Chapter 688

SPLURT!

It happened in an instant.

Before Su-ho could even think of stopping him, the Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City suddenly cut off his own wrist.

"E-Elder? Are you all right?"

Startled, Su-ho hurriedly reached out to treat the Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City's wrist.

But the Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City extended his remaining intact hand and refused the treatment.

"No need to make such a fuss. All of this is simply to show you something."

The Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City lightly shook the arm whose wrist had been severed.

Drops of blood splattered onto the ground around him, but then not only did the bleeding stop, the wound itself completely closed.

A recovery skill?

Su-ho couldn't tell.

The sight of the man healing his own arm as though he were some kind of monster was simply astonishing.

Still smiling, he picked up his severed hand.

Then, just as he had shaken his arm, he shook the severed wrist as well, and as if it were a lie, the bleeding stopped and its wound closed too.

He spoke.

"Do you remember when I said the Art of Dismantling can't be used on living beings?"

Su-ho, who had momentarily been staring blankly at the bizarre sight, quickly answered the Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City's question.

"Ah, yes. I remember."

"Then is this wrist alive right now, or not?"

"Since it's been severed, I suppose it's dead?"

"Correct. Which means this wrist now has a central point that couldn't be seen until a moment ago."

The central point of the severed wrist that was visible to the Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City.

Naturally, Su-ho couldn't see it.

His Smith's Eye had not yet reached the ultimate level.

"So, if I strike the wrist like this."

The sword transformed into a small hand hammer.

He lightly tapped the wrist with the transformed hammer.

Clatter!

It sounded like a pile of blocks collapsing.

Amazingly, just like the Black Iron Shield from before, the wrist shattered apart and collapsed into pieces as though it had never been flesh at all.

Looking at his own wrist, now reduced to a pile of fragments, the Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City spoke as though it were nothing.

"And just like that, it becomes material fragments."

"A-Are you really all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be? Do you know why doctors are so remarkable? Because ordinary people only know how to kill, not how to save. We're the same. Ordinary people only know how to break things. They don't know how to restore them."

He extended his severed arm toward the fragments of his wrist.

The wrist fragments began rattling and moving, and then one piece snapped onto the severed surface of his arm.

"It begins with the central point."

Then the other fragments began moving as well.

Shrrrk—

As though being reconstructed, they began joining together around the central point of the wrist fragment that had attached first.

Before long, the joined fragments had perfectly reconstructed the wrist exactly as it had looked before being severed.

"But this only means the shape has been fitted back into its original frame. It hasn't been perfectly assembled yet."

With that, he tapped various places on the wrist with the hand hammer.

There was almost no sound.

If anything, it sounded faintly like someone tapping leather.

Eventually, when he pulled the hand hammer away, a golden aura gathered around the wrist he had been striking, then dispersed.

The wrist began moving perfectly again, just as it had before being cut off.

As though nothing had ever happened.

"Wow......."

A murmur of admiration escaped Su-ho without him even realizing it.

It felt as though he had just watched an incredible magic show.

Having restored his wrist, the Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City casually waved it around again and smiled.

"What do you think?"

"I think it's incredible."

"Come now, you can't talk like an ordinary spectator. You're my successor, aren't you?"

"Ah."

At his reminder, Su-ho quickly collected himself and explained what he had taken away from what he had just seen.

"First of all, unlike the Mega Crusher, it seems the Blacksmith Style allows self-healing."

"Hmm. Do you really think self-healing is all it can do?"

"Pardon?"

"Broaden your perspective. This isn't the same kind of recovery skill you've learned."

"Recovery...... Ah!"

Right.

He had been thinking too much from his own perspective.

The man in front of him was a blacksmith.

Not a healer.

Then Su-ho needed to think differently as well.

"I think it allows modification of the human body, rather than healing."

"What makes you think that?"

"What you just showed me didn't seem like a process of destruction followed by recovery. You harvested the materials that made up your wrist, then used those harvested materials to reassemble and restore it...... In other words, I think it was closer to restoration."

"And?"

"Looking at it from that perspective, just like the information on the Black Iron Shield showed, if you have enough material fragments, then using the central point of the severed wrist as the foundation, it should also be possible to reconstruct an entirely new wrist using different materials."

"Correct."

Only then did the Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City smile at Su-ho's answer.

"You saw it precisely. What I just did wasn't an act of self-harm or destruction. It was the harvesting of materials through Smith's Eye and the Art of Dismantling. Then, using the Art of Assembly, I restored it exactly as it had been using the materials I'd harvested. But what if, instead of using the materials from my original wrist, I reconstructed it with materials harvested from something else?"

"Then it would become an upgrade."

"Correct."

"I have a question."

"Ask."

"In a case like that, wouldn't there be some kind of rejection reaction? From a medical perspective, as far as I know, if you forcibly combine different living organisms, the recipient dies quickly because of rejection."

"Good question. Naturally, that problem exists for us as well. That's why material stabilization is necessary."

