him, had apparently reached all the way into his soul — the first time Leo had ever encountered a poison capable of causing that kind of damage. Regardless, the soul fire burned it away completely along with everything else. The scars left behind in the soul’s structure were mended and refined, and years of accumulated impurities were stripped away entirely, leaving nothing but what genuinely mattered.

With refinement complete, Leo moved into tempering.

[Soul Tempering — Initiated.]

Countless small soul-fire hammers manifested and began striking the soul pattern rhythmically. Its structure grew stronger with every passing minute, density and resistance climbing steadily with each strike. Sigil’s identity, his skills, his defining traits — none of it was erased, only reinforced further, the soul’s underlying power growing purer and stronger under the tempering process.

Next came—

[Soul Memory Processing — Initiated.]

Leo began sorting carefully through the memory layers. He burned away everything tied to captivity and slavery — he didn’t want this undead blacksmith carrying forward any lingering resentment or pain. Just as Sigil had wished, Leo hoped that once the transformation finished, Sigil would finally be free to forge to his heart’s content, unburdened, and grow into the exceptional blacksmith he’d always had the potential to become. Layer by layer, those painful memories burned away, leaving behind only the truly remarkable experiences — a smith’s soul, honed sharp by decades of dedicated forging work. The feel of steel beneath his hands, the smell of hot metal and ash, the deep muscle memory built over a lifetime — all of it remained completely intact.

Leo finally moved through the last stage of soul processing. Now came the most difficult step of all.

[Ding~]

[Soul Will Processing — Initiated.]

The soul’s consciousness, its core identity, its capacity for independent thought — this was, in essence, the central processing core of the entire soul pattern, something like the delicate brain at the heart of a human soul. And it proved far more complex than the wolf’s had been. Leo worked carefully and slowly, probing gently through it. Sigil’s will remained strong at its core, though clearly wounded from everything he’d endured. Leo carefully mended the broken pieces of that will and consciousness, using soul fire to repair the damage bit by bit. As the process continued, soul fire and undead mana slipped naturally from Leo’s own body, quietly branding the mark of loyalty directly into Sigil’s consciousness.

With that, the soul refinement procedure was finally complete.

Leo held the fully refined, purified soul pattern steady in his hands.

Ash, meanwhile, could only stare at him in a daze, clearly not understanding what he was witnessing at all. To Ash, it genuinely looked like Leo was simply playing around with a glowing ball of light for no particular reason.

Leo returned the refined soul carefully into soul storage and stepped up to the table where Sigil’s body still lay.

He pressed both palms firmly against the body. Death mana poured out from his hands, spreading to cover Sigil entirely before radiating further, filling the surrounding chamber.

[Ding~]

[Body Reforging — Initiated.]

Ash felt a deep chill crawl down his spine at the sheer weight of the dark mana filling the room, and instinctively took a step back.

"What exactly are you doing to the body?" Ash asked. Leo was far too focused to register the question at all.

Undead mana rolled through Sigil’s body in full force, beginning to reshape its structure entirely. Every cell in his body underwent restructuring down to the atomic level. Muscle fibers strengthened and reinforced themselves with every passing second, while his skin darkened slightly in tone. The bones themselves were steadily cleansed by the undead mana, impurities washing away as the entire body underwent what looked like a complete purification process.

But when the undead mana reached his hands — where the newly grafted wyvern bones now sat in place of the originals — something changed.