"Stabilization?"

"Do you remember Square Forge-Welding, one of the techniques engraved into the Smith's Hammer?"

"Yes. It's the technique that combines one material with another."

"Once that reaches the ultimate level, it becomes what we call the Art of Synthesis. More precisely, Material Synthesis, though I simply call it the Art of Synthesis. Either way, you're synthesizing one material with another to create something new. During that process, stabilization is performed so the material becomes compatible with the central point of whatever you're trying to create. It requires repeated hammering and a great deal of mana."

"Ah, then it reduces the rejection reaction while also improving the material's specs, so the upgrade can be performed much more reliably."

"In theory, it becomes possible to improve a material's specs without limit. From another perspective, you could even call it a new form of creation."

"That must require an enormous amount of power."

"It's easy enough to say, but combining things with incompatible properties into one requires tremendous power. If you fail to control the synthesis of the materials, the process can run wild, and no one can predict how much damage the resulting rampage will cause."

"Then if a runaway occurs, wouldn't I, as the one performing the Art of Synthesis, be in the greatest danger?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not."

"Pardon?"

"You can grow infinitely stronger, can't you? Perhaps a runaway reaction caused during material synthesis wouldn't hurt you in the slightest. In the end, damage is relative as well."

"Ah...... I see."

That was something else Su-ho hadn't considered.

He had simply assumed that a runaway reaction was inherently dangerous.

"Then what I need to learn is Smith's Eye and the Art of Dismantling, along with the Art of Assembly and the Art of Synthesis?"

"Broadly speaking, yes."

"I have another question."

"Ask."

"What about extraction?"

"Extraction?"

"Not every material I harvest will come as a fragment containing exactly the option I want, will it? Didn't you give me the Flame of the Golden Blacksmith and the Smith's Furnace through the necklace so I could separate out the things I wanted from the materials I obtained?"

He thought back to Fairy Dragon Gomes.

He had obtained all kinds of byproducts from its body, including horn fragments and hide fragments.

For example.

[ Heart Fragment of Fairy Dragon Gomes ]

Grade : S# A heart fragment of Fairy Dragon Gomes, one of the forces belonging to the Fairy Hunters.

# Only part of it was harvested rather than the heart in its complete state.

# Gomes tormented the Protection Fairies for a long time and devoured countless fairies.

# When used, grants the effects 'Fairy Power Resistance +20%,' 'HP Recovery Speed +20%,' and 'Mana Recovery Speed +20%.'

# It seems that if enough of Fairy Dragon Gomes's power is gathered, a mysterious power may take root.

Something like that.

But Su-ho had focused on the last line of the item's description.

If enough of its power was gathered, a mysterious power would take root.

In most cases, wording like that meant a Rune.

Of course, the heart fragments themselves had excellent options, but when he put them into the furnace and processed them, he obtained Hide Crystals, Fairy Power Crystals, and Rune Fragments.

'And by gathering those, I was able to obtain Gomes's Rune.'

He remembered its options as well.

S+ grade.

Even the grade had risen by one level.

Then, by absorbing that Rune in its entirety, he had gained the power of the Fairy Hunters, whom all fairies feared without exception.

Fairy Hunter's Roar, Fairy Power Reversal Body, and Fairy Devouring.

That was why Su-ho believed extraction was extremely important as well.

Yet the Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City's explanation had included nothing about extraction.

The Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City grinned.

"You're paying more attention to the details than I expected."

"I'm your successor."

"Good attitude. On that note, what did I tell you earlier? Didn't I say that the Blacksmith Style can broadly be divided into four things?"

"Yes. You said the four representative ones were Smith's Eye, the Art of Dismantling, the Art of Assembly, and the Art of Synthesis."

"Then which of those powers do you think is closest to extraction?"

"If I had to choose one...... Wait, don't tell me the Art of Dismantling can also be used for extraction?"

"Why are you so surprised? A highly refined Art of Dismantling is no different from extraction. Take the Black Iron Shield as an example. Once you strike its central point, it splits apart into numerous shield fragments. But those are nothing more than large fragments. If you dismantle those again, breaking them down into even smaller pieces, wouldn't the options contained within those large fragments also separate into individual components? If that °• N ?? v ?? l i g h t •° isn't extraction, what else would you call it?"

"Ah......."

"Don't make the mistake of thinking the Art of Dismantling ends with striking a central point once and breaking everything apart into fragments. Smith's Eye is the same. Everything possesses a central point. Once you strike the first central point of the object you're harvesting, it divides into larger fragments. And each of those fragments has its own central point, allowing them to be broken down further and further. You need to become capable of seeing every one of those. That is the true ultimate level of Smith's Eye and the Art of Dismantling."

"Ah......."

For a moment, Su-ho's mouth fell open at an ability far beyond anything he had imagined.

Perhaps because of that—

"Will I really be able to learn something like that?"

Su-ho suddenly felt dizzy at the thought.